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The power of role models

commandcenter.blogspot.com

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Re: The power of role models

#261

Post by tptacek »

current_call wrote: post #248
tptacek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 su…

One very simple, coherent way to arrive at Pike's position without sacrificing the notion of merit is to accept the idea... By accept, you mean assume, and assuming is what Oxitendwe was warning against.

I'm pretty sure either you misread my comment, or I'm misreading yours, because this seems like a non sequitur.

Re: The power of role models

#262

Post by skookumchuck »

grzm wrote: post #245
skookumchuck wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see men being blamed, whether they are intentional or not. I also see men being put forward as being responsible for a solution. I.e. that women cannot succeed without the aid, approval, and encouragement of men. I view this as an unfortunate sexist and patronizing attitude, and is ultimately a destructive one. Women do not need the aid, approval, or encouragement from men to succeed in tech. This applies to everyo…

Thanks for taking the time to respond. In this thread, can you provide examples of men being blamed or being held solely responsible for a solution? What percentage of the comments do so?

> The women in tech pipeline is a leaky, toxic pipeline that results in talented women being driven out of the industry.

This thread is about men being the gatekeepers of financing. The parent article says:

> Men have the power to help fix those things, but they also should have the courage to cede the stage to women more often, to fight the stupid bias that keeps women from excelling in the field. It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely.

Re: The power of role models

#263

Post by tbirdz »

justin66 wrote: post #258
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…

> And for those who have experienced it, would you mind sharing a story about a significant role model in programming from your life? How does this require a story? For me it's as simple as reading about the exploits of people like Gary Starkweather, John Carmack, Steve Wozniak, or whoever and thinking "I want to do stuff like that." And yeah, if none of those role models were guys, I'm sure I would have been affecte…

I would be interested in hearing what exploits in particular that the person did inspired you to take them on as a role model. To me a role model would not just be someone who does good work, but someone who you would aspire to emulate. There would have to be something special about what they did and perhaps more importantly how and why they did it that inspired you to want to be like them.

So to take your list of people for example, someone like John Carmack. What I was looking for was what specific exploits were you talking about and why they were so inspirational to you. Maybe it was his work creating the Doom and Quake games, or his bootstrap work building id software from scratch, or his contributions to free software by releasing his engines under gpl, or his quakeworld talks, or his work with rocketry, or his new work with VR, or his general overall attitude about life, programming and everything.

I mean there had to be something special about him for you to want to be like him, and that seems like something that would be worth telling a little story about.

Re: The power of role models

#264

Post by DanBC »

gaius wrote: post #173
throwaway399 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being suited to men There are a bunch of other professions where women are under/over-represented. CS is one of them. Others include: Mechanical Engineering Construction Electrical Engineering Physics Aerospace Engi Geography Finance On the other hand, in Biology things are a lot more balanced. So maybe it is the field of interest as opposed t…

Loggers, refuse collectors, meatpackers, miners etc etc are also disproportionately male.

You were told three years ago about the programmes that exist to correct the gender balance in each of those industries.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6508777#6509275

Women in mining: http://internationalwim.org/

http://www.womeninmining.org/

Women in construction:

http://www.nawic.org/nawic/default.asp

(some editing to tone it down a bit.)

Re: The power of role models

#265

Post by justin66 »

chroma wrote: post #145

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 cou…

Hiring to correct a disparity in the proportion of men vs women on a team, to make it somewhat less ridiculously uneven in its tilt toward men, would be quite easy to defend in court. I'd be interested in knowing if any court cases of "zomg reverse discrimination" have ever been won by white dudes under those circumstances.

Re: The power of role models

#266

Post by nickparker »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #252
nickparker wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see where you're coming from, and I think we reach different conclusions because you see merit as a much more readily judged quantity than I do. I wholeheartedly agree, elevating people above the level of responsibility/work they can handle is a bad idea, as is taking away responsibility from more qualified people. Where you run into trouble is the people judging qualifications. Human judgment is an insanely noisy…

> many candidates who are equally "qualified" within our margin of error Too many acceptable candidates? Nobody I've ever worked for had this problem. If you meet the bar, you're getting an offer, even if Chuck Norris and Jeff Dean carpooled to the next session.

I think I'm discussing the upper end of the funnel while you're pointing toward the bottom.

At the level of phone screens and first interviews, there should be many potentially acceptable candidates. If there aren't it's indicative of a flaw at the very top of the funnel (ie, the opening needs to be better publicized, or the org. may have a public image problem).

Re: The power of role models

#267

Post by stale2002 »

Fishman343 wrote: post #176
stale2002 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the pipeline problem backwards. The women in tech pipeline is a leaky, toxic pipeline that results in talented women being driven out of the industry. Of course many women are not that interested in programming. This is obviously true. Because the women who DO get into programming are quickly driven out by the toxic culture. If I were a woman I wouldn't want to be in the tech industry either. It is a waste o…

Is there any way to actually measure this? Not the bounce rate of women leaving, but the reasons they do. You say it's the 'toxic culture' but is there any metric to measure it? We need some sort of exit poll data for people leaving the tech industry if that exists. We've seen the data for women giving up after receiving fewer rejections than men, but to my knowledge any accusations of toxicity are purely anecdotal.

You can figure out the reason that they left by asking them.

This isn't something that is controversial. There is lots of research into this.

https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/the-real-reason-wome...

http://news.mit.edu/2016/why-do-women-leave-engineering-0615

Are just two, actually published research attempts that I found with a 2 minute google search.

Re: The power of role models

#268

Post by justin66 »

tbirdz wrote: post #263
justin66 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And for those who have experienced it, would you mind sharing a story about a significant role model in programming from your life? How does this require a story? For me it's as simple as reading about the exploits of people like Gary Starkweather, John Carmack, Steve Wozniak, or whoever and thinking "I want to do stuff like that." And yeah, if none of those role models were guys, I'm sure I would have been affecte…

I would be interested in hearing what exploits in particular that the person did inspired you to take them on as a role model. To me a role model would not just be someone who does good work, but someone who you would aspire to emulate. There would have to be something special about what they did and perhaps more importantly how and why they did it that inspired you to want to be like them. So to take your list of pe…

Those are, personality-wise, three radically different people I listed and I don't think anyone who knows about them could consistently want to "be like" all three of them. I thought they did interesting and important work and had an exciting role to play, indicative of an important field.

We might have a disagreement about the meaning of "role model," which is fine. I don't really think that's the point at all...

Edit: Thomas's "cognitively available success cases" seems like a good one to me

Re: The power of role models

#269

Post by stale2002 »

Oxitendwe wrote: post #192
stale2002 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the pipeline problem backwards. The women in tech pipeline is a leaky, toxic pipeline that results in talented women being driven out of the industry. Of course many women are not that interested in programming. This is obviously true. Because the women who DO get into programming are quickly driven out by the toxic culture. If I were a woman I wouldn't want to be in the tech industry either. It is a waste o…

>The women in tech pipeline is a leaky, toxic pipeline that results in talented women being driven out of the industry. I'd be very interested to see some evidence of this. How many women leave, at what stage in their career path do they leave, where do they go after they've left, and how do you know that their unfair treatment is responsible?

You can figure out the reason that they left by asking them.

This isn't something that is controversial. There is lots of research into this.

https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/the-real-reason-wome...

http://news.mit.edu/2016/why-do-women-leave-engineering-0615

http://alltogether.swe.org/2016/04/real-reason-women-leave-s...

Are just a couple, actually published research attempts that I found with a 2 minute google search.

Re: The power of role models

#270

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #264
gaius wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loggers, refuse collectors, meatpackers, miners etc etc are also disproportionately male.

You were told three years ago about the programmes that exist to correct the gender balance in each of those industries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6508777#6509275 Women in mining: http://internationalwim.org/ http://www.womeninmining.org/ Women in construction: http://www.nawic.org/nawic/default.asp (some editing to tone it down a bit.)

[deleted]
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