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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#281

Post by KirinDave »

xor1 wrote: post #200
danso wrote: 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?

Because we get flagged down a lot. This thread managed to survive because we started a big twitter stink to try and get it unflagged, and because we had the international women's day hastags to get attention, it managed to make the front page. But even that was a struggle.

Many of us, myself included, fight on behalf of a lot of underrepresented groups on HN as best we can.

I'm sorry if you haven't seen it, but I assure you some people here are trying.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#282

Post by rifung »

xienze wrote: post #184
tghw wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that talking about a $0.7X to the dollar pay gap isn't helpful, since it isn't controlled for a number of factors. But there still is a pay gap of 2-20%, , depending on the industry, attributable only to difference in gender. It's better than it's made out to be, but that there still is a gap is not right.

> attributable only to difference in gender. Ehhh you're really gonna need to show me this study, including detailed descriptions of the male and female cohorts showing that every male and female pair in the study are exactly the same age, have the same amount of experience, exact same education level, and work for the same company. Otherwise you can't really claim that the only difference is gender, now can you? The…

> Furthermore, the idea that companies are paying women with "exactly the same" skills as men in "exactly the same" positions up to 20% less doesn't make any sense at all. Why would I ever hire a man in that case

I don't think people typically perceive the issues facing women result from conscious bias. While there are some cases of blatant sexism, my impression is that people consider the more difficult and (hopefully) more common issue to be unconscious bias.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#283

Post by gareim »

KirinDave wrote: post #278
bsder wrote: 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…

> And, when you control for experience, time off for family, etc., pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappear. Okay, so spoiler alert, I'm grinding an axe right now. It's completely ridiculous to imply that analysts are not normalizing for hours worked. That's one of the most basic things they do, and you really should provide proof in the form of a study that both published its methodology and has been don…

Making paternity leave widely accepted would help fix one of these issues. More people need to talk about this.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#284

Post by KirinDave »

sheepmullet wrote: post #108
zephyrthenoble wrote: post #21

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%…

> From a brief scan of the study they didn't control for hours worked and they are already down to 5.9%

Why is it a foregone conclusion that the majority of women in this population worked fewer hours? A forbes study which averages across a large canvas of american workers is not a very good thing to compare to glassdoor's targetted subsection.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#285

Post by fatbird »

ziikutv wrote: post #275
handojin wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could share these politically incorrect /truths/? I'm not through the thread but I'm missing them.

Main one being about the wage gaps being inflated. Not sure if thats true. Additionally, why don't we speak about rights of minorities on this forum. I don't think xor meant anything negative by this. A good question to ask but I guess not today?

We do speak about minorities; others have provided links. Bringing it up here, now, though, is deflecting from the actual topic at hand, which is a sadly common tactic in discussions like this.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#286

Post by evgen »

sheepmullet wrote: post #160
ajross wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... your response to finding an uncorrected variable in the study (which I don't see the value of, honestly, given that tech workers are near-uniformly salaried in this country) is to go out and cherry pick a "correction" from an entirely unrelated study that confirms your worldview? Who's quoting misleading statistics now? Yeah, I've gone through and scanned that BLS report you linked to (actually you didn't, you…

> which I don't see the value of, honestly, given that tech workers are near-uniformly salaried in this country You can't see how working extra hours can increase productivity enough to warrant a small increase in pay?

So, would you like me to link in the HUNDREDS of articles posted to HN over the past two years going over how working more does not equate to working better and how hours worked is a bad proxy for productivity. Should I? Or are you going to just concede the point right here and now and retract your statement?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#287

Post by KirinDave »

gareim wrote: post #283
KirinDave wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, when you control for experience, time off for family, etc., pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappear. Okay, so spoiler alert, I'm grinding an axe right now. It's completely ridiculous to imply that analysts are not normalizing for hours worked. That's one of the most basic things they do, and you really should provide proof in the form of a study that both published its methodology and has been don…

Making paternity leave widely accepted would help fix one of these issues. More people need to talk about this.

Yes, that is true. It's worth noting that it's a relatively small part of the problem here. We need to stop being angry at women for being women (e.g., viewing nursing rooms as a luxury or somehow unfair).

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#288

Post by sriracha23 »

yxhuvud wrote: post #276
bsder wrote: 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…

And why should you control for time off for family? Except for the really early time after birth, both parents can do that. Is it the fault of the employer? Well, perhaps they could be more persuasive in motivating the women to work and more accepting of men taking days off to care for their sick children. EDIT: Use similar term for both genders.

Motivating "the girls" to work? That language alone -- "girls" versus "men" -- suggests a diminutive, dismissive way of thinking about women.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#289

Post by jakelazaroff »

intellegacy wrote: post #235
alainv wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's been plenty written about how "the pipeline problem" is a myth:

- http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/07/26/426...

- https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/10/the-lack-of-women-in-tech-...

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#290

Post by fatbird »

intellegacy wrote: post #235
alainv wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Given a multitude of other results showing that equalizing for pipeline problems shows women competing equally with men, the more likely reason is that women are being filtered out of the pipeline by sexism, not some mysterious "maybe they just don't want to" handwaving.
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