Lara Karki

Computing researcher, maker of monsters

Real-Programming-Graph

Gatekeepers control out-of-school pathways to computing careers by maintaining the status quo in computing culture.

A simple, shape-based illustration depicts a road with three road-blocking gates and a gatekeeper sitting on each. The entire road is labeled "pathway to computing careers", the beginning of the road is labeled "novice-friendly computational work", and the end of the road is labeled "career growth in computing". At the beginning of the road is an outline of a person facing the direction of the gates. A thought bubble above the person's head reads, "Hey, I learned some HTML on that project. Maybe I could turn this into a career?" The gatekeeper on top of the first barrier is saying in a speech bubble, "Front-end developers make it pretty, back-end developers make it work". A legend identifies this gate represents "Occupational hierarchies reinforce unrealistic divisions of labor". On the second barrier, the gatekeeper's speech bubble contains an image of a four-panel comic, posted to Reddit's r/ProgrammerHumor. The first panel shows an old man with two young boys that look like they are going to fight each other. The old man is saying, "Kids, violence is never the answer". The next panel in the comic is one of the boys with a speech bubble that says, "HTML is a programming language". The third panel is only the old man’s face. The fourth panel in the comic is, the old man punching the boy who said that "HTML is a programming language". The legend labels this gate/gatekeeper, "Disparaging humor is deemed culturally appropriate". The third and final gate's gatekeeper is saying, "Program FizzBuzz", then in another sentence, "Yes, you are interviewing for a front-end design position". The legend indicates this gate/gatekeeper represents "interviews may assess knowledge unrelated to the job requirements".

Lara