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

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

#171

Post by andrepd »

deciplex wrote: post #166
andrepd wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, all of the schools that do not enforce such a ridiculous rule are my data points. So unless you suggest there are more schools enforcing that rule than not, then I have more data points, so I win. Right? The truth is that that anecdote brings no value whatsoever to the discussion.

It brings a little value, in the form of a single data point. Not "none" otherwise no one could talk about their experiences ever, without being accused of wasting everyone's time. Also, there need not be more than 50% of schools enforcing this policy, for it to discourage men from entering the profession. Even 10% would be a lot.

My point is that your single anecdote (or "data point" or whatever you want to call it) isn't indicative of the statu quo. Does it mean there are places where men are discriminated against? Yes. Does it mean the statu quo is discrimination against men? No.

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

#172

Post by morgante »

ankey1 wrote: post #52
larrik wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has taken the kids out and about during the day, I have to say that it's awkward . You end up being the only man in a group of dozens of women with their kids, or you are the guy at the playground sitting by himself while his kids play on it (which looks a ton like you don't have any kids to an outsider). Society, at least in most of the U.S. is frankly a bit hostile to males as the caregivers. I can't…

And now you know how it feels to be the only woman engineer on a team of 20 engineers. It's awkward and sometimes hard for women engineers like me to focus on our jobs because of the awkwardness contributing to hostile work environments. And this is why it's awesome that YC is supporting Women Who Code.

At least you're not treated as a criminal or pervert.

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

#173

Post by nostrebored »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #162
rayiner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a libertarian so ultimately I believe that everyone should be free to make their own decisions even if there are gender preferences at play. Not saying there aren't issues, but simply saying, "X is anti-women, because only Y% are female," is academically dishonest. It's not academically dishonest, it's the application of a reasonable epistomological presumption: we presume that observations are not caused by b…

It's not really reasonable to take as a strong prior (or null hypothesis if you are that sort) that two distributions are equal. Why would they be? Further, lets think of all the distributions where we can easily measure - upper body strength and height are two examples. The male/female distributions are, in fact, not equal. Same for the distributions of mathematical ability. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/321…

We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed.

The people with the pet hypothesis here are those who assume without causal evidence that there is a difference in cognition between men and women. Neuroscience is converging on the fact that sex specific differences in the brain are minimal. [0] Differences in the brain have been observed between taxi drivers and the general population. We clearly wouldn't assume that they were born to be taxi drivers, we would place the causation on neuroplasticity. Even then, neuroscience is a very immature field. Neurobollocks is an entertaining read.

[0] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/is-the-brai...

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

#174

Post by morgante »

nostrebored wrote: post #51
busterarm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know that that's the reason that more women are deciding to stay home? This looks like a big conclusion to draw when the data only _may_ correlate. Where's the survey of double-income family moms working in tech where they specified the reason why they chose to stay at home? There are a lot of reports coming out that look at numbers and say what may be the reason, but I've yet to see anyone go ask women the rea…

Oh, I've done this, let me tell you why: 1) People in tech are assholes to women. I don't think most of them realize they're doing it. Sending images of swimsuit models over slack or otherwise sexualizing your work environment is an awful idea, and you shouldn't do it even if you don't have women on your team. My partner gets asked out by coworkers regularly, even while pregnant. 2) No really, people in tech are assh…

> 4) Being pushed into management.

Do you have a source for that?

The dominant narrative I've heard is that women are passed over for promotions, not accelerated.

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

#175

Post by NTDF9 »

nostrebored wrote: post #120
NTDF9 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> So you think that there are more incapable women than men in the world? Incapable of what? Never once did I say women are incapable of either career or motherhood. Women can efficiently do what they choose to. Juggling many roles on the other hand is hard for any human being (regardless of gender) >> Women are capable of working in fields like tech through pregnancy. We have breast pumps and formula. If you're goi…

>"There are capable women who climb ladders successfully. The other women who couldn't, simply couldn't, just like many men who couldn't." There are fewer women, proportionally, who "climb ladders" successfully. This implies that there are fewer capable women than men in the world. >"Who said that man doesn't want to take a paternity leave? Every single recent father I know wants to take time off to bond with the kid…

>> There are fewer women, proportionally, who "climb ladders" successfully. This implies that there are fewer capable women than men in the world.

Or, they make different life choices.

>> The mother being present is not required for a child to be exclusively breastfed anymore. Pumping is quite effective. The only argument for only the woman to be taking the time off and making these career compromises is one that views women as the only capable caregivers.

Fine. Don't be a good parent. Women are not the only capable caregivers. Men can be equally good. Women can be equally shitty. Unfortunately, law treats women specially. Get this law to treat women the same as men.

>> And this can't be done with both partners sharing in childcare responsibilities and working? The data is out there (see my other posts) to show that SAHM are significantly more angry, depressed, etc. than their working counterparts. Is this a win for the mother and the baby?

Do you think that women are incapable of "playing point guard", i.e. providing for their family?

No. Women certainly can play point guard. But when was the last time you saw a woman date a deadbeat? No woman wants to date a man who sits at home....implicitly, men who are going to become a parent work (or have to work).

Women can play point guards when they start having families with deadbeats.

>> I've stayed at home with child. I know that it's hard. Being a successful PARENT is hard too, and the reason that motherhood is even harder for the majority of the people that I know is their sole responsibility as child-rearer.

It's not the mother's sole responsibility. But at least one partner has to take more care of the kid while the other partner sacrifices their social life for work. You can have men sitting at home taking care of the kid, but I don't see many women married to men like that. Care to set an example?

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

#176

Post by Pyxl101 »

nostrebored wrote: post #173
yummyfajitas wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really reasonable to take as a strong prior (or null hypothesis if you are that sort) that two distributions are equal. Why would they be? Further, lets think of all the distributions where we can easily measure - upper body strength and height are two examples. The male/female distributions are, in fact, not equal. Same for the distributions of mathematical ability. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/321…

We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed. The people with the pet hypothesis here are those who assume without causal evidence that there is a difference in cognition between men and women. Neuroscience is converging on the fact that sex specific…

> We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed.

Yes, it is easily observed and has been extensively studied. Wikipedia has several articles about "Sex differences in ..." on different topics. For example, see "Sex differences in intelligence" [1] or "Sex differences in human psychology". Lots of studies are linked. One that I recall is "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" [2]:

> Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. [...] 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin.

Another example is "Sex differences in parking are affected by biological and social factors" [3], which found that men are better at parking cars:

> The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. Although laboratory tests prove men’s average superiority in visuospatial tasks and parking requires complex, spatial skills, underlying mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we investigated performance of beginners (nine women, eight men) and more experienced drivers (21 women, 27 men) at different parking manoeuvres. Furthermore, subjects conducted the mental rotation test and self-assessed their parking skills. We show that men park more accurately and especially faster than women.

Another known result is that male IQ is higher on average has higher variance than female IQ. The intelligence study "Sex differences on the progressive matrices: a meta-analysis" [4] concluded:

> Results showed that there is no difference among children aged 6–14 years, but that males obtain higher [mean IQ] from the age of 15 through to old age. Among adults, the male advantage is 0.33d equivalent to 5 IQ points. These results disconfirm the frequent assertion than there are no sex differences on the progressive matrices and support a developmental theory that a male advantage appears from the age of 15 years.

"Brother–sister differences in the g factor in intelligence" [5] claims that male IQ is not higher on average, but has "substantially greater variance". If male IQ had greater variance, this means we would expect that there are more men than women with very high IQs (as well as more men with very low IQs). The section about current research in [1] has more.

These are just a small sample of peer-reviewed research articles examining mental differences between men and women. There may not be consensus on all topics, but there is on some, such as the higher variance of male IQs, and it's being actively studied.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc...

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300...

[3] http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/biopsy/papers/Wolf_Ocklenburg2...

[4] http://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/psicologia/pei/download/Lynn2...

[5] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606...

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

#177

Post by beepboop2045 »

hsubi wrote: post #82

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…

I feel like what they're doing is good in general but at the same time not my scene for a lot of the same reasons that you mentioned.

I suspect that women-oriented tech organizations lean that way because a large number of people who are women in tech AND who show up to meetups are women who don't have programming jobs and want them.

I also think there's a culture that pushes women into lead positions/managment because that will have a very obvious benefit to women who work in tech that work under them.

There's been a couple of initiatives that are more about the passion-side of tech that are oriented towards women. Double Union was a pretty good group for that when I was in SF.

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

#178

Post by busterarm »

nostrebored wrote: post #155
slackstation wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are startup problems. Larger mature tech companies (there are many of them) shouldn't be that hostile. I work at one with 1000+ employees and while it's not 50/50, I can't imagine it being that bad. Also, I'm a black person. All of the horror stories they say about POC in tech, I have never experienced one. I've had individual jerks but, I haven't had things like the company passing me up or ever felt that I wa…

Most of these anecdotes are from women at big 4 companies.

Not to shit all over other peoples' career choices, but those and fresh startups are exactly the sort of places that hardly ever pass my shit-test for work environment.

The absolute best places to work, I've found, are in (non-tech or tangentially tech) businesses that have a solid tech team but aren't in the Tech Co Echochamber. Surveying my friends and colleagues seems to point to the same.

Want to be seriously valued and friends with everyone at work? Be the person that asks questions, sees their problems and then makes the magic happen. You're not going to do this at Google or Facebook and you're not going to do this at DeathMarchOnwardNextFundingRound-ly either.

Tech-bro shenanigans not flying in the "traditional" business world is a huge bonus.

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

#179

Post by morgante »

busterarm wrote: post #35
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…

Also, should we really be pushing anyone into a field known for social isolation, long hours, depression and suicide without making a seriously strong effort to resolve those problems as well?

Introducing a higher percentage of women to the field would likely directly improve several of those problems due to statistics alone.

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

#180

Post by deciplex »

andrepd wrote: post #171
deciplex wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It brings a little value, in the form of a single data point. Not "none" otherwise no one could talk about their experiences ever, without being accused of wasting everyone's time. Also, there need not be more than 50% of schools enforcing this policy, for it to discourage men from entering the profession. Even 10% would be a lot.

My point is that your single anecdote (or "data point" or whatever you want to call it) isn't indicative of the statu quo. Does it mean there are places where men are discriminated against? Yes. Does it mean the statu quo is discrimination against men? No.

The "status quo" can be discrimination against men even if a small minority of schools actually implement this policy. If one tech company out of one hundred had a policy in place whereby female employees were required to come to work early in order to make coffee, we'd likely be talking about regressive culture at all tech companies, not just complaining about a shitty policy enforced by a few outliers.

We would do so because one company out of one hundred implementing such a policy would be highly likely to indicate some shitty attitudes everywhere, even if the shitty attitudes didn't always translate to that particular shitty policy. Likewise, even if most schools do not have this policy, even a few percent of schools implementing a policy which amounts to "men are to be considered sexual predators until proven otherwise, and even then" is probably enough to indicate we have some fucked-up culture going on even in schools that don't actually have this policy.

In other words, the fact that this rule isn't slapped the fuck down for the insane bullshit that it is, same as if the school had a strict "no lesbians" policy, even if it is the only school on the planet to implement this particular policy (which it isn't), already indicates an unacceptable tolerance for this kind of sexism at a societal level.

Moreover reminder you're the one who brought up "status quo" in the first place. The rest of us are talking about what keeps people out of a profession. Status quo may indeed not be assuming that all men are sexual predators, yet the likelihood of same may still be high enough to keep men out of the profession.

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