251–260 of 504 posts
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The individuals probably are acting on a moral belief, but an organization can't do things out of the goodness of its heart.
> but an organization can't do things out of the goodness of its heart. Why not?
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a large part of construction is now entirely machine based. how much strength does it take to drive a dump truck? or operate a crane? or drive a bulldozer? the answer is that it is the same amount as driving an every day car: almost none. I don't know enough about the other industries to comment.
How about when things break down, and you're out there in the mud turning wrenches and pounding on things to tear the machine apart, fix it, and put it back together? It's not an infrequent occurrence.
I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…
Both nursing and teaching have been wrestling with how to get more men into those professions for well over a decade, and the number of men in nursing has been rising for the past three decades.
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> But then knowing Big-O, algorithm, data structure, etc. became a way to "show off" and impress the interviewer How is knowing the very basics of CS a way to show-off? It should be requisite shouldn't it? That said, I agree with the degeneration to arms race. I'm awaiting an interview question on Shor's algorithm. "We like to be ready for whatever the future may bring here at LolCorp."
How often, in your day job, is it a necessary job-related task for you to be pop-quizzed on the Big-O characteristics of half a dozen data structures and then have to draw out manipulations of a binary tree on a whiteboard? Somehow we decided to never test for the things we actually do at work, and instead to invent an entirely new discipline (whiteboard interviewing) and test for competence at that, in hopes it woul…
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Wouldn't the message of "you are your accomplishments" make men more likely to give up after a failure rather than less?
Subtle(ish) distinction: You aren't your past accomplishments, you are your capability to generate future accomplishments. Who is more likely to persevere; someone who believes they have to keep achieving things or they are worthless, or someone to whom achievements are a nice bonus to the intrinsic value that they already have?
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Are you saying that cultural differences can't be explained by systemic biases? Systemic bias may be the cultural difference, and in this context appears redundant.
As asked elsewhere--what systemic bias exists that targets certain women (white, black, mexican), but not women of other races (particularly Chinese, Indian and Russian)? Perhaps instead, it's because schools (government?) in Russia, India, and China have emphasized Computer Science, and produce higher number of female grads. Anecdotally, I attended a tiny engineering school in the midwest, and pretty much all the gr…
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> Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On top of this, it is nearly impossible to fill positions with qualified applicants. True. > Given that, there is a pretty strong argument that we should change the way we hire software developers and an obvious way to change it is to be more inclusive. What is this 'strong argument'? Your conclusion "be more inclusive" is ba…
The argument is we could hardly be worse. I'm not convinced we know what qualified even looks like. We certainly can't tell in any objective way. Given that a purely random inclusion of more applicants is likely to improve the situation. Thats before arguing for the merits of a diverse work force or relying on moral imperatives.
If you want to bring moral imperatives into it, one would think a basic commitment to truth and statistical literacy would be included, but it very rarely is. You'd also imagine diversity of thought would be included as a point of intellectual honesty, but in practice, it is the exact opposite.
As for software projects routinely failing, that has numerous possible explanations. One is that it's one of the most abstract forms of engineering around, in the sense that the material we manipulate and the arrangements we construct cannot be seen or touched, and hence are invisible to outsiders. It must rely entirely on explicit and deliberate communication, unlike more practical fields. The onus is entirely on the engineer to make himself understandable, and it is rare to find people gifted both in abstraction and verbal thinking.
Another is the recurring observation that schools are particularly bad at teaching the practical skills required to deliver software projects, being taught by people with little to no industry experience. It goes beyond basic project and code management skills and goes into product design and usability: people learn to build code when they should be learning to craft tools. But just because currently applications focus more on theory than practice, doesn't mean we'd get better results by turning to people who lack the theory entirely.
I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…
> mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries Given that we're talking about "tech", I think your argument would be stronger if you used examples where physical strength is seldom an important factor in job-performance.
Why is there such a push for female police, soldiers, and fire fighters?
I don't want a woman trying to pull me out of a fire if she was only accepted because of lower standards.
I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…
When you have an argument that's A) deeper then a copy/paste soundbite, B) doesn't contain an informal fallacy ("how dare you try to fix this one instance of a problem until you've fixed every other instance of it first, and I'll use this no matter which instance you go after first"), and C) doesn't require you to look like a 1990s $la$hdot u$er talking about Micro$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$oft, maybe we could have a constru…
I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…
When you have an argument that's A) deeper then a copy/paste soundbite, B) doesn't contain an informal fallacy ("how dare you try to fix this one instance of a problem until you've fixed every other instance of it first, and I'll use this no matter which instance you go after first"), and C) doesn't require you to look like a 1990s $la$hdot u$er talking about Micro$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$oft, maybe we could have a constru…
Until we fix the classroom that forms early childhood loves and hates, nothing is really going to work with software developers. We will get mostly outsiders that found their love outside of the system.
Also, why would you want your daughters to go into a career that exhibits all the ageism of being an actress?