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Women: Learn to Program This Summer

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#431

Post by RandomInteger4 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #362
RandomInteger4 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this is what I meant. I should have been more clear in my statement. Maybe I'm mistaken, but being in a startup seems like a riskier career move than taking a job with an established player in tech, which is why women would be more averse to joining a startup.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#432

Post by kevinskii »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #177
grondilu wrote: post #55

Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? I mean, most programming languages have extensive documentation, tutorials and so on (at least FOSS dynamical languages like Python, Rust, Perl...). From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of resources for whoever wants to…

From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of resources for whoever wants to learn. I would love to learn to code. It's the reason I originally joined HN closing in on a decade ago. (Proof: my first post, the day I joined: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713015 ) But I have found that one barrier to me getti…

> I really don't know how to adequately describe the ginormous Wall of China style deafening silence that faces me and that helps keep me poor, unable to figure out coding and a zillion other things that drive me crazy.

I genuinely do wish you success. But I've been complicit in this wall of silence for a long time, and I make no apologies for that. Your comment history suggests that any good faith attempt to engage with you will most likely be futile.

You preemptively dismiss anyone who doesn't pander to your claims of sexism and class-ism. A minor disagreement about even the most banal of topics can lead to accusations of "pissing" or "crapping" all over you. Your constant Gish gallop of grievances makes it difficult to focus on any one of them for long enough to make any constructive difference.

I wish I could be of some help, but I'm pretty certain that any good advice will continue to go unheeded. Until that changes, I can only say: Best wishes to you.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#433

Post by leereeves »

wsy wrote: post #416
mywrathacademia wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it obvious? Poor people. The politically favored are women but by opening this to all women you only help women who are already privileged not poor women living in ghettos or from other poor backgrounds

There are so many initiatives out there supporting poor people. True, this one does not. But it seems a bit far-fetched to conclude from this one example that the poor are not supported at all.

Only 4% of Stanford students come from the bottom 20% of family incomes, while 66% come from the top 20%. That's 15 times as many students from wealthy families as poor families.[1]

The numbers are similar at other top schools, and feed into everything beyond, including startups.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#434

Post by gridlockd »

danso wrote: post #414
gridlockd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years... I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders. You need sales, marketing, accounting, management, HR, legal - and even the IT guys often truck along fine with little to no coding skills. If you need code written to perform your task that usually just means the UI of your application isn't powerful en…

Charlemagne reportedly ruled his empire despite being illiterate [0]. Christians were able to worship before they could read or even have access to printed Bibles. Literacy allows for creation and understanding beyond what can be attained via delegating the ability to read and write. It’s the same with coding, and I think you aren’t seeing how coding — or rather, being able to think the way code requires — is an abil…

> Literacy allows for creation and understanding beyond what can be attained via delegating the ability to read and write. It’s the same with coding, and I think you aren’t seeing how coding — or rather, being able to think the way code requires — is an ability that goes beyond building a web app.

Yeah I've heard the meme that "coding teaches you how to think". I don't buy it. I could make the same unsubstantiated claim about playing chess or some other mental gymnastics.

> Here’s a good write up from author Clive Thompson about how he learned to code, and how it helped him, when he was writing a book

He doesn't really give very convincing examples that it helped him professionally, but the time investment was substantial. That's called a hobby.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#435

Post by 0xfeeddeadbeef »

I am a cisgender white male. I never wanted to be a programmer — I was forced into it by my mother, aunt and grandmother. They also provided me with tuition money. I will sue them for oppressing me and also making it harder for women to pursue their dreams.

Edit: Downvoting into oblivion, as expected. Cue the western woman — the most oppressed life form on the planet Earth.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#436

Post by leereeves »

yep8883 wrote: post #420
manfredo wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 35% of my company's tech hires we're women in Q1, as compared to an industry representation of 20%. 39% of new grad hires we're women when tech grads were about 20% women. When women join the company they received additional mentorship and leadership opportunities that are exclusive to women. They are also promoted at higher rates than men (albeit slightly). This is in addition to the explicitly discriminatory h…

Many studies have found significant bias in favor of women" which studies? I think you are basing your opinion solely on anecdotes from your company/bubble. Women are underrepresented in tech - just go any tech conference and see for yourself. Are women not as smart as men when it comes to tech? Or are there barriers to entry for women?

Here's one that was big news here not long ago:

When Google conducted a study recently to determine whether the company was underpaying women and members of minority groups, it found, to the surprise of just about everyone, that men were paid less money than women for doing similar work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303039

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#437

Post by DoreenMichele »

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #431
DoreenMichele wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this is what I meant. I should have been more clear in my statement. Maybe I'm mistaken, but being in a startup seems like a riskier career move than taking a job with an established player in tech, which is why women would be more averse to joining a startup.

I'm a woman. I was agreeing with you and expanding on some of the why.

It's all good. I saw nothing wrong with you bringing this up.

I'm very aware of the children angle because of having kids. I didn't think it would impact my life in the way it did. So I've thought a lot about it and read up. I try to add some female perspective to the HN discussion because it's an overwhelmingly male environment.

Carry on.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#438

Post by hnxs »

jschwartzi wrote: post #231
crumpets wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>non-white men I assume Asian men are actually "white men" for the purposes of your example?

Can you explain a little more what you mean by this or where the disagreement is? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Thanks!

If you ever make it out to the bay, you’ll see that white men, Asian men, and, to a much lesser extent (though much more represented than everyone other than the first two), Asian women make up the majority of the engineering workforce here.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#439

Post by manfredo »

40acres wrote: post #427
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…

This is bad policy, but in my experience also an outlier. I'm actually quite surprised that a company would publish this policy, as opposed to simply executing it under the rug. I have to ask -- how large is your company? Is it public? Secondly, I'd also disagree that about the general attitudes of folks pushing diversity initiatives. No one is trying to eliminate white and Asian men from the workforce. This is more…

It's in the San Francisco Bay Area and it's between 1,000 and 10,000 people. I'm not going to say anything more than that because I've already posted specific statistics that can probably identify the company for people who work there. I've also probably posted enough info about myself on this profile to identify me if people really try.

It's somewhat under the rug, but it's basically an open secret like Area 51. I explain in greater detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465891

Again maybe it's a regional thing, but in silicon valley policies like these are pretty standard in my experience. In fact, many of my colleagues have called people racist and sexist for opposing these policies. These poilicies aren't just accepted, they're expected. I really don't think a lot of people understand just how social acceptable it is to discriminate against white and Asian men. Multiple managers have written in public email lists that they don't intend to hire white or Asian men for certain roles, and nobody took issue with this.

I get that inclusion of women and URM doesn't have to come at the exclusion of white and Asian men, but many companies are framing diversity in terms of percentages. That inherently puts it in zero sum terms. Everyone wants to have > 30% but there aren't enough women to go around. So the only way to achieve that goal is to deny employment to qualified men. It is indeed pursuing diversity through exclusion.

I get that having boot camps to get women into tech doesn't inherently cause companies to enact discriminatory policies like these. But saying outright that men are not welcome is a clear reminder that in many peoples' eyes, men's opportunities do not deserve the same protection as other groups. Replace men with pretty much any other group (except maybe Asians) and this situation would be outrageous. If we genuinely do believe in equality, then it needs to be just as unacceptable to do the same to men.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#440

Post by cimmanom »

UncleMeat wrote: post #421
tracker1 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to #2, is it bias when the candidate pool is self-selecting? I mean, generally we're talking about an industry where a self-starter can learn, get their foot in the door and build a career. Every actual study I've seen actually indicates bias in favor of women. The fact that the candidate pool is so unbalanced to me seems to indicate an issue in education or no issue at all (self-selecting), not corporate hiring.

But not everybody is a self starter. We also have a ton of people who were nudged in this direction and men get those nudges far more often. I certainly didn't learn software totally independent of other structures. Both my parents were software engineers. I had toys (marketed at boys) that encouraged creativity with computers. I had teachers who encouraged me to work in software. Etc etc.

As well as nudges (often subconscious ones) away from it that are more frequent for girls/women.
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