I knew exactly how she felt • Hacker News Board

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#101

Post by eightpersimmons » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:08 PM UTC

s_baby wrote: post #61

I see plenty of insightful comments here but no one acknowledging the conclusion. >It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT. How many of these articles/talks put the impetus on changing women alienating women from tech? How likely are you to see some twitte…

Absolutely - women sometimes internalize and participate in misogynistic and cruel behavior, and it can be hard to talk about.

I've seen this happen with the "fake geek girl" phenomenon - some women who feel that they are legitimate parts of the community participate in this kind of destructive policing because they've bought into the cultural misogyny and are often rewarded and have their status reinforced in their community.

On a much more damaging level, this happens with slut-shaming and sexual policing. One of the major factors in the recent suicides of teen rape victims was the rejection and shaming by their female peers.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#102

Post by kobot » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:10 PM UTC

I am a girl studying computer science. I never understood the whole geek girl mentality of "I don't get OTHER girls! They only like shopping! I like nerdy things!"

I like shopping and makeup. I also like nerdy things like Lord of the Rings and programming hackathons. I get along with girly girls AND geeks.

People are more complex than "I only like shopping" or "I only like Star Wars". It's not hard to make friends with people who have different hobbies than you - in fact it makes your social group more interesting, I find.

Why does there have to be a divide?

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#103

Post by memset » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:13 PM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #2

I'm not sure the author quite understood the seeing Star Wars thing was a super low bar fitness test. Once long ago my new wife asked me why geeks always wear tshirts with obscure references that no one gets. I was slightly put out by the question until I figured it out. They're a uniform. It's how we id the friendlies on the battlefield.

I am guilty of this (using the term "guilty" because, as we're discussing in this thread, this can really turn people off of being in our field.)

My HN name is "memset", and if you've ever written C, you are quite familiar with this function. So if this comes up in conversation with other tech people, and they don't "get it", it tells me something about them. "Hm, we don't have the same background."

It remains to be seen how useful this is as a way to decide what kinds of people I feel I could learn from or want to work with in the future.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#104

Post by jessedhillon » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:13 PM UTC

oijaf888 wrote: post #78

memset wrote: post #25

I will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it m…

I'm interested in working for a fashion company in tech, do you happen to work for one of the really great ones like Warby Parker? Any tips?

http://pict.com/

These guys have recently pivoted into something a bit less fashion-specific but are still oriented on that industry. Drop me a line if you're interested, email is in my profile

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#105

Post by narrator » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:15 PM UTC

newnewnew wrote: post #90

narrator wrote: post #59

I'm going to annoyingly meta on this one because I'm feeling really philosophical today. There is a constant dissonance in the western world between assumptions about "ideal" or "moral" statistical probability distributions and actual statistical probability distributions over a large sample size when it comes to any politically sensitive topics like the one implied in the article (i.e women having an interest in sci…

What we are experiencing is a particular flavor of secular religion called "cultural Marxism". Marxists believe that social forces are best understood through a model of class conflict . Economic Marxists explained the ills of society through the conflict between rich capitalists and the poor working proletariat. The rise of the middle class threw it a curve ball that it couldn't explain and it fell out of favor (out…

This is where I was a few years ago. You've found the enemy and it's Marxism.

However, Marxism is just an abstraction that is related to the underlying epistemological disease of the modern era which is that we use statistics to prove our assumptions regardless of an actual identified mechanism of the phenomenon. We discard the search for the theory because it's hard and we've become accustomed to believing hand-wavy explanations for fields or social phenomenon we are not experts in. Arguably, nobody is an expert here though because there is lots of murky data about these particular topics that is widely dispersed and subject to heavy confirmation bias by researchers.

Instead of looking for the "why" we cargo cult and focus on the other side. IMHO, it's better to understand the "why" whether it's the why of the "ideal curve activist" or the meta-why of the observer of the "ideal curve activist" or the meta-meta-why of me observing your understanding of the issue. However, figuring out the "why" and seeing through statistical "facts" is the only way to really improve our understanding.

In the natural sciences this is easy. We have the scientific method. In the social sciences there is endless opportunity for subtle errors or coming to conclusions that are incorrect occasionally due to error but usually due to sometimes carefully constructed but almost always omission filled perceptions of reality.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#106

Post by msutherl » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:16 PM UTC

memset wrote: post #25

I will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it m…

I don't know, I also sometimes work as a programmer with fashion people and I just made some time to learn all the references. These days I work as a sort of fashion person for a chip manufacturer. I can hold a conversation about Haskell and I wear designer clothes to the office.

Do both. When you're being Othered, ask questions, listen, and adapt.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#107

Post by pessimizer » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:16 PM UTC

s_baby wrote: post #61

I see plenty of insightful comments here but no one acknowledging the conclusion. >It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT. How many of these articles/talks put the impetus on changing women alienating women from tech? How likely are you to see some twitte…

>women are [..] framed as victims of patriarchal socialization not responsible for their behavior

What conclusion did you read into the OP that framed the judgmental girls as themselves responsible for the culture that they were brought up in? Saying that they play a role in perpetuating the culture isn't the same as saying that they are responsible for it.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#108

Post by pekk » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:17 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #15

> One of them told her to stop making them feel stupid all the time. The world is full of idiots. What she experienced isn't unique to women, it happens to anyone who ends up spending time with people who do not care about knowledge.

You're glossing over something significant. Some subcultures (and demographics) suffer more from norms against intellectualism. It is more stigmatized as a woman, among the general population of other women in the US, to be into technical stuff, than to be a man into the same things. It is similar to how bookish black kids may be told to stop 'acting white'.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#109

Post by pekk » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:19 PM UTC

xyzzy123 wrote: post #46

seivan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't PM's know jack about code. The problem is the set where a PM would even be required. That means there's a structural flaw in your process. The idea of having a project manager is ridiculous. People _should_ manage themselves and take ownership of the project. Making the PM useless.

That's probably why, when building a skyscraper, modern construction practices dictate that all the subcontractors just "do their own thing" and sort out with each other when it's OK to put in walls, pipes, wiring and structural alterations. The N^2 communication overhead is OK, because PMs are just useless overhead anyway. I heard sometimes building projects fail because the PM only understood what was supposed to b…

That would be great if software were exactly analogous to building skyscrapers, and developers were idiot construction workers who do nothing but put the sheetrock and nails where they are asked.

(Note: I am not saying that construction workers are idiots, I am saying that programmers are not idiot-construction-workers.)

There is not just one way to organize a project.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#110

Post by vec » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 7:20 PM UTC

nhebb wrote: post #96

This actually explains why more women do not get into tech careers. In the same way that this young woman felt alienated from her schoolmates, many women who are not into geek culture would feel alienated by CS classmates and the tech industry. There's been a lot of talk about getting more women into this industry, and it's often looked at as a failing of the industry itself. What's plainly obvious to me is that many…

> What's plainly obvious to me is that many (most?) women just aren't interested in the field.

Which is exactly the problem. There's no strong reason to suggest that this difference is due to anything other than social pressure. Something in the way we socialize children is convincing half the potential talent pool that they shouldn't develop an interest in technology fields, almost certainly because they see few if any adult role models.

It's not really a failing of the industry, in the sense that we're probably not the ones who originally caused it. But it is a problem for the industry, and one that industry insiders are in a unique position to solve.