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What happened to all the female developers?

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Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#101

Post by a3camero »

saturn wrote: post #47
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…

> The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers I was all primed with a fiery response about how good programmers in hot markets should be pulling more than 200k, lousy markets at least 100k, and anyone who wasn't is either a lousy negotiator or not good, but then I remembered where I was. The crème de la crème. Yeah, "staff programmers…

Registered nurses at Ontario's public hospitals can make $100k+. http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/20....

Paramedics can make $125k+. http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/20...

Doctors can make $200k+. See both of previously mentioned lists.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#102

Post by saturn »

rdouble wrote: post #95
saturn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it the case that if you want to get rich as a GP or specialist you have to start your own business, too? Also known as a practise? It is known that you'll never get rich working for someone else, but that applies to all trades and I don't see any reason why starting one as a programmer is dramatically different from starting one as a GP, or a plumber, or any other kind of highly skilled and valuable trade.

It depends on what you mean by rich. If you want beaucoup dollars (millions) it does help to own the cardiology clinic. However, my dad hires physicians for a rural health care system. A cardiologist in this area can get paid a salary of $350,000 per year, guaranteed three year contract. This is in the middle of nowhere, where a nice house can cost $100K and a king's mansion costs about $400K. That is "rich" by most…

Bloody hell. I guess I didn't realise they could make quite that much. Yep, that outpays all but the most exceptional programmers all right, I stand corrected.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#103

Post by rdouble »

[deleted] wrote: post #99
curtis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

He just said that doctors deal with people more the software engineers, which is pretty much universally true. The only specialty where you don't deal directly with people is radiology.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#104

Post by lutorm »

If you plot women's share of doctorates in different fields, it's pretty telling that CS is the only field in which the fraction of women dropped significantly between 1920 - 1960. In 1920, 20% of mathematics and CS PhD degrees went to women, by 1960 it was down to 5%. It took until around the turn of the century for it to get back up to 20%. (See http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf06319/)

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#105

Post by lutorm »

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.…

You might be right, but the female fraction of CS/math PhD's also dropped by a factor of 4 between 1920 and 1960 (see my other post). So the effect extends beyond "unskilled" computer jobs.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#107

Post by gsmaverick »

cjzhang wrote: post #58
diolpah wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downvotes are appreciated. Where am I wrong?

Why didn't you just say "women can't code?" Also, the sample size is crap and the deviation is crap relative to the sample size, so you can't make very many truly meaningful observations from it.

That's what you wanted him to say so you could attack him. He was merely stating an observation of the given data in an unbiased manner.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#108

Post by psykotic »

rdouble wrote: post #95
saturn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it the case that if you want to get rich as a GP or specialist you have to start your own business, too? Also known as a practise? It is known that you'll never get rich working for someone else, but that applies to all trades and I don't see any reason why starting one as a programmer is dramatically different from starting one as a GP, or a plumber, or any other kind of highly skilled and valuable trade.

It depends on what you mean by rich. If you want beaucoup dollars (millions) it does help to own the cardiology clinic. However, my dad hires physicians for a rural health care system. A cardiologist in this area can get paid a salary of $350,000 per year, guaranteed three year contract. This is in the middle of nowhere, where a nice house can cost $100K and a king's mansion costs about $400K. That is "rich" by most…

Cardiologists are in the upper salary echelons of physicians. If you're a family physician or a pediatrician you probably won't make more than $200,000 per year, which isn't too far out of line with what some programmers make.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#109

Post by dasil003 »

Sandman wrote: post #86
gaius wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes and no. I've been laid off twice from high tech firms. Both times I found a (better!) job within a couple of weeks, but if you want a stable career, this is not the industry for you.

if you want a stable career, this is not the industry for you. Well, yes and no :). Depends on where you work. If you work at a tech company then yeah, that's probably not the most secure workplace, but I work at a bank, and the only way you're ever going to get fired from there is if you're a really, really crappy worker, or if you screw up big time.

Plus you have the added security that if the brass really fucks things up the government is there to pick up the slack (at least in the U.S.).

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#110

Post by rdouble »

psykotic wrote: post #108
rdouble wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you mean by rich. If you want beaucoup dollars (millions) it does help to own the cardiology clinic. However, my dad hires physicians for a rural health care system. A cardiologist in this area can get paid a salary of $350,000 per year, guaranteed three year contract. This is in the middle of nowhere, where a nice house can cost $100K and a king's mansion costs about $400K. That is "rich" by most…

Cardiologists are in the upper salary echelons of physicians. If you're a family physician or a pediatrician you probably won't make more than $200,000 per year, which isn't too far out of line with what some programmers make.

Right, but to make $200K a year as a programmer you have to work at Goldman Sachs or have spent the last 8 years moving up the ranks at VM Ware or be Mark Zuckerburg's college friend. To make $200K a year as a GP you can live anywhere in the USA you want and work part time (which is what my father does).
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