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What happened to all the female developers?

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Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#221

Post by marquis »

bugsy wrote: post #206
marquis wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a core issue here I point out to my male colleagues, which I find to be true of myself as a female developer: as a stereotypical trait (I am generalising here, beware!) girls don't find sitting in front of a computer alone all that interesting. I personally value my personal time alone and am fairly unique in this respect (my boyfriend would love it if I wanted to hang out and work with him! But I focus best…

"girls don't find sitting in front of a computer alone all that interesting" To be honest, the nature of the work is that most time working is spent in solitude. It's the same if you write novels or compose operas. Do we also say that writing novels is unfriendly to girls because sitting in front of the typewriter alone is not all that interesting? It is interesting if you are a writer or developer or opera composer…

>Because of the way the work is

Well, to write a novel you have to have spent some time learning to write, and hopefully have either lived a little or have an imagination. To learn to program you have to spend a LOT of time focused on a computer taking in technical information. After you have acquired a certain amount of technical knowledge you can then program a utility. I wouldn't put this in the same boat as an artistic pursuit as the mode of acquiring information is different.

Once you have learnt sufficient computer knowledge then yes, you can work in a team, but the learning process requires a lot of time alone, while also having a technical aptitude. From my experience, from my friends, the girls who like to spend time alone are artists (painters/writers whatever) and the girls who have technical aptitude are scientists or in the medical profession. It really is my belief that if we want more women in computing it has to become less of an isolated pursuit - I'd like to see other suggestions but I've yet to find any other solution.

If you're a woman and reading this I'd really love to have some feedback from how you've found computing as a profession. Personally I find its isolation the core challenge.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#222

Post by temphn »

Locke1689 wrote: post #7

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,…

This whole endless search for the reason why "women aren't in computing" is just a modern day version of epicycle theory. In ancient times, they couldn't admit that the earth went around the sun, so they came up with the increasingly baroque epicycle theory, where planets were postulated to do loop-de-loops just so that no one would have to concede heliocentrism.

Today we face a similar taboo, held for similar quasi-religious reasons. Our latest epicycle is competitive job postings. This at least is laudably specific; most of these kinds of explanations aren't testable at all.

The obvious but taboo answer is that women will generally gravitate to fields which are more social/people focused and less technical/mathematical. That spectrum runs from teaching through medicine in the middle through CS.

These trends are due in nontrivial part to genetics. Women are just more social and men more systematizing, on average.

As programming went from rote punch card/data entry to something more like physics or math, the percentage of women dropped.

All this breast beating is about a refusal to accept that basic biological differences could possibly affect behavior. Indeed, not even the tenured President of Harvard can broach the topic, even if he only moots the possibility of differences in variance rather than mean!

It's not much of a debate when those who voice the "partially genetic" position are at risk of losing their jobs.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#223

Post by kamaal »

While we analyze why there isn't much gender diversity as it is before. We must also understand how much the industry has changed over years. The volume of work that existed back in the pre - 80's era and now isn't even comparable. And with volume the culture of our profession has changed drastically.

If its your usual 9-5 job, where you have to apply routine steps everyday then it would have been OK. But being progressive in programming requires you not just to work hard(And in most cases working under difficult deadlines and overnight) you also have continuously keep learning and update yourself with things that come along everyday. This is pretty demanding if you have a family, kids and especially when you are pregnant etc. There are physical limitations in those issues. If I look at the way my career has been, I sort of had to stay and overnights and work on difficult deadlines many times over long periods. It becomes very difficult for a mother with kids to accommodate work and family in that kind of schedule. So she has to often opt to be one side. A general counter point presented to this argument is to ask the Project manager to be more come with a more accommodating plan.This is often not possible due to economic reasons, given the time, money and resource something needs to be delivered. This has nothing to do with male domination in the society, these are just unavoidable situations.

This is typical of many other professions. Why don't we find as many female cab drivers as male ones? Why don't we have as many frontline female soldiers/nurses?

Let alone all that, if the current biological situation was reversed. And men could stay at home(Do the house choses, kids, food etc) and women had to take all responsibilities of house, family, money and security for their whole life. How many women in mass(not individual cases) would be happy with such a tiring and demanding life?

Well I guess everything in the nature and the way things go have a purpose.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#224

Post by kamaal »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #98
Duff wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that, medicine is more portable. At a typical large company, the ingress point into the company is at an entry-level position. Many women want to interrupt employment when they have children, which isn't practical for a IT person or programmer at a bank or government agency. My mother, to use a fairly typical example, is a nurse. She took 5-6 years off at various times when my siblings were born or when day…

Why should it be a big deal if you interrupt your career for a few years (whether to have a family or to travel the world...somehow I bet the second would be seen as ok in tech circles)? A good programmer can pick up a new technology in a couple of months. If you are hiring based on candidates winning resume buzzword bingo, you are going to get crappy candidates anyway. Hire for intelligence and capability and five y…

You take a break for some years come back and see who was your peer sometime back is now your boss. How would you feel? The feeling of underachievement especially when you know you were helpless to prevent that, hurts!

It would hurt me atleast. If I knew I would face a such situation I will rather take up some other profession.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#225

Post by kamaal »

jamesteow wrote: post #68
rweba wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Honestly, when you hear the phrase 'the world’s best developers,' you see a guy. " Thats the key right there - women are comfortable competing, they just have a hard time picturing themselves as the alpha geek hacker that this competitive language brings to mind for many people. At least thats how I interpreted it. Also there are studies that women tend to underestimate their skills while men tend to overestimate t…

"Also there are studies that women tend to underestimate their skills while men tend to overestimate them which might also be relevant." In general, men have far more pressure to be confident than women do.

This is actually a very important point, I work so hard currently because I know I will have to secure my family's financial future after I get married.

On the other hand, If I were to be a girl I would be a lot more relaxed in may approach because I know my earnings are not the primary source of income to my family. And husband is going to take care of it anyways.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#226

Post by vacri »

gdilla wrote: post #75
Locke1689 wrote: post #7

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,…

Aren't we missing something here? Med schools try to have 50/50 gender split in their incoming classes. Heck, patients certainly 50/50. Med schools don't even want gender diversity, they want gender parity. CS departments can't fathom such a thing. And while employers like diversity, they don't need parity. Startups need skills, not stats, so it's not a priority for them either. I'm not saying females are not on par…

Gender parity is more significant for medicine as there are a great many patients who have trouble working with a doctor of a particular gender. It's not always same-gender pref either - I know of two women who prefer male gynaecologists because they're less rough when examining.

Given the importance of medicine to leading a happy life, it's important to get as much information out of patients as possible - so it's in the interest of the industry to make sure that the client-facing staff have plenty of both genders.

It's much less important in programming as users and programmers rarely interact. Was Firefox written mostly by men or by women? It doesn't matter to me as I don't interact with them in order to use the service Firefox offers.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#227

Post by kenjackson »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #210
kenjackson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fisher men . 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 domin…

Women tend to be blocked from firefighting by the fitness test. Requirements like carrying a 80kg 100 yards, extending a ladder and running quickly were too hard for many women. Fortunately, this problem is being solved in progressive countries - they are making the test easier. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375381/Fire-service... This isn't great for me - I weigh more than 80kg, so I run the risk of getti…

This isn't great for me - I weigh more than 80kg, so I run the risk of getting stuck with a firefighter who can't carry me out of a burning building. But hey, gender equality is great, right?

Fewer fajitas maybe?

But seriously:

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=11592

Women were kept out period until relatively recently. I don't agree with reducing the physical exam if it puts lives in danger. I don't think we should block women from being able to even apply simply because we think the mass majority couldn't pass the test. At the same time we shouldn't create physical exams that have nothing to do with the job, knowing it excludes most women.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#228

Post by stcredzero »

sapphirecat wrote: post #208
stcredzero wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buzz words are a keen sign you are going to be working with a bunch of sales men. The prejudicial reaction to buzz words is one of the things that I've found really weird in the programming fields. Often, a buzz word was a legitimate technical term just a few years, or a couple of decades ago. It's not the word, it's how it's used. Rejecting someone because they use a given buzz word is just prejudice. It just means…

> The prejudicial reaction to buzz words is one of the things that I've found really weird in the programming fields. At one level, like Google aggregating signals, responding to an abundance of buzz words is one of several ways to classify a given posting as promising or not. A few buzz words could be fine, but a company actually saying they "are building every website in AJAX, MVC, REST, and HTML 5" all in the same…

To me, undiscerning resentment of buzz words is a sign of one level "Cargo Cult" mentality looking down upon another level of "Cargo Cult" mentality.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#229

Post by timsally »

rdouble wrote: post #168
tsotha wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but you're gonna be crushed by debt and won't be starting making money until you're in your mid 30s. Programmers come out way, way ahead once you consider the lost opportunity and cost of all those extra years doctors spend in school.

People who say this haven't done the math or looked at real salary numbers. The average salary for a cardiologist is $308,000/yr. The average salary for a software engineer is $58,000/yr. The cardiologist makes six times as much money. Even with a 12 year head start the programmer comes out behind. Medical school debt can be paid off in 2-5 years. In addition, the cardiologist can keep practicing into her 60s whereas…

Comparing the average software engineer to a cardiologist is just silly. If you're going to select a small, highly skilled portion of the medical field to analyze, you should compare it to a skilled portion of the software engineering field.

Let's draw a more valid comparison: that between cardiologists and graduates of good engineering programs. Graduates from top CS programs are making significantly more than 58K fresh out of college. The standard offer from Microsoft for a good UIUC CS student is 80K + starting bonus. Conservatively assuming an average salary of 100K over 15 years for the programmer, he is 1.5 million ahead once the cardiologist is finally debt free (12 years of school + 3 years to pay back debt). The cardiologist will then take 7.5 years to catch up, by which time the cardiologist will be in his 50s. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be debt free and making 100K in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, then being the guy on top when I'm 50.

Re: What happened to all the female developers?

#230

Post by robryan »

_delirium wrote: post #200
klipt wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of that article seems to be "some college students are trying to game our grading system by learning programming in advance. Let's crush them by making them program in an obscure language!" To me that sounds like "some elementary school students are trying to game our grading system by learning reading in advance. Let's crush them by making them read in an obscure language!"

I agree it's tricky to do anything about it without seeming absurd, but I can also see the motivation. One semester isn't very long, so it's easy for incoming knowledge to completely swamp whatever a course could teach in 14 weeks. But if the goal of CS101 is to put people on track to a CS degree, and the purpose of grading is to give some indication of performance, having CS101 grades completely dominated by incomin…

I'd say it's true in almost every field. Usually the person with previous programming experience because they were interested to self guide themselves through it will be the better programmer and may stay that way all throughout college. They may get higher marks but it certainly isn't hard enough that those just coming in can't pass also.
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