11–20 of 228 posts
"And the sexual harassment, while annoying, was just that: annoying. I cannot recall that it ever affected my work, nor that I lost any sleep over it." This says it all. Most women are not like this author. They will loose sleep over it and rightly so.
She said the harassment came from clients not co-workers.
"And the sexual harassment, while annoying, was just that: annoying. I cannot recall that it ever affected my work, nor that I lost any sleep over it." This says it all. Most women are not like this author. They will loose sleep over it and rightly so.
I see far more diversity in tastes and interests in most other majors and careers, while in CS/SWE, X seems to hold a monopoly.
CS/SWE goes far beyond a career, usually becoming close to a religion or way of life. I rarely see doctors, lawyers, or most professions engaging in their practice outside work as a hobby, but in CS/SWE, you're evaluated by your hobbie-contributions on GitHub, your postings to HackerNews, etc.
There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all this non-work community.
And that brings us to X, a set of interests and values that permeate CS/SWE workers, and frequently makes those interested in CS/SWE feel unwelcome if they don't take part in X.
It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman (or any of the other identities/genders/etc.), if you don't like X (which might include sci-fi, fantasy, video-games, board games, certain types of discussions, and a lot more), there's a good chance that you might not feel like you belong in CS/SWE (this isn't universal, and I've seen many teams that embrace cultural diversity pretty well).
Sadly, for whatever reasons (I have my own hypothesis that the rise of male-dominated gaming culture in the 80's and its further attachment to CS studies due to the overlap between coding and gaming is the cause) X is male-dominated. So even if men who don't take part in X feel unwelcome, the impact is bigger on women, as they have a much lower representation in X.
One of the key pieces of information that led me to think like this, was this: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...
I don't claim any authority on this, or even that this is correct. These are just my own (low-n) observations, and I'm pretty sure a good part (if not all) of it probably doesn't stand up to reality.
So I'm probably all wrong here, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
My gut feeling is that I shouldn't post this, as the previous discussions here about this issue are borderline flamewars, from both sides, but I still have hope that some good discussions are possible here.
That's fine. Many of us don't spend weekends building tech setups in basements - in fact I strive not to. My coworkers don't as well. You don't have to mainly identify as a profession in order to practice it, and I suspect as we improve work life balance, we wont in general.
I think it's a shame if someone quits the profession because they think they need to keep up with people who might or might not be delivering actual business value.
That's fine. Many of us don't spend weekends building tech setups in basements - in fact I strive not to. My coworkers don't as well. You don't have to mainly identify as a profession in order to practice it, and I suspect as we improve work life balance, we wont in general.
"I built a fiber-channel network in my basement". I want to know more about this. Can the OP write more about this?
"And the sexual harassment, while annoying, was just that: annoying. I cannot recall that it ever affected my work, nor that I lost any sleep over it." This says it all. Most women are not like this author. They will loose sleep over it and rightly so.
What is different about the tech industry that girls graduating high school are happy to go into studying medicine or law, but don't want to study computer science? It seems the problem starts far before most people think that it does.
"And the sexual harassment, while annoying, was just that: annoying. I cannot recall that it ever affected my work, nor that I lost any sleep over it." This says it all. Most women are not like this author. They will loose sleep over it and rightly so.
Personally I think it is oversimplification - the thing is that - yes there is a root cause in biology - but than that root cause is multiplied by social circumstances. If there are few women in tech - then it is costly for employers to adjust to them (stuff like adding women sizes t-shirts) - plus it is also cheaper intellectually for people to judge women stereotypically. Plus there is that thing that if women are more agreeable than man - than people tend to target them more (with stuff like interruptions etc).
I have never seen any career that is so deeply tied to a certain culture as CS/SWE and a certain culture that I'll call X, to avoid any discussions on naming and so on. I see far more diversity in tastes and interests in most other majors and careers, while in CS/SWE, X seems to hold a monopoly. CS/SWE goes far beyond a career, usually becoming close to a religion or way of life. I rarely see doctors, lawyers, or mos…
