Women: Learn to Program This Summer • Hacker News Board

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#391

Post by sqrt17 » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #331

sqrt17 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being, being a doctor is (in many parts of the world) both more challenging/competitive and better paid than programming. You explain with discrimination (which was real in the 50s according to most evidence we have) what is in parent's case better explained as a difference in motivation (making a five-figure salary by being responsible for humans is more attractive to the average US woman than being r…

> You explain with discrimination (which was real in the 50s according to most evidence we have) what is in parent's case better explained as a difference in motivation (making a five-figure salary by being responsible for humans is more attractive to the average US woman than being responsible for modules of code is). and your evidence for this is ....? > , and there is a multitude of reasons that are more plausible…

> and your evidence for this is ....? If we look at other professions (business, law, medicine), we'd find more discrimination but also more women. So discrimination is unlikely as a sole cause.

> Only when the job became prestigious were they pushed out by men. I clearly recall the days when programming was thought as the domain of the pimple-faced nerds with the thick glasses, way before the brogrammers and other "cool" nerd types came along. Law and medicine are all more prestigious and by your reasoning would have pushed out women even more. So there's something you're missing, and actively missing it even when reality waves its hand to you.

Just one google query gives something more nuanced, such as this: https://austinstartups.com/the-tech-gender-gap-a-2016-progre... which rightly points out that the percentage of women was rising in CS as much as in medical and law until around 1985. And if you look at the graphic here https://blogs.sas.com/content/sascp/2018/12/05/booming-enrol... you notice that it's not women leaving the field, it's more men coming to CS while the number of women stays the same until they leave in troves at the following bust cycle.

You keep using evidence from the 50s (i.e., 70 years back) as explanation of today's state of affairs, but the evidence points that the 50s don't tell us anything about why we don't have more women programmers. Instead, ask why women got pushed away by post-bubble insecurity and maybe (and this is interpretation) some stigma that we as CS people have that pushes out women.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#392

Post by gdix » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #331

sqrt17 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being, being a doctor is (in many parts of the world) both more challenging/competitive and better paid than programming. You explain with discrimination (which was real in the 50s according to most evidence we have) what is in parent's case better explained as a difference in motivation (making a five-figure salary by being responsible for humans is more attractive to the average US woman than being r…

> You explain with discrimination (which was real in the 50s according to most evidence we have) what is in parent's case better explained as a difference in motivation (making a five-figure salary by being responsible for humans is more attractive to the average US woman than being responsible for modules of code is). and your evidence for this is ....? > , and there is a multitude of reasons that are more plausible…

> When computer programming was first invented nearly all programmers were women. Only when the job became prestigious were they pushed out by men.

Or maybe they were placed in these positions by men and when they were free to select it as a career, they didn't. In the early days of computing, personal interest wasn't a driving factor in selecting it as a career because it was still so new. I really think your example demonstrates the opposite of what you think it does.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#393

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

pathseeker wrote: post #376

dragonwriter wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT, criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers that are women. If the industry is systematically unfavorable to women, hiring at the same percentage as the industry as a whole (which is what matching the “percentage of tech workers that are wo…

>If the industry is systematically unfavorable to women It's not. The CS graduation ratio is just as bad.

> The CS graduation ratio is just as bad.

If the industry were either actually or even merely perceived as systematically unfavorable to women, a natural consequence would be women being less likely to pursue education focussed on the field in preference to other fields that were less unfavorable.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#394

Post by wsy » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #387

spamizbad wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Sure, but are they explicitly discriminating against women in hiring teachers in order to increase the percentage of male teachers? Because more and more that's what's going on in tech companies (with the genders reversed).

Of course. If a man and a women apply for the same primary school teacher position with the same skill level, they will hire the man.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#395

Post by manfredo » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #383

CptFribble wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lumping all white men together as if they are equally privileged is dishonest. A poor white boy from Appalachia doesn't benefit from whatever "privilege" young white men in the Bay Area might tend to enjoy as a result of their parents' success.

It's not just white men it's also Asian men.

And you raise a good point. The acceptability of "learn to code" when it was directed at laid off coal miners, but sudden shift to unacceptability when it was directed at journalists is extremely hypocritical. White male coal miners who went to a boot camp would have their resumes rejected on the basis of their race and gender. The same would happen to many journalists, but a substantially larger portion of journalists belong to demographics from which we do give a chance at interviewing when they come from boot camps.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#396

Post by belorn » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

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…

> I'm saying "prove it".

There is a rather obvious finding in a study quite a long time ago that simplistically said: individuals in a group who belonging to a minority feel less secure than those individuals belonging to a majority.

From there we can make a relative small jump to say that when everything else is equal, individuals like to feel safe over not feeling safe. In additional when faced with adversity, how safe a individual feel has a strong potential to effect the outcome.

Those points is actually from a gender study looking at gender segregation. It doesn't say anything about "chicks don't like tech" or that "dudes don't like teaching", nor is parent comment.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#397

Post by wsy » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #368

protonimitate wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Which underpriviledged groups are never supported?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#398

Post by manfredo » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

wsy wrote: post #394

manfredo wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but are they explicitly discriminating against women in hiring teachers in order to increase the percentage of male teachers? Because more and more that's what's going on in tech companies (with the genders reversed).

Of course. If a man and a women apply for the same primary school teacher position with the same skill level, they will hire the man.

But do they explicitly deny women jobs for a position where they would have hired a man? As in do men get two chances to pass an interview when women get one? Do they have blanket policies to not hire women of certain backgrounds where they do hire men of those backgrounds?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#399

Post by Grustaf » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

wsy wrote: post #381

Grustaf wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people get interested in computers early on in life, when there is nothing at all stopping them. You can’t blame society that many more 12 year old boys than 12 year old girls are obsessed with computers. It is a fact that even at birth, girls are more interested in people where boys are more interested in things. This is even true for newborn chimpanzees. You can’t really blame society for this. Surely this is…

Society still has an immense effect on what children and teenagers prefer to do, via instilling role models. There is an amazing small experiment with primary school children. First, no girl in the class even has the idea she could become a pilot, because this is seen as a boy's/men's profession. Then a female pilots and a female car mechanic visit the kids, and explain what they are doing. Afterwards, half of the gi…

Ok, for how long did this wish remain? Of course society has an effect on people, but you really have to ask yourself, if it is known that even newborns show these tendecies, can’t you at least entertain the idea that women actually on average prefer medicine to programming? At some point, with enough scholarships, free code schools for women, female founder conferences etc, you need to just accept that there is a pretty significant difference between what men and women like, on average, it will just become ridiculous otherwise.

For example, especially young men are much much more risk loving than women. They are also much more aggressive and competitive. This is true for a lot of social animals, but definitely for humans. You can imagine that there used to be strong evolutionary advantages from this. These differences may have arisen in a very different world, but they are still here today, in men and women born in 2019. Testosterone is real. Why insist on denying and fighting these biological realities? Better to accept them, let people make their choices and make the best of the situation?

No matter how many awareness campaings and female coding scholarships you launch, women will still prefer to work with people rather than computers if they can help it. And that’s not a bad thing. The issue if anything is that some people centric jobs are underpaid. Nurses and kindergarten teachers do some of the most valuable work in society.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#400

Post by SolarNet » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

DBYCZ wrote: post #320

DoreenMichele wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jessica Livingston, an investor who happens to be female, isn't saying "There should be more women in tech." She's saying "If women want to found tech companies, they need to learn to code. Not coding is a barrier to successfully founding a tech company that trips up lots of women interested in founding a company of this sort." and putting her money where her mouth is and offering women an opportunity to learn to cod…

A scholarship for a CS program seems a much more worthy cause, as everyone with an internet connection has access to learn everything needed to begin a career in tech.

You realize scholarships are way more exclusive than half of all people right?

I got a scholarship based off of the street I lived on. I got a scholarship based off of the career choice of my fraternal grandmother (e.g. if she had been my maternal grandmother I would not have qualified). I got a scholarship based off of how similar I was able to make architecture sound to programming.

Women only scholarships are barely even notable.