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Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

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Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers here are "and mathematical scientists"¹, so it's not (as upthread implies) CS grads, it's CS grads + other studies. I lived with a physics major; she did some code, would she have been counted?², but she was not a SWE in the making³. My gut would not think other math degrees would necessarily be more women heavy. But like upthread, my class was 2 women in a class of ~160, or Not sure what to say, aside fr…

This chart isn't lumping them, it has never been close to single digit percent for the past 50 years. Any class with sub 10% women is a big outlier. And as you can see from the graph, things hasn't really improved, classes used to have way more women, the single digit percent examples are low outliers at a time when things had already gotten really bad from where they used to. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2…

That graph (which is from here: [1]) lists [2] as its data source; none of the tables under "326 Completion and…" match the data they're graphing; it never breaks it out by degree+sex, AFAICT; there are a lot of tables, and I did not exhaustively search them, nor did the article include enough information on their methodology.

The phrasing of "Over the weekend, I…" implies some exogenous data source, but it's not shared. One can't even begin to replicate the conclusion reached.

> Any class with sub 10% women is a big outlier.

You claim, but what is being asked for here is evidence to support such; Occam's razor implies that not only should it not be, that it would be an outlier in the other direction. Hence the desire for something that lays out its methodology well enough that we can tell that it's not in that lovely third category of "statistics".

[1]: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-declinin...

[2]: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/current_tables.asp

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#292
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. You'd think all the organizations that attribute their challenges in hiring non-male engineers to a "pipeline problem" would've spent a small fraction of their recruiting budgets helping to fund Girls in Tech...

once interests rate went up all DEI initiatives dried up - these companies don't really have integrity or beliefs beyond doing what is politically correct at the current time.

Almost as if they are organizations formed around the goal of optimizing profits, and not the general benefit of society.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#293
post #51

At the risk of posting a reflexive comment, what should we be doing here? It seems like everything has unintended consequences (not on a cost-benefit basis): - Minority affinity groups pull people from majority groups and decrease integration. - Anti-discrimination/sexism/etc. movements often add social barriers to interactions (e.g. things I do within my identity group would be misperceived if done across) - Affirma…

> Affirmative action makes minorities feel like they don't deserve to be there Does it? I see a lot of affirmative action victims saying that it _ought_ to make them feel that way, but I never hear that from affirmative action recipients.

I have multiple friends who've told me that they very much wondered if they got a job just because they were a "diversity hire" and even more who were afraid that others would view them that way and resent them for it. I don't think that fear was irrational. None of them were ever confirmed "affirmative action recipients", but the fact that affirmative action and diversity quotas exist at all is enough to make them doubt themselves and be doubted by others.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#294
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (economic) purpose of Girls in Tech is to create more workers in software so that prices for labor will go down. Given the layoffs of 2022-ongoing, labor costs in tech are dropping enough that interested parties aren't incentivized to increase the supply of labor further.

> so that prices for labor will go down. I don't think that's the reason (it is a side effect though). What makes you think that?

Human nature.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#295
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> you seem to have very little curiosity into WHY those ratios are so skewed That's a weird take. How would you know what I'm curious about? Pardon the strawman, but I'm not interested in handwavy explanations which tend to border on bigotry ("$category simply isn't interested in $topic"). I suspect the fundamental reasons are myriad and complex, but that doesn't mean $field wouldn't benefit from more diversity. > It…

They can tell you aren't a curious person from your use of punctuation. This is why I always add ;`'([] at the end of every sentence ;`'([]

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those folks from outside of the USA had been from economically prosperous backgrounds, they too would try to become nurses or caregivers instead of programmers. Gender parity in STEM is a sign of the economic desperation of a countries people. This is a sociological fact which ruffles feathers when it’s stated out loud.

Do you have any citations to back up this “fact”?

I believe affinity of boys for interacting with "things" and affinity for girls for interacting with "people" has been demonstrated pretty well in studies.

(This falls into category of "something I read on the Internet")

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will result in some professions with extreme sex imbalance, and we should accept that outcome. We do accept it, for the most part. I don't see many Men-as-Teachers or Men-in-Nursing advocacy groups.

There's a lot of Men-in-Teaching advocacy, in part because its thought having male teachers tends to be beneficial for male students[1]. I think stuff like that is the main reason to be worried about gender imbalances. A 40-60 imbalance probably isn't a big deal, but once you get to like, 90-10 or worse, as is the case with early education, you start to get a bunch of secondary social problems. Kids who associate lea…

> There's a lot of Men-in-Teaching advocacy

There are pundits saying this should be supported. Are there programs with real dollars behind them making actual changes?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the mechanism for that "funneling" though? intentional programs to make diverse candidates feel more welcome? more money? if big tech is actively working to attract diverse candidates and other companies aren't keeping up, it doesn't sound like it's through no fault of their own that they can't retain those people.

More money. Smaller companies can't compete with FAANG salaries. So when FAANG prioritizes hiring women, and there are still many fewer women than men in tech overall, smaller and poorer companies can't compete with the offers women are getting from FAANG.

... sure, on the other hand way less competition, and smaller companies can also simply go ahead hire promising juniors and do on the job training.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#299
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they large? I've not heard of them. It has 130 thousand members, but that doesn't mean they're all employees?

The law requires only 50 employees. I am not sure of their number of employees though.

A 501(c)3 requires at least 50 employees? That would surprise me if it was true.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#300
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More money. Smaller companies can't compete with FAANG salaries. So when FAANG prioritizes hiring women, and there are still many fewer women than men in tech overall, smaller and poorer companies can't compete with the offers women are getting from FAANG.

... sure, on the other hand way less competition, and smaller companies can also simply go ahead hire promising juniors and do on the job training.

"way less competition"?
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