Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#141

Post by theorique » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 1:14 PM UTC

kalkin wrote: post #125

theorique wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - I hadn't known that about Danish humor. It is probably also no accident that the Mohammed cartoons were made in Denmark. The thing is, those weren't even offensive or derogatory. The rest of the world overreacted and rolled over because of overblown threats from the Islamic world.

You don't think an image of Muhammad where he's wearing a bomb for a turban is derogatory? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptions_of_the_Jyllands-Po...

It's controversial political speech; I wouldn't personally call it derogatory.

If I understand correctly, the reaction was to the mere fact of Mohammed being rendered in drawing, not about the content of those drawings.

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#142

Post by rmc » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 1:18 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #121

rmc wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) In your hypothetical example, everyone seems to be heterosexual. I assure you reality doesn't fully match your theory. (b) It's just an "attractive female" advantage, "attractive men" have been found to have similar advantages.

(a) In your hypothetical example, everyone seems to be heterosexual. I assure you reality doesn't fully match your theory. I'm talking about social status and "coolness" which are not identical to sexual "market value". In fact, I think it's a bad idea for women to exploit any sexual "assets", because a woman who is visibly trying to do so won't be taken seriously. I'm talking about a more general-purpose social asse…

Men in that age range have low social status (theirs starts out very low, but increases into the 40s and 50s) while women at that age have high social status (and it declines with age).

If I'm parsing this right, you're saying women's social status is mostly based on looks (you say it's better around then) and less so on (cay) career, whereas men's social status is less based on looks, and more on career.

You're probably right (that's probably how a lot of the world works), but damn it jim that's wrong. And from a realpolitik advice it might be helpful. I'm just a principled person, and want to fight this!

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#143

Post by rmc » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 1:18 PM UTC

zxcdw wrote: post #120

rmc wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) In your hypothetical example, everyone seems to be heterosexual. I assure you reality doesn't fully match your theory. (b) It's just an "attractive female" advantage, "attractive men" have been found to have similar advantages.

a: Taking sexual orientation into question plays no good for anybody especially since it's completely individual aspect. b: There's no "attractive male" advantage to be found in tech, at least not compared to "attractive female" advantage as your parent explained.

b: There's no "attractive male" advantage to be found in tech, at least not compared to "attractive female" advantage as your parent explained.

Yes, IT is full of straight men, but the parent post gave example of non-IT

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#144

Post by finnw » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 1:22 PM UTC

alexchamberlain wrote: post #102

rmc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they are different, but they are so close aswell. After all how much job movement is there between IT & development? Lots. Compare that to the job movemement between IT & being lawyer (not that much) etc.

I wish there was more movement between IT and lawyers; then we'd have some developers who understand data protection and copyright principles and some lawyers who understand IT.

Whatever you do, don't get into a bikeshed argument with a lawyer-turned-programmer. If they were a good lawyer, they will be an expert in persuasion, and can get you fired for disagreeing with them about Allman-vs-BSD indenting. Not out of malice, but just by following their old habits.

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#145

Post by rmc » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 1:22 PM UTC

kalkin wrote: post #122

Wintamute wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those situations the assumptions may, or may not, originate from core racist/sexist beliefs. You need to be careful going around labelling people like that just because they made an assumption. For better or worse it's just a fact that at the moment a girl working in a software shop is more likely to be a graphic designer than a coder. If I was in a rush looking for the new freelance designer one morning and walke…

> You need to be careful going around labelling people like that just because they made an assumption. 1) Actually, I think you want to be a lot more careful about labelling people as "must be X" because of their gender than about labelling them as "made a sexist comment" because they maybe made a sexist comment. It is actually still worse to be a victim of sexism than to be called a sexist. 2) Having core sexist bel…

It is actually still worse to be a victim of sexism than to be called a sexist.

Having core sexist beliefs isn't a prerequisite for making a sexist comment.

Exactly, many people think "I'm not a sexist" and then say lots of things, presuming then that everything they say cannot be sexist. I take care to say "sexist talk/action". Tends to get people's backs up less.

You can do "s/sexism/racism/g" for all of the above as well.

Exactly. I've made this same post several times, only doing a bare minimum of s/race/sex/g

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#146

Post by abrahamsen » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 1:51 PM UTC

theorique wrote: post #141

kalkin wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think an image of Muhammad where he's wearing a bomb for a turban is derogatory? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptions_of_the_Jyllands-Po...

It's controversial political speech; I wouldn't personally call it derogatory. If I understand correctly, the reaction was to the mere fact of Mohammed being rendered in drawing, not about the content of those drawings.

It was both. The view on depictions of Mohammed differ within Islam. Insulting Mohammed on the other hand, it pretty much universally condemned.

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#147

Post by jrogers65 » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 1:53 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #140

jrogers65 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the point the guy is trying to make is that there is nothing sexist about this. If I saw a new guy at work with a beard, jumbo sized cup of coffee, glasses sitting in front of a dual monitor setup, I would assume that he is a programmer. Does that make me sexist against men? Or prejudiced against people with beards or coffee drinkers? There's an old saying which appears to have been lost somewhere along…

There is a difference between "everybody should walk on eggshells" and "there should be standards". It's not black or white, "eggshells" or "f * you I can say what I want", there is (millions of) middle ground(s). HN has rules and guidelines about how to reply to people ( http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). Does that mean "everyone has to walk on eggshells around here"? No, there are rules, but it's not mad…

Actually, yes, people do have to walk on eggshells around here. I am walking on eggshells right now for I can not express myself freely in a forum like this without suffering from social manipulation (downvoting, hellbanning). And this is while adhering to practices such as "no personal insults". In a place like this, you get banned for disagreeing, let alone speaking in an "unapproved" way. This place is hardly an example of civility.

I agree that there is a middle ground - when someone's quality of life is seriously suffering because, for example, someone is shouting abuse at them all day then something must be done. However, taking serious offence at people's ignorant opinions or ways of expression is unwise and in itself ignorant.

I'm anticipating prejudice so I shall address it pre-emptively - I am, in fact, a minority. In many places on this planet, I risk serious injury just for being what I am. People have expressed extremely ignorant opinions about the group I fall under in workplaces. I initially took offence upon hearing what I heard but then I moved past that stage and accepted that one cannot understand something they haven't dealt with directly. They were not trying to be mean, they merely did not understand because of their limited experience. How can I take offence when this is the case?

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#148

Post by LiveFanChat » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 2:01 PM UTC

physcab wrote: post #47

I'd love to use this opportunity to do a little promotion. My sister and I just launched a site to connect women in industry with girls taking math and science called Girls Love Math ( http://www.glmclub.org ). It would make my day if women like nerdess became mentors. I have a feeling that lots of girls are looking up to them.

your website fonts dont work in IE9....for a nerdy website you think that usability testing across different browsers would be on your checklist.

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#149

Post by laumars » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 2:03 PM UTC

asnyder wrote: post #132

laumars wrote: post #105

"Computer languages and “real” languages are actually very similar." I really couldn't disagree with that more. Sure, some languages' syntax borrow English words (Python, Pascal, VB, etc), but that's such a minor similarity. Those words are completely arbitrary and the syntax could have been in Klingon for all the difference it would make to the compiler. Computer languages are a maths language; albeit a very very du…

Don't know why you felt it was necessary to take a dig at PHP, as if PHP is the cause of all bad web programming practices. Nowadays, PHP is very much evolved, and the abundance of mature frameworks have completely removed the most of the inconsistency issues.There are in fact variable declarations and types in PHP, there's even type-hinting to enforce types. The fact of the matter is that many web developers fall in…

While I agree that a bad programmer will write bad code in any language -and visa versa- my point was that PHP doesn't enforce good practices thus allowing many less experienced developers to accidentally fall into easily avoided pitfalls (lets be honest, having to === to force type matching is just plain dumb). So by the time you've properly hardened your code, it's anything but pseudo-English - which was my point (ie programming languages are not similar to human languages).

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#150

Post by legitsource » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 2:03 PM UTC

electrozoic wrote: post #22

victorhn wrote: post #11

"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." That looks like sexism to me.

I sincerely hope that I've never been a pity/diversity hire. I want to be evaluated on my qualifications as a well-rounded developer and compensated appropriately for my work.

What's even more troublesome than being a diversity/affirmative action hire is when you aren't one and other people assume you were one. When a group is artificially bumped up in the rankings (or is perceived to have been), everyone assumes they are not as skilled as they really are.