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Women: Learn to Program This Summer

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#361

Post by Quekid5 »

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.

This has also been formulated even more succinctly/pithily as

> When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

(Unknown author.)

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#362

Post by DoreenMichele »

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #353
austincheney wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Women tend to be more risk averse in part because they are capable of getting pregnant and women are generally expected to put their kids first. A man puts his career first and hardly sees his kids, he's a good provider. A woman puts her career first and misses a birthday party, she's a bad mother and a monster.

In order to raise a child with someone so you can make parenting a priority, you need to put their career first. In order to raise a child alone, you need to make so much money that you can afford a nanny and that still is tough because good childcare you trust is tough to find. (A US senator recently gave a speech about how the challenges of finding good childcare nearly derailed her career and her aunt resolved it by showing up to do the childcare.)

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#363

Post by pathseeker »

turbohz wrote: post #209
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overcorrecting for bias is not the same as removing bias. You never heard the phrase "two wrongs don't make a right?"

You're the one calling it an overcorrection. To me it is a weight scaling correction

It's still bias to against some men to correct for previous bias against some other women. Still unjust.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#365

Post by reitzensteinm »

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.

Parent linked to their policy, which contains this:

"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 after 3 years industry experience candidates are considered traditional even if they came from one of those two.*"

Note that this isn't impacting those well represented in tech; a white or asian man from a middle or higher class background.

It is instead rebalancing the priorities of those lacking in representation. A white guy who had to drop out of school to take care of his family? Not interested. Asian woman who decided her previous field wasn't for her, and does a coding bootcamp? Come on in for your interview.

I'm not saying I have an answer, but this is a legitimate concern. Responding with a generic platitude about how OP is merely feeling the effects of losing relative privilege is I think quite belittling and inappropriate.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#366

Post by kansface »

ajross wrote: post #308
manfredo wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the core point. It's not that industries are selective of gender. It's that people are selective of the industry they work in, and on average women select things other than tech. The agency is on the part of people. So the less restrictions there are on gender roles, the more agency people have to select fields based on their own preferences.

No no, I get your point. 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. Basically, you're saying "chicks don't like tech", and I'm saying "prove it". And you won't. And then you try to tell me that I'm missing the point because I failed to note that c…

If women have surpassed parity in other (far more demanding), more prestigious and better paying fields, why do you think that at the same time, the trend went in the other direction in our field? Do you think the tech workers of Silicon Valley - probably the most left leaning white collar professionals in the most left leaning part of the country simultaneously put up barriers for women at the same time that doctors and lawyers were taking them down? Do you think that demographic became more sexist from the 70s to the 10s to the exclusion of women?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#367

Post by yorwba »

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…

The evidence is not the small proportion of women in tech, but that it gets smaller when you compare countries where women have little freedom to decide for themselves to countries where gender equality is enshrined into law and women earn as much as men. So individual freedom appears to lead to fewer women choosing a career in tech.

That doesn't necessarily mean that no discrimination is going on. For example, both medicine and tech could be discriminatory, but medicine slightly less so, and women choose the better one. But any possible explanation needs to take into account that women do have a choice and they choose differently from men.

Offering scholarships might be able to tease out the difference, although it would have to be applied at much larger scale. If every student of medicine were offered a scholarship to learn programming instead, how many would switch?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#368

Post by leereeves »

protonimitate wrote: post #188
ajiang wrote: post #58

EDIT: To clarify that the money is going directly to private individuals, as per Austen. Incredible, thanks for putting your money where your values are @jl. As for the numerous comments in this post around reverse sexism / reverse discrimination: 1. This is a private individual giving personal capital to other private individuals, supporting a personal cause. It is hard to both claim principles of free market and ra…

>3. None of this is to say that you personally are not experiencing a challenging time or are not subject to bias in any way. None of this should diminish your personal challenges in the work environment. That should be addressed. This particular individual (@jl) and this particular company (Lambda School) are just not addressing that particular cause at this moment. And that should be ok. I think you summed up perfe…

It's generally always the same groups that receive these advantages, and other groups that never do.

So this is helping those who are already privileged, while the actual underprivileged are ignored once again.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#369

Post by spamizbad »

manfredo wrote: post #210
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…

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…

Is there any evidence of a "general attitude" that white and asian men are bad in technology? Because if they are, they must be incredible at what they do as they keep getting hired in droves. I think the view is they're overrepresented, but the "bad" part of that is the overrepresentation, not the race or gender.

For example the American Association of Educators is trying to encourage more men to become elementary school teachers, where women are drastically overrepresented (It makes tech look like a utopian melting pot). By doing so, they're not saying women are bad, but they are saying the profession would benefit significantly from more male participation, particularly when addressing concerns specific to young boys who are more likely to struggle in school.

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