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I knew exactly how she felt

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Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#111

Post by pessimizer »

claudius wrote: post #51
noamsml wrote: post #38

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that consuming cultural artifacts that happen to correlate with liking engineering has anything to do with liking engineering. If you think liking Star Wars is necessary for being an engineer, you're probably missing some pretty good people who just aren't that into Star Wars.

Sure, you will miss people, and you will miss good people. But since there is (according to you) some correlation, it might act as a heuristic, employed when it is simply not feasible to implement better tests.

But what if it's a better heuristic for finding young men than engineers?

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#112

Post by z-factor »

noamsml wrote: post #38

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that consuming cultural artifacts that happen to correlate with liking engineering has anything to do with liking engineering. If you think liking Star Wars is necessary for being an engineer, you're probably missing some pretty good people who just aren't that into Star Wars.

There seems to be a correlation between geek culture and liking engineering, but I'm not convinced there's correlation with being any good at it. I'd say there's negative correlation if any.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#113

Post by neya »

s_baby wrote: post #61

I see plenty of insightful comments here but no one acknowledging the conclusion. >It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT. How many of these articles/talks put the impetus on changing women alienating women from tech? How likely are you to see some twitte…

This should be the top-voted comment. Well said!

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#114

Post by oh_sigh »

katherineparker wrote: post #39
oh_sigh wrote: post #27

This sounds like the equivalent of a male nerd complaining about "brogrammers"

Is a bro equal to a drunk idiotic party boy? If so, female nerds don't like them then either :)

My point was that disparaging someone because they have different tastes from you is stupid. Okay, so you don't like fashion or gossip, and you like star wars. That fact alone doesn't make you better or more interesting than someone who likes fashion and gossip, but not star wars.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#115

Post by pessimizer »

pekk wrote: post #108
pavel_lishin wrote: post #15

> One of them told her to stop making them feel stupid all the time. The world is full of idiots. What she experienced isn't unique to women, it happens to anyone who ends up spending time with people who do not care about knowledge.

You're glossing over something significant. Some subcultures (and demographics) suffer more from norms against intellectualism. It is more stigmatized as a woman, among the general population of other women in the US, to be into technical stuff, than to be a man into the same things. It is similar to how bookish black kids may be told to stop 'acting white'.

>It is similar to how bookish black kids may be told to stop 'acting white'.

As someone who was an absurdly bookish black kid (pre-edit: from a segregated black neighborhood in Chicago, lower middle-class, never knew a white person until I was 13) in the 80's I never heard this once except as a declaration by white people about the pressure felt by black children not to achieve.

I agree with your overall point, though, just not the example.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#116

Post by AlexandrB »

newnewnew wrote: post #90
narrator wrote: post #59

I'm going to annoyingly meta on this one because I'm feeling really philosophical today. There is a constant dissonance in the western world between assumptions about "ideal" or "moral" statistical probability distributions and actual statistical probability distributions over a large sample size when it comes to any politically sensitive topics like the one implied in the article (i.e women having an interest in sci…

What we are experiencing is a particular flavor of secular religion called "cultural Marxism". Marxists believe that social forces are best understood through a model of class conflict . Economic Marxists explained the ills of society through the conflict between rich capitalists and the poor working proletariat. The rise of the middle class threw it a curve ball that it couldn't explain and it fell out of favor (out…

> nobody cares that there are no female garbage collectors or miners

Just like nobody cares that there are very-few/no male prostitutes or strippers.

The underclass you speak of is split along gender lines too - unfortunately.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#117

Post by socialist_coder »

seivan wrote: post #32
memset wrote: post #25

I will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it m…

The problem isn't PM's know jack about code. The problem is the set where a PM would even be required. That means there's a structural flaw in your process. The idea of having a project manager is ridiculous. People _should_ manage themselves and take ownership of the project. Making the PM useless.

I used to have this attitude and then I realized that the vast majority of people cannot manage themselves.

If you have a small startup you can probably only hire people who can manage themselves. But as soon as you want to grow big, that becomes very very difficult.

Unless you're Valve, who apparently has been able to do it =)

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#118

Post by lotharbot »

petercooper wrote: post #99
noonespecial wrote: post #2

I'm not sure the author quite understood the seeing Star Wars thing was a super low bar fitness test. Once long ago my new wife asked me why geeks always wear tshirts with obscure references that no one gets. I was slightly put out by the question until I figured it out. They're a uniform. It's how we id the friendlies on the battlefield.

I've not seen Star Wars . Well, I tried to but fell asleep 10 minutes in. Oddly, I'm not feeling like an odd one out here, even so :-)

I refused to watch Star Wars as a kid, because people kept telling me that if I was a nerd I had to watch it. I considered it a protest against their definition of "nerd".

I did finally watch the original trilogy after I was married. It's OK I guess...

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#119

Post by [deleted] »

pessimizer wrote: post #107
s_baby wrote: post #61

I see plenty of insightful comments here but no one acknowledging the conclusion. >It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT. How many of these articles/talks put the impetus on changing women alienating women from tech? How likely are you to see some twitte…

>women are [..] framed as victims of patriarchal socialization not responsible for their behavior What conclusion did you read into the OP that framed the judgmental girls as themselves responsible for the culture that they were brought up in? Saying that they play a role in perpetuating the culture isn't the same as saying that they are responsible for it.

[deleted]
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