A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech • Hacker News Board

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#181

Post by arkis22 » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

>Between the ages of 16 and 24, girls have more sophisticated social lives than boys of the same age. Young women talk to their friends more often [1], care more about their reputation [2], spend more time talking about their friends [3], and assign more emotional value to close relationships [4]

I admire that she provided links for these, but I really don't believe any of those statements. That list of 4 things is difficult to measure because they probably occur in different forms for boys vs girls and the studies consequently "found" what they were looking for.

Sexism is dripping in irony. Damore can't say there are biological differences between males and females, but it's ok to say that as a male I care less about my friendships.

Try to be nice, try to be fair, try to be honest. Ignore everything and everyone else...

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#182

Post by alonmower » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

ryanobjc wrote: post #107

kazinator wrote: post #28

> Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. "Honey, there is this random blogger who thinks I should befriend a girl in my company. It's supposedly not creepy or anything. What do you think?" If I didn't care what my wife thinks, I'd still have to think twice and consider the gender-political climate of the modern age. The mere perception of having some intention of wrongdoing can harm you. In all…

Here's your simple rule: https://medium.com/@annevictoriaclark/the-rock-test-a-hack-f... Quoting: "It’s as clear cut as this: Treat all women like you would treat Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson." and "But definitely don’t hit on her. It looks like she could kill you with the chair you’re sitting on." It's really that simple.

This seems like a pretty awful way of approaching it.

"Hey, how much can you squat?"

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#183

Post by stcredzero » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #105

WallWextra wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math majors in my upper-level math classes had significantly better social skills than the people in the CS classes I took. This is only an anecdote, but it's not obvious to me that mathematics isn't more social than CS.

I don't know how true this is; I've also had the experience of sitting around a restaurant table with academic math nerds and other times with computer programmers, and the differences there was pretty stark as well. But another point: pay attention to the distinctions we're drawing, because "computer science is less social than other STEM fields" is not the same argument as "computer science is more forgiving of ant…

We all know about dev cultures that thrive on toxic behavior,

I think a part of the problem is that the programming field is immature and flubby with ideology masquerading as principles. I think the programming field inadvertently trains us to become ideologues and engage in behaviors reminiscent of sectarian religious conflicts of the past.

and a lot of us have seen firsthand how homogenized groups of developers have mistreated people from outside their narrow social experience...that can cause people to falsely attribute things to the outsiders.

Sure. I think one such event at Google recently was widely covered in news media, though it was ideological narrowness, not social narrowness. I saw a whole bunch of false attribution across social media.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#184

Post by leshow » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #77

cde-v wrote: post #24

> Compared to almost any other industry, women are underrepresented in technology. Except for the many industries where women dominate like: Preschool and kindergarten education Nursing Accounting Social Work Psychology

Note the pay on those careers. "Women's Careers" pay significantly less. And they're all 'emotional' and 'soft skill' jobs. That's a problem. Edit: So, at -3 currently. Is the -1's a "disagree" or "stfu"? Please state where I am wrong.

Don't they pay about as much as the male dominated jobs?

brickmason, drywall installation, crane operator, roofer, etc

All of these jobs have 95%+ males. I can't imagine they pay very well.

That's genuinely a question, not trying to be smart. It seems to me like jobs on both ends of the spectrum might not pay the best.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#185

Post by ajkjk » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #133

ajkjk wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's an uncharitable simplification. I'm talking about statistical trends, and specifically about games- and nerdery- _in lieu of all socialization_.

And I'm rejecting it as unfounded. What specific statistical trend are you talking about?

It's a bit more complicated than that.

First: it's 'founded' in the sense that it's my opinion based on my experiences. Yes, it's subjective. I meant trends in my own anecdata / observations of the world. But I share them because I expect that many people have seen the same trends and might agree if they see them in words, which seems to be true.

Second, lumping all video games into one category and then talking about statistical trends among them is going to drastically misrepresent the actual picture of who's playing games and how much. But beyond that I'm not really talking about 'playing games at all' so much as playing in an obsessive, anti-social style -- like 12 hour sprints, all night, instead of playing outside, etc.

Third, I'm talking about ~10-15 years ago, not today. Not sure what things are like since then. I assume it has evened out somewhat as gaming became more normal.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#186

Post by panopticon » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #56

ajkjk wrote: post #23

Most of the theories I've seen about the women-in-tech gap don't resonate with my experience because there was a very obvious 'women-in-tech' gap in about... 5th grade? in my (typical, I think) American elementary school. It was nerdy boys, almost entirely (I remember one exception), who wanted to stay after school playing games on the iMacs in our classroom, and I am pretty sure that it would only be the boys in my…

I keep reading about a "women in tech" gap, but if it exists, it must be regional. I've lived and worked, as a programmer, in the Dallas, TX area for over 20 years across 5 different employers. There have always been _lots_ of women in technology-related roles, everywhere. The vast majority of them (as well as the vast majority of the men) have been Indian, though. Is this different in San Francisco/Silicon Valley?

I've held a few software jobs in Iowa, Kansas, and the valley. Between the three places I worked at in the midwest, I worked alongside a total of four women doing engineering work (the numbers get much, much larger if you include support and QA roles).

I've worked with many more women in engineering roles here in Silicon Valley, but the percentages are still low.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#187

Post by phlakaton » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

bmarquez wrote: post #112

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #58

> [If you’re a dude and you’re reading this article] Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. Include her, ask her for advice, introduce her, learn about her work and her life in the same way you would with any male friend or coworker. If you’re an investor, professor, journalist, or manager, take it on yourself to sponsor a young woman’s career. While I totally agree with this advice, I think th…

> men don't want to even get close to the line of doing something that could be perceived as inappropriate Yeah I am wondering why someone would stick their neck out, especially if they have below-average social skills. Lots of personal liability for little personal gain, and #MeToo just publicized the existing uneasiness with professional interactions. It's not like any women helped when I was evaluating a career in…

The way I see it:

1. Making friends isn't even remotely close to a line. The line is way out in workplace romance and sexual power politics land. The very basic mitigation strategy you have is simply not to go there. If you can't not go there, then you have other problems to deal with first, and the sooner you go about that the better!

2. If making friends isn't crossing a line, it's therefore not sticking your neck out at all.

3. There is no more liability than any other workplace friendship, and just as much potential for gain as any other workplace friendship. Plus, if you are socially awkward as you claim, you know darn well that the potential for gain is ginormous. If it's hard for you to make friends, you need all the good friends you can get!

4. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with nursing, but it's silly to hide behind that as an excuse. You need to get on with your life.

5. The less you put women on some weird fetishized platform of unobtanium, and the more you just treat them as fellow humans and geeks, the less likely you are to cross a line. At least, that's my conviction, and it seems to work pretty well.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#188

Post by turingcompeteme » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

as1mov wrote: post #104

yosito wrote: post #81

Pretend you're a woman and then read the comments on this post. That makes it pretty obvious that one of the reasons women have a hard time feeling welcome in tech is because men don't listen to or empathize with them when they speak about their opinions or perspectives.

I've been browsing this thread for about 45 minutes. Not a single comment is rude, most of the comments are trying to debate about the issue. If you post a submission on a forum and expect everyone to blindly agree with you or you else you consider it as "hate", then the problem is perhaps with you.

They didn't say rude, they mentioned empathy.

Julia Enthoven shared her experience as a Woman in tech, and this thread is filled with nitpicking, asking for sources, disagreement, alternate theories, debates, etc.

There is no empathy here. So I'll start:

Good for her for sharing her thoughts and experiences. It's a tough topic to talk about, and as we see here and elsewhere, people will immediately pick apart everything you say. Individual experiences like these are useful to read about for people like me who recognize that there is a problem but don't really know what to do about it. So thank you, Julia. I'm sorry it is such a difficult topic, but I hope you keep talking about this and that others are encouraged to do so as well.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#189

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

saint_fiasco wrote: post #167

kazinator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the chilling effect of several decades of gender politics put a damper on the unwanted attention. Boys are hammered with messages about sexual misconduct, and so even ones without any such intentions want to avoid the mere perception that anything is going on.

It puts a damper on attention in general, but the attention that is less dampened is precisely the unwanted attention. Think about it. A considerate well intentioned person might mistakenly overcompensate and give too little attention to female colleagues, while an inconsiderate person who doesn't care about gender politics will keep doing what they were doing all along. The result is that the ratio of unwanted/wante…

[deleted]

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#190

Post by yosito » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

troupe wrote: post #116

yosito wrote: post #81

Pretend you're a woman and then read the comments on this post. That makes it pretty obvious that one of the reasons women have a hard time feeling welcome in tech is because men don't listen to or empathize with them when they speak about their opinions or perspectives.

> men don't listen to or empathize with them when they speak about their opinions or perspectives. The comments I've seen are on par with comments on other posts where the author was male. The fact that someone disagrees with the cause of some statistical result is not the same as not listening.

I'm not talking about the comments that disagree with the hypothesis in the article. I disagree with it too. There's no statistical result being discussed in the article, but people are dismissing the author's opinion (saying things like she must be an outlier) and getting defensive about men's behavior (saying they have their reasons for how they act, like being unattractive).