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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

#331

Post by ploxiln »

stcredzero wrote: post #293
ploxiln wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, Math and Physics are in many ways similar to CS, and yet have more women. And I can think of a pretty good reason to explain it: Math and Physics are more classically respected and authoritarian. CS is the wild-west by comparison. In Math and Physics in high school and college, you can just study what you're supposed to study, do the problems you're supposed to do. You can mostly do that in CS too, of course…

I agree, Math and Physics are in many ways similar to CS, and yet have more women. I think it might be useful to ask: In what ways are Math and Physics are different from the programming field? I think the requirement to work together on larger projects is different. What is the gender distribution of physicists working at CERN? My experience in school is that the smartest girls studied a lot more, and the smartest g…

Back in the day, there were a few more women in CS :)

I still agree that CS being "less social" is a huge factor. But have to admit it seems like there's some other factors too, and I think the "less social" and "wild west" combo is pretty significant.

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

#332

Post by gnulinux »

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.

But also maybe think from the perspective of men when all throughout your life all your attempts to socialize with women were quickly labelled as "creepy" and it's very easy and comforting to ignore socializing with them. I would never discriminate against a women coworker, I do perfectly fine communicating with my female coworkers professionally, and I cannot see anything ethically wrong with what I'm doing. But it's simply too hard to properly socialize with women. I don't get mad at people when they don't learn something I find fascinating like automated theorem proving, and it drives me crazy when my friends get mad at me for not learning how to socialize with women. It really is not the end of the world.

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

#333

Post by Mythanar »

meheleventyone wrote: post #231
Zarath wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

Didn't you just describe the downsides in dealing with women in perfect detail?

That complicated attempts at telepathing how emotional it is for them, "subtler approaches", "slower processes", "shutting things down because it's uncomfortable". None of that is needed when both parties are males. Not to mention the entire possibility of that scenario happening is then about nil to begin with.

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

#334

Post by indoorfish »

yosito wrote: post #190
troupe wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

I would appreciate a bulleted list as to why my 5,5 mixed race frame is somehow unequal in engaging my coworker as another's 6,3 white mans. If it could completely explain how my careful quests for affection were dismissed, regarded as unwanted then maybe I would have more sympathy with direct, out of hand dismissals.

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

#335

Post by stcredzero »

yosito wrote: post #261
stcredzero wrote: post #197

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. 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.

I see. You, "won't do labor." Most of the time I see the phrase, it's not from good people. It's not like you can CMD-F a sentiment.

So, I just tried it, and I found exactly one match for "unatt" that fit the sentiment discussed from the 1st person. I only found one person who said he, personally, couldn't be friendly to women because he is unattractive. The rest are talking about people in general, and aren't necessarily attached to the ability to be friendly. From what I saw, the issue of being friendly with women is more attached to the problems of risk, and this risk is correlated with relative attractiveness.

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

#336

Post by hkmurakami »

mywittyname wrote: post #20
modbait wrote: post #2

> Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. As an unattractive computer nerd, I've been regularly reminded my entire life that I am creepy. Skipping.

I know the feeling. Something society doesn't accept that attraction plays a huge role in social development at a young age. An "ugly" person is not likely to develop the experience needed to feel comfortable befriending a member of the opposite sex at a young age. The other person can't help but be uncomfortable with the idea that you might be romantically interested in them. It gets better with age though. I've fou…

I feel like I am writing something ridiculous, but it's not uncommon for an unmarried woman to wear a wedding band to preempt advances by men. Could we have a world where unmarried men who are concerned about being perceived as making an advance will wear a wedding band to send a signal that they are not interested in the woman they are talking to? (obviously some/many married men make inappropriate advances but perhaps this helps somewhat?)

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

#337

Post by hkmurakami »

hn_throw_334 wrote: post #179

I'm not fond of talking about how much "experience" I have so I've made this throwaway. I've been programming for most of my adult life. I've worked on every level of the tech stack from writing byte code for CPUs by hand to front end web development. In my college classes I helped many people survive by offering advice on tooling, implementation, and even sometimes direct one on one tutoring. I would never say I kno…

An aside, but I would absolutely want to approach someone with a 12 year old thinkpad and ask what the internals are like, how the keyboard is holding up, which model you chose and why, etc.

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

#338

Post by Mythanar »

pvg wrote: post #318
Mythanar wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should probably not. If it works for the majority of the team (which from the grandparent comments seems it does), the impetus is on candidates to fit in existing culture, not the culture to change to fit candidates. Most effective teams are usually ones with least communication impedance. The less you have to judge your words and go through diplomacy/"re-examination" dance in routine conversations, the more time…

impetus Maybe you mean onus? And no, it isn't because that's exactly the sort of thinking that keeps the field as non-diverse and exclusionary as it is. What you're describing isn't some sort of property of an effective team. It's one of a hostile workplace.

That's where we disagree. All effective teams are exclusionary; I've never seen an effective team chosen by lottery tickets. And effective intra-team communication is their most defining trait. In my experience, so long as diversity does not impede communication, it is a neutral trait (neither positive nor negative correlation).

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

#339

Post by pandaman »

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 suggestion that someone's assessment of risk-to-reward ratio in this case is wrong spiced with the implication that he is bad at socializing, I would guess.

Consider the same exchange with different subject matter: "A: I don't race my car because it's dangerous" "B: Dude, if you're so bad at driving how do you even get to work? Learn to drive and get onto the track! It's awesome and I had been racing with no injures so why can't you?"

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

#340

Post by dennis_jeeves »

Here is the politically incorrect view, most people at the high end of the IQ are men. Like it or not, nature is not egalitarian. Why is this so f*ing complicated? Programming as a profession roughly falls under the high IQ spectrum. Ok, now some of you egalitarian nuts reading this _will_ interpret what I wrote as discriminatory, _waits for the backlash_
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