421–430 of 449 posts
And your contribution is.. Mansplaining?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009988 and marked it off-topic.
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Would you please not troll here? If that wasn't your intention, you need to make this comment more substantive and connect the dots to the current topic.
because we shouldn't encourage young boys gender equality?? you're dumb
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Yes. I am a straight white male. That is what I'm doing. I would say exactly the same set of things to her face as well. Next question?
What percentage of your technical hires are female?
" In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech. " Precisely. This goes directly to the core of the issue and what I had brought up on the thread recently about the Google employee who got fired. Specifically, if companies were truly interested in fairness, the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions.…
fighting the battle far earlier and getting girls interested young so that they choose to enter these fields at a higher rate than they currently are doing. It's your time and energy if you want to do that, but you should probably recognize you're still treating women differently in that case. Why do you want to pressure or influence people to do something that all the evidence indicates most of them aren't particula…
" In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech. " Precisely. This goes directly to the core of the issue and what I had brought up on the thread recently about the Google employee who got fired. Specifically, if companies were truly interested in fairness, the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions.…
I hear you when you say,"the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions". It just sounds like an HR platitude. If you know how to do that, I actually think you have a multi-$B idea! Unless you mean "cultural fit", or "went to the same school I did" as the best person, I'm doubtful you have one though. I've done enough interviewing and worked with enough people to know that…
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How many people here were alive "when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded others not on their merit but race and gender?" Preferences (quotas, lower standards, financial incentives, etc) for women and minorities in hiring and admissions have existed for a long time.
I'm still pretty young yet I've experienced benefits solely from my gender. My sister is smarter than me and better at math and physics than me. I was invited by my grade school to go to robotics camps over the summer, she wasn't. I was given special permission to take computer science courses not offered by our highschool, she wasn't. I was encouraged to to go into engineering by our guidance Councillor, she wasn't.…
Is it at the companies where they taken in under-representes groups ? Or Is it at the grassroots level such as by teaching parenting to students in college to be more aware of the bias they may've whilst upbringing their child. ( Similar to Diversity-training)
My point is that instead of giving them a relatively easier seat at the workplace, we must strive to make their paths easier thereby ensuring that the most talent people end up where they want to.
I'm actually quite surprised that the councillor didn't encourage your sister for they're usually trained to be aware of such biases and be neutral in their disposition towards every student albeit it's difficult , they're usually better at it.
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female participation in the tech industry grew until the mid 80s where it peaked and has been going downhill ever since I'm fairly certain that the aggregation of jobs described as "tech industry" in this statistic are a rather different collection of jobs pre-mid 80s and post-mid 80s. Not necessarily because of people massaging a statistic(but many people no doubt would be happy to overlook the previous supposition…
> I'm fairly certain that the aggregation of jobs described as "tech industry" in this statistic are a rather different collection of jobs pre-mid 80s and post-mid 80s. Not necessarily because of people massaging a statistic(but many people no doubt would be happy to overlook the previous supposition in making a case,) but because the nature of most jobs in computing has changed with the advent of personal computers.…
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...
If you look at this data you can see there is clear distinction in the types of work chosen on average between the sexes. These choices align nicely with the findings of personality research between the sexes.
It's seems such a cliche to say "Sure, sexism exists to one degree or another." But okay, I can agree.
The problem is when you pick some particular gap and say this gap is a problem because the main cause is sexism.
Doing this is a problem not just because it ignores many other relevant factors, but because when proclaiming the cause as mostly sexism you are then accusing many people of something of which they are innocent.
You're unjustly maligning many people when you do this.
What evidence would be sufficient to convince you that the divergence in sex ratios of fields like nursing & elementary teaching compared to engineering and more theoretical pursuits comes down to personality differences between the average man and woman, and not sexism?
In regards to your concerns about the status quo of the tech industry or any other and sexism therein, individual cases should be dealt with appropriately. Individuals should act responsibly and respectfully.
I thought one the guiding principles for people these days was you shouldn't treat members in a group in a way that is informed by the actions or characteristics of other members of the group.
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> I can't speak about Canada, but in the US, personal anecdotes aside, 60% of college graduates are women. The gender gaps under discussion are specific to computer science [1]. That more and more women have been (a) going to college and (b) getting into STEM with the exception of computer science is why this is so interesting to debate. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
I'm aware that some people are trying to limit the scope of the discussion, and yet, I wonder why no one cares about the young men who are now at a disadvantage.
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> I'm fairly certain that the aggregation of jobs described as "tech industry" in this statistic are a rather different collection of jobs pre-mid 80s and post-mid 80s. Not necessarily because of people massaging a statistic(but many people no doubt would be happy to overlook the previous supposition in making a case,) but because the nature of most jobs in computing has changed with the advent of personal computers.…
I don't think the sex ratios are a red herring at all. I think they are the entire point. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce... If you look at this data you can see there is clear distinction in the types of work chosen on average between the sexes. These choices align nicely with the findings of personality research between the sexes. It's seems such a cliche to say "Sure, sexism exists to…
I am not disputing this at all.
> It's seems such a cliche to say "Sure, sexism exists to one degree or another." But okay, I can agree.
Okay, we've found some common ground here. Let's go a little further. "The tech industry has a problem with sexual harassment and sexist treatment towards women." Agree or disagree?
> The problem is when you pick some particular gap and say this gap is a problem because the main cause is sexism.
Except I did not say either of those things.
> Doing this is a problem not just because it ignores many other relevant factors, but because when proclaiming the cause as mostly sexism you are then accusing many people of something of which they are innocent.
> You're unjustly maligning many people when you do this.
Please stop putting words in my mouth. Thanks.
> What evidence would be sufficient to convince you that the divergence in sex ratios of fields like nursing & elementary teaching compared to engineering and more theoretical pursuits comes down to personality differences between the average man and woman, and not sexism?
You don't need to convince me of this because I am not disputing it. I am disputing the idea that sexism has no role to play, however.
> In regards to your concerns about the status quo of the tech industry or any other and sexism therein, individual cases should be dealt with appropriately. Individuals should act responsibly and respectfully.
That is a great platitude however it does not seem to be helping very much as we (as an industry) seem quite content to perpetuate the status quo.
Great article. Sad that if this article had been written by a man, it would not be getting any attention and the comments would be calling the author "sexist". Here are my 2 cents as a male (thus my opinion on the issue automatically doesn't carry any weight to most of you). Women chose to pursue tech less than men (just look at any open source project), and this starts way before college. I took CS in high school -…
You're completely missing one of the main points of the whole gender discrimination discourse: that there are strong social influences that prevent women from going to tech long before your 'before college', as well as during college and after college. There are many turning points at which girls are influenced the way that discourages them from tech instead of helping them to develop interest in it. So yes, discrimi…
> "And no, the diversity debate doesn't 'get too much attention'. It gets significantly less attention than it should"
First of all, it's not even a "debate" as the memo has shown. It's a one-sided emotional crusade against the opposition, and you're not allowed to disagree with the hivemind.
Why is it only considered a "problem" and attention-worthy when women are underrepresented? Nobody gives a shit about men being underrepresented in certain professions, or women being underrepresented in the trades. There's a clear double standard here.