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Women: Learn to Program This Summer

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#281

Post by manfredo »

pacala wrote: post #45
manfredo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm your observations. At my company we have a couple policies. 1. We only accept applicstions from candidate from non-traditional backgrounds if they're diverse. Diverse is defined as any of the following: women, black, Hispanic, or native American - maybe also veterans but I'm not sure. Non-traditional background means coming from a coding boot camp, or majoring in a non-computing related field. I think a…

> Diverse candidates get two attempts to pass the technical phone interview, non diverse get one. These rhyme with soviet era policies circa 1950-1960 in Eastern Europe. At universities, there was an admission exam for 'healthy origin' people for the majority of the spots, and then another exam where everybody, including those failing the first time, could compete for the scraps. We all know how that turned out econo…

To be fair, the tech companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The media has been heavily pushing the narrative that women are underrepresented at these tech companies - and they are compared to the general population. But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT, criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers that are women. Same sort of deal with URM.

Ironically, the concern over discrimination in tech is itself the cause of a significant amount of explicit discrimination.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#282

Post by zzzeek »

DBYCZ wrote: post #246

Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in science. If STEM women found Coding as interesting as they did Medicine (which is arguably more competitive and prestigious), we wouldn't have any shortage of women writing code. There is nothing wrong with either way, just let people do what they like to do.

"Anyone who argues there should be "More women in medical school" needs to go visit a secretarial school. Completely filled with super smart women interested in typing and being secretaries."

"If secretarial school women found being doctors as interesting as they did being Secretaries, we wouldn't have any shortage of women being doctors."

same comment in 1950 when only 6% of doctors in the US were women (surprisingly, a lower number than in 1890), which was due to, surprise! male hostility to women in such a career, as we are seeing on gala display in this thread. in the case of medicine, the barriers were only broken through more forceful means than we see in tech, e.g. class action lawsuits and federal legislation.

lots of great background at https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/01/fight-women-doct...

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#283

Post by andonisus »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #147
andonisus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the underlying reason is that women, as a whole, are less interested in Science/Engineering than men are?

Is this actually true? How do we verify this? (Certain portions of engineering have higher women participation rates than men- can we identify a biological cause for this disparity, or that many of the sciences have women on parity or overrepresentation?) I agree that this is a definite possibility but I struggle to identify a reason to explain the disparities of participation in subfields purely from a genetic point…

You are trying to verify an innate property of a person by measuring the emergent outcome of their choices. While this is a good litmus test, I do not think the answer to quantifying this acclimation toward a certain profession is something that can be measured discretely.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#284

Post by PhasmaFelis »

manfredo wrote: post #261
ajross wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to e…

The gender equality paradox is one strong example. Contrary to the narrative that women don't go into tech because of restrictive gender roles, the countries with the greatest amounts of gender equality, the highest male child rearing participation, the most generous parental leave, the smallest wage gap, etc. actually have the lowest rates of women in tech. By comparison the countries that have the most restrictive…

> The Scandinavian countries have 10-20% women in tech.

Wait, 10%-20% of what? 20% of all women (or all men) involved in tech work seems like a lot.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#285

Post by jimbokun »

alexashka wrote: post #44

'breaking into the startup world' - sigh... How do you break into being a domain expert via 5-10+ years of experience? What do people think start-ups are exactly? Random people with no domain expertise coding their way to great products?

Jessica explicitly says in her blog post that many of the women who consider applying to YCombinator have a lot of useful business skills and domain expertise for the business they want to start, but are held back because they can't code an initial version of the product.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#286

Post by dang »

mlevental wrote: post #235
dang wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that moderation comments are out-of-band for the site. But they're necessary, because the system can't right itself without them. If it helps at all, they're even more tedious to write than they are to read. Edit: mlevental points out that you were referring to the article, not my comment. I think there's plenty of intellectual curiosity in what Jessica wrote, especially in the blog post explaining why she…

the person you're responding to here is trying to point out that the article is disingenuous and so only can generate the same. I don't agree/disagree. just clarifying.

Now that you mention it, I see that I misread the comment. Thanks!

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#287

Post by harrisonjackson »

I like to take the most positive outlook on these sorts of things... What a fantastic opportunity for 40 women!

In my career and life, I've been fortunate to have a lot of great opportunities - some that I sought out and some that fell into my lap. I've tried to pay it forward when I can and I am sure that these women will too given the chance.

The impact of these 40 scholarships could be 40 more technical cofounders or mentors or inventors - and that is a great thing for the community. I hope that 1+ of these ladies offer me a great opportunity or create an amazing product that I love :D

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#288

Post by manfredo »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #284
manfredo wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender equality paradox is one strong example. Contrary to the narrative that women don't go into tech because of restrictive gender roles, the countries with the greatest amounts of gender equality, the highest male child rearing participation, the most generous parental leave, the smallest wage gap, etc. actually have the lowest rates of women in tech. By comparison the countries that have the most restrictive…

> The Scandinavian countries have 10-20% women in tech. Wait, 10%-20% of what ? 20% of all women (or all men) involved in tech work seems like a lot.

Female representation in tech. I meant that 10-20% of tech workers are women.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#289

Post by the_af »

grondilu wrote: post #238
the_af wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her username here is Doreen, and I assume that's her name. Why should she have to hide it? If she has to hide her sex in order to get meaningful answers, that right there is a huge impediment us men in tech never have to experience.

Most people on internet pick a fairly random, gender-neutral pseudonym. Your username for instance is "the_af". Her picking "Doreen" as a username was her publicizing her gender. She can't do that and at the same time complain about being treated as a woman. It's not a "huge impediment". She'd just have to pick a gender-neutral pseudonym. Is it really such a big deal?

> She can't do that and at the same time complain about being treated as a woman.

She's not complaining about "being treated as a woman"; she is specifically complaining about this:

> "I can't join a chat or slack channel and count on getting help because I posted a question. I can count on being dismissed, sexually harassed and treated like an unwelcome intruder."

I don't think people should have to hide their identity in order to be able to discuss tech with their peers without harassment or being dismissed.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#290

Post by dragonwriter »

manfredo wrote: post #281
pacala wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diverse candidates get two attempts to pass the technical phone interview, non diverse get one. These rhyme with soviet era policies circa 1950-1960 in Eastern Europe. At universities, there was an admission exam for 'healthy origin' people for the majority of the spots, and then another exam where everybody, including those failing the first time, could compete for the scraps. We all know how that turned out econo…

To be fair, the tech companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The media has been heavily pushing the narrative that women are underrepresented at these tech companies - and they are compared to the general population. But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT, criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to mention that this is exactly in line with…

> But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT, criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers that are women.

If the industry is systematically unfavorable to women, hiring at the same percentage as the industry as a whole (which is what matching the “percentage of tech workers that are women” is) is indicative of being fully on-line with the average degree to which the industry is systematically unfavorable to women.

It would be inconsistent to criticize the industry but not firms that were dead in the middle of the pack.

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