Why diversity matters

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Topics to cover and ideas

• a key for a high effective team is to have a diverse balance of individuals
• man and women are wired quite differently and it is important to have a balance in the team
• mention Jane's book and the issue of not having enough women in the cyber security (which makes us more insecure)
• caveat on the inaccurate use of women to represent diversity. LGBT, minorities and introvert individuals (man and women) are also part of the key diversity that we need in our industry
• need to get more women in programming and data science
• if you are good with maths and logic, you will be a good developers

• the most important things that a good developer must have are (note how most women are very strong in this area):

  • design and creativity
  • common sense
  • attention to details
  • ability to solve complex problems by breaking them down into smaller ones
  • ability to learn fast and reacting well to comments/criticism
  • good at diagraming and architecture
  • good engineering practices (namely doing fact based decisions)
  • good at managing tasks (and estimating how long something will take)
  • document code and write tests
  • work well under pressure
  • stakeholder management (namely at keep the expectation of when code will be delivered)
  • good team player
  • positive attitude to the team and new challenges

• what are the characteristics of a bad developers:

  • (the reverse of the above)
  • 'hero'syndrome (he/she will 'save the day')
  • superiority complex (everybody is not as clever has him/her)
  • very complex design (which nobody real understands)

Looking at the two lists, it is obvious why we need more women to get into programming

Another topc is