11–20 of 55 posts
Translation: women are not interested in programming. This is the fault of everybody but women. (I'd love to see counter arguments to this instead of clicks on the "flag" button, but, alas...)
Not a great article. I can completely understand the rejection of bootcamp applicants. I've personally interviewed people for algorithm / math heavy positions (explicitly mentioned in the article) and bootcamp applicants just do not cut it. The genuine knowledge in a field like this cannot be conveyed to anybody over the course of a few months. Teaching someone with a stats or physics background to code is pretty doa…
Coding "bootcamps" have been broadly embraced by people trying to get programming (about as gender-selected a profession as there is) opened up to people from broader backgrounds. Obviously there are white dudes that come out of these programs too, but... no, it's not too much a stretch to imagine someone talk about "bootcamp applicants" as shorthand for post-college women looking for a change of career.
Likewise, sure, it's possible that someone is just using "bootcamp" as shorthand for "unqualified" and trying to sincerely convey the deep background required of the position. But it's not in "bad taste" to imagine something a little less wholesome either. Which is to say (pause while people get out their SJW hatchets): check your privilege a bit. It's easy for people like us who followed the rules and have the right chromosomes to imagine that injustice doesn't exist. Those closer to the problem have a different perspective.
Translation: women are not interested in programming. This is the fault of everybody but women. (I'd love to see counter arguments to this instead of clicks on the "flag" button, but, alas...)
How on earth is that your takeaway from reading the article? It's not even a long article.
> I spent twelve weeks, ten to twelve hours per day, of my boot camp working primarily on algorithms and data structures, and was tested on that knowledge every three weeks. So that can’t be the skill I’m missing. Wow, 3 whole months ? I wonder why they didn't want bootcamp applicants... But, in general, I agree. They should be filtering by ability rather than putting a blanket ban on people who have done a bootcamp.…
I've worked with developers who have 20 years of development on their résumé who haven't spent 3 months thinking about data yet. I've also worked with interns who are weeks in to their first professional role who have taught me things about data I haven't seen before. Time served is a terrible way of measuring knowledge and passion for a subject.
Not a great article. I can completely understand the rejection of bootcamp applicants. I've personally interviewed people for algorithm / math heavy positions (explicitly mentioned in the article) and bootcamp applicants just do not cut it. The genuine knowledge in a field like this cannot be conveyed to anybody over the course of a few months. Teaching someone with a stats or physics background to code is pretty doa…
I always wonder, though, whether I'll eventually run into a math-critical issue and cannot just reason my way through it. It's a terrifying prospect, but luckily in my 5 years of dev experience I haven't faced that scenario.
Not a great article. I can completely understand the rejection of bootcamp applicants. I've personally interviewed people for algorithm / math heavy positions (explicitly mentioned in the article) and bootcamp applicants just do not cut it. The genuine knowledge in a field like this cannot be conveyed to anybody over the course of a few months. Teaching someone with a stats or physics background to code is pretty doa…
I've been curious about this issue, because I've been relatively successful in my so-far short career as a web developer. Yet I'm self-taught, and can't math my way out of a paper bag. I'm good at logic so that's gone a long way in helping me. I always wonder, though, whether I'll eventually run into a math-critical issue and cannot just reason my way through it. It's a terrifying prospect, but luckily in my 5 years…
I used to do and enjoy algorithm competitions as a student, but in "real life" I've found there is almost no correlation between the complexity of the algorithms and the amount of money to be made.
Not a great article. I can completely understand the rejection of bootcamp applicants. I've personally interviewed people for algorithm / math heavy positions (explicitly mentioned in the article) and bootcamp applicants just do not cut it. The genuine knowledge in a field like this cannot be conveyed to anybody over the course of a few months. Teaching someone with a stats or physics background to code is pretty doa…
I've been curious about this issue, because I've been relatively successful in my so-far short career as a web developer. Yet I'm self-taught, and can't math my way out of a paper bag. I'm good at logic so that's gone a long way in helping me. I always wonder, though, whether I'll eventually run into a math-critical issue and cannot just reason my way through it. It's a terrifying prospect, but luckily in my 5 years…
For me for example the turning point was having to learn a lot of trigonometry to apply to an AR app. No way I could have done without, but because I was still doing something I love I got the motivation to learn.
Perhaps "bootcamp" as the last thing on your resume just screams that you are a greenbean and can't rightly claim competence in much of anything. Get hooked up with a technology staffing group in your area, they'll help get you placed and the sweet, sweet lucre will begin to flow your way. (Search for "IT Staffing" or "Technology Staffing".)
I suppose there is a lot that is unfair/crummy about women's experience in the workplace these days, but I'd be shocked if landing an IT job is crummier than it is for men. I observe that sane women with any decent level of technical acumen in my division get promoted more rapidly than men. So, in some companies, it'd probably be advantageous to be female.
Let's not be complainers and wallow in our victimhood. That blog post will make you quite unattractive to some employers that care to google you by-name.
"The post went on to detail a need for an understanding of BigO time complexity, which is completely fair. No one wants a double loop in production code. What a bulky monstrosity that would be (imagining a giant disgusting swamp monster made of 0’s and 1’s, eeek!)."
"I certainly don’t want to make a messy newb mistake like creating a method with a time complexity of O(n²) or worse (cringe)."
I'm not going to be critical and say that this is wrong and that the author doesn't know what she is doing. But it does seem that this quote demonstrates a tendency I see among female advocates of women in tech, and that is to slightly awkwardly use technical terms in order to try to prove that they are part of the "in group" of people who understand technical concepts.
In this case, it seems that she is trying to prove that she knows what BigO is. I feel like this is a kind of meta-sexism. What she is doing by explaining to us the gist of BigO is saying "I think that you think that I'm so stupid that I don't know what BigO is, so now I'm going to prove to you that I do."
I know I suffer from the assumption that women don't know how to code. It's a hard thing to get around, since %90 of female programmers whom I meet are women from PyLadies who come to the local python meetup, and really don't know how to program yet. And now our author is suffering from the assumption that I assume that she doesn't know how to code. And in trying to prove otherwise, she trips over herself in her eagerness to prove my assumption wrong.
This meta-sexist thinking and behavior is getting so complicated and convoluted that it is acting to distract us from thinking and communicating on technical topics. I believe that it has become harmful to the cause of encouraging women and minorities to join our communities. It is harder for me as a white man to talk to a woman or a minority because I am thinking about their gender or race. And it is harder for a woman to talk about tech if she is thinking about my thinking about the fact that she is a woman.
Somehow we need to escape meta-sexism and start talking to each-other as equals, without presumption or presumption of presumption.