To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes • Hacker News Board

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#231

Post by ZenPro » Tue, Jan 21, 2014, 1:43 AM UTC

pyrocat wrote: post #206

DanBC wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better reply would have been "we'd like mean to take paternity leave too". I sometimes wonder if HN commentors ever think that maybe their comments might leave them open to legal liability in some future case.

I think you misunderstood my tone, which in hindsight I should have phrased differently. I was saying "Women aren't required to have kids... but this quote implies that all women have kids, which annoys me"

"Women aren't required to have kids..."

^^ Double edged sentence you have there ;-)

I am pretty sure they are; unless there are some serious medical advances and questionable ethical boundaries.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#232

Post by tomc1985 » Tue, Jan 21, 2014, 1:55 AM UTC

A lot of engineers I've known, tend to speak in plain, objective, sometimes even offensive terms.

Most of the women I've met seem to react negatively to this style of communication.

Further, social groups often try to be exclusive to those like them; I see this even at the company I work at. Different = bad

Then there's the whispered complaining, from the fellas in the room, that they have to censor themselves when a woman is present.

Engineering culture has a lot of growing to do before it can be seen as a welcoming group, whether to women or any other descriptor of people

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#233

Post by theorique » Tue, Jan 21, 2014, 2:03 AM UTC

obstacle1 wrote: post #230

theorique wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying it only takes one kid who makes an inappropriate joke like changing "public void" to "pubic void" when we're doing a code review. In such a situation, the boy will suppress a smile while he innocently exclaims he made a typo, while his friends all giggle innocuously This is an expression of "masculinity", pseudo- or otherwise? Seems more like a silly juvenile joke that some kids (or adults) of both sexes m…

I thought this too. There is nothing inherently masculine about pubic hair, or jokes about said hair.

I mean, if you made me guess the sex of the person involved, I would certainly suspect it was a boy. Mischief of this kind tends to be more popular among boys. But a joke like this isn't intrinsically sexist, or anti-girl, or silencing of female voices

(Obviously, it's good if genuine sexism is halted in coed classrooms so that both boys and girls can learn.)

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#234

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Jan 21, 2014, 2:28 AM UTC

daleharvey wrote: post #49

ekianjo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice the question mark after the "lack of skills" - I'm just saying this may be one reason among others. Not everything revolves around gender .

Even accepting it as a questionable hypothesis is ridiculous. Everything does not revolve around gender, which is why a lot of people (not just 'some women') question why this industry revolves entirely around the male gender. Comments like yours help exacerbate that.

I don't see guys complaining "why are nurses mostly females? OMG there must be some discrimination going on, let me find a user group on the internets to complain about that". Some professions have more females than males, and some others the opposite. And some workplaces have about an equal ratio. There isn't a great conspiracy at work going on here. It's fairly obvious that since the beginning of computing, most people interested in computers happened to be male, and therefore you end up with an industry mainly composed by male workers. This is going to evolve as there are more and more schools to learn coding/design/etc... than before, and therefore I expect more women to come in that workforce progressively. Whether it's 50/50, no-one knows, but honestly who cares? It's not as if women are prevented from entering or learning. There are very capable women in many IT-related industries (I know many working in video games), and honestly if a woman has the right skills and the right attitude, I don't see why a company would turn them down. But bear in mind that in terms of employment, men and women are not equal (women tend to want to have kids and maternity leave) and that's also something an employer factors in when they recruit people, especially when they are in a very small structure. Just stating the obvious.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#235

Post by xrctl » Tue, Jan 21, 2014, 4:55 AM UTC

melindajb wrote: post #229

What girls of hackernews? that's my question. 224 comments as of writing this, and most of them ignorant straw man whiny responses by (surprise!) men. Hard to imagine why some women wouldn't enjoy coming here and discussing things with so many enlightened, educated folks. If you're threatened by the thought of more women in coding, then you don't really believe that we're a meritocracy. If you're one of those folks,…

No. No one is threatened by women, just perhaps annoyed by their endless complaining.

> To use an analogy, I can't imagine Olympic athletes being happy for the best competitors from another country being sidelined due to their sexual preference. No, that's not happening. because world class athletes know their victories are hollow unless they're truly competing against the very best in the world.

But you can probably see how male Olympians would be annoyed if they had to put up with 24/7 accusations that their superior performance in comparison to female Olympians was only because how much they hated them.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#236

Post by Zombieball » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 5:26 AM UTC

notastartup wrote: post #226

Zombieball wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious why you think nursing is bad pay? Or what do you consider to be bad? Where I live (Vancouver, BC.) entry level (students) pay for nurses is $50K/year. Average earnings for nurses I believe is on the order of $70-90K/year though.

It's almost like Vancouver cares more about nurses than software developers making up a significant portion of tech industry. Think about this, an entry level nurse makes more than an entry level software developer in Vancouver, an experienced nurse ends up making more than a intermediate/senior developer with several years of experience at a firm in Vancouver. Nurses get paid overtime, software developers are not, a…

I think this argument also holds true about Vancouver when you replace nurse with [insert random trade] (e.g. HVAC technician, elevator technician, etc.)

On average I feel software devs are highly underpaid in Vancouver (even more so when you take into account the cost of living).

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#237

Post by melindajb » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 5:02 PM UTC

xrctl wrote: post #235

melindajb wrote: post #229

What girls of hackernews? that's my question. 224 comments as of writing this, and most of them ignorant straw man whiny responses by (surprise!) men. Hard to imagine why some women wouldn't enjoy coming here and discussing things with so many enlightened, educated folks. If you're threatened by the thought of more women in coding, then you don't really believe that we're a meritocracy. If you're one of those folks,…

No. No one is threatened by women, just perhaps annoyed by their endless complaining. > To use an analogy, I can't imagine Olympic athletes being happy for the best competitors from another country being sidelined due to their sexual preference. No, that's not happening. because world class athletes know their victories are hollow unless they're truly competing against the very best in the world. But you can probably…

You've completely miscategorized the nature of legitimate criticism. But why let facts stand in the way of a good argument?

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#238

Post by ZenPro » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 8:38 PM UTC

ZenPro wrote: post #231

pyrocat wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood my tone, which in hindsight I should have phrased differently. I was saying "Women aren't required to have kids... but this quote implies that all women have kids, which annoys me"

"Women aren't required to have kids..." ^^ Double edged sentence you have there ;-) I am pretty sure they are; unless there are some serious medical advances and questionable ethical boundaries.

Downvoted? For saying women are necessary in the birth of children?

HN is weird.