Women: Learn to Program This Summer • Hacker News Board

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#51

Post by jakelazaroff » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

pacala wrote: post #26

jakelazaroff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We never really valued skills over demographics — it's just much less visible where it benefits a dominant group. Consider that the percentage of VC deals with female-founded companies is 5.4% and yet they receive only 2.2% of VC dollars [1]. This has held true for over a decade: the average female founders have received less than their average male counterparts. But for some reason, there aren't many people complain…

Never heard of an open and blatant 'women need not apply' in the 20 years I've been in the US. Not in the universities, not in the workplace, not anywhere. Not sure about NFL policies, though there aren't that many 6 foot 250 pounds fit women out there. Pretty sure there is no VC advertising 'we will fund no women' out there, if it were there would be a huge press coverage. And yet, the OP is openly and blatant 'men…

My point is, blatantly saying "X need not apply" isn't any worse than saying "this opportunity is open to both X and Y" and then only accepting Y. Implicit discrimination isn't somehow better than explicit.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#52

Post by austenallred » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #44

'breaking into the startup world' - sigh... How do you break into being a domain expert via 5-10+ years of experience? What do people think start-ups are exactly? Random people with no domain expertise coding their way to great products?

1. Who said you have to have 5-10+ years of experience to start a startup? That's likely an advantage, but certainly not a prerequisite

2. Perhaps there are domain experts with 5-10 years of experience in _something_ and them learning to be technical is impactful?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#53

Post by creaghpatr » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

nck4222 wrote: post #50

I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services…

It's ethical as long as they don't target journalists.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#54

Post by rubicon33 » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #43

There will be benefits to this program for those who participate, and I wholly wish those women who have the opportunity to participate the best of luck. However, I also worry about the motives behind the program. A huge part of feminism is a push towards gender equality[1]. Discriminating against half of the population while aiming for equality is an odd way to behave. I know the blog post did not mention gender equ…

I don't understand why you're getting down voted for this comment. Isn't the goal equal opportunity? Providing artificial silo'd environments seems at odds to the goal of an unbiased, fair workplace.

But I guess I'll just get down voted too.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#55

Post by grondilu » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

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 learn.

Now, if for some reason women don't take this road and "need" someone to hold their hand in order to learn programming, I would argue that maybe those women don't have the intrinsic motivation to do so and trying to force it upon them may be a gross waste of time and resources.

Not to mention that programming can be a tedious and lame job (sitting in front of a computer all day is often mentioned as a genuine nightmare), so if you have to do it, you'd better love it in the first place.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#56

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

nck4222 wrote: post #50

I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services…

> discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender.

Is there any evidence that this is happening, though? I've never seen anybody, even anecdotally claim "I'm a woman (who is qualified) and I've been unable to find employment". Mostly what I see is people trying to work backwards and say, "if group X makes up Y% of the population and only Z% of programmers, that in itself must be evidence of discrimination".

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#57

Post by deogeo » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

lixtra wrote: post #10

rosterface wrote: post #3

I recently completed a very difficult job search where I unfortunately had to lean on my ethnicity (I’m Mexican) to pass through very overt screening against white men. I was shocked to hear from multiple companies, large and small, that they did not want men and white men in particular. Now we see a YC co-founder giving 40 women $9000 to learn to program. Where does it end? I was really sad that while I personally c…

Please don’t forget that it is her private money (I don’t know about tax benefits). So it’s like paying for the education of your children.

Inheritance is also private money, yet this case in Canada shows race/sexuality/gender-conditions in a will getting overturned: https://globalnews.ca/news/2533006/ontario-court-rejects-sch...

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#58

Post by ajiang » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

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 rally against this.

2. Private companies making hiring decisions are correcting for an indefinite history of bias. That doesn't mean they're hiring unqualified individuals, simply that they're making sure they put in measure to correct for biases and can identify individuals with the great qualifications that in the past would have been past up due to arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'.

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.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#59

Post by rhcom2 » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

nck4222 wrote: post #50

I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one. On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender. On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services…

> On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong.

> If this was targeted specifically to disadvantaged people

You already accepted women have been disadvantaged though.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#60

Post by seancoleman » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #41

seancoleman wrote: post #28

My girlfriend, a nurse of 10+ years, just started learning to code on her own, built her first (basic) website ( https://www.nataliepeterson.dev ) and is applying to Lambda School already. I sent this to her this morning and she was elated. Programs like this really work.

For whatever reason this website feels so personal. Instant flashbacks to the 2000s. I love it. Hint for picking a random image when clicking on the image: The currently shown image should be excluded from the list of images to draw from. This prevents the problem that sometimes clicks appear to do nothing, although in reality the same image was randomly picked again.

Great suggestion. I will pass along the feedback to the developer :)