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Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

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Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#81
post #75
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but hair is a bad example. Men go bald and get beards, while women don't.

You must be young or not know very many women. Nearly every woman eventually starts growing facial hair. Many remove it every day. And some women do lose their hair, though admittedly it's much less common.

Sure technically both genders grow facial hair. But still, men can grow much more hair on average than women, especially facial hair, no? South Asian females as an example sometimes can have more hair than average in many spots, but then you have many men with forest levels of hair around their body.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#82
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mm you mean go of the deep end into far right politics this isn't setting up a Branch of young conservatives in the London google offices is it.

How did Damore went of to deep end of far right politics?

You need me to explain that to you? google and all sv countries are majority centre right at best.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#83
post #55

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in her post: > Despite the cargo shorts and the loner attitude, I learned like a girl. And: > it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. Hmm, it sounds more like she has a different learning style, which is not necessarily down to her femaleness. That said, I think that at a fundame…

Is there a specific part of what you're referring to with

> This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says, but I bet that he knew exactly what he was doing. Playing games is pathetic, dude.

I haven't read the manifesto and don't want to procrastinate now. Are you saying he knew his stuff about women being inferior for the work Googlers do (which I wholly disagree with) was him partially BSing and just stirring shit up or trying to get his sexist viewpoint across with any excuse possible?

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#84
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mm you mean go of the deep end into far right politics this isn't setting up a Branch of young conservatives in the London google offices is it.

No. Just show up to work in a pro-Trump baseball hat, or speak openly against illegal immigration, and see what happens. No one cares about the London office.

You would get fired quicker turning up with a pro Union t-shirt I bet and I bet those on H1B visas in google would be very negative against illegal immigrants.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#85
post #66

> girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure. This does not quite jive with enrollment at my university. I am thinking specifically of maths as compared to other STEM fields. Of all seriously theoretical courses, maths has the most women, last time I checked…

Most math majors are there to become math teachers, which is very people oriented. If you consider only PhD programs for math then it becomes very male dominated.

If the near-50-50 gender ratio in math is explained by math teachers, wouldn't we expect a similar ratio in physics?

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#86
post #55

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in her post: > Despite the cargo shorts and the loner attitude, I learned like a girl. And: > it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. Hmm, it sounds more like she has a different learning style, which is not necessarily down to her femaleness. That said, I think that at a fundame…

Every time I hear someone mention behavioral differences due to the biological differences between men and women, my response (that I'm stealing from my professor) is that the differences amongst men and women outweigh the differences between men and women. Applied to this topic, that means that you're going to find people that prefer these different learning styles on both sides of the gender gap. Also, I feel like…

> Every time I hear someone mention behavioral differences due to the biological differences between men and women, my response (that I'm stealing from my professor) is that the differences amongst men and women outweigh the differences between men and women. Applied to this topic, that means that you're going to find people that prefer these different learning styles on both sides of the gender gap.

That's a great way of describing learning. I love your professor's quote. Definitely going to use it :P

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#87
post #55

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in her post: > Despite the cargo shorts and the loner attitude, I learned like a girl. And: > it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. Hmm, it sounds more like she has a different learning style, which is not necessarily down to her femaleness. That said, I think that at a fundame…

Every time I hear someone mention behavioral differences due to the biological differences between men and women, my response (that I'm stealing from my professor) is that the differences amongst men and women outweigh the differences between men and women. Applied to this topic, that means that you're going to find people that prefer these different learning styles on both sides of the gender gap. Also, I feel like…

> Every time I hear someone mention behavioral differences due to the biological differences between men and women, my response (that I'm stealing from my professor) is that the differences amongst men and women outweigh the differences between men and women. Applied to this topic, that means that you're going to find people that prefer these different learning styles on both sides of the gender gap.

That's a nice sentiment, but it's not actually very true. With regard to this particular article, I think there are plenty of women who can thrive in the environment she described. I know some of them. So, I don't think this particular situation is caused by divergent information processing between men and women.

That being said, information processing is a multi-dimensional thing. The axes of difference between men and women may be different than the axes of variance among men and women. To say that "the differences among men and women outweigh the differences between men and women" is to ignore the fact that they may not be the same differences we're talking about.

This is a thorny question, because it obviously implies that men are better at some things and women are better at other things. This can reinforce biases, and entrench or seem to justify unfair treatment. But the fact that an issue may be fraught does not change the truth-value of its propositions.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#88
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. Though not necessarily a bias between male and female. Just a bias for people who can work well [enough] with that sort of learning.

And it's not just courses. Many types of work bias toward people who are just fine with locking themselves in a room/the library stacks/a lab for a week to work through some problem. It's a completely different mindset from someone who likes doing sales or PR work. It's not that there aren't people who can do a good job with both. But some things certainly come more naturally to some people than they do to others.

100% agree with your entire comment. People are just different.

I recently learned guitar for the first time using one of those Guitar Hero games but you play with a real electric guitar. Two friends commented how if I haven't gotten to learning it after multiple attempts, gamification won't work. But it did. This isn't the first time gamification has worked on me. For whatever reason, gamification [and accountability] work[s] great for me.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#89
post #76

I am more the lone wolf type myself. I am fine with collaborating, actually enjoy it when needed, but I prefer doing the majority of my work alone or with a small team and banging my/our head against a problem until I/we have figured it out. What's starting to bother me is that there is a trend where extroverted people (like her I assume) try to change education and workplaces to suit their style but introverted peop…

I am a female software engineer who is an introvert too. It's wrong to assume that men want to work alone and women want to work with people... it ignores a lot individuals like me. I currently work in an open office environment and find it very hard to concentrate with people around me. I don't want people to assume that bc I'm female I want to work with people. I really really don't. People should stop trying to force women as a category into computer science, and just focus on the individual.

Re: Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

#90
post #66

> girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure. This does not quite jive with enrollment at my university. I am thinking specifically of maths as compared to other STEM fields. Of all seriously theoretical courses, maths has the most women, last time I checked…

jibe, not jive

http://americanenglishdoctor.com/wordpress/jive-and-jibe/

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