The very fact that this is newsworthy says a lot about the lack of diversity in our industry. As a society we should try to find more ways to encourage women and minorities of all sorts to get into this industry.
> The very fact that this is newsworthy says a lot about the lack of diversity in our industry.
I don't like this logic. The news media has their own agenda, we shouldn't use "what they choose to write about" as a barometer.
I don't like this logic. It presumes that there's some dark cabal of web journalists conspiring to change the world.
Unfortunately their agenda is typically, 'will we get advertising revenue from our target demographic by publishing this?'
Nothing more sinister than that.
And given this was published to, uh, a _news site for and about POC_ and not a tech news site.... (take a look at the domain, maybe?) what nefarious agenda could they POSSIBLY be running? Maybe one that promotes POC, and responds positively to a company that celebrates its diversity?
But the parent of my comment couched the phrase as if there's some dark cabal pushing some evil agenda. It reeked of a cis-gendered cis-sexual white male privilege soaked persecution complex.
Regardless, being _biased_ is most definitely _not_ the substance of any interesting critique of media. Rather, it's trivially obvious that the production of media is intricately related to ideological beliefs and political agendas - precisely because media is the primary tool of mass persuasion. Look no further than the long, storied history of newspaper barons.
Fundamentally, media functions as a legitimation strategy for normative beliefs; a structure for the normalization of acceptable opinion.
> 'will we get advertising revenue from our target demographic by publishing this?'
I agree this is the most likely agenda. But it's not the agenda I want to use to determine what to do in this industry.
Why? What's the benefit from this? They aren't barred in no way in pursuing these kind of careers
Even if I interpret that to merely mean actively barred, I still don't think it's true. But women and minorities are certainly passively barred from these kind of careers. By virtue of opportunity, environment, peer group, role model, education, and all sorts of passive mechanisms.
This however does not stop "female-rights-activists" from citing it over and over again. I'm sick of it.
I also don't like the notion that women are portraied as victims here. Most women I know don't want to go into tech-jobs because they think it's fucking boring. Live with it, people!
I know it's also due to socialization, but do we really want to change the entire society just to shoehorn exactly 50% in our employee statistics? Who benefits from this?
I know no woman who is sad because she just can't get hold in a tech job. If a woman is passionate about something, and pursues it, it will work out for her. Same with men of course.
Oh, and why don't people go berserk because we have like 96% women as educators (kindergartens, pre-schools, ...). Oh yeah, right, I know, because you can't earn as much money with that.
the fact that the women also worked less hours than men
Or maybe that women of a certain age are discriminated against during the hiring process because of maternity leave? https://books.google.com/books?id=26FB_ny0tVsC&pg=PA114&lpg=...
Or any of those many other reasons that people talk about that explain the statistic? The issue isn't as black and white as you want to make it.
I know it's also due to socialization, but do we really want to change the entire society just to shoehorn exactly 50% in our employee statistics?
Most women I know don't want to go into tech-jobs because they think it's fucking boring. Live with it, people!
If a woman is passionate about something, and pursues it, it will work out for her.
Oh, and why don't people go berserk because we have like 96% women as educators
I am not interested in this debate and further feel like it's not remotely germane to this thread, which is why I feel entitled to tell you how uninteresting I find that debate.
I suggest you write a story about how you feel harassed by people who seem to have an agenda, and then submit it to HN and see how it does, rather than using this story about Slack and these four engineers as a coatrack.
This is not a sarcastic comment.
Admittedly, this is about (academic) science, not tech, but Neil deGrasse Tyson disagrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ihNLEDiuM