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What happened to all the female developers?

blog.fogcreek.com

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Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was hoping for specific examples, but thanks anyway.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#122
post #112
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I doubt the compiler is responsible for assessing the test. I also doubt that gender-bias on the part of the assessor is the reason for the disparity though (assuming the disparity in this small sample is representative anyway).

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#123
post #28

And she said that one of the things that happens is that women don’t even think they’re qualified for something because it’s advertised in competitive language. The language of competition not only doesn’t appeal to many women, it actually puts them off. This doesn't make sense to me because easily the most competitive path I've ever seen is premed. Almost all of the premeds I know are competing for the best grades,…

She didn't say she was put off by competition, she said she was put off by competitive language in the job listing. She recommended more focus on the collaborative side of the internship - mentorship, line by line code review, and being part of decisionmaking. "Things that have to do with collaboration and learning appeal a lot more to female candidates." Couching something in mainly competitive terms does not just a…

A very good point, I'd agree with this.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#124
post #57
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…

Tiny sample size aside, a given woman is nearly four times as likely as a given man to receive an internship offer from Fog Creek provided both have reached the phone interview stage. From there, women are twice as likely to decline Fog Creek's offer, presumably due to having more & better internship options.

Survival rate by stage:

  Submitted resume gets reviewed:
      1.05 : 1 in favor of women.

  Reviewed resume gets a code review:
      1.02 : 1 in favor of women.

  Reviewed code gets a phone interview:
         1 : 1.96 in favor of men.

  Completed phone interview leads to an in-person interview:
      1.31 : 1 in favor of women.

  Completed interview leads to an offer:
      2.92 : 1 in favor of women.

  Candidate declines offer:
         2 : 1 in favor of women.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#125
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…

This book helps explain it a lot: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472...

The pay difference is a matter of a multitude of life choices made slightly differently between men and women.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#126
post #113

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, th…

Is it because we as a culture have decided that "men are focussed on building things" and "women are focussed on social interaction"?

I think that that is the root of the problem, that collective decision, that outsourcing of our moral responsibility to our bodies.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#127
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

He just said that doctors deal with people more the software engineers, which is pretty much universally true. The only specialty where you don't deal directly with people is radiology.

Nope, there are many. Pathology, for one.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#128
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…

[deleted]

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#129
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

And low paying, dirty, dangerous industries too

Thia is not strictly true. For a couple of reasons:

1) Men have systematically blocked women from being a part of some dirty dangerous industries. For example combat soldiers, firefighters, even fishermen. It's possible women may not be particularly good at these jobs, artificial boundaries certainly don't help your case.

2) There are other low paying industries dominated by women. For example pimped out prostitutes are predominately women. So again, there are basically no high paying professions dominated by women. And low paying professions are shared by men and women.

Homelessness and prisoner isn't a profession. It's a state of life. But a more fair comparison there is to something like domestic abuse leading to death at the hands of the opposite sex. Or rape at the hands of the opposite sex. Or even just murder at the hands of the opposite sex.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#130
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

This isn't about high positions. This is about choice of profession. I can buy your argument for why men become CxOs (although based on people I've worked with in the past who have said they'd never report to a woman, I think sexism plays a large role in our industry), it doesn't explain why women as a whole go into poorer paying fields.

Psychology is the classic example. Few women in the field in the 60s, and pay was relatively good. By the late 90s it became dominated by women and the pay dropped signficantly. Did women go into because the pay was low, or did the pay drop when women went into it? You can find people who argue either side.

But the point is, there's never been an industry that women have gone into that has become a high paying field.

The best way for your son to be a financial success is to not go into whatever his sister is going into. :-)

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