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Girls Who Code

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Re: Girls Who Code

#21

Post by gfodor »

lkrubner wrote: post #11

One fascinating aspect of this is how bad the post 1990 startup culture has been for women. There was something about those big, boring corporations of the 1970s and 1980s that actually gave female hackers more acceptance than what startups have offered. You can see female interest in programming change in the charts on these pages: http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21993/women-comput... Note that those graph…

"Culture fit" is a vague enough term to not really be able to say much about it. Are there companies who use it as a way to hide behind discrimination? Sure, almost certainly. But in my past experience the amount of times we rejected a candidate due to "no culture fit" was quite low and was for reasons that were of the flavor: "this person sounds like they totally caused drama in their old workplace" or "this person admitted to bending the rules in a way we find ethically dubious" etc. In other words, there are certainly alternative criteria for "culture" fit that are legitimate things to consider and are not discriminatory.

Re: Girls Who Code

#22

Post by ericedge »

lkrubner wrote: post #11

One fascinating aspect of this is how bad the post 1990 startup culture has been for women. There was something about those big, boring corporations of the 1970s and 1980s that actually gave female hackers more acceptance than what startups have offered. You can see female interest in programming change in the charts on these pages: http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21993/women-comput... Note that those graph…

To some extent I wonder if the difference between the two environments is the acceptance of more junior engineers into the ranks. Even the original link suggests that female coders need to have the same skills as the male coders in order to succeed in the field, whereas one of the main bullet points for Carnegie Mellon's success was specifically encouraging students with no prior experience to join the program:

http://blog.play-i.com/carnegie-mellon-study-on-gender-and-c...

But how often in web engineering do you see postings for junior employees? Everyone wants someone who already has experience, the more senior the better. How do we get more people of any diversity to work at our companies if there are no entry-level positions in the field?

I think some of this might arise from the fact that web engineering is still a relatively new field. People making staffing decisions feel like they're taking on enough risk as-is, and don't want to take on the additional burden of training up junior engineers.

But if we don't train them, gaining diversity will be much more difficult, and we may some day find ourselves with a quickly-dwindling pool of experienced engineers to draw from.

I'm not sure we're there yet, but when we reach that point, already having a solid training program in place at a company will be an incredible market advantage. So we might be shooting ourselves in the foot by not starting those training programs now.

Re: Girls Who Code

#23

Post by smtddr »

city41 wrote: post #20
tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is an ER nurse. Back of the envelope: There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female: there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US. There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa. There have probably been several…

9.6% of all RNs are male [0] Why is there not a male nurse initiative? Or male elementary teacher initiative[1]? I have to admit, I am strongly against things like "Girls who code". If there truly are issues in our culture that prevent girls from looking into coding, then absolutely let's get rid of those as best we can. But a girl can look into and explore coding just as easily as a boy can. There's really nothing s…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6530237

Re: Girls Who Code

#24

Post by icegreentea »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

I am a man. These initiatives will simply not work. Imagine "Men Nurse." Many women SIMPLY do not code for the same reason many men do not code. Most of us were not exposed to the science as kids, hence step 1 is to make Programming mandatory. Note I say programming and not C.S.. I am an amateur programmer and I can say wit confidence that this is as fundamental as basic arithmetic. Full stop. I frankly wish they shu…

I don't quite understand the structure of your argument.

First you claim it will not work because you cannot imagine "Men Nurse" would succeed. And then you claim that the reason why many women is because they were not exposed to programming as a child, a trait that is shared with many males.

This implies that the reason there is a short-fall in men in nursing is the similar to why there is a short-fall of women in programming. I don't believe this is the case, especially when you consider that your stated reason for the short-fall in women is that they are not exposed to programming as a child, implying the reason that men do not get into nursing is because they were exposed to less nursing like activities as a child. Which seems frankly kinda silly.

Furthermore, if we accept your premise that the reason that many women do not code is because of lack of childhood exposure, then clearly the massive skew in demographics right now implies that there is something about how we tend to do things that skew exposure towards boys. And if we're not careful about it, then if we just did a "We Code" we could very likely just include the same skewing towards boys, and we're right back to where we began.

I wanted to post something like this the last time something like this came up, but here we go. Rising tides raise all boats. But patching the leaky ones and installing a bilge pump will certainly help the floundering ones more. And right now people are deciding that there are some boats that are having trouble, and want to fix that first.

Re: Girls Who Code

#25

Post by owenwil »

gfodor wrote: post #17

I have to thank Valleywag for doing me the favor of helping me prune people who lack reading comprehension from twitter. I'm still kind of amazed how so many people un-ironically cited valleywag in their tweets. It's pretty obvious what pg was saying in this particular "smoking gun" quote: that figuring out a way to get more girls interested in programming at 13 is an incredibly important and hard problem. The willin…

Right, but when he had a chance to comment again to defend his statements, he instead went after the angle of saving himself rather than addressing the issue at the core.

He could have talked about the work he's doing to help girls learn to code. He could have talked about others' work to help girls learn code. He could have talked about how he is not biased towards men.

Instead, he just attacked journalists in general and didn't bother to address the root problem. It's all about saving oneself.

Re: Girls Who Code

#26

Post by gfodor »

city41 wrote: post #20
tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is an ER nurse. Back of the envelope: There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female: there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US. There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa. There have probably been several…

9.6% of all RNs are male [0] Why is there not a male nurse initiative? Or male elementary teacher initiative[1]? I have to admit, I am strongly against things like "Girls who code". If there truly are issues in our culture that prevent girls from looking into coding, then absolutely let's get rid of those as best we can. But a girl can look into and explore coding just as easily as a boy can. There's really nothing s…

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. The question you ask is a good one, though you are jumping to some conclusions. I think it may very well be that there should be a "male nurse initiative", or at least that the lack of one doesn't somehow dictate the ethics and obligations of our field.

Re: Girls Who Code

#27

Post by pflats »

tptacek wrote: post #13
rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

I am a man. These initiatives will simply not work. Imagine "Men Nurse." Many women SIMPLY do not code for the same reason many men do not code. Most of us were not exposed to the science as kids, hence step 1 is to make Programming mandatory. Note I say programming and not C.S.. I am an amateur programmer and I can say wit confidence that this is as fundamental as basic arithmetic. Full stop. I frankly wish they shu…

There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is an ER nurse. Back of the envelope: There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female: there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US. There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa. There have probably been several…

If by tons, you mean 9%, then yes, there are tons of male nurses. Many are nurse anesthetists, which isn't what most people think of when they think "nurse". (Anesthetists also earn an extra hundred grand a year, on average.)

http://www.census.gov/people/io/files/Men_in_Nursing_Occupat...

Re: Girls Who Code

#28

Post by tptacek »

city41 wrote: post #20
tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is an ER nurse. Back of the envelope: There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female: there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US. There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa. There have probably been several…

9.6% of all RNs are male [0] Why is there not a male nurse initiative? Or male elementary teacher initiative[1]? I have to admit, I am strongly against things like "Girls who code". If there truly are issues in our culture that prevent girls from looking into coding, then absolutely let's get rid of those as best we can. But a girl can look into and explore coding just as easily as a boy can. There's really nothing s…

That's 3x as many as there were 20 years ago. What does the trendline look like for software development? (I don't know; it's a serious question).

Re: Girls Who Code

#29

Post by gfodor »

owenwil wrote: post #25
gfodor wrote: post #17

I have to thank Valleywag for doing me the favor of helping me prune people who lack reading comprehension from twitter. I'm still kind of amazed how so many people un-ironically cited valleywag in their tweets. It's pretty obvious what pg was saying in this particular "smoking gun" quote: that figuring out a way to get more girls interested in programming at 13 is an incredibly important and hard problem. The willin…

Right, but when he had a chance to comment again to defend his statements, he instead went after the angle of saving himself rather than addressing the issue at the core. He could have talked about the work he's doing to help girls learn to code. He could have talked about others' work to help girls learn code. He could have talked about how he is not biased towards men. Instead, he just attacked journalists in gener…

Where did this happen? This article is a blog by Fred Wilson.

Re: Girls Who Code

#30

Post by tptacek »

pflats wrote: post #27
tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is an ER nurse. Back of the envelope: There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female: there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US. There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa. There have probably been several…

If by tons, you mean 9%, then yes, there are tons of male nurses. Many are nurse anesthetists, which isn't what most people think of when they think "nurse". (Anesthetists also earn an extra hundred grand a year, on average.) http://www.census.gov/people/io/files/Men_in_Nursing_Occupat...

It is not helpful that "nursing" is an explicitly gendered term. And despite that, the fraction of nurses who are male is climbing steadily.
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