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Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

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Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#71

Post by Scarblac »

catears wrote: post #37

The definition of working with people vs. working with things doesn't seem obvious to me. As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer. Therefore I must be working with things! But... I am just as much working with my soft skills. Scrum retros, talking to stakeholders, discussions on design with fellow engineers, testing with end-users. Some days I don't spend even a minute working with "things". I don'…

>As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer. Therefore I must be working with things! But... I am just as much working with my soft skills. Scrum retros, talking to stakeholders, discussions on design with fellow engineers, testing with end-users. Some days I don't spend even a minute working with "things".

Yes but did you join the profession for the Scrum meetings or for the programming?

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#72

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

catears wrote: post #37

The definition of working with people vs. working with things doesn't seem obvious to me. As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer. Therefore I must be working with things! But... I am just as much working with my soft skills. Scrum retros, talking to stakeholders, discussions on design with fellow engineers, testing with end-users. Some days I don't spend even a minute working with "things". I don'…

> As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer.

And with ChatGPT coming up we all will have soon to resort to a mixture of arguing, begging and threatening to make computers do what we want.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#73

Post by ahmetnoid »

jwrallie wrote: post #7
ahmetnoid wrote: post #4

Still the problem here is we don't _really_ know whether this is genetic or shaped by our upbringing even when it comes to the most egalitarian societies. I'd like to see the same study done on the little left hunter-gatherers bands.

This is something really difficult to know, specially because genetic differences can shape behaviors that can be natural selected creating a reinforced loop that reflexes on culture and upbringing.

Very good point. But I'd like to get an accurate answer from science in general, I don't see why more effort shouldn't be put into finding the reason behind what's discussed here. culture and upbringing is a mix of biological tendencies and imposed constructs, and I'd like to know which is which.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#75

Post by curiousguy »

epicureanideal wrote: post #23

Does this mean James Damore was right? Or is there something wrong with this research?

James’s mistake was to want to discuss taboo topics in _public_ and in a _working environment_.

One of the best pg articles imo:

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#76

Post by therealmarv »

catears wrote: post #37

The definition of working with people vs. working with things doesn't seem obvious to me. As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer. Therefore I must be working with things! But... I am just as much working with my soft skills. Scrum retros, talking to stakeholders, discussions on design with fellow engineers, testing with end-users. Some days I don't spend even a minute working with "things". I don'…

I know some of my friends who would never like to work with people through things (like computers or the Internet). They prefer to have a real office or retail with actual persons around them and don't like working in solitude physically (and a co-working does not cut it for them).

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#77

Post by postsantum »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #59
epicureanideal wrote: post #23

Does this mean James Damore was right? Or is there something wrong with this research?

That's a bit reductionist. He made more points than men prefer things and women prefer people. If you make 1000 points, and one of them is right, it doesn't make the other 999 right.

996 of which were made up by the angry mob on Twitter

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#79

Post by FeepingCreature »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #67
gnull wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need confirmations like that to say he was right. He was right, and we know that because his arguments were (relatively) well-built, so they are really worth considering.

Define "well-built". His choice of wording is poor, and it's clear in most cases he assumes he's "right" - rather than posing a question and linking to supporting evidence for why he "might be right". The way to start a good conversation isn't Authoritarian: "You're wrong, and I'm right. Now let me lecture you why." It's Seneca style: "here's some things I noticed that are weird and don't add up, let's discuss, and -…

(Is this the standard for internal memos at Google, such that people routinely get fired for missing it?)

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#80

Post by guerrilla »

vlabakje90 wrote: post #60
guerrilla wrote: post #32

> Instead, it was those countries with greater uncertainty avoidance that had larger differences in interests in people/things between men and women. Uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree to which a culture teaches its members to feel unpleasant in situations that are new, not previously known, surprising, or generally just different from usual. I wouldn't mind seeing a ranking of countries by uncertainty avoida…

A ranking of countries by uncertainty avoidance is part of Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimens... ). There is a website where you can easily compare countries ( https://www.hofstede-insights.com/ ).

Thanks... This seems pretty counterintuitive though.

  Sweden: 29
  United States: 49
  Switzerland: 58
  Thailand: 65
  Italy: 75
  Portugal: 99
> The extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these is reflected in the score on Uncertainty Avoidance.

My experience is that those numbers pretty much rank in reverse when it comes to actual risk taking. It seems weird to me that this metric as described would not correlate to that. Swedes and the Swiss are pretty (extremely) risk averse compared to all Italians and Portuguese I've ever met and observed... And Thailand ranks above Sweden? That's nonsensical...

> Countries exhibiting high Uncertainty Avoidance maintain rigid codes of belief and behaviour and are intolerant of unorthodox behaviour and ideas. In these cultures there is an emotional need for rules (even if the rules never seem to work) time is money, people have an inner urge to be busy and work hard, precision and punctuality are the norm, innovation may be resisted, security is an important element in individual motivation. Decisions are taken after careful analysis of all available information.

I feel like whoever made this up hasn't been to any of these countries.

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