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A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

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Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#171

Post by yosito »

cwperkins wrote: post #121
yosito wrote: post #81

Pretend you're a woman and then read the comments on this post. That makes it pretty obvious that one of the reasons women have a hard time feeling welcome in tech is because men don't listen to or empathize with them when they speak about their opinions or perspectives.

Seems to me like a lot of people in this comment section read the article before responding? One of the things I like about HN is that the commenters more respond to the content of the article rather than the headline.

They read the article and then promptly dismissed it as a woman who doesn't know what she's talking about. I don't agree with the article, but I think we're too quick to dismiss the author's perspective and get defensive.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#172

Post by Zarath »

meheleventyone wrote: post #144
JPKab wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a talented, and wonderful, female dev on my team. One thing though:. She has described to me some of the male coders as being "creepers". When I asked for specifics, she couldn't provide them. She simply stated it was a "feeling". The one commonality I found with the creepers is that they are pretty clearly below average in looks. The question is whether this is a correlation or a casual factor. But definitely…

One way to possibly look at this is that she opened up to you because she felt you might understand, to her you responded sceptically and out of professional self-interest she downplayed the whole thing. That doesn’t mean those guys are necessarily creepers but that you’ve definitely lost her trust.

What would you suggest a proper response is... "yeah, I know!"? To me, asking "what do you mean?" is a perfectly valid response to someone openly name calling people you know.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#173

Post by skookumchuck »

sp332 wrote: post #125
bmarquez wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> men don't want to even get close to the line of doing something that could be perceived as inappropriate Yeah I am wondering why someone would stick their neck out, especially if they have below-average social skills. Lots of personal liability for little personal gain, and #MeToo just publicized the existing uneasiness with professional interactions. It's not like any women helped when I was evaluating a career in…

Because social skills can be practiced and learned. #MeToo is about physical abuse and abuse of power, not some peer who has a hard time making eye contact.

There's a large grey area. There are also false accusations.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#174

Post by commandlinefan »

bmarquez wrote: post #112
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #58

> [If you’re a dude and you’re reading this article] Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. Include her, ask her for advice, introduce her, learn about her work and her life in the same way you would with any male friend or coworker. If you’re an investor, professor, journalist, or manager, take it on yourself to sponsor a young woman’s career. While I totally agree with this advice, I think th…

> men don't want to even get close to the line of doing something that could be perceived as inappropriate Yeah I am wondering why someone would stick their neck out, especially if they have below-average social skills. Lots of personal liability for little personal gain, and #MeToo just publicized the existing uneasiness with professional interactions. It's not like any women helped when I was evaluating a career in…

Many years ago (almost 20, I think), I was working as a contractor on a remote contract in a foreign country with one other person from my company, who also happened to be a woman. Since we were the only Americans there, and were staying at the same hotel, we naturally ended up having lunch and dinner together, and talked quite a bit. She was married, and I knew that. She commented once that she was spending more time with me than she normally spent with her husband and I laughed and said, "yep, next thing you know I'll be at your house for thanksgiving dinner this year". She laughed, I didn't think much of it. Well, quite a while later, we had sort of a "falling out": she had sounds turned on on her computer (remember when you could configure windows to play a sound every time you deleted a file or got an e-mail?) I asked her to please mute those sounds because it was really distracting. She refused, and I asked to have my desk moved so I wasn't right next to her, which irritated her, since she relied on me for quite a bit of technical assistance and now she had to walk across the floor to talk to me. We argued about this for a while, but then the contract ended and we were back in the states. Next thing I know, I get a call from my boss that she's filed a formal sexual harassment claim against me, based on my comment that I was "going to show up at her house for thanksgiving dinner". As you can probably imagine, I've been very cautious about my interactions with female coworkers ever since.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#175

Post by titanix2 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #58

> [If you’re a dude and you’re reading this article] Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. Include her, ask her for advice, introduce her, learn about her work and her life in the same way you would with any male friend or coworker. If you’re an investor, professor, journalist, or manager, take it on yourself to sponsor a young woman’s career. While I totally agree with this advice, I think th…

This advice assume that men want to befriend women. It is understandable from a women point of view, but from a man perspective the friendzone is a big no-no. Most men would date a woman or not establish contact at all.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#177

Post by peoplewindow »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #49
walshemj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit if you only started programming after you went to University your going to struggle with the course and afterwards work. You would not expect to do a Degree in English lit and have done no reading of the cannon before getting to university.

The idea that, if you have no experience programming going into college, you’ll struggle, is strange to me. About a third of my graduating CS class had no prior experience. Did we take more time to finish the first semester projects? Sometimes. But after the first semester prior experience seemed to have very little effect on class performance.

You're assuming CS class performance correlates with ability.

Most of the people on my CS course hadn't programmed before, and they mostly all passed. But many of them couldn't code at graduation and went into non-programming jobs.

They passed anyway because the university carefully rigged the course to ensure it was possible to get good grades despite being unable to write any sort of non-trivial program. After all what are they going to do, constantly fail 90% of their class and attract questions about their own competence as teachers?

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#178

Post by troupe »

chrisseaton wrote: post #37
throwaway84742 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they be “weaker”? I don’t get what you’re trying to say.

I don't think they would be weaker - where do you think I said I thought that? But lots of men definitely do think women are likely to be weaker in computer science. I don't know why they think that - you'd have to ask them?

Wasn't the group project at the end of the semester? It seems people would have had a good idea of their classmates' strengths by that point.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#179

Post by hn_throw_334 »

I'm not fond of talking about how much "experience" I have so I've made this throwaway. I've been programming for most of my adult life. I've worked on every level of the tech stack from writing byte code for CPUs by hand to front end web development. In my college classes I helped many people survive by offering advice on tooling, implementation, and even sometimes direct one on one tutoring. I would never say I know everything about software development but I've had a lot of practice and I know how to find out how to do anything and I can teach and or exercise that same skill to anyone.

Unfortunately though I am what this author would call "a baggy-eyed programmer in a dark cave with Red Bull or a unintelligible savant who can’t get a date."

I'm extremely nervous in social situations to the point where I don't enjoy ordering something different from restaurants I've already been to for fear that the person behind the counter will ask me to clarify something and I won't know what to do. I've been getting much better at talking to people and I'm usually extroverted when I'm around people I've already met.

As for what the article asks as a solution, as many point out, this is very difficult.

> [If you’re a dude and you’re reading this article] Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy.

I'd consider the engineers I work with to all be my friends and that's only because I work with them on a day to day basis and I had time to acclimate to them.

The women who I've met university however did not pan out this way. I have many male friends. Many of whom have either noticed me, or who I have noticed, have terminals open and have been vigorously typing during a lecture. Whenever I see this I make a point to lean over and ask "what editor do you use?", "what class is this for?", "that's cool! Do you have any side project that you do outside of school".

I've made some very good friends by doing this but women for the most part are creeped out. It's understandable. I'm a weird looking dude with a 12 year old thinkpad that sports stickers from OSH Park and I'm likely going to be talking to people who I already know about anime or something else equally as strange.

One thing that has never happened to me, and that I've never seen happen anywhere, was see a women lean over and do what I have just described.

Unfortunately just due to the nature of the possible sample size (I love teaching and I want to get better at making friends. It's just very difficult for me, and the many others like me, to be the one to reach out. I think it would generally be positive if encouraged women to try and ask "what editor are you using?"

I'd definitely go to meetups, talk shop, work on projects, etc with someone else in the NYC area. I've got a lot I can teach and much more that we could learn together. I just don't know how to make that happen. Facilitating an environment where that could happen is probably the best bet if this author is correct imo.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#180

Post by [deleted] »

always_good wrote: post #93
walshemj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit if you only started programming after you went to University your going to struggle with the course and afterwards work. You would not expect to do a Degree in English lit and have done no reading of the cannon before getting to university.

Sounds little more than a self-aggrandizing belief to me. The thought that other people can't run your gauntlet. You'd be surprised that not only can they, but all they need is more motivation or discipline and then they can lap you. Just like someone who didn't learn to exercise until later in life.

[deleted]
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