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How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

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Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#71

Post by jaems33 »

stcredzero wrote: post #67
jaems33 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many other demographics in tech that are also under-represented. African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies. Every week on Twitter or HN I see great stories about people trying to advance women's presence in tech. I don't disagree with tha…

> African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies. There is something subtle going on here. Most likely multiple subtle things going on. Unfortunately, they are subtle enough that I have a hard time thinking of ways to gather empirical data concerning these…

Indeed. I've brought up this point numerous times yet no one (besides you) responds. It just seems easy to swath all men as having advantages over women when in fact, divided into subcultures one could argue certain demographics of men do suffer from numerous disadvantages over certain demographics of men and women.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#72

Post by kaybe »

stcredzero wrote: post #67
jaems33 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many other demographics in tech that are also under-represented. African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies. Every week on Twitter or HN I see great stories about people trying to advance women's presence in tech. I don't disagree with tha…

> African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies. There is something subtle going on here. Most likely multiple subtle things going on. Unfortunately, they are subtle enough that I have a hard time thinking of ways to gather empirical data concerning these…

By whom are they interrupted?

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#74

Post by ilaksh »

ahelwer wrote: post #69
ilaksh wrote: post #66

So for me, to be honest, I would be excited to go to this type of event because I hardly ever interact with women. Which is just because my life is sad. LOL. But anyway, I think that to sell it to men would be pretty easy: tell them "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!". To sell it to the women, you would probably tell them the same thing: "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!"…

Hey ilaksh, some of what you have said is actually a big part of the problem. At professional events, you should refrain from seeing women there as holding the potential for interaction outside of a professional setting. Sexualizing women you meet in such contexts is NOT okay.

Excuse me, "sexualizing"??

Just to clarify, what I meant was I would be happy to just literally be having any type of extended interaction with women while I was there. Not flirting with them, or hitting on them, or asking them out, or "sexualizing" them. Just working with them.

First of all, I generally refrain from seeing women as holding the potential for interaction of any sort in any sort of setting. Mostly because I generally don't interact with them, but also because I am bad at socializing in general and also because I have personal priorities to take care of before I am willing to attempt dating again. I'm short, not particularly attractive, I have a health issue that causes me to feel and look fatigued a lot of the time, and I'm not particularly well-off financially.

So I get that. No female in a working context ever wants to date _me_ or have any interaction with me outside of a professional one. I got that many years ago. Thanks for re-iterating that.

Anyway, I can understand that women are tired of being hit on at work. They are just really really sick of it. So I get the motivation for your comment. But to suggest that, based on my comment, I was "sexualizing" women was not fair or accurate, and the reality is that some of the women who attend a hackathon would not mind one single bit if a man who was there who they felt was attractive flirted with them a small amount.

So I think that the truth is that not every woman in every circumstance in regards to every man at every event like that would agree that there is no potential for interaction outside of a professional setting whatsover with every man there. Its worth emphasizing to keep things professional, but you definitely overstated things the way you worded your comment.

But anyway, don't worry. If I ever attend such a hacker event with women (which I probably never will, realistically, I hardly leave my home, and I am really bad at making friends, even among hackers), I will never consider having any kind of friendly or otherwise social engagement or interaction with any of the women there aside from one that is 100% professional. Thank you for setting me straight.

My mistake for being honest.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#75

Post by jholman »

roguecoder wrote: post #45
ninetax wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are enough high-quality women programmers out there to have 50/50 gender balance (obviously) Do you have a source for that?

I was referring to this specific hackathon, which obviously succeeded. More generally, Computer Programmers as a whole are 22% women. Many hackathons where I am are wildly oversubscribed; any hackathon that is at least 127% oversubscribed should, if they have average gender representation for the profession, be able to have a 50/50 split. Since I've seen 2x or 3x oversubscription rates, that is not unreasonable. If y…

So, it's not at all clear that there are, in fact, enough high-quality female programmers to have a 50/50 split in the field at large, which is clearly the important point.

But I really started this comment to pick a few minor nits. So feel free to ignore the entire comment.

1) They didn't achieve 50%, actually, even with all that work.

2) 127 * 0.22 = 28% . Assuming your industry estimates are correct, you're going to need better than 100% oversubscription to get 50% women, actually.

3) And even that only assumes random sampling. Which is actually clearly a crazy assumption. And I would take this hackathon as proof of that, actually.

4) I'm now on a team that's roughly 13% female. That's a new maximum for my career. So with that in mind, I'm curious where you got that 22% figure.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#76

Post by ahelwer »

ilaksh wrote: post #74
ahelwer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey ilaksh, some of what you have said is actually a big part of the problem. At professional events, you should refrain from seeing women there as holding the potential for interaction outside of a professional setting. Sexualizing women you meet in such contexts is NOT okay.

Excuse me, "sexualizing"?? Just to clarify, what I meant was I would be happy to just literally be having any type of extended interaction with women while I was there. Not flirting with them, or hitting on them, or asking them out, or "sexualizing" them. Just working with them. First of all, I generally refrain from seeing women as holding the potential for interaction of any sort in any sort of setting. Mostly beca…

Oh! I'm sorry if I came off as insensitive. I didn't mean to criticize you as a person or anything. I was trying to convey that your post held undertones which weren't really compatible with the goals of events promoting women in tech.

Sexualizing doesn't have as extreme connotations as you seem to think; like a lot of sexism these days, its manifestations are much more subtle.

Anywho, I hope you go to one of these hackathons! It's easy to make friends when you just respect and treat everyone equally, man or woman (or extra-binary adjective).

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#77

Post by drhowarddrfine »

cletus wrote: post #19

Is it just me or does all this talk about women in tech and efforts to balance things out (artificially) just devalue what good work women engineers are doing? It's the classic affirmative action problem: if you lower the bar for one group in the eyes of everyone else members of that group are viewed as having less merit regardless of whether or not its true. I'm all for having more good female engineers because I'm…

If a female wants to be a good engineer, they will do so. Obviously most women don't want to do that for the same reason I don't want to be a good women's clothing designer or seamstress.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#78

Post by yummyfajitas »

roguecoder wrote: post #49
yummyfajitas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this paper shows is that men compete just as hard even if you give preferences to women. It does not address the question of whether lowering the bar for some people will lower the overall average or the average for that subgroup (hint: it will - this is almost a mathematical identity).

Who said anything about lowering the bar for anyone? There is no bar to attend most hackathons, no qualifying heats or even resume screening. You also assume that lowering the bar inherently attracts less-qualified people than the marginal alternative participant. That is not true unless the outcome you care about is whatever bar you are using to measure and people accurately self-assess (or universally apply). For e…

Who said anything about lowering the bar for anyone?

Cletus, in the post you replied to.

As for using gender as a predictor in admissions, you'd also need to penalize high scoring women (and reward the low scoring ones). I have no particular objection to any of this.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/08/variance-induce.html

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#79

Post by kevinpet »

stcredzero wrote: post #63
kevinpet wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you gave preference to women makes your whole blog post utter bullshit. You could have written a very good blog post about "our hackathon was better because we ensured it wasn't dominated by men" and it could have been true. But instead you wrote a blog post about these little tricks that might help a little bit, but are likely completely dominated by turning away men.

> But instead you wrote a blog post about these little tricks that might help a little bit, but are likely completely dominated by turning away men. I don't see the problem with this. If you wish, you can hold your own hackathon without 50/50 male:female enrollment.

> If you wish, you can hold your own hackathon without 50/50 male:female enrollment.

When did I ever say anything critical of their limiting attendees? If they want to do that, that's their business.

If they want to write a blog post about a bunch of tricks that might help your event be more inviting to women, that's great too.

The problem is with representing the results as due to those tricks while ignoring the other hugely significant factor (limiting attendees).

Consider this: how about I write a blog post about how I changed my headline color from red to green and got a 300% increase in sign ups. Oh, by the way, I also added a free usage tier at the same time, but that's more complex and I didn't want to include it in the same blog post. You should definitely use green for headlines, though.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#80

Post by stcredzero »

kaybe wrote: post #72
stcredzero wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies. There is something subtle going on here. Most likely multiple subtle things going on. Unfortunately, they are subtle enough that I have a hard time thinking of ways to gather empirical data concerning these…

By whom are they interrupted?

The wait staff and by others at the table. I think there's a subconscious perceived status thing that just makes interruption less likely for "white" men. Granted, this is just my perception. Data would be good. I should probably search the social psychology literature.
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