211–220 of 228 posts
Great article and hits on what I think is the main difference between men and women: men seem to be far more likely to become obsessive and devote massive amounts of time to hobbies and study. I mean if you're not popular and girls aren't interested in you, what else are you going to do? And spending years being obsessed with computers is naturally going to lead you down a path towards a degree and job in computers,…
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Yeah, but that's part of the old patriarchal system where men make money and women stay at home. In this age of double incomes, it should be irrelevant. Still, some people cling to the old patriarchy.
It's not just that, it is that women have the greater bargaining chip in the relationship. They have the womb for creating babies, so they can make more demands. Also, they make the greater investment into kids (at first, at least, over time it can change), which also warrants "compensation".
> James Damore should probably have used fewer words with high negative emotional indices, when more neutral ones were available. But he was basically making the same point that I am: that women seem to have less interest in working with inanimate objects, and that ignoring this is going to lead to a lot of useless or even counterproductive diversity initiatives. Hard to take this piece seriously. I've worked in tech…
this is not true at all. Maybe a WNBA could score a few points here and there. But even the worst NBA player is better than the best WNBA because of the biological difference between men and women. The women's national hockey team and soccer team scrimmage regularly against 16 boys and get beat by those boys. The difference is magnitude when a full grown man actually did scrimmage against them.
But to relate to the central topic, the biological difference between men and women in programming is insignificant.
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Here's what I don't understand. Traditionally male-dominated fields rife with harassment issues - like law and medicine - now have much less of a problem, because the gender ratio has been somewhat normalized. Tech companies are actually becoming MORE male dominated - yet medicine and law would be put to shame by the sheer amount of mental and financial resources that tech companies pour into diversity efforts nowada…
Law and medicine are high status jobs, with a lot of people interactions. Yes, programmers have meetings. Not the same level of interaction as medicine, by a long stretch. There are many TV shows glorifying medicine and law. How many TV shows glorify the job of a programmer? How would you make a TV show glorifying the job of a programmer?
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She says she realized tech wasn't for her when she realized doing IT in her off-hours was unpalatable. Here's my question: Why? Because she is actually extremely competitive, something typically thought of as a male trait: Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me. She didn't want a job where she was going to be considered second rate. She wanted to be in a job where she would…
> She didn't want a job where she was going to be considered second rate. She wanted to be in a job where she would be "the best" and get accolades for it, etc. She realized she didn't love tech enough to have the biggest bragging rights, so she went someplace where she could outcompete others. That's the opposite of extremely competitive. Extremely competitive people don't go into the easy lane and the certainly are…
The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius. All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job. When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be…
> James Damore should probably have used fewer words with high negative emotional indices, when more neutral ones were available. But he was basically making the same point that I am: that women seem to have less interest in working with inanimate objects, and that ignoring this is going to lead to a lot of useless or even counterproductive diversity initiatives. Hard to take this piece seriously. I've worked in tech…
>like a few WNBA players might be able to give NBA players a tough challenge this is not true at all. Maybe a WNBA could score a few points here and there. But even the worst NBA player is better than the best WNBA because of the biological difference between men and women. The women's national hockey team and soccer team scrimmage regularly against 16 boys and get beat by those boys. The difference is magnitude when…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> She didn't want a job where she was going to be considered second rate. She wanted to be in a job where she would be "the best" and get accolades for it, etc. She realized she didn't love tech enough to have the biggest bragging rights, so she went someplace where she could outcompete others. That's the opposite of extremely competitive. Extremely competitive people don't go into the easy lane and the certainly are…
With rare exceptions like Michael Jordon's baseball career - most competitive people don't seek out situations they can't win.
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…
I kind of disagree with the gaming part. I'm almost sure that most hardcore gamers actually never become part of the CS/SWE crowd because of video game addiction. Gaming and software development are two very different domains. Hardcore gamers usually are not motivated, accomplish very little, and lack in career development.
The best computer games have alot in common with software design as far as thinking about how a system works, planning for edge cases that could lead to problems/opportunities, and developing the patience to find which strategies pay off over a long period of time.
More than that, I often find that the most addicted hardcore gamers are people who are using that to replace the sense of purpose that work gives them, which means they're pretty hard working once they find a career they enjoy. Of course, then they might turn into a workaholic instead...
Great article and hits on what I think is the main difference between men and women: men seem to be far more likely to become obsessive and devote massive amounts of time to hobbies and study. I mean if you're not popular and girls aren't interested in you, what else are you going to do? And spending years being obsessed with computers is naturally going to lead you down a path towards a degree and job in computers,…
Her point about the culture around alot of tech and SW development making it less appealing for women (and probably some kinds of men) was pretty insightful though.