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To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

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Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#41

Post by Zombieball »

kaybe wrote: post #26
jmnicolas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly. I'm a bit fed up with people advocating more women in . As far as I can tell these same people don't complain that teachers and nurses jobs are mainly occupied by women. Everybody seem to agree that a nursing job is not attractive for most men. Maybe the reason that women are few in tech is because these professions are not attractive to them.

I heard tons of people complain about that, though for other reasons - it would be really good for boys (and their social and academic performance) to have male rolemodels, the argument goes. Consider the reasons for non-attractiveness. In the case of nursing, it's bad pay as well, presumably. In the case of IT, the general unfriendliness is one reason, though there might be others. Shouldn't we just remove the remov…

Just curious why you think nursing is bad pay? Or what do you consider to be bad?

Where I live (Vancouver, BC.) entry level (students) pay for nurses is $50K/year. Average earnings for nurses I believe is on the order of $70-90K/year though.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#42

Post by _bfhp »

notastartup wrote: post #10
primitivesuave wrote: post #9

I run a private education organization that teaches kids how to code at a physical facility, and we get a gender breakup of male and female students that is similar to that of the industry (around 80 - 20). Because of the overwhelming male presence, it is difficult to make a comfortable learning environment for the female students, who may often feel uncomfortable, at odds with, or ostracized by pseudo-masculine effo…

This is extremely sexist and needlessly hostile. It's like being male and interested in coding is somehow associated with all the stereotypical male attributes which turns off women from coding. Ah, so we need to have boys acting less like boys because it's clearly why we don't have more women in tech. So we all need to teach teen boys to become meterosexual so it can be more inviting and suitable for females? I thin…

primitivesuave was literally recounting their own experience with young children; are they "sexist", or is describing reality just not to your liking? What does "acting like boys" even mean, may I ask? primitivesuave was taking about the toxic masculinity that involves macho superiority and violence, sorry if it upsets you that that's what masculinity involves.

primitivesuave wasn't talking about genitals, they were talking about gender, and you know this -- "acting like boys" has nothing to do with genitals -- but seem profoundly confused and angry about it.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#43

Post by shaan7 »

kamaal wrote: post #39
pjmlp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it depends a lot on the country as well. In many European countries those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer.

>>those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer. What good would that do? If you pass laws that make it difficult to start and sustain a competitive company, next time around you will see such companies would be starting up in some other country. Now the whole ecosystem suffers.

you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees? I know a lot of companies that are the best in their business and never have to.

It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#44

Post by animus9 »

olefoo wrote: post #3

There is nothing about programming computers that is gender specific; in fact it seems kind of weird and awkward that we have to discuss this at all. Given that so many of the foundational figures of the field ( Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, etc. ) were female, the fact that programming and IT became an almost entirely male-dominated profession is suspicious, and should make us question the attitudes and social constru…

The only thing suspicious is the propaganda machine which is creating this never ending list of gender-tech articles and their associated divisionist jargon.

Social construct theory is dead. Girls who have a genuine interest in technology couldn't care less about the sex of their coworkers (because if they did then they would be sexists).

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#45

Post by nerfhammer »

pjmlp wrote: post #27
kamaal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not about programming. Or anything to do with the profession. Its has much to do with the culture. In my first project near impossible work conditions and deadlines were placed on us. Most of us had to make extreme sacrifices(health wise, socially and in many aspects)- The other option was being out of the job. The problem is you need a supporting family. Here in India, its difficult for women at least socially a…

I would say it depends a lot on the country as well. In many European countries those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer.

Perfectly legal in the US, as long as you're salaried.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#46

Post by yummyfajitas »

daleharvey wrote: post #20
ekianjo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because some women think they are ostracized because of their gender only, and not because of their skills (or lack of?). It's always funny to see these kind of gender kind of statements, you don't see the same thing with races at all like "I am Asian and I code" - I just find this line of reasonning by separating people with one criteria (gender/race/eye color/hair color/whatever) really preposterous, yet s…

Your comment is fairly disgusting, it admits that women are ostracized in the industry but then implies its because they ... as a gender ... lack the skill to code. But the rest of the statement was ironic given recent popular story about the topic - http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...

A charitable interpretation of his comment: many women suck, just as many men suck. People who suck are treated as bad programmers. A subset of the women who are treated as bad programmers assume it is due to their gender rather than their poor ability.

An equivalent claim which I made in real life:

Steve, an old school NY boy with a south-asian family: "She dissed me because I'm brown."

Me, another old school NY boy more Italian than anything else: "She dissed you because your a bridge&tunnel boy rather than a wealthy hipster in $200 skinny jeans. She'd have dissed me too."

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#47

Post by alan_cx »

Tongue in cheek, but I think there might be a point here struggling to see the light of day...

Why? I mean, why would women want to get into coding?

If one is not already working with computers, from the outside world, its a crappy job, and the money isn't better than many other things. Not to mention the insane hours culture. Women have a clean sheet choice. Why work in an office, killing your brain on hugely complex things for not much extra money, sat in front of what is essentially a complex toy?

Has it ever occurred to people that perhaps girls take an objective choice based on purely the work and reward (money or psychological) and make a wise choice to do something else?

Also, coders are seen widely was geeky, spotty, awkward, weirdos, who cant get laid. And, um, they are often banging on about getting more women in the workplace. From a girls POV, that's sounding a bit iffy at best.

My attitude is to just let women do what they want to do, and if I get a CV from one, well, I dont want to know if its a woman or not. I just want the skills. I dont care if its a man, woman, or what ever. Just don't get in anyones way and let nature take its course.

But personally, I cant help thinking women are making a smart choice, and going for better way to spend life earning a crust. I mean, really, look at what we do. Its a terrible way to be. And we know this is true because even the big tech companies go out of their way trying to make offices and environments fun and exciting. And that is for men. Heh, even men hate it, and need a bouincy toy to distract them!!! I don't see many of other companies going this far. Why? Because the job is awful.

So, men, stop trying to shit up womens lives by making them feel bad for not wanting to work down the mine.... sorry, code.

XXXXX love you all, obviously ;)

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#48

Post by cclogg »

olefoo wrote: post #3

There is nothing about programming computers that is gender specific; in fact it seems kind of weird and awkward that we have to discuss this at all. Given that so many of the foundational figures of the field ( Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, etc. ) were female, the fact that programming and IT became an almost entirely male-dominated profession is suspicious, and should make us question the attitudes and social constru…

The other comments here are talking more about the work-life balance issues that might be causing the gender gap... but I personally just think it's to do with parents/relatives, role models, and the time between grade 1 and grade 12.

I myself am a coder because I loved modding games when I was younger. I do like creating things regardless, but I got to that point because a childhood friend shared PC games with me (games that his uncle shared with him)... and then you end up spending a large chunk of your childhood on the computer, so it's natural to progress down that path. But I know both guys and girls that played games like me and chose not to do a career that is computer-related.

It'd be great to have more gender balance in computer science, but actually in all fields too. I found in my art history classes in college that the class was around 80-90% female, for every class I took. This was basically the opposite of my computer science classes...

Man though, it's tough to judge society in the present lol.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#49

Post by daleharvey »

ekianjo wrote: post #32
daleharvey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is fairly disgusting, it admits that women are ostracized in the industry but then implies its because they ... as a gender ... lack the skill to code. But the rest of the statement was ironic given recent popular story about the topic - http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...

Notice the question mark after the "lack of skills" - I'm just saying this may be one reason among others. Not everything revolves around gender .

Even accepting it as a questionable hypothesis is ridiculous. Everything does not revolve around gender, which is why a lot of people (not just 'some women') question why this industry revolves entirely around the male gender. Comments like yours help exacerbate that.
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