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That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident it doesn’t help

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Re: That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident it doesn’t help

#11

Post by some1else »

lumberingjack wrote: post #10
jonfw wrote: post #5

She showed a graph of 'hope for success' versus 'predicted probability for promotion'- it's just outright silly to attempt to represent something as complicated as this on two axises. Any attempt to quantify something like "hope for success" can branch into endless debate about setting success criteria, defining hope, measuring anything in this space, etc. This is a philosophical or psychological issue, not a mathema…

Case in point, she is a woman. She's oversimplified her world so much that she thinks she's found THE answer

I have seen men over-generalize things just as much as women. Case in point: your comment.

Re: That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident it doesn’t help

#12

Post by lumberingjack »

thisisbrians wrote: post #4

Women of HN: how do you think your male peers can best help to close the gaps in tech (and otherwise)? A lot of us want to help, but I fear we are often misguided.

There are no gaps, women want to be what they want to be and they don't want to be in tech. trying to shoehorn them into tech just going to end up with products that suck because you got employees that don't want to work in the industry really and don't care about their work. See "firefox pocket" whole team hired on diversity and nobody likes the product at all

Re: That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident it doesn’t help

#13

Post by aswihart »

lumberingjack wrote: post #12
thisisbrians wrote: post #4

Women of HN: how do you think your male peers can best help to close the gaps in tech (and otherwise)? A lot of us want to help, but I fear we are often misguided.

There are no gaps, women want to be what they want to be and they don't want to be in tech. trying to shoehorn them into tech just going to end up with products that suck because you got employees that don't want to work in the industry really and don't care about their work. See "firefox pocket" whole team hired on diversity and nobody likes the product at all

lol yeah we need more Juiceros

Re: That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident it doesn’t help

#14

Post by shawnb576 »

lumberingjack wrote: post #10
jonfw wrote: post #5

She showed a graph of 'hope for success' versus 'predicted probability for promotion'- it's just outright silly to attempt to represent something as complicated as this on two axises. Any attempt to quantify something like "hope for success" can branch into endless debate about setting success criteria, defining hope, measuring anything in this space, etc. This is a philosophical or psychological issue, not a mathema…

Case in point, she is a woman. She's oversimplified her world so much that she thinks she's found THE answer

OK this is not an appropriate comment for HN

edit: or anywhere else

Re: That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident it doesn’t help

#15

Post by Simulacra »

As a woman I totally agree. Leaning in had done absolutely nothing working as a software engineer on a massive government contract. Producing good work, good code, and a focus on getting the job done has (it seems) been the primary driver of promotions here. Maybe because it’s government, but the whole overconfidence and fearlessness just falls flat here and make you sound like a tool - male and female.

Re: That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident it doesn’t help

#16

Post by Simulacra »

thisisbrians wrote: post #4

Women of HN: how do you think your male peers can best help to close the gaps in tech (and otherwise)? A lot of us want to help, but I fear we are often misguided.

I make more than my male peers. I think they would like the advice more. I don’t worry about making friends at work, I’m here to do a job to the best of my abilities.

Re: That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident it doesn’t help

#17

Post by itsdrewmiller »

jonfw wrote: post #5

She showed a graph of 'hope for success' versus 'predicted probability for promotion'- it's just outright silly to attempt to represent something as complicated as this on two axises. Any attempt to quantify something like "hope for success" can branch into endless debate about setting success criteria, defining hope, measuring anything in this space, etc. This is a philosophical or psychological issue, not a mathema…

This complaint seems like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good - the author took the data she had, applied it in what sounds like the best way related to the problem, and reported the outcome. It didn't seem like an especially strong result to me, though - while there is clearly a relationship between the chosen measure of confidence and promotion probability for men, it sure looks like it's there for women too, even if it doesn't pass the author's test of statistical significance.

It's also a reductionist view of what the advice in "lean in" is actually about. It's been a while since I read it, but my recollection is that it is about actually doing things like staying in the workforce even if you have kids, putting your name in for promotions, etc. I would be extremely surprised if choices like those are not correlated with likelihood of promotion.

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