The Tech diversity story not being told (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The Tech diversity story not being told (2014)

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9 pointsbootload11 comments

How does that compare to overall percentage of women (and minorities for that matter) in the industry? Maybe it's not a problem with big, evil corporations that they don't want to hire woman, but there's simply 10 male asian candidates for 1 black female and the rest is statistics? I'm doing master of science right now and 10% of students are female. How can that later translate to 50/50 hired workers with master degree? Should we hire people from the street because diversity? Serious question, I don't understand what's up with diversity issue.

Exactly. I studied engineering and there were 3 girls out of 70-80 students. I don't get this forced diversion based on percentage (you must hire 50% women/minorities or else be flamed as sexist/racist), but where to get them?? This problem should be solved starting from foundation (children education), not stupid, irrational quotas.

There is no company with more than 10 employees in the entire industry that has a "50% women/minorities" quota.

Asian women are also statistically over represented. But that doesn't fit that narrative of this post so ignore.

[2014]

Women only make up 18% of comp sci majors. If you want more women in computers encourage them to study comp sci. If they don't they may not be qualified for the jobs.

It is all a matter of having an interest in learning. I have African-American friends who I offered to teach them programming so they could get a job. But they refused and had no interest. It really is that a person has to have an interest in learning something in order to be qualified for a job. The diversity problem could be not enough women and minorities with an interest in learning comp sci and programming and other things.

Asians have an interest in learning comp sci, which is why there are more qualified applicants from Asia and get more jobs.

At one time programming was done by mostly women. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmin...

But that changed and women weren't hired as much as men and women gave it up and then lost interest in learning.

> "But that changed and women weren't hired as much as men and women gave it up and then lost interest in learning."

That's kind of the point, isn't it? By your own admission, hiring patterns might be based on factors other than representation, which then translates into decreased interest by under-represented groups.

It's just a "good" sounding narrative. How about a different one:

It looks like it all changed once we hit the early personal computer era. Suddenly, you could learn on your own time, and many more men did than women.

Now companies realised they could skimp on training and get away with it.

Women then thought... "Hey going into a career where I am competing with men who have invested hundreds of hours before they turn 18 and where most learning is expected to happen in your own time is crazy"

Even today the narrative is learn on your own time if you want to be successful. If companies really give a damn about diversity then they will start incorporating learning on the job.

...oh wait instead they are pushing to get young girls to invest in IT just like some young boys do.

Personal Computers were marketed towards boys and not girls. Some like the Commodore and Atari series were video game consoles that you could also program on and cost $399 or under for the base system. Boys would buy them for the video games and then buy a tape or floppy drive to learn how to program and save their programs.

When I grew up in the 1980s, girls didn't have an interest in personal computers and video games. Didn't have an interest in Star Wars or Star Trek or other sci fi that the boys had. Over time men into those things taught their daughters how to use a personal computer and program and get into sci fi like Star Wars and Star Trek. Then once social networks came about and mobile devices more girls got into computers to use them at least.

But yes on the job training and learning is needed for diversity reasons. When women first got into computers and programming they got trained on the job. Started out punching cards, and later wrote programs with some training and on the job experience. That all changed when personal computers came out and then companies no longer hired women and trained them on the job or helped them learn at work. Boys learned in their own spare time by typing in programs from magazines and learning how to modify them during the personal computer era.

This industry is full of 20-something white men who didn't get CS degrees who nonetheless feel perfectly qualified to write new Rails test frameworks for $175k/yr in Sunnyvale.

Interestingly the industry (in the US) is also full of hundreds of thousands of people on ~$80k/year and no way to get a raise without uprooting their whole family and moving to an area with a high cost of living.

People with 10+ years of experience.

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