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What happened to all the female developers?

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Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#111

Post by gaius »

kenjackson wrote: post #71
gaius wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's only a "problem" when an industry is male-dominated it seems. Question is do we want equality, or not?

Actually, it's only a problem because males dominate high paying industries. There's a lot of talk about gender transitions on jobs. One common argument is if men leave jobs as they begin to pay less or is it that as more women take to a job, we value the job less. Outside of a few niche industries (modeling, porn, etc...), men generally are in higher paying industries. And gender transitions within industries tend t…

males dominate high paying industries

And low paying, dirty, dangerous industries too - and no industries at all, the majority of the homeless and the prison population are men!

This is the nasty little secret at the heart of feminism - they only want advantages, not equality. Another thing feminists are very quiet about is the earlier retirement age...

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#112

Post by gaius »

ovi256 wrote: post #57
diolpah wrote: post #9

A cursory look at the graph indicates that the only place women suffered was on their own code. Resume, phone skills, interpersonal skills, all great.

You're getting downvoted, no doubt because the thing you remarked is a thing-you-can't-say. I completely missed it myself, but it's very telling: code screen eliminates women in a 28:5 (5.6) ratio, compared to men's 26:10 (2.6). A classic rebuttal is that the test could be biased. Reducing complex phenomena to one factor so that they can be digested on a 30-second news segment or put into soundbites by any politician…

How on Earth can you gender-bias a coding test!? The compiler doesn't know if you're a boy or a girl!

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#113

Post by Udo »

flomincucci wrote: post #87

I'm a female developer. I'm not going for CS, but a Systems Engineering degree. I share classes with lots of women (well, in the best of situations, we're 1/3 of the total population of a classroom). Even knowing lots of women going for a SE degree, I can count with one hand the female developers I know. Most of them aren't interested in developing, but in functional analysis and leading teams.

> Most of them aren't interested in developing, but in functional analysis and leading teams.

But why is that so? Is it because we as a culture have decided that "men are focussed on building things" and "women are focussed on social interaction"? I'm interested in the thought process that actually motivates people to decide what they prefer to be working on.

When I look back on how I got started with programming, the overwhelming aspect for me was the incredible coolness of being able to make anything I could dream of. It's this feeling of creative empowerment that really drives me to this day. And somehow I never thought of this as being a gender-specific motivation, but I would like to hear more opinions on whether I'm mistaken or not...

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#114

Post by Lambent_Cactus »

saturn wrote: post #47
rdouble wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are women turned off by competitiveness in CS ... but not in medicine? Maybe they are just more practical. The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers. If you do pre-med but can't get into med school, you can still get into public health, physical therapy, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, etc... If you do CS but can't get a job at…

> The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers I was all primed with a fiery response about how good programmers in hot markets should be pulling more than 200k, lousy markets at least 100k, and anyone who wasn't is either a lousy negotiator or not good, but then I remembered where I was. The crème de la crème. Yeah, "staff programmers…

Whoa, where are good programmers in hot markets making more than $200k? Is that counting stock compensation, or actual salary? I'm seeing sub-200k salaries for Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-San... http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Software-Engineer-P... http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Microsoft-Software-Developme...

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#115

Post by psykotic »

rdouble wrote: post #110
psykotic wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cardiologists are in the upper salary echelons of physicians. If you're a family physician or a pediatrician you probably won't make more than $200,000 per year, which isn't too far out of line with what some programmers make.

Right, but to make $200K a year as a programmer you have to work at Goldman Sachs or have spent the last 8 years moving up the ranks at VM Ware or be Mark Zuckerburg's college friend. To make $200K a year as a GP you can live anywhere in the USA you want and work part time (which is what my father does).

To make that $200,000 you also have to pour an ungodly amount of time, effort and money into the education system, etc. Once you factor in all the relevant differences the gap is a lot smaller than it appears at first. There are many programmers who earn that kind of salary and don't fit your description of being in finance or climbing the managerial ladder for years on end.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#116

Post by peterwwillis »

Why did I (a boy) get into computers? I was a nerd and I had one friend and no social skills. I played no sports and did nothing but play with action figures and watch TV - until I found the computer. I never gave it up until I grew up, and now it's a job and sometimes a hobby (when i'm home long enough to play with it). Would you say it's more likely or less likely that an equal percentage of girls to boys would have similar experiences? Or would you say that girls might just have an easier time socializing and might be less prompted to lose themselves on the computer?

Why do we even care about which sex works more in that field? If we had the answer to this question, and somebody decided to increase the population of women in the field... Is it going to produce better code or something? What's the point other than just playing with social structures for fun, or exercising some strange need to reach some kind of artificial equilibrium anywhere we see what we perceive as an imbalance?

tl;dr there's not as many friendless geek women and who cares who's coding anyway

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#117

Post by rdouble »

psykotic wrote: post #115
rdouble wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but to make $200K a year as a programmer you have to work at Goldman Sachs or have spent the last 8 years moving up the ranks at VM Ware or be Mark Zuckerburg's college friend. To make $200K a year as a GP you can live anywhere in the USA you want and work part time (which is what my father does).

To make that $200,000 you also have to pour an ungodly amount of time, effort and money into the education system, etc. Once you factor in all the relevant differences the gap is a lot smaller than it appears at first. There are many programmers who earn that kind of salary and don't fit your description of being in finance or climbing the managerial ladder for years on end.

There are many programmers who earn that kind of salary and don't fit your description of being in finance or climbing the managerial ladder for years on end.

Who are they and where do they work? I am looking for a job.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#118

Post by cma »

saturn wrote: post #94
rdouble wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you shine you don't make as much as a general physician, and you'll never make as much as a dermatologist. If you want to get rich as a programmer you have to attach yourself to a liquidity event or run your own business.

Isn't it the case that if you want to get rich as a GP or specialist you have to start your own business, too? Also known as a practise? It is known that you'll never get rich working for someone else, but that applies to all trades and I don't see any reason why starting one as a programmer is dramatically different from starting one as a GP, or a plumber, or any other kind of highly skilled and valuable trade.

"or specialist you have to start your own business, too? Also known as a practise?"

The number of practicing dermatologiests strictly limited to an amount determined by a council of dermatologists via the AMA. Programmers have nothing remotely similar.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#119

Post by psykotic »

rdouble wrote: post #117
psykotic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make that $200,000 you also have to pour an ungodly amount of time, effort and money into the education system, etc. Once you factor in all the relevant differences the gap is a lot smaller than it appears at first. There are many programmers who earn that kind of salary and don't fit your description of being in finance or climbing the managerial ladder for years on end.

There are many programmers who earn that kind of salary and don't fit your description of being in finance or climbing the managerial ladder for years on end. Who are they and where do they work? I am looking for a job.

Find product companies where top-percentile individual contributors can make a huge difference to the company's bottom line and are renumerated accordingly.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#120

Post by bad_user »

benmccann wrote: post #92
curtis wrote: post #16

I wonder what the percentage of high school graduates who can program is, broken down by gender. My guess is there's close to an order of magnitude more 18 year-old males who can program than there are 18 year-old females, at least in the U.S., anyway. Furthermore, I'd guess that many if not most 18 year-olds who can program (male or female) are largely self-taught. My thesis here is that teenage boys are much more l…

Except you don't have to be able to program to be accepted to a CS program, so that shouldn't have a dramatic effect on why there are so few female students interested in CS.

But you have to know about what programming and computer science is about before WANTING to apply to a CS college. Or you can just rely on the media or your parents to tell you that CS pays good money - but that's just disastrous.

I think that CS does not appeal to females simply because females are more social than males; spending endless hours in front of a computer is not really that attractive.

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