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Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

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Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#71

Post by masswerk »

yardie wrote: post #70
masswerk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the fame of Steve Jobs is some of a different story: after his departure from Apple, he had been kind of a persona non grata , and later, with the demise of NeXT (BTW also known for its flat hierarchy and salary structure), not much talked about, either. It was really with the resurgence of Apple and Jobs' 3rd or 4th comeback that he became idolized, especially after the iPhone. This is quite a biography,…

I was just a teen when Jobs becaome iCEO at Apple. It felt like a big deal and the only thing that could have made it bigger was if Woz stepped on stage as well. It really did have the air of the band getting back together. At least that was the case for the Apple faithful.

On the other hand, Jean-Louis Gassée was well remembered and there had been high expectations regarding an integration of BeOS, and even rumours of Sun maybe acquiring Apple. Compared to this, Jobs' return felt much like a "small (village) solution" with vague prospects to some. (Notably, this notion of "small" is somewhat ironical, given that Apple had been once one of the most successful startups in US corporate history, second only to Xerox.)

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#73

Post by nashashmi »

nashashmi wrote: post #44
Atreiden wrote: post #34

[flagged]

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play. The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their me…

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play.

The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their meaningful role, it creates tension. It creates lack of confidence. It creates environments where the person feels small. “I need to take care of the kids and therefore can’t go to conference” for men is equivalent to “I need to go to the conference and therefore can’t stay home” for women. Both are negatives based on the role they play.

If you want to create a new world where the roles are switched, or where both put equal time in doing both domestic and professional tasks, you would be ignoring their biological, physical, and mental strengths.

The last bit that makes the whole issue worrisome, male social circles are competitive on achievements rather than perceptions, While female social circles are vice versa.

There is a world where women can be successful and pioneering. It exists. But it doesn’t exist if there needs to be a tectonic shift. Like in the case here. And in the case of most normative systems where men and women play designated roles.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#75

Post by leononame »

ekms wrote: post #66
leononame wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ist 20%/23% good? Am I reading the numbers wrong? 40%, that I could agree on. But 23% is very low. Another thing is culture. The in the company's where I've worked at, how the men talked about women was pretty off-putting to be honest. They didn't do it in front of women (obviously), but even your nerdy developers would drop comments that had me wondering whether I was really in the ckrrect field. I'm sure the wo…

23% > 20% which means if someone goes into the field of computer programming they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman than if they are a man. "remain in the field" is used as a proxy for success. You could argue about whether or not it's a good proxy for success, but your response sounds like you think women would be more likely to drop out of the field alltogether than men, which doesnt appear…

Does it really say that or are women just slightly more probable to enter the field without a degree?

And I'd argue it's a pretty bad proxy. Because the field might be growing (or shrinking) and percentages don't mean anything. 23% of 10k is less than 20% of 5k, for example. The percentage numbers don't really indicate whether someone will stay in the field, it's just a number that's highly dependent on a lot of variables and a very bad indicator for "people are staying in the field". I'm happy to be corrected, it's just how I read this.

Additionally, if your assumption is that 23%>20%, that would kind of mean that it's capped at 23%, right? Once more the CS degree quota is higher than 23%, following your logic, that would be an indicator that women are more likely to leave the field because it naturally gravitates towards 23%. But that's not based on anything, you could argue just as well that it's an indicator that more women are starting to take interest in CS as a career.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#76

Post by leononame »

toolz wrote: post #61
leononame wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ist 20%/23% good? Am I reading the numbers wrong? 40%, that I could agree on. But 23% is very low. Another thing is culture. The in the company's where I've worked at, how the men talked about women was pretty off-putting to be honest. They didn't do it in front of women (obviously), but even your nerdy developers would drop comments that had me wondering whether I was really in the ckrrect field. I'm sure the wo…

well I'm not making a value judgement, but we're talking about odds, not "good" or "bad"...if 20% of women go after a software job and the field is made up of an even higher %, that suggests the odds are amazing for women. Odds don't tell the whole story, but the odds seem in women's favor at the moment.

If you define odds being good as "the odds are good for the ones that choose to study CS", sure. But if you define the odds as "women overall", 20% is a relatively poor number in my opinion. Yes, we're getting better and yes, it takes time. But I don't think we can pat ourselves on the back here. That the women who decide to work on tech do well is (in my very unscientific and unproven) opinion just an indicator that the women who do join tech are on average more skilled than the men who decide to join tech.

That's for a myriad of reasons, but the main one being that men gravitate to tech more, so even if they're not a huge talent they still might choose a career in tech, whereas women might prefer a different career unless they have a very strong calling.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#77

Post by DontchaKnowit »

worik wrote: post #59
ThomPete wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are no odds as a woman in the tech business. The tech industry is on of the most inclusive industries because it measures talent and value creation not features no one can do anything about

> tech industry is on of the most inclusive industries because it... Where have you been? That ignoring history

[flagged]

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#78

Post by flkiwi »

zer00eyz wrote: post #20
xyst wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when the word of your boss or manager actually meant something. Today, have to get that in writing otherwise risk getting hung out to dry in court or worse.

No, you just need a boss you can trust. You need to not be a clock puncher of an employee. You need to be present (in an office) for these conversations to happen. This sort of thing still goes on all the time. If your not part of it your either in "Giant Corp" or the wrong company, or you have the wrong boss, or you are the wrong person.

I’ve had (and honored) plenty of those types of conversations with subordinates I’ve never met in person in any of a number of global offices. Physical presence isn’t a prerequisite for being a good boss or worker.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#79

Post by flkiwi »

nashashmi wrote: post #73
nashashmi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play. The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their me…

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play. The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their me…

What?

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#80

Post by dosinga »

toolz wrote: post #57

I do believe there are unique challenges to being a woman in tech, but the odds seem in favor of women doing well both back in the 70's and today with todays stats having roughly 20% of CS grads being female while some 23% of SWEs are female. That suggests there are more women in software jobs than women who have been pursing that career academically. What stats do you see that suggest the odds are against women in t…

That's one explanation. The other is women just have to be better to survive the CS education so if they do, they are going to be better than average. Certainly true for a bunch of female SWEs I have worked with
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