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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

#261

Post by alphydan »

tomp wrote: post #252
rayiner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge cultural push for women to leave the workforce after having a kid, which you don't even really appreciate until you try to swim against the tide. After law school, my wife and I pursued the best jobs we could find, which left us working about 120 miles apart. We also had a baby. There was enormous pressure on her to make a career sacrifice to come work where I did, none for me to do the same. Even whe…

What kind of pressure was there? You, her family, your family, friends, coworkers, ...? Were they only saying that she should make the sacrifice (easy to ignore), or was she e.g. not promoted because of it (hard to ignore)?

I would argue the exact opposite applies to many people:

I couldn't care less about promotions (An additional $40,000? It doesn't affect my happiness in any way). If I want extra responsibilities for the challenge, I can usually engineer my roles and projects to do them without moving up the org-chart.

On the other hand, all your family and friends judging you, raising eyebrows, making you feel like a bad mother ... that one is harder to ignore.

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

#262

Post by yummyfajitas »

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…

I agree it's not easily observed. What I'm disagreeing about is the idea that if two numbers are not easily observed, they must be assumed to be equal.

Similarly, it's unreasonable to assume that the number of dollars in my wallet is equal to the number of dollars in your wallet unless someone can come up with pAlso, on this topic, I don't trust any pop-science writing (such as Scientific American) or journalism about science papers. I don't even trust the abstracts of science papers. Take a look at my citations about mathematical ability - unless you look at the data tables, you won't actually realize that those citations provide strong evidence of significant differences in math ability between men and women.

For example, consider the article with the title "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance", while the first data table shows a variance ratio of 1.11-1.21 and the second table shows the result of this in the right tail.

Unfortunately scientists need to tread very carefully and obscure the "wrong" results - loudly proclaiming these results is a career limiting move.

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

#263

Post by Ntrails »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #65
busterarm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but my cousin was a primary school teacher and faced an incredible amount of hostility because of his gender from parents and colleagues and left for construction after 2 years.

Westerners seem to have a serious distrust in men when it comes to young children. A woman talking to kids in a park is most obviously a mom. A man talking to kids in a park is most obviously a paedophile.

If I see a random child and they look at me, I used to ignore them. Not because I don't think it's hilarious to stick my tongue out or make a face - but because I was worried what someone might think. And, hell, I'm only 30 - it will only get worse as I get older.

I decided that I would not bow to that absurdity, and now I choose to say hello, or run away, or say "boo" or whatever takes my fancy in interacting with said child. Because it's amusing getting a response, watching them process the event and make a decision on how to react. I'd still be nervous if I saw a child without obvious supervision though. To try and help, or not to try and help...

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

#264

Post by cloudjacker »

carrja99 wrote: post #226

This is likely going to be 100% ignored since I'm late to the party on this but my wife's experiences have been that true discrimination and difficulty doesn't rise until a female engineer tries to enter management. When she was "just an engineer" things were great and nothing went wrong. When she tried to level up into management, she faced these difficulties: - competition from other female managers who had transit…

isn't this a challenge for every software engineer?

it is practically a stereotype for other engineers to criticize someone else's code

it is practically a stereotype for senior software engineers to face a career plateau

and you think this was uniquely sexual discrimination? so lets give you the benefit of the doubt, of the things you described, these are issues all software engineers face.

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

#265

Post by chongli »

morgtheborg wrote: post #228
throwaway293810 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

100% agree. At the start-up I work at when I brought up we needed to set a maternity leave policy, I made a point of saying we should match it with a paternity leave policy. I'm a woman, but if I was hiring and it came down to someone I had to give x weeks of paid leave to if they had a child (aka a woman) or someone with the same credentials and skills who I wouldn't need to give that leave to (a man), you bet your…

Having equal parental treatment is a good start. But how do you deal with the subtle cultural bias against men who partake of the leave policy? Their peers and boss judge them as not being committed enough to 'the team'.

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

#266

Post by brianlweiner »

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…

This is a great post! My workplace is about 65/35 male / female and I have this crazy approach to working with women - treating them like normal people! I've never been the type to make sexualized jokes or engage in that stereotypical 'male' office behavior, so censoring myself has never been an issue but it's really just about not assuming things about someone before you actually know them.

It works pretty well, I've met men that aren't particularly experienced or talented as programmers and women - it's stupid and shortsighted to presume things about people you don't know.

It's interesting nursing is always brought up in these discussions. My wife is an RN on her way to being a NP and I've noticed that it's an incredibly hostile field for newcomers despite being dominated by women. Partly this is a result of abusive patients (usually men, but their families as well) - since the ACA hospitals are paid in part based on their patient satisfaction ratings and these people seem to assume nurses are there to be part concierge, part maid, part entertainer - not medical professionals there to monitor your health and keep you alive. A nurse can actually threaten her hospital's revenue streams if she responds in a hostile manner towards the sexual harassment they are likely to receive from patients and their families.

It's also a result of bullying from more senior-staff which takes the form of shitty patient assignments, undesirable work schedules, and a general hostility and casual disrespect from doctors, residents and PAs (this is where some more misogyny enters the picture).

Another interesting thing is the education required to enter the field. Nursing was once an occupation you could start with an Associates degree - in many areas that is no longer the case and a BSN is considered the minimum. At Johns Hopkins School of Nursing a solo BSN isn't even offered anymore, all new students need to enter on a BSN + Masters course path. The result has been a significantly higher barrier of entry into the field and I haven't heard any major news outlets discuss it at all.

Despite the prevalent attitudes towards the difficult work environment in Tech, I don't know any other field that offers the combination of high salaries and a relative disregard for your formal education. That seems to me incredibly empowering for individuals who are actually interested in the work and yet it's never really mentioned either.

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

#267

Post by exstudent2 »

cgriswald wrote: post #223
exstudent2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hard != unfulfilling. The result is very fulfilling. It's really telling that raising a child being fulfilling is even up for debate.

That's the debate only in your own mind. You've completely failed to grasp the not-so-nuanced context. He's not talking about the raising of the child, but the meaningless, but necessary, work that goes with it. Watching my kid succeed at something that I've helped her to learn is very fulfilling. But no matter how much you protest, being a stay-at-home dad was filled with thankless, unfulfilling tasks. I gagged -eve…

I don't understand how you can divorce the hard work that goes into raising a child with the end result of that hard work. When you're changing diapers, do you really not think that you're helping your baby be healthy? That's not rewarding?

I know I said in another comment that my background doesn't matter but believe it or not, I'm actually a dad. Yeah, stuff is tough, boring... but I always think that it's worth it because I'm happy being a good dad.

The "result" of changing a diaper is that your kid isn't sitting around in their own waste. You can take some pride in making that happen IMO.

Also, gagging while changing diapers is a bit weak. You're not really making the case that men are more suited to be stay at home parents :P (jk)

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

#268

Post by exstudent2 »

imron wrote: post #241
exstudent2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hard != unfulfilling. The result is very fulfilling. It's really telling that raising a child being fulfilling is even up for debate.

hard != unfulfilling. I agree. I was going for boring ≈ unfulfilling. I don't think anyone was talking about whether raising a child is fulfilling or not, rather it was that the process often involves unfulfilling manual labor. Two very different things and you're conflating discussion of latter with the former.

Raising a child is nothing but the process. All those long nights, boring days when they're infants... it's all hard work for a good cause. That it's difficult makes it even more rewarding.

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

#270

Post by brianlweiner »

cloudjacker wrote: post #264
carrja99 wrote: post #226

This is likely going to be 100% ignored since I'm late to the party on this but my wife's experiences have been that true discrimination and difficulty doesn't rise until a female engineer tries to enter management. When she was "just an engineer" things were great and nothing went wrong. When she tried to level up into management, she faced these difficulties: - competition from other female managers who had transit…

isn't this a challenge for every software engineer? it is practically a stereotype for other engineers to criticize someone else's code it is practically a stereotype for senior software engineers to face a career plateau and you think this was uniquely sexual discrimination? so lets give you the benefit of the doubt, of the things you described, these are issues all software engineers face.

The reality is that women face presumptions about their technical incompetence at a much higher rate than men. This is well documented and researched. [1]

Obviously male developers also get undermined by their coworkers and face career plateaus. That is reality, but it is not a binary action - simply because some men face similar problems does not imply that it is an equal problem for both genders.

[1] http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopa...

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