Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers • Hacker News Board

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#81

Post by ps4fanboy » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:48 PM UTC

throwaway293810 wrote: post #11

larrik wrote: post #7

Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably…

> you might as well just stay home But why does it have to be the woman who stays home? Why is this just the tacit assumption? I'd love to see not just solid support for moms at work, but solid support / encouragement for dads at home: paternity leave up-to-par with maternity leave, a normalization and acceptance of stay-at-home dads where desired, etc. It's kind of amazing how prevalent the assumption is that childr…

Because women dont want to marry men who want to be primary stay at home dads, some do, but I have never met a woman who wants that. Most of the women I speak to when asked think its a little bit funny.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#82

Post by hsubi » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

Is it just me or does anyone find these type of groups too career oriented? Don't get me wrong, I am a female dev and I'm all for equal opportunity and working towards supportive environment for any gender or non-gendered, sexual orientation or no orientation. I don't really find these organisations really that helpful in bringing everyone together. I'm a nerd by nature before I knew computers existed and becoming a coder just came naturally to me. Obviously it's not because I'm unique and amazing. I just grew up in an environment with a lot of freedom as a child so I wasn't limited to think or act in a certain way. Anyway I wouldn't be comfortable in a group like wwcode because looking at the blurbs on the site it's just too career oriented. I wouldn't fit in at all but that doesn't mean I don't have the same problems these women have. Just because my sex is female I get treated differently even though I don't necessarily feel either female or male inside and I'm a pure thoroughbred nerd. I don't feel like climbing the career ladder because I enjoy being the lowly dev as long as there's a bit of freedom in how I solve problems and problems are not too terribly boring. All this, yeah you're a woman, yeah you deserve to get promoted etc kinda puts me off a little bit. I'm sure it's all with good intentions but if I'm feeling like this (a woman) imagine all those males who feel threatened by us. That's why I think these type of organisations, even though they have good intentions sometimes fall short at bringing everybody together. Because in the end we all need to come to an understanding and accept our differences to have a truly harmonious society. Also a side point about people comparing computing jobs with nursing or bin lorry operators. You are comparing apples and oranges. There are factors such as money, status, education levels to consider and are different. No one is blocked from becoming a bin lorry man/woman and as a kid no one dreamt of becoming one. They add a lot of value to the society though maybe even more than some developers but that's another discussion. Ok rant's over. :)

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#83

Post by ps4fanboy » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

dudifordMann wrote: post #10

larrik wrote: post #7

Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably…

I am not sure if that is the right mind set: "So around the time a lot of people have kids? ...you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare ... you might as well just stay home." The "you" can be the other partner. Ensuring fair pay and opportunities for all qualified workers would encourage only a brief departure from a woman's career for maternity leave, allowing either partner to be the home support (as need…

Now to find women who want their husbands to stay at home looking after the kids while she works, good luck with that. And to be clear unless 50% of the coupled women out there commit to this you wont see any meaningful change in how society perceives stay at home dads, which currently is "lazy"

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#84

Post by TheCoelacanth » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #50

jfe wrote: post #28

i have trouble accepting the idea that fewer women in tech is a problem. it's not that i want to discourage women -- or anyone -- from going into tech. i just don't believe in encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, except what they enjoy. i'd appreciate it if someone can persuade me that the hype is true so i no longer need to feel like a black sheep. but.. for one, the fact that there are fewer women than…

> for one, the fact that there are fewer women than men in any field, computing or otherwise, is neither good nor bad. the disproportionate number of women in nursing is not seen as a problem, but somehow it has become one in tech. I don't agree. I think the gender disparity in nursing is just as much a problem. I think it's a significantly less tractable problem though, because I don't think the monetary incentives…

> The median salary for software engineers could be reduced by 25% and it would still be a good career choice. So there's no real reason not to encourage more people to enter the field. Nursing has a substantially lower median salary.

That's not accurate, at least when controlling for location. Going by BLS data, the difference between RNs and software engineers is less than 25% in LA, NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Jose and probably many other places that I didn't check. In San Francisco, RNs actually get paid more on average.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#85

Post by gshulegaard » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

nostrebored wrote: post #78

gshulegaard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that the parent comment is assuming one way or another, just offering a plausible explanation given the very limited perspective of the metrics being quoted. For example, how does this compare to other trends for female jobs in other sectors? How do the figures compare when you separate the population between those with children and those without? When someone wants to make a claim like: "These numbers…

And to say that people are making their decisions in a vacuum is intellectually dishonest. Unless of course you just assume that women have different brains, that make them too intellectually feeble to have interests in computing, engineering, machinery.

I don't have an interest in forwarding the notion that one gender is superior to the other in anyway shape or form. But neither are both genders identical.

For example, the video I linked above, there is a brief observation made about how more female doctors drifted towards pediatrics than men. I don't think that says anything about the potential of either gender, but I would possibly describe it as a gender preference.

And ultimately, I think we should aim for freedom of choice. And if we do that, I don't think we can expect to split our population up by any characteristic, examine flat participation percentages and think that anything other than 50-50 is caused by prejudice.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#86

Post by nostrebored » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:54 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #79

nostrebored wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's completely ludicrous. There are breast pumps, there is formula, there is no compelling reason that a mother has to stay at home. The question becomes is this a biological imperative or a social imperative, and until we remove the social portion it's too confounded to tell. Why do we also assume that men have no "overwhelming paternal instinct?" The answer is that we have an ideology strongly rooted in the past…

Not the biology I meant. I meant the fact that someone just hauled around a baby inside themselves for nine months, with all that entails. Breast pumps cannot change the fact that women and men may have different views.

I don't understand. Do you think that gestating makes you have a stronger attachment to your baby, even after months of having your child around?

You're right that men and women may have different views. The overwhelming majority of women in my parenting group who could afford to were very excited to go back to work. The majority of fathers had a romanticized view of staying at home.

Maybe my experience is an outlier, but I think that after a few months both parents have developed connections with the baby -- it's just that half of them are told by society that if they haven't it's wrong. There's a reason that many women develop postpartum depression, and I don't think that it's entirely chemical. Being a stay at home parent is extremely isolating.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#87

Post by DanBC » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:57 PM UTC

bastijn wrote: post #29

I wonder how much of the balance difference is due to boys liking tech more than girls. I'd say that if you ask 10-15 year olds, who hardly think about their future, about what they do in their free time you will find equal balance on the reply "gaming/stuff on my PC". Most girls don't like it, that translates to later stages in life I guess. Never see the reports for other fields where females excel in acceptance ra…

> I don't see people fighting there for equal rights.

every time the gender imbalance comes up on HN someone makes the same comment you have.

Did you try Google? Because those programmes are trivially easy to find.

People will often make a similar comment about the lack of programmes to get women into construction or mining. But those programmes are really easy to find too.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#88

Post by gshulegaard » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 9:59 PM UTC

ksenzee wrote: post #80

gshulegaard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that the parent comment is assuming one way or another, just offering a plausible explanation given the very limited perspective of the metrics being quoted. For example, how does this compare to other trends for female jobs in other sectors? How do the figures compare when you separate the population between those with children and those without? When someone wants to make a claim like: "These numbers…

TFA isn't a position piece intended to argue the point. It was saying, "hey, this is a problem, here are two numbers indicating the scope of the problem, and here are some people who are working on it." Not "This is a problem, and here are statistics to prove it to skeptics." The data on why women leave tech is out there if you're genuinely interested.

In general, complete data on population trends is very lacking. So if you have a source I would genuinely be interested in examining it.

But I guess where you and I disagree is whether or not the problem identified actually is the problem. Which I think makes creating essentially sexist sub-networks/organizations questionable. If the crux of the issue isn't some sort of gender discrimination (nefarious or not, structural or cultural, etc.) then the proposed solution doesn't actually address the underlying issue leading to the observed macro trend.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#89

Post by nostrebored » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 10:00 PM UTC

gshulegaard wrote: post #85

nostrebored wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to say that people are making their decisions in a vacuum is intellectually dishonest. Unless of course you just assume that women have different brains, that make them too intellectually feeble to have interests in computing, engineering, machinery.

I don't have an interest in forwarding the notion that one gender is superior to the other in anyway shape or form. But neither are both genders identical . For example, the video I linked above, there is a brief observation made about how more female doctors drifted towards pediatrics than men. I don't think that says anything about the potential of either gender, but I would possibly describe it as a gender prefere…

>"But neither are both genders are identical."

I'm going to take a step back and substitute gender for sex. Saying that the two sexes are not identical is a very interesting, and strong stance. Especially seeing as it is impossible to prove with socialization and neuroplasticity.

I don't doubt that there are preferences based on gender. Gender is the word that we use to describe a set of sex-stereotypes that we project onto members of our society.

Aiming for freedom of choice makes sense sans socialization. I overuse this example, but imagine Douglas Adams' cow that was raised to be eaten -- if we raise girls with the notion that they should love children, be self sacrificing, value helping others over money, not be selfish, and raise boys with a completely separate set of traits, is it reasonable to not apply a critical lens to these choices when they cause a detrimental effect on the quality of life of one group, and the set of available experiences to both groups?

Is raising a cow that chooses to be eaten any better than raising one that doesn't? Is it even worse?

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#90

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jun 02, 2016, 10:00 PM UTC

xenihn wrote: post #43

throwaway293810 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's cultural, undoubtedly. Many couples just do it that way because that's "how it's done" without really thinking about it. But as far as I've seen/heard there is also significant social cost to stay-at-home dads. They're alternately demonized, ignored, assumed incompetent, assumed less worthy for not financially supporting the family, or just not accommodated in a thousand other ways. That's what we (society…

>Many couples just do it that way because that's "how it's done" without really thinking about it My hunch is that you don't actually know any women in tech who have decided to take a leave from their careers (either temporarily or permanently) in order to raise their children, and your handle + the fact that you just made that account makes me think you're a troll. Many (most?) mothers suffer if they can't be around…

Strongly disagree, and I say that as a parent who loves his child. Raising kids is often hard unfulfilling manual labor, and leaving the workforce to do it leaves many women in precarious financial and social positions as a consequence. I know a middle-aged woman who left her job as a hospital exec to be a stay at home mom. Now the kids are grown, she's bored out of her mind, she's ineligible for any career that would challenge her, and resents being financially dependent on her husband. I probably know more women in that position than the other way around, between family and friends. It's particularly challenging when marriages don't work out later in life, which is common.

And saying that you should be happy staying home if you really want kids is a crock. You can love your kids without desiring to restructure your whole life around them. And as a society we should be skeptical of glorifying parenthood to the point of encouraging people to structure their lives around their kids.