Code 301 Class 13 Reading Notes
Consider the History: That time When Women Stopped Coding
- What occurred during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer science? Personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers.
- Why does it matter that males had been playing on computers growing up? It gave the idea that computers are for boy and defined who geeks were, and this created the techie culture.
Additional Notes
Particia’s Ordonez story brought me joy! After accepting self defeat she did eventually return to computers and received a Ph.D. in computer science. I’m sure now she is the mentor that she needed when she initially dropped the program.
Review the data: Employee breakdown of key technology companies
- What three take-a-ways do you have looking at this data?
- As of 2017 there isn’t a lot of diversity among tech companies, but there was a push from 2016 to 2017 to make that change. What happened then?
- For the predominately white companies, it seemed the older the company the higher the percentage of white employees.
- There was a HUGE jump in Fortune 500 Asian CEOs from 2016 at 2, to 2017 at 21!
Ask the question: Why diversity matters to your tech company
- When are diversity efforts most successful? When they’re driven by a commitment from company leaders.
- Why do diverse companies perform better?
“Diverse groups of people bring … more and different ways of seeing a problem, … fast/better ways of solving it” - Scott E. Page, Professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan.
- Give an example of how a diverse company can serve a diverse user base or vise-versa. Bringing in a diverse company will enable the company to reach a diverse audience. If this is driven from leadership, this will solidify that value and instill it through out the company. Which will in turn, reach more customers and said company will perform better.