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The Human Dimension of Software Engineering

The Human Dimension of Software Engineering

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How Google Leadership Failed Women in Tech

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Reading Time: 4 minutes

Google loves a good pedigree.

James Damore, the developer at the center of the huge anti-diversity manifesto controversy that got him fired from Google, is an educated person with a solid academic pedigree. According to his LinkedIn profile, he holds a BS in Molecular Biology, Physics and Chemistry from the University of Illinois and a Master in System Biology from Harvard.

After a couple of short internship with Princeton and Harvard, he spent over one year as Research Scientist at MIT. Google likes academic backgrounds like James’, and he landed a four months internship with the company. I am not sure where James learned computer science fundamentals, but he knew enough to get a Software Engineer job a few months after his internship ended. He stayed employed for three years and nine months until he got fired for his anti-diversity manifesto. Or, more accurately, for offending a significant part of Google employees at creating chaos. ... 

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Anti-Diversity, Google, and Lack of Good Judgment

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Reading Time: 7 minutes

[This post was featured on the Huffington Post]

Many people who are successful show lack of good sense or judgment. There are many examples. A recent one is Travis Kalanick, the ex-CEO of Uber. His list of actions showing a lack of good judgment is impressive. You can find a version of the list here. It was painful to watch him wreck his career. Now he is no longer the CEO. That is a demonstration that behaving the way he did was not smart for himself or the business.

Definition of stupid.

The definition of “stupid” is: ... 

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We Need Women in Tech

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The realization that the world needs more women in tech

A few years ago, I observed my daughter become interested in technology and coding. I bought her a , and she started learning Python. She also signed up for some Java development classes at DigiPen. She naturally gravitated toward programming because she wanted to work in a creative and technical field that could stimulate her creative and analytical mind. Accidentally, that is exactly what originally brought me to the world of computer science.

Over the years, she slowly lost interest for many reasons. Some of them had to do with gender bias. First, she noticed how 90% of her peers in the Java class were males. She started associating “programmers” with “men”, Furthermore, she found the topic of coding hard to discuss and somewhat stigmatized by her female friends. ... 

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