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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

#341

Post by stcredzero »

tptacek wrote: post #311
stcredzero wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about men being bad I never said that you did. You only impute that from the juxtaposition of the sentences. I only said that vilification wasn't such a good idea. Given that we are talking about the potential downsides of "an insular and chauvinist culture," I think it's useful to say one should be circumspect about vilification. Assume incompetence before maliciousness, and all that. You impli…

I don't know. Are there? The home computing revolution was a weird inflection point. Medicine got more scientific over the last 200 years, steadily so, not less. The law has steadily remained formal and accredited since the founding of the country (and presumably long before). I'm sure there are similar cases, but this might be the biggest one in recent memory. Again, part of my claim is: this is not really a surpris…

I don't know. Are there?

Popular Music? Fiction writing? Journalism? Creating video content would qualify. (Possibly relevant: YouTube's audience is mostly male, while Tumblr's is mostly female. IIRC, the audience for video pornography also tends to skew male, while written erotica skews female.)

The home computing revolution was a weird inflection point.

Basically, it's the start of when computing went from a tool for accounting/administration/bureaucracy to also broadly encompassing media. Many of the de-profesionalized fields I mention above are associated with media.

Again, part of my claim is: this is not really a surprising or weird argument. It's pretty obvious from the recent history of the field.

I do think you're onto something.

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

#342

Post by mundo »

mikeash wrote: post #324
mundo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason that "Just don't drink, what's so hard about that?" would be in a discussion of alcoholism.

If the rest of the discussion revolves around how to drink as much as possible without going broke or getting caught then that would be a fine response. Yes, improving your social skills can be damned hard. But that’s irrelevant if you don’t even want to do it. First we need to convince people that self improvement is the solution, not isolation. Then we can talk about how.

> Yes, improving your social skills can be damned hard. But that’s irrelevant if you don’t even want to do it.

Er... your theory is that "too shy/awkward to carry on a casual conversation with a woman" is something that some men prefer? That they could overcome it, but don't want to? That seems more likely to you than "they would like to overcome it, but haven't been able to"?

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

#343

Post by mikeash »

pandaman wrote: post #339
mikeash wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, it’s exactly like the car thing, except racing cars is a recreational activity enjoyed by only a few people, while talking to people is an essential human skill done by virtually everyone.

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

#344

Post by mikeash »

mundo wrote: post #342
mikeash wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the rest of the discussion revolves around how to drink as much as possible without going broke or getting caught then that would be a fine response. Yes, improving your social skills can be damned hard. But that’s irrelevant if you don’t even want to do it. First we need to convince people that self improvement is the solution, not isolation. Then we can talk about how.

> Yes, improving your social skills can be damned hard. But that’s irrelevant if you don’t even want to do it. Er... your theory is that "too shy/awkward to carry on a casual conversation with a woman" is something that some men prefer ? That they could overcome it, but don't want to? That seems more likely to you than "they would like to overcome it, but haven't been able to"?

When the discussion consists entirely of people saying they just avoid talking to women entirely, yes, that seems much more likely.

I’m not saying they’re happy with it, but prefer it over self improvement? You bet. People usually hate trying to change themselves.

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

#345

Post by throwaway84742 »

mikeash wrote: post #326
throwaway84742 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, creepiness exists in your mind only. Believe it or not, we valued the fact that those women were there and we tried to help them out in whatever way we could. My field of study back then (guidance systems, weapons design) is even more male dominated than CS. All male peer groups are not a fun thing to be in. To preclude the question, yes those girls did get asked for a date every now and then. If that’s wrong, I…

I read “have a pulse” as “it doesn’t matter how qualified or pleasant these women were, the men were eager to have any contact with a woman and would have taken them on just for that.” Does it mean something else?

It means they didn’t have to make any effort whatsoever to get attention and help of their male peers. Interpret this as you wish.

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

#346

Post by ironjunkie »

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…

I'm in full agreement with you here.

This, plus seeing some of the "social media star women engineers" on twitter calling out the "White dudes" on some guys just for trying to have conversations with them.

This #MeToo movement gave power to a minority of women that know how to use it in their political advantage, while creating a bigger separation between women and men in general.

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

#347

Post by curtis »

ploxiln wrote: post #331
stcredzero wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I actually think this is probably wrong. Back in the day there was a higher percentage of women in CS. It's possible that in absolute numbers there are as many women today in CS as there was then. That's because there's probably a lot more people in CS overall.

I also think it's likely that back in the day most college-educated programmers had EE degrees, not CS degrees, so what you'd really want to look at is the percentage of women in CS and EE, not just in CS.

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

#348

Post by xywalters »

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.

Does she have any demonstrable creative output or is she just a bureaucrat whom one can ignore?

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

#349

Post by pandaman »

mikeash wrote: post #343
pandaman wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, it’s exactly like the car thing, except racing cars is a recreational activity enjoyed by only a few people, while talking to people is an essential human skill done by virtually everyone.

Racing is traveling, traveling is an essential human skill done by virtually everyone.

Please, let us not get into bad faith argument even deeper. Nobody here is arguing against talking to people. The question is about the safe and dangerous modes of talking to people.

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

#350

Post by [deleted] »

arkis22 wrote: post #181

>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 d…

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