IEEE vs. ACM Jobs Death Match

In order to keep my ear to the ground on what's happening outside the ebony tower, I subscribe to several career newsletters from both ACM and IEEE. In case you're unfamiliar, these are the two primary professional organizations for both academic and industrial computer scientists and engineers.

Photo by Kevin Steele

Today I received two "career alert" emails from each. Here are the headlines from the ACM one:

1. "After Pay Cuts, IT Workers May Seek Payback in New Job"
2. "Tips to Recharge Your Job Search"
3. "Five Mistakes Online Job Hunters Make"
4. "Five Questions to Ask Before Taking That Telecommuting Job"
5. "How to Decode a Job Posting"
6. "Why Personal Branding is So Misunderstood"
7. "Befriend the Intern to Fire Up Your Career"
8. "Much More Than Office Space"
9. "Are Female IT Graduates Still Underrepresented?"
10. "U.S. Congressman Introduces Measure to Address Crisis in K-12 Computer Science Education"

Ok, so 10% "You're hosed", 70% "You're hosed, here's help", and 20% non-sequitur. Now let's look at IEEE:

1. "Employers Getting More Picky Hiring Engineers"
2. "Learning to Think Small"
3. "The Big Deal About Details"
4. "Cure for Joblessness: Go East?"

#2 is basically a "You're hosed, here's help" article. #3 is a "The job market sucks so much right now that if you say "Um" or have sweaty palms YOU'RE OUT."  #4 is "Honestly, things are so bad you may as well pack your bags and move to India."

#1 is the most depressing of all. The article implies recruiters are simply keyword matching for niches instead of hiring people who can actually reason and think. This is terribly stupid. In an economy like this, you want people who are versatile, not people who have X years of experience on some particular chip set or programming language that probably won't even be used anymore come next year. 

Technology changes very quickly. Companies who are clever will hire people who are good at learning and adapting, not people who have mastered one particular niche trade. If you understand the fundamentals of how a computer works, it doesn't matter what shape or size it is, or what brand is stamped on it. It doesn't matter if it's Gopher or bittorrent. If you know how to solve problems and learn new things, you can figure it out. 

Anyway, I feel like it's more useful to read the ACM alerts only because they seem to actually list constructive things you can do if you're unemployed. Instead of just moving to India. 

my bro's pad....

you could say that my family all got bitten by the design bug....

my dad's day job is being a lawyer but his real passion is building....anything.

and my mom has a great eye for design and antique collecting....one of her favorite things is yard sales (although when they are bad, she swears it's her last one!!)

my brother and i grew up watching them restore our 100 yr old house and going to antique shows like lakewood on the weekends (the best antique show ever that sadly ended a couple of yrs ago). so that is where my brother and i get our love for design from...

i thought it would be fun to show you my brother's pad or rather cabin that my dad built for the family back when i was in high school. my brother lived in thailand on and off for 10 yrs and when he finally returned to the states, he convinced my dad to let him buy the cabin. after an addition (done by my dad and brother) and some furniture changing, this is what my brother calls home. the two are constantly tweaking it....and up next: the guest house- aka. my brother's airstream that sits up on the hill. he is going to make into a place his guests can come and stay!

august??!!

is it august already....that is insanity!! someone at the pool yesterday asked me what taylor was going to be for halloween...seriously?!

*images courtesy of forever lovestoned, little blue deer, martha stewart, the city sage, house and garden

definitely a monday.

i'm having one of those days....where instead on posing gracefully on this old truck, i would be the girl beating her head on it...and it's only 9:00 :)

at least i have this cheesy show finale to look forward to. i started watching it b/c one of my friends was married/divorced to him up until about 2 months before the show started taping and i had to see what his story was going to be. then i got sucked into it. i am totally addicted....not even going to lie about it. so who do you think ali is going to end up with- roberto or chris?

*images courtesy of style notes, nj.com

Women in CS: It's not nature, it's culture

Here's my goal for the year:

To convince people to stop throwing up their hands and saying women are just not interested in Computer Science, and instead do something about it. 

Whenever someone says this, the implication is, "It's not our fault. We're not doing anything wrong." Instead of saying, "How can we retain/attract women?" they simply assume that we are:

• Not interested
• Biologically deficient at math/logical thinking
• Don't have what it takes to be a "code cowboy"¹

These assumptions are not correct. In some parts of the world we see equal numbers of women and men studying computer science and engineering and being employed in the tech sector. For example, in Malaysia women comprise 50-60% of jobs in the tech sector. This is entirely due to culture - turns out, men who work indoors are seen as less masculine than those that work outdoors, and women who work outdoors are seen as lower class [1]. It's funny, we actually have sexism working in reverse - leading to an increase in women working in technology. 

The data ain't pretty, though 1982 sure looked nice.

Source: NYTimes

We see similar trends in other parts of Asia. I don't have recent data, but around 2003 women were earning 59% of science and engineering degrees in China, 46% in South Korea, and 66% in Japan. (Compared with 33% in the US). [2]

As for the biology argument, if you're still not convinced, read Terri Oda's excellent piece, "How does biology explain the low numbers of women in computer science? Hint: it doesn't."

So for the non-Asian world that is still struggling with underrepresentation [2], I think we need to change our culture. We need to eliminate the geek mythology (that to be successful you must eat/sleep/breathe code and nothing else) [3], we need to ensure we illustrate the purpose and value of computing [4], we need to be proactive in recruiting women [5], we need to provide plenty of other women as peers and role models [6], and we probably should de-masculinize the workplace [7]. These approaches are all shown to make a big difference in attracting and retaining women in CS.

If you do these things at your institution, I guarantee you that in addition to helping attract women, you will also attract men. And probably also people of different races, cultures, ethnicities, and socio-economic statuses. Which given the recent yo-yo enrollment trends over the last decade is not a bad thing at all. We really don't want computer science departments going the way of the way of the dinosaur².

So, please - stop mansplaining and start doing.

Notes
¹ It's worth mentioning since it's a common misunderstanding: coding != computer science, coding ∈ computer science. It's like how doing an assay is not molecular biology research. Assays are an aspect of the field of molecular biology, coding is an aspect of the field of computer science.
² No disrespect to anyone who works in Paleontology (I am truly saddened to hear of your suffering), but I just couldn't resist the pun.

References

[1] Mellstrom, U. Masculinity, Power and Technology: A Malaysian Ethnography. Ashgate, 2003.
[2] Simard, C. "The State of Women and Technology Fields Around The World". Anita Borg Institute. 2007.
[3] Margolis, J. and Fisher, A. "Geek Mythology and Attracting Undergraduate Women to Computer Science" Impacting Change Through Collaboration, proceedings of the Joint National Conference of the Women in Engineering Program Advocates Network and the National Association of Minority Engineering Program Administrators, March, 1997.

[4] Margolis, J., Fisher, A., and Miller, F. "Caring About Connections: Gender and Computing". IEEE Technology and Society, December, 1999.
[5] Cohoon, J. M. 2002. Recruiting and retaining women in undergraduate computing majors. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 2 (Jun. 2002), 48-52.
[6] Lagesen, V. The Strength of Numbers: Strategies to Include Women into Computer Science. Social Studies of Science February 2007 vol. 37 no. 1 67-92.
[7] Cheryan, S., Plaut, V.C., Davies, P.G., Steele, C.M. "Ambient belonging: How stereotypical cues impact gender participation in computer science." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 97, No. 6. (December 2009), pp. 1045-1060.