Readings: Diversity & Inclusion in the Tech Industry
That Time When Women Stopped Coding
(reference: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding)
Questions
- What occurred during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer science?
The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers
- Why does it matter that males had been playing on computers growing up?
It was marketed and geared towards them, even with all kinds of media like film.
Why diversity matters to your tech company
(reference: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2015/07/21/why-diversity-matters-your-tech-company/30419871/)
Questions
- When are diversity efforts most successful?
Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.
- Why do diverse companies perform better?
“female representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value.”
- Give an example of how a diverse company can serve a diverse user base or vise-versa.
When YouTube’s almost entirely right-handed developer team built the iOS app without considering how left-handed people would use it, for example, 5% to 10% of videos were uploaded upside down as a result.