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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If women are underpaid because they're (consciously or not) undervalued as workers by entrepreneurs, then those same entrepreneurs are unlikely to visualize a net salary savings. You're basically saying: if women are as good as men but you can pay them less, why not hire women? And the answer is that the same factors that lead to women being underpaid lead to not seeing them as interchangeable hire with males.

I could be wrong, but I think the point that the poster was making was this: Sure, maybe women are undervalued on average, but that's just on average. Assuming women are both paid less, and undervalued, then together that creates a double opportunity for an employer that can see through the undervaluing, and rationally hires mostly women because they are just as good but cost less. And the point is that we don't seem…

I think your characterization of the op's point is correct. My point remains: The same sexism leading to underpaying women or directing them into less compensated roles, should also tend to obscure, for decision makers, the "rational" idea that there's a double opportunity there.

Evidence? First, "pricing is information". Second, Uber et al, and the continuing follies of the tech industry demonstrating systemic sexism. Third, continued use of the word "meritocracy" despite repeated demonstrations that tech firms practice a particularly narrow form of geek clubhousing. Bottom line: no one's actually rational enough to exploit what's really a fairly transparent, backhanded attempt to say that women are paid less because they're worth less. We just tell ourselves that we are.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you be more likely to hire a man than a women for an engineering role? If they are equally good, there's a good chance I'll choose the cheaper one.

Indeed, that's what we like to tell ourselves. But is that actually what's happening? Did you take the test?

Happening what? 100% equal candidates that differ only by gender? No, it's never happening.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#233

I'm frankly quite surprised by the initial wave of comments disparaging this message. The facts are that women are poorly represented in the tech community[1], and do make less than men[2]. Any attempt to let women feel more accepted and bring about much needed change should be championed, not picked apart and belittled because you feel like you are personally being attacked when people are just asking for help. 1. h…

Perhaps there are disparaging comments because people love to quote misleading statistics... kind of just like you did. From the glassdoor wage gap study you mentioned in [2]: > After taking into account differences in education and experience, men working at tech companies overall make 5.9 percent more than women do From a brief scan of the study they didn't control for hours worked and they are already down to 5.9%…

Ok, I can appreciate skepticism. But do you have any arguments to advance yourself? Wage gaps are hugely complex, and the stats put out by the labor department (fuck Glassdoor, whatever) are both controlled, detailed, and fairly damning. Women make less on average in almost every field, women are employed less in high paying jobs, and the jobs that are heavily weighted towards women do not pay nearly as much. I don't understand how people can brush off single statistics while ignoring the absolutely massive cache of freely available evidence.

Also, starving people of hours is just as effective at reducing costs as lowering the hourly. I don't think it's in your favor to argue that's something that should be controlled.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there are disparaging comments because people love to quote misleading statistics... kind of just like you did. From the glassdoor wage gap study you mentioned in [2]: > After taking into account differences in education and experience, men working at tech companies overall make 5.9 percent more than women do From a brief scan of the study they didn't control for hours worked and they are already down to 5.9%…

Ok, I can appreciate skepticism. But do you have any arguments to advance yourself? Wage gaps are hugely complex, and the stats put out by the labor department (fuck Glassdoor, whatever) are both controlled, detailed, and fairly damning. Women make less on average in almost every field, women are employed less in high paying jobs, and the jobs that are heavily weighted towards women do not pay nearly as much. I don't…

The claim is that women (im aggregate) make different life choices than men, and once we account for those, the "wage gap" disappears.

I honestly don't see anything wrong with different life choices leading to different outcomes, since the same is true within genders! That is, there's nothing sexist about that fact.

The truth is the people advocating for equalizing pay when the sexes make different choices are arguing for sexism, not against sexism.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#235
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To build off your comment, I went ahead and found the glassdoor study: https://research-content.glassdoor.com/app/uploads/sites/2/2... And it, like most of the statistical papers surrounding the pay gap suffer from what I personally affectionately refer to as the "peanut butter spread" problem. The implicit assumption of pay gap studies is that if you group all jobs into a category and then segment them by gender bot…

You're building a strawman. No one is calling for "a Utopia-esque society where there is perfect freedom of choice [and] perfectly equal distributions of any sort." One does not need to call for that in order to find the current representation of women in engineering/CS lower than desirable. Continuing on the theme of using the sources presented in this thread: do you find it more likely that Google's worldwide tech…

oh please, google did their own study. They want to hire more females than any company but the conclusion was that there aren't enough women in the engineering pipeline.

So yea, the more likely reason is C) Women don't want to become engineers as much as men do, for whatever (social/biological/cultural) reason

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#236
post #208

I really wish they would quit promulgating this because it's actually counterproductive: "women face continued pay disparity" Seeing this statement tells me immediately that the author is grinding an ax. In some fields of engineering (EE, for example), women actually get paid more (104% last I checked). And, when you control for experience, time off for family, etc., pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappe…

Do you have citations for the stats you claim? That's not a dig, btw; I'd honestly like to see them.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#237
post #200
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for racial diversity. This particular piece focuses on gender because of today's being International Women's Day. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-cant-silicon-... http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/20/9179853/tech-diversity-sco... https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/thought-on-diversity...

>The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for racial diversity Why don't I ever see it being discussed on HN?

I see it come up pretty regularly. It usually is then followed by racist pablum of one sort or another--so the resistance to racial issues isn't exactly different from the resistance to gender ones.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they make less than men, why don't companies hire women alone? Don't they want to save money on salaries?

Precisely the question. Why indeed? Would you be more likely to hire a man than a women for an engineering role? Take the harvard implicit gender bias test for one answer: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

Implicit association tests probably don't work. Sources may be found at https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/25/devoodooifying-psychol...

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#239
post #173

If ever I had a notion that an expression of solidarity for women in tech was unnecessary or quixotic, the response to this article on this very forum would be sufficient to dispel it.

From what I've seen, there are less African-American and non-white hispanic men in tech than there are white and Asian women, yet I never see this discussed. Is this not an important issue as well? Will skewed racial ratios only be handled after gender parity has been achieved? Or do they not matter at all?

I've seen a number of programs/discussions about black people in tech on HN.

http://www.blackgirlscode.com/ https://www.devcolor.org/

I remember reading this particular blog entry via HN: https://blog.devcolor.org/on-being-a-black-man-42ecb7946fe0

The disparity you're talking about could be because there are more women in tech (just underrepresented in C-level roles or whatever it might be) likely to speak up, whereas black people are underrepresented in tech full stop?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#240
post #94
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "everyone is telling you it's not rare?" I read accounts of women who were treated horribly and unjustly, but certainly not by "everyone." I expect I see a post or three every month and that is rare considering there are 3.6M programmers in the US and 18.2M worldwide. I don't stare at a screen all day. I work and have worked with teams of all sizes, hiring, firing, negotiating salary, dealing with…

You know, not every woman who has bad experiences in the tech industry writes a blog post about it and puts it up on HN. A lot of us don't even bother reporting it to HR anymore, since we're well aware by now that HR exists to protect the company from lawsuits, not to protect women from harassment. And lawsuits just end up getting you informally blacklisted. I personally know a lot of women, including myself, who hav…

This is a really good point and shows how hard it is to gather data on the subject.

I certainly don't expect everyone to write a blog post about it, but I would encourage people to tell their stories. Otherwise, we just have more and more hearsay.

In this case, HR will work to prevent a very expensive lawsuit. I've seen HR help victims of sexual harassment many times.

But without more people speaking up, things will never get better.

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