Also, these scholarships are based on financial aid. Yanked directly from article: " 10 female students, we’ll provide a $5,000 needs-based scholarship"
I think it's interesting how you assume you know what a woman thinks coming from a man. Have you asked women you know about their opinions about a Computer Science degree?
I don't assume to know what anyone thinks regardless of whether they are a man or a woman. I do know that belittling people and playing 'white man's burden' on them makes them feel disadvantaged and marginalized. I see that behavior coming through here; good intentions, bad secondary consequences.
All the women I've asked about whether they'd get a CS degree ( if they weren't already ) said that there were much better opportunities available to them, and that they chose not to pursue CS because the barrier to entry was higher for them than other more lucrative careers in finance, medicine and law ( this was almost always not an extrinsic barrier but intrinsic, 'why would I want to sit by myself and code all day for someone else, when I can trade stocks/bonds for myself?'; and other such comments about the inherent abstraction of CS ). My friends did not look at CS as liberating in what they could do, but limiting in how they could do it. And of course the women I asked who were already in CS were there for intrinsic reasons as well. I also don't see how my limited interactions are a good metric to apply to all women, but nevertheless.
I just want to understand why you feel that offering a grant is "belittling." You claim to not assume what people think, yet you are trying to judge how women make decisions to get into a particular field. Being involved in outreach, I know that intimidation and lack of relation to others plays a factor. While I certainly know many women that won't get into CS because they aren't into it, I certainly do know handfuls of women that didn't get into it particularly because of the gender gap.
Job descriptions just shouldn't have "rock star" or "ninja" unless they are hired on their ability to perform music in front of an audience or on their katana wielding skills.
You forgot to mention "brings his katana to meetings" (the sword, not the Suzuki motorcycle).
It's kind of "friend-of-a-friend", but I had a boss who told me about working with a developer who actually did that, I think at a game company in the late 80s.
Scholarships based on need or because the person comes from a poor socioeconomic background helps build equality by helping remove an inherent barrier/bias.
Scholarships based purely on the persons gender or race is by definition sexist/racist... it discriminates who gets it solely on the fact that the person was born a certain race or gender.
That being said, the motivation for such scholarships are because the entity investing that money believes an inbalance already exists in the opposite direction, so they hope to balance the scales.
The hard question is whether doing the same thing (biasing support based on gender/race) on the opposite side of the spectrum is really helping the situation.
By your logic, scholarships "based on need or because the person comes from a poor socioeconomic background" would be considered classist.
Grants based on gender attempting to correct an imbalance are not sexist. Classifying them as such is ignoring the greater context: a severe lack of that gender in that field. It also diminishes examples of actual sexism.
I'm not sure why you think scholarships based on gender are sexist but scholarships based on socioeconomic background are fine. There exists a very real bias against women in the tech industry.
> By your logic, scholarships "based on need or because the person comes from a poor socioeconomic background" would be considered classist.
Of course the selection of recipients is classist... so is $100k tuition. The whole point is to reduce the impact that class and socioeconomic background has on who can attend the institution.
The result is a more meritocratic application process, which I believe is a worthy goal in the context of universities.
> Grants based on gender attempting to correct an imbalance are not sexist.
You twisted my words. I said the selection of who gets the grant is sexist by nature. I admitted the motivation for doing so is to help reduce sexism via creating biases on the other end of the spectrum.
Kind of like in war when one country kills a thousand of the enemies because the enemy killed a thousand of their soldiers. It may seem like a fair reaction, but is it solving the root of them problem (for ex making sure another thousand won't die again)? Or is it creating a larger divide?
> I'm not sure why you think scholarships based on gender are sexist but scholarships based on socioeconomic background are fine.
It's simple.
The problem which socioeconomic applicants is that they can't afford to apply, regardless of their ability. A grant is a monetary award that was voluntarily donated to allow them to compete based on merit/ability with the wealthier applicants.
With gender and (pure) race-based scholarships the problem is usually ignorance or bias of the administration - the school ignores the ability or merit of the applicant simply because of their race or gender. Giving the applicant a monetary award for (potentially) being left behind due to the administrations ignorance isn't solving the root of the problem.
> The whole point is to reduce the impact that class and socioeconomic background has on who can attend the institution.
And the whole point of Etsy's scholarship is to reduce the impact that gender has on who gets into the tech field.
> You twisted my words. I said the selection of who gets the grant is sexist by nature. I admitted the motivation for doing so is to help reduce sexism via creating biases on the other end of the spectrum.
It's not sexist the same way a scholarship for kids coming from households with low incomes isn't classist. Sure, if you want to stretch the definition, it's "classist" (or "sexist"), but truly it's not. It's there to correct already existing classism (or sexism) or to assist a specific group of people.
I didn't twist your words. You specifically said the scholarship is sexist. I said it is not.
> Kind of like in war when one country kills a thousand of the enemies because the enemy killed a thousand of their soldiers. It may seem like a fair reaction, but is it solving the root of them problem (for ex making sure another thousand won't die again)? Or is it creating a larger divide?
Your (rather poor) analogy would make more sense if the first country was constantly killing enemy soldiers for thousands of years, and then the second country tries to take a little bit of land back and the first country screams, "Look! Look what they're doing! This isn't fair! We should be treated equally!"
The only divide it's creating is in people who don't think women belong in those fields. We call those people "sexists" and I don't enjoy their company.
> The problem which socioeconomic applicants is that they can't afford to apply, regardless of their ability.
The same is true of women. Regardless of their ability, it is much more difficult for them to get into the field versus men.
> With gender and (pure) race-based scholarships the problem is usually ignorance or bias of the administration - they ignore the ability or merit of the applicant simply because of their race or gender. Giving the applicant a monetary award for (potentially) being a victim of the administrations ignorance isn't solving the root of the problem.
And, using your same logic, income-based scholarships ignore the ability or merit of the applicant simply because of their income level. They are all in place to bridge a gap. This attempts (rather well) to bridge the gender gap in the tech industry.
Theres different ways to approach them problem. I'm much more inclined to figure out what the deeper problems are and address them (ignorances, biases, misconceptions etc)
I feel that grants may only be patching the surface and don't really address the higher level problems.
My cofounder is a female hacker and I recently mentored a "Ladies Learning Code" event.
From that I've learned its best to communicate why programming is fun and interesting. To get past their misconceptions that its all geeky male culture and actually a really rewarding skillset.
Reducing those misconceptions on both sides will have a long term impact. Humans have been effective at evolving and changing "common sense". Newer generations are incredibly more tolerant of race/gender than older ones. I believe that happens through changing peoples understanding of the issues and trying hard to not further segregate it into us vs them groups.
I appreciate Jeff's mature response to Ryan's article. What most irked me about Ryan's initial article was how he seems to yell "FIRE!!!" and tries to backpedal the situation. It is hard to take that seriously even when he has some good points.
I am a huge advocate for the Django web framework, yet I always tell people that web frameworks (Django|Rails|etc) are not for beginners. Like many have mentioned, it's easy for experienced web programmers that have been mucking around things done "the old fashioned way" and without any true MVC structure.
I assume it would be difficult for novice programmers to really understand what the advantages and best practices of MVC web frameworks are for, when they have little experience of having worked in anything else.
This guy is SO out of touch with independent music it's not even funny.
How many people know amazing, talented bands that get no where? Good music within itself does not promote itself. You have to advertise, whether it's engaging in fans online or offline, or making friends with other musicians to split the bill.
Do not have a backup plan? Is he insane? For every insanely lucky guy like him there's thousands of other guys working off their blood, sweat, and tears only to end up extremely poor or with nothing. What he's saying is like every startup is going to be Facebook or Google... I'm sorry that's not going to happen. But at least even in a startup you tend to make decent money, not near poverty wages like touring musicians have to endure for years before any "break" ...
To be fair, John Mayer started as an independent. His first album was self-published. He did a tour where he drove from gig to gig in his own car. Even after getting a contract, he played unglamorous gigs second-fiddle to guys like Glen Phillips (the lead singer of Toad the Wet Sprocket) at dinky clubs in Seattle.
Sure, he's hit the mainstream, but the guy knows something about being independent.
I second this. I haven't been too big of a fan of his latest work, but I bought my first John Mayer album physically from John Mayer. To say he doesn't understand independents isn't true.
Me too. I have a signed copy of his second album that I bought from him directly, by handing him cash, in a club. That's about as independent as it gets.
I agree. If you look on jamendo.com you can find lots of great music that people have released for free that no one is talking about. Here are some of my favorites (I tend to like instrumental, progressive music):
Not once does he say anything about independence or labels. He just says that the focus needs to be on shipping, everything else is secondary.
There's nothing "out of touch" about that. It's completely, and trivially, true. If you want to ship, ship. Don't tweet that you're half-finished writing a lyric for a song you have the opening riff to. Ship it.
