In which I answer all of the questions (2012)
sarajchipps.com
sarajchipps.com
I don't feel her second point says much about the need for gender diversity either. It seems to me that it's the people who use the internet that actually write this history rather than the people who merely build the architecture. I think it would be far more useful to see gender diversity in online arts, writing, social activism and so on, rather than in the teams who build that blog engine that allows all genders to express their ideas.
I don't see how the last point has anything to do with gender either. If it's technology that will produce most jobs in the future then we should encourage all people to take more training in technology.
I read the article precisely because I was interested in an answer to that why question and also because I was happy to read that she does not think asking this question is offensive (it's often the opposite). I'm not very satisfied with her answer though. I'd appreciate it if someone else could contribute to this discussion.
http://www.catehuston.com/blog/2013/10/30/a-bs-metric-for-di...
They looked at the effects of a few kinds of diversity on assigned work groups. They looked at "informational diversity", which they measured using educational background, job background, and position in the company; "social category diversity", which they took to be age and gender; and "value diversity", which they measured with a questionnaire.
Looking at their regression analyses, we see:
Informational diversity significantly increases actual performance (a number of .30), mildly decreases group efficiency (-.05), and mildly increases perceived performance (0.05), satisfaction (0.09), intent to remain (0.06), and commitment (.10).
Social category diversity moderately increases perceived performance (.16), satisfaction (.14), intent to remain (.12), and commitment (.16), while mildly decreasing actual performance (-.07) and group efficiency (-.03).
Value diversity moderately decreases group efficiency (-.17), actual performance (-.12), perceived performance (-.10), satisfaction (-.11), intent to remain (-.19), and commitment (-.19).
Even if you disregard the engineering shortage, doubling the pool and taking the to half dramatically shifts the curve of ability and passion of our workmates. We're all missing out.
This goes of course for any profession that has a specific culture attached to it.
Is the industry missing out on 50% of the talent pool? In this day and age, where basically everyone has the opportunity to at least try something like programming, but wherein it is incredibly easy to isolate yourself from lots of types of people and viewpoints and live in your own bubble, and based on how free we really are as individuals, even though we legally have most freedoms... that figure could be anywhere from 30% to 95%, depending on your viewpoint.
I also find Shanley's demeanor extremely rude, off-putting and counterproductive to a discussion on any topic.
Manners were an invention of the aristocracy.
my opinion is that Jeff was replying to Shanley with what he considered to be a better approach to the topic.
Except that Jeff can't even bring himself to acknowledge Shanley in his post while stealing her title and structure after making an ass out of himself on Twitter such that he deleted the (MLK-splaining, among other) tweets before writing that post. He's participating in bad faith and being I-know-better, but what does he care? He has no skin in this game; he's got his.
Linus Torvalds is even worse according to your definition of bad demeanor. Would you say that this helps or hurts his advocacy?
In any case, while I also have a hard time with Shanley's demeanor, I do try to separate the emotion and personal manner from the good points. It can be hard sometimes, that's for sure
Do you consider yourself an intelligent person such that upon reflection you might be able to come up with at least a couple of possible answers to your own question? Just curious.
I was just pointing out that the two pieces have the same topic and the same 4 word title (because Jeff was being snarky. If that's a crime, lock me up now). Otherwise, they couldn't be more different. Shouting "plagiarism" in this case seems pretty disingenuous, and feels like people are manufacturing outrage just for outrage's sake. Being that this is the internet, I can't fathom why I expected anything different...
It's gotten a little weirder now, since Atwood is communicating with people about it but appears to be justifying not crediting Shanley by saying she was too negative, which is a little appalling: https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/459796782164103168
EDIT: Also, I just read this, which addresses a lot of the things I didn't like in Jeff Atwood's post better than I can: http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/
* Get company funds diverted to the cause
* Start a feminist bookclub for men
* Get better management training in your company
* Get women hired
* Don’t speak at events or on panels where women speakers aren’t represented
* Encourage diversity at conferences you go to
Jeff says:
* Abide by the Hacker School Rules
* Really listen
* If you see bad behavior from other men, speak up
* Don't attempt romantic relationships at work
* No drinking at work events
The only place they overlap in their respective messages is each of them saying "be the change you want to see in the world" in their own way. So I still don't get the plagiarism claims, even with the warped definition.
As for Atwood saying that he didn't link to her piece because it was too negative: There are two very different tones to take when writing about this (or most any) topic. Jeff, in his piece, acknowledges the issue and maintains a pretty even keel. Yes, it's a problem, here's how I think we can fix it. On the other side, Shanley is writing in a very aggressive tone towards men. It feels less like she's trying to affect social change, and more like she's shouting at passing men from the top of a soapbox.
Truth is, if I were writing a piece that was taking a subtle jab at Shanley's writing, I wouldn't link to her either. If I felt like she was trying to contribute seriously to the issue, then I would in a heartbeat, but that's not how her piece reads.
Edit regarding your edit: I agree with some of the issues the author had about Atwood's take on things, though I think claiming that Jeff not linking to Shanley is yet another way men dismiss or marginalize is grasping at straws. Imaginary straws.
Jeff called her out on it, making an unfortunately cliched reference to Letter from Birmingham Jail and people got heated again. His point has been constantly missed but he's not backing from it too much and in some places the meta discussion about the discussion has been somewhat enlightening itself. Jeff and I had a very good conversation on twitter about it with a woman saying we were tone policing, which I didn't even know was a thing people felt when talking but it is apparently.
That's not plagiarism.
I'm part of a small multicultural team of 8 engineers, 4 of which are women. The team is a professional outfit, makes consistent effort to remain inclusive, and ensures that everyone has a comfortable way of voicing their opinions, thoughts and other intellectual contributions. Despite this, all 4 of our female engineers prefer to avoid product discussion (be it 1:1 face-to-face, group, email, etc) and as such, their contributions amount primarily to SVN commits of what they're asked to build. In my 4+ years of working closely with them I never observed them having an impact on our deliverables that could be attributed to their gender.
Our operations team of 30+ people has only 2 female system administrators. This is a pair of fantastic individuals who are kind, positive and wicked-smart. Their experience and skills command respect and people like them because they're enjoyable to work with. In my observation, they have these qualities because they are:
a) Excellent engineers
b) Excellent human beings
Both of the above traits can be displayed equally well by both men and women, making gender a completely moot point in the comparison.
I completely agree that we need more excellent engineers and more excellent human beings in our line of work regardless of their gender, however nothing I've seen so far indicates to me that we need more women specifically.
* 1 African-American male
* 2 Latino-American males
That seems really worrying, especially given the demographics of California.
Yes, let's be open minded and work on making programming as accessible to as many ppl as we can. But, let's not start affirmative action here.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/201... (there a other similar studies; that's just one example)
edit: "Bad culture fit" can also be a reason for not hiring whose underlying cause has to do with gender or other diversity.
I had women professors in college. I have a woman software manager. I work with many women. And these women generally wanted to work in software development. Of course we aren't "building the internet" over here or making "internet history". Just some Joe and Jane Schmos plugging away.
I see no need to push an agenda for more women in tech. More women will continue to join the field, but I wouldn't expect it to be representative of the population.
https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0
>Get women hired. Make your workplace give a fuck about hiring diverse teams. You are in a wonderful position to advocate and agitate for more diversity in your workplace. Draw attention to your company’s demographics internally, bring in speakers on building team diversity, start a committee dedicated to auditing and improving the hiring process. Oh and make sure this doesn’t just end up in a position where you just hire a few white women and call it a day. Not good enough.
I don't agree with diversity for the sake of diversity. So no, I'll hire the most qualified candidate regardless of race/gender.
This doesn't sound like they are encouraging employers to hire less qualified candidates just to check off boxes.
Her points here are about woman, but Sara's actions reflect a consist effort to educate people on the fringes.
If you're not interested in the subject matter, you should at least look at the article to see all the typographic features in the font.
In the post about Aaron Swartz, he compared that to rage-quitting, even though he stated that he "understands depression is a serious disease".
"In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers. Aspergers is a spectrum disorder; the more severe the symptoms, the closer it is to autism. And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio?
Interesting. I might even go so far as to say some of those traits are what makes one good at programming."
As a kid, I'd really wished there'd been more mentoring, education, and general support available for young hackers. I would have been seriously pissed about discrimination -- and I daresay rightly so -- if exactly the sorts of things I wanted to participate in had existed, but had been closed to me because I was the wrong race (white) and gender (male).
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the "get girls to code" idea. "Get young people to code" is a better idea, since it's more inclusive.
It's always seemed strange to me how many people seem to think that the right way to solve discrimination is with more discrimination, just in the opposite direction.
Is that as strange as believing that ignoring a problem will make it go away? Because the only alternatives I can see to "Actively try to attract more of the underrepresented group" are "Do nothing about the gender inequality" — which obviously won't fix it — and "Try to push away more of the overrepresented group," which is not what anyone wants.
Also, your use of the word "discrimination" here is a bit odd. It seems to imply that men are being excluded from tech by these programs, which is demonstrably not the case.
And how to you "expose and remove the discrimination" in this case?
What I meant by "expose and remove discrimination" is point out that the team atmosphere is hostile to women, and start disciplining people until that changes. Or, realize that Fred is automatically rating resumes lower if it has a feminine name, and confronting Fred on that. Or... you get the idea. If there's something going on (other than lack of viable candidates) that leads to fewer female programmers, find it out and fix it.
The remaining problem is lack of viable candidates. To fix that you have to fix problems outside of your own organization - problems in the education system, in homes, and in society in general. That's a tall order, and it's beyond any one person's power. But still, when you see obstacles that differentially harm females (or blacks, or gays, or whoever), don't just ignore them. Do what you can to expose and try to fix them.
Maybe read what you write?
But I did have something of a point too, namely that the lack of females in programming jobs is not just due to discrimination in the hiring organizations. Some of it (not all) is due to there being more male candidates than females who meet the same qualifications. Like it or not, that seems to be the current reality.
So what I was trying to say is that we need to address that. We need to fix actual discrimination in hiring organizations, and we need to address the supply of qualified candidates. (I was not trying to say that there are currently no qualified female candidates, but I see how that line could be taken that way.)
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/christians-pers...
I am a female programmer and started really young. In 7th grade, I remember being afraid that people would find out I liked computers and had a website. I was afraid of standing out and being labeled a nerd. I didn't know any girls who liked computers and probably wouldn't have signed up for a program that wasn't specifically for girls. Being a kid in middle school is a tricky time and having a safe environment to learn and be yourself around like minded people can make a big difference.
To this day, I still feel quite a bit more comfortable at women coding events than tech talks where I am one of 3 women with 100 guys. I definitely think specialized groups can provide a more conducive place for learning when you're in a minority group. I think calling it discrimination is a bit short sighted.
> It's always seemed strange to me how many people seem to
> think that the right way to solve discrimination is with
> more discrimination, just in the opposite direction.
Thankfully, their time is passing. All we can do now is get more young women into technology out of high-school/college.
I'd love to see someone, anyone's thoughts on encouraging young women to become interested. I think it's possible, but I think programming needs a makeover of culture before that happens.