Full disclosure: I was at Startup Chile at the same time as the Regalli team. During pitch day they blew us away and I've been happy to watch their continuing s

Full disclosure: I was at Startup Chile at the same time as the Regalli team. During pitch day they blew us away and I've been happy to watch their continuing success. Last year I spent nearly the full year (along with others on my team) working to build a team, constantly attempting to hire for a variety of positions. For business positions we had a lot of female and minority applicants. For design positions there were female and minority applicants. For software there were very few (though we did over-represent in our hiring ultimately, because we lucked into some great candidates who happened to be ethnic minorities.) Why is it that the %3 he refers to apparently more likely to seek business degrees, or art degrees than programming degrees? We certainly did have a diverse flow of candidates for those positions, but we did not for engineering. I don't think that metal detectors in schools are making people less likely to be a programmer. I think its because programming has become a non-glamourous, non-respected profession. (Look at the wide use of the diminutive "coding" or "coder" and the patronizing words in the job applications "ninja rockstar"-- these are words you use with people you don't respect who you think are gullible. "You just might be the ninja rockstar coder we're looking for! And just because you're so special we'll be paying you 45 whole thousand dollars! Isn't that neat?" We're pouring money like crazy into education- I read recently of a New Jersey school system which was spending 20,000 a student, and producing bad results. We've spent trillions on the war on poverty-- in fact, I read recently that something like $87,000 a year is spent per poor person. Hell, if you just gave them that money they wouldn't be poor anymore! Years ago I read that of the money that goes into the welfare system only %25 of it actually goes out in checks to welfare recipients, with %75 going into overhead. The problem isn't a lack of money- we're spending it. The problem is a lack of incentivizes to spend that money wisely. Can you imagine a private school getting 20k per head and not producing well educated kids? Sure, it could happen, but it wouldn't stay in business for generations like public schools do. We recognize that government is inefficient at a lot of things- basically everything. So why, if this is the most important thing, do we leave it in the hands of government? Sure if you want government to fund education, that's a different issue... but government is not good at delivering it. I say this as a graduate of public schools, with the unique advantage of having changed schools more than once a year on average from first grade to graduation from high school. All of them were terrible. I even went to a state wide magnet school for my final two years-- it was not terrible, (my physics teacher taught at stanford, for instance, and would come teach us while working on the results of his experiments) .... but even it was nowhere near what it could have been. The schools in the middle class neighborhoods are terrible. Why would we expect the poor neigborhoods not to be worse?