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

I'm not a Woman in Tech

communequation.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 621 posts

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#151

Post by Norfair »

treehau5 wrote: post #9
serg_chernata wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching from the sidelines as a white male, I have to say that I find these kinds of situations so confusing. Some people want these differences to be highlighted, while others like yourself want the complete opposite. I'm left believing that my only choice is to have no opinion. Though I lean towards your stance across the board.

> I'm left believing that my only choice is to have no opinion. I learned this lesson a long time ago from the role models in my life that ended up getting burned because of having a differing viewpoint from whatever societal winds were blowing. I, and I realize probably cynically, now only elect to share, post, tweet, or whatnot whatever only can positively benefit my "brand". Sometimes I have to act like my own PR…

'If something you say doesn't offend or piss someone off, you just haven't ran into the right person yet'

Can I quote you on that?

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#152

Post by lentil_soup »

serg_chernata wrote: post #4
aphextron wrote: post #2

>I want inclusivity, not exclusivity. Thank you. I find myself feeling the exact same way as a black man in this industry, and cringe at "minority only" events and clubs. We don't need token inclusion and separate praise for being "brave" and "fighting against the odds". We need a world where those things are irrelevant.

Watching from the sidelines as a white male, I have to say that I find these kinds of situations so confusing. Some people want these differences to be highlighted, while others like yourself want the complete opposite. I'm left believing that my only choice is to have no opinion. Though I lean towards your stance across the board.

Well, I think that's ok. As fellow white male, our opinion is not really what matters here. It's not really about us. We are involved, we try to help each other out and whatnot, but in the end it's ok to just be there and listen for once.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#153

Post by richmarr »

djsumdog wrote: post #79
msimpson wrote: post #54

> Studies are showing that more diverse teams have higher collective intelligence... Yet the evidence provided for this claim regards preliminary findings of a singular study conducted six years ago. > Is it a problem that of computer science degrees earned, only 28% are earned by women? Again, the evidence provided for this claim is an article about an article about an infographic stating, "Among all students holdin…

I really like how you broke down the sources, statistics and try to put things in perspective. I really tend to agree here. There is no mention of pay in this article, but there are plenty of other sources that dispel the myth that women get paid less than men (it's more like people of lower confidence simply do not ask for as much money -- both men and women; see The Confidence Gap). I also think part of the reason…

> the myth that women get paid less than men

This is not true.

On the experimental side, studies show candidates with female names are rated lower and recieve lower starting salaries to male candidates with identical CVs (see Moss-Racusin et al. 2012)

On the statistical side, check out the data from;

- the UK's ONS (http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/blog/the-gender-pa...),

- the OECD (https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm)

You may have your pet theories as to what explains the statistics, and some of them may partially explain some aspects of a complex phenomenon.... but the fundamental finding that people are treated differently based on who they are is repeated over and over, both in research and in human experience.

Some more studies on the subject:

[1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010).

[2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011).

[3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004).

[4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#154

Post by realusername »

rootlocus wrote: post #48
buf wrote: post #7

Unpopular opinion: I think when you're in a minority and you are not rising to the top as fast as you expect, you use your minority as leverage to propel yourself. I am also in a minority. I've often felt cheated that my career isn't Musk-esque. And sometimes I even ask the question, "Am I being held back because I'm [in my minority]?" Then I snap back to reality. It's not the minority that holds you back. It's a cla…

If you think it's the class system that's holding you back from being Elon Musk, you're the one holding yourself back.

The class system is obviously holding everyone back, that's why you have poor neighbourhoods and poor cities instead of just poor individuals. And every statistic you see tends to show the class system. Elon Musk is just a statistical error and even then wasn't even coming from a poor family in the first place.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#155

Post by cholantesh »

splintercell wrote: post #56
projectramo wrote: post #16

Okay, so here is the thing: nobody wants to make the labels explicit, or to think about the minority or female labels. The reason that has come into style is because people have implicit associations and biases. And the theory is the best way to deal with them is to explicitly think about it. Example. You're hiring for a position. It is very technical. You see a bunch of candidates and then you just think some would…

> It would be better to read the resume without the gender clues. (Names removed, sorority and fraternity info removed, women organization removed etc) But without that I think we make it explicit just so we have a shot at examining the things we don't make explicit. > That is the theory, anyway. Recent studies[1] contradict your theory. 1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

It's actually only one study, and both the lead author and the conducting body have their doubts about it:

>Professor Hiscox said he discussed the trial with the ABS and did not consider it a rigorous or randomised control trial, warning against any "magic pill" solution.

The discussion section of the study's report also opines that the voluntary nature of recruiter selection [1] as well as the absence of a control group could skew results, and that particular recruitment processes were not studied for engendered bias before designing the trial.

[1] - ie, recruiters who tended to be more supportive of diversification in the public sector would be more likely to participate

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#156

Post by peterwwillis »

dang wrote: post #60
fche wrote: post #49

> Some people want these differences to be highlighted Those people are political activists.

That's definitely not always true and probably not in the majority case either. Please don't escalate a discussion like this straight into political battle—we want interesting, thoughtful conversation here and the two aren't compatible. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702833 and marked it off-topic.

I think the decision to detach the comment was overzealous. A reply to that comment on that thread would have been a great opportunity to provide an informed opposing view, and now it'll be stuck down in the cheap seats where people involved in the original discussion won't benefit.

The idea of a political activist isn't divisive, it's a core feature of all politics. Every single person engaged in politics does so to bring attention to their issue. Of course, not everyone who highlights a difference in some political sphere is an activist per-se, and marking the distinction may be useful to help understand a potential bias over a politically divisive issue.

I understand that you're trying to serve the will of your HN overlords, but can you please ask them to not require you to micro-moderate sociopolitical posts? Downvotes and replies from peers with power provide more positive guidance for group behavior than sending "spicy" comments to the back of the bus.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#157

Post by kybernetikos »

buf wrote: post #7

Unpopular opinion: I think when you're in a minority and you are not rising to the top as fast as you expect, you use your minority as leverage to propel yourself. I am also in a minority. I've often felt cheated that my career isn't Musk-esque. And sometimes I even ask the question, "Am I being held back because I'm [in my minority]?" Then I snap back to reality. It's not the minority that holds you back. It's a cla…

Almost everyone has about a million things holding them back. The problem is that for any specific individual, focussing on the things holding them back is usually counter productive.

For society as a whole, spotting some of those things and trying to remove them can be very beneficial.

Telling yourself that you're a victim of other peoples bigotry even if true tends to lead to paranoid, non-growth mindset attitudes when to actually succeed you'd be better served by an open, growth attitude.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#158

Post by richardknop »

adventured wrote: post #96

edit Why did my comment get dislodged from being underneath another comment that I was replying to? It's now showing as a stand-alone comment under the thread. ------------------------------------------- I'm doing a similar thing. I stopped posting anything personal on Facebook about a year ago and I never post to Twitter. I'll never go back to posting personal thoughts on social media, not under any circumstances. I…

I am doing the same thing more and more. The threat of being crucified for sharing or expressing a view not in accordance with the increasingly politically correct society is real.

It is a defensive move for me to avoid talking about politics or anything like that because there is a chance some very politically opinionated person with army of online followers will attack me as insert-type-of bigot.

The safest is to never express my opinion and only talk about business or tech related topics.

This is true on both left and right spectrum.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#159

Post by nilkn »

mercurysmessage wrote: post #144
tanilama wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feminism is not simple as that. > People ask me sometimes, when — when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine. This is from Justice Ginsburg, and a widely shared quote by a lot of feminist articles. This claim feels pretty vindictive to me and definitely not about equality. In the other words, it is not about REDUCE the inequality, it is a…

So it's fine if there are nine men in court but not nine women? I don't get your point. Shouldn't it not matter? You are also arguing that one persons opinion represents an entire group.

It's entirely possible for someone to maintain the position that neither of those situations is ideal.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#160

Post by lucozade »

076ae80a-3c97-4 wrote: post #3

I really agree with this. It has always disturbed me when a push for female developers is mentioned; a company should be focused on acquiring the best developers they can, not finding ones of a specific gender. This behaviour is literally an example of the problem it is trying to resolve. To the company I work for, I am a software engineer, not a man or woman.

I understand your argument but it's taking a very narrow view of best. Specifically, you're usually making a very small selection from a small sample that responded to a specific job description.

Now the chances are that you haven't selected the best is some global absolute sense as that would be stunningly unlikely. So you've actually selected from a sample that is exceptionally biased in numerous ways. By having a drive for, say, female developers, you're just replacing one very biased sample with another very biased sample.

Now, if you're at a sufficiently small organisation and you're recruiting sufficiently few people, and you're only interested in the immediate needs of your organisation, it is reasonable to assume that a female biased cohort won't necessarily lead to better candidates due to the current heavy gender imbalance.

However, not everyone recruits with such constraints. For example, I work for a large, global organisation that recruits 100's of devs a year into a pool of 1000's of devs. Given the statistical significance, any gender imbalance is not because we recruited the best, it's because we recruited the best of a very badly skewed pool. The corollary is that, if we don't try to address this, we are deliberately ignoring a huge pool of potentially talented devs.

Now, it would be correct to argue that, if we were just to select women from the existing pool, it isn't likely to help things much. If an organisation is doing that then they're mostly doing it to appear diverse. But a drive for female devs that affects the pool absolutely can make a difference. It's not easy, it can mean planning for the long term i.e. going to universities, schools etc. but I strongly believe that it's worth it.

Post reply on HN