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To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

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Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#71

Post by DanBC »

obstacle1 wrote: post #53
primitivesuave wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one. I am merely giving anecdotal evidence that female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. My decision to make a few of our classes into girls-only ones was to allow the girls who felt uncomfortable in a male-dominated setting to still have an opportunity to learn in a setting they found c…

>I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one You literally segregated males from females in your coding class. That is considering them to be different. >female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. So male students aren't peers of female students? Really? I'm pretty sure you're not being purposefully malicious, but jeeze... Your…

You are ignoring all the evidence that young females learn better in single sex classes.

By keeping mixed sex classes you are already putting females at a disadvantage.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#72

Post by scdoshi »

"Assigning a label to myself like “hacker” or “developer” gives me the heebie-jeebies."

This in particular is not limited to women. As a guy from a non-CS background, I felt the same way for a long time. I'd say it's a function of experience rather than gender.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#74

Post by kamaal »

shaan7 wrote: post #43
kamaal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer. What good would that do? If you pass laws that make it difficult to start and sustain a competitive company, next time around you will see such companies would be starting up in some other country. Now the whole ecosystem suffers.

you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees? I know a lot of companies that are the best in their business and never have to. It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.

>>you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees?

Not at all, but to be a "competitive company" you have to be "competitive" which is essentially doing better than your competition. The issue is someone is always willing to put more effort than you/your company. This is where it all breaks down.

This is exactly what makes our profession so much sought after. Because at some point you can make money non linear to your effort, and if you compress that effort into a small period of time you can make a fortune.

For every person that is happy to go back working 4 hours a day, there are people to put in 16 hours a day.

>>It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.

IT professionals in India are not cheap. Compare it with any other profession in India, even engineers. We come out easily as better paid people here.

And even a cursory look at the start up industry across the world, not just in India will tell you what kind of a fierce competition it is.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#75

Post by pyrocat »

animus9 wrote: post #57
_bfhp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's weird is that people assume that this has to do with programming specifically, instead of the larger workings of gender as a social construction and hierarchy (laid upon the material reality of sex dimorphism). Discussing gender isn't weird, men (and many women) just aren't very literate about the thing.

Actually most men who program are just interested in it. Same with the ladies. Discussing gender is irrelevant to this forum. This new age jargon will have a short shelf life once the truth gets out. Those who sow seeds of discord will soon have to reap their crops.

So how's your militant MRA cult going?

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#76

Post by _bfhp »

eXpl0it3r wrote: post #37

It would be really nice to see more females in the industry, but I rally have to ask myself if those artificial promotions will help much. I never learned to program because of some courses or because the industry needed me, I started programming because I wanted to create things. There was just a natural interest in computers and how they work, that's what drove and often still drives me today. If females have the s…

How do you make the determination that the interest is necessarily "natural" when children's minds are so pliable growing up? It's a proven fact that boys and girls are treated differently by their parents and the media, and surely their older peers...

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#77

Post by DanBC »

pyrocat wrote: post #69
kamaal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not about programming. Or anything to do with the profession. Its has much to do with the culture. In my first project near impossible work conditions and deadlines were placed on us. Most of us had to make extreme sacrifices(health wise, socially and in many aspects)- The other option was being out of the job. The problem is you need a supporting family. Here in India, its difficult for women at least socially a…

> "Plus women have to take breaks in their 20's and 30's for maternity reasons." Women aren't required to have kids?

A better reply would have been "we'd like mean to take paternity leave too".

I sometimes wonder if HN commentors ever think that maybe their comments might leave them open to legal liability in some future case.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#78

Post by aortega »

kamaal wrote: post #22
olefoo wrote: post #3

There is nothing about programming computers that is gender specific; in fact it seems kind of weird and awkward that we have to discuss this at all. Given that so many of the foundational figures of the field ( Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, etc. ) were female, the fact that programming and IT became an almost entirely male-dominated profession is suspicious, and should make us question the attitudes and social constru…

Its not about programming. Or anything to do with the profession. Its has much to do with the culture. In my first project near impossible work conditions and deadlines were placed on us. Most of us had to make extreme sacrifices(health wise, socially and in many aspects)- The other option was being out of the job. The problem is you need a supporting family. Here in India, its difficult for women at least socially a…

It's very simple for me: From 20s to 30s most women are having babies, because it's the only time on their lives when they can do it safely. They can go startuping later.

Male coders on their 20s are mostly coding and brofounding because they don't have a better thing to do. IMHO It's even not such a good idea to go having babies at this age for a male because you are mostly broke all the time and you are still a teenager.

When people talk about Female founders or coders I think they mean young pretty female founders. There are few, and for good reasons.

I see no shortage of older females in software managament or software arch. positions and many moms are just fine doing startups on their 50s.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#79

Post by obstacle1 »

_bfhp wrote: post #42
notastartup wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is extremely sexist and needlessly hostile. It's like being male and interested in coding is somehow associated with all the stereotypical male attributes which turns off women from coding. Ah, so we need to have boys acting less like boys because it's clearly why we don't have more women in tech. So we all need to teach teen boys to become meterosexual so it can be more inviting and suitable for females? I thin…

primitivesuave was literally recounting their own experience with young children; are they "sexist", or is describing reality just not to your liking? What does "acting like boys" even mean, may I ask? primitivesuave was taking about the toxic masculinity that involves macho superiority and violence, sorry if it upsets you that that's what masculinity involves. primitivesuave wasn't talking about genitals, they were…

primitivesuave's post is fraught with unconscious sexism. That is the problem.

First he generalizes that all adolescent males put on "pseudo-masculine efforts". No they don't. That's just as much a stereotype as "all girls suck at coding" or whatever stereotype-du-jour militant feminists are raging about this week.

Maybe a few of the students put on "displays" that he considers to be "pseudo-masculine efforts". That is a reflection of his own judgment of stereotypes though, not something innate to adolescent boys.

Then his proposed solution is to segregate males and females to facilitate learning.

Think about that.

Rather than discipline the kids who are acting out, teaching them to act in ways appropriate to civil society, he thinks that segregating boys and girls is the correct play. Even by his own logic, he's perpetuating the gender divide. Rather than stop the "pseudo-masculine efforts", he removes the women from the situation so that said "pseudo-masculine efforts" can continue. It's a really, really bizarre 'solution' when smoothing the gender divide is a stated goal.

It's akin to a company's HR getting complaints from female staff that the male executives are swearing too much or making sexual jokes or _insert_stereotypical_sexist_male_exec_behavior_here_. Rather than addressing the offending behavior, HR chooses to give females the "opportunity" to go have their own meetings down the hall on different days. No sane person thinks that will make strides towards gender equality. It will end in females being relegated to admin/secretary land while the executive boys club carries on.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#80

Post by yeukhon »

smtddr wrote: post #19

To the author of this blog and all ladies reading this: I'm sorry, but just like stories around racial diversity in tech you're about to see a bunch of HN comments making _EVERY EXCUSE CONCEIVABLE_ , and then some, to dismiss your concerns and/or say this blog is doing damage instead of helping. I think they're all wrong, but I can't argue against all of them. All I can do is upvote your supporters and downvote the d…

Downvote simply because someone disagree is like telling other to shut up and don't ever talk about it. That's not the right attitude to respect disagreements.
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