Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The power of role models

commandcenter.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 380 posts

Re: The power of role models

#71

Post by tptacek »

Oxitendwe wrote: post #24

>The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is not to recruit them, important though that is, but to promote them. To create role models. To push them into positions of influence. I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another. This is antithetical t…

If you disagree with Pike's implied priors, do so directly; don't huff about how logic that starts from a different set of premises to yours ends at a bad place when you swap the premises out from under it.

One very simple, coherent way to arrive at Pike's position without sacrificing the notion of merit is to accept the idea that it's very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being suited to men, and thus the gender gap must itself be an indication that something other that merit is systematically advantaging men and disadvantaging women.

You're welcome to argue that point (or any other), but don't pretend that you've beaten it by default.

Re: The power of role models

#72

Post by GauntletWizard »

CJefferson wrote: post #34
trentnix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that the solution wouldn't be to double down on bias hoping that bias in the opposite direction will somehow result in harmony. That's like a cable news network letting polemics on opposite sides of an issue (as if there are only to ways to look at an issue in the first place) scream at each other for a segment and then patting themselves on the back for their "balance". After all, they "presented both…

I disagree. There are a number of papers (and I'm very afraid I'm on my phone right now, so I can't cite them. I am sorry for that) which show that things like severe gender imbalance are not self-correcting systems in the case of extreme bias -- you have to push them back closer to 50/50, but then the system will remain balanced. This makes (to me) intuitive sense -- current staff / managers will tend to employ, and…

I'd love to see those papers; I intuit the same result, but I don't trust my intuition on social issues.

The problem is going to remain - Where do we draw the line? Where does pressure towards the center start to hurt progress because of pushback? I'd posit that much of the "Black Lives Matter" debate is actually this debate - But that the communities are speaking past one another. The places where Black Lives Matter is considered axiomatic are already past that line, while the places where it's viewed with disdain are where racism is still firmly rooted.

Re: The power of role models

#73

Post by bbatsell »

Oxitendwe wrote: post #24

>The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is not to recruit them, important though that is, but to promote them. To create role models. To push them into positions of influence. I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another. This is antithetical t…

I think it might be valuable to reflect on why your immediate reaction to "push them into positions of influence" is to think that women are unqualified to be there and they must be receiving "special advantage" if they are.

Re: The power of role models

#75

Post by ericjang »

Oxitendwe wrote: post #24

>The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is not to recruit them, important though that is, but to promote them. To create role models. To push them into positions of influence. I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another. This is antithetical t…

> And what of the girls who learn that their role models have been given a handicap, pushed upwards beyond their skill by well-meaning but naive men?

Proponents of affirmative-action policies argue that the handicap offsets disabilities from the glass ceiling, discrimination / stereotype threat in the workplace/education pipeline. The calculus of what "balances out inequality" is imperfect, but arguably better than just having the disability.

Re: The power of role models

#76

Post by zigzigzag »

jordanlev wrote: post #8
hd4 wrote: post #3

This is a fine and good idea, as long as the central pillar is that we remain meritocratic first, everything else should come after that.

What if we start from an assumption though that things are currently not meritocrous? Doesn't that then imply if we want to get to a place of full meritocracy some things need to be done that are different than the status quo?

But why would we start from that assumption?

Developer hiring is pretty rigorous compared to a lot of fields where the process boils down to "turn up, is the candidate presentable and interested, do they avoid saying anything dumb in the interview, do they have a good CV, hired". People are asked to actually demonstrate their skills during the hiring process, for instance, something a lot of job interviews lack.

Moreover, the demand for skilled talent is enormous. All sorts of people who are kind of weird or anti-social get hired as programmers when they would struggle to get hired as, say, business analysts or salespeople, simply because people want software and beggars can't be choosers.

In such an environment, implying that the industry is not meritocratic or hopelessly biased against women is especially silly. Women programmers are sought after everywhere. They already have the playing field tipped in their favour in precise, specific, concrete ways. The idea that there's some impossible to see glass barriers stopping them from getting into programming is never nailed down with specifics, probably because no such barriers exist.

Re: The power of role models

#77

Post by ArkyBeagle »

skywhopper wrote: post #12

Programming used to be a field with significant numbers of women, including true pioneers like Grace Hopper. IIRC, female computer science majors peaked in the 80s, and have been declining since. Even with those low numbers these days, a lot of women who are interested in programming and computer science are chased away early on, or they quickly move into more welcoming fields. So it's true that among senior staff, w…

I raised two girls who found the "alpha geek" phenomenon totally repugnant. One is heading back into a CS degree in her thirties; the other went bio and is an entrepreneur.

I have to wonder if the chasing away is not to their benefit. Perhaps the ugly is not just a ... social artifact but more of a reflection of the nature of the course of study.

Two things spring to mind:

- the curious economics of program-correctness. ( people quickly abandon all hope and despair - the "fixes" are all very tedious )

This one's weird - I hope I do not try your patience with it...

- the observation that is made by Adam Curtis in "All Cared For" that what we now call the "environmental movement" could be an artifact of computing. The mindset that there is a knowable and optimum equilibrium for complex systems is something I find increasingly puzzling. It just seems to be a bootstrap; I can't really come up with an ...epistemology of it that isn't circular. People 100 years ago just didn't care; they do now; there was propaganda; it's a thing now that used to not be.

Now suppose that there are other, irrational "optima" that people in our field become obsessed with.

Finally, I believe that prior to the 1990s, people used things like punch cards and other madness to filter participants. After 1990, the unemployment rate of GenX led to the abuse of computing to find those kids something to do. That, I think, led to the "alpha geek" phenomenon as it is now - we had "alpha geeks" before but they seemed nicer, somehow. Or something.

I'm increasingly attributing thready employment to Fed policy, as per Dean Baker, and Scott Sumner. That's not a main stream view...

I would submit that the tech industry is definitely moving backwards. Whether this is all part of it is a hard question.

Re: The power of role models

#78

Post by Oxitendwe »

bbatsell wrote: post #73
Oxitendwe wrote: post #24

>The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is not to recruit them, important though that is, but to promote them. To create role models. To push them into positions of influence. I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another. This is antithetical t…

I think it might be valuable to reflect on why your immediate reaction to "push them into positions of influence" is to think that women are unqualified to be there and they must be receiving "special advantage" if they are.

Was it not his entire point that these people should be given an advantage? What else do you think it means to be "pushed into positions of influence"?

Re: The power of role models

#79

Post by DalaiObama »

jordanlev wrote: post #8
hd4 wrote: post #3

This is a fine and good idea, as long as the central pillar is that we remain meritocratic first, everything else should come after that.

What if we start from an assumption though that things are currently not meritocrous? Doesn't that then imply if we want to get to a place of full meritocracy some things need to be done that are different than the status quo?

If you pick your starting assumption, you can reach any conclusion you desire.

Re: The power of role models

#80

Post by raverbashing »

skywhopper wrote: post #12

Programming used to be a field with significant numbers of women, including true pioneers like Grace Hopper. IIRC, female computer science majors peaked in the 80s, and have been declining since. Even with those low numbers these days, a lot of women who are interested in programming and computer science are chased away early on, or they quickly move into more welcoming fields. So it's true that among senior staff, w…

Some say the decline happened because computers became household objects and a boy's toy.

Which makes sense to me.

Post reply on HN