I wonder what happened to change the demographics so heavily.
Fran Allen says in her interview for Coders at Work that IBM's gender balance slowly shifted in the 60s as a side-effect of new IT hiring standards. Recruiting preference was given to candidates with advanced degrees in engineering, and most of these new graduates were male [1].
Through this lens the gender shift can be seen as an artifact of the higher education system: Fewer women were getting into these schools and finishing with advanced degrees in math and computing. Even today women can have a tougher road putting together the 7-10 consecutive years of full-time academics required for a terminal degree given that the 20s are also prime child-bearing years.
pg explains the corporate hiring mindset better than I can with a "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" analogy in News from the Front:
A recruiter at a big company is in much the same position as someone buying technology for one. If someone went to Stanford and is not obviously insane, they're probably a safe bet. And a safe bet is enough. No one ever measures recruiters by the later performance of people they turn down [2].
Through this lens the gender shift can be seen as an artifact of the higher education system: Fewer women were getting into these schools and finishing with advanced degrees in math and computing. Even today women can have a tougher road putting together the 7-10 consecutive years of full-time academics required for a terminal degree given that the 20s are also prime child-bearing years.
pg explains the corporate hiring mindset better than I can with a "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" analogy in News from the Front:
A recruiter at a big company is in much the same position as someone buying technology for one. If someone went to Stanford and is not obviously insane, they're probably a safe bet. And a safe bet is enough. No one ever measures recruiters by the later performance of people they turn down [2].
[1] http://www.codersatwork.com
[2] http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html