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This is Not ok

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Re: This is Not ok

#121

Post by jiggy2011 »

yarrel wrote: post #105
jiggy2011 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see how that is a barrier to entry.

You're not going to get hired if people think you're not there to get hired.

People will naturally make assumptions based on prior experiences and statistics , essentially "optimising for the common case". In the same way that I would make an assumption that somebody from say Pakistan is more likely to be a muslim than christian.

This is simply how humans operate, probably because it has survival value and is more a function of evolution than prejudice.

It's not a difficult assumption to get past anyway, talking knowledgeably about something a recruiter would probably not know or even wearing a tech related T shirt would make people change their assumptions.

The only way to solve that particular problem properly would be to have more women in tech.

An actual barrier would be a company or a CS programme deliberately discriminating against women by not employing them. Now I'm sure this does happen in some cases and would be difficult to gather evidence of because any company admitting to this practice would be open to law suits. Another example would be of creating a workplace that was somehow misogynistic in some way, but I actually find that more common in other industries than in tech.

OTOH , many universities seem to actually discriminate in favour of women for CS, in some cases lowering entry requirements on giving a priority on placement. They still tend to end up with 80%+ men though.

One observation I have made about women who work as developers or in an engineering/science field is that the majority I have met have tended to be chinese. This makes me wonder if there is in fact a stigma attached to western women going into tech but I don't necessarily think this stigma comes from the inside.

Re: This is Not ok

#122

Post by benatkin »

raganwald wrote: post #92

Meta-question for both men and women. If you were a woman considering a career in IT and you were to read the comments on a thread like this, would you be more likely to join, less likely, or unaffected by reading the thread?

Certainly less likely to join (unless it made me want to get in and change things, which I hope is what women reading this will do). What that gets me is the criticism of her writing, which seems harsher and less constructive than the average on HN. The thing is that it isn't completely false, and the people who post it think we won't notice they're being mean, because there's some truth to what they're saying. But it's only bad writing if you raise the bar of what makes good writing much higher than it normally is for a blog post on HN.

Re: This is Not ok

#123

Post by [deleted] »

raganwald wrote: post #92

Meta-question for both men and women. If you were a woman considering a career in IT and you were to read the comments on a thread like this, would you be more likely to join, less likely, or unaffected by reading the thread?

[deleted]

Re: This is Not ok

#124

Post by sha348 »

moistgorilla wrote: post #62
pdelgallego wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, Are people concern because there are not enough afro-americans/hispanics/etc in the software industry?

I know I'm making a generalization here but the software industry isn't racist like it is sexist.

Wait, what are you basing this generalization on? If it's purely based on numbers, I've worked with more female programmers than african americans. If the allegation is that the software industry is sexist purely because women don't participate, then the software industry must be even more racist.

Re: This is Not ok

#125

Post by jiggy2011 »

shadowfiend wrote: post #106

Empathy, noun: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I think this is our[1] problem. Or a generalization of it: the ability to share another's viewpoint. To step into their perspective and say “oh. I see.” And to accept that maybe, just maybe, their viewpoint is valid. This isn't always true, by the way. But it is sometimes true, even often true. And even if it is valid, you may not agree with…

It depends on whether you believe women are trying to enter the tech field and are being scared away, or whether they are not interested in the first place.

I would suggest it is mainly the latter, look at any IT/CS type course at a college and you will see mainly men and these are people who haven't even entered the field yet to get a chance to be scared off.

The point regards passion is an interesting one, I imagine that there are a fair number of people here who got an interest in tech at an early age long before they had to worry about starting a career.

The question for these people would be, if you were at that age and were instead a born a woman but had the same interests would there have likely been anything that would hold them back? If so what would it most likely have been?

Re: This is Not ok

#126

Post by JoelMcCracken »

pdelgallego wrote: post #58
moistgorilla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think she has a problem with the fact that men got 92% of the bathroom facilities. Especially when it was logically justified. I just think she was disillusioned by the fact that there were so few woman at the conference that a decision like that could be justified.

Honest question, Are people concern because there are not enough afro-americans/hispanics/etc in the software industry?

Yes, many of us are.

Re: This is Not ok

#127

Post by nitid_name »

moistgorilla wrote: post #56

I'm kind of disappointed by the comments here. Not just by the fact that people couldn't read the entire article before making judgments but more that I would have thought the people of this website would understand why it's important to bring women into tech. Women aren't biologically inclined to not like STEM fields (which I sadly see is a popular sentiment). The reason women don't go into these fields is because o…

>The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture.

[Citation needed]

Re: This is Not ok

#128

Post by juridatenshi »

pdelgallego wrote: post #58
moistgorilla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think she has a problem with the fact that men got 92% of the bathroom facilities. Especially when it was logically justified. I just think she was disillusioned by the fact that there were so few woman at the conference that a decision like that could be justified.

Honest question, Are people concern because there are not enough afro-americans/hispanics/etc in the software industry?

Some certainly are. It's important for us to have diversity in a variety of areas (and intersections of areas), not just women. That being said, this specific article is focused on a woman's experience, so it makes sense that it would focus on gender.

Re: This is Not ok

#129

Post by Ntrails »

jeremyarussell wrote: post #113
Ntrails wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see why a dislike of hospitals, excrement, and old people would hold women back from working in the tech industry?

I think you missed the point on that by a bit. See the point was men don't generally become nurses as often as women, because of the social stigma that it's a woman's job. The way I figure there is no biological reason why a girl wouldn't want to expand her mental capacities via technology and programming. It's strictly because it's seen as a nerdy guy stuck in basement thing, then the brogrammers came out and people…

Actually, I was intentionally pointing out the absurdity of the blanket statement being made, whilst attempting to apply humour. I did consider being a nurse, when training to help with a family members illness the nurse teaching me suggested I would be good at it. I was not interested, in large part for the exact reasons I listed above.

I would also like to point out that the gender imbalance in nursing is not blamed on the nurses - you yourself describe it as a social stigma.

Fixing societal attitudes needs something rather more than an introspection on the tech industry and why we are full of terrible people. It needs parents and schools to encourage girls to study the relevant areas, it needs schools to get all of their pupils trying out basic programming in a rewarding, exciting and gender neutral environment.

I could be wrong - but to my mind this is a problem in all of STEM and fixing it needs a broad response to treat it as a single issue.

N.B. Women not going to conferences because they are home to a host of manchildren who spend half their time drunk is a separate issue and one deserving of serious attention.

EDIT: I have no idea why some of this seems to be in italics. Sorry :(

Re: This is Not ok

#130

Post by rbellio »

shadowfiend wrote: post #88
rbellio wrote: post #32

She isn't upset by the fact that the ladies room was relabeled as a mens room, she was frustrated by the fact that she didn't find as many female peers at the conference. She felt encouraged around other women to discuss technology and wants to encourage other women to become excited about the field. I have some insight into this. I'm engaged to a mechanical engineer who works in a largely male dominated industry. To…

“Why should I want someone with no passion, who simply wants a job, to enter my market and drive down the price of labor?” Because for every 10 people with no passion who simply want a job, you get one who is incredibly passionate but simply wanted a job. One who didn't realize that hey, this is actually pretty cool stuff, and maybe it's more than just a job, it can be a passion and a career. I am of course making up…

I may not have made it clear enough, but I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage women or non-technical people to pursue technical experience and/or education. I personally prefer to work in a diverse workforce and enjoy sharing my workday with people of different sexes, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. I'm not sure what stereotypes you're referring to, either, as I personally have worked across a multitude of domains and have not seen any difference in the approach of the professional development world to that of the rest of the market (my last software company was co-founded by a woman in fact).

I'm saying that simply wanting women or any other sociological division of people to be more prevalent for the sake of presence is a mistake. In your example, you say that out of 10 people that are encouraged/trained, you might get one very passionate developer. I know the math is made up, but if you look at this in the other direction, you now have 9 developers that are bad at their job, dislike/don't care about their job or possibly both. This would mean that 90% of the workforce is now comprised of people who are hindering the other 10%. That 90% of the code written is probably poorly executed.

I think that the career of being a developer is attractive enough that anyone interested in pursuing it would see it as a viable option. Segregating encouragement along the line of sex I think does more harm then good though.

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