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The power of role models

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Re: The power of role models

#181

Post by skookumchuck »

SwellJoe wrote: post #166
superioritycplx wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I responded to someone who said "There's no shortage of women with money." So, in this particular comment, I am saying exactly what I said: There is a severe shortage of women with money who are making decisions in the tech funding industry. I'll go even further to suggest that the gap is even larger in tech investing than it is in tech in the general case. But, since you asked: I will now say that there are biases i…

I personally know lots of women who are multimillionaires. Maybe you should be asking them why they don't start VC funds. There is nobody to tell them they can't. Why doesn't Marissa Meyers start one? or Melinda Gates? or Chelsea Clinton? or Madonna? or Ellen Pao? or Oprah?

Re: The power of role models

#182

Post by mwfunk »

zigzigzag wrote: post #62
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any good sources that analyze the causes exodus of women from computer science? To solve these kinds of problems it would be helpful to learn the cause of the change.

There have been plenty of such studies. There is no "exodus", the industry has been dominated by men for a long time. It doesn't change because at each stage of the educational pipeline where women could make a choice that takes them towards software/hardware, a chunk of them drop out, until you get the ratios in the job you get today which are more or less similar to the ratios that graduate with CS degrees. They dr…

There were a lot more women graduating with CS degrees in past decades, it's been declining for a long time:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

Re: The power of role models

#183

Post by SwellJoe »

skookumchuck wrote: post #179
SwellJoe wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Friends and family are traditional sources of startup capital, and loaning money to businesses is a traditional business for banks. Have you ever founded a tech startup funded exclusively by friends and family? Have you ever tried to get a loan from a bank for a tech startup?

> friends and family? Yes. Started my tech company with a 4 figure loan from a family member. Am now independently wealthy. I was told I would fail every step of the way from just about everyone. > bank No. Never needed to. Never needed any other outside capital. My aunt got a loan from a bank to start her own successful business. (She was told that women couldn't get loans to start businesses. She was quite a firecr…

> Yes. Started my tech company with a 4 figure loan from a family member. Am now independently wealthy. I was told I would fail every step of the way from just about everyone.

Congratulations for being born into a family that could support you economically.

> No. Never needed to. Never needed any other outside capital.

That was lucky. Banks don't loan to tech startups. Unless you have assets to put up as collateral (say, your house that you have significant equity in), you will not be able to obtain a loan from a bank to start a tech company. The SBA does enable a limited number of loans for businesses, but they are almost exclusively of the brick and mortar kinda. I have never met a software company founder who could get a loan from a bank to start their company.

If you don't already have money, your ability to get money from a bank will be extremely limited.

Re: The power of role models

#184

Post by [deleted] »

grzm wrote: post #152
facepalm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would diversity the yardstick? The yardstick is creating useful products. (Edit: no there can not be more yardsticks in the long run - a company needs to survive. It gets paid for great products, not for virtue signalling).

There can easily be more than one yardstick. Edit: Yes, a company needs to survive. Which products or services a company provides are simple examples of choices that are not purely based on profit. Similarly, there's plenty of variety in how companies are run while still being able to survive. Maximizing profit at the expense of all else is a choice some do make, but that's not the only way to run a business.

[deleted]

Re: The power of role models

#185

Post by zzzcpan »

nielsabel wrote: post #153

“Science has been done without women for centuries, and it obviously worked.” – Luboš Motl Can we please just stop all this PC bullshit. Robo Pike obviously doesn't realize that the reason these women attending that meeting are so excellent is because there are so few of them. I.e. only those survived/came so far who have actual skills. The same goes for computer science. The women who are really skilled and who real…

I also find the whole "women in tech" problem very ignorant and kind of a first world problem, possibly invented by VCs PR companies for whatever reason (larger hiring pools?). It cannot possibly be a priority for someone who is even a little bit aware of what's going on in the world. And that's not even considering what states expect from women and how much propaganda and incentives are in place to make sure they do not pursue a career, but raise children.

Re: The power of role models

#186

Post by watwut »

dominotw wrote: post #119
tbirdz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

growing up in a poor country my two options were 1. become a software engineer 2. continue to live rest of your life in dire poverty. This is precisely the reason you would find so many female programmers in south asian and other poor countries. Its funny to see all the armchair philosophers like Pike come up with some 'Well actually, it's because X' explanations without presenting a single bit of evidence to back it…

"growing up in a poor country my two options were 1. become a software engineer 2. continue to live rest of your life in dire poverty"

Where exactly? Because frankly, that seems to be highly unlikely.

Re: The power of role models

#187

Post by stale2002 »

nielsabel wrote: post #168
stale2002 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men do leave, but they leave much much less. All you have to do is look at incoming CS major undergrads vs finished degree CS undergrads, or you can look at any statistic at all along a women's career. Women are leaving in droves. We do not have a pipeline problem. We do not need to get more women in kindergarden interested in math. We have a toxic pipeline problem, when women are driven out of the industry.

> we need to get more women in kindergarden interested in math. Why? What's the (supposed) benefit? I'd rather see general improvement on math lessons in school. Most of these lessons are boring, given by boring teacher. I'd be happy if people went out of school simply not hating math (they don't have to like) it. I find this to be much worthwile instead of pushing girls into math even though they might not be inhere…

I meant the opposite.

TLDR: Stop focusing on Kindergarden. Focus on the women who have already spent years of their life in tech, and are being driven out. Help these women, by fixing tech culture, so they are not driven out.

"the problems in STEM (and science in general) won't be solved by quantity but by quality. "

I agree. Quality. We need to stop driving the quality, talented women out of the industry.

Re: The power of role models

#188

Post by [deleted] »

skookumchuck wrote: post #181
SwellJoe wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I responded to someone who said "There's no shortage of women with money." So, in this particular comment, I am saying exactly what I said: There is a severe shortage of women with money who are making decisions in the tech funding industry. I'll go even further to suggest that the gap is even larger in tech investing than it is in tech in the general case. But, since you asked: I will now say that there are biases i…

I personally know lots of women who are multimillionaires. Maybe you should be asking them why they don't start VC funds. There is nobody to tell them they can't. Why doesn't Marissa Meyers start one? or Melinda Gates? or Chelsea Clinton? or Madonna? or Ellen Pao? or Oprah?

[deleted]

Re: The power of role models

#189

Post by aidanhs »

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…

Yes. When I was younger, before I was capable of any programming (but still somewhat technically competent), I used to visit the freerainbowtables.com forums. There was a poster there (sc00bz) who posted highly technical/mathematical posts which were completely incomprehensible to me at the time [0], but made me highly motivated to always want to learn more so someday I could communicate on that level.

As it happens, I 'rediscovered' him on twitter via another hackernews post [1] a while ago, so dropped him a message to say thanks for being an unwitting inspiration :)

[0] This is a relatively simple example, it's hard to find better ones now the site is down - http://web.archive.org/web/20111111050908/https://www.freera...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691798

Re: The power of role models

#190

Post by tbirdz »

mjibson wrote: post #171
tbirdz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Does anyone here really have any role models that were influential to their interest in the field? Rob's entire piece is about how a group of women in a highly technical field were influenced by role models. And we're still denying these women's responses?

I tried very hard to make sure my comment did not come across as dismissive, evidently I failed. Just to reemphasize, I am not in any way trying to deny these women's responses.

I have just seen this concept of a role model bandied about before, and that is something that I have never experienced in my own life in computing. In the article, Rob mentions how in the field of astronomy, the women he has talked to consider role models to be important. But he never mentions any people he would consider role models to himself in computing.

So I was just curious if anyone else here had any role models in computing (man or woman), and if so would they mind sharing a little anecdote about that experience. I've often heard talk of the importance of role models, and I felt like I was kind of "missing out" for not having one. So I thought, how about I start a little side discussion on the role that role models in computing had had on others lives and careers on here.

I am NOT trying to imply any of these things: "Women shouldn't need role models because I didn't have one" "Role models are unimportant" "Women should accept men as role models" "Women are liars"

or any other such derogatory statements.

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