IBM's Technology Camp for Teen Girls - Reinforcing Stereotypes?

IBM Camp apparently has a camp which tries to get teen girls interested in technology. That's great - it really is. But their approach seems something like "hey, let's get women to learn about computers by showing them how to look up recipes!" The article scares me. Here's a few snippets:

Look! Pretty pink flowers!

... they watched a scientist from M.I.T. (Massachusettes Institute of Technology) dip a pink carnation into a vat of liquid nitrogen, and then shatter the frozen flower against the side of a tank.

Let's hold hands and make bracelets!

... girls learned how to make "binary bracelets" (of beads that sported ones and zeroes on them)

Girls like cooking and candy!

The girls learned ... how to make bubble gum

Seriously - whatever works to get girls more interested in technology, and I do applaud their efforts to try to look at it from a girl's perspective. I just question if this is really the way to get girls interested in learning about technology, any more so than little girls playing a barbie computer game would want to learn how to program. Instead, the camp seems to just reinforce existing stereotypes.

Contrast the image of pink flowers, making bracelets and cooking candy with the 7th and 8th grader's essays:

The application process involved an essay in which the girls imagined an invention that would improve their worlds. Yehia wrote about a biodegradable trash bag. Gidla wrote about a USB-based application-specific device designed to help organize her schedule. Bahnham wrote about a double-sided television that would allow family members watch two different shows, while still spending time together in the same room.

Call me crazy - but it sounds like these 7th and 8th grade girls might want to do more than make bracelets, cook candy and play with pretty pink flowers.

Way to go IBM - you've taken geeky girls and shown them how to do things "more appropriate" for their gender.

Sexual Harrassment: Online & Otherwise

The greater the feeling of anonymity the more likely it is that people will behave inappropriately. This holds up both online and in real life.

An article on Shiny Shiny got me thinking about this. A quick quote:

I raised my hand and (desperately not to scream) explained that there is actually a huge issue with women and sexual harassment online, and on blogs. I mentioned Kathy Sierra, Devious Diva, and the fact that women are threatened with rape and violence, simply for speaking their minds online.

While I've never been threatened online, I have seen my share of, well, offensive behavior. I've noticed that guys are more likely to be physically or verbally aggressive at a club where the music is loud and the lights are low. I've noticed that guys are more likely to make an inappropriate comment, gesture, etc, if you're walking by them than if you're standing next to them. I guess it feels more anonymous if you aren't going to stay physically near them. Is it that they think no one will notice, or that they actually think it's ok?

I've also noticed that a woman can't be in the news without someone making remarks about the woman's looks. It's as though many people lack the ability to assess one set of attributes (intelligence, etc) without assessing all attributes (looks, etc).

None of this is particularly shocking, I suppose. I guess what surprised me is how inappropriate the comments get.

About two years ago, the Seattle Times wrote an article about why people are choosing to work at Google over Microsoft. The first few paragraphs were about me, and I stumbled across some forum where they were discussing the article. I started from the beginning of the four pages of comments and at first, it was pretty much on topic. Around the end of page 2, someone found my website and some pictures of me. Pretty quickly the comments degenerated into a very sexual and very vulgar nature. When someone found a picture of me and a Black friend of mine, they became not only vulgar and sexual, but also racist. I would repost some of the comments, but frankly, I don't even feel comfortable re-printing it.

Just a few weeks later, I posted something about Google and Open Source. You expect the usual set of pro-Google or anti-Google comments there. You do not expect someone to make this comment (which, incidentally, didn't even begin to compare to some of the comments on the previous forum): "You certainly are a slut when it comes to corporate fanboyism. I hope you're this easy in getting into the sack."

More recently, digg.com posted a New York times article about students in CS which features a photograph of a few male and female students programming. As expected, a huge chunk of the digg comments were assessing the attractiveness of the women.

After a while, you just start to expect this kind of behavior. You take it as a given that guys will grab your waist in a club, that they'll grab your arm if you're walking away from them, that they'll argue with you if you won't give him your number, that if your name or picture ever appears in the news, that they call you "hot", "ugly", "fat", "easy", etc.

Such is life, and such is the behavior you expect from strangers. But here's what gets me: is it just that the guys I know are that much better, or do they not have enough anonymity to act like the rest?

Videos from Seattle Scalability Conference

The Seattle Scalability Conference was held on June 23rd in Bellevue. One person posted their notes a while back, and videos of some of the talks were recently made available.

Enjoy!

Recruiting - The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

I just started subscribing to Microsoft's Job Blog - I figured it might have some info related to CareerCup (my own site related to interviewing, with lots of technical interview questions).

The most recent post gives a Top 10 No-No's when you contact a recruiter. The basic points are:

  1. Do your homework. Call with relevant specific questions.
  2. Customize your letter. Address it to me.
  3. Don't treat your recruiter like they are stupid. They are your advocate, if you want them to be.
  4. Know when to back off.
  5. Don't lie.
  6. Don't make excuses like "I'm sick."

Good advice. From an engineer's perspective, let me give some advice to recruiters (yes, you'll notice the high degree of overlap):

  1. Call your relevant positions. If I'm a Software Engineer at Google who already turned down a development position at Microsoft, I'm probably not interested in your testing contractor development position in Everett. Sorry.
  2. Customize your letters to me. And please spell my name right.
  3. Tell me how you got my resume. Did you find it on my blog? On another website? A recommendation from a professor? The more specific you can be, the less I think it's spam.
  4. Know when to back off. Yes, I'm speaking to you, Friendly Microsoft Recruiter. I really don't need to be contacted every month. You're hiring! I get it! :-)
  5. Call for a specific position - at least if you want to increase your chances of being interested. I'd have to be pretty desperate for a job to be excited to hear about a "development" position at some unnamed company - and is that really the person you want?
  6. Don't call me for a position I already have. Ok ok, this only happened once, but it was still pretty funny:
    Recruiter: "Hi Gayle, would you be interested in a Software Engineering position at Google? We have offices in Mountain View, New York, Seattle, ..."
    Me: "um, I work for Google."
    Recruiter: "What do you mean?"
    Me: "I mean... I'm sitting here, as we speak, at my desk, in Seattle, at Google."
    Recruiter: "Oh."

  7. If you leave a voicemail, leave your name, number and company. Speak slowly and clearly. I recently had someone leave two voicemails and each time I couldn't hear the phone number. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have called back anyway... but still. My point remains. The same person also claimed to have sent me an email. She probably didn't spell my email address correctly.

Sigh... the fact is that this happens to the same reason that spam happens. Responses are low. Email is cheap. Personalization is expensive. What can you do?

One Laptop Per Child - Why?

So, imagine that you're a starving child in Africa. You need food, water, medicine, and school supplies. Children all around you have died for lack of these things.

Someone offers you a laptop. Yes, it was built for $150 and is therefore pretty damn cheap as far as laptops. It's better than nothing, absolutely. It's an impressive feat of engineering. But - according to late night commercials anyway - just $1 per day could sponsor a child in a developing nation. That's almost five months of food, medicine, school supplies, etc. Which would you pick?

The One Laptop Per Child program states the following on its website:

Our goal: To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

Great, they can express themselves now - but does that make them any less hungry, thirsty, or sick?

Yes, the One Laptop Per Child program does good. It helps them. But is it really the best way to help them? It seems that microfinance, encouraging condom use in Africa to fight AIDS, improving irrigation and farming techniques or many, many other things would be more well suited to their needs.

Female Programmers: Are they special?

Last week, at lunch with two Microsoftie-friends, we got into a discussion about why there aren't many women in Computer Science. I've heard so many theories, but all we really know is that there are so many factors and some of them date back to childhood.

"So how'd you do it?" Jim asked, as though there was some huge obstacle I had to overcome, what with my being a woman and all. "Well, much the same way as you", I replied.

I applied to Engineering school. I was accepted. I did my homework. I took exams. I interviewed for internships. I got offers for some, I got rejected from others. Jim and I - we did the same thing. Was it harder for me to correctly prove that p is prime in discrete math? Do I deserve special recognition because I was able to do that proof despite my having an X chromosome where Jim has a Y?

My mother studied Electrical Engineering and no doubt, she had actual obstacles: people who would actually say "Kathy, I'm not sure Engineering is really for you. Perhaps you'd want to consider something more suitable for you, like fine arts?" Although you'd never hear her say it, women probably did have to fight professors to get into class, or to find an employer who would consider hiring a woman. But look at where we are thirty years later - no one's ever told me "go away - you're a woman."

Instead, we have so much special recognition that it's as though there are two types of programmers: regular programmers and then female programmers. Does it really help encourage this latter type if we give them a special attribute?

I'm not saying there aren't subtle ways which make women less likely to pursue Computer Science. A quick comparison of the United States to other countries tells you that that must be the case. But, by and large, society does not actively push women out of technology - women just aren't getting drawn into it as much.

Is that a problem? Yes, it is. Let's try to fix that.

Was it harder for me to get here because I'm female? No.

So that's all I'm saying - while various cultural issues make women less likely to pursue Computer Science, it's no harder for women to do it. So why label women programmers as "special" if they're doing the same thing as the "regular" programmers?

Bad Snail Mail, Bad!

It seems like generally a good idea to limit the amount of snail mail you get that has sensitive information on it (social security number, bank account, etc), right? I called my bank today to ask them to stop mailing me copies of my bank statements. I don't like snail mail in general and with all this identity theft and such, paper bank statements are just begging to be stolen.

My bank said no because apparently, Washington State has a law where banks have to send you a monthly paper statement. You'd think that with Seattle as a center of technology, Washington State would understand that paper bank statements are bad. But no no - it's law that I have to receive a nice little envelope every month with my bank written in large lettering so that would-be identify theives will know just where to look. What's up with that?

Seattle's Kwik-E-Mart

Despite my best attempts to not read through my RSS feeds in morning, I stumbled across an article about 7-Eleven turning some of their stores turned into Kwik-E-Marts. Well, I was curious, so I looked up the locations on 7-Eleven's website.

Not only was there one in Seattle, but it was just a few blocks from my apartment. I took a small detour on my way to work this morning to visit it.

I was somewhat impressed by the thoroughness of the Kwik-E-Mart makeovers:

Repainting the outside

Squishee & Buzz Cola Machines

Changing the sign on the top of 7-Eleven

Cardboard cut-outs of Simpsons characters (Ralph, Chief Wiggum, Lisa, Bart, Maggie, etc)

Kwik-E-Mart Chairs

Employees wearing Kwik-E-Mart uniforms

I have a few more pictures up on my Picasaweb album.

It's the last thing - employees wearing Kwik-E-Mart uniforms - that stuck me as being strange. As it just so happened, the guy at the cash register was indeed Indian. Ok, fine, dress up your stores... but your employees? Really? Are they commodities like that? And in those stores who have Indian/Pakistani employees, it feels a tad uncomfortable - like the stereotype is screaming at you.

The makeover, while somewhat amusing, just strikes me as being a little tacky. It's like 7-Eleven is a Disneyland ride, themed and all. But hey, that's marketing, right?

Stupid, stupid plaxo

Oh Plaxo, you were so close... so close...

Your syncing between Google Calendar and Outlook was great. Almost. But in the process, you've just spammed a whole bunch of my friends by sending out event cancellations for events that were 2+ months ago (well, let's hope it was only prior events and not future events). You also deleted the full guest list for an upcoming event and - for those who have Gmail - told them that it was canceled. Why, Plaxo, why? You came so close...

Maybe I'll try it again when you're out of beta.

Anyone got any good solutions for syncing between Google Calendar and Outlook (or Google Calendar and Blackberry)?

No iPhone for me!

I do not want an iPhone. That's right, I said it. I do not want one.

I like my blackberry pearl. It's small. It's cute. Email works beautifully. It runs Google Talk, Gmail, Google Maps, etc. I can install new apps on it. It has actual keys on the keyboard. I like it.

Music on my phone isn't a bad thing, but it's not that great. If I want to play music, I'll bring my iPod with me. And besides, I'm fairly sure that the size of my iPod plus the size of my blackberry is still smaller than the iPhone.

I do, however, want to play with one... just for a few days.

On a related note - how much productivity will be lost over the next few days due to the iPhone launch? What's going on today at the Apple campus?

RE: Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective

Sigh... why do I always get sucked into these things?

By now, it seems like everyone has read Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective. And now, I too am getting sucked into this discussion...

  1. The email pretty much states that one of the primary goals of this article is to give pointers for how Microsoft can convince candidates to come to Microsoft. eg, how can we spin Google's perks the other way? Keep that in mind. These are not necessarily things he does or doesn't like about Google.
  2. People are walking away from this article thinking "oh my god people at Google work really long hours." That's not actually what it says. It actually says that people work 10am - 6pm, but also spend time working from home. 10am - 6pm is an eight hour day - including lunch. Not bad. I work for Google, used to intern at Microsoft, and most of my friends work at Microsoft. I've seen no difference whatsoever in working hours.
  3. "Nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7". Microsoft employees tend to have SmartPhones with work mail on it, Google employees don't. Also, Google employees tend to use separate accounts for personal and work emails, whereas Microsoft employees tend to use their work address for both (not sure why). So actually, Google employees can more easily stay away from their work email.
  4. "Your [20%] project needs to be tacitly approved by your manager." Heh. That's not true.
  5. "Most managers won't remind you to start a 20% project." That's true. Google has a more hands off management style. They don't babysit you.
  6. "Google doesn't seem to think that private offices are valuable for technical staff. They're wrong." Ah, yes, the often discussed "open office" vs "private office" issue. There are pros and cons for each. The pros for a private office are pretty obvious, so I won't go into them. I think people overlook the pros for an open office: everyone on your team is right there. Have a question about the system architecture? Just ask. Everyone's right there. You don't have to call a meeting. You don't have to run down the hallway. You don't have to make a phone call. It saves a lot of time - and avoids unnecessary meetings.
    I actually had my own office for a few weeks when I first started at Google, and after that I shared an office with just one other person. It seemed cool at the time, but now, I actually prefer an open office plans. If I'm getting distracted I can put on my headphones, but normally, it's just nice to have everyone right there. (I've heard that the Bungie team at Microsoft was encouraged to switch to private offices when they were acquired. They declined. I didn't understand why they wanted cubes when I was at Microsoft either. It makes sense now.)
  7. "My manager had over 100 direct reports and is the common case for managers at Google." A slight exaggeration on the reports, but anyway... The email discussion on management only tells one side of the story. You might think, for example, how can a manager with 100 direct reports review you? Well, they don't, your peers do. That's just one example. I guess what I'm saying is that you can't apply Microsoft's management structure (eg, reviews by managers) to Google's numbers (100 direct reports) - that's mixing and matching, and it doesn't work. The structure is very different between the two companies.
  8. "Oh and conflict resolution between team members is very complex." Not complex, just different. Instead of some PM or manager coming down and saying "this is my decision - now go implement!", decisions are made more as a result of team discussion. A manager could step in, but usually a group consensus is better than just one person's decision.
  9. "Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it's hard to think about leaving because of all the "stuff" you'll need to transition and then manage for yourself." Heh. Now you're just being silly!

Is he happier at Microsoft than Google? Why did he leave Google? I'd be curious about those two points which are never addressed.

In my mind, there's one pretty powerful fact in Google's favor: many people have left Microsoft for Google. Microsoft would be more than happy to take them back. If they were happier at Microsoft, don't you think they would return? I don't know anyone who has.

And... I really have to stop getting involved in petty debates :-)

Applying to Google. Or just stealing food.

Recently a few friends of mine have applied to Google - without letting me refer them. It makes me cry inside. :-(

So, I'll make the following statements:

  • If I know you (or you know someone I know), and you want to apply to Google, send me your resume. I'll submit it for you.
  • If I don't know you, you're welcome to send me your resume anyway. If your resume looks good, I'd have no problems referring you. No promises though :-).

Also, lunch!

  • If you know me or anyone I know: Yes, we have free food. It's tasty and free for guests as well. Join me!

I'm in the Google office in Seattle/Kirkland. Email address is at the bottom of the page. Hope to hear from you soon :-)

Where does spam come from?

Most (technical) people by now know that it's not a good idea to give your real email address to websites when you register your account. But how much of a difference does that really make?

I have one email account for work, another that I give to family and friends, another that I post (obfuscated) on glaak.com, another that is posted in plain text on a university webpage, and one that I use to register for websites. All of them (other than my work email) forward to my "family and friends" email account, and all get spammed in their own special ways.

A few stats:

8000 spam per month: Generate-able Email Address ([First Name] @ [a common domain.com] )
This email address has a (remotely) common name + a common domain. It has never been posted anywhere, or been used to register for another service.

4000 spam per month: Plain Text Email Account
This email address was posted in plain text on a university webpage

1000 spam per month: Less Easily Generate-able Email Address ([First Name + Last Initial] @ [a common domain.com])
This email address has also never been posted or used to register, but is easy to generate.

100 spam per month: Registration Email Address
This email address would be difficult to generate, but is always used to register for services. Of course, the number of "legitimate" mailings this email address receives is a bit higher.

13 spam per month: Obfuscated Email Address
This email address is posted on this website, but is obfuscated with javascript. Yes, yes, it appears in plain text when the page is rendered, but in the source it's in javascript.

Of course, this wasn't a totally fair experiment. Not all email addresses have existed for the same amount of time, some are posted in more places than others, and there's overlap between some figures (for example, I'd guess that some of the spam going to the obfuscated email address is actually from people generating the address).

Conclusions:

  • Don't have an email address that you can easily generate (or make sure you have a good spam filter)
  • Don't post your email address online in plain text

Registering for a website with your real email address? You're probably ok. (Still, I recommend a secondary gmail account which auto-forwards to your real email account).

Luckily for me, Gmail's spam filter gets nearly all of the 13,000 montly pieces of spam (missing maybe 10 or so per month). Not bad.

Ahhh.... Plaxo

I've been using Google Calendar since it launched (well, actually, a bit before it launched :-)) and loved it. Yeah, I've used Outlook's Calendar and it's nice and all, but without an exchange server, I can't access my calendar from home and work. Plus, Google Calendar has Quick Add which is pretty much the best feature ever.

The only issue with Google Calendar was that since there was no way to sync Outlook & Google Calendar, there was no way to sync my blackberry with Google Calendar. Boo :-(

Plaxo just released a new version though which solves this. It can now sync between Google Calendar & Outlook (and a bunch of other services which I care less about). Ahh... meetings on my blackberry now :-).

Teaching & 20% Time

When I joined Google last year, I was simultaneously thrilled to be building innovative applications and bummed to be leaving behind my college years. No, I'm not talking about dorm life and late night pizza runs - I'm talking about teaching. I started teaching as a Sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and loved every minute of it. At first it was leading smaller sections of a larger lecture, but I later created the curriculum for a new course titled Software Design and Development and taught this in my final two years. As graduation neared, I toyed with two career choices: teacher and software engineer. I loved both but, since I had to pick just one, I decided to join Google as a Software Engineer.

Once I joined Google though, I realized that I didn't have to pick just one: I could do both! Google's 20% Time allows engineers to spend 20% of their time working on something outside of their main project. Long story made short, that's how I wound up teaching Software Design and Development at the University of Washington in Spring 2006.

Thirteen freshman and sophomores spent the quarter learning how to design and implement large software projects. Each project involved a graphical user interface, although the priciples and techniques learned would apply to a variety of topics.

In the final four weeks of the course, students had the opportunity to build any application of their choosing. These projects clearly reflected each student's individual passions and strengths - which, being college students, meant music, games, pictures, and chat.

Andrea Parkhill, a drama major who was interested in both music and computer science, wrote MelodyScript, an application which allows the user to compose music by adding notes to a musical staff. Alan Fineberg's project had some similarities, but his was specifically focused on generating music loops. Andy Peck, however, created an application which would enable users to search their music collections and create playlists based on a variety of categories.

Julia Schwarz, a sophomore who excelled in user interface design (and in a number of other areas), created a beautiful chat client that allowed Tablet PC users to chat with hand-written text and drawings. Nathan Weizenbaum's application also supported chatting, but was instead focused on collaborative drawing of images (complete with layers, history, and all that fun stuff!). Alyssa Harding also did something image related, but her application instead acted as a photo organizer and uploader.

The popularity of arcade-style games is never a surprise: Daniel Suskin wrote Pacman, Paul Beck wrote Bejeweled, Peter Beckfield wrote Snakes, and Peter Miller wrote a networked 2 player version of Tetris.

The final three students, Cosmin Barsan, Dayne Wagner and Eli Williams, implemented a file encryption application, a peer-to-peer file synchronizer, and a personal calendar, respectively.

While students were pushed to design applications with a clear user interface and clean, well-written code, they were still offered the opportunity to design and implementation an application that matched their passions. For me, however, this course offered me the opportunity to merge my passion for teaching with my passion for software development. I thought when I graduated from school that I had to pick one or the other - I never would have thought that I could pick both!

Blogger Hosting

If you're wondering where all the previous comments have gone, let me assure you that I didn't delete them. Well, not really. I switched over my blog to be hosted by Google's Blogger and was able to import all the posts. But, unfortunately, I lost the comments in the process.

Now though, at least RSS feeds will work and I get a whole bunch of new admin features. It's a change for the better, I swear :-)

CareerCup - New Features!

CareerCup: www.careercup.com

First of all let me thank everyone who's helped out by reporting bugs, issues and feature requests on CareerCup. Your feedback - both positive and negative - helps to make CareerCup better.

CareerCup is your source for interviewing and finding a job. Browse technical interview questions from major companies and find out directly from candidates what it was like. CareerCup also provides resume tips, interview tips, and other suggestions to help you find your dream job. You can post your resume and see companies like Google that are hiring.

The new changes to CareerCup help you stay more up-to-date with today's questions. Specifically, I added:

  • RSS Feeds listing the question of the day and the ten most recently added questions.
  • A Google Module that you can add to your personalized homepage.
  • In addition to grouping the interview questions by company or category, you can also sort them by date
  • A feature to invite your friends to CareerCup or to email them a question

Want your favorite feature to be implemented? Tell me about it here!