Why so many politically correct people on HN?
Not everybody, of course. But enough to discern a pattern. Programming requires the kind of intellectual rigor and purity that’s incompatible with political correctness. On a good number of the threads, you don’t see enough of the kind of reductionist thinking that one would apply to hacking, applied to just ideas in general. Two examples: every once in a while, the topic of how difficult it is to learn to program well will pop up. And the general consensus often seems to be that anybody can learn to hack well and that learning how to program well has little to do with how smart you are. It’s hard to see how anybody who knows how to program can deny that abstract thinking capacity is a serious factor in learning how to code; and that it isn’t distributed evenly. Second is the issue of why there are so few female hackers or women in technology overall. How many millions of dollars have been pumped into efforts to get girls interested in tech. The results are always dismal. The thinking, even on here, seems to be that women don’t have enough good role models. Hard to believe if you think about it for a second. So few people are willing to admit that the reason women generally don’t get into tech is because they’re not interested in it. I don’t know many females in my life who’d rather spend hours focusing on impersonal abstractions rather than people. It’s generally not a female inclination. This phenomenon plays itself out in college classrooms all over America. How many female nerds do you know? Would be great if more people were honest about what they really believed.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 32.8 ms ] threaddoes that mean i'm politically correct?
You're partly right, I think, but you have to take into account group psychology. People like being in groups. A lot of women probably don't go into tech (or condition themselves not to be interested in tech) because there are few women in tech at present. For example, assuming you are a male, pick any occupation (even a well-paid one) where 95% of employees are women, then spend a few weeks there. Very soon you will be tired of listening to other women talk about nails, babies, and other female business. Now the same applies, in reverse, to women who are afraid of joining a male-dominated field. It's a self-perpetuating pattern.
Why are you implying we're not? I do believe there is no big issue with female developers, apart from the fact they (still) don't fit the typical female role idea in the minds of too many people. Most girls will follow the group and do what their older friends / family / ... did and where they feel they should be. And that simply does not include "nerdy" positions.
Then again there's the thing discussed a couple of months ago - too many developer communities are just unused to women developers and create weird situations. Bring up some project on typical forums and mention the name of a woman leading it. See how many will turn into "look, it's made by a woman and she's pretty too" threads, forgetting the project itself completely. Point it out and you'll meet with lots of aggression :(
Surprisingly, I did meet a few women leading interesting software projects and a number of developers - majority of them in eastern Europe. In UK, I haven't met any... (apart from those who migrated) Just a data point.
> the reason women generally don’t get into tech is because they’re not interested in it
This is the interesting part. The real question is - are they not interested because society makes them think they shouldn't be or because women are naturally different from men in a way that makes them not interested. I think we'll only find out once "geek girl" stops being a bad thing for teenagers and guys in development stop being more interested in the "woman" part of "woman developer" (in work context at least).
Whether we really need to fight that hard to change the current situation is a completely different question though. Maybe it just needs time and 1-2 generations to correct itself.
My wife is a senior Oracle DBA. She's very technical. She has great Unix skills on top of her Oracle knowledge.
I know plenty of women like that in tech. Intelligent, highly skilled, motivated. In fact, almost all of the women I've worked with in software development fit that description.
On the other hand, the majority of men I've worked with in software development are just putting in time. They're working 15/30, collecting their pay, running their fantasy football league from their desk. They don't really understand what they do, but there's always someone willing to carry them.
Why the imbalance? The women who aren't interested in tech move on to something else, leaving behind the good ones. The men who aren't interested in tech linger on, becoming a burden (Wally!).
I wish the uninterested, uninspired men would move on as well. It's no fun having a team lead who spends his days surfing porn, YouTube, and NASCAR.
Specifically, I have met one female developer in my entire life, and I have been in a hiring position for 11 years now.
Additionally, I have yet to meet even one male developer who cares about NASCAR, fantasy football, or works to simply punch the clock.
In my world( that would be the web technology and retail automation industries of Orange County and Phoenix ), female developers effectively don't exist, and male developers care deeply for the technology they use and create.
Your hiring experience sounds unusual. You never get resumes from women? You never interview guys who sound good on paper, but turn out to be duds?
As for the females, I can honestly say I have received maybe one or two resumes from a female for a developer position, in my life.
The way you advertise jobs will have a large influence on the type of people who apply. Word of mouth through your all-male developer network isn't likely to reach female developers. The tone of your ads may discourage women from applying (a PDF study: dbem.ws/Sex%20biased%20ads.pdf).
The benefits you offer may also discourage women. Vacation time, flexible hours, and maternity leave tend to be as important to mothers or would-be mothers as health and dental coverage (as a father those things are also important to me, but I know dads who don't care). If you've got benefits that only a young single guy could love, you'll get young single guys applying.
And then there's your reputation. Software development is a surprisingly small, connected industry. If you've only interviewed one female developer in 11 years (the maximum if you've only ever met one), that statistic is out there. Perhaps women don't apply because they've heard you don't hire women or don't even interview them.
If you're not getting female developers applying for jobs, you're missing out on half the talent out there. You may want to check your network on LinkedIn and find out where they are working and why. And more importantly, why they're not interested in working for you.
I wish I had the answer why women are not interested, but from what I see from inside the industry as well as from what I hear from my non-tech gfs, there are many components.
Missing role models are one of them. Before you go dismiss that off hand because it doesn't fit your world view, how many female role models can you name? How many male ones? Notice something there?
Then there is the fact that quite a few guys get very defensive if you even mention the idea of interesting women in tech. It comes across as not wanting them around.
In my previous industry (games) you can also add in that many places are a frat house on steroids - not too appealing to a lot of women.