It's frustrating because you don't have all of the advantages, or just the advantage that you really want?
It is frustrating because as a kid/young adult you don't see the full picture : you only see you are being discriminated against. It is frustrating because for many young men the disadvantages often seems to outweigh the advantages. It is frustrating because as a kid/young adult some of the the countermeasures are so broad that they are hard to understand as anything but pushing one gender ahead at all cost: try to m…
This is true; the advantages I have are not as well advertised. For example, no professor ever told me anything like, "Women don't study mathematics," as my girlfriend had.
I don't see why this rather insightful post is downvoted. The site specifically targets these groups by name. Why in the age of a _World_ Wide Web and "post-discrimination" are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? What will be in the girls-only code program that might be inappropriate for boys?
> Why ... are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees. They want to hire more women. In order to hire more women, there needs to be more qualified women applying for jobs. In order for there to be more qualified women applying for jobs, there needs to be more qualified women. In order for there to be more qualified women we…
N=1 personal anecdote: A few years ago I spent a day visiting Wellesley College's CS department (all-women's school) to give a talk and to meet with professors and students. And one of the main vibes I got was that students felt way more comfortable there just focusing on hacking, understanding, debugging, struggling, etc. with the hard parts of CS/programming without worrying about the tons of well-documented implicit biases, stereotype threats, and issues that are commonly-found in regular CS classrooms. It wasn't that they somehow wanted special treatment as "women studying CS" (they didn't) -- they just wanted to be able to focus on CS without all the other external crap that their peers in traditional CS programs need to deal with. See Unlocking the Clubhouse for a comprehensive study of this phenomenon.
Looks great if you're Indian, Irish or female. Edit: Or AU/NZ, missed that one.
I don't see why this rather insightful post is downvoted. The site specifically targets these groups by name. Why in the age of a _World_ Wide Web and "post-discrimination" are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? What will be in the girls-only code program that might be inappropriate for boys?
Well, my guess is as follows:
Irish: big corporate tax breaks in that area.
India: outsourcing potential. Perhaps more liberal attitudes towards CS education?
Women: we really need more women in tech, though on a corporate level where money is the motivator I can only guess what the incentives are.
The above are my assumptions and may be wrong.
As for your girls-only code program comment, I have taught kids to create things using visual scripting tools. There is a difference in what the girls want to make and what the boys want to make. This was my first hand experience and is a limited insight into a small world.
Plenty of people "do just fine in their lives" without knowing how to read. This is discussing how to "be an educated citizen", a far higher bar. An educated citizen: * can have an informed opinion about the NSA's definition of "collecting" information [0]. * when told "we need to make sure that this list of 100,000 URLs are all valid websites", doesn't respond "wow, we'll need to hire a big team". * can reason about…
I disagree. That is like saying that an educated citizen must: * have an informed opinion on current Emission standards * be able to change oil on their own car * could describe how a 4-stroke engine works Replace the computer with a car and you will see that what you consider basic knowledge is not basic to most people. They rely on experts for advice, opinion, and guidance.
Call me a nerd, but I'd call all of your points a pretty basic requirements for a citizen of a technological civilization.
Failing that, we end up with lot of crazy beliefs about the world that people wouldn't have if they hadn't forgotten 99% of stuff they spent learning in high school.
I can't speak for your particular experience at school, but in general I think it's a shame that people whose lives are, as you say, "privileged" by the systems in which we live feel like they are at a disadvantage because of concerted attempts to raise others to their level.
You know, I was a lot younger then. Furthermore I was answering a direct question: "What is the problem?" Also I put the "privileged" word in quotes for a reason: while being male gives me a number of advantages it also gives me a number of disadvantages. Furthermore there is all the rest: coming from a low socioeconomic background should account for a lot as well (buying a pc was a huge deal - I think I was 15 when…
I can see that. It must be very juxtaposing to see upper middle class blacks/hispanics/females (the typical "oppressed minority" working at big tech companies) getting special benefits.
People are free to study what they want. If there are more men who want to study a STEM subject, this will of course lead to a majority of men. Indeed, typical STEM subjects have no limitation on your A-level mark (Numerus Clausus) for being allowed to study it. So there is clearly no selective barrier to entry (Numerus Clausus) [but I'm not a native speaker of English - so it can be that "selective barriers to entry…
Have you ever been somewhere where it was clear everyone noticed you didn't 'fit in'?
That's not possible in the tech field because the tech field is very diverse. With the high immigrant %, most people do not fit in because there is no majority/in-group. The demographic is fragmented with the immigrant groups clustering by native language and country of origin. You end up with maybe 30-40% Americans in an engineering team.
Have you ever been somewhere where it was clear everyone noticed you didn't 'fit in'?
> Have you ever been somewhere where it was clear everyone noticed you didn't 'fit in'? There are multiple ways to answer the question: 1. I often don't fit in - and don't consider this as a problem. 2. I have yet to see a woman studying a STEM subject who is very skilled at it and made such complaint. 3. Saying one does not study, say, computer science because one does not fit in means that "fitting in" is more impo…
> I have yet to see a woman studying a STEM subject who is very skilled at it and made such complaint.
Seriously, you should actually talk to some of these women about their experiences.
People need to learn how to learn first ... the Trivium ... grammar, logic, and rhetoric ... after a successful baseline there then they can teach themselves CS or whatever ... too early exposure to CS just continues the trade school factory mentality prevalent in current pre college education
Plenty of people "do just fine in their lives" without knowing how to read. This is discussing how to "be an educated citizen", a far higher bar. An educated citizen: * can have an informed opinion about the NSA's definition of "collecting" information [0]. * when told "we need to make sure that this list of 100,000 URLs are all valid websites", doesn't respond "wow, we'll need to hire a big team". * can reason about…
I disagree. That is like saying that an educated citizen must: * have an informed opinion on current Emission standards * be able to change oil on their own car * could describe how a 4-stroke engine works Replace the computer with a car and you will see that what you consider basic knowledge is not basic to most people. They rely on experts for advice, opinion, and guidance.
You don't think the educated citizen should have an informed opinion on current emission standards? Your second two examples rely on specific facts or techniques, which I don't think mine do. For example, I didn't say that the person be able to write the script to check all those URLs, just be able to identify it as a task that an expert could easily do.
I graduated with a CS degree in 2004 from Carnegie Mellon University and Google didn't give a shit about me until 2011 where they told me they would only hire me if I were working for another local company first. The other local companies didn't want to hire me, because they thought I would just go work for Google. Never met anyone at Google who cared that I was a good programmer or had devoted my life to it. They seemed focused on stealing workers from their competitors. If they want to hire computer scientists, then tell their employees to focus on that in the hiring process. If they have someone with a Computer Science degree who is a great programmer who wants to work with them, maybe they should find the time to speak with them or to explain how they could get a job in computer science or programming.
My experience is that Google things a Computer Science degree is worthless. It can't get your foot in the door to speak to them, you have to be a race or gender they are looking for.