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Girls Who Code

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Re: Girls Who Code

#231

Post by icambron »

PakG1 wrote: post #230
leahculver wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. IBM was >30% women engineers when I interned there in 2004/2005. About half the interns were women and there was plenty of racial diversity as well. My boss was a woman, my mentor was a woman, and frankly it was the most diverse place I have ever worked.

I have to say that I dislike it when someone says Bigcorp was like this, that is what Bigcorp's culture is. Having worked in several bigcorps, they are huge, diverse, and it's impossible for one employee to say that their experience is reflective of the entire company. There are differences from department to department, from team to team, and for the multinational bigcorps, from continent to continent. A warehouse w…

That was in response to:

> In your example, I bet IBM was still predominantly male despite the anecdotal hiring of a few women that you mention.

Responding to someone's completely unsupported generalization with an anecdote to the contrary is still a step up in the conversation. If you're genuinely interested in improving the rigor of the conversation, perhaps you should reply to the grandparent with, "how do you know?"

Re: Girls Who Code

#232

Post by theorique »

anildash wrote: post #217
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shanley Kane and her circle and sympathizers are spearheading this. Many of them show up in every HN thread about charged topics. I fully expect defense of them to show up in reply. It is part of my core being to be respectful to everyone, to listen to all sides, to feel empathy; however, when I am presented with a popular group in my industry that does none of those things, I am not sure how to react. What's depress…

"I'm a white male and I am evil to them" Name one person who has said this.

No one says it literally. It's embedded in the implications.

The industry is "too white, too male".

White men don't understand the implications or the need for diversity.

White men are dinosaurs, they need to adapt to the new world.

There's a ton of dog-whistle racism and sexism against white men. Unfortunately, that's the 'acceptable' kind of racism and sexism, because many white men are in positions of power and authority (and therefore 'white men' are considered acceptable to criticize as a group - and even those who lack power are lumped in with the tiny elite at the top).

The criticisms that are levied, without proof, against white men in the tech industry, would be treated as evidence of terrible racism and/or sexism if they were levied at other groups.

Unlike other groups white men are just expected to smile and nod and agree with the 'feminists' or 'anti-racists' ... arguing back is taken as proof of guilt.

Re: Girls Who Code

#233

Post by protomyth »

judk wrote: post #126
parennoob wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and a series of uncomfortable truths about how things work against men (specially Asian men) who are trying to learn to code: 1. At school and such, no one tries to encourage you to code. People naturally think, "Oh, male and Asian, screw him , the world doesn't need another Asian dude coding. Let's try and teach Rails to that cute girl -- we need more of her kind." 2. People assume you are better at coding, mat…

Are you joking? The fashion world has massively outreached to men in recent couple of decades. Axe and chest shaving and all that other metrosexual stuff. And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education world, especially with respect to the need to provide male role models for kids of single moms.

"And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education world, especially with respect to the need to provide male role models for kids of single moms."

Not by the people doing the hiring since they grow more risk adverse every year and being male is a risk. Daycares are more open about it, but elementary schools aren't far behind.

Once again, if you don't want your female child's diapers changed by a male teacher - you are part of the problem.

Re: Girls Who Code

#234

Post by parennoob »

esperluette wrote: post #218
xrctl wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hahah, you recall that the top science students you knew were women? How convincing! I have analyzed the records of the World Cubing Association, and there is 1 woman in the top 100 ranked [1]. I have analyzed the ratings of the American Scrabble Association, and there are 6 women in the top 100 ranked [2]. It is well known that there is only 1 woman in the top 100 ranked chess players (FIDE). I have analyzed the rat…

And this couldn't be in part because women have less free time across the board, about five hours less?[1] Hard to get to tournament quality if you don't get as much time to practice. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/10/another-gend...

Are you seriously saying that women without children at home having less free time is now somehow society's problem? You don't just "have less free time" automatically. It's probably because you choose to do more housework, which is exactly what the study says ("they spend about six hours more than men doing household work").

Don't want to do it? Cool, practise for a tournament all the time, don't do more housework, and take the risks that come with that. There are tons of lonely male nerds who have untidy houses and excellent tournament records. You are very welcome to join their ranks. In fact they would probably be glad to have more female participation. I on the other hand will err on the side of a more tidy house, and no medals.

Re: Girls Who Code

#235

Post by 3pt14159 »

tonecluster wrote: post #229
jfarmer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower guaranteed reward, worse training programs, higher pressure. This is explained equally well by inexperienced managers hiring people similar to themselves culturally, racially, and socioeconomically. Likewise, if I were a woman, I wouldn't want to work on a team with five dudes oblivious to their dude-dom.

Who in their right mind would want to work on a team of highly-intelligent, socially-challenged, culturally-homogeneous young men whose experience to date is primarily steeped in the casual misogyny, homophobia, and racism of MMORPG chat-channels; dorm-room bike-shedding; and adolescent dude-bro jokes?

The irony of being sexist in this HN thread is breaking my mind man.

Re: Girls Who Code

#236

Post by theorique »

glesica wrote: post #221
yummyfajitas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But IBM, and many of the big corporations in the USA, followed very liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place. A meritocracy based on raw intelligence and skill (measured by standardized testing) is not exactly what people mean today when they discuss "promoting diversity". In fact, nowadays people typically criticize such practices as inhibiting diversity [1]. As for culture fit, it's a complicated…

> A meritocracy based on raw intelligence and skill (measured by standardized testing) is not exactly what people mean today when they discuss "promoting diversity". Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities. [1] Aside from that, what exactly is a "meritocracy"? What does that mean? You have to define it pretty carefully. HN is full of posts about making soci…

Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities.

IQ tests - which are pretty well normed across cultures if you use the right ones - tend to turn up the same patterns over and over.

IQ tests (or their proxies) are useful ways of testing general cognitive fitness and ability and anticipating on-the-job performance and learning (see, e.g., http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatter... )

Some minorities seem to score higher than the mean (in some cases, up to one standard deviation higher) and some minorities tend to score lower. This is less about bias and more about measured genetic differences. (see, e.g., http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx )

And further, it seems as though women are no slouches in the IQ game: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173808/Women-overta...

Re: Girls Who Code

#237

Post by velis_vel »

reinhardt wrote: post #214
Alex3917 wrote: post #18

Apparently the definition of sexism is now just not telling women what they want to hear. The vast majority of the criticism of pg's answer that I saw wasn't even claiming that he was wrong, but just calling him sexist because his answer wasn't masturbatory enough. C.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840377

Pretty much. The definition of sexism also involves endless discussions about the almost last job category still ruled by the evil patriarchy - computer engineers - among the 15 projected to grow the most over the next decade [1]. For the record, the only other male dominated job category is janitors but I somehow doubt it faces similar outrage by the gender equality knight templars. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/ma…

> For the record, the only other male dominated job category is janitors but I somehow doubt it faces similar outrage by the gender equality knight templars.

I'm really curious where you got this information because it doesn't agree with anything else I've read. Among other things, about 75% of US doctors are male[1].

[1] http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/1078/

Re: Girls Who Code

#238

Post by kro0ub »

lkrubner wrote: post #11

One fascinating aspect of this is how bad the post 1990 startup culture has been for women. There was something about those big, boring corporations of the 1970s and 1980s that actually gave female hackers more acceptance than what startups have offered. You can see female interest in programming change in the charts on these pages: http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21993/women-comput... Note that those graph…

I particularly appreciated your classification of McDonald's as a startup.

Re: Girls Who Code

#239

Post by theorique »

tptacek wrote: post #19
danso wrote: post #7

One of that impresses me, and kind of amuses me, is how PG will talk these issues out, even though the danger of being misquoted or misinterpreted is much higher than the chances of being appreciated, especially for someone in his position. The phrase "God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers?" , as a standalone statement, is ripe for ripping apart. But I think in its context, it o…

Once again: after establishing bona fides by saying "fuck Vallywag and everything they stand for", I feel like I need to say that Graham wasn't hugely distorted. He was asked whether YC discriminates against women. The obvious subtext of that question is that there's a large imbalance between men & women among YC founders. He could have said "no, we don't discriminate; I don't know why the imbalance among YC founders…

Nobody is saying privilege needs to be rooted out and eliminated.

I don't get the sense that you, personally, are saying such a thing, but a lot of the more radical, fringe elements in this conversation (who nevertheless seem to get a lot of air time) do seem to be saying such a thing.

Re: Girls Who Code

#240

Post by chas »

ama729 wrote: post #110
pnathan wrote: post #53

In tech, saying anything about gender is an opportunity to be lambasted vigorously. But I think I can contribute something. Having read what I could over the years on the academic side of "women in tech" (i.e., academic research studying the matter, rather than opinion pieces), the consensus seems to be that the early teens are the time where the decision is taken to move away (or not) from STEM fields. That is part…

If you have some links to the studies you have read, I would be really interested to read them. Thank you

The last paper mentioned is likely one by Sapna Cheryan. She gives an overview of her work on stereotypes, identity, and computer science on her homepage[0] as well as links to relevant papers.

[0] http://faculty.washington.edu/scheryan/research.htm

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