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1984 – When women stopped coding

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Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#111

Post by kelukelugames »

grandDesigns wrote: post #78

Because women are smarter. I notice that graph compares Computer Science ($50K-$150K/year), to Medical School ($150K--$1M), Law School ($120K--$1M), and Physical Sciences (???). Women see the writing on the wall on High School: Med/Law School offer a clear career path to the upper middle class, while CS offers a muddy path at a middle class life. They also see "rich" old Doctors and Lawyers. They have never seen a "r…

Well, I read your comment to my girlfriend and now she is pissed off at me. Sigh.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#112

Post by dracht »

grandDesigns wrote: post #78

Because women are smarter. I notice that graph compares Computer Science ($50K-$150K/year), to Medical School ($150K--$1M), Law School ($120K--$1M), and Physical Sciences (???). Women see the writing on the wall on High School: Med/Law School offer a clear career path to the upper middle class, while CS offers a muddy path at a middle class life. They also see "rich" old Doctors and Lawyers. They have never seen a "r…

>Because women are smarter.

What kind of reaction do you think you'd get if your assessment had the opposite outcome? I'm all for brutal honesty, but it should be a two-way street.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#113

Post by coldtea »

>But a lot of computing pioneers, the ones who programmed the first digital computers, were women. And for decades, the number of women in computer science was growing. But in 1984, something changed. The number of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged.

Those statistics kind of refute those lamenting male culture etc for the lack of more women in computer science.

One would imagine the 1969-1984 that the graph shows, the "male culture", bro attitudes, etc were far more imposing that they are in the milenial, PC environments of today. We're talking about the seventies to early eighties, after all!

And yet, there were more women back then than they are now.

(Always suspected the usual explanations weren't the reason. It's not like medicine, law school, finance, etc have much better male cultures than computer science).

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#114

Post by hasenj »

jessaustin wrote: post #17

The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers... And these... were marketed almost entirely to men and boys. Great, another travesty for which we have marketing to thank.

Think about it. If you are a greedy capitalist, why oh why would you limit your market to half its potential?

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#115

Post by Consultant32452 »

kelukelugames wrote: post #107
grandDesigns wrote: post #78

Because women are smarter. I notice that graph compares Computer Science ($50K-$150K/year), to Medical School ($150K--$1M), Law School ($120K--$1M), and Physical Sciences (???). Women see the writing on the wall on High School: Med/Law School offer a clear career path to the upper middle class, while CS offers a muddy path at a middle class life. They also see "rich" old Doctors and Lawyers. They have never seen a "r…

30 years ago, software engineers also had low social status. Only recently did our profession become more respectable.

While it may have improved I feel like it's still quite low. Outside of the valley and a few other key cities we're still largely considered anti-social dweebs who can't talk to women, have regressive sexist ideologies, are pedantic assholes, etc.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#116

Post by delibes »

grandDesigns wrote: post #78

Because women are smarter. I notice that graph compares Computer Science ($50K-$150K/year), to Medical School ($150K--$1M), Law School ($120K--$1M), and Physical Sciences (???). Women see the writing on the wall on High School: Med/Law School offer a clear career path to the upper middle class, while CS offers a muddy path at a middle class life. They also see "rich" old Doctors and Lawyers. They have never seen a "r…

I'll focus on the professional salaries...

"Uncle" Bob Martin gave an interesting talk in London last night about the need for a professional body for software.

Doctors have the American Medical Association (or BMA here in the UK). Lawyers have the American Bar Association (I think the Law Society is the UK equivalent). They can regulate their profession, ensuring standards, controlling membership through certification, and raising the value/cost of the members.

Perhaps he's right, and we'd benefit from the same in software?

http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2015/11/27/OathDiscussi...

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#117

Post by flexie »

grandDesigns wrote: post #78

Because women are smarter. I notice that graph compares Computer Science ($50K-$150K/year), to Medical School ($150K--$1M), Law School ($120K--$1M), and Physical Sciences (???). Women see the writing on the wall on High School: Med/Law School offer a clear career path to the upper middle class, while CS offers a muddy path at a middle class life. They also see "rich" old Doctors and Lawyers. They have never seen a "r…

Law is a middle class profession for most lawyers. Very few lawyers make anywhere near $1M per year. I guess that the number of US attorneys consistently making $1M yearly is in the hundreds or low thousands.

Median salary for lawyers is $113,530. That's a pay most lawyers don't achieve until they are in their late 30s or 40s.

Top 10 percentile is at $187,200.

Most lawyers spend 4 years in college and then 3 years in law school to land a $60,000 dollar job in their late 20s. Then they spend another 5-10 years paying off the student loans. Many programmers make that kind of money in their early 20s without any formal education.

Also, it's too early to say at what age programmers are "done". There were few developers in the 1970's and 1980's and they are now nearing retirement. Let's wait and see how it goes with the bigger generation of developers that are now in their 20s and 30s. My guess is that many of them will continue until retirement.

Source: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/lawyers.htm#tab-5

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#118

Post by ashmud »

I find it interesting the transition towards physical sciences and away from computer science in the late 1980s. At that time, my mother, who was educated and worked in chemistry, started working at home as a programmer. It was a very good job that allowed her to work remotely most of the time and set her own schedule.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#119

Post by stevesearer »

crusso wrote: post #91
purpled_haze wrote: post #6

I have daughters and was not able to get them interested in any computer unless it involves games or social media. But the boys they hang out with are the same way- games only, for the most part. While I played a lot of games on my computer as a youth, I also spent a lot of time trying to program games. Today, I'm a developer. Because of kids' fascination with their phones and tablets, and because programming isn't a…

I have daughters as well. I tried to get them interested in computers, I really did. I tried to show them how they could make web pages with HTML. I tried to show them some basic Ruby to ask them questions on the command line that they could answer (thinking that if I could emulate a social aspect of computers they might become interested). Nothing I tried worked. I talked one daughter into taking the AP Comp Sci cla…

I don't think I would have ever been interested in creating websites in high school unless I had a purpose for creating them. Mine just happened to be that I needed a place to share the stats from the equipment / weapons on the Star Wars MUD my friends all played, so Geocities was my first entry into running websites.

From there I made a personal website, then eventually started tinkering around with Wordpress which helped with publishing. All the while picking up little tidbits along the way to help make the sites look better. (And of course it was important to customize your myspace page)

Eventually I decided to start officesnapshots.com because it was quite natural to start a website for fun and 8 years later it is my full-time job.

All that said, having a reason to create a website was what got me started.

Re: 1984 – When women stopped coding

#120

Post by caskance »

darkr wrote: post #90
DeusExMachina wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hate towards marketing that is present on HN is almost comical at times. My experience is that, the more you study how marketing works, the more you realize marketing is about what people already want and try to appeal to that. Sure, big companies like Coca Cola have more sophisticated techniques to make their brands appealing, but still, if you look at Coca Cola's marketing, what they sell is "happiness", which…

I think you've totally missed the point why people hate marketing. It's not because of a lack of understanding on it's mechanics. > From this point of view, there is no "travesty" to thank marketing for. The reality was that probably personal computers were more appealing to men, so it made more sense to spend marketing resources towards them. Why it was more appealing to them is a good question to ask, and it could…

Marketing only manufactures desire if you interpret desire in the most narrow possible sense as desire for a specific product.

What marketing actually does is make desires concrete and suggest to the audience how that desire can be fulfilled. If you look at one of the most famous examples of successful marketing, diamond marketing created demand for a specific product, but it was only able to do so because the emotional needs the marketers tied their products to were already there and not being adequately met.

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