Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 258 posts

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#61

Post by botverse »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

> Computers were new and complicated, a unsafe bet for people who were so good included into society.

That's precisely the main point of the article. The reason why programming was left to women. Then men just took over when it was field tested and proven to be a profitable business. Doesn't matter how awkward those men were, they were still men.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#62

Post by pron »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

A couple of things.

1. Programming didn't start in the 80s or 90s. It started in the 40s-50s, and we've been doing it for seventy years now. When you were (by your own admission) a socially awkward boy interested in PCs, there were 50-year-old professional programmers working in banks, defense, aerospace and other industries whose programming culture was very different, because they didn't have computers at home at all, and all of them were first exposed to computers in college at the earliest.

2. When historians and sociologists say terms like "crowd out", they do not mean there was any conscious intent behind it, let alone ill-intent. They describe social dynamics. Also, since the eighties at least, professional programmers in the industry have had a lot of power -- whether you felt it or not -- as evident by the size and influence of the tech companies where they worked.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#63

Post by threatofrain »

naturalgradient wrote: post #22
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

This is an aspect that has always been bugging me as well. There is this implied notion that for men, it was ok or even encouraged to be nerdy and spend all their spare time in front of a screen. In my experience, committing to this lifestyle meant being socially crowded out. Some people were unpopular to begin with and sort of found refuge in the computer world out of necessity, some of us accepted being unpopular/u…

I would argue that boys and girls today still have this attitude, and now Radio Shack has died (and in that context, isn't Raspberry Pi such a blessing?). It's hard to persuade boys and girls that math and science are cool. It's also unfortunate because a lot of parents think that throwing an iPad in front of their kid will make them more technical, when the characters coming over YouTube / Minecraft are just cancer.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#64

Post by rhapsodic »

Just once, I would like to read in one of these articles about an actual non-anonymous woman who could plausibly demonstrate that a.) she had a strong desire to be a software developer, b.) she had developed sufficient skills in a marketable language to be employed as one, and c.) she had made a prolonged effort to find employment as one, and d.) she was unable land a job as a software developer.

Instead, it's always about something that a magazine ad said in 1969, or a teacher who told them that woman couldn't be programmers, or the boys in their school computer club ignored, them, etc. etc.

And the prescriptions, as usual, are that in order to get more woman into software development, that changes must be imposed on men, not woman.

This crap got old a long time ago.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#65

Post by k__ »

cmiles74 wrote: post #43
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

I don't think it's a stretch to imagine the socially awkward men you've met in the field aging into slightly less socially awkward older men tasked with hiring new developers. When hiring, it seems a small logical jump that they will higher more people like themselves (socially awkward men) and avoid people who differ. It's a pretty commonplace dynamic and an easy trip to fall into. What surprises me is how hard peop…

"insisting the current state is somehow the "natural state""

This is a strawman, nobody assumes this is natural in any way.

The point is, yes we want more women in the field, but the awkward male nerds that are there right now aren't the main problem.

Better look at the hiring managers and what society "shows" women every day.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#66

Post by deepnotderp »

It's hilarious that they criticize the stereotype of nerdy outcast male. If you're a girl, 9/10 you will never get flak for being nerdy (yes, exceptions exist, i know, but in my experience), on the other hand, emasculating the male nerd is practically a national pastime.

To add to the irony, a surprisingly large proportion of the anti - Damore tweets were criticizing his appearance and/or calling him a virgin.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#67

Post by belorn »

cmiles74 wrote: post #53
belorn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all How much money was the computer programming industry creating 1950 vs 1980. In the memo, one of the larger points was that men are exceptional pushed/forced/heavy incentivize by society towards high paying jobs. Would you argue that this claim is false?

I don't understand where you are going with this... Is your argument that since society seems biased to pay men more money, we should blindly do so? Does that logic apply to race as well as gender? IMHO, Damore was playing to the misplaced belief held by some men that they are innately better then everyone else and that societal biases have played no role in their successes.

Who said anything about paying men more?

The claim in the memo is that men are pushed towards jobs that are high paying. If a man tries to go to low paying jobs they are generally punished by society, often by being called things like lazy, weak, unfocused, and so on. Those that do seek and get high income get rewarded with high social status and strong correlation with dating success. It has nothing to do with getting paid equally.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#68

Post by botverse »

botverse wrote: post #54

How advertising of computers was made had an important accelerating effect towards the exclusion of women from the industry. https://qz.com/911737/silicon-valleys-gender-gap-is-the-resu...

Thanks for the down-vote.

More on this, computer were expensive toys, and traditionally boys get more expensive toys than girls. It's quite understandable the marketing decision there.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/06/gender.christm...

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#69

Post by guicho271828 »

Edmond wrote: post #30
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

The "socially awkward" archetype of a computer programmer I think is mostly a western (probably American) cultural artifact. For instance I have worked with a lot of Indian immigrants who are programmers and I don't find the correlation between social awkwardness and the people doing programming. While programming might be appealing to socially awkward western/American men , I don't think one should go from that to c…

It is same in Japan.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#70

Post by rhapsodic »

rayiner wrote: post #50
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

First, that's not true. https://i.imgur.com/pkZPrOI.png . CS was a third women in the mid 1980s, dropping to under 20% today. Twenty years ago, the Space Shuttle's software team was quite gender balanced: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff . Second, nerds can do a perfectly effective job pushing women out of the profession without being aggressive or having social power. We do a lot to gender th…

> Second, nerds can do a perfectly effective job pushing women out of the profession without being aggressive or having social power. We do a lot to gender the profession in ways that has little to do with the work. Think about all the references to hiring "cowboy coders" and "code ninjas." We emphasize hiring the lone gunman coder who learned to code in their basements, while the job actually is highly collaborative and team oriented.

If the casual use of innocuous phrases such as those are "pushing" women out of the software development profession, then I would conclude that either:

a.) women, on average, have fragile psyches and avoid working in rough-and-tumble environments where phrases such as "cowboy coder" (the horror!) are tossed around. They need an environment where speech is tightly controlled so as not to upset them or scare them off, or

b.) an overwhelming majority of women tend to not be interested enough in software development as a career to pursue one.

I'm going with b.

Post reply on HN