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Girls Who Code

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Re: Girls Who Code

#331

Post by theorique »

luigi wrote: post #271
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shanley Kane and her circle and sympathizers are spearheading this. Many of them show up in every HN thread about charged topics. I fully expect defense of them to show up in reply. It is part of my core being to be respectful to everyone, to listen to all sides, to feel empathy; however, when I am presented with a popular group in my industry that does none of those things, I am not sure how to react. What's depress…

It's telling that we only know him as "the guy from PlayHaven" while we all know Adria Richards by name. In that picture Adria took at PyCon, I'm not even sure which guy got fired. Okay, so the PlayHaven guy got fired. Adria had death threats made against her, was the subject of a beheading picture, had her home address and phone number publicized, her employer was DDOSed, and she was ultimately fired, like the PlayH…

Okay, so the PlayHaven guy got fired. Adria had death threats made against her, was the subject of a beheading picture, had her home address and phone number publicized, her employer was DDOSed, and she was ultimately fired, like the PlayHaven guy.

Neither one is acceptable. The mob action is obviously worse, but both punishments were wrong.

What should have happened (wishful thinking I know) is that AR could have told the guys to knock it off, or gone to staff without tweeting a picture to make a complaint if she was not comfortable with a one-on-one disagreement.

In that case the very competent PyCon staff would have mediated the complaint, and no one would have heard about it beyond a small circle of a few dozen people.

Re: Girls Who Code

#332

Post by theorique »

jdunck wrote: post #275
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shanley Kane and her circle and sympathizers are spearheading this. Many of them show up in every HN thread about charged topics. I fully expect defense of them to show up in reply. It is part of my core being to be respectful to everyone, to listen to all sides, to feel empathy; however, when I am presented with a popular group in my industry that does none of those things, I am not sure how to react. What's depress…

That people are reading this subthread and finding common cause with this right here... Do you realize how ridiculous you are? If you would like to know what racism is and why criticism of a dominant group on the basis of race isn't in, here's one take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M But you'd have to listen to get it, and you'd definitely have to give up your bullshit self-serving circular "logic".

Where does the parent comment even mention racism? This is just a drive-by snipe attacking something that the parent didn't even say.

Re: Girls Who Code

#333

Post by rokhayakebe »

xrctl wrote: post #157
rokhayakebe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men do better than women at the Math SAT[1] I just want to add that this has to do with culture, and, again, what we were exposed to and influenced to have an interest in from childhood. In high school I can remember the top Science student were all women and they racked more awards than men.

hahah, you recall that the top science students you knew were women? How convincing! I have analyzed the records of the World Cubing Association, and there is 1 woman in the top 100 ranked [1]. I have analyzed the ratings of the American Scrabble Association, and there are 6 women in the top 100 ranked [2]. It is well known that there is only 1 woman in the top 100 ranked chess players (FIDE). I have analyzed the rat…

I'll take my comment back until I can find proof (which I shall find :)).

Re: Girls Who Code

#334

Post by mistermann »

jfarmer wrote: post #264
newnewnew wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 minutes of googling: "MEN, WOMEN AND RISK AVERSION:EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE" - http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf "Sex Differences in Everyday Risk-Taking Behavior in Humans" - http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep062942.pdf Reality fits egalitarian beliefs quite poorly.

You've obviously made a serious study of this and that's why you have such justifiably strong opinions on the matter. Can you do 10 minutes of googling next time and share more? Or maybe 20?! Think of how informed you'd be after 20 minutes !

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.

It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully define and prove every single piece of content in a comment.

Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here.

Re: Girls Who Code

#335

Post by sophacles »

parennoob wrote: post #152
ceol wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet no one's complaining Plenty of people are complaining. You just don't see it because you're surrounding yourself in this little bubble of tech and startups and coding. The least you could have done, if not a simple Google search, was scroll three inches down before you replied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6981113 There are plenty of initiatives to get more men into nursing and teaching and fashion. Eve…

> There are plenty of initiatives to get more men into nursing and teaching and fashion. Show me the equivalent of initiatives like "Rails Girls" or "Girls Who Code", or "Github's free private repos for women" for male teachers or nurses. A halfhearted list of platitudes from a Dean at ASU and an NYTimes article != actual effort. Look at the list of sponsors on this page. http://www.girlswhocode.com/about-us/ and sho…

>Show me the equivalent of initiatives like "Rails Girls" or "Girls Who Code", or "Github's free private repos for women" for male teachers or nurses. A halfhearted list of platitudes from a Dean at ASU and an NYTimes article != actual effort. Look at the list of sponsors on this page. http://www.girlswhocode.com/about-us/ and show me something even remotely equivalent for nursing, or fashion.

Well googling for "programs to get men into nursing" returns these:

http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing#.UsGOpGRDsns

http://www.minoritynurse.com/article/men-nursing-school

Both of which show some good sponsorship. Heck, on the first page, under "resources" there is mention of a magazine called "male nurse magazine".

I'm pretty sure these aren't half-hearted platitudes.

Also consider: a profession that isn't tech may not have a giant list of tech heavyweights behind it. Again - different industries have different ways of doing things.

> All I'm saying is that, as a low-income Asian person who learned to code, I am not a particularly privileged or rich person. Yet I have had zero initiatives helping me, or encouraging me to code. I have seen several people in a similar position. On the other hand, plenty of girls with high-income parents are babysat and helped by initiatives like Rails Girls et al.

This is poor reasoning. Just because there are initiatives to help one group, and there aren't - for whatever reason - initiatives to help another group, doesn't mean that the initiatives that do exist are a problem. An attempt to solve one problem does not invalidate the other. Nor does the lack of solution to one problem invalidate attempts to solve other problems. It's like this: my software has 2 bugs. I spend a week fixing one bug. My boss doesn't complain that I didn't solve both bugs, but rather praises me for fixing one and says "now fix the other".

Re: Girls Who Code

#336

Post by dragonwriter »

draugadrotten wrote: post #113
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you're not old enough, but I am and I remember a huge stigma against men who wanted to become nurses because it was a job "for women" and what kind of man would want to do that kind of thing.

> huge stigma against men who wanted to become nurses because it was a job "for women" and what kind of man would want to do that kind of thing. ...and that's exactly the kind of label that women slaps on tech jobs. "What kind of woman would want to {drive race cars,work 60 hour weeks coding,debug java threads,maintain virtual server farms}" And there you have it. It's clearly the oppressive white males' fault.

Looking at it in terms of "fault" is particularly unhelpful -- and irrelevant to what most organizations, including the one that is the subject of this thread, looking to break down cultural barriers are doing.

Re: Girls Who Code

#337

Post by pc86 »

theorique wrote: post #330
lkrubner wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting that whenever this subject is brought up, someone will eventually introduce the subject of guilt. Can you articulate why you responded in this way? Do you feel that you have been accused of something? What exactly would the metaphorical equivalent of being a "witch" mean in this context? I'll point out that we could have a conversation about diversity in hiring without ever introducing the subject o…

Some possibilities: - The implication, stated or not (usually not), is that some people (i.e. white men) hold their jobs in tech because they took a position that rightfully should have gone to a more qualified person of a different group (i.e. woman / racial minority). With the attendant implication that they aren't actually competent and that they only got their position through in-group affiliation. - Men (white o…

Speaking only to your first point, I don’t think the implication is that the white man holds a job that a better qualified non-white-man should have gotten, I think the implication is often times that the white man should not have gotten the job because it would have been preferable to hire an equally qualified non-white-man solely on the basis of his or her non-white-mannedness. This often makes people defensive (I have been as guilty of this as anyone else, as a white man) because it may seem that they’re being told they are “taking” a job from someone who deserves it more not based on merit or even tangential career skills like networking or interview prowess, but just because they have a different skin color and/or chromosomes.

Re: Girls Who Code

#338

Post by tonecluster »

lmm wrote: post #319
tonecluster wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who in their right mind would want to work on a team of highly-intelligent, socially-challenged, culturally-homogeneous young men whose experience to date is primarily steeped in the casual misogyny, homophobia, and racism of MMORPG chat-channels; dorm-room bike-shedding; and adolescent dude-bro jokes?

If they're good coders, sure. I can ignore work-unrelated stupidity, but if I have to work with someone incompetent at their job that becomes very unpleasant very quickly.

It becomes unpleasant very quickly regardless of the quality of the skills of the programmers.

Re: Girls Who Code

#339

Post by macNchz »

judk wrote: post #124
revelation wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to be very clear that the programming jobs of that era are not todays programing jobs. It was 1980, general society wasn't very progressive, why would computer programming be the magic beacon of equality? And, of course, it wasn't, it was considered menial work fit for females.

I have heard that argument for jobs, but what about Bachelors Degree majors? To me, the bigger difference is that there must be 10-100x more CS majors per year now than in 1985. CS was mostly applied math then, and math majors have long been extremely majority male.

>To me, the bigger difference is that there must be 10-100x more CS majors per year now than in 1985. CS was mostly applied math then, and math majors have long been extremely majority male.

Actually, according to the second chart on this page(1), there are almost exactly the same number of CS bachelors degrees granted today as there were in 1985 (~41k). Also, the percentage of women in 1985 was double that of today.

[1] http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21993/women-comput...

Re: Girls Who Code

#340

Post by aphyr »

johnbm wrote: post #320
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I humbly submit that you have no idea how it feels to be gay It was a bad example, which is why I included partially, and I apologize for my poor thought there. I was only identifying with having no choice in a situation and then having vocal groups attempt to vilify that situation. I am certainly not claiming that I experience any hardship that gay folks do beyond that one. Please don't assume I'm in a bubble, eit…

I'm gay and I feel exactly the same way about this whole farce. The idea that no straight person can truly sympathize is bullshit... and when it comes from those who complain about a lack of empathy in others, I just scratch my head. The irony is of course, they are themselves the most privileged around: white, educated tech employees in Silicon Valley.

On the contrary, I believe strongly in the importance of allies.
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