Girls Who Code • Hacker News Board

Re: Girls Who Code

#391

Post by erichocean » Wed, Jan 01, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #154

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your "gender-based difference in interests" explain the last thirty years of (proportional) decline in women majoring in CS?

30 years is plenty of time for the interests of a demographic to shift.

It's also shifted downwards among females majoring in the humanities, but no one cares—there's no "Girls Read" initiatives, for example.

That's why trends are just not that useful in convincing people, especially people whose job it is to be logical week in, week out, and to generalize aggressively.

So these people look at you say "the trend is down" and then see you make that a primary reason for action, and then they immediately go and look at all the trends, and then notice the participation trend is down even more in the humanities among women (also having peaked in the early 80s, which makes me wonder what changed then), but regardless, they also see that the downward participation trend in the humanities is not a reason for action there, and wonder WTF? It seems like special pleading, because it is.

There are good reasons for promoting CS to females today (as ever), but "the numbers show a downward trend in CS" is not one of them.

Re: Girls Who Code

#392

Post by webmaven » Wed, Jan 01, 2014, 4:52 PM UTC

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.

I'll just note that coding is actually more a collaborative activity than a solitary one, so the 'socially challenged' are not very likely to be 'good coders'.

Re: Girls Who Code

#393

Post by webmaven » Wed, Jan 01, 2014, 4:59 PM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #150

judk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking? The fashion world has massively outreached to men in recent couple of decades. Axe and chest shaving and all that other metrosexual stuff. And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education world, especially with respect to the need to provide male role models for kids of single moms.

> The fashion world has massively outreached to men in recent couple of decades. Axe and chest shaving and all that other metrosexual stuff. I mean men working in fashion, not being marketed to. And Axe is not fashion, thank you very much. > And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education world... Show me the equivalent of "Rails Girls" or "Girls Who Code" for male teachers or fashion designers…

http://www.teachforamerica.org/

Re: Girls Who Code

#394

Post by jfarmer » Wed, Jan 01, 2014, 6:56 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #334

jfarmer wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

There's plenty of room between "justify everything from first principles" and "perform an ad hoc 5-minute search of the web for research that confirms what I already believe." I'd also say, the closer one is to the former, the more justified one is in feeling certain about their beliefs.

> 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.

That's good, because nobody here is advocating that!

> Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here.

Well, as they say, "Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen."

What's "common sense," here? That women are more risk-averse? I disagree, at the very least until one defines "risk" and "risk-averse" very precisely. My "common sense" tells me otherwise. Shucks. Ain't that the problem with "common sense?"

Re: Girls Who Code

#395

Post by theorique » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 1:12 AM UTC

glesica wrote: post #374

theorique wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In companies I worked for in the past, I definitely had to do IQ-ish tests such as puzzles and brain teasers. Many people in the tech industry have encountered this. The cultural mythology of Google (and earlier, Microsoft, when they were the ascendant, 800-lb gorilla) was about their puzzle based interviews, and how they didn't care about your specific skill set but only raw intelligence . (We can debate about wheth…

The problem is that those tests probably DO have cultural or gender biases. GP was pretty specific about the fact that only SOME intelligence tests have been shown to be effective and free of cultural and gender bias. So then we're back to my original comment.

I agree that an a in-house puzzle, brainteaser, and math test would probably be shown have some biases if it were analyzed according to the same processes that are used to analyze IQ tests and other psychometric tests.

Re: Girls Who Code

#396

Post by rada » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 9:03 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #365

rada wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication, stated or not (usually not)... You missed the parent's point so entirely, it's as if you are an MRA bot posting the same old scripted comments no matter what actual discussion is taking place. He said that we could "have a conversation about diversity in hiring without ever introducing the subject of guilt" and that we don't need to "frame the whole thing in terms of accusations" and your immediate k…

Theorique - to my eye, at least - was responding in kind to the academic arguments presented by lkrubner. He presents three possible explanations for the effect that lkrubner discusses. Nowhere in there is a value judgment, only three hypotheses. A good rule of thumb for when a conversation has become personal and emotions are getting involved is when the word "You" comes up. Conversations that stay on a strictly aca…

Ah, the tone argument... I Am Too Emotional, causing me to use Incorrect Words.

Except, here is what lkrubner said, emphasis mine:

The same is true about this conversation, and _your reaction_.

See how we were, in fact, having a thread where we all address each other personally? How you made up an arbitrary rule to discount my comment just because it made you uncomfortable?

Next time, check your own emotional state before jumping with with a lecture on someone else's. And try to argue on substance, not tone, please.

Re: Girls Who Code

#397

Post by Goladus » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 12:33 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #329

Goladus wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll point out that we could have a conversation about diversity in hiring without ever introducing the subject of guilt. The concept of blame was implied with the comment (paraphrased) startup culture is bad for women . That is blaming language, even though the victim was general and the guilt lies with a vague notion of 'culture'. If you want to avoid discussions of blame it helps to avoid judgmental language. "$…

"Startup culture is bad for women" doesn't imply anything about blame, except maybe blame for failure to change now that that harm is observable. The existence of a harm doesn't imply that it was foreseeable in advance such that there is any moral culpability attached to it.

Yes it does, because everyone participates in culture and culture is an ongoing thing. Or rather: it can be interpreted that way quite easily so don't make a statement like that and then blame people for talking about guilt.

If you don't want people talking about guilt then avoid judgmental language ("bad" in this case, "harm" in yours) until it's very clear that a judgment is necessary. Having an arm amputated in a car accident is "harm", it's "bad". Is not being hired for a position really "harm?" Maybe it is, but unlike bodily injury such a determination is not so trivial to make.