Diversity & Inclusion in the Tech Industry
That Time Woman Stopped Coding
- What occurred during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer science?
- 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?
- male classmates were way ahead [female students] because they’d grown up playing with computers
- computer science professors increasingly assumed that their students had grown up playing with computers at home
- early personal computers … were marketed almost entirely to men and boys
Employee breakdown
- What three take-a-ways do you have looking at this data?
- the majority of companies are very male dominated
- the majority of companies are mostly white
- despite representing ~ 6% of the US population, asians represent > 25% of most companies
Why Diversity Matters
- 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
Things I Want To Know More About
References