
The Death Row Book Club - wowsig
https://longreads.com/2018/03/27/the-death-row-book-club/
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spodek
For most of my life I wouldn't have seen it this way, but the HN community is
sensitive to equal representation of the sexes in STEM fields. This story had
only men in it. Does this story not illustrate sexism in the criminal justice
system hurting men? All the more that people don't immediately call out the
unequal representation of the sexes in every part of the criminal justice
system: 100:0 in this story, something like 99:1 in many other parts?

I know there are calls to change the justice system, such as from the
Innocence Project, which I support and recommend supporting, but nowhere near
the level for working on areas of society that hurt women more.

I'm not suggesting putting more women on death row, but shouldn't there be
some effort to approach equality in arrests, convictions, sentencing, and
other elements of justice? More importantly on the burdens and social
obligations we choose for our society to place on men as opposed to women? If
you believe men are simply more criminal than women, do you only believe
criminality is the only difference, that men are just worse than women and
100:0 is appropriate, or would you also expect other differences too?

~~~
matte_black
This sensitivity only applies toward women and only on favorable topics such
as making money or a career in STEM.

No one cares that there’s mostly men on deathrow because they are men, and no
one cares that there aren’t more women doing woodworking because woodworking
isn’t as glamorous as working in STEM.

The call for equality is not a call for universal equivalence in all things.
Never has been, probably never will be.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The issue is that we don’t need more woodworkers or death row inmates, but we
need more programmers. Expanding the talent supply by being more inclusive
will be beneficial to the industry and humanity as a whole, though we can
definitely argue about how it’s currently being done.

~~~
matte_black
We don’t really need more programmers anymore than we need more woodworkers,
or construction workers, or plumbers, but no one is calling for women to enter
those other careers.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I don’t think that is really true. Both of the latter are apprenticed-based
but otherwise easy to enter, and we are only having a shortage now because of
the housing crash in the previous decade. Tech has been booming almost
continuously now since the beginning of the century.

~~~
matte_black
But tech work has many force multipliers, unlike those other careers. The
right framework, or library, or product can make the work of one programmer
feel like the work of 10, and that’s what many people do not take into
account.

Also, demand for programmers at the salaries programmers want to work for is
not that strong. Many companies that want programmers want them for a lot
less. This cheaper labor can be harder to find, but can be substituted in many
ways such as using an “As a Service” offering or scooping up a pile of Indians
from Kolkata.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It is never that easy. Frameworks are kind of force multipliers until you want
to do something new, then you are stuck.

Demand for programmers is high even at high salaries (depending on experience
of course). The average google programmer pulls in around $1 million in
revenue, which covers their overhead well enough.

~~~
matte_black
What average google programmer pulls in $1 million a year?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I meant revenue for the company.

~~~
matte_black
Revenue an employee makes for a company doesn't need to correlate with salary,
that's based off market demand. If that's what people want they should work in
sales on comission.

