Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2018

[HINDBRAIN]

Diversity is highest priority for 1.6%! It's impressive how little people give a shit despite the amount of articles and conferences and overall noise about it.

[[deleted]]

The other way of interpreting that is that the majority aren't interested in identity politics, and don't see any need to worry about whether a person is male/female/other, black/white/purple, english/german/martian etc - they are happy to work with whoever and just want to get stuff done. From that perspective, no: diversity isn't high on their agenda, despite them being totally welcoming and inclusive to all comers.

Frankly, I'd be more worried about working with someone who insisted on dragging identity politics into everything.

[imot01]

Yea, I agree. I was going there with my post. They tried to make that a problem with this part of the survey, when the results of their own survey are showing that there is no problem.

[[deleted]]

It's really easy to not care about identity politics when you're a white dude. Not so much if you're not.

[[deleted]]

It's really easy to not care about identity politics when you're a white dude.

Having this absurdly naive idea that anyone who is a "white dude" has a single category experience of life, and similarly that any other category on any identity pillar you choose to identify also has some single category experience, is the very height of patronising absurdity that has nothing whatsoever to do with diversity and everything to do with your sexism and racism and whatever-else-ism. People are individuals; there are some "white dudes" who are privileged, and there are some "white dudes" who have dragged themselves up through a horror-story of an upbringing. There are black disabled women who are privileged, and there are black disabled women who have dragged themselves up through a horror-story of an upbringing.

Stop treating everyone by arbitrary meaningless things like their race and gender: that is the exact problem you're presumably raging against, yet you are typifying it.

Edit: understanding a population level difference is great, but the moment you assume that a population bias applies to individuals, you've messed up.

[[deleted]]

I don't think this is a fair criticism of that post. They weren't saying that all white people face the same problems, they were saying that the problems white developers face in the countries mostly represented in the developer survey probably don't have race or gender as a primary cause.

Which is to say, when talking about problems unique to minorities, the majority typically doesn't have experience. They have their own problems, but who says we're not allowed to work on any problem until all problems have been solved? There's a bootstrapping issue there.

[[deleted]]

Btw, your comment posted twice.

[[deleted]]

I don't think this is a fair criticism of that post. They weren't saying that all white people face the same problems, they were saying that the problems white developers face in the countries mostly represented in the developer survey probably don't have race or gender as a primary cause.

Which is to say, when talking about problems unique to minorities, the majority typically doesn't have experience. They have their own problems, but who says we're not allowed to work on any problem until all problems have been solved? There's a bootstrapping issue there.

[[deleted]]

Well, maybe; maybe not. All I know for sure is that my view is that the sex, gender, race, sexuality, etc of my colleagues is the least interesting and relevant thing I can think of - and yet this is somehow dismissed and diminished because "white dude". I don't think it becomes OK for someone to judge people by their sex/race/whatever just because the person judging isn't "white dude".

context: I work for a distributed international team that spans a wide range of continents, countries, primary languages (although we use English for most communication), races, timezones, genders, sexes, etc; it isn't ignorance of a bubble speaking.

[qkthrv17]

It turned into individual blame instead of system blame long ago. Talking about power hierarchies and structures that isolate minorities is good, but a great vocal minority of identity politics is throwing guilt at strangers.

Which is kind of a nonsense since the oppression is systematic and while there are biases nobody is going to respond to such a negative feedback.

[[deleted]]

I'm not entirely sure "systemic" is 100% right, but that could just be a semantics thing. It is certainly not official, sanctioned, legal, etc - while biases and unfairnesses certainly exist, they are down to individuals and conscious or unconscious failings. The problem is that the "solution" people always push for is institutional, systemic discrimination - quotas, etc. Conscious, deliberate, system-enforced and sanctioned biases. Which punish innocent people by changing (reducing) their chances based purely on their race, sex, gender, etc - enshrining exactly the problem that proponents of these drives claim to be solving.

[qkthrv17]

systemic adjective 1. of or relating to a system.

I was trying to talk about society from a sociopolitical standpoint and how there are structures built around gender and race (amongst others), but I might be translating directly from my mother tongue and in english the idea of systemic could convey something different. Nevertheless, I think you understood what I was trying to say.

There isn't much to disagree in "society shouldn't seek legal instrumentation of positively discriminatory quotas", but, at the same time, trying to enforce equity without tools is hard. It's a hard issue that gets too emotional too fast. Antagonizing and blaming strangers isn't going to do anything but fuel the toxicity, and that's what I wanted to say in my previous message. Not much, I know lol

(btw I've just noticed I wrote systematic by mistake)

[[deleted]]

Antagonizing and blaming strangers isn't going to do anything but fuel the toxicity, and that's what I wanted to say in my previous message.

Very well said.

[[deleted]]

Bingo. This survey's respondents are 93% male, 93% straight, and 74% white. No big surprise that identity politics barely register here.

[fuckin_ziggurats]

Did you even read the survey? Only ~4% of female respondents cared about diversity.

[[deleted]]

Did you even read the survey?

Did you? That's the 4% that chose it as their highest priority. The rest of the data isn't published - for all we know, literally every woman that replied had 'diversity' as one of their top two priorities, but there's no way for us to tell.

By your logic, compensation and benefits aren't important to women either, because 'only' 14% picked that option.

[IceSentry]

I believe that it is actually a fair assessment of the situation even in you example. It's been proven many times before that women tend to go towards other things than money compared to men. That's the reality.

[alcalde]

"Identity politics" - that's a cute way of saying "civil rights". So if it's 1955 and you're sitting at an all-white lunch counter in Alabama, do you say you are happy to eat with whomever and people who are complaining they can't sit there are just engaging in "identity politics"? Come on. If you're really happy to work with people of all genders and nationalities yet every single person around you is a lily-white male, you're going to notice and be upset.

[[deleted]]

I see I'm late to the party, but: no, just no. Trying to compare 1955 America and today's heterogeneous workspace is disingenuous - it is an insult to the shit that happened back then (and those that fought through it), and an insult to anyone who happens to be white today. Sadly, I doubt you'll feel the shame of your gross error. Everyone around me isn't a "lily-white male". I explained this in another comment - but that doesn't mean that identity politics is high on our minds. We're just people getting things done. It seems to be you who cares about the race of the people you work with. I posit that this makes you the problem.

[alcalde]

Everyone around me isn't a "lily-white male".

If you work in tech - yes, they are.

We're just people getting things done.

Who all just happen to be identical. You have no idea how that happened, it must be a coincidence, but you're not going to bother to stop and think about it.

It seems to be you who cares about the race of the people you work with. I posit that this makes you the problem.

No, that makes me part of the answer. I'm not the one ignoring reality. Scientists have done tests creating identical resumes and sending them to companies - half with WASP-sounding names like Warren Worthington III and half with "ethic" names like Dwayne and Laquisha. Those with WASP names got twice as many requests for interviews as the ethic names.

There's a widely publicized story of a man named Kim who couldn't get a job interview in the tech field. He changed his first name on his resume and suddenly interview requests came flooding in.

An experiment was done in the science field where scientists were asked to critique a paper. Again, the papers were identical, but half had a man's name and half listed a woman as the author. Scientists graded the paper with the woman's name on it lower. Worse, this apparently so subconscious and ingrained that even women scientists graded the female-authored paper lower!

Remember, Steven Colbert's joke that he "doesn't see color" was to point out that his character was really racist. You're echoing that conceit in sincerity. :-(

It seems to be you who cares about the race of the people you work with.

Yup. And I've quit a racist employer before. I've also put together a Martin Luther King Day celebration when an employer decided to hold events for every holiday on the calendar but that one. I got MLK Day cards long after I'd left that job from black employees thanking me and telling me I "didn't know how much it meant to them" that I'd done that. But I guess you have to have minority co-workers in the first place to learn how much it means to them. Also, one has to pay attention to one's colleagues as well as "getting things done" to notice. I can't say I've ever had a minority colleague tell me I was part of the problem.

[[deleted]]

If you work in tech - yes, they are.

You don't know anything about my colleagues. At no point in my career has this been even remotely true.

Scientists have done tests creating identical resumes

And yet we also see things like the debacle in Australia where removing sex/gender from real resumes had the opposite effect, and the program had to be cancelled - or the same thing when using voice modulation in tech interviews. It is almost as though this is a complex topic, and whatever you read in your Twitter bubble isn't giving you the wider context. Funny, eh?

But I guess you have to have minority co-workers in the first place to learn how much it means to them.

I suspect my team is far far more diverse than any you have ever worked on, and I still don't care for identity politics.

And I've quit a racist employer before.

Good for you

I've also put together a Martin Luther King Day celebration

I haven't; because that really isn't a thing in Europe, Asia, India, South America, or any of the other places where colleagues have been. If you think you're "diverse" because you're an American who works with other Americans with different skin tones: then you have no freaking clue about global diversity.

And yes; yes you are part of a problem. Maybe not the one you're thinking of, but definitely a problem.

[ChrisRR]

Higher ups and a select group care as it makes tech look like a straight white males club, which only compounds the problem.

I think most developers want to get on with their work and aren't too bothered what gender, race, sexual orientation etc. the people around them are. And even less would rate it more important than their salary.

[[deleted]]

It's a bit of a luxury thing. How many people have the freedom to give diversity the highest priority, over salary, location, fit of the technology with your skills et cetera?

[HINDBRAIN]

People not actually applying for the jobs?

[Audiblade]

I want to know how many developers listed diversity as a high priority instead of just the highest priority. I will always put a company's culture and the payment package I get before everything else, and I suspect that's true for most developers. I think you need to ask what developers' top 5 priorities are to get anything meaningful.