Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It's Gone Too Far

Unless I'm misunderstanding, I disagree vehemently. I went to a technical school and graduated with an associates degree. I decided not to pursue a bachelors and instead go with a more practical route via certifications. Currently I hold a CompTIA A+ and CompTIA Network+. Just two entry level certs. The cost is a lot cheaper than a 4 year college and the information contained within those two certs is about the same.

The reason I disagree is because there are already a ton of elective classes in even a 2 year associates curriculum. For example I was having to take required humanities classes such as Folklore, which while fun, gave nothing to my education at all. They were literally just wasted credits to milk money out of me for the school. I understand things like English, Math, programming and even public speaking as those are all directly related. You have to be able to speak and write as you have to communicate via email and at times give presentations.

A lot of it nowadays, in my opinion at least, is that people are seeing how hard it is to land a job in tech. Like the person below said, there are few places that do on the job training and learning intricate systems such as corporate sized active directory and things is something that is very difficult to do on your own time. I graduated and got my degree and certs and even then I barely landed the basic help desk job I have now. Luckily my employer decided to train me. I started out doing consumer repair for Geek Squad which only paid me $12 an hour for breaking PC's apart and dealing with being cussed out by nearly every customer I spoke to. Warehouse work in TN make more than that starting at 14.50 an hour and in KY some start at 13.50.

As stated below, adding more classes adds more credits to the curriculum which means more money going into the colleges which are already crazy expensive. That is yet another factor why I decided to not pursue my bachelors.

Finally, a large elephant in the room, at least in regards to this article, is that women in general don't seem to be interested in tech. Just like you see in nursing, you don't see a lot of men in that field. Same with construction work, you don't see a lot of women in that. Same with car mechanics and many other fields. The media doesn't go after them about diversity in the work force.

When I went through my server classes and even the visual basic classes I chose as electives, there was at most, 2 females in class at any given time. Even then, most of them didn't make it past the first week and dropped out or lost interest. Most STEM fields are fairly logical and I personally feel that adding more arts and humanities contributes nothing to those. The only thing you're going to do is appeal to people who have fun in the arts and humanities electives who don't care about the actual curriculum itself as I saw in my own school before I graduated in 2013.

I think this entire diversity shtick needs to go away. People are different and will do what they like and the fact of them being man, woman or attack helicopter doesn't matter in the slightest. What matters is their merits and whether they can perform the functions required.

In the end game, what needs to happen is businesses need to stop being so stingy and relying on colleges to train people for them. It's to the point now that even entry level jobs are requiring 3-5 years experience and moving up from that is hard as hell. I got a degree in networking. Haven't had any internships or any offers at all for any type of networking job to be able to learn more about protocols, firewalls and other things that I initially learned. I'm expected to learn everything on my own and then find some way to prove that i know what I know on a resume without actually listing any relevant experience. Landing the interview and then getting a chance to finally prove that I know what I know. There in lies the problem. Businesses are far, far too reluctant to train anymore.

/r/moderatepolitics Thread Parent Link - nytimes.com