Michael wrote an open letter to Bill Gates. Michael is a smart guy.

(…), unless things have changed drastically in Redmond while I’ve been away this past year, your technical employees (and those of other companies; this is not unique to Microsoft) put in far more than 40 hours per week. It doesn’t matter how interesting that work is; I submit that there is something wrong with an industry that expects its workers, as a permanent state of affairs, to work more than the accepted standard work week. And I think students agree with this and are voting with their feet.

That’s about it. I think that Michael is right that the long hours is probably the main reasons why women won’t go into IT.

How are we going to fix it? It seems that the best way to fix things is to do exactly what students are doing: just don’t enter the profession. As fewer people come into it, there will be more pressure to offer better jobs.

Outsourcing won’t do it. Massive temporary visa programs? We don’t have those in Canada, but the USA should probably do away with them and they probably will, if only for security reasons/paranoia.

I’m really hopeful that in 10 years, IT jobs will be much better. High end jobs will be 40 hours jobs at very good salaries. IT is simply too important to society and the challenges are too great not to have our best people working there.

I just read a great paper in the Chronical called Evaluation and the Culture of Secrecy:

For years now, I’ve been waging a private battle against the unexamined practice of confidentiality. When I write readers’ reports, I add a postscript requesting that the press or journal attach my name to the evaluation. Then I hope it does so. I add my request for openness to my tenure-evaluation letters too.

What an eye-opener!!! Our current academic system with all its secret evaluations takes a lot from the CIA and Al Quaida, but very little from the justice system.

For years now, I’ve been annoyed that my paper reviews are anonymous. In many cases, I’ve had the feeling that such or such review was motivated politically (I didn’t cite the right people). I’ve also heard many horror stories about promotion cases going sour for unknown pr unexplainable reasons. Like many people, I no longer really trust the system. I used to trust it when I was a graduate student. I believed that people did their best to manage the system, but now, I strongly suspect that many decisions are bias and people get away with it because of the secrecy.

What changed today is that I realized that I can do something about it. I can request that the reviews I write bear my name.

It is the fault of TV shows!!! Who knew?

Princeton University Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, Maria Klawe, said so.

In contrast, Klawe said the number of women in law and medicine has reached parity with men. Why? “I think there is a correlation with TV shows,” that even when Klawe was a teenager, showed women happily at work in those fields. “I think computer science is a lot more creative than the jobs doctors and lawyers have,” she said, asking why Hollywood doesn’t do more with the IT field.

Of course, some will want to distinguish Computer Science and IT. I won’t go there because a large number of Computer Science graduates (as well as other fields such as Physics for that matter) go into IT. It stands to reason that if you have no interest for IT, you might consider a law or medicine major.

Ok. But I still don’t buy the TV show explanation. What about relatively modest salaries, long hours, and the macho caffeine-induced buzz? I’m sure several women don’t mind working 90 hours a week, but if you are to attract women to the IT profession, you better come up with better working conditions: higher salaries, lesser outsourcing threats, more flexible hours and so on.

Maybe having fewer graduates might help the working conditions. Of course, we could always object that outsourcing will quickly compensate and keep wages low. Maybe. It is hard to predict where Information Technology will take us.

However, it is true that Information Technology and Computer Science is really the current driver, or as Bill Gates said it:

Computer science is the change agent of the time.

It is simply not the case, currently, that the profession is very appealing for women.

Thanks to Fred for pointing out the article.

Update: Scott vouched for Maria, so maybe the TV show idea is not so silly. Still, higher salaries would help!

Jython 2.2a1 is out! (see also here and here). This is great news. I use Jython a bit, but up to now, with some caution as it always seems like the project is about to die and bring me code down with it.

However, if version numbers are any indication, Jython is still behind Python which is at 2.4.1, but the be fair, the release notes say that they are at 2.3 and beyond:

Welcome to Jython 2.2a1
=======================

This release includes many major changes since the last full release:

– new-style classes
– Java Collections integration
– PEP 302 implementation
– iterators
– generators
– __future__ division
– support for running on JDK1.5
– new installer
– a significant number of features to bring Jython in line with CPython
– many, many bugfixes

It was compiled a OS X with JDK1.4 but should run on JDK 1.2 +.

The full set of changes are too numerous to list in detail. Please consult
the sourceforge tracker for all closed issues since the last release.

This version of Jython has support for most of Python 2.2 and numerous features from Python 2.3 and beyond. A more comprehensive list will be forthcoming.

Please email jython-dev@lists.sourceforge.net with questions.

thanks,

The Jython Development Team

Anyhow, if you are like me and can’t stand Java verbose style, Jython is a great alternative especially if you want to cook up an application fast. It is not as great as Java for designing APIs though because while Java can call Jython, it is a bit of a pain to do so.

Seb Paquet, the world famous social software researcher is leaving the Nationa Research Council of Canada and coming back to Montreal:

Let me just sum it up by saying that lots happened and some difficult decisions were made. Among the most significant outcomes: my family and I made a decision to move back to Montreal, and I’m leaving the National Research Council of Canada.

Personally, it feels great to be back in my hometown. While Moncton is nice, easy to navigate (by car), close to the ocean, and culturally active, it just can’t compete with Montreal in terms of the variety of opportunities to see and experience. Also, for the kids it’s great to be close again to the grandpas, grandmas and cousins. We missed those a lot.

I did the same a little over a year ago: we moved back from Fredericton to Montreal for just about the same reasons. The truth is that a research career means you have to travel, but it is not always a good thing. Some of us just need to have roots at a particular place. There are cities in the world, and Montreal is one of them, which own people. A Montrealer is a Montrealer.

So far, Seb is following Anna and I which is fair because Seb arrived at NRC about a year after Anna and I did. This tells you something about the survival rate. We both moved back from New Brunswick to Montreal. Not because we were offered better jobs or better salaries, but because we just needed to come back home to Montreal.

I can tell you that while I miss NRC researchers, and I miss the better salary, I cannot help but be glad I’m back in Montreal. I also happen to love my current job, but I was ready to settle for a so-so job.