Development teams at these financial institutions, who are likely to be white and male, may not realize that they are entering their own biases when building algorithms to determine whether an applicant should get a mortgage. They may tend to have the same background, experiences, and ways of thinking that may put people who are outside of this scope at a severe disadvantage. Women and people of color are at a distinct disadvantage.
Where major financial decisions are involved, like buying a home and trying to start a business, women and people of color have had a historically difficult time obtaining funding and getting it a low rate. Women-owned companies receive 33 percent loan approvals in comparison to those that are male owned, and those that are people of color get far fewer approvals. In 2017, Black-women-led start-ups were only able to raise .0006 percent of the venture capital they needed for their business (not even a full percent!). Independent decision-making AI systems that have biased algorithms have the potential of making this situation much worse.
One of the best and most effective ways to combat this and to ensure that systems are designed properly is to have diverse development teams, made up of people who come from different educational, economic, and social backgrounds. This ensures that AI systems are designed to serve a wider population, not just a select few.
Tech Career Misconceptions
Technology is a wide and vast career field, and one person's pathway to a tech career is highly unique. There's no one true path to tech. These are just a few widely held misconceptions on getting a tech career.
Tech Careers Require Constant, Hands-On Programming
There's a constant, widely held belief that one must study programming, and excel at it, or become a coder or programmer to have a successful technical career.
It's not true. Understanding programming and knowing how to code in languages like Python, JavaScript, and Java are good skills to have, as it can enhance your understanding of computational thinking (how to break down problems in a way that computers can solve them), help your own problem-solving abilities, understand how applications work, and help you understand how coders and programmers approach problems (you'll be able to speak their language). Taking a programming course or two just for your own knowledge is highly encouraged.
However, it doesn't mean that programming or coding is your only way into tech—especially if you end up not loving it. As you'll find going throughout this book, it's often soft or nontechnical skills, like communication, problem solving, and critical thinking, that are perhaps more important than programming.
If you enjoy programming or coding, that's great—keep it up! If you don't, that's okay too!
All Tech Careers Require a Four-Year Degree
Depending on the field, having hands-on, demonstrable professional experience is more valued than an academic degree. Many major tech employers are putting more focus on candidates having experience or certain skill sets, as a traditional four-year bachelor's degree isn't a clear indicator of how well a candidate will do in a job, or even a guarantee that they will do well.
There are different ways to acquire knowledge, skills, and experience. Internship or co-op experiences, apprenticeships, boot camps, hackathons, online courses, volunteer work, and self-study are just a few options that are available and should be explored in addition to a college education.
All Tech Careers Require Studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Another Specific Field
If you decide that a traditional undergraduate degree is the way for you to go, computer science and engineering are not the only paths that you can take. People who are in technical professions have degrees in fields such as mathematics, business, information technology, and even liberal arts.
A computer science or computer engineering degree could place you closer to certain job opportunities and allow you to move into other roles during your career. If you are contemplating a career as a software developer or in artificial intelligence, this might be the more appropriate route.
But when selecting a college major or concentration, you'll want to think about what your overall interests and career goals are and how a program you're considering will best serve those needs. As a possible alternative, you could take computer science or computer engineering as a minor to supplement another course of study. This way, you can explore the field while not committing to a full-blown course of study.
Computer science and computer engineering (CS/CE) programs are not easy nor are they cheap. You will more likely be able to ride out the difficult parts of a CS/CE program and complete it if you enjoy what you're learning, enjoy rigorous learning paths, and are able to bounce back after academic setbacks. You may find it difficult to stick with a CS/CE program if you're doing it for other reasons, like it looks good on your resume.
This is, sadly, not to say that you won't experience “tech elitism” from others. I find that this is more prevalent in software development circles, where those who did complete CS/CE programs in well-regarded colleges and universities try to minimize the education, contributions, and backgrounds of those who studied at “lower-tier” CS/CE schools or coding boot camps. However, you should not allow other people's narrow-minded perception influence what education you pursue. It's usually people who are insecure, are mean-spirited, and have close-minded views that exhibit those types of behaviors and attitudes.
All Tech Careers Pay a Ton of Money
While tech careers can pay more than other careers, you shouldn't approach it with the expectation that you will be making a six- to seven-figure salary right at the start. As you saw in the previous discussion of pay, the low- and high-end salary figures for different types of tech jobs can vary greatly.
A friend once told me that they had a friend who was making nearly $300,000 as a developer for a top technology company in San Francisco. Very impressive indeed.
But after asking a few more questions, I discovered that the friend who is receiving this salary had nearly seven years of professional, hands-on development experience and had many professional certifications under their belt. This made the story more believable versus this being someone who was commanding that kind of salary right after completing a four-year degree or coding boot camp.
Also, certain types of tech jobs will pay more than others due to overall demand. For example, as cloud computing becomes more of the standard for businesses, the need to have dedicated employees to handle and maintain physical hardware is decreasing. Those businesses now need employees who thoroughly understand computer networking and how computers talk to one another over short/long distances versus someone who maintains desktop computers.
As we discussed earlier, as businesses have begun to integrate artificial intelligence in their operations, they will need people who have a firm understanding of data science, machine learning, natural language processing, and more. People with these skills will likely be making more, as there aren't as many people trained in these areas.
Finally, in addition to your education and experience, where you live will influence what you can command salary-wise. Cities that have a higher cost of living, like San Francisco and New York, tend to pay higher salaries than places in less populated, more rural areas. In 2018, the average tech worker salary for the San Francisco area was $113,629, compared to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at $69,212.
That's not to say that major cities are the only places you can go to be paid well as a tech professional. Many professionals are leaving San Francisco and New York due to how expensive it is and are heading to growing tech cities like Nashville, Tennessee; Provo, Utah; and Cleveland, Ohio—cities that all experienced significant growth in tech jobs from 2017 to 2018 (more than 7 percent and up).
We will discuss how to negotiate salary