Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kapwing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 482 posts

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

#261

Post by yosito »

stcredzero wrote: post #197
yosito wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have missed all the comments of men complaining that they can't be friendly to women because they're an unattractive man. Not sure where you got the word "hate" from. I'm not saying anything about hate.

You must have missed all the comments of men complaining that they can't be friendly to women because they're an unattractive man. I've missed them. Can you aggregate links? I honestly find this interesting. (You can "cheat" this using the reply links.)

CMD+F unatt

I'm not gonna do your work for you.

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

#262

Post by tptacek »

stcredzero wrote: post #249
tptacek wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not "vilifying men or the masculine". I am a dude. Also a dad, of a STEM college boy and a STEM HS girl. I like beer and pork fat and whiskey and cars. I don't so much like video games, but only because I'd rather code or yell on message boards. I'm happy to keep talking to you about this stuff, but I will not do that if you're trying to trap me in some weird ideological conflict about the persecution of men. The…

I'm not "vilifying men or the masculine". I am a dude. Also a dad, of a STEM college boy and a STEM HS girl. Also a dad, of a STEM college boy and a STEM HS girl. I like beer and pork fat and whiskey and cars. Glad to hear it. I'm happy to keep talking to you about this stuff, but I will not do that if you're trying to trap me in some weird ideological conflict about the persecution of men. Well, likewise. I don't wa…

I didn't say anything about men being bad, I don't believe there is anything intrinsically bad about men, and in fact I reject a lot of hypotheses about gender disparity based on "masculine behavior" explanations, such as the notion that women are put off by competitiveness (I am married to an extremely competitive woman engineer and, through her roller derby escapades, have met more than my fair share of other competitive women).

You implied that I did. I'm shutting that down hard. Thanks for acknowledging.

Like I said: I think our field is weird in that home computing deprofessionalized it. I think programming methodology also deprofessionalized. I don't think it's a weird observation to make that our field stagnated or even regressed and that a lot of practices and technologies we work with today are (a) rooted in the 1970s and (b) ignore decades of subsequent research.

Since you can trace a lot of badness in our field back to home computing (which: to be clear, was a very good thing! life is complicated!), I find the "we're male dominated because hobbyist computing in the 1970s was an insular and chauvinist culture" explanation pretty powerful. I think all these things feed into each other, too. There can be more than one explanation.

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

#263

Post by commandlinefan »

Draiken wrote: post #203
commandlinefan wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many years ago (almost 20, I think), I was working as a contractor on a remote contract in a foreign country with one other person from my company, who also happened to be a woman. Since we were the only Americans there, and were staying at the same hotel, we naturally ended up having lunch and dinner together, and talked quite a bit. She was married, and I knew that. She commented once that she was spending more tim…

This is such a big problem that is almost always thrown under the rug with an "exception" label. Yes it's an exception but it's a possible life/career wrecking exception. If you look at it objectively, this entire scenario is only possible with a man to woman interaction. If the woman had said the exact same thing to a man, he could never file a sexual harassment complaint against her. In fact he'd probably be laughe…

Yeah, I get the impression that it's rare, but... it's just not a risk I can afford take.

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

#264

Post by stcredzero »

mywittyname wrote: post #129
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…

> "Well, I might be socially awkward talking to this girl anyway, so I'll just avoid the complication." This is exactly how I am, but it has nothing to do with the #metoo movement. The reason is because I discovered at a young age that girls didn't want a ugly boy talking to them. It makes them uncomfortable, and as a result, it makes me uncomfortable. So in my mind, avoiding attractive women is being polite. Somethi…

Something nobody will admit is that "creepy" is really 90% based on the looks of a person, and 10% what they are doing.

It's based mostly on relative status, and it mostly exists in the mind.

People aren't comfortable with the idea of an unattractive person potentially having a romantic interest in them (regardless of whether they do or not).

It's different between women and men. Men are a bit more physically dangerous to women, so a man liking a woman carries a bit more risk than a woman liking a man. Also, the state-of-nature potential downside cost of unwanted attention, should it go very badly, is higher to a woman than it is to a man.

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

#265

Post by yosito »

arkis22 wrote: post #205
yosito wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have missed all the comments of men complaining that they can't be friendly to women because they're an unattractive man. Not sure where you got the word "hate" from. I'm not saying anything about hate.

Are you saying that the men here aren't being empathetic because they feel like when they talk to women they get called creepy and therefore don't want to? Please, be specific. Otherwise it just sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

Specifically, dismissive comments full of excuses like "I'm unattractive and women aren't nice to me" are lacking empathy.

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

#266

Post by chillee »

tptacek wrote: post #233
Veelox wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Could you provide a citation on "the numbers hold up all the way to PhDs"?

I found https://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/fraction-p...

Vs

https://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/womenmajor...

Over 40% undergraduate degrees go to women, while less than 30% of doctorates.

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

#267

Post by stcredzero »

phlakaton wrote: post #187
bmarquez wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

As it stands now, this line is very easily "shifted" by spin and outright lying.

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

#268

Post by pvg »

mikeash wrote: post #151
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…

Women are people. Talk to them like people. If you’re so bad at socializing that you might accidentally harass someone, fix that! Don’t just retreat from the world because you can’t handle a basic skill. Edit: Interesting downvotes. Is it the suggestion that women are people, or the suggestion for self-improvement if you’re incapable of treating them accordingly?

It's the talking about downvoting. You know that.

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

#269

Post by jm__87 »

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…

While this may be a contributor now, I really doubt this is the main reason why men in tech don't talk to women more at school or work. I'd guess it has more to do with the fact that there are usually fewer overlapping interests and experiences between men and women than there are between men and men and many guys in tech have a hard time socially to start with, so it's just easier for guys to hang out with other guys (as I'm sure it is easier for women to relate more with other women).

Also, a lot of men use certain body language and tone when they talk to other men that just may not be appropriate when talking to most women (of course there are exceptions). As one example, at least the area I work in, guys are constantly challenging each others egos. If you grew up as a guy, this is totally normal treatment for our culture, if not welcome treatment. I've heard of at least a few stories where a bunch of guys tried to treat a female colleague like one of the guys in this fashion and it usually turns out very poorly.

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

#270

Post by godshatter »

lilactown wrote: post #224
Mythanar wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you think is harassing might quite well disagree with target female view of what harassing is, complicated by the fact that HR department might disagree with you both. And should that whole thing become public, you'll be judged by the entire office, with the entire spectrum of views on what harassment is. Personally, as a male, you have absolutely nothing to gain, and everything to lose. The most rational thing…

> as a male, you have absolutely nothing to gain, and everything to lose. Having friendly, healthy relationships with your colleagues isn't valuable? Or just with the ones who are women? Some of my best friendships/allies/contacts have been women who I worked with. I'm very thankful for the opportunities they have provided me and the value they add to my life. The fact that you see /zero/ value in having genuine conn…

Not the OP, but is the value in having a genuine connection with a female coworker worth the potential downside? I've got 29 years in. I'm not going to bet that on reasonableness in a world like the one we live in.
Post reply on HN