Women: Learn to Program This Summer • Hacker News Board

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#451

Post by dang » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:10 AM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #295

dang wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who (else) said anything about IQ? Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ? They include: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Also, please stop posting flamebait, especially ideological flamebait, to HN. It fuels flamewars, which destroy what we want to preserve here: thoughtful conversation and inte…

Coding was compared to literacy here. Literacy is taught in schools because people of average IQ (100) are capable of literacy and find it helpful in their everyday lives. Literacy is one of the few things taught in schools that actually has any utility in people's everyday lives. Coding is nothing like literacy. It is more like chemistry, physics or Shakespeare - something the vast majority don't care about and will…

That is a much more substantive comment! there wouldn't have been a moderation issue if you'd posted that to begin with.

One way to think of flamebait is low-information comments on provocative topics. Ideological flamebait is the same, on topics where the provocation tends to be ideological.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#452

Post by tracker1 » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:13 AM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #449

UncleMeat wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But those nudges are LONG before the hiring process, which as I mention seems to be biased in favor of women in the field. Education and other bits take a different approach. Media changes: * Don't show techs/ops and programmers as interchangeable in practice * Don't make techs or programmers look uncool * Show more diverse techs and programmers in roles * Don't dumb down smart female characters (some seasons of Arro…

A bit more on operations, management, development and deeper technology. I think a clearer understanding of the different roles that people play in development of technology systems is important. Men and women typically have different personality leanings (that broadly overlap), and understanding different roles and their focus would allow for people to understand and better choose towards their own interests.

In media, a lot of the time all the roles in IT/Development are interchangeable and muddled and there's almost no insight into where one role might end and another might begin.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#453

Post by GaryNumanVevo » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:20 AM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #404

California's Unruh Civil Rights Act specifically outlaws discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation. This law applies to all businesses in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act

This doesn't apply here. It's no different from me writing a check for someone to go to college.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#454

Post by DoofusOfDeath » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:21 AM UTC

0xfeeddeadbeef wrote: post #435

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.

I suspect you're being downvoted because of how you're presenting your idea, not because of whatever particular point you're making.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#455

Post by manfredo » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:23 AM UTC

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?

This one found a 2:1 hiring bias in favor of women: https://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#456

Post by _dw7s » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:25 AM UTC

TLAFanBoy wrote: post #153

decebalus1 wrote: post #123

I'm leaning back and watching our profession go to shit. The liberalization of programming is very profitable for software companies. The wages need to go way down as currently we're the contemporary blue-collar job that didn't get screwed up by the modern corporate machine. This has less to do with gender than with plain-old creating inflation within the profession. Accountants, doctors, lawyers, all managed to clos…

[flagged]

Yikes! nah.. I wouldn't take it that far. This is basically a profession with a very high entry barrier and consequently large compensation slowly becoming a commodity. That was my point. No idea about all the right-wing/left-wing stuff you're talking about.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#457

Post by tth3uoku » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:26 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #433

wsy wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm not sure how Stanford's economic disparity supports that there are no programs to assist people who are economically disadvantaged. Harvard, Stanford, and Yale offer free tuition for students with family income below 65,000 a year, Princeton for below 54,000, and Cornell, Brown, Columbia and Duke for families with income below 60,000.

There's no data in the article about the income level of the students applying. Are there 15 times as many wealthy applicants? Disparity is often contextualized in terms of systems of oppression and discrimination. Individual behavior, influenced by the effect being poor has psychologically, is likely to contribute to the difference in economic diversity.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#458

Post by decebalus1 » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:26 AM UTC

Uhhrrr wrote: post #144

decebalus1 wrote: post #123

I'm leaning back and watching our profession go to shit. The liberalization of programming is very profitable for software companies. The wages need to go way down as currently we're the contemporary blue-collar job that didn't get screwed up by the modern corporate machine. This has less to do with gender than with plain-old creating inflation within the profession. Accountants, doctors, lawyers, all managed to clos…

I'm reminded of a Bloom County strip where Steve Dallas, the town lawyer, is bemoaning his lack of clients. "What this town needs", he says, "is two lawyers". More engineers means more widgets and platforms and shims and other NIH, so I am not worried about the sort of thing you describe.

More subpar engineers means more nodejs fuckery, more golang snobbery and less salary.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#459

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:31 AM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #249

CydeWeys wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unconscious bias is a real thing. You can easily have a situation in which no one is intentionally discriminating and yet end up with decidedly non-equal outcomes.

One of my favorite examples from the Boston Symphony Orchestra[1]: > For the auditions, the musicians would be playing behind a screen, in an effort to remove all chance of bias and allow for a merit based selection only - a selection that would hopefully increase the number of women in the orchestra. > To their surprise, their initial audition results still skewed male. > Then they asked the musicians to take off th…

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#460

Post by Grustaf » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:34 AM UTC

wsy wrote: post #415

Grustaf wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

I'm working in tech as a man, and spend more than half of my work time in talking to people. Actually, the higher you go up in your career, the more you will spend time interacting with people, and the less with things. So should we aim to keep male coders, and foster female tech managers, because that fits the biological tendencies? I definitely would like to see more male kindergarten teachers, because the fact tha…

I don’t think we should “aim” to do anythinf, that’s the whole point. We should just trust grown up educated people to make their own choices. Even women!