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Barmecide Feast

I have written before about my weariness over the girls in STEM business. It launched college dreams and careers for the first women to spot it as a trend. I ran to several of Reshma Saujani wannabes since that time only to be disappointed. Their commitment to the cause runs only as far as getting their resumes ready for college application time. Historically, such resumes have yielded excellent results so the rush to be the next champion for the Girls in STEM/Code continues apace.

Beyond college, these young women move on to other resume building pursuits more appropriate for their age and place in the world. The pyramid scheme involves recruitment of the next wave of women from the same high-schools as the founders attended,  who also spot the "glaring gender gap in math and science classes and resolved to change that" exactly in the manner of their predecessor. The Women in Code/STEM playbook and the talking points have not changed in close to a decade which begs the question about the efficacy of their collective mission.

A one of my former clients,  is a tinkerer with broad-based engineering and programming skills. Recently he developed a low cost medical device and was looking for interns to help him complete the programming work on it so the product could be ready to ship. When he told me about his new venture, I reached out to several of these young ladies who I have met over the years with purported interest in getting women engaged in STEM and asked if they have any high school seniors that could use an internship this summer. They are always looking for mentors, coaches and judges for their hack-athons and such. I thought it was worth a shot to ask. 

This was real engineering and there would be applications of math and physics in the programming. Actual STEM stuff that these folks are talking about - not building a endless fake apps to solve social injustice of all stripes in the world. Never heard a peep back from any one of them. I can't say I was surprised. The make-believe STEM stuff that goes on at most of these organizations is the Barmecide Feast equivalent of the real thing. Everyone involved gets caught up in the delusions of greatness and change but becomes incapable of doing actual work. It reminds of what one of my former co-workers used to say about our boss at the time - the only person in leadership that can't separate product release documentation from a marketing brochure. 
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