Google Invests $50M in “Made With Code” Program to Get Girls Excited About CS

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/22/google-invests-50-million-in-made-with-code-program-to-get-girls-excited-about-cs/

by mikeevans • 12 years ago

59 56 12 years ago

crazypyro• 12 years ago

Previous discussion:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7921360

pflanze• 12 years ago

I wanted to compare the amount of investment with the GSoC[1] program. The GSoC home page[2] says it supported over 7,500 students; since each student/mentor pair(?) receives $5500, that makes about $41m, with overhead probably about the same amount as the "Made With Code" program, although GSoC ran 3 times longer with that amount than is planned for this new program.

Either Google thinks this topic is somewhat more important, or could benefit more from the money, or the effort can be concentrated into fewer years, or Google has a bit more money now than it had when it started GSoC. Or anything else (I haven't even read what they are planning to do exactly.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_summer_of_code [2] https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/?csw=1

auganov• 12 years ago

They seem so blindly focused on that one metric of girls majoring/working in CS. So much that they have no shame about exploiting sexist stereotypes in their message, strategy, branding even all the way down to web design. I'd love to improve that metric as much as anyone. But it would be so so so much better to do it by working on the fundamentals rather than by manipulating people into CS using the very warfare that keeps them out.

EduardoBautista• 12 years ago

It's all about the PR to be able to say you support women coders.

GuiA• 12 years ago

I've seen cynical commenters on HN/proggit/etc. write that the reason why companies like Google are so intent on getting more female programmers, and more programmers in general, is that it'd allow for engineer wages to go down over the next decade or two due to the basic laws of supply/demand.

Not sure I fully buy into it- but it's not a crazy argument either, especially given the recent accusations of collusion to keep salaries low between major tech players.

mFixman• 12 years ago

Why is having more programmers overall, even if it will mean lower wages, a bad thing? You could say the same things about any course about programming that doesn't specifically target 50% of the population.

psychometry• 12 years ago

Google has such a huge reserve of cash that it can afford philanthropic projects purely for the principle of the thing (and I suppose the good PR). A cynical interpretation isn't really warranted, in my opinion.

jophde2• 12 years ago

I don't see the programmer market ever getting flooded. I think it's sort of like writing. Pretty much everyone is taught how to write but not a lot of people can do it well let alone well enough to get paid for it.

vezzy-fnord• 12 years ago

My main problem with this has always been that it's treating the symptom, rather than the root cause. The idea is that if you throw enough money, you can magically cause radical paradigm shifts in how the professional interests of the genders and sexes.

This might be so, in the short term. You'll likely have a nice boost in numbers, which I'm sure will look really good. But you should really be striving for long-lasting and meaningful change. You want girls to actually be passionate about programming as a craft, and not just create more disposable cogs who can churn out high-level instructions.

I'm sure a lot of employers would salivate at the latter prospect, but it's not something we should be encouraging. Even the incessant use of the word "code" and the mystical cult of personality that is being erected around this abstract concept is cause for concern. I don't think having more women coders is enough, we need more women hackers to get something more meaningful.

And when you start looking for that, you'll quickly find that the issue goes deeper than something flashy campaigns and cash can just swiftly solve. It's societal. Once you pin down the causes, you shouldn't just hurry to turn the tides, either. You should analyze the cost and benefit of doing so.

nfoz• 12 years ago

I expect a short-term boost in the number of girls in CS will lead to a long-term boost. But I guess that's the sort of thing a sociologist might study?

jmromer2• 12 years ago

Perhaps. I think it'd be beneficial to have more women in CS, but there are ways to go about effecting that kind of positive social change that also corrupt or blunt social feedback mechanisms in such a way that vulnerable people will be led to pursue ends which aren't in the cards for them, or which are suboptimal for them. Effectively, such schemes transfer wealth to the vulnerable from the even more vulnerable. That should give people pause, I think.

cowbell• 12 years ago

Why is there such a clamor to get girls to code? I never hear anyone say "We need more female lumberjacks|roofers|trash collectors|pilots" despite those being male dominated professions as well.

ceras• 12 years ago

Coding is much safer, comfortable, low-stress, well-paying, flexible (esp. for mothers), and employable than those jobs.

wyager4• 12 years ago

Coding is much safer, comfortable, low-stress, well-paying, flexible (esp. for mothers), and employable than those jobs.

So we're back to the good ol' days of "women shouldn't do hard labor"?

adrianN• 12 years ago

Similarly there is no drive to get more men into early childhood education or nursing.

arikrak• 12 years ago

Nurses can actually earn high salaries, but there are no nurse billionaires.

andylei• 12 years ago

a false statement. a simple google search shows that gender imbalance in nursing is something people care about.

itafroma• 12 years ago

Similarly there is no drive to get more men into early childhood education or nursing.

This is an oft-repeated canard in these discussions, but it's patently and demonstratively not true: getting men interested in nursing and ECE has been a large focus of those fields for years. Even a quick Google search would produce tons of information on various initiatives, studies, and scholarly articles, but here's a small sampling:

http://aamn.org/

http://web.jhu.edu/jhnmagazine/summer2009/features/men_in_nu...

https://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing

http://folk.uio.no/olegmo/Men%20in%20Nursing/Evans%20J%20199...

http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/12710806

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ618681

http://www.meninchildcare.co.uk/index.htm

http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/61263553/male-pre...

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1012564610349

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

Except there is. It isn't talked about on Hacker News as much as drives to get women into programming (well, except that it gets mentioned every time the women in programming issue comes up because someone inevitably makes a comment like yours -- but its almost never an independent topic on HN) because of HN's particular focus.

railsdude• 12 years ago

The cynic in me says that by increasing the number of programmers available they can pay less.

The same reason, I believe, why FB is so keen about immigration.

magicalist3• 12 years ago

This is seriously the dumbest theory yet in these threads. Maybe it's just making the rounds now? (it's not even the first time in this very discussion!)

Not only would it be a horrible return on investment (and one that would take years to come to fruition), it's also never brought up about every other coding initiative out there. Let me know when you start bringing this up in every thread about corporate-sponsored hackathons, education events, scholarship programs, or just plain old "getting started" guides.

Good news: I see three on the front page right now! I'll wait.

Anechoic2• 12 years ago

I never hear anyone say "We need more female lumberjacks|roofers|trash collectors|pilots"

There actually is a push to attack more female pilots, this for example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2510471/British-Ai.... The fact you haven't heard of it probably means you don't follow that aviation market as closely as you do the tech market.

WRT to lumberjacks/roofers/trash collectors, those are the jobs that are rapidly being automated out of existence, so it's not surprising that there isn't a lot of effort to attack women to a dying industry. But there is a push to train women heavy equipment operation and some other trades: http://www.heavyconstructionacademy.com/2012/01/19/women-thr... http://www.womenbuildingfutures.com

We see the push for women in tech because it's a lucrative, growing field and that the lack of women in the field is caused in large part by various obstacles as indicated in any number of HN submittals. We'll see how it pans out.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

Why is there such a clamor to get girls to code?

From the side of people concerned about sex discrimination in society, because the perception that both the source and the effect of the problem is discrimination (on the source side, often subtle and potentially not conscious), which on the effect side leads to poorer range of opportunities and outcomes for females with similar natural abilities.

From the employer side, because programming is a high-cost labor pool and increasing the supply is expected to drive down the market clearing price, and because it is believed that (largely because the employer side sees the source as not too different from the discrimination-concern side) there is a substantial capable workforce for the field that is being pushed out but could be drawn in.

I never hear anyone say "We need more female lumberjacks|roofers|trash collectors|pilots" despite those being male dominated professions as well.

Do you spend as much time on lumberjack/roofer/trash collector/pilot focussed forums as on places like HN? It may be that what you hear is in part a reflection of what people say -- the factors noted above do not apply equal to all those professions -- but it could also be that what you hear is a product of where you are listening.

krstck2• 12 years ago

Pretty tired of hearing women who aren't programmers or in tech telling other women that they need to program.

KRuchan2• 12 years ago

This. I am a woman in engineering and share your sentiment. Can't describe how annoyed I have been to find non-engineer/non-programmer women beat the drums about getting more girls to code or more women into STEM while the actual deserving technical women toil away silently.

krstck2• 12 years ago

Yep. As a fellow woman in tech, I know that we have issues that need to be addressed. But what do Chelsea Clinton and Mindy Kaling have to do with this? Are they going to start programming professionally?

magicalist3• 12 years ago

There are many women involved in Girls Who Code who are programmers. If you go to the site, www.madewithcode.com, the women highlighted are engineers.

Moreover, no one here is telling anyone that they need to code.

eng_monkey• 12 years ago

Are they programmers or engineers then?

KRuchan2• 12 years ago

The public face for Girls Who Code is Reshma Saujani (law / politics background). As krstck pointed out, the public faces here are Mindy Kaling, Chelsea Clinton. While there are engineers involved behind the curtains in each of these programs, I don't like the fact that the ones who stand to gain the most (publicity, credibility, funding, access to resources and powerful contacts) are people who don't have anything to do with tech themselves except flying around the country giving talks about how everyone should code (Reshma Saujani, I am looking at you). I am being bitter here, but I would hope to live in a world where real engineers are the women in the limelight for the kids to look up to.

throwaway0x784• 12 years ago

This move makes me very reluctant to work at google. Would my future career be limited, because women are favored in promotions and internal recruitment? I mean this show what google's values are, and which methods they think are acceptable.

It would feel much safer and future proof to work for a more meritocratic competitor.

cgranade2• 12 years ago

"This move makes me very reluctant to work at google."

If removing barriers to getting good people interested in what you supposedly love makes you "reluctant," I think that says far more about you than about Google.

"Would my future career be limited, because women are favored in promotions and internal recruitment?"

No, but you might not be as favored over women as you are now. Men in CS, we're playing the game on easy mode (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...).

aianus2• 12 years ago

From my anecdotal experience women are favored over men for hiring at megacorps. I think men are still treated better at work and favored for promotions though.

Quick edit/evidence: 17% of Google technical workers are female where only 11% of CS majors at my school were women.

throwaway0x784• 12 years ago

Proof by analogy? Not a single piece of evidence? Really?

throwaway0x784• 12 years ago

Anyway cgranade, would you support internal career tracks for women only, to rectify the shortage of women higher up? Do you think women should be given extra consideration for promotion at google?

sk2code• 12 years ago

Instead of teaching someone to code the better approach would be to give basic STEM education. What would a coding class do if the basics of Maths and Science are not clear.

utopkara• 12 years ago

Disgusting title! An exhibit to why the program is needed. It is not for getting girls excited, it is for getting idiots like the reporter (Jordan Crook) understand that coding is not a men's thing.

TheMagicHorsey• 12 years ago

I don't understand the focus on making women want to code. Maybe women just like different career choices then men. Does it really make sense to spend $50M on marketing to convince women to code?

oh_sigh• 12 years ago

Google seems to think so. IIRC, 20% of their software engineering staff are women. This is probably because 20% of the software engineers in America are women. If google could help push that number up to near parity, then they will have hundreds of thousands of new potential applicants to help create skynet 2.0.

aianus2• 12 years ago

Not unless the class sizes get that much larger at the top schools. In reality they'd just be displacing the weaker male students at admission time.

Edit: Downvoted for a tautology? This site is going the way of reddit.

brandonmenc• 12 years ago

My girlfriend, who is an iOS and OS X programmer, described this as "highly offensive."

The program-some-jewelry-without-typing did not go over well with her.

tree_of_item• 12 years ago

They actually neutered the Blockly environment here. Try not following the instructions at https://www.madewithcode.com/project/bracelet

You can't! It tells you to use a diameter of "18"; if you try to make it "6", the environment will forcefully change it.

Is this even programming? You can't do anything here but click the buttons it tells you to. Half the fun of programming is doing oddball things your environment and its designers didn't expect. Some people call this "hacking", but it doesn't look like Google expects girls to want to hack.

Yeah, maybe "it's just a tutorial", but since when do tutorials acutally stop you from going off the rails and experimenting?

Google Invests $50M in “Made With Code” Program to Get Girls Excited About CS

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