When I read these articles about workplace diversity and equality, and how we need to have more of it, work harder for it, etc. I can’t help but find it absurd. The articles, such as the “Why Women Don’t Code” one, that present what seems like more logical arguments and look at many possible conclusions that can come from that data are much easier to accept. However, when so many articles present the generic “numerous studies” that back up their claim, I have to doubt the legitimacy of either side’s findings.

Up front, I will say that if I have to pick a side, I am going to lean towards the conclusions that the Reges, Geary and Stoet, and the Cummins  articles come to: that the gender gap is “overblow,” its not as big a problem as a few loud voices make it out to be. Sure, if you look at raw numbers, it is clearly not a 50/50 split between men and women in computer science and engineering fields. However, I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing, just the way it happens to be currently. If men and women really are completely and totally equal, as the NCWIT article seemed to claim, then the problem should fix itself as time goes on. After all, computing is a relatively new field when compared to fields like medicine or literature, and according to the statistics that many of these articles reference, those occupations have “ideal” ratios.

The Reges article made an interesting point that there are largely two branches of diversity, those that want the best people getting the jobs, regardless of background, and the more outspoken group that see diversity equality as what needs to be done to right past wrongs: “…working with the LGBTQ community is important because of the historical oppression they have experienced even though there is no evidence that LGBTQ individuals are currently discriminated against in the field.” Personally, this second type of diversity is what exasperates, and I think that this is the case for many others. “[Activists’] understanding of inclusion is also quite different. Inclusion is about culture, and in a twist worthy of Orwell, inclusion often demands the exclusion of ideas and opinions.” The right-ing of past wrongs by tipping the balance in the other direction can’t be equality.

If we want more diversity in the workplace, true diversity, programs that are exclusive to particular groups and hiring practices that give weight to people simply because they belong to some group is the opposite of the goal. I don’t think that programs that help stimulate interest in young people are bad, and its not bad to have programs that target specific groups, but as soon as you start to impose exclusivity and turn people away who fail on some grouping criteria, you are undermining the overall goal of diversity.

“Women can code, but often they don’t want to. We will never reach gender parity. You can shame and fire all of the Damores you find, but that won’t change the underlying reality.” This was another quote from the Reges article, and I bring it up because it is one that I feel like is not true. Sure, at this point in time the gender ratio in computer science is flat-lining. I don’t think that this trend is indicative of they way it will be in the next 10 or 20 years though. As I mentioned earlier, compared to many of the organic sciences, computer science is a new field. I think that in 10 years times the numbers will be very different. As the field matures and grows and spreads into other fields, we will need to reconsider what we are accounting when we put up these statistics.

The articles that recount the scandal at Uber show that there is a problem and should not just be swept under the rug or disregarded as an isolated incident. At the same time, I don’t think that microaggression training or unconscious bias workshops will solve anything. At its core, this problem arose because there is a small but damaging percentage of men in tech that feel that they are so much better than everyone else at what they do and that they are so indispensable to their company that do not need to afford people that they view as “below” them basic human respect. It is the few men like these that give everyone else a bad name. In an ideal world, we would be able to root them out and the problem would go away,  but like the anonymous FOSS letter said, it is too easy for someone to simply falsely accuse and ruin an innocent person’s career for this to be realistic.

Basically, I’ve come to the same conclusion that Reges did; its complicated and there still hasn’t been a good solution. There were a lot of great points brought up in the articles that I read for this week, and if I had started this earlier and composed my thoughts better it would have been nice to bring up all the excerpts that I liked. If I had done that though, this whole post would have been quotes and little else. Anyway, I think that the best solution would be for everyone to follow the Golden Rule, and then this problem would take care of itself, but that is just wishful thinking I suppose.

I think that it is possible to “have it all,” and my sisters and their families provide exceptional role models for me. Both of my sisters and their husbands work for the same employer, but all four do vastly different things. One of my sisters’ work requires that she travel around the world four or five times a year, the other writes briefs for top level officials. One of my brothers-in-law is the chief in his office, and the other considers and awards contracts for their company. I have four nieces and a nephew between the two families as well. As far as I can tell, besides small things like not particularly liking a co-worker or something like that, they all love their jobs despite the considerable stress that some of them are under each day. They come home to their families and have time for weekend activities, and are able to take vacations every time we go out to Maryland to visit. They have had to make compromises, but I don’t see any regret from them; they are performing impactful work that they enjoy.

What it means to have it all certainly differs from person-to person. Leaning on the examples of my sisters’ families again, my brother-in-law comes to mind. He is in charge of his office and the work that goes on in it. He has degrees in computer science and electrical engineering, but I don’t think he has done much technical work since he took up the position. Most of his days are spent in directorate level meetings, or briefings in Washington D.C, and he rarely if ever gets to write code himself. At least to me, this would be the opposite of “having it all.” I would much rather be given an problem to solve than be briefed on the solution someone implemented to a problem I gave them. What I’m getting at is that I don’t think that you need to “climb the ladder” to be satisfied with work. I enjoyed what I did over the summer at my internship, but I would dread all the meetings my boss this summer had to go to, let alone everything my bosses’s boss had to go through. I think that people equate “success and fulfillment” with “climbing the ladder” to heavily. I think that success is simply doing a job well and fulfillment is just having a job you enjoy. Anything beyond that should be left to the individual to determine.

Work-life balance is important to me. I’ve done a few different things during the four internships I’ve done, and  none of them offered work that I so thoroughly enjoyed that I wanted to let it consume me. I said that I enjoyed the work I did this summer, and I did. I look forward to returning to it after graduation. However, I have no desire to dedicate 50, 60, 70 hours a week to it. After I put in my 8 or 9 hours this summer, I was ready to go home and do non-work related things; watch TV, hang out with friends, read a book. Luckily for me, I will be entering the workforce as a Department of Defense civilian, so working much more than 40 hours a week is a rarity in my field, as the government doesn’t usually like paying overtime. Right now with my scholarship, I’m obligated to spend two years working for the DoD, but even before that government work as something I was seriously considering because of the work-life balance it allows.

Compared to a company like Amazon, government work seems almost unbelievably lax I think. The article about the business and tech side of Amazon I found quite startling. I knew that being a warehouse worker for Amazon was hellish, but I had no idea it was that bad for the office workers too. That article really reinforced my decision that DoD work has a lot more perks that people give it credit for. In terms of the ethics of Amazon’s practices, frankly, I think that it is very wrong. I get that business-wise it’s what has made them a trillion dollar company, but to me it seems too brutal and draconian to be considered ethical practices, and personally I could not imagine myself working there or at any similar company.

Ever since I started doing internships the summer after my senior year of high school, I have been doing them for the Department of Defense. Suffice it to say, I see my career continuing to head in that direction. Recently, I received a scholarship that required that I leave the agency I had done three internships with and, in exchange for full tuition plus a monthly stipend for two years, work at the sponsoring facility for a summer and then two years after graduation.

Once those two years are up, I’ll have the option of continuing at my sponsoring facility, returning to the agency I worked for in the past or some other Department of Defense agency, or perhaps leaving government work altogether. Since I still have a few years before I need to seriously consider my choices, job-hopping/loyalty aren’t really things that I’ve spent time considering.

At the moment, I don’t see myself leaving DoD work. I may or may not stay at the research lab after my two year commitment is up but I see myself at least staying within the Department of Defense, whether it is returning to the the agency I worked at prior to getting my scholarship or moving to some other agency under the DoD umbrella. The DoD is nice in that way; it is easy to change jobs within the same agency, and also fairly easy to switch agencies.

Company loyalty is an interesting thing to consider today, and I largely agree with the articles that we read on this topic. If money is all that drives you, then it makes sense to do what you can to make yourself most competitive for a position and command the highest possible salary. It’s worth noting that one of the articles did mention that there are some exceptions, such as academia, and I think that government work, specifically Department of Defense work, is another noteworthy exception. The DoD puts a lot of time and money into its civilian employees, and it also trusts them with a security clearance in most cases.

A security clearance is comparable to trade secrets that a private company might have. Being trusted with proprietary information like that puts job hoppers in an awkward situation. Oftentimes, being privy to these “trade secrets” means that you agreed to not work on similar projects for a rival company, or in the case of the DoD, any private company. If you try to hop jobs every few years, situations such as these can rule out a large number of jobs. Either that, or it puts you in an awkward legal and ethical spot with both the company that hired you, and the company that you left.

For the last couple years I never really considered Computer Science an engineering discipline, despite being in the College of Engineering here at Notre Dame. To me, there is something fundamental that separates traditional engineers (mechanical, chemical, etc.) and computer scientists, and I think that it has to do with the typical mindset held by the two fields.

In computer science today, with the Cloud, the Internet, software patches, and all other marvels of modern computing, the engineer mentality of trying to make sure a product is perfect before release is much more relaxed. When an engineer designs a bridge or a chemical to be used in some prescription drug, the final product must be perfect, or else there are life-threatening risks for the general public. Furthermore, if there is some defect, fixing the issue requires creating an entire new batch of the product or performing costly repairs.

On the other hand, if there is a bug in a piece of software, it is relatively quick and easy to push an update that patches the issue. To be sure, bugs in critical software, such as that used in the medical field, also pose serious risks, but those examples aside, the ease of pushing patches to customers has lead to a rather laid-back mentality in the commercial side of computer science. Some error in the code, while annoying for users, is unlikely to harm the bottom-line of the software producer or the reputation of the programmer that wrote that part of the code.

As much as it pains me to say it, this leads me to believe that computer “science” is more an art than a science or engineering discipline.

At the end of the day though, I don’t think it really matters what people think computer science is “officially.” It doesn’t change what they do, or how they do it, and I think that is fine. The current approach to software development, where devs try to discover all the bugs in quality assurance before release, but then push patches and updates as bugs inevitably crop up, works. I don’t see it changing anytime soon, and certainly, changing the degree computer scientists get from bachelors of engineering to a bachelors of science or arts will not change how work gets done.

Honestly, I don’t see what changes, if any, a computer science classification change could cause. In the short term, I suppose it would hurt graduates, as many companies look for new hires with “technical” degrees, and a BA could lead to their applications being turned away out of hand, much like how companies turn applicants away solely based on GPA. I don’t think this would be a problem for long however, especially if it became a national trend among colleges.

I am curious what other people will have to say on this issue, as I somewhat feel that the type of degree one receives upon graduation superficial. What’s most important is that fact that you did well enough to graduate in the program that you were in, and the type, BS, BA, etc. is really just a categorizing thing.

I am Steven Eisemann, a senior computer science major at the University of Notre Dame. My interests include swimming, outdoor activities like hiking or kayaking, and video games, mainly RuneScape and League of Legends. Each summer since 2015 I’ve interned with the Department of Defense, and most recently worked at the Air Force Base research lab in Dayton, Ohio. I am pursuing a degree in computer science because everything these days is linked to computing. DoD work is no exception, and with a computer science degree I can serve my country in a civilian capacity working at any of the various agencies under or linked to the Department of Defense.

Ethical issues are something that (God knows) have become a bit of a hot topic, particularly surrounding government work, and what agencies like NSA or FBI can and cannot do and not do when it comes to trying to provide security for the United States. I have my own opinion on these issues, but I don’t go out of my way to follow these topics or debate other opinions.  So I hope to hear some of the opposing views on these topics, and what the opinions are with government is replaced with some private sector tech company.

I think that the most pressing ethical issues facing computer scientists are IoT and anonymity.  Technology today is growing at an astounding rate, and everyone wants a slice of “cyber.” Today, just about any product imaginable has a model that can be controlled through the internet, whether its a thermostat, a toaster, or a car. Some Internet of Things products benefit from this internet connectivity, while others leave you scratching your head wondering what moron thought that up. The scary part of IoT though is that many products aren’t designed with security in mind; most have none at all, and those that do often have no way of receiving critical patches as vulnerabilities pop up. Anonymity is another issue we face. As encryption gets stronger and receives more application, the regular user benefits because their data is safer. However, this encryption also protects criminals and those that wish to cause harm, as encryption allows users to conceal their identity and communications. Encryption is an example of the balance between privacy and security, a debate that is unlikely to end soon.

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I do not consider computer programming a super-power. Coding is no more magical or extraordinary than calculus or trigonometry is. Computer science isn’t some unnatural ability that only some people possess. Computing is a skill that can be taught as easily as basic calculus, all it takes it a little time and dedication. The trouble is, today computer science, and STEM fields in general, are being seriously over-hyped. To try and draw people in, these fields and those that practice them are compared to fantastical things like superheros. While it is true that annually hundreds of thousands of computer science and tech jobs go unfulfilled, we should not be trying to allure youths into a field with false, outrageous advertising.

Instead, we should be realistic. Bill Gates didn’t invent the personal computer over a long weekend, nor did Mark Zuckerberg develop Facebook overnight. These were huge projects that were refined over many years and worked on by many engineers, and even then, while these were projects that their creators felt hugely passionate about, it is not necessarily the case that an entry level computer scientist will get to work on something he or she is equally passionate about. I know from my own experience that not everything you work on as a computer scientist is going to be enjoyable.

The Mathblog article brought up an interesting point; both coding and welding are critical to society’s function, however we don’t teach every child how to weld. I understand where this argument is coming from, and I largely agree with it. However, I think that all who desire to program be exposed to it at least once, and to something beyond the scope of “Hello, World.” As the article states a few times, most business applications are thousands to millions of lines of codes, and rarely is a project managed or contributed to by one developer. If we are going to expose children to coding in school, it needs to be integrated into curriculum better than “here’s a unit on programming in Python,. Everyone write a ‘Hello, World’ program.” If coding is going to be featured more heavily in schooling, it needs to follow the example set by subjects such as science, mathematics, or history. Each year of school builds upon the previous, and by the time a student graduates high school he or she can pursue a college degree in one of those fields fairly confidant that it is what they want to study. Coding usually is something that is offered as an elective high school, and the scope of the class rarely goes beyond simple programs. Recently, coding in languages like Scratch has been introduced in elementary school. I think that this is a good step, only if the size and difficulty of programs increases as the student’s knowledge does.

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton