Reading 03: Work-Life Balance

To put it bluntly, I don’t think that men and women can “have it all”. Not the way society currently operates at least. Society will look down on and devalue a worker who takes time off of work to be with his or her family. If a job requires a lot of extra hours to rise to the top, then parents will find it exceptionally difficult to balance work and family. The only way for one parent to devote enough time to this type of career is for the other to sacrifice their own career. Companies and government administrations don’t want a worker who will be away from the office. They want someone who will be devoted to their work at all hours of the day. This is especially biased against women, who are expected to stay home with their families.

Though, to be fair to the companies, they are paying people to be productive. If they think that the best way to do this is to shame people for giving time to their families, then they are free to do that. As Anand Iyer points out though, this does not seem to be the case. Some studies have shown that companies that are more generous allowing employees time off to be with their families. I don’t think that one way is more ethical than the other. If it is a person’s wish to work at a company with a policy they don’t agree with, then they have to deal with the consequences.

With that being said, I don’t think it is the right choice. There are plenty of valuable workers who want to balance work and family. A company that builds a reputation for being flexible with employees performing this balancing act will attract the best of those people to their company.

If I were running a company, this is the way I would run it. I would not want any of my employees to have to sacrifice the quality of their family for the sake of the gain of my company. Such success would feel tarnished and dirty. This is mainly because I know that I would personally greatly value this from an employer. I am the type of person that is not going to care as much about my job as much as I would my family. I see my career as nothing more than a way to support myself and my family. Of course, this also means that I don’t completely devalue my career. The further I can progress in my career, the better I will be able to support my family. The priority will always lie with my family though. It is difficult for me say how I am going to maintain this balance. I have never worked full-time and provided for myself. I just plan on keeping an open-mind to anything, and always re-evaluating where i am at when things get hard. After all, this kind of balancing act is not a science. It will be a series of judgment calls from one moment to the next. Anand Iyer said in his article that tech companies do a better job of this than non-tech companies, so this statement at least leaves me hopeful.

One other point that I would like to address is how people define “having it all”. Career is seen as an aspect of a person’s identity. If they are not successful in their career where they are well-known for their great accomplishments, then we view them as less valuable than other people. Why is career such a big part of this evaluation. For privileged people like myself who have access to higher education and a better career, it may be understandable to say that if I don’t use my education that I’ve let a few people down. But why can’t a less wealthy person who works as a truck driver have it all. Maybe they love their job because of how it allows travel and they are loved by their family and are genuinely happy with their life. They didn’t have access to higher education and the type of career that earns them more money. But if they are genuinely happy, don’t they still have it all. As Anne-Marie Slaughter points out in her article,  there is a lack of prioritization towards family life in the work force. We revere the fervor of people who take off time from work for religion, but devalue those who do it to spend more time taking care of their kids. Perhaps I am missing the point of the conversation, but It is my wish that society as a whole would put more emphasis on family life and less on career success.

I’ll finish with a quote from Anne-Marie Slaughter’s husband, Andrew Moravcsik, that really seems to sum up how I feel about this topic, “At the end of life, we know that a top regret of most men is that they did not lead the caring and connected life they wanted, but rather the career-oriented life that was expected of them. I will not have that regret.”

 

 

Project 01 – Code of Ethics Reflection

Our code of ethics is mainly focused on protecting the students. This can take many forms as a Computer Science student. It could mean anything from how students should never write code with vindictive intent to how students should always give their best effort so as to ensure they do not detract from their own learning or the learning of others.

Just like the ACM Code of Ethics, our ethical code is segregated into four sections. The first section is just general guidelines for students of computer science at a high level view. The major points are to try to make your work have a purpose and to avoid causing direct harm to any other students. The second section is more about the responsibilities of the students pertaining to course work. The third section then considers the situations involving group work and student leadership and the fourth serves to emphasize the importance of following the code of conduct.

I think that the major flaw in this document, as well as any other type of “honor code” document is the lack on an incentive to think about such a code. Except for on rare occasions when a student unfortunately deems it appropriate to cheat in a class, honor codes are hardly considered by the students. Most of the document is not about cheating or undermining classes in any way, but at least at Notre Dame, that is the only time we ever hear about the honor code. No one really gives thought to a code of ethics when they are orienting themselves toward making a positive impact on their community. And when students may are working on a side project outside of class, I highly doubt they would give consideration to the guidelines in such a document.

I think a better way of saying this is that when students (or really just any person) are thinking about how to be ethical, they are rarely guided by what is said in a document. Instead, people make ethical decisions based on their personal beliefs. If the ethical code does not agree with this thought, a person is more likely to defy the rule and act on their own moral imperative than they are to follow the code. That being said, I do acknowledge that it is important to have some type of written document acknowledging exactly what the rules are so that they can be enforced when broken.

I don’t think that there is a way to solve this problem. The only thing that could possible be done about it is to provide a second document to back up the ethical code which explains the reasoning behind it. The same problem still pervades this solution though, as if the students do not agree with the reasons because their own reasons for their personal beliefs are better, then they will still act against it. Additionally, its highly unlikely that students even read a code of ethics and it is even less likely that students read a document to explain the code.

As I stated above, although a code of ethics is not very useful as a set of guidelines, it does have its use as a written set of rules to aid in enforcing violations of the code. Though the actual code of ethics may not be that effective as a set of guidelines, writing a code ethics is a different story. As part of the procedure of writing a code of ethics, you really have to think about what each rule should be, and more importantly, why you think it should be a rule. This process can force you to realize the weight of a rule and it can also make you realize a glaring flaw that was previously unnoticed. Thus, it can be a type of self-proctored test of your personal ethical code in a way that is similar to a person practicing a speech in front of a mirror.

I believe that this type of self-reflection and humility is the most important aspect of an ethical guide. Whether a person’s ethical code is a written document or a personal philosophy, refusal to consider other perspectives is toxic. An ethical code should not be seen as absolute or set in stone, especially in a the field of technology. For as technology evolves, our ethical code may have to evolve alongside it.

Reading 02: The CS Interview

When I moved back in to my dorm at the start of last Fall, I felt all of the typical Senior year emotions. I was excited and nostalgic and looking forward to seeing all of my friends again. Looming over all of this though, was a great pressure I could feel in my chest.

I had to find a job for after college.

This inspired complicated emotions within me. I was certainly, on some level, eager for the challenge the interviewers would present me, but the dominant emotion was closer to, “OH MY GOSH WHAT IF I FAIL ALL MY INTERVIEWS AND DON’T FIND A JOB!” The previous year I interviewed with a few companies looking for an internship, but I was unable to get more than one on-site interview which I crashed and burned because I failed a programming test. Not good.

Granted, if I am being fair to myself, the reason that I failed that programming test had nothing to do with my programming skill, but rather because it dealt with math about an unfamiliar subject and used unfamiliar notation which I spent a long time figuring out. Being that I was alone in a room, there was not much I could have done to resolve this. It may not have been as brutal of an interview as Steve Shogren described on his blog, but this interview had shattered my confidence for future interviews. The thought that kept going through my head was, “What kind of programmer fails a programming test?” I questioned whether I was even “CS enough” for my career path in the first place. Maybe I should have majored in something else. Most other people were coming back from CS internships across the country, many with job offers, and I was never one to pursue side projects like other students do in Computer Science. The deck felt stacked against me.

Luckily, I quickly found that this was not the case for me. I had prepared that summer by reading the typical Cracking the Coding Interview book by Gayle Laakmann Mcdonell, and signing up for all of the project-based classes I could find. I applied to roughly 10 places and I got on-site interviews with almost all of the companies I heard back from. By the time I had completed my first on-site interview, my confidence had soared above what it started at. I was getting questions that I expected thanks to reading the interviewing book and having taken in a few weeks of our algorithms class I was much more confident in the efficiency of the code I was writing. I knew to ask the interviewers questions and help them understand what I was thinking. I even got to fly to Google and interview in person at Mountain View which was something I thought was far beyond my reach at the start of the year. Eventually I accepted a job in Kansas City with Cerner Corporation as a Software Engineer, and I am very excited to start working there in July.

With all of this being said, I also think that I was lucky in my interview process. There are a lot of bad interviewers out there. From luck, I was able to avoid them for the most part and as a result, the interview process was very enjoyable. However, if someone had asked me to program a linked list that conformed to List<T>, I would’ve been doomed. I don’t handle those overwhelming cases well, and would’ve been lost in the world of a language I’ve barely touched. I am very thankful that my interviewers were kind to met they all treated me like as Sam Phippen suggests in his post about unreasonable Junior programmer interviews.

I don’t think that any of the companies I interviewed with are unethical because they did something to make me feel pressured – not even the internship interview Sophomore year. They’re only trying to find someone to fit their team. This is no easy task. It’s fairly common knowledge that there is no good way to test a person’s Computer Science knowledge which is evidenced by how there isn’t a widely popular certification test. So judging a person’s talent in a few interviews is no easy task for a company employee. Certain people like Laszlo Bock think that have identified a better process, but it is still a work in progress that everyone is trying to perfect. The best we can do is our best, and I think that is exactly what is happening on both sides of every genuine interview.

Reading 01: On the Ethos of the Computing Industry

The computing industry does a good job of setting itself apart from others in many ways. One of these is how it rewards personal merit, allowing people from any background to elevate themselves to high positions as long as they have the skills to make themselves useful enough. Regardless of your personal background – such as whether or not you have a college degree, where you went to school, or how wealthy or famous your family is – if you can prove that you can make an impact, a company like Google will be willing to hire you.

Some people claim that this is not quite the case, arguing that the most successful people and the ones that get promoted to those height are still wealthy, white males. Alice Marwick says in an article for WIRED magazine, “If the tech scene is really a meritocracy, why are so many of its key players, from Mark Zuckerberg to Steve Jobs, white men?” And later in the same artical she defends her claim saying, “Studies of entrepreneurship discourse have repeatedly found that entrepreneurs are male-gendered, while female entrepreneurs are ignored, under-covered, and portrayed less favorably than men. For instance, in her study of entrepreneurs, Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included ‘self-reliant’, ‘assertive’, ‘forceful’, ‘risk-taking’, ‘self-sufficient’, ‘leader’, ‘competitive’, and ‘ambitious’.” While I agree with her that Silicon Valley is not quite a meritocracy, it is for different reasons. Although this is just because I think that the top entrepreneurs are there not only because of their skill, but also because of their luck and timing – elements of almost all entrepreneurial successes. My problem with this argument is that she is calling out society for labeling entrepreneurs with what she and ms. Ahl think are male-gendered terms, but these words do not have to be considered as such. They are simply the traits that can help a person to become a successful entrepreneur.

Addressing the other complaint, that female leaders are ignored in the computing industry, I say this is not the case at all. According to Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch, it is quite the opposite. He says that one particular conference, Y Combinator, are actively seeking out women leaders to speak. In his own words, “Y Combinator wants – really, really wants – female founders and that there just aren’t very many of them. I know this because Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston has told me how excited they are to get applications from women, and that they want to do everything they can to get more female applicants. What they probably won’t admit, but I suspect is true anyway, is that the rate of acceptance for female applicants is far higher than for male applicants.”

This being said, it is true that there are less female founders and CEOs than there are males in the computing industry. I don’t believe that this is because women have a harder time elevating themselves though. There are simply less women in the computing industry. Looking at our graduating Computer Science class of 2016, roughly 10% – 12% of it is composed of women. It is just a fact that more men are interested in the computing industry than women. This could be seen as an alarming fact that has more deep-rooted reasons which need to be addressed, but that is not the subject of this article. In order to gauge the success of women compared to men in Silicon Valley, we shouldn’t just compare the number of company founders who are men to those that are women. That would be an unfair poll because of the ratio of men to women in the pool being surveyed.

A much more interesting and truth telling statistic would be the percentage of women in the computing industry who are founders or CEOs of companies compared to that of men. I think that this statistic would be much more balanced. The same statistical comparison could be used to measure the power difference in race inequality, or personal backgrounds as well. While I cannot say for sure what the numbers of these comparisons would show, I think that there would be much less of a difference between the different categories of people. From my readings on the subject it seems that, in Silicon Valley, if you can prove your skills, then you’ve already got your foot in the door.

Reading Assignment 00: The Parable of Talents and Computer Science

Like many other people, when I first heard the parable of talents at a young age, I was s bit confused. Jesus normally preaches that those who have less and exemplify humility will come first into heaven, such as in the parable of the camel and the needle. Here,  however, he states, “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” On the surface, this seems  to be contradictory, so a closer look must be taken.

The story begins with the master giving his talents to the servants in differing amounts. The first two servants manage to double their talents, while the third simply maintains what he started with. Then when the master returns he praises the first two for their doubling of the allotments given to them with the same words: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” But the third servant who simply maintained what he had is severely punished. This is a strange and unexpected result for someone who seems to have done nothing wrong. There must be something about the talents given to the servants which is inherently supposed to allow for growth. The servant who returned the same amount then is shamed not because he did not double the currency given to him, but because he impeded the natural growth of the talents.

I believe these talents to be representative of thuman personal skills and talents that we each receive as individuals. God bestows on us various abilities as we progress through life. Some people are naturally athletic, while others might be more intellectually incline. You can also be a very nurturing person, or a great teacher. The list of personal talents that an individual could have is uncountable infinite. Each person is given a set of talents though. We may be gifted with many skills, like the servant who is given five talents; or we could also receive a less like the servants with two and one talents. Whatever these skills are, it is important to understand that we are given these skills with a choice. We can use them to create and spread love, or let them go to waste by using them to selfish ends or even let them go unused. Whatever the skill is, there is a way to put it to a good, selfless use. Athletes can use their talent to do good by being positive role models, and in the case of professionals, by being generous with their money earned. A teacher can use their talent to educate the next generation of students. The important aspect is not the skill itself, but to what end we use it. We must use our skills in a selfless way so as to promote the common good of all people, and create a community of love and care for each other.

In regards to my own personal life and computer skills, this means that the education that I have been working hard to obtain has got to be put to good use. After all, it has not only been obtained through my own work, but also as a gift from God. Just as the master expected to receive more than he gave to his servants, I must use my skills to make a positive impact on the world. This can be done through many ways, as a Computer Science education can lead down many roads. A person in this situation can be generous and give a large amount of my salary to the needy. Or he or she could use the skills in such a manner that is directly helpful to other people. The exact way that I can personally put these skills to such a use may not always be completely clear. But the grave consequences for letting them got to waste is very apparent at the end of this parable. Thus, I see that it is important to always be vigilant of opportunities where I can do exactly that, and use my education to create good in the world.

Personal Introduction

Hi, my name is Thomas Deranek. I am a native of South Bend, so Notre Dame has been a part of my life for a long time. Growing up in South Bend, I attended Marian High School, a small Catholic school no more than 15 minutes away from Notre Dame. They did a fine job of teaching and letting me explore what careers I might be interested during my time there, but when I left and started my college career, I still was not sure what I wanted to do. I decided to major in Computer Science mainly because I was so interested in video games; though my own high school had very little to offer in terms of programming experience, so I had little idea of what exactly it was I signing up for.

I remember freshman year in our introductory course for engineering, we had a day where seniors from each engineering discipline talked about their experiences in their majors. The representative of Computer Science said that he also got into the major because of video games originally, but that over time he began to appreciate the subject in a much larger scope, and was not going to work at a video game studio after graduating. When I heard this, I was excited at hearing that somebody else had joined it for the same reason (though now I realize that this cannot be very uncommon). I was also resolute, however, that I would not change my mind about going into video games. I thought back then, that that was the career path that I was meant for.

As I have progressed in my education of Computer Science, I have learned how fascinating that it can be, even when programming video games is not the ultimate goal. I quickly started to appreciate the many challenges that are present in an uncountable number of unique scenarios. My first major project within the major was a video game, as it was for most people. But it was during this project that I realized how the most fulfilling part of building the game was not the game itself. Instead it was figuring out the major challenges that were present in making the game, and then deciding how to solve those problems. The further I got into the Computer Science curriculum here at Notre Dame, the more I began to fully realize this. And now I am signed up for a job next year that is in health care, rather than video games. I will be working at Cerner Corporation in Kansas City, Missouri.

I believe that the most pressing issues in Computer Science are those related to security, on both a personal, and a business basis. On the business side, this concerns things such as credit card security and consumer trust. Without a strong foundation in security of computers, companies will struggle to keep their consumers’ trust. On a personal basis, there is the same issue of personal credit information being leaded, but also that of how data mining can expose people in ways that they are not comfortable with. The moral side to this comes from how people with the knowledge to bypass security must recognize the gravity of their decision to do so and think about the many ways that multitudes of people could be affected by their actions. In terms of the personal information, it is crucial to recognize that each person’s own dignity deserves as much respect on the Internet as it does normally. Thus each person’s privacy should be respected by any data mining practices taken.

I look forward to learning about these issues and many more in the class!