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Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

latimes.com

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Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#91

Post by Eridrus »

mjfl wrote: post #48

While they have the best intentions, these kinds of initiatives can backfire badly. 2 years ago, I was partnered on a project with a woman who did not how to code a single line of C++ in a senior-level computer science course. Whenever I would arrange for us to work together in lab, she would call in sick. This happened about 3 or 4 times. I told this to my professor, who was a HUGE social justice guy, and after inve…

I had the same thing happen to me in an advanced OS course, but my partner was a guy doing a Master's degree, clearly we're not going to blame it on his gender.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#92

Post by zackmorris »

Wow so many negative comments on this thread.

I hope that any stereotypically white/male whatever technology professionals reading this remember back to the scorn and ridicule that many of us faced in our formative years due to our interest in technology. Many women, minorities, etc have had similar interests to yours but had few or no peers who shared them. You may have overcome hurdles but now imagine doing it alone or worse never knowing that it was even a possibility for you.

Programs like this are designed to make up for the numerous biases in our culture that stand in the way of equality. I think it speaks to the fragility of your egos that you find the idea of giving someone else an opportunity threatening. Especially when it costs you essentially nothing to be supportive.

I think one of the very worst sins is to rise to a position of power and use it against others who haven't had the advantages you've enjoyed. This is one of the thousand reasons I am deeply troubled by our near term political futures. A feeling which is more exacerbated every day by level of vitriol projected by people with the "I've got mine" mentality. Yes I've struggled, but I work to make things better so that others can avoid going what I went through. It sure beats maintaining a status quo that makes us pay our dues in futility.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#93

Post by Eridrus »

noobermin wrote: post #42

I recently talked to a friend (who, yes is female) who took a required programming course. She is an English major, but she found python fun and she's planning to take another course on it next year. While everyone here is discussing SJ vs not SJ[0], I think this article is another data point in my belief that a liberal arts education, or one that requires a number of pre-requisites across fields, is so beneficial. B…

I'm glad this article mentions improving the compulsory classes, in my experience the compulsory classes were the worst because people couldn't not take them if they sucked.

I'm still bitter about the bullshit requirements my uni thrust on me. The patronizing "we know better than you" schtick gets old real fast.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#94

Post by mjfl »

Eridrus wrote: post #91
mjfl wrote: post #48

While they have the best intentions, these kinds of initiatives can backfire badly. 2 years ago, I was partnered on a project with a woman who did not how to code a single line of C++ in a senior-level computer science course. Whenever I would arrange for us to work together in lab, she would call in sick. This happened about 3 or 4 times. I told this to my professor, who was a HUGE social justice guy, and after inve…

I had the same thing happen to me in an advanced OS course, but my partner was a guy doing a Master's degree, clearly we're not going to blame it on his gender.

I am emphatically not blaming it on her gender rather a school policy that pushes unprepared students through a system to satisfy a vision of what things should be like. If you read the former you need to go back and read my post more carefully.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#95

Post by rokosbasilisk »

pomoma_grad wrote: post #74
mjfl wrote: post #48

While they have the best intentions, these kinds of initiatives can backfire badly. 2 years ago, I was partnered on a project with a woman who did not how to code a single line of C++ in a senior-level computer science course. Whenever I would arrange for us to work together in lab, she would call in sick. This happened about 3 or 4 times. I told this to my professor, who was a HUGE social justice guy, and after inve…

I went to Pomona College, which is next to Harvey Mudd, with cross-enrollment and some shared CS classes. I think the experience you are describing is not applicable here, because Pomona and Harvey Mudd are both highly selective schools. Nobody who can't code is graduating with a CS major. Mudd in particular is pretty hardcore. When I worked with other students in CS classes at Mudd, I was always impressed by their i…

Doesnt everybody mostly think this about their school ? No one wants to be known for graduating from the school that pumps out frauds.

Thats why alot of companies prefers ivy leagues, mit, other top schools etc.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#96

Post by rokosbasilisk »

chriskanan wrote: post #64
dominotw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is all anecdotes NHS did a study on female doctors who drop out of workplace at way higher rate than men and all the social/economic implication of it given the huge cost invested into medical education.

I don't think that's the same thing as what the parent post is suggesting. Based on my wife's opinion (a female physician), female physicians seem to be dropping out or working only part time for child rearing purposes. It does have huge healthcare implications though, since females are now making up a large number of physicians and there are only a very small number of slots at medical schools.

Working part time contributes to the gender pay gap, so it probably has economic effects as well.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#97

Post by rokosbasilisk »

__vertigo wrote: post #59
hkon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same experience here. Now 10 years later. Not a single person (man or woman) who was not a cs geek before uni started is into hands-on development

This doesn't match my experience at all. Are you considering people who moved into lead or management positions from more hands-on engineering positions as not being "into hands-on development"?

It matches my freshman experience, most of those people drop out though, so it got better.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#98

Post by rokosbasilisk »

zackmorris wrote: post #92

Wow so many negative comments on this thread. I hope that any stereotypically white/male whatever technology professionals reading this remember back to the scorn and ridicule that many of us faced in our formative years due to our interest in technology. Many women, minorities, etc have had similar interests to yours but had few or no peers who shared them. You may have overcome hurdles but now imagine doing it alon…

It sure feels like you are arguing a strawman here.

From reading the comments, its seems alot of people want to help but have legitimate, well reasoned and valid concerns.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#99

Post by drspacemonkey »

braveo wrote: post #85
BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #67

I wouldn't want my daughter working in technology for the same reasons I wouldn't want her to be a professional boxer or a coal miner. I'm a pretty tough guy, I've hunted and fished out of necessity and have had to deal with the hard consequences of a childhood lived in poverty and despair. Drug addiction, jail, recovery, I've had my fair share of time in life's gutter. Scumbags like Trump don't phase me, as I unders…

oh horsecrap, stop with the theatrics. You've been a drug addict who's gone to jail and had a hard time, but even you've never seen anything as horrible as white class workers presumably looking down on other white class workers? Is there anyone who actually buys that?

As soon as I got to the "over 9000", I knew it was 4chan nonsense. I stopped going to reddit to get away from that crap.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#100

Post by toasterlovin »

geofft wrote: post #36
toasterlovin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'd be one thing if we discovered that male brains were inherently better at tech thinking (it would be an extraordinary hypothesis that would need correspondingly extraordinary evidence, but it's certainly possible that evidence could be found). Given that males and females have vastly different reproductive strategies, the extraordinary claim is that male and female minds don't display the same sexual dimorphism…

Oh no, I totally believe that the minds exhibit dimorphism. The claim I think is extraordinary is that the dimorphism is correlated with tech thinking , which, for starters, isn't a well-defined term. Is it raw programming ability? (If so, there are lots of reasons to believe that women are more suited to it than men, which were common folklore in the middle of last century when programming was low-status.) Is it pro…

This is a hunch on my part, but I think the place to look for dimorphism isn't so much in raw ability as it is in motivation and willingness to take risk.

This is a non-PC opinion to match yours (which I largely agree with), but I think the desire to learn how to program is highly related to the desire to tinker and build, something which my life experience has shown to be much more prevalent in males than females (wood working, model building, car tinkering, etc. being largely male hobbies)

In addition to that, until recently, programming was a pretty high risk career choice. I think most people would not have predicted the sheer quantity of upper middle class careers that now exist in technology. I know when I was in college the received wisdom was that you became a doctor or a lawyer if you wanted a low-risk path to an upper middle class lifestyle. And I think those two professions are much more evenly balanced between males and females as a result.

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