>>It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline, but the fact is that virtually none of the software engineering we do in the industry --- very much including most of the work done at Google --- requires a college degree in the first place.
I wished more of these conversations around diversity were focused on these types of points, I call these "the small things". Talking about "college pipe lines" and "biological differences" are "the big things" and they make perfect red herrings for arguments.
Indeed if we want to talk about fitness for a job I would expect a major part of that conversation to be getting a fairly good sense of what is it exactly the job entails skills wise...I have a computer science degree (with a minor in math) and an MBA but I spend most of my days working on things that absolutely don't require that level of education. Education and level of skills is definitely important and should not be underestimated but we also need to be honest and realistic about what it takes to do most jobs.
I wished more of these conversations around diversity were focused on these types of points, I call these "the small things". Talking about "college pipe lines" and "biological differences" are "the big things" and they make perfect red herrings for arguments.
Indeed if we want to talk about fitness for a job I would expect a major part of that conversation to be getting a fairly good sense of what is it exactly the job entails skills wise...I have a computer science degree (with a minor in math) and an MBA but I spend most of my days working on things that absolutely don't require that level of education. Education and level of skills is definitely important and should not be underestimated but we also need to be honest and realistic about what it takes to do most jobs.