Re:The Empathy Gap in Tech: Interview with a Software Engineer
by dcow on Sunday January 07, 2018 @02:30PM
(#16092190)
One of the points in the essay was that statistically the tech industry is not the worst or even any worse than other industries in the harassment/sexism department. The difference (I'm interpreting/paraphrasing slightly here) is that the tech industry is high-paying and idealistic (for many) so it receives more intense scrutiny. E.g. there is a gender imbalance in nursing but you don't have The Atlantic posing smear-ish articles about the industry and groups of males storming the nets with social pitch forks.
I agree with you: our economic system is not the appropriate spot for social reform. Our economic system in America is capitalism. Maybe when I was younger–but I no longer have any expectation that a business will perform any altruistic act that does not align with its business model unless it's a PR stunt or the program is budgeted as employee quality of life (so it is effectively diced as employee comp).
I'm honestly curious what your idea of some low-hanging wins that make sense for a capitalist business to explore would be. Care to elaborate?
That being said, corporations and/or the business world aren't really the appropriate place for social experiments that take a generation to take effect. They are an excellent tool for taking scarce resources and divvying them up short term with value added.
There seems something very questionable about the idea a corporation embarking on a generational experiment to bring about social change if they have no evidence on it's efficacy. I'd probably call that small-scale political action funded by other people's money if I saw it in a public corporation, and would much prefer to see less of it. I'm a fan of evidence-based management.
I mean, the gender ratio's in tech are pretty lopsided; and we have enough stories to know there is outrageous behavior afoot. Surely there are some low hanging wins that can be hit a bit more quickly than 20 years out.