I recently heard some reasoning about programming that increases representation of minorities. It was some of the best reasoning I’ve heard so far. These notes are a test of my understanding, so feel free to challenge me on any of these points. I am open to changing my mind about the following opinions.
Being honest (and hopefully not cancelled), I believe that the western world has reached the stage of equal opportunity in the STEM field. There is no systematic prejudice in the recruitment process for any program (degree, job) anymore. There were many programs in the past to put an end to this prejudice that were actually successful! In tech at least, recruitment is now based purely on talent/skill. How to get that talent/skill is a conversation for another time though (most likely relating to Education).
Note: I may generalize all people in the STEM field as engineers both for flow and because engineering lives in us all :)
This article suggests that we are going to be at a shortage of 1000000 STEM professionals by 2025. Naturally, we should do anything and everything to make up for that number.
To solve our toughest challenges, we need more minds, not fewer. Education has been slow to evolve and needs to do a better job of producing engineering graduates across the socioeconomic spectrum.
A particularly high leverage way to increase the amount of engineers in the world is by increasing the throughput of low-presence group of people into the field. Historically, these groups are minority groups.
Specifically, if we can bring in some incumbents from poorly represented groups, this will start a domino effect. See bottlenecks for more of my thoughts about this. Essentially, seeing people in similar circles as you doing cool things is an enabler for yourself to do cool things as well. This phenomenon will abstract to any group or person.
The controversy of programs that try and improve minority representation in STEM is usually sparked under the assumption that opportunities and funding are taken away from the majority in order to allow for it. Clearly this can not be the case. We need more people! Of all shapes, sizes, and colours. It just turns out that it is more effective to focus on the people that aren’t represented because there is a larger market to address there, and that is why it is common to see more specific opportunities for them.
It might feel unfair, but zooming out shows that it is just the best play for society.
Some additional thoughts
- This need for more engineers could be pretty dangerous. Compared to the growth rate of the global GDP, and the forecasting of a pretty bad recession, it doesn’t seem economically feasible to support these engineers.
- The real need in the coming years is engineers willing to work for less pay than the current average. If minority groups are meant to fill in the gap then this leads to some nasty second order effects where minority groups are paid less than other groups. Yikes…
Update
I think there are still some holes in this reasoning that I haven’t been able to fill. The biggest hole being what my opinion would be if there was no engineering shortage. Logically this means that there should be no need for programs that increase minority representation in STEM and it will be generally less likely for these people to go into this field. I’m not sure if that is bad or good, but something generally doesn’t sit right with me about this. Another problem is if the specific minority population wasn’t large enough to make a dent in the workforce, my argument would fall apart.
I’ve also decided that I won’t be able to work on this problem in the near future. There is a certain amount of context and nuance that I miss by not being part of any minority in STEM. The assumptions I make may be purely logical to me, but empirically incorrect to those in minority groups. For this reason, it makes it inherently harder for me to align with the ideologies of the people that I am helping. I will continue to educate myself and others around me, however this fight is meant for someone else.
Thought Experiment
I’ve been wondering about whether men and women intrinsically have different interests. For any dichotomy of cultures actually (gender, race, sexual orientation). I understand that one’s upbringing matters a lot in this scenario, but that is a matter of killing societal norms and niche culture completely, which might be unrealistic.
Taking men and women in engineering as an example:
- After up-keeping minority programs as they are in their current state (2024) for 1000 years, if the split between men vs women in engineering has steadily plateaued at 70/30, is that a representation of intrinsic differences or a representation that the current programs aren’t enough?
- Let’s say we keep increasing the prolificness of these programs exponentially until we hit 50/50, what will happen when we kill these programs? If we know the ratio will change, should we kill these programs at all considering new generations of minority groups will feel more welcomed in the field. Maybe it makes sense to wait for 50/50 for 3 generations and then stop it. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to stop it at all. Curious.