21–30 of 60 posts
So I have this female friend that interviewed a few days ago in a small embedded device workshop - so they ask her to implement bubble sort in C. She manages this and then they as k her can you work with oscilloscope and she answers "No but I can learn fast" then they dismiss her and unofficially tell her that they won't hire her because girls don't like working close to hardware. So bias against women is alive and w…
I'm getting really tired of this ignorant "tech is sexist" garbage. women represent a minority of the already small pool of CS graduates. This is not due to discrimination but to individual choice of what a student wants to do with their life. Fewer women CS grads means a smaller ratio of women to men in the tech industry. The author blindly says that VC's want "a couple of guys that can build an app in a weekend". V…
And... you're satisfied with that explanation? "There are fewer women in technical careers, because fewer women choose to go into technical careers, QED"? You're not even a little bit curious about why that might be the case?
I do not necessarily agree with my grandparent comment, but are you advocating going out of your ways to find a problem out of statistics?
I'm also fed up with the whole "sexism in tech" bla bla. I don't want more women in tech. I want more talented, more dynamic, more interested or more passionate people in tech. More humble people. More beer lovers (there's no such thing as too many beer buddies). More video game players. More runners I can go jogging with. More team players. Less people only in it for the money. Less pointy haired bosses. Less consultants and less auditors.
These are my own personal preferences and guess what? In each single case I don't care about the sex of people in the industry.
By now, the "sexism in tech" has caused much more gender segregation than it did any good. Now we're afraid to talk at a conference or at the office. We never make any joke that might be remotely sexual around female coworkers (note that my female friends usually take it really well).
So to answer your question, we should be satisfied with that explanation. More women want to come, they're welcome to join. It's not going to be easy for them, but guess what, it's not easy for guys as well.
And to make one last thing really clear: I believe that there are a few problems women deal with in the industry, and we should be doing something about them. I'm thinking about uneven salaries or about the way they get treated if their nickname is ever slightly girlish.
So to make it clear, I care about women already in the industry. We should help them with these minor inconveniences. But I'm not going out of my ways to figure out why aren't women joining and what should I do to help them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am very curious as to why fewer women elect to go into engineering fields. But the article does not address this, it blindly labels tech and men as simply being sexist.
Where does the article says that men are simply being sexist?
How to Be a ‘Woman Programmer’ in two easy steps - a short introductory guide 1) Be a Woman 2) Program
4) write your memoirs, two novels and an op-ed in NYT
So I have this female friend that interviewed a few days ago in a small embedded device workshop - so they ask her to implement bubble sort in C. She manages this and then they as k her can you work with oscilloscope and she answers "No but I can learn fast" then they dismiss her and unofficially tell her that they won't hire her because girls don't like working close to hardware. So bias against women is alive and w…
Sounds like she really dodged a bullet!
Wow, it seems most of the comment here, as of now, decided to overlook the parts of the article that explicitly state problems that are most suffered by women. For example, how this woman had a boss who stroke her hair, or how another boss hated to hire women. That kind of pressure does not exist for most men in the industry. Yes, men suffer from high performance demands in business, but this is not oppression Olympi…
You are also misunderstanding the "small pool of women CS graduates". It's not to suggest that theres no discrimination, but that theres possibly not much you can do at the stage of post-graduation. That this is a result of discrimination that starts very early in childhood and teenage years.
Wow, it seems most of the comment here, as of now, decided to overlook the parts of the article that explicitly state problems that are most suffered by women. For example, how this woman had a boss who stroke her hair, or how another boss hated to hire women. That kind of pressure does not exist for most men in the industry. Yes, men suffer from high performance demands in business, but this is not oppression Olympi…
Well said. I'm surprised at how reactionary these comments are. Most just sound really defensive.
Working hard for a startup, a large or small business doesn't erase sexism. You did good, but it doesn't change sociology.
So I have this female friend that interviewed a few days ago in a small embedded device workshop - so they ask her to implement bubble sort in C. She manages this and then they as k her can you work with oscilloscope and she answers "No but I can learn fast" then they dismiss her and unofficially tell her that they won't hire her because girls don't like working close to hardware. So bias against women is alive and w…
Sounds like she really dodged a bullet!
Yet another article that perpetuates the myth that ONLY women are faced with high performance demands in business: "This strange illness meanwhile left the female survivors with an odd glow that made them too visible, scrutinized too closely, held to higher standards. It placed upon them the terrible burden of being not only good but the best." This is a very common argument and it is false. Many corporate cultures a…
2. Arguments like "This is a very common argument and it is false" and "it is simply not true that..." are merely bald assertions of fact and would not be convincing even if you were arguing against an opinion that someone actually held
3. "Many or even all men can feel this same expectation in performance-based professions, but they will not blame their sex" is dog whistling for the idea that women are somehow conspiring to use anti-sexism to apologize for poor performance. Also, how you can claim to know the feelings of "many or even all men", and compare them to the feelings of women is beyond me.
4. I have never seen a man complain about sexism in tech, but many women have. There are only three explanations: a) women in tech are somehow unreasonably seeing sexism where there is none, which given that it happens to numerous women but no men requires an explanation that isn't cheap handwaving b) women in tech are trying to use complaints of sexism to get ahead unfairly, which I will happily dismiss as being needlessly cynical and misogynist c) there is sexism in tech, which given that sexism exists to some degree in most every place is not an unreasonable thing to think
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat might be a good read
1) It's 2013. If you work with men that don't know women are people, find a new job. If they did something excessively stupid or harmful, you should sue them to discourage them from harassing other women. Interviewing is a two way street, you should not only prove that you're able to do a job, but also find out if you want to work with these people.
2) Why learn from asshole managers? The internet exists. Learning a new framework is easier than ever with superb documentation and tutorials. For the fundamentals, some CS courses are fully available online. You can even go back to school.
3) Yes, it is a numbers game. There are a small number of women who major in CS/EE, and from that pool of people there are an even smaller percentage who stick with it and get jobs in tech. Now as to _why_ fewer women are majoring in CS than in the past is something we should be investigating.
4) Seeing that it's mostly men who have jobs in tech, it makes sense that you'll see a small representation of women in VC backed companies.
5) If VC's are unconsciously discriminating against people who don't look like Mark Zuckerberg, what's stopping you from bootstrapping? The costs of starting a software company are smaller than ever.