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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#291

Post by tomlock »

unknownsavage wrote: post #167

The grandstanding is corny at best. Take the first example: > Despite continued assaults on the credibility of her contributions to modern computer science as the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace coded. Yet in reality she was very much respected in her day, and despite her challenges received widespread support. The first "assaults" on her scope of her contributions came over 100 after her death, and n…

She never attended University. Do you think she just wasn't interested in attending?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#292

Post by ziikutv »

fatbird wrote: post #285
ziikutv wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think what one person said about this really hit home for me.

Rising tides raise all boats or something like that.

Btw I was just summarizing the various points brought up in other comments for the person who asked.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#293

Post by rjbwork »

dashundchen wrote: post #143
chrisbrandow wrote: post #70

I just had a conversation with a friend of mine today about the issues she is facing as a "woman in tech". It was some stuff that really surprised me. On today of all days. Treatment of women as full-fledged peers is definitely something that needs better attention in our industry.

I am always amazed by the stories I hear. It's a common yet toxic mentality where women are told they can't or shouldn't do something, or aren't cut out for STEM because they are female. I recently saw this surface on HN in the basement of this thread, discussing the appointment of Jennifer Widom as the dean of Stanford Engineering. Many posters speculated, without knowledge of her credentials, that she was unqualifi…

Widom is great. I can credit her Stanford online Databases course with a good bit of my career as it stands today - she is a thoroughly great teacher, and explainer of things.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#294

Post by sebastos »

sanswork wrote: post #178
microcolonel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really have to ask yourself: Why would women, as a cohort, make the same amount per individual as men? Do you assume that nothing can be different enough between men and women to reasonably justify the statistics? I know of women who are paid more than me in tech, and I know why. I know of women who are paid less than me, and I can think of n reasons why. As for sheer numbers, ask yourself: are there any industri…

Your whole argument is that people are biologically set to specific roles because in some countries where they have the free choice they still go for those roles. But that ignores the fact that even in those societies children are still constantly bombarded with messages telling them what their gender should be when they grow up. You're looking at the finish line and making an answer while ignoring the fact that they…

You're treating it like well-established fact that people's career choices are based on gender identities which are fabricated by the environment they're raised in. Where is the evidence for this? Where are the oddball societies with female construction workers and all-male nurse workforces? If this is just an "accident" of the memetic evolution of societal gender tropes, then why is it so unilaterally consistent across cultures that have developed separately?

The biological explanation is, by far, the Occam's razor null hypothesis here. To be convincing, you would need to supply compelling evidence that children who have unusually low contact with traditional societal influence early in life make less predictable employment choices. Otherwise, this is a just-so story like all the rest of them.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#295

Post by WillPostForFood »

someperson53 wrote: post #250
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…

"when you control for experience, time off for family, etc., pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappears" That's a big "etc" to throw around - do you mind elaborating? What else beyond time off for family could possibly be in this list to the degree that pay disparities disappear?

Another thing in the "etc" bucket is the type of degree possessed. Men are currently more likely to have a more technical degree (EE, mathematics) which tend to get higher pay. The Payscale study cited in an earlier comment, for example, only controls for education level, not degree.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#296

Post by strictfp »

dobbin wrote: post #116
panglott wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were secretarial jobs because the men designing the hardware thought that was the hard stuff, and that designing software was basically secretarial work. When they discovered that designing software was hard, they forced the women out. http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...

It's a common pattern throughout history and one that really annoys me. People argue that the pay gap isn't real because men choose more highly-valued positions, but the reality is that positions favoured by women are inherently considered low-value. If some type of "women's work" somehow starts to become respectable or starts to pay better, it stops being "women's work" and the women are pushed out. If women start e…

So how does this explain low-valued male work like construction and garbage disposal?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#297

Post by dijit »

dang wrote: post #81
dijit wrote: post #25

I'm desperate to push the "women aren't victims" narrative. If we tell them they're victims enough then they'll believe it. There is evidence of this in other things for instance refugees who are told that they're victims are less likely to integrate. I'm more focused on pointing out that we're all equal. If you're a woman on my team, I'm incredibly sorry but I'm not going to celebrate your feminity any more than I'd…

Your comments in this thread have broken the site guidelines which ask you not to do classic flamewars "unless you have something genuinely new to say". This isn't new—it's a tedious trope we've all heard a zillion times and nothing is to be gained by repeating it. Please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13821991 and marked it…

I'm geniuinely not trying to bait or flamewar, but what's the trope I'm parroting?

I haven't seen people using the same arguments as me before.

Unless you're referring to my refugee sentence which has, at least some, connections to reality[0]

[0]: http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4fe039762.pdf

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#298

Post by strictfp »

astrodust wrote: post #253
mmel wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what used to be considered a "hard science" that is now no longer considered so due to (or corralated with) the influx of women into that field?

There might be confusion about causality here. Generally women find more success in a field that's not jammed full of highly competitive men who push anyone weaker out of the way. Where they move on to some other target, the playing field becomes more fair.

Your theory sounds more plausible to me. I'm male and find an all-male environment incredibly competitive, toxic and tiring to myself. It's very hard to get reasonable discussions and almost always degenerates into competition.

So I can imagine that you just bail if you aren't conditioned to put up with that kind of crap.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#299

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #81
dijit wrote: post #25

I'm desperate to push the "women aren't victims" narrative. If we tell them they're victims enough then they'll believe it. There is evidence of this in other things for instance refugees who are told that they're victims are less likely to integrate. I'm more focused on pointing out that we're all equal. If you're a woman on my team, I'm incredibly sorry but I'm not going to celebrate your feminity any more than I'd…

Your comments in this thread have broken the site guidelines which ask you not to do classic flamewars "unless you have something genuinely new to say". This isn't new—it's a tedious trope we've all heard a zillion times and nothing is to be gained by repeating it. Please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13821991 and marked it…

[deleted]

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#300

Post by dijit »

dobbin wrote: post #94
prepend wrote: 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…

That plays well into my murder analogy- that's incredibly unfortunate. I would say, normally, that I'd urge women to report this anyway, but this is what HR is for and that's depressing that it's viewed in such a light- they should absolutely tell their stories though.

If you have any female friends who want to work in a truly equal work environment that promotes women as equals; then my studio is aggressively hiring. http://www.massive.se/jobs/ ; it's in Sweden but we're also very good at relocating people (thorough support with VISA's and relocation allowances, etc;)

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