The power of role models • Hacker News Board

Re: The power of role models

#141

Post by Rusky » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:11 PM UTC

Oxitendwe wrote: post #96

ericjang wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 j…

>proponents of affirmative-action policies argue that the handicap offsets disabilities from the glass ceiling, discrimination / stereotype threat in the workplace/education pipeline. How do you know that the disparity in women in the general population versus women in computer science is caused by the things you mentioned? How do you know that they have an equal interest and potential in this field than demographics…

There are plenty of examples in other fields where we have implemented systems to counter bias against women, and then the demographics of that field have quickly shifted to match the population.

For example, before orchestras started doing blind auditions, there were far fewer women than men. After, the proportions are much closer to equal. Sports is a related example- there are clearly plenty of women interested in athletics, despite society pushing them out in the past. The article itself compares computing to astronomy- I find it unlikely that the differences between the two are wide enough to result in the difference we see demographics.

So at this point, it seems to me the burden of proof falls on the idea that women aren't discriminated against. Time and again society has tried to explain away a disparity by attributing it to intrinsic differences of biology, or whatever, and time and again that has proven false.

Re: The power of role models

#142

Post by superioritycplx » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:11 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #133

skookumchuck wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no shortage of women with money.

Compared to the number of men with money, there sure as hell is. 95% (that number is me talking out of my ass, but, I can tell you I only met one female investing partner at a VC, and no female angels, the entire time I lived there, and countless men) of investors in Silicon Valley are men. The whole ecosystem is hugely weighted toward men making decisions.

Are you saying male investors won't invest in a promising start up because it's female-run?

Re: The power of role models

#143

Post by donovanm » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:12 PM UTC

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.

Was software engineering ever meritocratic? It certainly doesn't seem so to me. Never mind the problem of how to evaluate who's the best which seems impossible.

Re: The power of role models

#144

Post by tptacek » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:13 PM UTC

throwaway399 wrote: post #136

tptacek wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article we're talking about opens with an observation about better gender parity in another hard science field, so it's hard to see how computer science can somehow exempt itself from the observation without special pleading.

How do you know that all hard science fields are equally interesting to women?

* Molecular biology

* Chemistry

* Math

* Evolutionary biology

* Biochemistry

* Statistics

* Astronomy

All these fields have greater than 30% participation among women.

It's always possible to compose a special-pleading argument; that's why we have the term "special pleading". But to be convincing, that argument would have to come up with a compelling difference between computer science and all those other fields (it would also need to account for the fact that women are also far better represented in the rest of the professions).

Re: The power of role models

#145

Post by chroma » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:13 PM UTC

The idea of publicizing more role models seems fine, but Pike crossed a line here:

> It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely.

Doing this would violate the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits hiring discrimination based on, "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin".[1] I'm also sure such a practice would be extremely counterproductive.

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2

Re: The power of role models

#146

Post by Rusky » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:14 PM UTC

mzzter wrote: post #41

> It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely. They don't need to be chosen "just because" :/ they should be chosen based on merit, otherwise, how good of a role model would that person become?

I read that as "just because" among otherwise equally-qualified candidates, as a counter to an unintentional bias in the other direction.

Re: The power of role models

#147

Post by tptacek » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:15 PM UTC

tbirdz wrote: post #107

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…

>Rob is right that role models are important. I've heard this thought expressed a lot, but I have to ask a genuine question: Does anyone here really have any role models that were influential to their interest in the field? I'm a man, so maybe it is different for women. But I never really had any role models in programming that I looked up to/wanted to emulate. Personally, I was always interested in computers, softwa…

"Role model" doesn't simply mean "someone you look up to". It also means "cognitively available success cases". This message board is practically a personification of that phenomenon. Among those of us running startups, most wouldn't have done so had many others not done so before us.

Re: The power of role models

#148

Post by skookumchuck » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:15 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #133

skookumchuck wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no shortage of women with money.

Compared to the number of men with money, there sure as hell is. 95% (that number is me talking out of my ass, but, I can tell you I only met one female investing partner at a VC, and no female angels, the entire time I lived there, and countless men) of investors in Silicon Valley are men. The whole ecosystem is hugely weighted toward men making decisions.

Women are free to start a VC fund. Nobody is stopping them. As I said, there are plenty of women with money.

Furthermore, VC funds are hardly the only source of funding. Friends and family are traditional sources of startup capital, and loaning money to businesses is a traditional business for banks.

Re: The power of role models

#149

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:15 PM UTC

Oxitendwe wrote: post #78

bbatsell wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

I think his post was that we should challenge our cognitive biases and the male-oriented geek culture.

For example, after some members of the team have interviewed a potential candidate for hire, we get together to discuss our observations on him/her. We were choosing between two people and the female, IMO, wrote much cleaner code. The team decided to go with the guy because "he fit the culture better".

What this meant was he and 2 of the other interviewers talked about League of Legends for 10 minutes and he wore a "hilarious" graphic t-shirt.

Re: The power of role models

#150

Post by zigzigzag » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 8:16 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #63

zigzigzag wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pike is arguing the opposite - that computing should become less meritocratic. Hence promoting women "just because". I think I'll continue to promote people who seem to do good work, regardless of their gender. If some women lose interest in computing because they lack role models, too bad for them: there are plenty of female programmers in eastern Europe and Russia who don't seem to care.

No, the fact that Pike doesn't accept the same premises you do about the nature of merit in the technology industry doesn't mean that he believes tech should become less meritocratic. A different set of priors creates a condition where gender parity results in more meritocracy.

Only with an absurd definition of "merit".

Yes, if you define "merit" as including particular genes in your DNA, then you can get away with Pike's attitude and still claim to be merit-based.

But hello, reality check, Pike is advocating for something that is not only immoral but also explicitly illegal. The law says that people should be assessed on their skill at the job and not selected due to their gender. Like, whether they write good code or not. The industry has a lot of different ways of measuring merit that are gender neutral - Pike is saying ignore those ways and promote bad coders over good, "just because" they're women.