Consider the history: That Time When Women Stopped Coding
What occurred during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer science?
- Personal computers became more common within the household. The article states that these PCs were marketed mainly towards the male demographic. This was further propagated with stereotypes that appeared in mainstream media.
Why does it matter that males had been playing on computers growing up
- Familiarity with computers lowers the barrier for entry into the world of tech. If an individual did not grow up with access to or interest in computers, their chances that they would pursue a career in tech is lowered.
Review the data: Employee breakdown of key technology companies
Ask the question: Why diversity matters to your tech company
When are diversity efforts most successful?
- Diversity efforts are most successful when they are sincere and are able to identify what constitutes “success”.
Why do diverse companies perform better?
- This isn’t an inherent fact. Comprehensive reviews of how diversity affects team performance have found zero effects—and not because diversity makes no difference. It’s because, sometimes, diversity can be harmful. People who are different from one another have trouble getting along, and they experience conflict and tension that hurts the team’s performance. Other times, diversity is a boon: You’re exposing people to different perspectives, they are more innovative, they make better decisions, and organizational performance improves.
What makes a Workplace Diversity Program Successful
Give an example of how a diverse company can serve a diverse user base or vise-versa
- A diverse company will be able to not only relate to a diverse set of users, but will be able to gather a large set of diverse data from their user base. An example given in the article describes how YouTube developers failed to realize that their user interface was not conducive to left handed individuals. By diversifying their testing pool, this is an error that could have been caught prior to production.