Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
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Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
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Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#2Harvey Mudd had some good success getting their enrollment up: https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bia...
Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#3If Google were a sports team, they'd be an elite NBA basketball team that decided to go co-ed, only to find it hard to recruit enough female players over six feet six inches tall. Meanwhile, the women they did recruit grew frustrated and insecure as they had to prove themselves all the time to the men. The player who attempted to explain it all was fired.
Note that "advancing women" is a goal itself based on stereotypes: namely that any generic woman will bring diversity benefits to an organization, based on their gender alone, and not based on the content of their character.
Rather than attempting to hire candidates who who are diverse by virtue of their individuality, the goal is to hire candidates based on membership in a particular class, because each member if that class is stereotyped as being "good." That's not as ideal as evaluating each candidate's diversity based on personal attributes.
Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#4This is going to be somewhat long and heartbreaking but I promise it will converge on an intelligent point at the end.
Every time I visit San Francisco, the heart of America's tech economy, I walk down Market Street and view dozens of adult human beings, many with traumatic brain injuries and psychological problems, living like animals, sleeping in tents, defecating directly on the ground and begging for help.
In the richest country in the world, at the very heart of the tech industry...let me repeat this again, we have scores of people living in abject poverty...exactly like animals.
After multiple viewings of this situation, I stopped looking at the homeless people and I started noticing the people walking past these individuals: Staring down at their phones, the residents of Silicon Valley have trained themselves to wear blinders to the abject, deplorable poverty of their fellow men. They are Tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming, SnapChatting their lunch.
Solving easy problems. Making easy statements. Liking the right comments and the right posts, retweeting the appropriate social messages. So simple and easy! Click! Like! Done!
As I stood in line at one bodega, I noted the professional and skilled manner in which a white collar worker like myself standing in line completely failed to look at, respond to or acknowledge the presence of a drug addict who was begging him for change.
What a wonderful technique, I thought to myself. I had been doing it all wrong previously by even remotely acknowledging the homeless whenever they hassled me on the street. After observing this man's behavior, I adopted it. I learned: Just pretend they don't exist and they will go away.
So back to my main point:
Silicon Valley is a corrupt, horrible place that has decided it's #1 problem to be solved is the gender imbalance in software engineering. Instead of focusing on solving the clear, heart rending, abject poverty around them, the entire tech industry has collectively jammed it's head deep, far into it's own anal cavity and decided that the optimal use of all of it's social justice time should be on ensuring that highly privileged women who have attended universities and received educations which fairly guarantee that they will achieve salaries that only .01% of the entire globe will ever achieve are the most pressing concern of the moment.
Every single day I see nothing but a relentless circular pounding on this topic. Women must learn to code! Women must learn to code! Women must learn to code!
The other half of the issue is just as fun: Our #1 issue as an industry is that women who are in the very upper 0.5% of the world must earn slightly more money. About 3%-5% more money. Yes, THAT is the issue we must harp on constantly all day, every single day online.
And the people living like animals on the streets we are ignoring? Yeah, fuck them, lets teach girls to code.
Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#5> The anti-science bias in this explanation has two faces, both well-meaning but both untrue. First, the science of gender difference is not gender stereotyping but, in fact, real, as the sources above will prove to any executive or person who studies them. Second, even if someone felt like that gender trait difference constituted untrue gender stereotypes, there is no hostility in the science. Hostility is, by its very nature, a violent attack on a person or group. Damore was not hostile nor violent; he was measured and scientifically accurate. Similarly, Larry Summers was not hostile, nor were Barbara Annis, my coauthor and I, in Leadership and the Sexes.
The whole idea that we have to dress up a topic in well-meaning white lies because feelings might get hurt is what has been making me less and less receptive to certain messages and points of view.
Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#6This is going to be somewhat long and heartbreaking but I promise it will converge on an intelligent point at the end. Every time I visit San Francisco, the heart of America's tech economy, I walk down Market Street and view dozens of adult human beings, many with traumatic brain injuries and psychological problems, living like animals, sleeping in tents, defecating directly on the ground and begging for help. In the…
"Instead of focusing on solving the clear, heart rending, abject poverty around them"
That requires ensuring everybody that wants a job has one unless exempted by age or infirmity.
Having more jobs than people means that the workers have the upper hand in wage negotiations. They always have another option.
And if there is one thing business hates, it's having to compete - particularly for workers.
A society that cannot work out that healthcare should be based upon need, not ability to pay, is already moribund and dying on the inside.
Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#7This is going to be somewhat long and heartbreaking but I promise it will converge on an intelligent point at the end. Every time I visit San Francisco, the heart of America's tech economy, I walk down Market Street and view dozens of adult human beings, many with traumatic brain injuries and psychological problems, living like animals, sleeping in tents, defecating directly on the ground and begging for help. In the…
let's drill the idea that they must be coders into girls' brains, because they're not having it themselves
ftfy
Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#8Harvey Mudd had some good success getting their enrollment up: https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bia...
Harvey Mudd is just performing selection bias. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#9This is going to be somewhat long and heartbreaking but I promise it will converge on an intelligent point at the end. Every time I visit San Francisco, the heart of America's tech economy, I walk down Market Street and view dozens of adult human beings, many with traumatic brain injuries and psychological problems, living like animals, sleeping in tents, defecating directly on the ground and begging for help. In the…
Where did you learn to derail a conversation so well? Curious, because I've seen similar tactics being used over the last couple months on other topics. Makes me wonder ...
Anyway, I'll be back in SF in a week or two. Please organize a group to address these poverty issues, post the time and place, and I'll donate some time.
Re: Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women
#10This is going to be somewhat long and heartbreaking but I promise it will converge on an intelligent point at the end. Every time I visit San Francisco, the heart of America's tech economy, I walk down Market Street and view dozens of adult human beings, many with traumatic brain injuries and psychological problems, living like animals, sleeping in tents, defecating directly on the ground and begging for help. In the…
"Instead of focusing on solving the clear, heart rending, abject poverty around them" That requires ensuring everybody that wants a job has one unless exempted by age or infirmity. Having more jobs than people means that the workers have the upper hand in wage negotiations. They always have another option. And if there is one thing business hates, it's having to compete - particularly for workers. A society that cann…
> Having more jobs than people means that the workers have the upper hand in wage negotiations. They always have another option.
Businesses would never let this happen though, they would just lobby the government to let them bring in more workers from other countries until they have the upper hand again. The third world has virtually an endless supply.