Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My positive experience as a woman in tech

lea.verou.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 403 posts

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#301

Post by Chris2048 »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #252
dragonwriter wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the "sexism" debate was stirred by people who were only tangentially involved in Tech, like the PR person "Adria Richards". If you listen to actual women with actual Math, CS, or EE degrees, you'll hear a different story. As someone whose listened to actual women with Math, CS, and EE degrees (and women who are working in technical roles without degrees in those fields, as both women and men in the field do), I…

It's the "actually listen to women" part that a lot of people here have problems with.

The "listen to women" part that people take issue with is being expected to assume legitimacy, and hence support any draconian policy proposed, all based on subjective testimony. Ask a certain UVA frat about that.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#302

Post by microcolonel »

Qworg wrote: post #284
dragonwriter wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does nobody make this argument about Nursing, or Teaching, or Social Work, or Psychology, or any of the "Female dominated" fields? People make this argument about female dominated fields (particularly education and nursing, which are, or have been, areas of perceived shortages) all the time; they probably don't make it as often in tech industry focused discussion fora , for reasons of lack of relevance to the v…

Another issue with this argument is that all of those fields are considerable less well remunerated than technology.

http://www.livingin-canada.com/salaries-for-registered-nurse...

http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Registered_Nurse_(RN...

The average yearly income of a nurse in my country is between $3k less, and $10k more than the average salary of a software developer in my country, depending on the source.

Although the stresses are perhaps not comparable, it's important to note that a nurse working the same hours as a typical software developer could expect to earn around twice as much.

Mind you, educational requirements may be more expensive than for software developers. I'm not familiar enough to speak to that.

http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Employer=Toronto_Distric...

An average elementary school teacher in a nearby city makes about $3k less than an average software developer, with around 7 weeks paid leave. At least one female respondent in another nearby municipality recorded having 10 weeks of paid leave and full benefits. With that, I think that total compensation must be at least on-par.

http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Social_Worker/Salary...

Average salary of a social worker is around $15k less than that of software developers in my country. I don't know as much about social work. I suspect it's good, hard work. I hear that it's risky. Benefits packages are mostly ubiquitous though.

Of the small sample on this site, all respondents said that they were extremely satisfied with their employment as a Social worker.

http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Clinical_Psychologis...

Average clinical psychologist salaries are about $25k higher than average software developer salaries in my country. Likely owing to higher typical educational requirements.

Of the small sample on this site, all respondents said that they were extremely satisfied with their employment as a Clinical Psychologist.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#303

Post by leaverou »

scintill76 wrote: post #32
bramblerose wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's prudent to avoid language that could make people feel uncomfortable. The weird thing is not that he apologized (that's reasonable), the weird thing is that he apologized /to her/ (and not to the group as a whole).

What if the reason she was "singled out" was actually that she was the only person the swearer didn't know well enough to feel OK about swearing around? Or was the only one he considered to be in earshot? Or she was just the closest and he felt he should make some gesture because he regretted it, but it wasn't bad enough to personally apologize to every last person? I guess the author's impression trumps ours (and on…

Nope. There were many people around, and it was clear that he didn’t know all of them. There were people he didn't know just as close as I was. He apologized only to me, nobody else.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#304

Post by Chris2048 »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #253
ManFromUranus wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does nobody make this argument about Nursing, or Teaching, or Social Work, or Psychology, or any of the "Female dominated" fields? When men don't go into a field, they find a way to blame men for it, when women don't go into a field, they find a way to blame men for it. Don't women have any agency? Are they dumb robots that only do what men tell them? Maybe they don't WANT to be in STEM fields...

People bring this up in every single thread about sexism in HN and almost every single time somebody gives them a cite to any of the several of efforts dedicated to getting dudes in those fields.

Which is meaningless without means of comparison. The fact that programs exist somewhere in the world tells us nothing about the importance placed, or resources spent, on those efforts.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#305

Post by [deleted] »

Ntrails wrote: post #227
gvb wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The golden rule requires you to be courteous regardless of gender. For instance, when you reach the door first, hold it open for the others, regardless of their gender.

No, it doesn't. It says "If you would want them to hold the door open for you were the places switched, then hold the door open." Of course if I don't really care about it, then I'm free not to bother. If I would rather someone confronted me when my code is shit, rather than letting it slide, then that is how I treat everyone else too. There is a strong argument to say the golden rule is really saying "treat others t…

[deleted]

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#306

Post by reitanqild »

tangled_zans wrote: post #297
reitanqild wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not downvote you. Maybe I should, but I tend to reserve that for special cases. That said I and a few others here are downvoted for no apparent reason as well and personally I don't care to much about it except they never care to tell why. That is annoying.

I've noticed that any time a debate of this sort comes up, and someone states a strong view supporting either side, the other side will start downvoting them. That's usually counteracted by their own side upvoting them back up. It happens to everyone, so it annoys me when I see people complaining about it in every HN thread that has divided opinions on some social justice movement or whatever. There's no "Please expl…

Good, now that everything seems to have calmed down just think how it would have felt if instead of a celebrity feminist taking offense at pycon there was a conservative Christian that made reported two developers ultimately causing them to lose their jobs.

Would that be different?

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#307

Post by cortesoft »

DanBC wrote: post #20
indifferentalex wrote: post #19

10/10 Will read again. The sexism debate has indeed painted a bleak picture, people so often try to show a different side of the picture but end up using the wrong words or simply adding ambiguity to the discussion, most of the time only making the matter more complicated, and worst of all, pulling us even further from a potential solution. This one showed us not only a potential solution, but also proved it's effect…

> treat others the way you want to be treated, You've never had a pathological arsehole for a boss?

Luckily in the tech industry, employees have a lot more power than in other industries. We can just leave and get another job.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#308

Post by tangled_zans »

reitanqild wrote: post #306
tangled_zans wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that any time a debate of this sort comes up, and someone states a strong view supporting either side, the other side will start downvoting them. That's usually counteracted by their own side upvoting them back up. It happens to everyone, so it annoys me when I see people complaining about it in every HN thread that has divided opinions on some social justice movement or whatever. There's no "Please expl…

Good, now that everything seems to have calmed down just think how it would have felt if instead of a celebrity feminist taking offense at pycon there was a conservative Christian that made reported two developers ultimately causing them to lose their jobs. Would that be different?

How about we take it a step forward and say "woman caused two developers to be fired"?

Or even better.

"A person at a tech conference caused two developers to be fired".

That way we can judge the situation within its own context, rather than letting our own affiliations or views bias us.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#309

Post by ksenzee »

Joeboy wrote: post #276
danielmason wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you being serious? That's exactly what's being implied. Which part of tangentially involved in tech juxtaposed with unlike women with Math, CS, or EE degrees would lead you to read that differently?

I am honestly as confused by your interpretation as you are by mine. I don't have any of those degrees, and I don't infer that Supercomputing is dismissing me as "tangentially" involved in tech. They are suggesting that Adria Richards' "Developer Evangelist" role wasn't a real technical role, which I couldn't really comment on. I don't think they are implying that ksenzee's "Senior Software Engineer" role doesn't cou…

Certainly, and your interpretation is logical. I agree the original commenter didn't necessarily mean to imply that. However, they appear to have bought into a kind of false dichotomy that gets applied to women and minorities all too often. It's a mindset where there are "fake" woman developers (or gamers, or whatever), and there are "real" woman developers, and you only get perceived as one of the "real" developers if you meet an unusually high standard. It's tiresome to be on the receiving end of it.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#310

Post by Chris2048 »

LesZedCB wrote: post #293
JDiculous wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Most men if approached by an awkward unattractive woman at a bar will at least be polite and have a normal conversation even if they're not interested. Whereas women will often outright ignore or even act hostile towards an awkward unattractive man trying to strike a conversation. Men are expected to treat women courteously, whereas women aren't held to the same standard. A woman can treat a man like a di…

Citation needed. Your assertion is completely baseless. Even in the event where it was in fact true, altering your behavior towards the person based on your expectation of what they might do based on statistics is the very mode of sexism.

> altering your behavior towards the person based on your expectation of what they might do based on statistics is the very mode of sexism

???

Can you unwrap that a bit...

Post reply on HN