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

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

#231

Post by meheleventyone »

Zarath wrote: post #172
meheleventyone wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to possibly look at this is that she opened up to you because she felt you might understand, to her you responded sceptically and out of professional self-interest she downplayed the whole thing. That doesn’t mean those guys are necessarily creepers but that you’ve definitely lost her trust.

What would you suggest a proper response is... "yeah, I know!"? To me, asking "what do you mean?" is a perfectly valid response to someone openly name calling people you know.

I presume from the general description the woman in question is a report so this is less gossip and more opening up to a manager.

You’re dealing with another person sharing something that is probably emotionally difficult for them to say. I’d suggest a subtler approach than immediately busting in with the evidence requests. It’s a slower process which is neither immediately believing or disbelieving the accusation but taking it seriously. Being open to the possibility and seeing where it leads rather than shutting things down because it’s uncomfortable. Because presumably the woman is also someone you know that you wouldn’t want to be hurt as well.

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

#232

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#233

Post by tptacek »

Veelox wrote: post #202
tptacek wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexander believes a lot of things. But you can just look up the stats on STEM fields yourself; they're not hard to find. There are STEM fields that approach parity, there are a couple in which women slightly lead men, and there are a bunch with more men than women. But CS is, by what to a casual glance looks like multiple stddevs, worse than the rest. Unless math is "warmer" than CS --- it isn't --- this explanation…

He address that in the article "Women are around 20% of CS majors, physics majors, engineering majors, etc – but almost half of math majors" ... "I was totally confused by this for a while until a commenter directed me to the data on what people actually do with math degrees. The answer is mostly: they become math teachers. They work in elementary schools and high schools, with people. Then all those future math teac…

No, the numbers hold up all the way to PhDs. Women aren't obtaining math PhD's to become "math teachers" (and, if you read my original comment, you can also predict that they aren't doing academic crypto research to go teach math either).

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

#234

Post by furi »

mikeash wrote: post #220
furi wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the ignorance of reality mostly. Whenever my girlfriend gets a guy approaching/messaging her both of us default to an immediate suspicion of romantic intent. It doesn't require them treating her in a dehumanizing way or harassing her (although those certainly happen and quickly remove all doubt about his motives), they just have to turn up and the suspicion starts. That suspicion alone (especially in an environm…

It sure doesn’t match the reality I live in. I see guys with really bad social skills struggling with this, but that can be overcome.

Well perhaps it's regional to some degree, I can't say, but I certainly know other people who think this way and it's what I'm scared of when approaching women. I'm not scared of harassment accusations (that seems like it's been blown out of all proportion). I just don't want to be perceived as sexually interested in them and I know that if the tables were turned I would immediately assume exactly that.

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

#235

Post by troupe »

UncleMeat wrote: post #148
walshemj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit if you only started programming after you went to University your going to struggle with the course and afterwards work. You would not expect to do a Degree in English lit and have done no reading of the cannon before getting to university.

The chair of the CS department at Stanford majored in Trombone.

Alex Aiken double majored in Music and CS.

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

#236

Post by modbait »

nicoburns wrote: post #55
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…

An interesting data point here ia that girls at all-girls schools tend to take much more interest in STEM subjects, which suggests that he issue might be more to do with social percpetions of what is for girls and boys rather than inherent interest differing between genders.

NB: "computers" != "STEM"

In many science fields, women have reached near parity or are even in the majority now. Computer programming is much different.

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

#237

Post by thucydidesofusa »

lanius wrote: post #170
thucydidesofusa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how that works. I heard one man say to a woman that he didn't schedule a meeting for a particular time because he saw that she had a conflicting meeting. Later that same woman described (to another woman) that the man had been "creeping on her calendar". If it weren't for society's deference to women's feelings, that would probably be read as a hostile comment.

Isn't checking attendees' schedules for conflicts standard procedure when scheduling meetings?

It's standard procedure but also a transgression against this woman if a man does it and isn't sufficiently attractive.

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

#238

Post by mywittyname »

turingcompeteme wrote: post #188
as1mov wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 everyth…

There are lots of posts of this nature, but there's also many, many posts that give the other side of the story -- explaining why young men in this field don't engage with women.

So, I think there is a good deal of empathy here. We understand that women feel excluded and have offered insight into why they may be excluded, which in turn can help society figure out how to help the next generation overcome this.

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

#239

Post by wilsonnb »

walshemj wrote: post #32
ghaff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which also corresponded to home PCs and gaming consoles becoming common. So computers became more about a hobby with often limited social interaction as opposed to being solely about something that college students and adults pursuing computing as a profession did. Which arguably also led to this idea that if you haven’t been doing computing recreationally since you were a kid you obviously are not Passionate enough…

I have to admit if you only started programming after you went to University your going to struggle with the course and afterwards work. You would not expect to do a Degree in English lit and have done no reading of the cannon before getting to university.

I had a very smart and talented professor for several undergraduate classes who entered the computer science field after getting an BA in Music and a PhD in Musicology. It didn't seem to slow him down.

The only thing I programmed before I switched from a music major to computer science was a TI-83 calculator for a few weeks in the 8th grade. Technically that counts as experience but I have a feeling you meant more extensive experience.

Regardless of whether my experience counted or not, I find the notion that only those who start programming before university will not struggle to be ridiculous.

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

#240

Post by ropeadopepope »

bitL wrote: post #97
JPKab wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a talented, and wonderful, female dev on my team. One thing though:. She has described to me some of the male coders as being "creepers". When I asked for specifics, she couldn't provide them. She simply stated it was a "feeling". The one commonality I found with the creepers is that they are pretty clearly below average in looks. The question is whether this is a correlation or a casual factor. But definitely…

There is definitely something else going on in the background: https://twitter.com/ekp/status/991817194987114496 I frankly found this shocking and absolutely disgusting.

Be attractive. Don't be unattractive. Your job now depends on it. Unless you work 100% remote and don't use video chat.
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