14 ms·

Is the goal simply to boost the numbers of some arbitrary group of people clumped together because of their immutable characteristics? Or is the goal to improv

Is the goal simply to boost the numbers of some arbitrary group of people clumped together because of their immutable characteristics? Or is the goal to improve the output and speed of innovation in an industry by exposing more people to it? If it's the former, you're probably right. If it's the latter, being concerned about sacrificed quality is not "BS".

emodendroket 8y ago
I imagine the focus is righting the historic wrongs that lead to women and minorities being underrepresented in well-paying jobs, and not a mindless focus on ever-higher productivity.
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  What historic wrongs kept these people out of programming? Last I checked most of programming came from the once persecuted nerd and geeks. Things have changed for sure, but every time I hear this statement with relation to programming I can't help to think about how laffable it is. For the longest time computers and programming were one of the major places you could go and learn alot and become good at all while being under the cloak of anonymity. Back when this would have made a difference it was almost mandatory to conceal both gender and race because the bandwidth for live streaming video,voice simply was not there. Vast amounts of work and collaboration were done via text interfaces. This is a narrative I keep seeing with little proof to back it. The lack of the numbers representing a group does not automatically imply discrimination. And if you are going to bring that to the table then you are going to need to show some hard proof that is the defacto reason why any group of people are not represented. But even if you were right, I am not entirely sure setting merit aside is such a good idea for roles that can mean life or death of others. Do you not want the best heart surgeon working on your heart? Do you not want the best programmer you can get programming robotic arms and the breaking subsystems of the car that is behind you in traffic? The only sane way to correct historic wrongs is by flooding the lower level education systems with money in poor areas. Programs to help single mothers, access to laptops and the internet. The second you lower the bar you are doing a disservice to society, and to the person you think you are helping.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    I would also add here Norway as the prototypical example. Norway is not only a mostly homogenous society with extremely low inequality, but is now considered arguably the most gender equal nation in existence. But the interesting thing is that this does not translate to an equal proportion of people in every single activity -- or even remotely close to it. What they found is that when working to actively push people into careers that would not normally fit gender "stereotypes" there was a small and relatively constant improvement. As soon as that push was relinquished the numbers would trend back towards the pre-push ratios. The point of this is that even when given completely equal opportunity in a completely equal society, different groups trend towards different things. This whole notion that everything and everybody is identical with most, if not all, differences being the product of some form of ism or discrimination of some sort of another is a very new, very wrong, and very dangerous belief. The only way you're going to achieve identical outcomes is by pushing society towards a dystopia as it would entail either preventing those who want to do x from doing so, or by pushing people who do not want to do x into doing just that.
  - rectang 8y ago
    > Last I checked most of programming came from the once persecuted nerd and geeks. ... > The lack of the numbers representing a group does not automatically imply discrimination. ...
  - dx87 8y ago
    I can't find the exact article where I read it, but programming used to be considered woman's work, similar to the work of a secretary or someone doing data entry. When big companies like IBM were trying to grow their workforce, they found that the best programmers were antisocial loners, and that woman programmers were more likely to leave the workforce early in order to get married and raise a family. Knowing this, they deliberately started trying to change the public perception of programming to a nerdy guy thing, and it appears they were succesful. That said, I do agree with you that lowering the bar is the wrong way to go about things, and that outreach programs will be more beneficial. I saw the negative effects of lowering the bar first hand in the military. Physical fitness tests have lower standards for females, but they both compete for the same promotion spots. This led to a lot of females with higher fitness scores than males, and and subsequent faster promotions and resentment from the males. A lot of the females didn't like the lower standards either, because they knew that once they got to a higher rank their subordinates would just assume they only got that high of a rank because they had to meet lower standards and that allowed them to get promoted faster than their peers.
- djschnei 8y ago
  What "historic wrongs" are keeping women or minorities out of the technology field? Honestly curious. > not a mindless focus on ever-higher productivity. Ugh. I said, "improve the output and speed of innovation". Those two things are what will actually help humanity collectively. You're equality of outcome wet dream will do the opposite.
  - jlelonm 8y ago
    I asked my girlfriend this, and she said a few things: 1) It looked tedious and frustrating to learn. 2) It's filled with a bunch of dudes, which makes her uncomfortable. 3) It doesn't come "naturally" to her so she thinks it'd be frustrating in the long run as well.
    - djschnei 8y ago
      Ah! The misogyny!
    - umanwizard 8y ago
      So basically, she didn't want to do it for a variety of reasons, and freely decided not to. How was anyone wronged here?
      - emodendroket 8y ago
        Our supposedly free choices are mediated by circumstance. Even in this apology (and really, am I supposed to be impressed with hearsay from a single woman?) one of the reasons is "I didn't want to enter a discipline that was overwhelmingly male."
      - michaelt 8y ago
        Depends if you think anyone is wronged by the gender pay gap, and whether (2) is one of the foundations of the gender pay gap.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      Thanks for your rigorous research.
Retric 8y ago
You get more innovation by having a wider pool of talent to draw from. That likely more than counters reducing the 'quality' of what is at best an introductory course. It's not about skin color, it's a question of having for example a blind team member causing the team to think about a wider set of issues.
- dsajames 8y ago
  And yet the computer industry is the most innovative in history. Computers got faster and cheaper than any other product ever. The speed and price drop led directly to new uses every day. The ability to write your own software without a factory led to all manner of companies writing software vs just the handful of hardware companies. Because software is copied for zero overhead, a single blind programmer can write software for millions of people (they have).
  - Retric 8y ago
    Computing has drawn from an incredibly wide range of people in the past. The first generation that got into the field without formal computing degree because no such thing existed have only just retired.
- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  But shouldn't we just hire people based on whatever qualifications we deem an indicator to talent, skill, ethic, etc? Does being a woman, disabled, ethnic, etc bring meaningful insight to designing a network protocol? Is that a quantifiable thing? I suspect both of these answers are a resounding no. Lets care what talent and interests people have. Lets give them the education they need to pursue those interests. Creating groups of people by what I consider irrelevant details like what organs they have and then forcing them into certain occupations does not seem likely to make better network protocols. I frankly am always puzzled that people who fight for equality, simultaneously care so much about what's between our legs. Now, if you think the blind, or women, or w/e are interested in STEM/etc but due to culture they avoid it? Great, that's something we can work with. Lets work on trying to change culture for new generations. Don't force them into STEM, but ensure that children who are interested in STEM can follow it, regardless of gender.
AlexCoventry 8y ago
I think of the goal as developing many more capable software developers. While some of the advocates for getting women into programming are motivated by gender politics, there are clear economic benefits: The more software developers there are, the easier it becomes to automate the drudgery and toil of life. Developing computer science instruction to woo and develop female students seems like low-hanging fruit with huge potential advantages.
- xigma 8y ago
  > The more software developers there are, the easier it becomes to automate the drudgery and toil of life. By "easier", you must mean "cheaper", but I don't believe that at all. There are now more software developers out there than ever before, yet project costs are the highest they have ever been and failure rates remain high. Software developers are preoccupied with creating problems for themselves, which they then get to bill clueless clients for. The more programmers there are (especially juniors), the worse it will be. Also, don't assume people actually want automation everywhere. Automation means killing jobs. Managers don't want to fire, they want to hire - it boosts their ego. Employees don't want to get fired, when in doubt, they'll come out against more automation in their day-to-day tasks. If the economy really needed way more programmers, their wages would go through the roof (across the country, not just in overpriced Silicon Valley) and even otherwise disinclined groups of people would go for it. As it is, the wages are commensurate with the effort required to learn the profession.
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Yeah, it's nice to be able to date and bang co-workers
zpallin 8y ago
That's actually a false dilemma. Both are compatible goals. The idea is that the more people with these skills, the more innovation can come from it. On that note, I don't believe "sacrificed quality" can come from an influx of more engineers, junior or not. Rather, a larger base of junior engineers has the opportunity of increasing the capability of existing senior engineers due to the paradigm of mentoring. Here is an article (posted to Hacker News some time ago) that I often reflect on: https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-developer-33e9da2dc58c https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-deve...

emodendroket 8y ago

I imagine the focus is righting the historic wrongs that lead to women and minorities being underrepresented in well-paying jobs, and not a mindless focus on ever-higher productivity.

mbrumlow 8y ago
What historic wrongs kept these people out of programming? Last I checked most of programming came from the once persecuted nerd and geeks. Things have changed for sure, but every time I hear this statement with relation to programming I can't help to think about how laffable it is. For the longest time computers and programming were one of the major places you could go and learn alot and become good at all while being under the cloak of anonymity. Back when this would have made a difference it was almost mandatory to conceal both gender and race because the bandwidth for live streaming video,voice simply was not there. Vast amounts of work and collaboration were done via text interfaces. This is a narrative I keep seeing with little proof to back it. The lack of the numbers representing a group does not automatically imply discrimination. And if you are going to bring that to the table then you are going to need to show some hard proof that is the defacto reason why any group of people are not represented. But even if you were right, I am not entirely sure setting merit aside is such a good idea for roles that can mean life or death of others. Do you not want the best heart surgeon working on your heart? Do you not want the best programmer you can get programming robotic arms and the breaking subsystems of the car that is behind you in traffic? The only sane way to correct historic wrongs is by flooding the lower level education systems with money in poor areas. Programs to help single mothers, access to laptops and the internet. The second you lower the bar you are doing a disservice to society, and to the person you think you are helping.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  I would also add here Norway as the prototypical example. Norway is not only a mostly homogenous society with extremely low inequality, but is now considered arguably the most gender equal nation in existence. But the interesting thing is that this does not translate to an equal proportion of people in every single activity -- or even remotely close to it. What they found is that when working to actively push people into careers that would not normally fit gender "stereotypes" there was a small and relatively constant improvement. As soon as that push was relinquished the numbers would trend back towards the pre-push ratios. The point of this is that even when given completely equal opportunity in a completely equal society, different groups trend towards different things. This whole notion that everything and everybody is identical with most, if not all, differences being the product of some form of ism or discrimination of some sort of another is a very new, very wrong, and very dangerous belief. The only way you're going to achieve identical outcomes is by pushing society towards a dystopia as it would entail either preventing those who want to do x from doing so, or by pushing people who do not want to do x into doing just that.
- rectang 8y ago
  > Last I checked most of programming came from the once persecuted nerd and geeks. ... > The lack of the numbers representing a group does not automatically imply discrimination. ...
- dx87 8y ago
  I can't find the exact article where I read it, but programming used to be considered woman's work, similar to the work of a secretary or someone doing data entry. When big companies like IBM were trying to grow their workforce, they found that the best programmers were antisocial loners, and that woman programmers were more likely to leave the workforce early in order to get married and raise a family. Knowing this, they deliberately started trying to change the public perception of programming to a nerdy guy thing, and it appears they were succesful. That said, I do agree with you that lowering the bar is the wrong way to go about things, and that outreach programs will be more beneficial. I saw the negative effects of lowering the bar first hand in the military. Physical fitness tests have lower standards for females, but they both compete for the same promotion spots. This led to a lot of females with higher fitness scores than males, and and subsequent faster promotions and resentment from the males. A lot of the females didn't like the lower standards either, because they knew that once they got to a higher rank their subordinates would just assume they only got that high of a rank because they had to meet lower standards and that allowed them to get promoted faster than their peers.
djschnei 8y ago
What "historic wrongs" are keeping women or minorities out of the technology field? Honestly curious. > not a mindless focus on ever-higher productivity. Ugh. I said, "improve the output and speed of innovation". Those two things are what will actually help humanity collectively. You're equality of outcome wet dream will do the opposite.
- jlelonm 8y ago
  I asked my girlfriend this, and she said a few things: 1) It looked tedious and frustrating to learn. 2) It's filled with a bunch of dudes, which makes her uncomfortable. 3) It doesn't come "naturally" to her so she thinks it'd be frustrating in the long run as well.
  - djschnei 8y ago
    Ah! The misogyny!
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    So basically, she didn't want to do it for a variety of reasons, and freely decided not to. How was anyone wronged here?
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      Our supposedly free choices are mediated by circumstance. Even in this apology (and really, am I supposed to be impressed with hearsay from a single woman?) one of the reasons is "I didn't want to enter a discipline that was overwhelmingly male."
    - michaelt 8y ago
      Depends if you think anyone is wronged by the gender pay gap, and whether (2) is one of the foundations of the gender pay gap.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Thanks for your rigorous research.

Retric 8y ago

You get more innovation by having a wider pool of talent to draw from. That likely more than counters reducing the 'quality' of what is at best an introductory course. It's not about skin color, it's a question of having for example a blind team member causing the team to think about a wider set of issues.

dsajames 8y ago
And yet the computer industry is the most innovative in history. Computers got faster and cheaper than any other product ever. The speed and price drop led directly to new uses every day. The ability to write your own software without a factory led to all manner of companies writing software vs just the handful of hardware companies. Because software is copied for zero overhead, a single blind programmer can write software for millions of people (they have).
- Retric 8y ago
  Computing has drawn from an incredibly wide range of people in the past. The first generation that got into the field without formal computing degree because no such thing existed have only just retired.
asdkhadsj 8y ago
But shouldn't we just hire people based on whatever qualifications we deem an indicator to talent, skill, ethic, etc? Does being a woman, disabled, ethnic, etc bring meaningful insight to designing a network protocol? Is that a quantifiable thing? I suspect both of these answers are a resounding no. Lets care what talent and interests people have. Lets give them the education they need to pursue those interests. Creating groups of people by what I consider irrelevant details like what organs they have and then forcing them into certain occupations does not seem likely to make better network protocols. I frankly am always puzzled that people who fight for equality, simultaneously care so much about what's between our legs. Now, if you think the blind, or women, or w/e are interested in STEM/etc but due to culture they avoid it? Great, that's something we can work with. Lets work on trying to change culture for new generations. Don't force them into STEM, but ensure that children who are interested in STEM can follow it, regardless of gender.

AlexCoventry 8y ago

I think of the goal as developing many more capable software developers. While some of the advocates for getting women into programming are motivated by gender politics, there are clear economic benefits: The more software developers there are, the easier it becomes to automate the drudgery and toil of life. Developing computer science instruction to woo and develop female students seems like low-hanging fruit with huge potential advantages.

xigma 8y ago
> The more software developers there are, the easier it becomes to automate the drudgery and toil of life. By "easier", you must mean "cheaper", but I don't believe that at all. There are now more software developers out there than ever before, yet project costs are the highest they have ever been and failure rates remain high. Software developers are preoccupied with creating problems for themselves, which they then get to bill clueless clients for. The more programmers there are (especially juniors), the worse it will be. Also, don't assume people actually want automation everywhere. Automation means killing jobs. Managers don't want to fire, they want to hire - it boosts their ego. Employees don't want to get fired, when in doubt, they'll come out against more automation in their day-to-day tasks. If the economy really needed way more programmers, their wages would go through the roof (across the country, not just in overpriced Silicon Valley) and even otherwise disinclined groups of people would go for it. As it is, the wages are commensurate with the effort required to learn the profession.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

Yeah, it's nice to be able to date and bang co-workers

zpallin 8y ago

That's actually a false dilemma. Both are compatible goals. The idea is that the more people with these skills, the more innovation can come from it. On that note, I don't believe "sacrificed quality" can come from an influx of more engineers, junior or not. Rather, a larger base of junior engineers has the opportunity of increasing the capability of existing senior engineers due to the paradigm of mentoring. Here is an article (posted to Hacker News some time ago) that I often reflect on: https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-developer-33e9da2dc58c https://medium.com/@melissamcewen/who-killed-the-junior-deve...