.png)
According to Zippia, "9.1% of [all] artificial intelligence specialists are women" and "13.6% of [all] security engineers are women." According to Boell, "only 10-15% of machine learning researchers in the leading technology companies are women."
I'm willing to bet the percentage of blockchain developers/programmers of blockchain technology is similar.
These jobs are very high paying. The average salary for AI + ML engineers, security researchers, and blockchain developers ALL are in the six-figure range.
These jobs are not that hard to enter. A lot of people become blockchain developers in under two years, and there are many stories of people becoming software engineers in six months. There are countless FREE online courses for all these jobs' qualifications. The only difficulty I think is to overcome laziness and to have a few months' living expenses prepared to live off of when you are learning. Getting good at anything is a different story, but having the basics is already enough to get your foot in the door in an economy where you only have leverage if you are harder to replace, and clearly demand for these new tech workers is outpacing supply.
Everybody doubts their ability to learn and fit into a job until they actually acquire the skills necessary. Then things get much easier and more mundane. Never think you can never learn something. Everybody's brain is super powerful, and just because a job has a high barrier to entry doesn't mean anything other than you will have to invest some time into your learning. I knew someone at a community college who graduated as a software engineer at a top trading firm despite not having a computer science degree.
You might be like me, a hardcore philosophy and spirituality enthusiast who comes from a humanities background. Heck, I have won awards for the humanities in the past, yet I am STILL pivoting to STEM. Why? Simple: I have learned that I actually hate dealing with workplace politics. STEM is better for introverts who feel more energized away from people (that's the definition of being an introvert). I used to work with toxic people, and that's how I knew I would prefer a job with less interpersonal communication and fewer meetings. The baseless and degrading stereotype that "women are emotional" is not true, as you all know, so I encourage everybody to step outside of the boxes that society tries to perpetuate for us in our careers. There's no reason for us to be in people-facing jobs when those tend to be the MOST EMOTIONALLY TAXING jobs. Switch to tech — not only do you get paid more, but you also have less bullshit to deal with.
Tech is the new oil nowadays — we cannot let men be the main arbiters and controllers of such a powerful new revolution of software into the future. We know that women have been socialized and conditioned as children to stay away from STEM; it is time for us to break free of that mental bondage and to realize that we have no limits in living out the life that we want.
Edit: Btw, I am a big believer in doing technological work that brings EQUITABLE SOCIAL CHANGE / benefits those most marginalized financially and educationally, so I want to share this job board curated by researchers from Oxford and other members of the Effective Altruism movement, for those of you searching for ANY job roles (engineering and more) that will BENEFIT society: https://jobs.80000hours.org/
Plus, you can always work at STARTUPS, which pay well and offer remote work often! Startups tend to work on highly innovative projects that bigger organizations have neglected.
I agree that we should be influencing tech. However not all of us are into the lifestyle of staring at a computer for 12 hours a day, or are capable of teaching themselves engineering from scratch. What are other roles/areas of influence that would make a difference in tech, but are less technical oriented? As an outsider to the field, I would be interested to know that.
Also reiterating the UN’s stance that another user has posted here.
1/5 workers in AI are women while in software development it is 1/3. I sat with our HR team for recruiting more women from college and work ex.
I’d recommend that if you were in any way involved in your company’s hiring process, then stand for the women who needs to intern and work with you. Trust me they are always the legit choice.
Theres freecodecamp.com with great up to date resources for learning to code and they have certifications on there as well. learning coding is a pain in the ass though and I’m going back to an affordable state school for a CS degree bc it’s easier and more streamlined for me to break into tech.
Are you successfully transitioning into STEM? using what resources?
I'm interested, but I can't afford another degree.
Like you, I have a humanities background and dislike workplace politics.
I learned HTML/CSS basics to make simple webpages on a popular free coding site, but I got stuck and gave up...
I was an excellent student, including in math and science classes (I haven't taken advanced classes though), but I do better with guidance/ structure.
It seems like getting into STEM without a degree requires a lot of independence and finding answers for yourself. It was hard to even know what to ask, like I didn't even know what I didn't know.😞
Thank you for this post! To be an ML researcher, would you need a PhD? I am definitely so through with people-facing jobs.
I met a Facebook (Meta) ML engineer at a data science event I went to, and he seemed like a total dick. All he seemed to talk about was how much money his advertising algorithms were making the company. Like who cares?? I imagine having more women in this field would do wonders.