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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#361

Post by flukus »

ajross wrote: post #359
sheepmullet wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the difference is explained by difference in hours worked. I'm saying it's a possible explanation. You on the other hand are trying to draw conclusions that aren't backed by the data.

What? That's 100% up-is-downism. What you say is simply incorrect. The conclusions is backed by data. The data is in the link. Go look at it. See? Glass Door says women are underpaid. That's data! What you are doing is saying "No, I don't think the conclusion should be what the data says", and then you're going out and finding ("cherry picking") different data about related but not identical subjects that appears to…

Not all data is equal. The collection methodology for glassdoor isn't much better than an online poll.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#362

Post by ajross »

flukus wrote: post #361
ajross wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? That's 100% up-is-downism. What you say is simply incorrect. The conclusions is backed by data. The data is in the link. Go look at it. See? Glass Door says women are underpaid. That's data! What you are doing is saying "No, I don't think the conclusion should be what the data says", and then you're going out and finding ("cherry picking") different data about related but not identical subjects that appears to…

Not all data is equal. The collection methodology for glassdoor isn't much better than an online poll.

Still better than "Hey guyz! I found a link on Forbes to a BLS study about some other subject that totally makes you wrong!"

Believe what you want. Just like climate change denial, there's enough uncertainty in these numbers to make any level of ostrich-headery justifiable. I just want to know why no one ever manages to show data that is "wrong" in the other direction...

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#363

Post by illumin8 »

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…

The fact that this comment is the top comment on this post, and pedantically tries to tarnish the entire article, which contains many real-life quotes from female software developers who are real, and live today, speaks volumes.

Please, take a moment and reflect on what is most important. Is it gender equality, or is it nitpicking the temporal sequencing of Ada Lovelace's contributions?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#364

Post by gspetr »

fatbird wrote: post #338
prepend wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is the sexism so pervasive it would prevent women from starting companies and making an app? The meritocracy of technology means that people downloading your app have no idea who the coders are, or what their genders are. Perhaps this is an opportunity for VCs because people certainly love money more than sexism.

Prevent? No. Continually add friction at all stages, from conceptualizing, staffing, funding, and interacting with the larger techsphere while competing for earned media, virality, etc.? Yes, absolutely, with predictable effects. One way to understand the effects of systemic "isms" is that the targets have to continually deal with a headwind that others don't, and the cumulative effect of this is like compound intere…

> One way to understand the effects of systemic "isms" is that the targets have to continually deal with a headwind that others don't, and the cumulative effect of this is like compound interest.

Nevertheless there do exist profitable apps written by low caste Indians living on a few dollars a day and having virtually no social welfare safety net.

Do you honestly believe that women in the US have it worse than those men?

I do not see enough evidence that your systemic "isms" can explain the lack of bootstrapped female founders and entrepreneurs in the US.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#365

Post by gspetr »

KirinDave wrote: post #349
x1798DE wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying people more for having more experience isn't some weird fetish that companies engage in. It's done that way because people with more relevant experience generally get better at the thing they're experienced in (or have more breadth of knowledge, etc). If you try to pay someone with 10 years experience the salary of someone with 1 years' experience, you will either have a very hard time finding people to hire o…

> So yes, if someone takes 10 years off to raise children or to go yachting around the world or to help sick children, they will probably not command the same salary that their (otherwise identical) co-worker who stayed in the field for those 10 years would command, because they likely won't be capable of "equal work". Anyone doing anything else would be systematically overpaying their workers, and are likely to be o…

> "How well does this person do the job"

And people use experience and continued employment as proxy. Sorry, companies have not figured out a better method in general.

If you only look at women who never married and never had children the pay gap is tiny.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#366

Post by fatbird »

gspetr wrote: post #364
fatbird wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prevent? No. Continually add friction at all stages, from conceptualizing, staffing, funding, and interacting with the larger techsphere while competing for earned media, virality, etc.? Yes, absolutely, with predictable effects. One way to understand the effects of systemic "isms" is that the targets have to continually deal with a headwind that others don't, and the cumulative effect of this is like compound intere…

> One way to understand the effects of systemic "isms" is that the targets have to continually deal with a headwind that others don't, and the cumulative effect of this is like compound interest. Nevertheless there do exist profitable apps written by low caste Indians living on a few dollars a day and having virtually no social welfare safety net. Do you honestly believe that women in the US have it worse than those…

When you can find a few examples of some group succeeding or being where the vast majority of their group are not, it's called "tokenism", and it's a self-defeating argument. Is it common for low caste Indians with no security to successfully bootstrap profitable apps? Are they a significant constituency amongst tech leaders in India? Rags-to-riches stories only prove something is possible, not that it's normal.

We have no problem understanding how subtly performance enhancing drugs in sports can make huge differences over the long term. Why are we sceptical that performance degrading circumstances are as consequential?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#367

Post by rkuykendall-com »

xor1 wrote: post #173
phlakaton wrote: post #104

If ever I had a notion that an expression of solidarity for women in tech was unnecessary or quixotic, the response to this article on this very forum would be sufficient to dispel it.

From what I've seen, there are less African-American and non-white hispanic men in tech than there are white and Asian women, yet I never see this discussed. Is this not an important issue as well? Will skewed racial ratios only be handled after gender parity has been achieved? Or do they not matter at all?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#368

Post by intellegacy »

fatbird wrote: post #290
intellegacy wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh and your claim that they're being filtered out by sexism doesn't qualify as handwaving?

Look, if women are being unfairly excluded from the pipeline then fight THAT. Don't blame Google or Facebook or X company for hiring the best they can. They have "diversity consultants" on their payroll for christs sake. This isn't an issue that is gonna magically be solved in a few years. Making the "pipeline" more diverse takes years of investment and education and encouragement. What I take an issue is with people blaming these companies when they're actually doing a reasonable job of trying to become more diverse. As if these companies are the ones really holding people back. and if only they could overcome their biases they'd have a perfect diversity ratio overnight.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#369

Post by intellegacy »

handojin wrote: post #267
intellegacy wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And they hate being doctors too. Except they don't. And deconstruction of what was a frankly pervasive culture of sexism in medicine and law has resulted in much higher participation of the second sex in these fields. Willful blindness is what it is.

well there are definitely cultural and sexist factors holding women out of STEM, that I agree with. What's the solution then?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#370

Post by fatbird »

intellegacy wrote: post #368
fatbird wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh and your claim that they're being filtered out by sexism doesn't qualify as handwaving? Look, if women are being unfairly excluded from the pipeline then fight THAT. Don't blame Google or Facebook or X company for hiring the best they can. They have "diversity consultants" on their payroll for christs sake. This isn't an issue that is gonna magically be solved in a few years. Making the "pipeline" more diverse tak…

We have voluminous statistical evidence that women are judged more harshly than men in all phases of hiring when the only differentiator is being perceived as a woman. That's not handwaving, that's decades of study. Handwaving is "for whatever (social/biological/cultural) reason".

We know there's a pipeline problem, and we are fighting that. We don't think it's going to be solved overnight either, and critically, not just by addressing the pipeline because, as numerous stories from the tech industry have made clear recently, even when qualified women make it through that anemic pipeline, they still face individual and institutional sexism. Or have you forgotten that one of Uber's recent departures left Google after an internal sexual harassment scandal that was quietly handled?

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