Facebook’s First Female Engineer Leaves « 620house

Having done a startup with my wife, I’m going to give myself some leeway here to comment freely. Women should be better guided into technical roles at every stage of education. No one disagrees with that, so lets get specific.

I’ve heard this stat about women using social media as a motivator to get more female engineers, and I think it is completely nonsense. It’s like saying that most people that use drugs are old, so old people should make them. There is nothing at all related to the market that uses the product and the people that design and build those products. Should I work on the factory line making iPhones because I own one? Should I pick blueberries because I love eating them?

We should push to get people to get better and more diverse education as early as possible. I have a 4 year old and a 1 year old. It is clear that even at those ages, parents and educators do things that are guiding girls away from technical roles later in life.

It unambiguously hurts these efforts if you spout bullshit statistics.