Can Women Write Code As Well as Men?

Anyone working in Silicon Valley (or reading local newspapers) cannot fail to be personally affected by issues of workplace diversity (at least vicariously). (Actually, anyone reading the Wall Street Journal these days could not avoid seeing the variety of prose on this topic from its chorus of reporters and columnists.) And during the last couple of weeks s/he could scarcely avoid hearing about the 10-page memo written by Google’s James Damore, his subsequent firing, and the furor both locally and nationally. There is a saying in Japanese that “the nail that sticks up is the one that gets pounded down”, and we are sure that he feels very pounded down these days. And his subsequent article published in the Wall Street Journal (in a nice touch the accompanying picture shows him wearing a T-shirt that says “Goolag”) has doubtlessly made Google management feel pounded down, too. (This appears to add insult to the injury already facing Google because the U.S. Department of Labor is already claiming that Google systematically pays women less than men.)

It is no secret that the tech industry in general employs a majority of white or Asian (mainly Indian) men, particularly in technical and leadership roles, which means that Google is no better or worse than other giant tech companies. But when one digs a bit deeper, it turns out that Damore’s belief that women are less capable at writing code than men is incorrect because Indian women CAN code too.

The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler points out that there is limited proof that Google’s mandatory “Unconscious Bias” training has any merit, because of the fallibility of the numerous studies that have supported its inclusion.

Actually, it is meaningless to give OVERALL statistics about percents of male/female or race without also putting them in the context of compensation or managerial level or similar measure, as we have tried to do with the illustration above.

The Argy-Bargy About H-1B Visas is All About Dollars … At Tech Companies AND Universities

We at Technology Bloopers are not big fans of President Trump, but his administration’s putting pressure on tech companies’ hiring software engineers from India and China to replace Americans does seem to be consonant with his pre-election promises.

But apparently it is even worse than that. We heard a couple of days ago about one local company that not only hired a bunch of Indian H1B visa-holders, fired their American staff, and replaced them with these imported folks … after they were trained by the Americans. And this noxious practice has apparently been going on for some time, according to the Stateline folks at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Three months of coder school is not much training compared with that of the better-trained—often in American universities—and more-experienced visa-holders. But why are these American universities welcoming these foreign students? It’s because those students come bearing big funds for their education. (At state universities, it is simply that the international students must pay the same (higher) prices as out-of-state American students.) We have heard that among some of these students it is said that PhD stands for “Parents have Dough”. Interestingly, those international students are more prone to cheat on their exams. Hmmm … does that mean that their future code will be less trustworthy than that of Americans?

We wonder why the big Silicon Valley tech companies have not done a better job on their own of training software engineers. Couldn’t they be hiring “junior” software engineers from the coder schools and boosting their capabilities with on-the-job training. We suspect one reason is that it is more expensive to do that than to hire foreign help. And more time-consuming. And another reason may be that they didn’t do a good job of forecasting their growth and concomitant demand for those software engineers. Maybe the current visa flap will motivate them.

But it may not be the fault of these companies. Americans may too lazy, or too afraid to be “uncool”, to study STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics) courses so there is not enough local talent to fill the needs of Silicon Valley. Graduates with strong STEM knowledge are polar opposites to “art history majors” , a term used derogatorily to connote enjoyable-but-low-paying jobs.

Social Networks Need a Hippocratic Oath … And Users Need to Heed the Warning of Caveat Lector

Why are we at Technology Bloopers going back centuries to use Greek and Latin to admonish Millennials to be careful how they use social networks? Just as physicians swear that they will “First do no harm”, the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Reddit are so powerful that they should also have such an oath … or risk legislation to prevent their doing harm. There are numerous examples of the harm they have already done. Most recently, the fake news posted by malevolent individuals and organizations had some impact on the U.S. presidential race, possibly to the extent that Hillary Clinton was unfairly defeated by Donald Trump. The importance of some of the harm being done is likely to result in legislation to limit their behavior, so these giant companies should police themselves before the government does so.

People are social animals, so the social networks can provide a ton of experiences that they crave. People like fatty foods and sugary drinks, but over-indulging can make them obese due to their lack of nourishing foods and drink. The same goes for social networks, which can distract them with amusing but mindless fare but deprive them of the solid information and communication they need to be productive. The web already provides effective ways to communicate with your friends, business associates, and other people organizations. Information is used to inform, educate, and entertain, but it appears that social networks overdo the entertain role and short the inform and educate roles.

All of the above goes double (or more) for teenagers, who usually have a lot of time and highly value being popular. Additionally, they haven’t yet developed a full set of values that allows them to distinguish good from bad, and avoid the bad. They might profit from a couple of pieces of homespun advice. Remember that much “Web Wisdom” is worth only what you pay for it. And “Believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see”.

Does the Brevity of Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, et al Reflect their Paucity of Useful Content ?

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Modern technology—especially all things enabled by the Internet—continues to produce miracles that could only be fantasized about a few short years ago. Among those miracles is a whole family of social networks, all of which offer near-instantaneously gratification. One can debate the extent of benefits offered by each of the social networks, but the billion-plus active Facebook users strongly implies that THEY believe in the benefits. And there are continuing examples where people can connect with their loved ones despite disasters, or just stay in touch simply and quickly. We wonder, however, if Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, and their ilk are in the same league. The fact that the small amount of content (regardless of how clever it is) leaves as fast as it arrives suggests that it doesn’t have lasting value. In fact, this lack of permanance probably is a GOOD thing for many of the teenagers who are a considerable portion of the recipients. But actually, it appears that more and more teenagers are choosing to communicate in person, so it may be that they are tiring of the high volume of stuff with little lasting value.