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Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

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Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#121

Post by eva1984 »

fsloth wrote: post #99
eva1984 wrote: post #70

First of all..The stereotype is mainly nerdy, socially-awkward male...but is it overall white? No. Actually the percentage of white people in software is lower than the overall demographics. I can understand why white is singled out here, because it helps to drive the rhetoric of the discussion to racism and sexism, but fundamentally the problem is much more complex. My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in…

"My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of samples), are video games, myself included." I think you are drawing a false statistical conclusion here. The basic hypothesis you are making is: "In the population of women, there is a lower average aptitude for…

That is not what I saying.

Basically hypothesis: back in the day, programming is niche and needs self-motivation -> More boys were interested in video games -> Became programmers latter.

And if you really read through my post, the sampling is here not to be about women programmers...it is about gamers population in male programmer.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#122

Post by mpweiher »

blah5432 wrote: post #94
icebraining wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, fair enough, I understood a different thesis from the article (of a self-reinforcing stereotype among employers).

This is a blame game. It's tried on individuals. When they reject accusations, there's the "you are biased even if you don't realize" and then the "you are a tool in the hands of an oppressing society". If you can't convince, at least seed the doubt. Have you seen what happens when there are no employers? Open source projects, I mean. It's qualified then as a "toxic culture" with "ambient pressure", "terrified women"…

> "you are biased even if you don't realise"

Yes. For example, I looked at some online "implicit bias" test from some well-respected university. Well, started to take.

One of the first questions was whether I associated "black" (in general) with sports. I do. It was obvious that answering truthfully was going to dramatically up my "implicit bias" score.

But I don't do this because I am biased, I do this because my lived experience tells me this association is a true reflection of the world. I was on my high school's track team. In a school that was (guessing) >90% white, I was the only white guy on the sprint relay team. When going to the next level (county championships), I was the fastest white guy in the 200m that I competed in. I was also the only white guy (came in 4th of 6) in the 200m finals. Or look at the running competitions in the Olympics. Bias my ass.

Aaaand...it doesn't apply to individuals. When I see President Obama, I don't think "sports", I think "President of the United States", and "amazing speaker" and "says things like 'that makes no sense' when people make no sense". And

But I guess "reality = bias" these days.

See also: "Stereotype Inaccuracy: A Belief Impervious to Data"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201408/st...

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#123

Post by fsloth »

mpweiher wrote: post #120
fsloth wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of samples), are video games, myself included." I think you are drawing a false statistical conclusion here. The basic hypothesis you are making is: "In the population of women, there is a lower average aptitude for…

>>is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. >lower average aptitude for programming than in the population of males How did interest turn into aptitude ?

"How did interest turn into aptitude?"

Sorry, poor choice of words. I mean 'A quality which increases the likelihood of being employed as a programmer'- this is just not interest, though. But yeah, not a deeply insightful comment, given I tried to play with back of the envelope statistics and ended up with a low quality scheme myself.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#124

Post by fsloth »

eva1984 wrote: post #121
fsloth wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of samples), are video games, myself included." I think you are drawing a false statistical conclusion here. The basic hypothesis you are making is: "In the population of women, there is a lower average aptitude for…

That is not what I saying. Basically hypothesis: back in the day, programming is niche and needs self-motivation -> More boys were interested in video games -> Became programmers latter. And if you really read through my post, the sampling is here not to be about women programmers...it is about gamers population in male programmer.

Yeah, I think my sampling does not reflect what you originally said. I think I need to refresh on my statistics before trying any back-of-the envelope sampling next time.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#125

Post by mikekchar »

jacalata wrote: post #58
mikekchar wrote: post #10

Reading articles like this is so strange for me because I have such a hard time understanding the perspective. To give some background, I started in the late 80's and early 90's in Canada. There were very few womon in my CS program (I recall it was 5 our of 140 in the graduating class), but even still in my early career, I was never on a team without women. I would say that between 10-20% of the programmers I worked…

So what percentage of male programmers that you worked with were excellent?

Obviously there is a range of abilities. I would say that all except one person I know at the very top end of the range were male. If I extend the range down to where I would include the women that I previously called "excellent", I think that would include about half of the men I've worked with. Basically, good solid developers who could be trusted to get things done, knew enough to know what they did and didn't really understand, and could find out the things they didn't understand in a relatively short time frame.

So for the women I know, the distribution seems to be compressed and shifted to the right a bit. I have absolutely no idea if that matches with other people's experience. Or, indeed, if my experience with male workers matches their experience.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#126

Post by dang »

cb18 wrote: post #19

So many mysteries of the modern world become quite understandable when you allow yourself the luxury of understanding the relevance of intelligence. It varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. The modern tendency is to feverishly avert one's eyes from this fact, but it must be reckoned with eventually. I believe we'll all be better off wh…

You made a trainwreck of this thread by taking it down an ideological flamewar tangent. That breaks the HN guidelines. Please don't do this again.

Blithely pronouncing a radical view to be "scientific consensus" on the most divisive of topics is a form of trolling. I've noticed that users who do this invariably display how far from dispassionate science their interest in this subject really is. There's also some irony in how fixated they are on the topic of intelligence—a quality that somehow never seems to distinguish these threads.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11539519 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#127

Post by dang »

vox_mollis wrote: post #113
jonathankoren wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Intelligence] varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. Holy fuck. Yeah. I'm calling you out for being a racist fuck. Your "human biodiversity" aka "scientific racism" is a pseudoscience that has no basis at all. All your ideas better explained by economics. So in conclusion, fuck you.

I love this response. [META] Not due to the content of the response, but the fact that dang, who is rightfully vigilant about enforcing standards of civility all over HN (with detachment, warnings, and bans), willfully ignores blatant violations of said standards where ideology aligns.

The assumption that if you've seen something then we have too is wildly off base.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#128

Post by dang »

jonathankoren wrote: post #30
cb18 wrote: post #19

So many mysteries of the modern world become quite understandable when you allow yourself the luxury of understanding the relevance of intelligence. It varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. The modern tendency is to feverishly avert one's eyes from this fact, but it must be reckoned with eventually. I believe we'll all be better off wh…

> [Intelligence] varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. Holy fuck. Yeah. I'm calling you out for being a racist fuck. Your "human biodiversity" aka "scientific racism" is a pseudoscience that has no basis at all. All your ideas better explained by economics. So in conclusion, fuck you.

Please don't, no matter how right you are and how wrong someone else is. I understand the frustration, but it only makes things worse to take discussion to the level of "fuck you", and it flagrantly violates the HN guidelines.

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#129

Post by puppetmaster3 »

azazqadir wrote: post #89
puppetmaster3 wrote: post #66

Programming is a dead end job, mostly for immigrants. What you want is an MBA.

You wouldn't have Facebook, Google, Hacker news, Twitter or even Internet without programmers.

Built by suckers!

Re: Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

#130

Post by jacalata »

mikekchar wrote: post #125
jacalata wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what percentage of male programmers that you worked with were excellent?

Obviously there is a range of abilities. I would say that all except one person I know at the very top end of the range were male. If I extend the range down to where I would include the women that I previously called "excellent", I think that would include about half of the men I've worked with. Basically, good solid developers who could be trusted to get things done, knew enough to know what they did and didn't rea…

I was wondering if your experience backed up the theory I've heard that men are happy to be average programmers but women who aren't excellent don't stay in the profession. Sounds like it does.
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