What happened to all the female developers? • Hacker News Board

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#31

Post by jff » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:29 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #21

rdouble wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are women turned off by competitiveness in CS ... but not in medicine? Maybe they are just more practical. The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers. If you do pre-med but can't get into med school, you can still get into public health, physical therapy, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, etc... If you do CS but can't get a job at…

That is actually the only plausible explanation at this point in history. The average woman looks at the long hours and job insecurity in high tech and thinks "this is just not worth it". Men, historically, have always done these kinds of jobs and still do. We don't see feminists agitating for more woman refuse collectors do we?

As opposed to the low-stress 9-5 world of medicine?

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#32

Post by joshuacc » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:29 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #22

dpritchett wrote: post #13

This post is presumably part of the patio11 campaign to boost Fog Creek's SEO and conversion rates by publishing "content you can't get anywhere else". Looking good! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2588431

That's what I thought, but FogCreek and Joel Spolsky probably has billions of in bound links from Joel's writing. Surely they wouldn't need to attract in links?

1. The fact that Joel's blog is on a separate domain means that Fog Creek doesn't reap all the SEO benefits that it could have from links to his writing.

2. Having people visiting the same website where the software is actually sold gets them one step closer to purchasing.

3. There's the "top of mind" marketing effect of constantly having Fog Creek's blog posts on the front page of HN and other tech news aggregators.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#33

Post by iuytghyjuyh » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:29 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #5

It's my understanding that in the early days working with computers was considered manually labor, something akin to data-entry of today. The "real" scientists and business people would instruct their CS conterparts to do a task, and how that task was accomplished was neither interesting nor remarked upon. As computation became cheaper, CS still retained many qualities of data entry especially in the business sector.…

I worked with several women programmers who had worked for big-iron computer companies in the 60s/70s.

There was a demand for programmers, there were no CS grads, so the companies had simply looked internally at the people sitting in front of typewriter keyboards, thought "that's the same thing really" and trained them as programmers.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#34

Post by ma2rten » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:30 PM UTC

curtis wrote: post #19

true_religion wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps there's more prestige in a medical degree than a CS degree. Or perhaps there is a perception that doctors are really helping people, as opposed to CS professionals. Didn't we just have a spate of articles that complained that startups weren't doing enough to "help the world".

I don't think it's just perception. Doctors really do deal with other people -- both patients and coworkers -- more than software engineers do.

Yes, but that does not mean that software engineers are not helping people (indirectly).

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#35

Post by kenjackson » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:31 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #4

This question makes no sense unless it is also asked in conjuction with "what happened to all the male primary school teachers"?

I think the rise of males in CS was due to the rise of the personal computer. As someone noted earlier, as computers become more common in the home and males started using them, they picked up a stigma associated with the type of males that used them.

Why does that have anything to do with primary school teachers? I'm fairly certain very little.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#36

Post by erehweb » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:32 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #21

rdouble wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are women turned off by competitiveness in CS ... but not in medicine? Maybe they are just more practical. The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers. If you do pre-med but can't get into med school, you can still get into public health, physical therapy, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, etc... If you do CS but can't get a job at…

That is actually the only plausible explanation at this point in history. The average woman looks at the long hours and job insecurity in high tech and thinks "this is just not worth it". Men, historically, have always done these kinds of jobs and still do. We don't see feminists agitating for more woman refuse collectors do we?

Sure you do. See attached link - I'm guessing women becoming trash collectors in the first place wasn't achieved without a struggle. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2008/mar/29/city-hono...

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#37

Post by yummyfajitas » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:32 PM UTC

mrkurt wrote: post #27

Locke1689 wrote: post #7

And she said that one of the things that happens is that women don’t even think they’re qualified for something because it’s advertised in competitive language. The language of competition not only doesn’t appeal to many women, it actually puts them off. This doesn't make sense to me because easily the most competitive path I've ever seen is premed. Almost all of the premeds I know are competing for the best grades,…

Premed and organic chem aren't advertised in "competitive language", though. How often do you see schools write course descriptions like "we're seeking the world's best chemistry ninjas to help us take our chemistry educating to the next level?"

Just as often as course descriptions say "we're seeking the world's best javascript ninjas".

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#38

Post by dpritchett » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:32 PM UTC

jff wrote: post #31

gaius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually the only plausible explanation at this point in history. The average woman looks at the long hours and job insecurity in high tech and thinks "this is just not worth it". Men, historically, have always done these kinds of jobs and still do. We don't see feminists agitating for more woman refuse collectors do we?

As opposed to the low-stress 9-5 world of medicine?

Doesn't an M.D. imply more job security and a higher starting wage than any C.S. credential?

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#39

Post by iuytghyjuyh » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:33 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #2

"In 1987, 42% of the software developers in America were women. And 34% of the systems analysts in America were women. ... the percentages of women who earned Computer Science degrees rose steadily, peaking at 37% in 1984." While that's definitely higher, still seems like the field was male dominated (the majority were male).

Also in 1987 the only count of "software developers" were people working at IBM/ICL/Burroughs etc. Most of these women devs were in pretty menial jobs - the equivalent of the Indian outsourcing outfits today. Those companies had women devs because they were cheap - not out of equality.

Also CD degree programs in the early 80s were pretty rare - so 37% of 100 grads nationwide is easier to imagine than 37% of the 100,000 now

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#40

Post by gaius » Tue, Jul 26, 2011, 4:34 PM UTC

erehweb wrote: post #36

gaius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually the only plausible explanation at this point in history. The average woman looks at the long hours and job insecurity in high tech and thinks "this is just not worth it". Men, historically, have always done these kinds of jobs and still do. We don't see feminists agitating for more woman refuse collectors do we?

Sure you do. See attached link - I'm guessing women becoming trash collectors in the first place wasn't achieved without a struggle. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2008/mar/29/city-hono...

2.8%, yep, looks like equality to me!