Atlas, I will have to think more about your message, but I think you're
right to suggest that FAANGs might be part of a problem. For example,
see yesterday's outreach email from a FAANG (quoted at end of this
email), posted as an apparent diversity initiative, to students of a
big-name CS department, inviting them to a "10-week workshop series", to
prep for (IMHO: submit to, and game by playing to the metrics) the
company's recruiting hazing process and supposed metrics.
(Such hazing processes were not a thing when I got my first software
engineering internship, before FAANGs. Perhaps coincidentally, half the
engineers at my internship were women, and they were all highly-skilled
and accomplished, doing impressive things, and had the same prestigious
responsibilities and recognition as the men did (though executive,
marketing, and field sales were very different stories, unfortunately).
Later, in grad school, in a "gender issues in CS" interest group, I
learned there were some problems other places. Then I started to see
various kinds of unwelcoming and barriers in academia, after I switched
universities (regrettably, moving from a school known for being
warm-fuzzy, to one known for egos and sharp elbows). At the start of
dotcoms, the only software company I recall being known for things like
puzzle interviews was also the company that was later most cited by
female interns for sexism among employees. Just at that time, the
dotcom gold rush started, and IPO-driven VCs and 20yo founders seemed to
institute brogramming culture. It seemed a Californian veneer variation
on the infamous 1980s coked-up Wall Street culture, which needed
aggressive worker drones for their earlier version of dotcoms' "move
fast and break things" -- which has turned out to be a euphemism for
grabbing money and power, by being the most irresponsible. Fortunately,
individuals are better than the aggressive worker drones some companies
have seemed to want, but individuals can only do so much about a
top-down culture, so I'm criticizing the companies here, not the
individuals trapped in it.)
In what I see as some degree of contrast, the Racket community overall
(including at the top) seems to care genuinely about being thoughtfully
constructive, we already have some diversity of perspectives (and some
of the talk, including my own, sometimes sounds unfamiliar, and maybe
wrong, to some others, perhaps *because* of that diversity), and I get
the impression we want more diversity. Collectively and individually,
we still have many things to figure out, in how to welcome and support
people, but we seem to have genuine and good intentions, and have made
some progress already. Still, I'm sure people can point to some
problems that are obvious to them, but that others of us (including
myself) didn't really notice or appreciate as much as we should.
Maybe Racket needs a better channel for talking about such things, and
figuring out how to get good movement on them. Maybe starting with a
different email list, with some guidelines?
As possible "comic relief" (I try to have a sense of humor about
upsetting things), here's yesterday's FAANG hazing outreach:
Want to boost your readiness for [Company] technical interviews?
This Fall, we're expanding our Above & Beyond Computer Science (ABCS)
program to Atlanta, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, and
Washington D.C. to build a diverse pipeline of future software engineers.
Participants collaborate with peers and [Company] software engineers
in a 10-week workshop series to help increase their competitiveness
for their coding interviews. You’ll gain in-depth and applied practice
on common interview topics, learn interview best practices, and
collect rigorous preparatory materials to unlock their full potential.
Hear from one of our past participants:
“The ABCS program gave me the extra nudge that I needed to strengthen
my technical interview skills. The program was an absolute success and
coincidentally, I will be starting at [Company] later this year as a
Software Engineer Intern and I can directly say that it was a result
from the lessons and valuable skills I learned at ABCS.” - Lauren L,
ABCS Boston, 2018
Last fall, 76% of our program participants landed competitive summer
internships or jobs in tech.
Are you ready to apply to a software engineering internship or
full-time job and want to go above and beyond to set yourself up for
success?
Apply for an ABCS program near you: [...]
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket
Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/cf733b40-1630-8e31-b03e-cdb692a09e9c%40neilvandyke.org.
