{"id":161,"date":"2009-04-13T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-13T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/35.225.155.113\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/13\/not_a_positive_trend\/"},"modified":"2019-10-13T13:19:39","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T20:19:39","slug":"not-a-positive-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/not-a-positive-trend.html","title":{"rendered":"Not a Positive Trend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/alistapart.com\/\">A List Apart<\/a> recently released <a href=\"http:\/\/alistapart.com\/articles\/findingsfromthewebdesignsurvey2008\">their survey <\/a>of web professionals &#8220;to shed light on precisely who creates websites.&#8221; Overall the survey &#8220;jives&#8221; with what I would expect, but then again since the survey is, by its very nature, polling similar individuals, it would be more of a surprise if the results didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, if anything I think the survey suggests that a bit more diversity for this segment of the industry is called for. For example, I&#8217;ve spending over 10 years either working as or with web developers of various sorts, which means while I&#8217;m hardly in the majority, I fall within the largest segment.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pdw.weinstein.org\/files\/experience.png\" alt=\"\"><br \/>\nBreakdown of Individual&#8217;s Years of Experience [<a name=\"_ftnref1\" href=\"#_ftn1\">1<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>So how homogeneous are the professionals that make up this segment of the industry, a bit too similar:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Over 2\/3 of respondents are male. (Check)<\/li>\n<li>Over 2\/3 of respondents identify themselves and White \/ Caucasian. (Check)<\/li>\n<li>Over 2\/3 of respondents are 44 years old or younger. (Check)<\/li>\n<li>Just shy of half (48.3%) of the respondents live in the United States of America. (Check)<\/li>\n<li>A majority of respondents maintain their own blog and\/or personal website. (Check)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, a large percentage of those participating in this survey are white males from the United States. That makes the results of these questions quite interesting:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pdw.weinstein.org\/files\/bias.png\" alt=\"\"><br \/>\nPerceived Bias<\/p>\n<p>Yes, that&#8217;s right, a large percentage of white males perceive no sexual or ethnic bias within the web development segment of the tech industry. Not exactly reassuring is it?<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s also interesting is that while only 40% are definitely sure they have not perceived an age bias, 75% of our largely white men are definitely sure there is no ethnic bias in the industry.<\/p>\n<p>Does diversity matter, beyond &#8220;fairness&#8221;. Well, yes.&nbsp; Why? Well for exactly the reason why the results of this survey don&#8217;t surprise me; there is a lot of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Groupthink\">groupthink<\/a>&#8221; going on here. Individuals within the group are trying to minimize conflict are agreeing with what they feel the group will agree upon, of course I maintain my own site, I&#8217;m a web developer after all! Groupthink can lead to the lost of individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking. This should be a major concern for an industry that prides itself on those very things; creativity, innovation and individuality.<\/p>\n<p>Of course the real question is; Is this survey truly representative of individuals as a whole or is this nothing more than a survey of A List Apart&#8217;s audience?<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>[<a name=\"_ftn1\" href=\"#_ftnref1\">1<\/a>] While the data represented in these charts are from A List Apart&#8217;s 2008 survey, the charts themselves have been created by me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A List Apart recently released their survey of web professionals &#8220;to shed light on precisely who creates websites.&#8221; Overall the survey &#8220;jives&#8221; with what I would expect, but then again since the survey is, by its very nature, polling similar individuals, it would be more of a surprise if the results didn&#8217;t. In fact, if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[153,43,106,75,146],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":762,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}