31–40 of 70 posts
I'm working with a group of teenagers right now on a long-term technical project and my observations are that the boys are fantastic for giving immediate, interesting ideas but aren't interested in documenting their work. The only volunteers to maintain the project documentation were girls, who are also willing to spend their own time outside of the class on this. This is just an observation, mind, and I may be biase…
It is thankless work. I've been spearheading a continuous deployment project for my team here at microsoft. A team with fairly poor documentation. As much as everyone laments on this issue I get push back from my managers on writing specs, documenting components etc, instead of simply throwing together something no one understands or knows how to work with.
I have worked with women who are clearly smarter than everyone else in the room, and take the entire group to a new level. However with every guy I have worked with we can argue the entire meeting (and maybe get emotional), but then at lunch time it's like it never happened. From my experience, if you argue with most (not all) women in the conference room, do not expect her to forget about it the next day.
This is a stereotype that has never panned out for me. Most of the time when you think the men have "let it go," they've just passive aggressively suppressed it. I'd rather deal with someone who is obviously pissed at me than someone who is secretly pissed at me any day of the week. (The passive aggressive thing has been much, much more prevalent amongst nerds, in my experience, compounding the problem)
For me, it's been nerds and women.
I'm working with a group of teenagers right now on a long-term technical project and my observations are that the boys are fantastic for giving immediate, interesting ideas but aren't interested in documenting their work. The only volunteers to maintain the project documentation were girls, who are also willing to spend their own time outside of the class on this. This is just an observation, mind, and I may be biase…
> whereas women innately like to see a project successfully managed and will do what work is needed for the common goal? Just curious, does this "what work is needed for the common goal" extended to things which were complex compared to regular tasks? Or was it more on the documentation/project management side which the women showed initiative in?
When women are around, there's more at stake for men. They need to be more competitive but also more well-behaved (they're being judged not just on performance but also on character). There could be an analogous effect on the women, I don't know. In my Silicon Valley experience, a team without women is a disadvantaged team indeed, and not just because they make the men better. But not acknowledging the potential cont…
That doesn't really explain why the groups with 100% women did so well, or why the groups that were 50/50 did worse than the groups of all men or all women. Maybe I'm trying to take more information from the chart than is really there.
Link to chart: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> whereas women innately like to see a project successfully managed and will do what work is needed for the common goal? Just curious, does this "what work is needed for the common goal" extended to things which were complex compared to regular tasks? Or was it more on the documentation/project management side which the women showed initiative in?
I think, and I really am generalizing here based on experience, that girls/women less mind doing a task that doesn't directly benefit them. It may also be that girls don't mind being perceived as bossy? Management often dictates that you ask others in your group to complete tasks within a timeframe and girls may already be prepared for this (going into difficult territory here) by learning from their mothers run a ho…
I don't follow. Are you saying documentation doesn't benefit the assignee directly and coding does?
> Management often dictates that you ask others in your group to complete tasks within a timeframe and girls may already be prepared for this
We have different definitions of initiative here(I am putting words in your mouth. You said girls are more likely to take tasks which needs to be done and I am calling it initiative). Initiative for me is there is a task which needs to be done and no one wants to do it because it's difficult or unpleasant, and you voluntarily do it.
Asking others that it gets done, provided you have the authority to do so, isn't actually initiative. Authority is defined loosely here. Consider I am working with 3 people and I have done most of the coding. I will ask the other two to get the documentation done, even though we are peers.
My original question was more on the lines of if you are working on a regular programming project, and a module requires more work than the others, who was more likely to pick it?
I'd like to interject, although this is purely based off observation in a different setting, and I have absolutely no proof whatsoever... so the disclaimer is there: I used to be a very avid gamer in a lot of different MMOs. Back when 16-22 year-olds were still the dominant demographic for MMOs, I observed something: guilds with at least a few girls tended to be much stronger overall than guilds with no women. To und…
It's wrong to say that better guilds had women, so women cause better guilds. The only thing you can say is that annectodally the better guilds had women.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't really explain why the groups with 100% women did so well, or why the groups that were 50/50 did worse than the groups of all men or all women. Maybe I'm trying to take more information from the chart than is really there.
Hm, I missed that link to the chart before, and I was trying to respond to the "cognitive diversity -> effectiveness" discussion. You're right: it's hard to see the chart supporting my claim. (There are some hints at a sweet spot there in the middle, except for that drop at 50/50!) Link to chart: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...