reading-notes

That Time When Women Stopped Coding

What occured during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer sciene?

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?

This idea that computers are for boys became a narrative. It became the story we told ourselves about the computing revolution. It helped define who geeks were, and it created techie culture.

Employee breakdown of key technology companies

What three take-a-ways do you have looking at this data?

• There is a tendency for some companies to increase the percentage of women in their companies

• The Asian region is still lower in terms of the percentage of working women

• With the passage of years, the rates of women’s work in general increase

Why diversity matters to your tech company

When are diversity efforts most successful?

when they’re driven by a commitment from company leaders.

Why do diverse companies perform better?

Given that diverse teams are smarter and more creative than homogeneous ones, it is unsurprising that a wealth of research shows a strong correlation between diverse organizations and positive financial outcomes.

Give an example of how a diverse company can serve a diverse user base or vise-versa.

When the employees of an organization better represent their users and desired users, they will build more effectively for those groups.

ex: When YouTube’s almost entirely right-handed developer team built the iOS app without considering how left-handed people would use it.