How the viral anti-diversity memo from a Google employee affects me
PERSPECTIVE | I’m a 62-year-old black woman trying to break into tech
I haven’t had a social life since April 18. That’s the day I unpacked my computer and went back to school—a 24-week full stack web developer bootcamp.
On Tuesday and Thursdays evenings, and for half the day on Saturdays, I settle into a seat at Case Western Reserve University and huddle over my laptop. I labor to create code for everything from a simple form on a web page, to an app that might help you find free parking near your favorite concert.
I’m not a nerd. Coding is not my life. But I have to work. And job outlook for anything tech-related makes development seem like a sure thing.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment for web developers will grow 27% between 2014 and 2024. With a low barrier to entry — an associate’s degree can get you through the door — and a median hourly pay of $32 in 2016, the field offers the security not seen since General Motors, Chrysler and Ford regularly ran three shifts and overtime.
In fact the job outlook kept me going through the sites that didn’t deploy, the buttons that didn’t work and the code that threw an error because I’d replaced a brace with a parentheses, or forgotten to add a semicolon. For once, I was learning a skill that would lead to sustainable employment. I might get a small job, but I would get a job, I told myself.
Until the Google “manifesto.”
The “manifesto” is a 10-page anti-diversity screed written by James Damore. He argues that women are psychologically and biologically unfit for tech careers because we’re too touchy-feely.
“Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men … More men may like coding because it requires systemizing … comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics,” he writes.
He also claims that men are in leadership positions because they crave status and can handle stress — then contradicts himself:
“Status is the primary metric that men are judged on, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail.”
So yes, Google is on my mind as I work on my resume and craft my LinkedIn page. I’m everything Damore looks down upon. I’m a 62-year-old black woman, a musician and a writer, who came into development through graphic design. I’m definitely — but not solely — directed toward aesthetics.
But I’m analytical enough to research the field before plopping down $8,500 for the six-month course. What I found was worrisome.
An EEOC document from 2014 showed women in tech are way behind, making up 20 percent of the industry’s leaders and 28 percent of technicians. Compare those stats to all private industry, where women comprise 28 percent of executives and 50 percent of technicians.
And race? African Americans comprise less than 2 percent of tech executives, and barely 9 percent of technicians. The comparable figures for private industry are 3 percent and 13 percent respectively.
Of all minorities, Asian Americans are better represented in technical jobs than in private industry. They make up about 11 percent of executives and almost 10 percent of technicians. In private industry as a whole, they hold barely 5 percent of executive positions, and almost 7 percent of technician jobs.
But it’s still way behind white men, who hold more than 80 percent of high-level jobs and almost 70 percent of technician jobs in both tech and private industry.
Nevertheless, I decided to chance it; I’m an optimist and a risk taker. I’ve done very basic development work for years. I was confident I could elbow my way into the field if I could just upgrade my skills and get a foot in the door.
Until the Google “manifesto.”
Damore’s paper ignited an uproar when it was leaked. Predictably, he was fired. But Wired reported Damore’s co-workers are posting supportive memes on the company’s internal message boards.
He’s not an outlier — but I am.
I wonder about the opinions Damore didn’t share. If women are too artistically inclined to wrangle code, are African Americans simply not intelligent enough to master computational thinking? Are people over 55 simply too inflexible and isolated to conceptualize new apps?
I have a personal stake in this issue because I’m in the pipeline. So are the 40 classmates I see three times a week. I’m the only woman of color in my cohort, but one of six in the workshop. I’m not the only person of color either. Our mix includes African Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans and Hispanics.
I’m probably the oldest in the group, but several of us are above 40. Some of us are a few years out of high school. Some are tech whizzes who never enrolled in college. Others, like me, have advanced degrees.
We are the industry’s future, and our diversity runs far deeper than Damore and perhaps Google have envisioned.
I know I’ll learn to code. But I wonder, after reading the manifesto, whether I’ll learn to fight attitudes that led to a 10-page screed against opening such a crucial field.
