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Apple Technology

Tech Jobs and Apple: Every Bit As "Fun" As Pleasure Island? 185

theodp writes: On the eve of Apple's big Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the lack of diversity in tech is 'our fault' — 'our' meaning the whole tech community. "I think in general we haven't done enough to reach out and show young women that it's cool to do it [tech] and how much fun it can be," Cook explained. Indeed, the WWDC scholarship winners shooting selfies with Cook at the San Francisco Four Seasons to celebrate their iPhone apps and other WWDC attendees looked to be having as much fun as, well, Pinocchio at Pleasure Island. But, as the NY Times recently pointed out, Cook can be guilty of overlooking inconvenient truths. Which here is that most young women (and men) wouldn't find it 'cool' or 'fun' to live with 8,000 co-workers in factory dormitories where they can be roused out of bed in the middle of the night by Apple for an emergency 12-hour shift to fit glass screens into beveled iPhone frames, although that too conjures up a scene from Pleasure Island.
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Tech Jobs and Apple: Every Bit As "Fun" As Pleasure Island?

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    How is it "our" responsibility to help anybody who can't see for him or herself (or who just has different tastes) see that tech jobs are "cool" and "fun?" Seems like young girls have every opportunity as young boys generally to form those opinions if they will.

    Seems to me like this whole diversity push by all the big companies is just a way to make the job market more favorable for them. But I'm a white male, so I'm probably a racist, sexist homophobe.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BitZtream ( 692029 )

      Its "our" fault that we don't magically undo a hundred thousand years of evolution and make every woman think being in tech is cool and make them want to do all the same things as men.

      Its "our" fault that women and men are different.

      Can someone please explain to me WHY WE HAVE TO HAVE EQUAL REPRESENTATION WHEN WOMEN AREN'T FRAKING INTERESTED IN THE JOB.

      Oh wait ... you know why? Because they can treat women to lower pay thanks to the required time off for most who want to have children not being able to ded

      • Get your free bitcoins from freebitco.in member 708! I have more experience!

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Can someone please explain to me WHY WE HAVE TO HAVE EQUAL REPRESENTATION WHEN WOMEN AREN'T FRAKING INTERESTED IN THE JOB.

        BECAUSE WOMEN ARE FREAKING INTERESTED IN THE JOB.

        Aside from the many, many studies and surveys backing this up, you only have to look at recent history. Even 15 years ago there were more women graduating with tech degrees, or working in tech jobs.

        • BECAUSE WOMEN ARE FREAKING INTERESTED IN THE JOB.

          Aside from the many, many studies and surveys backing this up,

          Citation?
          I know a lot of women (no seriously, my mother and sister are both women), and I simply don't see it anywhere. Sure we get *some* women who are genuinely interested in tech, but they are in the minority, just the same as men who want to work in infant care. Sure they exist, but nature dictates that generally speaking, men prefer mechanic type activity and women prefer social activities. This is even demonstrable in monkeys [newscientist.com]

          • by gfxguy ( 98788 )

            No, he's wrong and you're right, actually.... eliminating outliers, women aren't really interested in tech jobs - especially when at the ages they need to be interested in STEM - the puberty years. Men and women have different physiology, it's not just the "naughty bits" that are different - certain parts of women's brains are larger than men's, and vice-versa. It's not that anyone is better or worse, it's that we're different. Of course, when women are doing tech jobs they should be paid similarly to me

            • Of course, when women are doing tech jobs they should be paid similarly to men, so I'm not justifying different treatment - but women generally actually do steer clear of STEM (generally) as a function of their physiology.

              Agree 100% and in my experience they are. I've been managed a few payroll system projects and been privy organisational payroll and never saw any obvious discrepancy in remuneration. Men also tend towards money making jobs, while women will often target job satisfaction over cash. So on paper women get paid less overall, but it's because they choose jobs that pay less, or work less hours in order to support the family (eg Maternity leave).

              • So on paper women get paid less overall, but it's because they choose jobs that pay less, or work less hours in order to support the family (eg Maternity leave).

                In a civilized society, paternity leave should be the same as maternity leave. There are plenty of men who would choose to spend time with their children instead of working, if they could afford to.

                • It is here, but women tend be better at this role than men so naturally more women do it. Nature is both racist and sexist, we'll all be better off when we accept this.
            • I now have proof that time travel exists, as I appear to be back in the 1950s.
              • by gfxguy ( 98788 )
                Just because you WANT an egalitarian society doesn't mean one can magically exist, or that we're all basically the same... if you want to ignore scientific fact that certain parts of the female brain are different sizes than men's, then you're really no better than creationists who think the world is 6k years old.
      • Yes, as a white male you are automatically a racist sexist homophobe on the verge of a hate crime. Its in our DNA apparently ...

        No, it's in your internalized cultural values. An outdated institution is using you and the AC as meat puppets in a desperate struggle to pass on its memetic material. Let it go.

    • "I think in general we haven't done enough to reach out and show young women that it's cool to do it [tech] and how much fun it can be,"

      Actually, I think that "reaching out" is exactly why so many woman have run screaming from the industry.
    • I don't see how 12 hour shifts in a factory to attach bevelled screens to an iPhone has any relationship to women in "tech" job (engineering & technical marketing). People in those roles are very well paid and voluntarily put in 24 hour "shifts" when the situation calls for it. The summary seems to be comparing the doctor to the orderly. Every single time "diversity in technology" comes up, someone mischaracterizes it, then someone else draws a parallel to their own hot issue that is more or less ortho

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Read my post again, China IS evil, but we are too. We refuse to cut them off, therefore we enable them to continue to be evil. We should be using our position to force them to become more democratic, enact and enforce environmental and labor protection laws, and generally kick them into the 21st century. Instead we are using them to erode our own laws, undermine our own workforce, and generally let them lead the way to further recidivism.

          By your own statement, it does sound like we have laws to protect work

  • by clifwlkr ( 614327 ) on Saturday June 13, 2015 @12:31PM (#49904071)
    OK, I've worked in the industry for a very long time now, and it can be 'fun' for the few bits where you actually get to prototype or work on the bulk of the features. That takes 10 percent of the time. The rest of the time you are going to be trying to find obscure bugs, introduced by crappy programmers rushing to get features out. Meanwhile you will be micro-managed through the 'agile' process asking you to account for every hour of your time. Then we will throw ill defined features at you, and expect them to be done within this two week time period, and be shocked when you reach the end of two weeks, and they are not done. This is usually due to the fact that meanwhile 16 support tickets were also thrown at you that are all critical in nature. Then you have those late night calls with your Indian counter parts that you can barely understand or stay awake for. But it is fun!

    I don't know what planet these people live on. It is a tough career with crazy deadlines and weird policies. You have to constantly keep up on the latest trends, or you will be viewed as 'too old' for the job. Meanwhile, computers never sleep, nor do they expect you to. You have to push back constantly to maintain your personal time.

    That said, I love computers. I love programming. I just don't love the industry as it is now. There is a reason that most women don't want in. They may in fact be much smarter than men in this regards.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'm a programmer and I enjoy my job. I don't think software development is different to any other job. There are good places to work, and bad places. I've worked at bad places, but I know not everywhere is like that. I enjoy my current job.

    • OK, I've worked in the industry for a very long time now, and it can be 'fun' for the few bits where you actually get to prototype or work on the bulk of the features. That takes 10 percent of the time. The rest of the time you are going to be trying to find obscure bugs, introduced by crappy programmers rushing to get features out. Meanwhile you will be micro-managed through the 'agile' process asking you to account for every hour of your time. Then we will throw ill defined features at you, and expect them to be done within this two week time period, and be shocked when you reach the end of two weeks, and they are not done. This is usually due to the fact that meanwhile 16 support tickets were also thrown at you that are all critical in nature. Then you have those late night calls with your Indian counter parts that you can barely understand or stay awake for. But it is fun!

      I don't know what planet these people live on. It is a tough career with crazy deadlines and weird policies. You have to constantly keep up on the latest trends, or you will be viewed as 'too old' for the job. Meanwhile, computers never sleep, nor do they expect you to. You have to push back constantly to maintain your personal time.

      That said, I love computers. I love programming. I just don't love the industry as it is now. There is a reason that most women don't want in. They may in fact be much smarter than men in this regards.

      Possibly one of the most insightful comments here in a very long time

    • by camg188 ( 932324 )
      The bottom line is that when Apple employees leave home every morning and head to the office, they say "I'm going to work" not "I'm going to have fun."
    • You need a new employer. I've never been in that position, and I've held several jobs over a long career.

  • by StandardCell ( 589682 ) on Saturday June 13, 2015 @12:38PM (#49904103)
    Why is Tim Cook even wading into this discussion? Mainly because the SJWs are shaming companies such as Apple and Intel to do something about what they perceive to be an epidemic of gender skew in technology professions. Funny how they're nowhere to be found when it comes to nursing or other female-dominated professions, nor all the factory positions in China where men are worked to the death. Yet all the idiot CEOs take the bait and run with it.

    What they all fail to realize is that equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome. Nobody gets me out of bed in the morning, brushes my teeth, forces me to do a particular job or anything else, so it's up to me to do that. Same with careers. If you have a specific problem, there are LOTS of legal protections to prevent this kind of thing - lawsuits, DoL complaints, and so on.

    Ask any person of any identifiable group whether they feel good about being hired not because they were the best candidate, but because of some identifiable characteristic. You'll get two groups of answers - the majority who would feel awful about it, and the minority who would feel proud and entitled because of it. As long as that difference exists, this nonsense will continue.
    • equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome

      I think that sums it up bests. It's short and to the point. Short enough to become a tagline/rally cry/etc.

    • Why is Tim Cook even wading into this discussion? Mainly because the SJWs are shaming companies such as Apple and Intel to do something about what they perceive to be an epidemic of gender skew in technology professions.

      It's happened recently because tech companies have been getting more involved in politics. Apple/Google/Facebook want politicians in Washington to do something for them. Some of the Democrat politicians in return are asking about the gender ratio (because it's something they care about). So those companies talk about it, to make their 'partners' in Washington happy.

      It's not because of shame, it's a way to get political power.

      • Why is Tim Cook even wading into this discussion? Mainly because the SJWs are shaming companies such as Apple and Intel to do something about what they perceive to be an epidemic of gender skew in technology professions.

        It's happened recently because tech companies have been getting more involved in politics. Apple/Google/Facebook want politicians in Washington to do something for them. Some of the Democrat politicians in return are asking about the gender ratio (because it's something they care about). So those companies talk about it, to make their 'partners' in Washington happy. It's not because of shame, it's a way to get political power.

        It's both, and the problem is that the SJWs and Democrats (who are wanting their votes and energy) both miss that actually, the disparity may--as others here have noted--be due to women being smarter and refusing to work in the field because of things entirely linked to gender-neutral working conditions...

        While I doubt there's been any formal studies, because their results would actually be un-PC enough that you couldn't easily get the funding to do it, personal experience is that at least when it comes to

        • lol bro, just because you hate programming doesn't mean everyone does. Calm down.
          • lol bro, just because you hate programming doesn't mean everyone does. Calm down.

            Not everybody who opts to not be a programmer as a career hates programming. Some of us just took one look at what management thinks programmers ought to be capable of doing and decided that we'll keep doing it for the love of it and nothing more.

            I'm one of them: I am calm, I do love programming, but I did enough research when deciding on a career to know that management on the whole believes that programmers are magical creatures capable of doing the impossible. It turns out that if a company expects me to

            • (Also, I'm not a bro and certainly not yours.)

              Don't be sexist.

              • (Also, I'm not a bro and certainly not yours.)

                Don't be sexist.

                I don't know how to break it to you, but I have rather obvious anatomical indicators of my being the wrong sex to be a bro and we're not friends so even if I was the right sex it's still overly-familiar. So, how exactly is it sexist to object to being called something I most definitely am not?

    • equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome.

      Yep. We used to have a nifty word called "aptitude".

      If opportunity were to be magically made really equal, then the only remaining differences in outcome would be due to aptitude.

      We know for sure that aptitude for various tasks is not spread equally among individuals - that's why we have things like the Scholastic Aptitude Test, for Pete's sake.

      Is aptitude for all tasks spread equally among groups? Genders? Racial groups? We don't know, and we sure aren't going to be allowed to study it. But if it isn

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There have been plenty of studies into aptitude in different genders and racial groups. Intelligence, academic ability, dexterity, spacial awareness... You name it, it's been studied.

        The point of all these efforts is to get more women to apply. Not to favour them in the selection process, just to get them to apply. MRAs go on and on about how hiring should always be done on merit, and it is. That's what's happening. That's the goal.

        What you really mean is that you don't want any more competition.

        • Except for the fact you're lying through your teeth and the entire point IS explicitly to produce the 2:1-4:1 [cnn.com] advantage that women are privileged with in STEM fields.

          • That "study" is ridiculously flawed; they couldn't find a real paper arguing their point (noted in the article), so they invented a unrealistic scenario and used that. Nobody sane hires based entirely upon a piece of paper without meeting the person beforehand. It's absurd. They asked faculty members (not the people who would actually hire) to pick between two identical on-paper only people without being able to acquire more information or meet them in an interview setting, so of course they're going to dec

            • No, what they couldn't find was a single study that used actual faculty members in the actual fields being talked about. In other words they couldn't find a single scientifically valid study on the subject. THEIRS actually IS a valid scientific study which properly controls for confounding factors and passed peer review in a major journal.

              You're just freaking out because your religion has been offended by the unspeakable heresy of disagreeing with your men-bad-women-victims narrative.

    • Why do the MRAs have to wade in on every discussion about this? We get it, you don't want to read or comment on these stories, so why do you keep doing it?

      Why do MRAs keep repeating what everyone already knows? Of course it's about equal opportunity, not equal outcome... It's even called "equal opportunity" in many places.

      More to the point, why don't they get that hiring it always done on merit? It's been discussed often enough, and they claim to be fed up of reading about it, yet the message hasn't sunk in

      • Women have a 2:1-4:1 advantage over men in getting STEM field jobs, and utterly dominate the entirety of education to the point of being nearly 2/3rds of graduates. Meanwhile men utterly dominate homelessness, workplace deaths, and are many times more likely to be convicted and incarcerated than a woman is for the same crime. In fact the criminal justice system is SO anti-man that a white male is more likely to go to prison than a black female for the same crime.

        But you keep throwing "MRA" into almost every

        • Are you claiming it's OK that there's bias against women in one field because there's bias against men in another?

          Perhaps you should realise that doubling down on bias just doubles the shittyness, and as such it's a terrible reason to continue. The sensible thing would be to try to remove bias. On that note, since you care about such things as the problems in the criminal justice system, what have you done about it? Or are you just whining all over the internet that someone else hasn't done anything about i

    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome

      Far too many genuinely don't understand why this is true. They've been so sheltered from unequal opportunity that they take it for granted and assume the equality people have been fighting and dying for for hundreds of years must be something else.

      We will have to keep spelling out "equal opportunity" until they clue in.

  • by chill ( 34294 ) on Saturday June 13, 2015 @12:39PM (#49904109) Journal

    Those jobs are factory assembly work, not "tech". They are in the same category as assembling car parts, radios, or toy wagons. Cook is talking about creative development where you work with your mind, not simple low-skilled labor.

    Yes, it sucks. But conflating the two in this article is dishonest.

    • Steve Jobs's Advice for Obama [wsj.com]: Jobs told Mr. Obama that Apple employs 700,000 factory workers in China because it can't find the 30,000 engineers in the U.S. that it needs on site at its plants. "If you could educate these engineers," he said at the dinner, "we could move more manufacturing jobs here."

    • Well given the tone of the article, it seems that the poster seems to want to blame Apple responsible for everything that its contract manufacturer does even though the same manufacturer makes products for all of Apple's competitors, he/she isn't going to have the same tone with Dell or Samsung.
  • Jesus H. Christ (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Saturday June 13, 2015 @12:39PM (#49904111) Homepage Journal

    Diversity for the sake of diversity is NOT a good thing. Granted, if a company has a thousand employees, and the only black face in the crowd belongs to the janitor, then there is a problem. But - if the company's demographics perfectly reflect community demographics, then we all know that the company is more absorbed in public relations and catering to special interest groups, than it is in BUSINESS.

    I work for a woman. I work with women. Women work for me. I prefer the company of women, truth be told. But - I'm sure as HELL not going to hire a female because she's female. Or black. Or Asian. Or gay. Or whatever. I'm going to hire the MOST QUALIFIED PERSON FOR THE JOB! If that happens to be a straight white male - so be it. If it happens to be a gay Chinese woman, again, so be it.

    Screw diversity. It's a waste of my time, waste of your time, and a HUGE waste of company resources.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      But - if the company's demographics perfectly reflect community demographics, then we all know that the company is more absorbed in public relations and catering to special interest groups, than it is in BUSINESS.

      Apple's own figures are that 80% of its tech workers are male. Does California have an 8:2 male:female ratio?

      But - I'm sure as HELL not going to hire a female because she's female.

      Neither is Apple. They just want their workforce to reflect their community's and the world's demographics.

      • AC already stated that California has an 8:2 ration of males to females WHO ARE QUALIFIED TO HOLD THAT POSITION. With Affirmitive Action, we would give those positions to unqualified persons, just because they are female, black, or whatever. And, that route leads to multiple failures.

    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      Diversity for the sake of diversity is NOT a good thing.

      Diversity for its own sake does in fact have some value, but it has costs as well, and in principle it's just as illegal and repugnant as any other form of discrimination.

  • Who in their right mind thinks a factory worker counts as a technology worker? The closing sentence is completely irrelevant, even if true.

  • Red herring? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CurryCamel ( 2265886 ) on Saturday June 13, 2015 @01:04PM (#49904187) Journal

    . "I think in general we haven't done enough to reach out and show young women that it's cool to do it [tech] and how much fun it can be,"

    Do "we" reach out for the young men?
    Nobody ever "reached out" for me, yet here I am. Have I just been living under a rock?

    • I avoided computers while going to school, even though everyone told me I should be in computers. I studied electronics in the early 1990's, but those jobs were disappearing. After a three year stint as spaghetti cook, my roommate got me a job as a software tester "intern" (i.e., Fortune 500 company couldn't afford another full-time staffer). After that six-month stint, I became a video game tester for three years. When I became a lead video game tester that lasted another three years, I went back to school

  • There are women on the tech field, those who want to do it are doing it already. More than that do not want to do it and you can't and shouldn't either force or manipulate them into anything.

    Steve Wozniak was nowast encouraged wastby society to spend his entire time building computers and other tech. He simply liked being able to do something for the sake of doing it. Not because anybody told him he should like it but because it made him feel good that he could do it. Good luck convincing people who do no

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      those who want to do it are doing it already.

      No, those who want to do it more than they want to avoid putting up with harassing, unprofessional, boorish assholes, are doing it already.

      The problem is, there's a lot of harassing, unprofessional, boorish assholes in the industry, and they're doing their damnedest to protect their boys' club.

      This line of argument is like concluding, that women "obviously don't like golf," based on a quick perusal of the Augusta National Golf Club's membership list circa 2005.

      • Bullshit. Like I said, Wozniak wasn't forced or manipulated by anybody to do tech stuff ON HIS OWN in his house. I wasn't either and I did do tech stuff anyway before EVER even setting a foot in any workplace ever.

      • You do realize that those of us who got into tech were not exactly popular in the guys department either, right? I mean in highschool it was not the computer club guys getting the dates to the prom, it was the football jocks and such. I got into tech despite the many, many social pressures against being a smart kid. This is true for both genders in America. So don't believe that some magical boys club is promoting up our youth in this industry. The entire pressure in high school for both genders was to
      • by Livius ( 318358 )

        No, those who want to do it more than they want to avoid putting up with harassing, unprofessional, boorish assholes, are doing it already.

        In other words, *exactly* the same as men.

        If you think all men are equally content with dysfunctional workplace cultures, well, that's just sexist.

  • by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Saturday June 13, 2015 @01:10PM (#49904217)

    This is the most rote, politically correct, by-the-numbers news story I've seen on Slashdot in a long time. Are you building a portfolio to try to apply for a job at a North Korean news bureau? Are you getting paid or graded based on the number of silly, college-student-activist, progressive bromides you can pack into a paragraph?

    People don't buy apps based on the "diversity" of the programming staff. App users don't care. It's a 100% equal opportunity for everyone. But that's not really what you want, is it?

  • Bleeding heart, emotion based reasoning is part of the legacy, pseudoscience, pseudo-liberal mindset.

    Whether Timmay wants to admit it or not, the meritocracy matters -- blacks, women, christians struggle when faced with asians, males, and jews, at least when faced with a difficult test. The world of physics blossomed after the Ivy League finally allowed Jews into their schools in the 1920's and 1930's. All that immersion in the Torah as a child really pays off.

    So it's bad enough that we use emotional reason

  • The CEOs just want to portray the menial jobs as 'cool' so they can reduce wages even further.

  • When I was a video game tester and a lead video game tester for six years, most people told me that I have a "fun" job. My answer always mystified them, "It's fun for the first six weeks."

    Working at a video game company isn't fun and games. Testers test video games, testers don't play video games. A distinction that most people don't get. Something that fresh out of school newbies have to learn the hard way when they get a job in the video game industry. Most don't last more than two months.

    When I worked at

  • JFC. All we have done in the last 15 year, and probably before that, is try to encourage women and minorities to enter the field. Everywhere I've worked since college has had targeted recruiting for women and minorities. One company would spend a lot of money on recruiting trips to HBCUs and HWCUs and the only other university they visit is the local state school because it's only a day trip. We have had outreach programs at all levels of education, even driving down into elementary schools, to make STE

  • Tim Cook doesn't give a shit about minorities or women for that matter. The reason he is saying this is so there there will be more programmers in the pool to choose from. More programmers means that Apple and others can get away with paying lower wages, since there will be more qualified candidates to choose from. It's the same reason that they all support more H1-B visas - flood the market with programmers and drive down salaries.

    Just like everything else in business, it's all about the money.

  • ...in general we haven't done enough to reach out and show young women that it's cool to do it [tech] and how much fun it can be...

    Isn't it time we started waking up to the fact that computing and technology isn't about 'cool' or 'fun'? And wouldn't it be better to show that little bit of respect to young men and women, to not expect that the only thing they could possibly have an interest in is 'cool' and 'fun'? Most young, clever people simply want to get to grips with life in a serious way, to develop their skills and feel they are doing something wortwhile. Why else do so many young choose careers that are demanding?

    Technology is

  • Is it just me or does OP seem to be stretching a little bit in the last few sentences to try and segue an article about US gender diversity into another dig at the working conditions in China.

    Look, I'd like for all the people in China to have nice jobs, and be treated well, breathe clean air and eat double quarter pounders whenever they want to as much as the next guy. But stop blaming Apple for this not happening. Apple strides to set restrictions on their manufacturing partners that have been steadily i

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