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Women: Learn to Program This Summer

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#351

Post by Grustaf »

krastanov wrote: post #300
camelNotation wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question, constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now? There is no problem to solve.

Is it not important to understand where these choices come from? Not because we have to enforce any particular distribution of genders, rather because it is useful to understand any differences that exist and whether they are truly personal choices.

Surely the reason is obvious, as it pervades all of society. Women are, generally speaking, more interested in people than men are, and men are more interested in things. Yes there is a big overlap, and yes there are plenty of exceptions, but the trend is very clear. And yes it is present from birth, so it can’t be just society.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#352

Post by jsbaby608 »

CptFribble wrote: post #340
manfredo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I feel, is a disingenuous summary of the concerns with explicitly discriminatory policies voiced in the comments here. The issue is not that people don't want to make coding more accessible. The issue most serm to be taking is that many places are pursuing diversity by deliberately making it less accessible for undesireable demographics. See my company's policies for one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/it…

If you are in a privileged position, and then that privilege is reduced, it can feel like a barrier is going up. It's not. When you rebalance scales, the side that was too high has to go down a little.

If I want to change careers, but am a white male..how does that make me 'privileged'????

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#353

Post by RandomInteger4 »

austincheney wrote: post #294
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 that there should be "More women in tech" I don't think there is any problem (shortage) of women in tech, but this is a substantial deficit of women in startup tech. There could be many reasons for this, but I suspect this is due to the personalities needed at an early stage startup and some degree of narcissism or self-interest that many developers (particularly women developers) find less appeal…

Perhaps this is also due to risk aversion?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#354

Post by Grustaf »

anisppp wrote: post #339
QualityReboot wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Who feels welcome in tech? It's an elitest culture filled with strong personalities that fancies itself a meritocracy.

The same can be said about medicine.

Doctors are not socially awkward, it’s much more fun for a normal person to hang out with medical students than with programmers.

Who could possibly feel welcome in an industry filled with awkward, mostly introverted geeks?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#355

Post by manfredo »

ajross wrote: post #338
manfredo wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saying there's a much more obvious hypothesis for why "people are selective of the industry they work in", and you need to refute that instead of circularly insisting on its truth as the basis for your argument. ...no? It's your responsibility to provide evidence for your "much more obvious hypothesis". I provided evidence for my claim that women choose not to go into tech on their own volition. I provided glob…

> I provided evidence for my claim that women choose not to go into tech on their own volition. Uh... no, you didn't? I don't see it. All I see is circular logic: you're citing the lack of women in tech as evidence that they don't want to be there in response to a thread that says the lack of women in tech is a problem . My point is that there are dozens or hundreds of other career paths where women used to be exclud…

> All I see is circular logic: you're citing the lack of women in tech as evidence that they don't want to be there

If this is all you see then you did not get the underlying point I'm making. I provided evidence that there is the least representation of women in tech in countries with the most gender equality and gender freedom. The countries with the least gender equality and most restrictive gender roles have the most women in tech. The evidence lies in the inverse relationship between greater gender equality and more flexible gender roles with the percentage of women in tech. If all you took away from this was that women are underrepresented in tech worldwide, then you did not see the evidence I was actually referring to.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#356

Post by malvosenior »

CptFribble wrote: post #340
manfredo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I feel, is a disingenuous summary of the concerns with explicitly discriminatory policies voiced in the comments here. The issue is not that people don't want to make coding more accessible. The issue most serm to be taking is that many places are pursuing diversity by deliberately making it less accessible for undesireable demographics. See my company's policies for one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/it…

If you are in a privileged position, and then that privilege is reduced, it can feel like a barrier is going up. It's not. When you rebalance scales, the side that was too high has to go down a little.

That's a very abstract and dismissive take. Having a job isn't a "privileged position" and deciding who gets to be employed based on race and gender is more than "rebalancing scales". It's discrimination and people who have their life and family on the line aren't going to just smile and take one for the team while people push for them to be unemployed.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#357

Post by ketzo »

gcheong wrote: post #349
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.

That may be how it is now in medical colleges but it was a long road in getting there, starting with being allowed to even attend medical school in the first place, and some would say we're still on it. It didn't just go from 0 to where it is now overnight.

Yeah, I don't see how the example of medicine is anything except further reason to encourage women to join tech fields.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#358

Post by pathseeker »

40acres wrote: post #182

Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination and gatekeeping work not just in our industry but in society as a whole. How can we simultaneously be an industry built on free an open source software and yet try to put up walls around our industry when efforts are made to make it more accessible to others? The barriers to programming are being lowered and this is an excellent thing. More d…

> Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination and gatekeeping work not just in our industry but in society as a whole.

You might not realize it, but this is a strawman without linking to specific comments or providing some kind of examples.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#359

Post by Grustaf »

krastanov wrote: post #297
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…

A lot of sibling comments stick to the "gender equality paradox" while forgetting all the other research on the topic (this is already a heavy selection bias). Yes, women in Scandinavia and women is Bangladesh, given the chance to pursue a career in STEM, might make choices that superficially support the notion that women self-select out of tech. But this line of reasoning forgets to compare what other choices/opport…

Well but that is the point isn’t it. Women in poor, unfree countries go into tech because it makes a huge difference to their personal finances and comfort. In Scandinavia everyone lives in freedom and comfort, so you can work with something you actually enjoy instead.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#360

Post by filoleg »

gridlockd wrote: post #323
jimbokun wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jessica made a really good point, that female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.

> Jessica made a really good point, female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. If I followed this line of reasoning, then I couldn't hire a lawyer without knowing law, I couldn't hire a marketing person without knowing marketing, I couldn't hire a sales person without knowing sales, and so on and so forth. I would argue that knowledge in law, s…

>To accurately judge someone else's competence, you have to be at least on their level

If you want to be as accurate as possible, then yes. But there is a whole spectrum of accuracy in-between those two options, and being "somewhat ok" (which is what this program, I assume, is supposed to help the attendees achieve) is better than "completely guessing, because I have zero relevant knowledge"

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