<p>For Google technical employees compared to overall CS graduates:</p>
<p>
Demographic Google CS graduates
Women 17% 14%
Men 83% 86%
Nonresident alien NA 8%
White 60% 67% (73% of residents)
Asian 34% 15% (16% of residents)
Hispanic 2% 5% ( 6% of residents)
Black 1% 3% ( 4% of residents)
Two or more races 3% 1% ( 1% of residents)
Other <1% 1% ( 1% of residents)
<p>It “starts” in K-12, but it’s a chicken and egg cycle. Young females/minorities don’t get into CS because that’s not what females/minorities do. I think, unconsciously, that’s part of the reason I didn’t discover CS until I got to college, even though I don’t really fit any other “girly” stereotypes. Schools need to be more proactive about getting the under-represented groups into CS, but the companies need to do their part as well, and should invest more in getting a variety of young people into CS. Yes, there’s only so much they can do with a limited pipeline, but they can also help to improve that pipe line and not just try to wash their hands of it.</p>
<p>In this respect, there may be two forces working against companies doing things in this area:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Companies often have one quarter to one year time frames that they look ahead to. Expanding the pipeline of CS students starting in high school reaps the benefits five to eight years in the future, so a company with a typical Wall-Street-defined one quarter to one year attention span may have less incentive to do something here.</p></li>
<li><p>Any effort by a company to expand the pipeline of CS students starting in high school creates a mostly external benefit (more CS graduates who can be recruited by companies in general, rather than by the company that made the effort to expand the pipeline of CS students in particular).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My daughter’s high school didn’t have CS. To join Robotics Club, you need to wait forever for something, she lost interest in the process. Luckily, she did apply to a summer program at MIT about EECS and that gave her a glimpse of what the major/field is. I was not pushing for her to go into any field.</p>
<p>D’s school was created specifically to address this problem, by a black woman who had worked at MS. We had an all-school science fair this year and Google help finance it. The school graduates a number of kids into STEM majors and colleges, when some don’t even have a computer at home. THAT is how you do it. Schools and districts from all over the US send people to take a look at the place. Her foundation also runs an after-school program for elementary kids and it’s been having similar great results. </p>
<p>I’m hopeful that engineering toys geared toward girls like Goldieblox might make a difference. When my kids played scholastic chess most schools had very male dominated teams, but one school (whose team did very well) was 50/50 - the difference one of the women teachers at the school ran the chess club. I think you have to start early and parents have to be really concious about the pink aisle at the toy store and how much their girls are being influenced by the dominent culture. I think I was probably luckily that I spent a chunk of my childhood with few girls to play with. I had dolls and played house, but I also spent a lot of time with Legos and building cities in our back yard.</p>
<p>The idea is that everyone in college is reconciling some balance between what they like and what can make them money in some fashion when deciding what to study, correct? If so, which of these two factors does showing examples of minority students doing X to younger minority children increase? Does it make people people like it more or does it cause them to make more money doing it? </p>
<p>If more people majoring in CS is a good thing (seems to be implied in this thread), which is a better outcome, non-minority graduates in CS increases by 20% and minority graduates in CS increases by 10%, or non-minority graduates in CS doesn’t change and minority graduated in CS increases by 10%? If the former is better (which is what I suspect), why are we looking at percentages of people by race in the field?</p>
<p>I’m an engineer. Thinking back on my ms math team, there were 4 girls and 1 guy… and the ad visor was female, Interesting, never realized there might be a connection there. Thanks Ms K! </p>
<p>In hs math team, it was mostly guys. There was a male advisor. That never deterred me, but perhaps it did deter other girls from joining. </p>
<p>If he is straight, then there will be about a 5 to 1 ratio of men to women that he has to contend with. If he is gay, then the gay men population is just one pool of eligible mates to (mutually) choose from.</p>
<p>I think Mathmom’s son1 sounds like a wonderful young man. I would encourage him to join one of their many clubs, e.g. bookclub, Pilates, whatever that attracts more females than males. </p>
<p>There are a number of Googlers who do social dancing, mainly in Palo Alto. I told my sons long ago that if they could cook or dance, this would be a good way to have a social life. One dances, one cooks. ;)</p>
<p>DIL reports that her department has gone from one female engineer to four in the past year. She is heavily involved in mentoring and recruitment efforts (she’s a site reliability engineer).</p>
<p>According to the news, Google is going through some training with regards to unconscious bias in their interviewing and hiring because according to a research out of MIT that diversity teams is more productive. I hope diversity also includes age. Who wants to be kick out at age 40?</p>
<p>I myself went for an interview at Apple when Apple stock was $16 and didn’t think it was a good fit for me because the team was mostly white male interviewers. I did ask them why there was no female interviewers and they said they didn’t know. So I went to a better company at the time mostly because there was more female engineers and also because the stock of that company was hotter than Apple. Had I knew then what I know now that Apple could go to $600+, maybe I would have kept my mouth shut.</p>
</p>