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How's that STEM education working out?
Much of the public enthusiasm for STEM education rests on the assumption that these fields are rich in job opportunity. Some are, some aren’t. STEM is an expansive category, spanning many disciplines and occupations, from software engineers and data scientists to geologists, astronomers and physicists.
What recent studies have made increasingly apparent is that the greatest number of high-paying STEM jobs are in the “T” (specifically, computing).
Earlier this year, Glassdoor, a jobs listing website, ranked the median base salary of workers in their first five years of employment by undergraduate major. Computer science topped the list ($70,000), followed by electrical engineering ($68,438). Biochemistry ($46,406) and biotechnology ($48,442) were among the lowest paying majors in the study, which also confirmed that women are generally underrepresented in STEM majors.
So study cybersecurity, not slime molds.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:52PM (11 children)
Two problems with your ideas. First, sometimes damn good people get eliminated because of bad teaching material. When I was a senior in college, my dad tried to change careers by taking an introductory programming class at a local community college. I couldn't do his homework assignments after the third week, that's how hard they were. So if I had started in that podunk community college program instead of the prestigious university I attended, I would have washed out and assumed I was too stupid to make it as a developer. Some programs are poorly structured, some instructors are awful.
Second and more importantly, race, creed, and color contribute to comfort. I was a white heterosexual Christian male in a CS classroom full of white heterosexual Christian males taught by white heterosexual Christian males. (I'm atheist now, not that it matters.) I had zero social anxieties in any of my CS classes, which made it easier to focus on the material. If I attended a college were all of my classmates and instructors were, for the sake of argument, Asian (and Asian American) women or African (and African American) men, that probably would have made the difference between making the cut and washing out. So if you want to tell some woman, "If you can't deal with feeling socially isolated in the field, get out" then by the exact same logic you have to evict me too. And I very much suspect that many other people in our field are in the same situation. James Damore, et al seem to miss that. "We shouldn't have to account for diversity" isn't what he's saying, what he's really saying is "We shouldn't have to account for diversity because the current monoculture works strongly in my favor." They just lack the self-awareness to realize it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:55PM
s/If I attended a college were all of my classmates and instructors were/If I attended a college where all of my classmates and instructors were/
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 03 2017, @09:03PM
You're right that the monoculture does work strongly in my favor. White Christian male. But I would like to think that even if it didn't, I would get along with everyone around me. But I've never had to test that. So while I'm usually comfortably pessimistic and cynical, in this case maybe I've allowed myself to become naively optimistic.
Thank goodness the 1st amendment forces people to listen to you and agree with you.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 03 2017, @09:58PM (6 children)
I am utterly unable to even see where you're coming from on the second paragraph there. I, as a feather-not-dot indian, have never once felt excluded in any way by the people I've gone to school or worked with because of my race. Not anywhere in the country that I've worked at numerous blue and white collar jobs since I got my first job in highschool. I think you're just working through some white male guilt or something.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @03:31AM (1 child)
Screw the scientific method, your individual experience is all we need to know in how every other person's experience is.
Find it amusing when those that claim to support scientific principles, but then espouse anecdotal (and unverifiable) evidence because it fits their innate bias.
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:57AM
I do not know why you come to a forum of opinions seeking for scientific method supporting people's thesis, but I guess a beer would do you good.
On my personal anecdote though, I kind of support the opinion that in general race does not really matter in programming jobs. When your ass and your team's ass is on the line you want your team to perform and make it easier for you and everybody to spend that time the best possible. I work with a Philipino and I enjoy his companionship in my team as well as his competence.
I work in Poland by the way, pretty much a white country, and I am quite dark skinned Portuguese, hairy and all. There are obvious physical differences but I never felt that my competence or friendliness was in any way related to my skin color. I also have a ginger in my team and we constantly play the stereotypes for the theater that they are. My whole attitude towards work, is: I am a professional and will only go as low as cordiality if I do not like the person, otherwise I try to make my workplace socially relaxed with focus on sharing knowledge and improvement. Maybe it's the nice people of Poland, but I feel good here.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday November 04 2017, @05:49PM (3 children)
Out of curiosity, how obvious is it from casual inspection that you're an American Indian? There are lots of people that are part Native who don't look like it and thus don't receive any kind of discrimination because of it.
One of my employers rejected a potential candidate for a developer job solely because he was a dot-not-feather Indian - he announced that fact to his entire team (I left shortly thereafter). A friend of mine who worked in HR described another candidate who had all the right experience, aced the interview, and in the post-interview meeting learned that nobody wanted to hire her solely because she was black. So don't tell me that this kind of stuff is in my imagination, because I've seen it happening right before my very eyes. And we're talking about events happening in 2015, not 1965.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:24PM (2 children)
Depends on the time of year. In the winter it's strictly bone structure and hair. Once the sun starts warming up though I go from zero to getting mistaken for mexican PDQ.
Now that I've answered that though, why are you interested? Were you planning on telling me my heritage doesn't count because of skin color? You know, I take it back. It's damned easy today to find bigots. Just look for anyone who subscribes to identity politics.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday November 04 2017, @07:28PM (1 child)
Do I think the racial discrimination I directly observed is real? Yes.
Do I think it's wrong? Yes. Not just morally wrong, but leads to sub-optimal institutions, because the capable people that don't fit the desired stereotypes aren't hired, promoted, or otherwise rewarded.
I think, as the vast majority people who study it think, that the variations within any particular identity group are far greater than the differences between the averages in the groups.
Lastly, I think that some of the discrimination out there is the manifestation of internal biases, where most people naturally react to others based on visual cues that are not in fact accurate. For example, face symmetry can have a huge effect on your life.
I don't subscribe to the (silly) idea that whoever is the most victimized by that discrimination is the best person to pick for a job. But I do subscribe to the idea that if I'm interviewing 2 equally experienced candidates, and they both do equally well, I should err on the side of countering my own bias by hiring the person I'm naturally biased against, because I've likely downgraded their performance in my head prior to making the decision. And that's what affirmative action is all about.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:23PM
Okay, let's come at this from another direction then.
Discriminating against people based on skin color is foolish and creates hatred in those discriminated against.
When you discriminate in favor of someone based on skin color, you necessarily discriminate against everyone else based on the same.
Thus every time you do this you are fanning the flames of racially based hatred for the demographic you extended preference towards and for yourself.
The above also applies to gender through the exact same logic chain.
You are not making the world a better place; you are filling it with a double scoop of hate.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @10:33PM
So you're uncomfortable around people with different racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds? That's the problem, not that there's a lot of white guys in tech. There are lots of white guys in America, and it hasn't been that long since a computer cost several months wages for most people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @01:29AM
Wow, pops. What decade did you go to uni then? The '50s? Ever considered the possibility that your experience doesn't apply to the majority? I didn't think so you myopic grey haired boomer piece of shit.