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The power of role models

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Re: The power of role models

#311

Post by zigzigzag »

brennen wrote: post #172
pjc50 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like AA, first you have to admit you have a problem. (Not you personally, but there are plenty of people who claim it's just the natural order of things.) The profession does not conduct exit interviews, but fortunately every few weeks someone will write a blog post on why they (a women) left computer science. These articles may be posted to HN, where they often get a skeptical to hostile reception. Harrasment is the…

Yeah. As I've asserted a few comments over, there's an ample body of detailed, firsthand observation available to men who are sincerely interested in the problem. It's also possible for us to talk to women who work in the field and listen as they describe their experiences. The existing gender imbalance, routine discrimination in hiring and promotion, rampant harassment, and profoundly toxic social dynamics are all r…

This sort of post comes up in every HN discussion of feminism or sexism in programming: someone says "just listen to women" followed by "this entire discussion is embarrassing".

I virtually never downvote on this site, but I did in your case because you're simply trying to make an entire area of discussion taboo, by writing off any views you disagree with as "embarrassing" and a "trainwreck". This is the school of thought that gave the world Trump; telling people their own experiences are wrong and that if they disagree they're just horrible people.

My experience of tech hiring, as someone who has been a tech interviewer hundreds of times, is that discrimination in favour of women is rampant. Invariably recruiters and HR would claim it wasn't illegal as the final decision was unbiased, and there was certainly a lot of truth to that, but they did everything they could to give women a push along the way. Scheduling the most experienced interviewers to women (so reducing the chance of hiring mistakes), systematically allowing women onto the next interview stage even if they failed the previous stages, setting up massive scholarship programmes closed to boys etc. And of course the difficulty in firing women.

I don't need to listen to women to know about these things - I've seen it with my own eyes. It's driven by attitudes like Rob Pike's and eventually it hurts both men and women.

Re: The power of role models

#312

Post by zigzigzag »

watwut wrote: post #186
dominotw wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There seem to be far more female programmers in India and former Soviet bloc countries. Poverty is the obvious link. When you want a well paid job, niceties like role models or what your friends think are less important, and gender ratios become more balanced.

Re: The power of role models

#313

Post by zigzigzag »

justin66 wrote: post #265
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.

Either the courts would apply the law and Pike/Google would receive the punishment, or they wouldn't and the clear written intent of the law would have been subverted.

If Congress wanted to systematically disadvantage men in favour of women they should have called it the "Female Rights Act".

With respect to your question the answer is yes, such cases have been won, like this one:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/men-rights-unruh...

Re: The power of role models

#314

Post by zigzigzag »

sctb wrote: post #255
zigzigzag wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

, because ... it's obvious. Promoting incompetent people because they have a vagina is not a policy that will promote harmony between the genders, nor will it magically make meetings vaguely better. It will however lead to resentment and distrust amongst men, who will always wonder if their female boss got where she did by being good, or simply by being a woman.

If you're going to participate in discussions on Hacker News it has to be more civil and substantive than this.

Are you objecting to the use of the word vagina? It seems base, uncivil and shocking doesn't it? It's also a statement of cold fact. That is exactly the policy being advocated by Pike and too many people in this discussion thread: promote and hire people simply because of their anatomy. Your shock at my language is not the result of me being uncivil, but at an uncivil policy stated clearly and without linguistic obfuscation.

Re: The power of role models

#315

Post by infodroid »

tptacek wrote: post #71
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 su…

Oxitendwe didn't start with a different set of premises, he took Pike's conclusion and showed how it would lead to some bad consequences.

You haven't stated anything to rebut any of the points made by Oxitendwe.

Instead, you demonstrated your ignorance of basic argumentation skills and your proclivity for self-righteousness.

You would do well to drop the sanctimonious tone ("don't huff about", "don't pretend") during discussions.

If anybody here is huffing, it is you.

Re: The power of role models

#316

Post by watwut »

zigzigzag wrote: post #312
watwut wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

There seem to be far more female programmers in India and former Soviet bloc countries. Poverty is the obvious link. When you want a well paid job, niceties like role models or what your friends think are less important, and gender ratios become more balanced.

I am from former Soviet block country and there is no surge of female programmers. Also, poor people don't become programmers - only middle class kids do. Poor don't have computers at home and schools don't teach programming. You have to learn from elsewhere.

Re: The power of role models

#317

Post by SolaceQuantum »

Shubley wrote: post #288
stale2002 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 goog…

People don't give (or often even know) the real reasons they do things. Steeped in a culture of sexism accusations, it's not surprising that you'd hear reports of sexism from women leaving the industry. A man doing the exact same thing (and many men do leave tech) would say their boss was an asshole, or they hated the hours, or whatever. Women are prodded and trained to interpret exactly the same circumstances as sex…

I've attended Women in STEM meetings at university as an undergrad and there was already weeding out. Posters for the Women in STEM meetings were always getting torn down. Asian Americans in STEM or Robotics Club posters were not removed as aggressively as the Women in STEM posters. Furthermore, pretty much every woman ther had an experience that I would find hard to say could ever happen to me as a male. One told me of a story where a TA called them "woman" instead of their real name several times. One told me they heard their boss saying "we should only hire the hot ones(referring only to hiring females if they're attractive to the boss)". I really can't imagine either of those things happening to a man in the workspace.

Re: The power of role models

#318

Post by sagichmal »

Oxitendwe wrote: post #38
sagichmal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "strong feelings" are misguided. As a society or [sub]culture we are not judged on our efforts or philosophies but on our outcomes. And the stakes are higher proportional to the power we collectively wield. If women or other minorities are disproportionately under-represented in our communities then that fact, that outcome, deserves direct acknowledgement, attention, and recompense.

>that fact, that outcome, deserves direct acknowledgement, attention, and recompense. Why? Your statement has an implicit assumption - that all demographics have equal interest and potential in every field and community. This has not been proven and if it is not true, then what is the point of making sure everyone has equal representation in every field?

CS is not just another field/community, like tradesmen, garbage collectors, or astronomers. It is a field/community that is accruing disproportionate economic and political power. Society owes equal opportunity (minimally) and representation (ideally) to all of its constituents into the halls of power.

This is why, not coincidentally, criticisms of affirmative action in tech that point at the relative lack of interest in e.g. teachers or garbagemen fall flat. Those positions and communities don't broker power.

Re: The power of role models

#319

Post by 4ad »

daenney wrote: post #16
4ad wrote: post #7

> The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is [...] to promote them. [...] To push them into positions of influence. I am all for equality in chances for all people, men and women, black and white, gay and straight, anything really, but this affirmative action "promote X because she is a women" (or black, or XXX) is something I will fight against with all my being and all my forces until the d…

Promote has two meanings: > Further the progress of (something, especially a cause, venture, or aim); support or actively encourage. And > Advance or raise (someone) to a higher position or rank. From my reading of the article Rob is mostly arguing for the first and not for giving them positions of power purely based on their gender. But having women in positions of power is important and we should ensure to at least…

> Rob is mostly arguing for the first and not for giving them positions of power purely based on their gender.

No, he is not, from the article:

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

It's there, black on white (and already mentioned several times in this thread). Illegal (!!) discriminatory hiring and promotion practices are exactly what is advocated by the article.

Re: The power of role models

#320

Post by 4ad »

Tarq0n wrote: post #56
4ad wrote: post #7

> The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is [...] to promote them. [...] To push them into positions of influence. I am all for equality in chances for all people, men and women, black and white, gay and straight, anything really, but this affirmative action "promote X because she is a women" (or black, or XXX) is something I will fight against with all my being and all my forces until the d…

Can you supply a realistic alternative to affirmative action that would make it unnecessary?

You are implicitly assuming the existence of a problem in the first place.
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