Other industries faced similar problems and materially improved representation. Ours steadfastly refuses, and instead comes up with increasingly silly special pleadings. The last CS gender debate I saw devolved to an argument about the behavior of monkeys in laboratories. People saying there isn't a problem in the industry are making an extraordinary claim, and pretending otherwise.

Ours in an industry with extremely low barriers to entry (you don't even need a degree!), no formal credentialism and therefore much more meritocratic, but on the other hand without the enhanced social status of say law or medicine. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this point, or if it has any relevance on the representation, but suffice to say, you can't really compare it with "other" (probably law & medicine, not trucking & nursing) industries that are invariably completely different.

Most practitioners in our industry are fed to it through the university pipeline. It's not interesting to this particular discussion to note that the pipeline can be bypassed by especially motivated people, because it's the task of the industry to make sure that URMs don't need to clear a higher bar for motivation and resourcefulness than the median practitioner does.

At least some other industries with problems (law, medicine) have an oversupply of practitioners that is limited by cartel behavior. This does make this problem a bit more tractable.

I think that's a fair point! There needs to be a sustained effort across the board, I think; the solution will be iterated, and involve continued lifts both from the labor supply and the demand side of industry.

What worries me is that we have a coordination problem, and if you snipe at efforts to make employers retain more URMs, you're damaging the case for the pipeline to supply more URMs.

I feel like this problem was easier to solve in other industries. For instance for doctors or lawyers there was a long line of women who wanted to be doctors and lawyers but couldn't because of institutional barriers.

All we had to do was remove the barriers.

Software is harder. I see three places we are losing women. First is women who never even consider the field, the second is women who drop out of car in college, and the third is women who switch fields from cs.

We're losing the most women in the first step in the pipeline and I've tried to convince so many of my girl friends to join software because I work half as much and make twice as much as them. But despite this they all had absolutely no interest in joining. They mostly had two fears. One was they wouldn't be good at it, but overwhelmingly the fear was they wouldn't like it.

The second was women who switch in college. I only know 2 women who started off cs and switched. One switched because she didn't like it. The other switched because she felt intimidated because she was put in a class with people like myself who had years of coding experience in a classroom, summer camps, and as a hobby before our first class in CS.

For the third leak in the pipeline all the women I know who left, left because they didn't enjoy the work. Some because they wanted to feel more connected to their work and people, moving from software to roles like therapist and teacher.

I think it's incredibly important we try to get women into tech. Women those women who would enjoy it lives would be better, consumers would enjoy better software, and our industry would be healthier.

But I think to do that it's important we use identify the right root causes.

I one of which is treating devs like rockstars aka children with specialized skills that need to be managed instead of professionals similar to engineers.

But I don't think sexism plays a big part. It exists,and it should be eliminated, every female dev I've talked to has experienced it. But none of them mentioned it as a reason they were thinking of leaving software.(at the professional level, I think it's more impactful at the college level where you have a bunch of kids who have no idea how to talk to women, and peer groups are more influential). But all my friends who are doctors and lawyers also experienced sexism, and in most cases far worse than the devs.

Repeating myself here: I believe the solution to this will be iterated, and will require work both on the supply and on the demand side; it's in part a coordination problem. Industry will need to put in a big lift without immediate significant returns, because otherwise there's little incentive for the pipeline to correct itself. Correcting generations of obstacles to participation isn't easy.

Harvey Mudd College has achieved gender parity in CS graduates.

“Fix the educational system and hope disparities resolve themselves” is not a “concrete practical effective solution.” It’s a cop out.

Here's a concrete, practical solution:

Radical affirmative action. Not radical in the rioting / revolution understanding of the word, but in its application.

So, if the issue with systematic racism is such that it endangers the foundational core of American society, it's time to take a big risk: literally pull random people to sit on VC and companies boards, in skilled jobs, etc. (a bit like the Diversity Visa Lottery the US already does for immigration). And train them on the job.

Sure, there will be issues here and there, but it would definitely solve the issue once and for all. It wouldn't even have to be explicitly racial. If it's truly random, you would end up with an accurate representation of the population.

It would also desegregate schools and neighborhoods, too, because with such a disruption people would have to move to match their new jobs.

Now, an exception should be made of course for professions where an error would mean life or death (or injury): doctors, airline pilots, etc. But I suspect 95% of careers at least could be desegregated in this way.

And perhaps an exception for jobs that truly require special abilities: professor of physics, professional athlete, etc.

That's sortition, baby!

Indeed. We also use this logic for juries.