Voice of the DBA

Tag: diversity

  • Are You a Diverse User Group or Event?

    One of the things that I’ve seen crop up at various points in my career is a question of diversity. I know there are many people that don’t think this is a problem, or maybe more specifically, their problem. They don’t think that it is their fault that not enough women or minorities are represented in their industry.

    One thing I’d ask user groups and events to do is publish a diversity scorecard, either after a schedule is selected, or annually for user groups.

    What do I mean? Here’s a short look at something I noticed. I went out and grabbed a set of data from a few user groups and event that I thought of. I have no real idea of what to make of this:

    2021-06-14 11_53_42-Dviersity in User Groups.xlsx - Excel An average diversity of 35%, though I could have made some mistakes. I counted women, and separately counted minorities that were not white males as diverse. I think I counted those I know as LBGTQ as minorities as well.

    It’s not scientific, nor is it necessarily some quota I’m looking to meet here. As a minority (I’m in a few data sets above), I think 35% is pretty good, but likely it ought to be higher, especially with regards to women. They make up half of the world, but are underrepresented in our industry.

    A quick anecdote, in case you think that this isn’t important. Early on, the computer jobs were mainly for women. They programmed a lot, and helped get things working in various industries. The job was seen as “secretarial”. Once companies started to pay more, men wanted those jobs, and took over the industry. Hiring practices, and men being comfortable with other men, not because of talent. Good programmers come in all colors, creeds, and genders.

    That has happened in other industries as well. It’s not a malicious thing, but it is a trend when there isn’t visibility or attention paid to the issues. Those that are in charge tend to aim for homogeneousness, or some level of uniformity. That displaces others.

    I’d like to call on all user groups to add a report to their main meeting page. Just cull the data from the last 12 months (or meetings) and report on it. Microsoft does something like this for their company, as does Apple, Google, Facebook, Redgate, GE, Walmart, and many others.

    Do us all a favor and pay attention to your actions in this area, and encourage others. I was happy to speak to the local WIT group years ago on how to give a presentation and managed to get one person to start speaking. If I did that every year, we’d have a lot more women speakers, so this is on me as much as on many others.

  • Expanding Inclusion and Diversity – Better Linking

    I’m a native English writer/speaker. Some might debate how well I really know the language, but I am a native. I wasn’t a good student of languages. I struggled with Spanish I, took 4 years of Japanese in college, and wasn’t sure I really learned a lot.

    I tried to learn some Spanish when my wife hired someone who had that as a native language and struggled with English. I didn’t apply myself well and struggled. I also tried some Italian when my boss was learning, but again, continuity was an issue. However, the pandemic changed some of that, as I’ve been working on a streak with Duolingo, back in Japanese and practicing with my son, as well as doing French with my daughter. So far, I’m nearly at a year of some daily practice.

    What does this have to do with diversity and inclusion? It has a little to do with it, and a new habit I’m going to try and build.

    The other day I saw a tweet from @SQLChick: “I learned something cool! You know how Microsoft Docs are localized? We can tell because it’s in the URL. For me, that path includes “en-us/” and if I remove that, the Docs site adds it back when I visit the page. Removing it is better for link sharing with a global audience.”

    That’s a good idea. I’ve known this was the structure for MS Docs, but I hadn’t thought about it.

    I hadn’t thought about inclusion here.

    I often assume most developers know English, at least from the code standpoints. Most languages are implemented in English, and lots of software doesn’t get translated. However, that is changing, and I know companies are thinking about localizing things more and more.

    As they should.

    So, my challenge to myself, and you, is to grab links and make them local where possible. As an example, I was looking up this link the other day:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/select-order-by-clause-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15

    If I remove the “/en-us” part, I get this:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/t-sql/queries/select-order-by-clause-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15

    If I drop that in a new browser, it reverts to the English version, but if someone has their local system set for French, or Japanese, or Spanish, they get that version. The link works for them, rather then dropping into my language.

    It’s not necessary, but it’s polite. Something worth doing a bit more of all the time.