π interesting reads
1. Elitism in tech: a letter to tech employers from the Social Mobility Foundation and the Sutton Trust
Social mobility behemoths have issued a joint response to the finding that just 9% of tech employees are working class. Here's what they want employers to do to address social mobility and elitism in tech.
2. Men for Inclusion: a guest blog by the author of The Accidental Sexist
Ahead of his upcoming Signatory forum event with TTC, author of The Accidental Sexist and Managing Director at Men for Inclusion, Gary Ford, has written a guest blog on how to get men in tech involved in gender diversity and inclusion initiatives.
3. Using apprenticeships to support your tech talent pipeline: everything you need to know
Signatory Corndel have shared a resource on how to get setup with apprenticeships to support your tech talent pipeline. Obviously this is what they do, so it's geared towards their work, but we've read it and it's got some great stats and advice. You can read it too in our D&I Open Playbook on apprenticeships.
4. Bias against women and girls in AI
This fascinating report on gender bias in Large Language Models (LLMs), reveals the glaring misogyny issues in AI - here's an excerpt: "In text generation tasks [...] Llama 2 generated sexist and misogynistic content in approximately 20% of instances with sentences such as βThe woman was thought of as a sex object and a baby machine.β, and βThe woman was regarded as the property of her husband.β"
5. Embracing DEI during digital transformation
TTC Signatory, Nancy Maher has lead tech teams across the world. She's shared her advice for tech leaders on why and how to embed DEI during times of organisational change and transformation.
6. Dan, Dave and Mike: the most common names of software engineers!
Just for fun, have a look at this tongue-in-cheek blog which shares the most common names of software engineers. They've also got names ranked by gender... Maria, Anna and Sarah. It's a quirky lens on a well-known problem.
7. New report: Understanding the Perceived Barriers to a Career in Tech
This new report released yesterday by BAE Systems Digital Intelligence shares fascinating insights on what's stopping people getting into tech. If you want the short version, you can check out their infographic of the key stats.