6 ms·

More like journalism is using race to hide its jealousy problem. Tech now has the power, influence, and compensation that journalist used to have, and they're m

by darawk 8y ago

More like journalism is using race to hide its jealousy problem. Tech now has the power, influence, and compensation that journalist used to have, and they're mad about it. Most of these companies go way out of their way to recruit minorities and women. If you believe that not having enough of them in tech companies is a problem, you're going to have to look further down the funnel, to college major choices and honestly probably much earlier. These groups are simply not graduating with CS degrees or programming skills in the numbers necessary to be equally represented as employees at these companies. Whether that's because of discrimination at earlier stages or simple preference, fixing it at the level of hiring for tech companies is way way too late to improve anything. By then it's a completely zero-sum problem. There are only so many viable candidates from these groups with the requisite skills, if Google hires one, that's one less that Palantir can take. It's just a silly game of musical chairs until we fix the pipeline problem, which is that there are not enough viable candidates from these groups. Once that is fixed, then if companies are still not hiring them, let's talk about that, but I very much doubt that will be the case.

dpflan 8y ago
Would you be willing to share your ideas on what can be done at the beginning of the pipeline?
- adamnemecek 8y ago
  Good primary and secondary education systems and affordable colleges.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Countering American anti-intellectualism is needed as well.
    - joelfolksy 8y ago
      Yep. America hasn't even started to reckon with the attitudes encapsulated in the n word (no, not that one, the other one).
- malvosenior 8y ago
  Step one (and really the only step) is that people have to want to become developers/scientists, sit in front of a computer all day, read and learn, all the time. There are a million different reasons someone may not want to do that or may be encouraged against it, but you'd have to look at every individual and culture to find out why. It may not even turn out to be a bad thing. What if someone wants to become a chef or athlete instead, is that a problem?
  - dpflan 8y ago
    For choosing a major and career I think step makes sense but I think that is near the end of the pipeline. What about exposure to the field and introducing computational thinking into earlier pars of the education system? Not necessary making kids program as their first exposure, but exposing them to computational concepts (maybe start with power of twos when learning multiplication, or control-flow-logic for writing a story....).
    - crististm 8y ago
      There are so many hours in a day. Exposure to computation as opposed to not exposing to what? What would you trade this with?
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      I think that's a great idea. Honestly I don't think any culture in the west has ever been truly supportive of becoming a STEM person. Until very recently is was extremely derided in even white American culture as being "for nerds". A more positive exposure to technology at an early age can only be a good thing. I think we'll still find very few people want to become engineers due to the required workload and that will be ok.
    - jameane 8y ago
      I think even more helpful would be framing how this actually translates into the real world - what does this sort of thing enable in the real world. I loved the show Numbers because it was a show about how math helped detectives solve crimes. Way more interesting than just doing algebra about speeding trains. I think sometimes there is an idea that everyone has the same problem and your problem is universal. For example I heard about a hackathon for black and latino kids. And the ideas that came out of it were really different. One app was a social networking platform for private school kids to connect with other black private school kids to talk about their experiences and vent. Another idea was a payment app to send money to Mexico without having to go to Western Union or whatever. There is a startup in Oakland that has an app to help people who are caught up in the criminal justice system to keep track of court appearances and hearings and stuff so they don't need to go to jail for bogus stuff like missing a court appearance. Technology has the opportunity to enable and transform - if we make sure everyone has access.
- ben_jones 8y ago
  In my experience the theme of what someone wants to do as a career often forms in high school. Programming/software is equated to the more introverted gamer/robotics types which often confers lower popularity and social status then other extra-curricular activities. Men and women alike choose to opt out of programming for this reason, although the absence of women is much more heavily felt.
- crowdpleaser 8y ago
  Sure, instill discipline in schools. Go to a school of 'underrepresented minorities' and you'll see an incredible amount of misbehavior. Anyone who struggles to listen and not gratify their most immediate desires will probably fail to develop technical skills. Also, immediate suspension for kids who bully academically-inclined students for 'acting white'. Not only is it a racially charged statement that probably has no place in school (or so progs would tell us), but it seems levied exclusively against the kids who need education the most.
  - jameane 8y ago
    Maybe have a little empathy here. In a low-income school, kids are walking in the door with way more problems than your upper middle class school where most kids have their basic needs met. Also, it is time to retire this stereotype that every non-white kid who is academically inclined is being bullied for acting white at school all the time. I get the most grief from white kids about "acting white" growing up. From fellow black kids it was pretty rare - 1-2 times. Mostly other kids were more inclined to help uplift me.
    - deogeo 8y ago
      > upper middle class The US is a long way from having its entire white population in the upper middle class: http://www.nccp.org/media/releases/release_34.html http://www.nccp.org/media/releases/release_34.html
andrewmcwatters 8y ago
The whole thing is a bullshit joke to begin with; it's always a complaint about diversity in jobs perceived to have status, but never jobs that are not. No complaints about diversity in fast food. No complaints about diversity in landscaping or construction.
- sctb 8y ago
  We've asked you countless times to stop breaking the guidelines, so we've banned the account. > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - andrewmcwatters 8y ago
    No, you've just asked me to not have differing opinions. Of course, when it's convenient for others to express theirs in similar language, as long as it's not the wrong opinion, it's quite fine.
samstokes 8y ago
You've italicised "pipeline" as if you believe this is a novel insight, but actually it's very common to dismiss diversity and inclusion efforts by redirecting attention to "the pipeline problem". Unfortunately there is evidence that the pipeline is far from the only problem, and even after successful interventions to swell the pool of qualified diverse candidates, companies' representation is still extremely skewed, and those candidates still encounter hiring barriers that other demographics do not. Here's one thread from an organisation that spent 10 years working on the pipeline and found many companies wouldn't hire their candidates: https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19 https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19 (Edit: gah, pasted the same link twice instead of the Twitter thread I meant to post) And some more links on the "pipeline problem": http://isitapipelineproblem.com http://isitapipelineproblem.com
- darawk 8y ago
  > You've italicised "pipeline" as if you believe this is a novel insight, but actually it's very common to dismiss diversity and inclusion efforts by redirecting attention to "the pipeline problem". I'm not dismissing diversity and inclusion efforts. They're being made, and i'm glad they're being made. > Here's one thread from an organisation that spent 10 years working on the pipeline and found many companies wouldn't hire their candidates: https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19 https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19 > (Edit: gah, pasted the same link twice instead of the Twitter thread I meant to post) > And some more links on the "pipeline problem": http://isitapipelineproblem.com http://isitapipelineproblem.com I'm certainly open to arguments of this form, though the links you've pasted here aren't very convincing to me. The Code2040 people say the companies said their candidates weren't qualified. I see no attempt at rebutting that (by e.g. trying to objectively measure 'qualifiedness' and then showing that these companies were preferring equally qualified white candidates). Similarly, for the attrition rates for women, I think that very same data can be used to show a preference difference rather than an inclusion problem. If you wanted to make the case that it was an inclusion problem, you'd have to believe that fields like medicine and law, which women have become quite well represented in, were substantially less male-biased than tech. If you drill down in medicine though, you'll see that women sort themselves into sub-specialties that deal with human contact, where men sort themselves into sub-specialties that do not, on average. Again, pointing to a fundamental preferential difference. In my own personal experience, i've known a few women who are excellent CS students and programmers. They had no shortage of capability relative to the men I knew. However, without exception, every single one of them aspired to be a project manager of some kind, rather than an actual engineer. They were more than capable of doing the engineering, and they did do it. However, their end goal was managing people and process. Most of the men I know who are engineers, hope to be writing code until they die. This is anecdotal of course, but it's an experience I see echoed a lot.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ingsoc79 8y ago
One look at the website of Seattle's Garfield High School (34% black/latino) CS Club website pretty much sums it up: http://www.garfieldcs.com/ http://www.garfieldcs.com/ The makeup is similar at the college level: sitting in on CS courses at UW you see a sea of white, east asian, and south asian faces. I can count the number of black or latino students (out of the several hundred enrolled students I saw) on two hands. It's a pipeline problem, full stop.
- whyaduck 8y ago
  And corporate diversity goals are based on the pipeline, not the general population. Lots of folks in this conversation seem to be making utterly incorrect assumptions about programs that they seem to have deep contempt for. Unsurprising.
  - SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
    Well, right. Corporations internally work towards their diversity goals, which are sensibly based on the pipeline and aim to eliminate bias in hiring. That's why they don't want to publicize their numbers; they know people like the Bloomberg reporter who wrote this article will incorrectly try to measure their efforts against the total number of minorities in the US.
    - whyaduck 8y ago
      The hiring pipeline is discussed explicitly in the article, and comparison to national demographics is legitimate.
      - darawk 8y ago
        Comparing hiring to national demographics is not legitimate. You should compare hiring to national graduates with CS degrees, controlling for institution. That will tell you if there is discrimination in the hiring step. If you want to see if there is discrimination in entrance to CS programs, you go a step earlier, etc. And you keep walking back until you find the source of the discrepancy. Where do women get off the CS pipeline? Is it at the hiring filter? The college major filter? Somewhere in high school? Even earlier? It's disingenuous to place the blame for the entire pipeline at the feet of the entities at the very end. Somewhere there is a bias, but it isn't necessarily at the corporate level.
air7 8y ago
What if there isn't a pipeline problem? What if there is an actual difference in preference? For example, looking at gender and STEM it seems that [0]: a. Countries that push for more gender equality see less women in STEM. b. Girls in school perform just as well as boys in STEM. Also, men are also highly over-represented in low-end jobs such as drivers, construction, mechanics etc [1]. Is that also a sign to a bias/pipeline problem? Should we attempt to strive for diversity in those fields too? [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... [1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...
- darawk 8y ago
  > What if there isn't a pipeline problem? What if there is an actual difference in preference? To be clear, i'm including 'preference' as a sub-component of 'pipeline problem'. I think it's a cultural open question whether or not we consider this a 'problem'. I think the argument for preference is much stronger on the gender question though, than on the minority question. There's strong psych research indicating preferences against programming for women, but i'm not aware of any for say, African Americans. In the minority case, I suspect it's more of an access/opportunity issue early on, but i'm open to many views of these issues.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    Given the link between tech work and depression, and more generally the link between depression and careers with very little physical activity, I think it's unconscionable to modify the preferences of people who would otherwise prefer to not work in tech. By all means, help people who desire it. By why 'correct' people who don't?
    - darawk 8y ago
      Ya, i'm not a huge fan of 'correcting' people's preferences. I do think it's possible that part of the issue is how women are socialized, and it's also possible part of the issue is how CS is taught. However, I think the lion's share of the variance is explained by biologically innate preferences, and while there could be good arguments for changing those, I don't see any being made at the moment.
thorwasdfasdf 8y ago
At a company I worked at they hired an young female intern in her late high school years, who made it obvious she didn't really want to be there. Our project manager made sure to tell us to "make programming seem as interesting as possible to her". When I was 17, I would have killed for an opportunity to work at a software company, and so would many other young kids. It's time for the world to admit, there's reasons why some people are naturally pulled towards one discipline or another. I have a 3 year old daughter, and I'd love to teach her math and programming. I sat her in front of the computer with me to get her interested and devised lots of fun math based games to play with her. But, no matter how fun I make the material, she's just not into counting things. "daddy, I don't want to count anymore" (after just a few tries) Stories about princesses and reading/writing however, this she can listen to all day long. I'm certainly not giving up on teaching her programming but you have to admit it when certain types make it clear their not into it.
- jameane 8y ago
  We need to stop trying to attribute that to gender. I loved math as a kid, I thought it was fun. I was on the math team for middle school and high school. I had a computer at home from a young age, and played the math games my parents forced on me. In addition to the game, games. (I am 40 - so things were pretty different as I was coming up. But my family was an early adopter of technology - we had a computer when I was 5. And if I would have had different upbringing the outcome could have been quite different.) Being a programmer wasn't something that was on my radar at all. I didn't know any. I didn't know it was a job that existed. As I got older it seemed like "computer people" only liked video games, magic cards, scifi books and didn't like to hang out with people. It seemed boring and antisocial - and not like my sort of people. I probably would have been a great engineer. And while I work in tech, I am a marketer and have worked in more technical roles around software implementation, operations, pre-sales in addition to all of the marketing jobs. So let's ask ourselves something else - how many people do we lose along the way because of exposure or the way we have socialized what an engineer is, does and likes.
  - thorwasdfasdf 8y ago
sylphiae 8y ago
I’m a current CS student. When I walked into my school’s CS computer lab, there were about an equal number of female and male students. I’m also a transfer student. At my previous university, at which I was also a CS major, there were maybe like 5 women to every 15 men in a class. This isn’t reflected at the tech companies I’ve worked at. There are far fewer women. This article, and articles like these: https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engin..., point out that the number of women graduating do not match the number of women who choose to go into the tech sector, or who remain there.

by darawk 8y ago

dpflan 8y ago

Would you be willing to share your ideas on what can be done at the beginning of the pipeline?

adamnemecek 8y ago
Good primary and secondary education systems and affordable colleges.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Countering American anti-intellectualism is needed as well.
  - joelfolksy 8y ago
    Yep. America hasn't even started to reckon with the attitudes encapsulated in the n word (no, not that one, the other one).
malvosenior 8y ago
Step one (and really the only step) is that people have to want to become developers/scientists, sit in front of a computer all day, read and learn, all the time. There are a million different reasons someone may not want to do that or may be encouraged against it, but you'd have to look at every individual and culture to find out why. It may not even turn out to be a bad thing. What if someone wants to become a chef or athlete instead, is that a problem?
- dpflan 8y ago
  For choosing a major and career I think step makes sense but I think that is near the end of the pipeline. What about exposure to the field and introducing computational thinking into earlier pars of the education system? Not necessary making kids program as their first exposure, but exposing them to computational concepts (maybe start with power of twos when learning multiplication, or control-flow-logic for writing a story....).
  - crististm 8y ago
    There are so many hours in a day. Exposure to computation as opposed to not exposing to what? What would you trade this with?
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I think that's a great idea. Honestly I don't think any culture in the west has ever been truly supportive of becoming a STEM person. Until very recently is was extremely derided in even white American culture as being "for nerds". A more positive exposure to technology at an early age can only be a good thing. I think we'll still find very few people want to become engineers due to the required workload and that will be ok.
  - jameane 8y ago
    I think even more helpful would be framing how this actually translates into the real world - what does this sort of thing enable in the real world. I loved the show Numbers because it was a show about how math helped detectives solve crimes. Way more interesting than just doing algebra about speeding trains. I think sometimes there is an idea that everyone has the same problem and your problem is universal. For example I heard about a hackathon for black and latino kids. And the ideas that came out of it were really different. One app was a social networking platform for private school kids to connect with other black private school kids to talk about their experiences and vent. Another idea was a payment app to send money to Mexico without having to go to Western Union or whatever. There is a startup in Oakland that has an app to help people who are caught up in the criminal justice system to keep track of court appearances and hearings and stuff so they don't need to go to jail for bogus stuff like missing a court appearance. Technology has the opportunity to enable and transform - if we make sure everyone has access.
ben_jones 8y ago
In my experience the theme of what someone wants to do as a career often forms in high school. Programming/software is equated to the more introverted gamer/robotics types which often confers lower popularity and social status then other extra-curricular activities. Men and women alike choose to opt out of programming for this reason, although the absence of women is much more heavily felt.
crowdpleaser 8y ago
Sure, instill discipline in schools. Go to a school of 'underrepresented minorities' and you'll see an incredible amount of misbehavior. Anyone who struggles to listen and not gratify their most immediate desires will probably fail to develop technical skills. Also, immediate suspension for kids who bully academically-inclined students for 'acting white'. Not only is it a racially charged statement that probably has no place in school (or so progs would tell us), but it seems levied exclusively against the kids who need education the most.
- jameane 8y ago
  Maybe have a little empathy here. In a low-income school, kids are walking in the door with way more problems than your upper middle class school where most kids have their basic needs met. Also, it is time to retire this stereotype that every non-white kid who is academically inclined is being bullied for acting white at school all the time. I get the most grief from white kids about "acting white" growing up. From fellow black kids it was pretty rare - 1-2 times. Mostly other kids were more inclined to help uplift me.
  - deogeo 8y ago
    > upper middle class The US is a long way from having its entire white population in the upper middle class: http://www.nccp.org/media/releases/release_34.html http://www.nccp.org/media/releases/release_34.html

andrewmcwatters 8y ago

The whole thing is a bullshit joke to begin with; it's always a complaint about diversity in jobs perceived to have status, but never jobs that are not. No complaints about diversity in fast food. No complaints about diversity in landscaping or construction.

sctb 8y ago
We've asked you countless times to stop breaking the guidelines, so we've banned the account. > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- andrewmcwatters 8y ago
  No, you've just asked me to not have differing opinions. Of course, when it's convenient for others to express theirs in similar language, as long as it's not the wrong opinion, it's quite fine.

samstokes 8y ago

You've italicised "pipeline" as if you believe this is a novel insight, but actually it's very common to dismiss diversity and inclusion efforts by redirecting attention to "the pipeline problem". Unfortunately there is evidence that the pipeline is far from the only problem, and even after successful interventions to swell the pool of qualified diverse candidates, companies' representation is still extremely skewed, and those candidates still encounter hiring barriers that other demographics do not. Here's one thread from an organisation that spent 10 years working on the pipeline and found many companies wouldn't hire their candidates: https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19 https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19 (Edit: gah, pasted the same link twice instead of the Twitter thread I meant to post) And some more links on the "pipeline problem": http://isitapipelineproblem.com http://isitapipelineproblem.com

darawk 8y ago
> You've italicised "pipeline" as if you believe this is a novel insight, but actually it's very common to dismiss diversity and inclusion efforts by redirecting attention to "the pipeline problem". I'm not dismissing diversity and inclusion efforts. They're being made, and i'm glad they're being made. > Here's one thread from an organisation that spent 10 years working on the pipeline and found many companies wouldn't hire their candidates: https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19 https://twitter.com/Code2040/status/1092853501766467585?s=19 > (Edit: gah, pasted the same link twice instead of the Twitter thread I meant to post) > And some more links on the "pipeline problem": http://isitapipelineproblem.com http://isitapipelineproblem.com I'm certainly open to arguments of this form, though the links you've pasted here aren't very convincing to me. The Code2040 people say the companies said their candidates weren't qualified. I see no attempt at rebutting that (by e.g. trying to objectively measure 'qualifiedness' and then showing that these companies were preferring equally qualified white candidates). Similarly, for the attrition rates for women, I think that very same data can be used to show a preference difference rather than an inclusion problem. If you wanted to make the case that it was an inclusion problem, you'd have to believe that fields like medicine and law, which women have become quite well represented in, were substantially less male-biased than tech. If you drill down in medicine though, you'll see that women sort themselves into sub-specialties that deal with human contact, where men sort themselves into sub-specialties that do not, on average. Again, pointing to a fundamental preferential difference. In my own personal experience, i've known a few women who are excellent CS students and programmers. They had no shortage of capability relative to the men I knew. However, without exception, every single one of them aspired to be a project manager of some kind, rather than an actual engineer. They were more than capable of doing the engineering, and they did do it. However, their end goal was managing people and process. Most of the men I know who are engineers, hope to be writing code until they die. This is anecdotal of course, but it's an experience I see echoed a lot.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ingsoc79 8y ago

One look at the website of Seattle's Garfield High School (34% black/latino) CS Club website pretty much sums it up: http://www.garfieldcs.com/ http://www.garfieldcs.com/ The makeup is similar at the college level: sitting in on CS courses at UW you see a sea of white, east asian, and south asian faces. I can count the number of black or latino students (out of the several hundred enrolled students I saw) on two hands. It's a pipeline problem, full stop.

whyaduck 8y ago
And corporate diversity goals are based on the pipeline, not the general population. Lots of folks in this conversation seem to be making utterly incorrect assumptions about programs that they seem to have deep contempt for. Unsurprising.
- SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
  Well, right. Corporations internally work towards their diversity goals, which are sensibly based on the pipeline and aim to eliminate bias in hiring. That's why they don't want to publicize their numbers; they know people like the Bloomberg reporter who wrote this article will incorrectly try to measure their efforts against the total number of minorities in the US.
  - whyaduck 8y ago
    The hiring pipeline is discussed explicitly in the article, and comparison to national demographics is legitimate.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Comparing hiring to national demographics is not legitimate. You should compare hiring to national graduates with CS degrees, controlling for institution. That will tell you if there is discrimination in the hiring step. If you want to see if there is discrimination in entrance to CS programs, you go a step earlier, etc. And you keep walking back until you find the source of the discrepancy. Where do women get off the CS pipeline? Is it at the hiring filter? The college major filter? Somewhere in high school? Even earlier? It's disingenuous to place the blame for the entire pipeline at the feet of the entities at the very end. Somewhere there is a bias, but it isn't necessarily at the corporate level.

air7 8y ago

What if there isn't a pipeline problem? What if there is an actual difference in preference? For example, looking at gender and STEM it seems that [0]: a. Countries that push for more gender equality see less women in STEM. b. Girls in school perform just as well as boys in STEM. Also, men are also highly over-represented in low-end jobs such as drivers, construction, mechanics etc [1]. Is that also a sign to a bias/pipeline problem? Should we attempt to strive for diversity in those fields too? [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... [1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

darawk 8y ago
> What if there isn't a pipeline problem? What if there is an actual difference in preference? To be clear, i'm including 'preference' as a sub-component of 'pipeline problem'. I think it's a cultural open question whether or not we consider this a 'problem'. I think the argument for preference is much stronger on the gender question though, than on the minority question. There's strong psych research indicating preferences against programming for women, but i'm not aware of any for say, African Americans. In the minority case, I suspect it's more of an access/opportunity issue early on, but i'm open to many views of these issues.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Given the link between tech work and depression, and more generally the link between depression and careers with very little physical activity, I think it's unconscionable to modify the preferences of people who would otherwise prefer to not work in tech. By all means, help people who desire it. By why 'correct' people who don't?
  - darawk 8y ago
    Ya, i'm not a huge fan of 'correcting' people's preferences. I do think it's possible that part of the issue is how women are socialized, and it's also possible part of the issue is how CS is taught. However, I think the lion's share of the variance is explained by biologically innate preferences, and while there could be good arguments for changing those, I don't see any being made at the moment.

thorwasdfasdf 8y ago

At a company I worked at they hired an young female intern in her late high school years, who made it obvious she didn't really want to be there. Our project manager made sure to tell us to "make programming seem as interesting as possible to her". When I was 17, I would have killed for an opportunity to work at a software company, and so would many other young kids. It's time for the world to admit, there's reasons why some people are naturally pulled towards one discipline or another. I have a 3 year old daughter, and I'd love to teach her math and programming. I sat her in front of the computer with me to get her interested and devised lots of fun math based games to play with her. But, no matter how fun I make the material, she's just not into counting things. "daddy, I don't want to count anymore" (after just a few tries) Stories about princesses and reading/writing however, this she can listen to all day long. I'm certainly not giving up on teaching her programming but you have to admit it when certain types make it clear their not into it.

jameane 8y ago
We need to stop trying to attribute that to gender. I loved math as a kid, I thought it was fun. I was on the math team for middle school and high school. I had a computer at home from a young age, and played the math games my parents forced on me. In addition to the game, games. (I am 40 - so things were pretty different as I was coming up. But my family was an early adopter of technology - we had a computer when I was 5. And if I would have had different upbringing the outcome could have been quite different.) Being a programmer wasn't something that was on my radar at all. I didn't know any. I didn't know it was a job that existed. As I got older it seemed like "computer people" only liked video games, magic cards, scifi books and didn't like to hang out with people. It seemed boring and antisocial - and not like my sort of people. I probably would have been a great engineer. And while I work in tech, I am a marketer and have worked in more technical roles around software implementation, operations, pre-sales in addition to all of the marketing jobs. So let's ask ourselves something else - how many people do we lose along the way because of exposure or the way we have socialized what an engineer is, does and likes.
- thorwasdfasdf 8y ago

sylphiae 8y ago

I’m a current CS student. When I walked into my school’s CS computer lab, there were about an equal number of female and male students. I’m also a transfer student. At my previous university, at which I was also a CS major, there were maybe like 5 women to every 15 men in a class. This isn’t reflected at the tech companies I’ve worked at. There are far fewer women. This article, and articles like these: https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engin..., point out that the number of women graduating do not match the number of women who choose to go into the tech sector, or who remain there.