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Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

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Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#161

Post by wlievens »

youngnerd112 wrote: post #152
theresaanna wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reworded: I either gravitate toward women who tend to respond to my advances negatively or have some behavior that puts women off. Therefore, I'm sexist and consider most if not all women inferior to men in ways including ability in math, engineering. Because I can't get them to sleep with me. ...What??

Umm no...but let me try to reword what I said in that language: Although I absolutely agree that it is totally irrational to think of women as inferior in anything , my primate human brain cannot be convinced by reason alone to discard all its biases.Therefore I stand as an example of a young male nerd who as a result of his interactions with the opposite sex is developing negative biases towards them.

> Umm no

Read that post again very carefully. Either you look for the wrong women, or you do something women dislike. Both are relatively easy to fix.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#162

Post by cturner »

youngnerd112 wrote: post #98
jessedhillon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that you are commenting here because you favor the theory that women are inhibited in some way from being effective software engineers -- and that is why they are underrepresented: For women not to be represented in the population that practices software engineering indicates some intrinsic flaw or inability with them -- but for one that is nice there is at least a hundred shallow bitches around -- But for y…

It was in response to the parents comment "but young nerds in particular tend to act bizarrely towards women, and are therefore undesirable to be around." and a personal explanation of why I as a young nerd is slowly developing this kind of a bias.

If you're having trouble of the sort of ratios you're talking about, you're doing something that alienates people. That doesn't have to be the end of things, because if you work at it eventually it'll change.

You can't change other people. Focus on the things you can affect, like finding ways to make yourself a more relaxed and relaxing person to talk to.

Some people are trying to give you feedback in other parts of this thread. Much of it is not constructive, but some is. But you seem to be focussed on reiterating your points rather than taking it on.

Work out how you can be more open to feedback. Find someone who will give you honest feedback. Distinguish between people who give good, direct feedback and people who get off by demeaning you.

I assume you created this account as a throwaway because you had an idea what you were saying would be controversial but this stuff is troubling you you and you wanted to talk about it. Good move. Now take the next step.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#163

Post by roguecoder »

nsxwolf wrote: post #144
shallowwater wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those lady-types reading the comments here and getting the message loud and clear that no matter how interested I may be, or how talented I may become, I am not a welcome addition to this community.

What led you to that conclusion? No, seriously, I want to know. Why don't you feel welcome?

This is how I've seen the global conversation go:

Women: "We feel unwelcome. It's kind of lonely." Dudes: crickets Women: "Well, fine, we can make more money elsewhere working fewer hours." leave Nerdy Girls: "Video games are for boys, except the stupid ones. All those programmers are men, and all the technical women I've seen got pushed into program management. Guess I should go be a computational biologist instead. I'm not regarded as a strange alien in those classes." Dudes: "Hey, there's a lot fewer women here. Maybe there's a problem like those women said." Other Dudes: "Nah; let's just keep doing what we're doing. They probably just want to pop out kids or something. Besides, it's not like they wanted to sleep with me anyway." The Woman Who Didn't Leave: "It's totally cool guys; I'm not a bitch like those other women! I think it's awesome being the only girl!"

This thread is part of a much bigger context. As long as the response to someone just pointing out the consequences of the sexism women have reported happening repeatedly for decades is a bunch of dudes bickering among each other about whether the problem exists or whether it is more important than nerds having trouble propositioning women for sex in bars, I'm not sure what message women are supposed to receive.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#164

Post by roguecoder »

youngnerd112 wrote: post #153
roguecoder wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, but I bet she's be in a situation where men expected her to drop everything to make herself sexually available for a stranger. Everyone wants to be seen as desirable, but it is not an entire gender's fault that the specific women you've approached don't respond to your advances. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the best way I've found to get dates is to treat women like interesting people instead of potential…

Although I fully agree with what the advice you are giving me.....I think you are wrongly viewing my motivations being primarily sexual...and the point is that most women do it too!

So, about 20% of college-aged women and 20% of college-aged men enjoy casual sex based on superficial characteristics. They tend to populate bars. Because you mentioned offering to buy women a drink I had, perhaps unfairly, assumed that was your target market.

If you are interested in relationships, those 20% are unlikely to provide them. I think online dating is a much better choice: I know several friends, including married friends, who met on OkCupid.

The problem I have observed is that nerds assume the problem is women. It's like if you're linking in a common library and it's failing to load: what's more likely, that there's a bug in the library that thousands of other people use or that you accidentally linked against the debug version? Someday I'll get around to writing my "How to Hack Dating: an iterative approach to acquiring relationships" book. Lean Startup principles apply surprisingly well.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#165

Post by mattgreenrocks »

youngnerd112 wrote: post #158
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brutally honest? You're projecting your own personal failings onto all women, and it has absolutely no bearing on this discussion whatsoever. What's more, it will haunt you if you don't deal with it now. Go talk it out, either with a friend or a therapist. The longer you wait, the harder it will be.

>You're projecting your own personal failings onto all women, and it has absolutely no bearing on this discussion whatsoever. I think like all other people you are missing my point.Please read my other responses on this thread. But Yes I am certainly a failure so far by all conventional standards......but that does'nt mean I have the magical ability to get rid of all my biases....dealing with them is going to take ti…

I didn't call you a failure per se; it was more an exhortation to quit the pity party, take responsibility for your misguided thinking, and do something about it. That is the point of my thread.

The specious arguments you put forth in the thread are not worth addressing.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#166

Post by monochromatic »

MartinCron wrote: post #129
monochromatic wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women getting their panties in a bunch about something as minor as that is the reason they aren't taken seriously in the workplace (to the extent they aren't, I mean).

So you're saying that women aren't taken seriously because they feel like they aren't taken seriously? Did you even read the part of the article about circular logic? I am embarrassed for you.

How is it circular to say women don't get taken seriously when they make a big deal about things that seem minor to guys?

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#167

Post by ngzax »

I have been programming since the 70's. I have hired at least 100 programmers, either full-time or contract, over those years and have always sought to hire women. As a matter of fact, I give preference to women candidates. This is because, in my experience, teams with both women and men perform better than those with only men.

Unfortunately, my experience is has always been that there are far fewer women to choose from. If anything, I agree that it is worse today than 10 years ago.

Anecdotally, I have 2 teenage children, a boy and a girl. I would say that in terms of computer _usage_ they are approximately equal. However, while my son loves to program, my daughter has no interest at all even though she does well in and enjoys both Math and Science in school and I have urged her to learn. Go figure.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#168

Post by MartinCron »

monochromatic wrote: post #166
MartinCron wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that women aren't taken seriously because they feel like they aren't taken seriously? Did you even read the part of the article about circular logic? I am embarrassed for you.

How is it circular to say women don't get taken seriously when they make a big deal about things that seem minor to guys?

Of course it seems minor to you, that doesn't mean that it's not a real thing. You have to be mature enough to realize that your perspective isn't the only valid one.

Turn it around for a moment. Imagine you work in a mostly female industry. There's something that you, as a man, care about, that your women co-workers don't (I don't know, scheduling you to be on-call during the World Cup finals). What do you do?

Option 1: Say nothing, suffer in silence, and feel like they don't know or care.

Option 2: Say something to try to improve the situation, and have people accuse you of getting your boxers in a bunch over something minor.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#169

Post by youngnerd112 »

wlievens wrote: post #160
youngnerd112 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes...but when you get a lot of rejections from recruiters dont you console yourself by saying/fantasizing that one day when you are truly successful you will ignore all recruiters and maybe get one or two out of a job...if you see all the threads on HN about recruiters people are easily biased against recruiters. We are all human beings with weakly rational brains.Only thing wrong here is that it is not socially acc…

He's not talking about rejections from recruiters... he's talking about getting too many crappy recruitment mails. I get about 5 mails per week pimping some junior job to me that would probably pay 40% less than my current job. I don't reply to these emails because these people haven't done their homework. The poster above you is saying that maybe that's how attractive women fail...

yes you are right...sorry I misunderstood him....but my point about the similarity in emotions about companies which reject you (although it is only one or a few recruiters who are rejecting you) when you apply for a job and women (although I have only interacted with a very negligible fraction of all women) when most of them reject you still remains valid.

Re: Martin Fowler: The Fallacies and Reprocussions of Diversity Imbalance

#170

Post by youngnerd112 »

roguecoder wrote: post #164
youngnerd112 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I fully agree with what the advice you are giving me.....I think you are wrongly viewing my motivations being primarily sexual...and the point is that most women do it too!

So, about 20% of college-aged women and 20% of college-aged men enjoy casual sex based on superficial characteristics. They tend to populate bars. Because you mentioned offering to buy women a drink I had, perhaps unfairly, assumed that was your target market. If you are interested in relationships, those 20% are unlikely to provide them. I think online dating is a much better choice: I know several friends, includin…

i'll definitely buy a copy...although their are some resources online for getting better with (impressing)women.
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