I was talking to coworker who recently transferred from China to the US. He told me that China is will dominate the US because diversity is the greatest US weakness. Kind of shocking because our company is about 1/3 White, Indian and Chinese. But he doesn't see that as diversity. I think that is the answer that he can't see. Once groups accept each other as equals diversity becomes a non-issue. It does take work and…
I appreciate everything you said. It was tough for me studying an engineering degree in college but since then working has been a breath of fresh air. I feel I owe a lot of that to the spirit of professionalism within companies. It's interesting your Chinese friend said that. I recently found out that unless you are ethnically Chinese, even if you are born in China you aren't a citizen.. correct me if I'm wrong. I fe…
He started out well, but about halfway through meandered into bullshit. Bad data, cherry picked data, incorrect incorrect understanding of the science, incorrect conclusions -- he even referenced the Cultural Marxism Conspiracy theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marx... By the time we hit "why we're blind" he's gone fully off the rails. I sympathize with him -- and even agree with several…
Why do you call Cultural Marxism a conspiracy theory? Have you actually read through any of the papers being pumped out by humanities departments in academia? Not only is marxism on full display, it's actively promoted. Hell, it's one of the foundational elements of Critical Theory.
> The question is: where are the goalposts? Is the industry sick and oppressive towards women until it hits 50% representation? I don't think that's a fair expectation. It's hard to find a benign reason why the percentage of women CS majors would halve in the last 30 years while the profession as such has become more attractive. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
One possible benign reason: as society has gotten more free and open to women's choices, their preferences have been revealed. (Note that this also may explain why there are more female computer programmers in Iran than in, say, Finland. Women are more free to do what they want to do in Finland.) Now, look, this explanation may be wrong , but, no, it's not hard to imagine alternate explanations. Nice and neat conclus…
I don't agree that this is a benign reason in itself. Regardless if you say that women don't want to be programmers now or that women never wanted to be programmers, you have to find a good reason why they don't want to. Because women have no problem sitting in front of computers in economics, so why do they in software?
I don't think it is hard to find a good reason why someone wouldn't go into nursing (even if this wouldn't disprove sexism in nursing). It has barriers to entry by requiring formal education, which can be competitive. The working conditions are somewhat difficult having to work irregular hours and be exposed to emotional stress as in seeing people dying. At the same time it still relatively low status, not necessarily well paid and has limited career prospects.
Of course you can argue that this shouldn't be the case. That the profession should help people dealing with stress and have good working conditions etc. Still it much harder to imagine these sort of "hard" reasons, negative things that are inherent to the profession, when it comes to programming.
> The question is: where are the goalposts? Is the industry sick and oppressive towards women until it hits 50% representation? I don't think that's a fair expectation. It's hard to find a benign reason why the percentage of women CS majors would halve in the last 30 years while the profession as such has become more attractive. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
One possible benign reason: as society has gotten more free and open to women's choices, their preferences have been revealed. (Note that this also may explain why there are more female computer programmers in Iran than in, say, Finland. Women are more free to do what they want to do in Finland.) Now, look, this explanation may be wrong , but, no, it's not hard to imagine alternate explanations. Nice and neat conclus…
I'm sorry, but if you're still in the dark about what I believe, then I think you're willfully so. I have to be honest: I didn't really think you were arguing in good faith in the beginning, but I was hopeful that you might be brought into a reasonable back-and-forth. I no longer believe that's possible. Edit: Just to make this explicit: I don't have any eccentric or unorthodox views about the differences between "ra…
That is a strange response to a straightforward question, but I can't say I'm unhappy to see this weird little thread die here.
What do you want? How is '''the differences are probably explained by a complicated mix of factors, but that genetics likely play some role''' '''a genetic explanation, should one exist, says absolutely nada about policy, "supremacy," how we should treat each other, or really anything else. I also strongly believe that a good faith inquiry into this question (and acceptance of whatever the science reveals) is a pursuit orthogonal to "white supremacy"''' unclear?
Fact: IQ results differ by race, even though 'races' are a badly-defined concept. Fact: Socioeconomic factors are a lot of this. Postulation: There might maybe be a genetic factor somewhere. Assertion: This doesn't justify treating people differently by race.
What is unclear? What do you object to? You seem to find the idea that there might be any, miniscule genetic factor to intelligence that is more or less common in a specific 'race' as equal to white supremacy. Am I misreading you?
(And note I didn't say anything about which way genetic factors might go. If they exist they might be opposite the socioeconomic factors, who knows.)
It's perfectly all right to say that there are statistical differences between the average biological man and the average biological woman. The problem is to then assume a gigantic pile of facts not in evidence (that the differences observed are 100% biological with no cultural influence whatsoever, that they conclusively explain gender disparities in many fields, etc. etc.) and accuse anyone who disagrees with you o…
Blind interviews is a good idea that I think could/should satisfy parties on both sides. I mean it's really putting your ideas to the test. And either way you can take some comfort knowing that, if properly set up, the process will be fair. Now the correlation between a good interview and doing well on the job is another issue altogether.
Yes, I can attest to this too, harkening back to the classical orchestral auditions. This is why every player is put on probation for 6 months to a year. Their colleagues then vote them into the orchestra or they get voted out. This is the part that is about how they actually do their job. Getting voted out is pretty rare, but I have known a few people who have been voted out of top ten orchestras after the probation period. I can't tell you how tragic it is for everyone involved, especially the players who vote them out, because every single player knows how hard it is just to get to the point of sitting in their chair. Players who win auditions are extremely motivated to show up with their music memorized and perfect for every single rehearsal, sectional, and concert. They are on their first date behavior. So if they fail, there is usually a great reason that has to do with showing up unprepared or being rude to colleagues on a regular basis, or playing louder than the section all the time, or in some cases, showing up to work drunk or something ridiculous. But even when people have a substance abuse problem, the orchestra usually tries to help them first. So, perhaps there could be a probation period after tech interviews the same way we have them? (Actually, my friend told me that the Boston-based company, Wayfair, does this. Do any other companies do this? I think it makes sense for both parties. It's a drag when someone has had to relocate and they don't pass through to tenure, but those are the breaks, I guess.)
It's a pretty drastic oversimplification to say "women have better people skills" but there are definitely personality differences between men and women [1]. (I don't know why this comes as a surprise to anyone) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/
When people see a tech company that's 90% male, they say "Oh well, men and women are different, that's the explaination." So where are the places which are 90% women? Why isn't politics 90% women. Instead it's about ~20% and that's after years of campaigning & activism.
Nursing, teaching. I'm sure there are others, especially if you look at industries and not companies, HR for instance.
But what about the non-gendered "political" things, like trad unions, local political party organisations, universities, other non-gendered clubs, if women are really better at people skills, shouldn't them be dominating those areas in the same way men are dominating STEM? Can you find a group which, at the low levels is about 50:50, and yet women dominate the political/organisational level? How much counter-examples…
Personally, I think "women are good at people skills, men are good at STEM" is a misleading simplification. Men and women have different strengths in people skills. It has been my observation that men are better at treating other people as abstractions, or with some detachment. I don't have it on hand, but I recall seeing some survey where it said women have a harder time working with people they personally dislike.…
that's cool that you know so many people with diverse education, but the absolute ignorance of and disdain towards the social sciences in this thread definitely does not challenge the tech bro stereotype
For example, somebody detected (and published) a 53% extrasensory perception effect (ESP, predict the future), using "methodological sound" social sciences techniques, https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem-prove... . The field is marred with systemic issues, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Replication... > A report by the Open Science Collaboration in August 2015 that was coordinated…
And yet half the people in here are citing Jordan Peterson as if he's an expert.
your intentions don't excuse inappropriate behavior. if you really didn't intend to say something that made someone feel disrespected, your response should be "Oh, I am so sorry, I won't make that kind of comment in the future", not "Well you're wrong for being offended." that kind of response is basically saying "your feelings don't matter, all that matters is what is going on in my head and not what I actually did…
As a person of grammar, I'm offended by the fact that you don't capitalize the first word in your sentences. It doesn't excuse your inappropriate behavior that you may not have intended it.
i have a college degree i know how sentences are supposed to be capitalized lol