“I feel quite strongly that people should stop trying to get women into coding and software engineering,” Claudia Hill writes for Stuff. “I am a woman who has been immersed in the tech sector for almost two decades. I have gone from a software engineer to running my own software development company. I am also a working mother of three kids. However, I have to agree with much of the sentiment in a memo from a Google executive which hit the headlines this week, and incited outrage in the US and around the world.”
“Titled Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber, it argued that women are under-represented in the tech industry not because they face discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between the genders,” Hill writes. “In many ways, I agree.”
“As a woman in tech I am not taking this stance lightly, but I believe the enormous effort put into recruiting females into software engineering is a waste of time,” Hill writes. “In my opinion it feels very much like ‘box checking’ and on the whole, it’s a fundamentally flawed approach. It also assumes the following: that women want to be software engineers. Here is an inconvenient truth: a lot of them actually don’t! How about instead we focus on roles that women are better at – nurturing talent, managing people and communication – that includes senior management and leadership roles in the tech sector.”
“I hope that people do not misunderstand my comments or find them hurtful or dispiriting,” Hill writes. “I am a big believer that there is a great place for females in tech and I hope to see more females entering the industry, but we need to change our tune and encourage females to play to their strengths.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Former Google engineer James Damore’s original memo, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” can be read in full here.
As we wrote three years ago, back in July 2014:
Diversity is good, but getting the absolute best should remain the goal. Forced diversity carries its own set of problems. Would the group be comprised of the best-qualifed people possible or would it be designed to hit pre-defined quotas? Would some employees, consciously or unconsciously, consider certain employees, or even themselves, to be tokens meant to fill a quota? That would be a suboptimal result for all involved.
Truly looking at qualified people from a larger pool would result in delivering different viewpoints and new ways of looking at things and tackling problems than a more homogenized workforce would be capable of delivering.
Regardless and of course, someday it sure would be nice for everyone to just be able to evaluate a person’s potential, not measuring and tabulating superficial, meaningless things like skin color and gender.
SEE ALSO:
Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘U.S. will lose its leadership in technology’ unless more women are hired – April 7, 2017
Apple’s board has urged shareholders to reject proposal to tie executive compensation to racial diversity quotas – February 27, 2017
Apple Inc. fights shareholders group demand for more diversity – February 15, 2017
Apple’s Board of Directors says a call for diversity is ‘unduly burdensome and not necessary’ – January 15, 2016
Apple leads Facebook, Intel, Cisco, Google on gender diversity among Bay Area companies – November 17, 2015
Apple’s latest diversity report shows progress – August 13, 2015
Tim Cook is ‘personally involved’ in improving diversity at Apple Inc. – July 14, 2015
Apple donates over $50 million to diversity efforts – March 10, 2015
Apple CEO Tim Cook met privately with Jesse Jackson regarding diversity – December 9, 2014
Apple adds Vice Presidents, more diversity to Executive Leadership Team – August 15, 2014
A message from Apple CEO Tim Cook on diversity – August 12, 2014
Jesse Jackson calls on Obama to scrutinize tech industry’s ‘lack of diversity’ – July 28, 2014
Tim Cook: Apple will release diversity data ‘at some point’ – July 9, 2014
Jesse Jackson targets tech’s lack of diversity; sends letter to Apple, Google, HP, others – March 19, 2014
Apple changes bylaws after facing criticism about lack of diversity on board – January 9, 2014
