The more stuff I see like this, the more I'm convinced the only way to actually help diversity along is a free market solution. Instead of demanding quotas, just have the data available publically.
The reasons are many, but the biggest is that I feel that hiring people that are bad at their job but have some physical characteristic, will make the problem much worse in the long run by "proving the biased people right" about their biases.
People can learn on the job and can become not 'bad', right? Or is it the case that some set of people have some innate quality that makes them always be bad at a job?
Some people don't understand computers at all. Teaching them to engineer software, for example, can be a long and expensive undertaking. Which these people might not be interested in since they are good in other things.
I think it's not good to simply assume that you can insert any random person in a job and they'll "just become not bad" at it.
And this is not restricted to any nationality, gender, etc, either, you can take any two random humans and they'll (with high probability) like and perform at a job at different levels, irrelevant of the amount of learning performed (respective to the learning level atleast)
It's not some innate quality, it's just how people all over the globe are made: different.
I've deliberately not singled out any specific group of people but there is some evidence from Sociology and Biology studies that certain genetic or social groups of people will not have as much interest or understanding of computers.
Of course the social groups can "fix" this much easier, provided they have a desire to do so.
But again, not mentioning any specific groups specifically because it is not necessary. You can get the same results by replacing "computer skills" with any other skill or job and repeat to get the same results.
I don't think any diversity initiative calls for random people to be inserted into jobs.
The assertion of the comment I responded to was that "People can learn on the job and can become not 'bad'" and asking if maybe there is something that makes some people bad at computers naturally, to which I responded as you have seen.
Comments
The more stuff I see like this, the more I'm convinced the only way to actually help diversity along is a free market solution. Instead of demanding quotas, just have the data available publically.
The reasons are many, but the biggest is that I feel that hiring people that are bad at their job but have some physical characteristic, will make the problem much worse in the long run by "proving the biased people right" about their biases.
People can learn on the job and can become not 'bad', right? Or is it the case that some set of people have some innate quality that makes them always be bad at a job?
Some people don't understand computers at all. Teaching them to engineer software, for example, can be a long and expensive undertaking. Which these people might not be interested in since they are good in other things.
I think it's not good to simply assume that you can insert any random person in a job and they'll "just become not bad" at it.
And this is not restricted to any nationality, gender, etc, either, you can take any two random humans and they'll (with high probability) like and perform at a job at different levels, irrelevant of the amount of learning performed (respective to the learning level atleast)
It's not some innate quality, it's just how people all over the globe are made: different.
"Some people", as in, anecdotally? Or some groups of people? I don't think any diversity initiative calls for random people to be inserted into jobs.
Not anecdottaly, provably.
I've deliberately not singled out any specific group of people but there is some evidence from Sociology and Biology studies that certain genetic or social groups of people will not have as much interest or understanding of computers.
Of course the social groups can "fix" this much easier, provided they have a desire to do so.
But again, not mentioning any specific groups specifically because it is not necessary. You can get the same results by replacing "computer skills" with any other skill or job and repeat to get the same results.
The assertion of the comment I responded to was that "People can learn on the job and can become not 'bad'" and asking if maybe there is something that makes some people bad at computers naturally, to which I responded as you have seen.