[chillacy]

That's what a lot of us have been saying in industry for awhile now but tech media has been pretty relentless in implications without clarification of the underlying difficulty (the pipeline we have to work with). It's good to highlight the hypocrisy.

[Avicebron]

I think the pipeline argument is a little biased, it implies that only certain kinds of people can learn "the skills". This thinking back propagates down the line from what the ideal resume looks like, to where someone went to school, down to something like gender or class.

I think this is patently untrue and encouraging training and taking chances on different types of applicants would do a lot to improve this.

As someone with a bit of an odd background and a bit scattered of a resume. I've experienced this stonewalling first hand.

[philwelch]

> I think the pipeline argument is a little biased, it implies that only certain kinds of people can learn "the skills".

Not at all. It only implies that certain groups of people actually do learn “the skills” at different proportions than their overall share of the population. “Can” and “actually do, in the context of society”, are two very different concepts.

The pipeline argument is basically, “you can’t have a society that fundamentally fails certain groups of people throughout their entire childhood and early adult education and then expect them to magically develop the same skills and qualifications as people who didn’t have those barriers”.

It’s crazy that people see pipeline arguments as excuses for social injustice because the most damaging aspects of social injustice manifest themselves as pipeline problems. For instance, the risk of childhood lead exposure has a huge correlation with race in the United States. That’s a horrifying and disgusting fact and it needs to be fixed. But if childhood lead exposure was the only fundamental racial disparity left, you’d still see other statistical disparities arise from that.

[filoleg]

> I think the pipeline argument is a little biased, it implies that only certain kinds of people can learn "the skills".

I don't think so. I truly believe that a lot more people from disadvantaged populations can learn "the skills" than the numbers we currently have, to the point where it would equal out to be the same as people from other demographics. They have the inherent ability to get good good at it just like anyone else. The issue comes with those career paths and opportunities not being as often encouraged and "advertised" to them when growing up. And that's the part that needs to change.

We need more supplementary coding opportunities for children in disadvantaged communities. They need to be exposed to those opportunities. Those opportunities need to be presented as viable paths for them, and not something like "you need to learn tons of math and you will be sitting all day at a computer like a drone". If you don't already have great math skills (which most people don't) and don't have role models that encourage this (e.g., an uncle who is a software engineer), then no wonder that this pitch won't convince you to seriously consider a career in software engineering, no matter how actually capable you are.

Of course, a lot of people would scoff at this approach, as it takes time to come to fruition and deliver the results. And it isn't a flashy "bandaid" solution you can put on this issue and proclaim a loud victory, without actually making a systemic change. But big systemic changes like this take lots of time and effort, and we should be focusing on that, rather than giving it up in favor of more "bandaid"-tier solutions.

[jimbokun]

"and you will be sitting all day at a computer like a drone"

Um, this one is kind of true of many programming jobs. Also true of many non-programming jobs today, too.

[filoleg]

Sure, but that's not how it should be presented to children. You can paint almost any modern job this way, as you said. So programming needs to be presented as a viable alternative, just like all the other jobs.

No one gives a classroom speech to kids on how being a doctor means doing many years of medschool after finishing college, getting into debt, and then doing 24-36 hour shifts in residency while being paid peanuts, before you can actually start working as a doctor. And I don't think that presenting programming to kids should be done this way either.

It should be presented in a similar manner to how it got many of us into the field due to the love of programming. It is all about solving intricate problems, puzzles, automating things, and doing all sorts of cool stuff with it. In fact, I believe that it is especially shameful how it is usually presented to kids as a menial/robotic job, given that programming has a lot of potential for showing kids cool applications of it, way more than most other fields. Programming robots, computer systems on board of space shuttles, soccer balls that have systems tracking performance, programmable music instruments, etc. The potential for making it entertaining and captivating for kids is gigantic.

[Izkata]

I think the sibling comments are going a bit more "big picture" than GP and GGP are referring to, which has nothing to do with ability to learn skills, just time involved.

The pipeline problem has nothing to do with ability, it's all about the hiring pool and the time it takes to change the hiring pool. Companies can't hire people that don't exist, so focusing solely on hiring practices won't get the desired outcome at anywhere near the speed the activists want (if at all). The activists are focused on completely the wrong area; it's going to take years-to-decades fixing problems much earlier in life before companies would even be able to do such hiring.

[Avicebron]

>The activists are focused on completely the wrong area; it's going to take years-to-decades fixing problems much earlier in life before companies would even be able to do such hiring.

And this is the breakdown of the argument, it's a way to sideline a huge ask into the argument and stall it out. It's designed to lead the question of "well it will take decades, nothing we can do now".

I don't disagree there are some decades of change needed, but still there should be some introspection into where and who is making this argument.

Often they are the ones who've already made it.

[majormajor]

> And this is the breakdown of the argument, it's a way to sideline a huge ask into the argument and stall it out. It's designed to lead the question of "well it will take decades, nothing we can do now".

It will take decades so we have to start now - since we can't start yesterday - so vote and donate money to organizations working on those things appropriately.

Without that "do something" then yes, it's a stalling tactic, a "don't make me think about it" response. But there are actions we can ask for that will encourage those changes.

[mc32]

If the pipeline were not an issue and you could train people, then we’d have no need to import workers. They’d take kids (whatever race or background) off the street and get them up and running. But they already have a hard time accepting people from boot camps (of course some are diploma mills, but some people are good, but get ignored regardless).

[Avicebron]

>If the pipeline were not an issue and you could train people, then we’d have no need to import workers.

I'm confused as to whether you are implying it's impossible to train people? Also isn't the concept of ignoring applicants with some form of training (reasonable boot camp) essentially blocking the pipeline?

[mc32]

I think people are trainable but companies are loath to do do that. They hardly want to train people they’ve vetted and hired.

And yes, ignoring people from boot camps and other alternate learning systems is a problem.