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Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

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Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the other commenter was saying that at the time people believed it was an acceptable answer, just as now you're saying it's a plausible explanation for this problem.

Yes, thanks, I didn't think I'd actually need to be that explicit... lesson learned!

No need to be explicit. I understood your intended meaning just fine.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was a perfectly acceptable answer to justify segregation Actually, no. It was not an acceptable answer to justify segregation.

I believe the other commenter was saying that at the time people believed it was an acceptable answer, just as now you're saying it's a plausible explanation for this problem.

Yes, I understood he was referencing "at the time", that's why I included the word _was_. My point still stands. Although many people did accept it, it WAS not an acceptable answer, and IS still not an acceptable answer to justify segregation.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#143
post #39

Or it could be that tons of girls get sold into taking up the tech field at a young and impressionable age by presidential speeches, books telling them to "lean in", and articles like this that hint there is some conspiracy of men out there actively working to damage women and they are needed to right the wrong. Then, after spending 4+ years in college studying surface friction losses or CRDT applications without tom…

Ummm.... no. At least not with the data points that I have. 1) Former boss, who is now managing over 100 people at Intel. Smart engineer and totally into the technology. I loved working for her. 2) Former female employees and coworkers that are every bit as much into the technology and every bit as capable as male engineers. 3) Friend and female no-nonsense CEO of startup who has had to fight jack-asses like you for…

> The world has changed.

The nature of people has not.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is it's self-reinforcing. When you have a gender imbalance of something like 10:1, everything bad that happens in the 1:1 case now happens ten times as often even if all the men behave exactly the same. A bad experience that would have occurred to 3.5% of women then occurs to 35%, assuming exactly identical behavior. And worse than that if the bad actors become more aggressive for lack of prospects. Which…

In your first paragraph you're essentially describing the Matthew Effect. It's one of the strongest arguments against laissez-faire libertarian approaches to unfair/unnatural inequalities. Your approach is a more aggressive form of affirmative action.

Affirmative action can't work. It isn't that kind of problem. There is no percentage of qualified female applicants you can accept that will put 10 women in 50 seats.

You have to change the culture in middle and high schools so that lots more little girls want to be hackers.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#145
post #11

Is it also possible that the men are usually being more aggressive towards getting more interesting work? After all, in their example the girls could've just told the guys no and came to an agreement instead of just accepting their lot.

The problem with that is that once you do it a few times, you get a reputation as a "bitch". Assertive men are seen as a "leaders", assertive women are seen as "bitches".

As a leader you get criticized. When we're assertive, men are called assholes and women bitches. I think the difference is men tend not to care what they think and believe they're right, regardless. This is useful in that it lets you press on despite the adversity, but detrimental if there really is an issue. It's good that women listen better and are more aware than men of peoples' feedback, it makes them a different kind of leader. Perhaps we need corporate cultures that value listening more. We all have our strengths.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#146
post #77

My company has desperately tried to hire female candidates into our engineering team, which is currently all male. From the dozens of applications that we got for the position, only about 5% were female. After interviewing them, they either declined the position, or weren't able to complete our take home challenge (nothing against these women, we have lots of guys fail it too!) So, yeah, I'd love to have some females…

You may want to consider these posts by Gayle Laakman McDowell (who write "Cracking the Coding Interview") on possible problems with take-home exams: http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-cand... From her blog post on general interviews and take-homes: http://www.gayle.com/blog/2015/6/10/developer-interviews-are... "Be fair to candidates. Balance the demand on their time with the utility you get fro…

Same experience as OP here both on number of applicants and number of qualified female applicants.

Take home test results were considerably worse for females too and they had over five days to complete a simple thirty minute exercise.

There might be responsibilities that get in the way but IMO if you can't find a slice of time to work on something that came up then I'll be really careful in considering you for a job.

Shit happens w/o planning and I'd rather have people I can count on.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#147
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may want to consider these posts by Gayle Laakman McDowell (who write "Cracking the Coding Interview") on possible problems with take-home exams: http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-cand... From her blog post on general interviews and take-homes: http://www.gayle.com/blog/2015/6/10/developer-interviews-are... "Be fair to candidates. Balance the demand on their time with the utility you get fro…

Same experience as OP here both on number of applicants and number of qualified female applicants. Take home test results were considerably worse for females too and they had over five days to complete a simple thirty minute exercise. There might be responsibilities that get in the way but IMO if you can't find a slice of time to work on something that came up then I'll be really careful in considering you for a job.…

I agree, the inability to do homework would itself be a little bit of a red flag for me, beyond the quality of the homework.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#148
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally! Someone had to say it. These sorts of situations (low percentage of women engineers) are not issues; they're just facts, and most likely caused by, generally enough, the way that women and men think/act/desire. It's not a problem, it's just a fact of life that people, oddly enough, are having a hard time accepting.

People have said exactly what you are saying about every single underrepresented minority in almost any field of human endeavor. Almost every single time history has proven them wrong. Maybe people are right on this one. But I doubt it.

You bring up an excellent point that historically underrepresented minorities have gotten a bad deal. I wonder what kind of criteria could be used to decide if this case was similar.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#149
As someone who has had the statistically rare opportunity to be the only man on a software engineering team I can see this explanation reflects my experience.

I took so many fewer days off than the team average that I tended to get assigned the most vital work.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#150
post #7

I question the method of this "study". I don't think it's a leap to say 40 undergrads writing in their journals is anecdote.

Not every study is a double-blind random sample with statistical modeling and error bars.

Not an excuse a study being garbage. Many fields with studies based on people are flooded with absolute crap based on researching undergrads. This is no different.

If you can't spend the effort to get any kind of reasonable sample, your work doesn't carry any weight.

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