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

As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 228 posts

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#91

Post by ucaetano »

account2937858 wrote: post #86
ucaetano wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explanation doesn't match the chart: There weren't a lot of women in CS. They were growing, just like other fields. And then, suddenly, they stopped growing and started declining.

It did rise most sharply in CS because it was open to women early on when women joined the labor market (previously either holding non-degree jobs or being stay-at-home wives). Once other fields opened up too they left CS for those fields which aligned more with their interests. Maybe there might be two effects at work here: Women joining a field early that was seen as a female job (computer secretaries) that did not…

> It did rise most sharply in CS because it was open to women early on when women joined the labor market (previously either holding non-degree jobs or being stay-at-home wives). Once other fields opened up too they left CS for those fields which aligned more with their interests.

Again, that doesn't match the chart: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#92

Post by Boothroid »

xienze wrote: post #27
dogma1138 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure being unpopular or not being the object of attention for girls has anything to do with this. Hobbies on the other hand was a pretty good spot. Nearly every male I know has hobbies that are either directly related to tech or engineering or of not are mechanical engineering or crafting related (e.g. metal working, cars etc.). I know on a very personal level 6 females in tech, including my current partner t…

> I'm not sure being unpopular or not being the object of attention for girls has anything to do with this. Sure it does. I know if I was popular in school I wouldn't have spent so many Friday nights locked away programming and subsequently honing my craft.

I managed both.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#93

Post by dunkelheit »

tptacek wrote: post #47
jasode wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all this non-work community. There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality: the jobs at non-software companies where programmers are a cost center . E.g. enterprisey - line-of-business - type of programming. Actually, the "back-office" type of software dev is the majority of programming jobs out there . Yes, there may…

It meshes fine with virtually all companies. Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it: their employees burn large amounts of time doing nonproductive stuff while maintaining "face time", and quality suffers terribly as people do shoddy work to maintain the preferred cadence. Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-…

Maintaining an interest in one's field outside of work != 60 hour work week. In fact they are antithetical - 60 hour week doesn't leave much room for anything else, engineering-related or not.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#94

Post by robertlagrant »

radiowave wrote: post #42

As appealing as I find the idea of building a fibre-channel network at home, the fact that people in computing (like me) routinely do these kind of things is also an aspect of a culture within the field, not an essential characteristic of the field itself. Do surgeons have watercooler conversations along the lines of, "You'll never guess what I dissected at the weekend..." ?

Probably, because they have to work weekends!

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#95

Post by FooHentai »

emmab wrote: post #52
tptacek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It meshes fine with virtually all companies. Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it: their employees burn large amounts of time doing nonproductive stuff while maintaining "face time", and quality suffers terribly as people do shoddy work to maintain the preferred cadence. Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-…

> Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-day 6-day-a-week people are, in general, spending all that time productively. I've probably worked that much before during hypomanic episodes. I can't keep it up indefinitely though.

Those particular personal projects that hit the sweet spot and lead me on a 2-week, barely-coming-up-for-air frenzy of creation? Yeah, I'll put in that much work and more in one stretch.

The odds of hitting that level of flow on a paid work project? Sure I care, but it's never going to meet the criteria and get that far under my skin. I can believe in the merits of a goal/project to the highest degree, but if it's not scratching the particular itch that takes me into the zone, I get some kind of x-factor, then I'll never be able to hit the 100% flow state for any significant period of time.

Just personal experience, I think there are others who are far more capable of getting 100% into that kind of work.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#96

Post by jholman »

tptacek wrote: post #85
ralfn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you absolutely sure you arent just convincing yourself? As someone who does actually love all this stuff so much that work doesnt start and hobby doesnt really stop... We meet and work with people like you all the time. We like the diversity. There are many ways to contribute to the end result and any smart company hires both of us. But your resentment is mean spirited. Get over yourself. We are not driving any o…

Absolutely nobody has argued that people who code in their spare time should be fired. That's something you introduced, pointlessly and disruptively, to the thread. What a tire fire all these threads are. And people are surprised they get flagged!

I think that's very close to what gyardley argued.

First paragraph is a claim that people who code in their spare time are liabilities rather than assets. Second paragraph is a claim that the tech industry as a whole should recognize this, and take steps to make sure there aren't too many around.

That's not actually arguing for firing (I mean, it might be arguing for that, but not necessarily), but it's at a minimum arguing for actively choosing non-hobby-programmers over hobby-programmers for programming jobs.

ralfn is not the one who turned this thread into a tire fire. If it is one, which I dispute, the culprits would be some combination of you and now me.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#97

Post by SamReidHughes »

ucaetano wrote: post #72
js8 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you're wrong. This doesn't disprove anything, unfortunately, because there also can be a feedback effect from people preferring fields with more people of their own gender (that is for example women will prefer jobs with more women over jobs with less women, ceteris paribus). In the presence of such feedback effects, even if the ratio of men and women who intent to work in some field is the same, you will g…

> because there also can be a feedback effect from people preferring fields with more people of their own gender No, that would mean that women in business, architecture, physical sciences, etc. would not have increased. The fact that women in CS followed closely several other fields (business, architecture, etc.) means that % of women already on the field is not relevant. The fact that other fields that use skills s…

No it doesn't, because they're different fields, some of which are pre-med related. And amidst programming itself there's different behaviors. Way more men design their own programming languages.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#98

Post by Boothroid »

noncoml wrote: post #90
the8472 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The google memo argued that altering the job to be more people-focused instead of thing-focused - e.g. more pair programming - would achieve the same goal without what may be seen as affirmative action.

> The google memo argued that altering the job to be more people-focused instead of thing-focused - e.g. more pair programming - would achieve the same goal without what may be seen as affirmative action. While it did mentioned that, it didn't really argue that. After all this is something that happens after you are in the company. The main argument was that Google should stop conscious efforts to increase representa…

And quite honestly I don't think anyone has done me any special favours because I have a penis - in fact in my experience possession of a vagina is a fast track to the top, simply because companies are so desperate to even things up.

I've had to work hard for what I've got. How is it fair that someone without the same passion and possibly also without the same ability to deliver should be given opportunities purely to meet this week's fashionable quota?

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#99

Post by qb45 »

tptacek wrote: post #85
ralfn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you absolutely sure you arent just convincing yourself? As someone who does actually love all this stuff so much that work doesnt start and hobby doesnt really stop... We meet and work with people like you all the time. We like the diversity. There are many ways to contribute to the end result and any smart company hires both of us. But your resentment is mean spirited. Get over yourself. We are not driving any o…

Absolutely nobody has argued that people who code in their spare time should be fired. That's something you introduced, pointlessly and disruptively, to the thread. What a tire fire all these threads are. And people are surprised they get flagged!

> flagged

How is this not an abuse?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14873001

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#100

Post by WednesdayThrow1 »

Mz wrote: post #34

I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail. At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people…

Or they were raised with the belief that if you have nothing nice to say then you say nothing. Maybe they hear about her personal issues all the time and are sick of patronizing her. As you said, they're coworkers not your BFFs. That has nothing to do with being a woman or a man.
Post reply on HN