In my opinion programming surveys should focus on development area and leave demographics, personal questions to someone else.
I see no other reason for asking these questions than following the money.
In order to identify systemic / cultural discrimination against certain demographics. If these types of questions were never asked we would only have personal anecdotes to guide decision making.
e.g. We are better prepared to address the gender disparity within the industry when we have surveys and studies reporting the massive imbalance of men and women. By asking the same questions year after year we are able to tell whether diversity programs and policy changes are working.
If all the women working in diversity programs actually started coding then it’d have a greater effect than all the diversity programs ever.
Oh, what’s that? they don’t want to code? They want to people? Funny that…
What about all the women who already code but face discrimination?
What about all the women who picked computer science as their major but faced ostracision and stereotypes?
What about all the women and especially girls who may have aspired to become programmers, but the reality is that programmers are always portrayed in pop culture as men?
Right, and now think about this for another ten hours and you might capture a slither of what their field is.
For example, yes, women might have a preference for people over code. That’s 100% fine, if there is an actual reason for this preference.
If they just prefer it, because throughout their lives they were told to prefer people over code, because they are women, then that is horseshit and it would be beneficial to society to stop that.Besides, it’s not just about driving up percentages/diversity. Not all women have a preference for people over code. And even if it’s just 10% of women that prefer code to people, those 10% should feel just as welcome as any men that enter the field.
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I don’t understand why it shouldn’t be included. It can give interesting insights, for example, I’ve noticed that relatively many transgender people work in IT security.
Might be, because they’ve had to protect themselves from assholes and so have a natural disposition towards that field.
So far, that’s a pretty worthless pet theory of mine. A survey can help to prove or deny such a theory by providing empirical data.Which is really all that a survey ever does. To provide interesting insights. So yeah, why not include it?
following the money
Can you elaborate on this?
Corps will do anything to suit current social trends for money. The perservance in promoting “whats fashionable” gradually decreases within reaching middle-eastern or chinese markets for some reason.
The hipocrisy is strong in that one.
I don’t even know what corporations your mean with that, or what kind of promotion. But companies adjusting to the local circumstances in order to maximize profit? I fail to see this being more hypocritical than e.g. any of us being on holiday in a foreign country which laws we don’t appreciate but comply with anyway.
I know this is probably a troll question, but just in case I’ll answer it seriously.
The reasons are a combination of:
- That there are underrepresented and overrepresented people in any field of any kind is so obvious we can treat it as an axiom. If you disagree we do not share sufficient warrants to have a meaningful discussion at this level and need to move discourse down a level to coordinate the warrants.
- This over/underrepresentation may be a result of “natural” issues or it may be a result of systemic ones.
- We cannot at all determine which it is without good quality data in sufficient volumes.
- Ergo, we collect data so we can effect meaningful policy changes (if needed) or defend a lack of same (if not needed).
I always find it curious who asks these questions because it is almost never one of the underrepresented groups asking this…
It might be interesting to see which kind of people are over- and underrepresented?
“We’re looking for someone to develop software that optimizes travel routes for delivery services. So, first question: Who do you like to fuck?”
