
I'm not a Woman in Tech - triplesec
https://communequation.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/im-not-a-woman-in-tech/
======
meej
"You’re victimising me when you do that. You’re indicating that it’s most
likely I need special, extra support. Just because I’m female."

This is exactly how I felt during my Microsoft internship in 1998 when the
internal women's organization, HOPPERS, decided to change their successful
"intern buddy" program from opt-in to opt-out. (Well, not really opt-out,
because until I got upset with them about it they clearly never considered
that anyone might want to opt out.) Despite being only one of two women, both
interns, on a team of 40 people, I never felt anything other than welcomed by
my team and never felt singled out or harassed because of my gender. As such,
I felt quite insulted by the assumption that I needed an "intern buddy" just
because I'm a woman in a male-dominated field. A long email thread with the
head of the organization ensued, and in the end I did not have the intern
buddy that I never asked for in the first place.

I wholeheartedly support the self-organization of underrepresented groups to
create safe spaces. However, when participation in such efforts is compelled
by things like special awards for members of underrepresented groups in tech
or being assigned an "intern buddy" without your knowledge or consent just
because you are a member of an underrepresented group, that's not a safe
space. That's a ghetto.

~~~
unidentified103
I don't quite understand how a corporate policy like an "intern buddy" can be
compared to a ghetto or even how it remotely hurts you in the same way that an
unspoken "boys club" office setting would. A corporate policy like that is
pretty clearly an impersonal management-type fluff program that does not solve
every problem that could possibly arise from sexism, but that serves a
resource for a few people desperately in need of it (and pretending that there
are not people desperately in need of it is part of the problem). Furthermore,
refusing to participate in a program that could give you connections and
special insight out of some misguided principle that we must maintain the
appearance that everyone is treated equally is very strange to me. While you
were refusing assistance out of principle, your colleagues were offered
opportunities, encouraged into management, etc. at varying rates based on
process that can in no way be described as meritocratic.

~~~
tomc1985
The mere offering of assistance to people who do not need it, and feel they
should not need it, can be construed as insulting.

EDIT: As mentioned to in another comment, "Special treatment feels
condescending."

~~~
unidentified103
Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a _ghetto_? Is
your pride really so hurt that someone wanted to help you out around the
office that you refuse to believe that you could have learned anything useful
from it? You can't even come out of it with another friend, a future business
contact, an interpersonal skill, deeper knowledge of a workplace tool? It's
great if some people don't think they need help overcoming sexist barriers in
the office, some people do. No need to over-complicate it.

~~~
tomc1985
Because it implies an opinion of weakness to the party offering said "help".
Many people do not need or want help and forcing it on them only serves to
enforce hidden power dynamics on behalf of the requestor.

What I really don't understand is how we men can act so innocent about all
this. "Oh, I was just asking a question," "I didn't force her to do anything,"
"she was free to decline," "what, how could you not want help? Think of all
the [rationalizations]!" and so on....

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Intentions are as clear as the sky on a sunny day...

People who see others as equals treat people differently than those who think
they see a potential partner, or victim, or lackey...

EDIT: Also, "mansplaining"

~~~
unidentified103
So am I supposed to feel equally condescended to by the man in upper
management who calls me "sweetie" and the woman who has organized some person
to show me around the office and introduce me to people? Okay.

~~~
weberc2
Why interpret one charitably and not the other? I survived being called
"honey" by a woman in management; I didn't take offense because it would never
occur to me to spin a well-intentioned comment for victim points. I fully
realize that cute nicknames can be used in condescending tones, but then the
issue is being condescending, not the nickname. I also realize that the
genders are reversed, and that's supposed to make the nickname more offensive
or invalidate my opinion or something; just to head this one off early--it
doesn't.

------
fruzz
There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is.
I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers,
but other people have, and they need these words and spaces.

Take my previous job. Women were objectified on Slack. A woman was groped,
though she didn't report it out of concern for the repercussions. In meetings
execs, male execs would only address/look at the men, not the women. The
company was 91% men, even though 24% of the workforce for those jobs in the
area was female.

My friends in another high-profile company in the area were sexually harassed,
though they felt like they couldn't report it. They simply left the job.

I've mentored young women in high school interested in STEM in a program
specific for them. The content is the same, but there's value in having these
to counter the obstacles specific to women that they'll face.

I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female
peers discuss. Not all women encounter these, but as a group, it's undeniable
that there's extra obstacles.

~~~
Dove
> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles

I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter
problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for
that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a
pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they
wind up in jobs they _need_ , in a way we never will, which opens them up for
a different kind of abuse in the workplace. Men experience such pressure to
succeed that they sacrifice their health and well-being, sometimes their life,
in the effort to succeed, and that seems pretty terrible. And there are
cultural reasons for _that_ and blah blah blah.

I really don't think it's useful to try to calculate who has it worse.
Workplace abuse is bad. Let's oppose it. Sexual harassment is bad. Let's
oppose it. Which is worse? Who cares? They're kind of incomparable anyway.
Let's not waste time on _that_. Let's all agree to oppose these things and
help those who suffer!

I'm not saying opposing sexual harassment is a waste of time. That's
absolutely a good thing to do. And I'm not saying women as a group don't have
a specific set of issues and problems it makes sense to address as a set. I
think sometimes they do. But I am saying focusing on that and saying, "and
therefore WOMEN HAVE PROBLEMS AND MEN DON'T" is a bit myopic, and I don't
really think it helps either of us.

We've all got problems, some of our own making, some due to family or history,
or . . . sometimes we just randomly walk into someone else's problems. People
have genetic diseases. People have deformities. People have nutritional
problems and religious obligations and sick relatives. And people overcome
these things because they're AMAZING! Let us not bother keeping score. Let us
be compassionate and kind and support those we see in trouble. Let us expect,
without exception, that everyone will be treated well.

~~~
koaladevops
edit : clearly hackernews is not my audience.

~~~
lotharbot
Dove is a woman.

(Source: I'm her husband.)

EDIT: the issue isn't the Hacker News audience; the issue is that you were
wrong in your assumption that Dove was male, and your entire comment depended
on that assumption. There is no audience for which you could write that
comment where it would have been correct (though some audiences might have
cheered it, that would be a fault, not a virtue, of theirs.)

One of the beautiful things about the HN community is that we expect and
welcome disagreement -- but we hold it to high standards. We expect people to
read whole comments and engage in the actual ideas expressed, not to skim and
then rail at straw men. You are welcome here, and you are welcome to disagree
with the _ideas_ expressed in Dove's comment -- but we will not demean you by
excusing low-quality, low-content, personally-targeted rants as the best you
can do.

~~~
koaladevops
> One of the beautiful things about the HN community is that we expect and
> welcome disagreement

don't think this is really true ... in any online community.

My comment would have been the same regardless of gender. Since apparently I
can't articulate what I meant, let me direct to a blog post written by better
writers than me : [https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/phmt-
arg...](https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/phmt-argument/)

~~~
lotharbot
> _" don't think this is really true ... in any online community."_

Stick around and give us the opportunity to surprise you ;)

> _" My comment would have been the same regardless of gender."_

You might have intended the same point, but I suspect you would have
articulated it differently. There were a few lines like "We probably are under
more pressure than you" or "Everything is about you all the time anyway" that
don't make sense directed toward a woman, for example.

> _" direct to a blog post"_

Thanks. I think that helps me articulate my own disagreement better (and also
some agreement, though I won't focus much on that.)

In essence, you're approaching the issue from the perspective that talking
about men's issues "silence" women's perspectives, and you believed Dove's
comment was an uninvited insertion of men's issues. It wasn't. Instead, it was
the _same type of meta-commentary as the blog post_ \-- it was about _how to
have the discussion effectively without silencing the relevant perspectives_ ,
specifically, why trying to "keep score" is an ineffective approach (as a
direct response to a scorekeeping comment) and why _that_ approach inherently
silences key perspectives. The approach that says "group X has it worse than
group Y" invites competition and pushback rather than understanding and
collaboration. The natural consequence of a comparison is for people to argue
the comparison, which takes the focus away from the actually-relevant issues,
and thereby silences actually-relevant perspectives in favor of tangential
perspectives and pointless noise-making.

In a broader sense: every "civil right" or "human right" happens at the
intersection between people, groups, and/or institutions. Whenever we're
talking about rights, we're talking about the boundary between what we are
entitled to (both "to do" and "to be"), and what we are restricted from
because it interferes with another. Whether we're talking women's rights,
men's rights, LGBT rights, economic rights, religious rights, immigrant's
rights, parental rights, children's rights, or any other type of rights, it's
always about how we as a whole interact with each other. There are two
conceptually different approaches to how we approach the discussion, and IMO
one of them is far more effective than the other.

One approach is to treat rights as group-specific, and to create a hierarchy
of rights violations. To say, this is a women's issue and it's worse than what
men face, and talking about men experiencing literally the exact same thing is
a distraction. This hierarchical approach (which the blog post criticizes in
its quoted point #5) invites competition and one-upmanship and tribalism among
"insiders" and "outsiders". It invites "patriarchy hurts men too" comments as
a way for men to attempt to improve their position on the scoreboard.

The other, IMO better, approach is to treat rights as universal, and then to
apply the universal to the specific. For example, all humans have the right to
life, and we recognize that right is threatened by domestic violence,
particularly for women. So we highlight that issue as a women's rights issue,
but not exclusively so -- and we also recognize that solutions are not
explicitly women's solutions. This approach invites us to hear women's
perspectives and to elevate those perspectives because they represent a large
part of the whole (and allows for women-only discussions to particularly
highlight those perspectives, but does not treat that as the default
expectation.) It also invites the broader community to participate in holistic
understanding and unified, compassionate support. It invites us to treat each
others' civil rights as participatory, to transform our own actions for the
sake of one another, and to treat our underlying humanity as a uniting force
that allows us to respect our differences and hold one another in high esteem.

~~~
rectang
Eventually, those "universal" rights have to be applied to an out-group or
they are meaningless. There's no avoiding a conflict. Look at the hundreds of
messages on this page which sum to "nothing is wrong, change nothing".

~~~
lotharbot
> _" those "universal" rights have to be applied to an out-group"_

Yes, absolutely! That's why I used the term "universal". They apply to
everyone, not just favored groups.

> _" hundreds of messages on this page which sum to "nothing is wrong""_

A few. Most, you're reading uncharitably. I'd summarize the most common theme
as more like "we've misidentified the precise problem, and as a result our
solutions are ineffective or worse."

> _" There's no avoiding a conflict."_

Some types of conflict are essential and inevitable. Others are optional and
unnecessary.

When you apply universal rights to a group that has been dehumanized, there is
_necessary_ conflict between those who wish to continue dehumanization and
those who wish to end it.

But when you treat rights like a contest, you introduce _unnecessary_
conflict, by creating incentives for various groups to try to knock one
another down in order to compete for a more favorable spot in the hierarchy.

Focus on resolving necessary conflict, not artificially generating unnecessary
conflict.

------
BlackjackCF
As a queer woman in tech... I feel this so much.

I don't really know where to sit on this. It's a bit confusing for me. I
understand the need for "X minority group in tech" events, I really do. I
think it helps newcomers and people who feel like they're at the fringe find a
community.

At the same time, I DO find it a little weird at times to go to "LGBTQ-only",
"Asian-only", or "women-only" events. It just kind of reminds me of... this
reverse-frat mentality.

Going to events with ONE homogenous group just really skeezes me out for some
reason.

~~~
ehsanu1
I think the "-only" part is the problem. Marketing and naming events for
minority groups is fine, but they would ideally be welcoming of all groups not
part of the minority. Now it might still seem slightly funny for any old
person to take part in an event called "black girls code", but it's better
than excluding them entirely and I'd hope that most such events are inclusive
of all groups.

~~~
athenot
> but it's better than excluding them entirely and I'd hope that most such
> events are inclusive of all groups

"Most"?

No, the point is for _ALL_ events to be inclusive. Instead of combatting
exlusion with isolation, it would be far better to strengthen the message that
it really doesn't matter what labels other have put on you: if you have a
desire in skill X, then come to this event with other people who are further
along and learn from them, _irrespective of their label_. And conversly, if
you are skilled in X, come spread the skill to anyone who's got a desire,
_irrespective of their label_.

------
paperpunk
She makes a good point when she says "I’m already here, people. So I’m not the
problem you’re trying to solve."

I think what a lot of these kinds of posts miss is that efforts to bring women
into tech generally aren't aimed at the kind of women who have always done
tech, have always wanted to do tech, and participate in the tech community
despite their gender. Those women are the die-hards who largely will ignore
gender barriers because of their enthusiasm for the field. But if we want to
improve the gender ratio we have to think about how to appeal to the women who
don't fall into that category too.

I do consider myself a "woman in tech" but that doesn't mean I want special
treatment. I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by smart, passionate people of
all genders and don't really suffer much sexism with regards to my work. What
I do want is more women colleagues and I support initiatives aiming to achieve
that.

Full disclosure: I run a student branch of the Women's Engineering Society
here in the UK, although we are far from a women's only group. Most of our
events are about 50/50.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I don't consider getting women into tech as the only problem facing our
industry. Because once they get in, a lot of them face abuse.

Nobody is saying you should get special treatment. Only that we need to
acknowledge and label a problem in order for it to have visibility so we can
make the problem better.

She also says:

"I also wish gay rights == human rights. If you throw a parade celebrating
women who did awesome shit in STEMM and invite the world to join, I’m in and
I’m bringing pom-poms!)"

So, wouldn't you take this as saying that the gay rights movement should
change their entire PR to advance "human rights" and not gay rights? How do
you solve a problem and market a problem without actually calling it out?

This all feels like she is reading too much into a label.

~~~
xxSparkleSxx
While true, the more women you get into tech the more than can end up at the
top in tech. The more women at the top of a tech company or working in VC, the
more diversity we have at the top which (hopefully) leads to the sexist men at
the top being held accountable by their peers.

If that can happen, then there will likely be a decrease in abuse towards new
comers in the field. Yay!

------
aphextron
>I want inclusivity, not exclusivity.

Thank you. I find myself feeling the exact same way as a black man in this
industry, and cringe at "minority only" events and clubs. We don't need token
inclusion and separate praise for being "brave" and "fighting against the
odds". We need a world where those things are irrelevant.

~~~
serg_chernata
Watching from the sidelines as a white male, I have to say that I find these
kinds of situations so confusing. Some people want these differences to be
highlighted, while others like yourself want the complete opposite. I'm left
believing that my only choice is to have no opinion. Though I lean towards
your stance across the board.

~~~
treehau5
> I'm left believing that my only choice is to have no opinion.

I learned this lesson a long time ago from the role models in my life that
ended up getting burned because of having a differing viewpoint from whatever
societal winds were blowing. I, and I realize probably cynically, now only
elect to share, post, tweet, or whatnot whatever only can positively benefit
my "brand". Sometimes I have to act like my own PR person, because if I
learned anything, anything you say _can_ and most likely probably _will_ be
used against you. Working in foodservice for 8 years before switching to
developer taught me if something you say doesn't offend or piss someone off,
you just haven't ran into the right person yet.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
> _because if I learned anything, anything you say can and most likely
> probably will be used against you._

Even right now, writing on a niche message board using a fake name, I'm
hesitant to voice my honest opinions about _anything_ related to race or
gender or other topic like that. it's like there's an army of internet people
waiting for you to mess up and will punish you with controversy and/or
honestly try and get you fired.

~~~
scruple
Absolutely. 9/10 of the comments that I write on HN never see the light of
day. And not just on HN, but pretty much every social media platform I engage
with.

I don't feel like I have anything particularly controversial, inflammatory, or
offensive to say. But, I so strongly don't want to be perceived that way that
I just opt-out most of the time.

~~~
mpweiher
"Ask your doctor if Fukitol® is right for you" ;-)

------
DavidWoof
As a straight white male, this type of thing has never affected me directly.

But as a programmer who's now in his 50s, I'm starting to get a very tiny
taste of the same emotions. There was an article on HN just a few days ago
about "why you should hire older programmers" which I felt to be deeply,
deeply offensive in a way I found hard to articulate. Why are you putting
labels on me? Why are you pretending there's something special about this
aspect of me that's completely irrelevant to my tech skills? It really
bothered me, and I couldn't figure out how to respond to it.

I couldn't imagine being inundated with this stuff on a daily basis. If there
were "older programmer" meetups or if HR were reaching out to me to put me in
outreach materials or if I had to read articles like this all the time, I
honestly don't know well how I'd deal with it. It's easy to deal with the
occasional age discrimination in the industry (which is definitely out there),
but it's actual this other aspect of it that I find infuriating.

~~~
kowdermeister
We can't exists without labels. There are no lab-white programmers out there
pure as a function. I missed that article, but older probably meant more
experienced. You shouldn't be offended, but it's up to you.

I try to avoid labels too, but I can't escape it. In a room full of firmware
engineers I would be the "web guy", I'm fine with that.

There are "older programmer" meetups, it's just not called that way. A friend
of mine visited a smalltalk meetup in London and he sad it was a couple of
guys in their 50-s. He really enjoyed it.

I think it's much better to learn to live with labels (after all you can
invent your own) than being constantly pissed off about them.

~~~
DavidWoof
> I would be the "web guy"

> smalltalk meetup in London and he sad it was a couple of guys in their 50-s

These examples sound to me like the _exact_ opposite of what was being
discussed here. In both cases, these are examples of labeling based on
technical skill or interest, the complete polar opposite of what's being
discussed here.

> than being constantly pissed off

I don't see how either myself or OP said anything like this. In fact, I tried
to emphasize how I had experienced only a tiny taste of this kind of thing.

~~~
kowdermeister
How is this the complete opposite? Tangent at worst :) Labels are labels, it
doesn't really matter to me if it's a tech label or something I can't control.
If I can't control it, then I don't care about it.

~~~
DavidWoof
Well, because the discussion is about labelling people based on non-technical
personal attributes. You're discussing the exact opposite type of label.

If you honestly don't see any difference between somebody being called "the
web guy" on a daily basis and making assumptions about your skill based on
that title, as opposed to somebody being called "the black dev" on a daily
basis and having people making assumptions about skills based on that title,
then I don't think anything I say here can possibly make a difference.

------
Pxtl
It's hard to know what's right on this stuff. For every woman like Maria,
there's another woman saying that exclusive events helped her get over her
fears and join in. There are women who celebrated their geeky side and then
were scared off by men who, for whatever reason, couldn't manage to treat her
like one of the boys.

Some areas of tech have reached that terrible threshold where women aren't
just a minority, they're ultra-rare. This makes the problem worse as they
become a black hole for all the attention, both positive and negative (and
that terrible combination of both where a million lonely young men chase the
one woman who is Like Them). Even if you subscribe to the idea that the
apparent disinterest of women in the field is not a real problem, you can't
deny that it's bad when they start facing the effects of being a "fringe
group".

~~~
danesparza
"It's hard to know what's right on this stuff"

Perhaps. After all, we're a very diverse species, humans. But please don't use
this as an excuse to stop engaging.

------
076ae80a-3c97-4
I really agree with this. It has always disturbed me when a push for female
developers is mentioned; a company should be focused on acquiring the best
developers they can, not finding ones of a specific gender. This behaviour is
literally an example of the problem it is trying to resolve. To the company I
work for, I am a software engineer, not a man or woman.

~~~
falsedan
> _a company should be focused on acquiring the best developers they can, not
> finding ones of a specific gender_

I agree, that's why I think companies should consider what is putting off
women & why the gender balance in tech is so heavily weighted towards males.

That is, most companies (regardless of conscious choice) are finding the best
(young, white) male developers only.

~~~
amiga-workbench
I don't think the fault lies at the employment level.

I think the societal biases are imprinted in people during their social
development.

Girls are less likely to be given the equipment and backing to get into
software development at an early age, and their peers would rarely understand
such an interest.

The field and the associated character traits around it are viewed as nerdy or
boring, the people who don't give a stuff about such judgements seem to be the
people who do gain an interest in the field and consider working in it.

~~~
hyperdunc
Biases are not just socially constructed - they're often rooted in biology. It
might just be the case that for biological reasons, females (in general)
aren't as interested in creating technology.

The gender imbalance in fields like programming and nursing is larger in the
most "fair and evolved" societies (e.g. Denmark), because these societies
allow biological gender differences to more freely assert themselves.

~~~
amiga-workbench
Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome is something I very strongly
agree with, I would be mortified to be given handouts because of a particular
box I fit in.

Affirmative action reeks of plastering over a bug instead of squashing it at
the root cause.

------
tuna-piano
1\. Take a look at this chart[1] and let me know

(1) Which professions have a gender diversity problem? and

(2) Given that the population's gender ratio is ~50/50, which male stone mason
(99.5% male) do you want to be a preschool teacher (97% female) and which
preschool teacher do you want to make into a stone mason?

I've seen a bizarre thing with a certain portion of women in tech, which this
article kind of alludes to. Instead of being interested in new technology or
being really interested in tech itself, some number are interested in "women
in tech". It's bizarre, and I believe a symptom of this effort to bring women
into tech by emphasizing that they're women. Women/Men/Whatever should just be
people in tech, stop focusing on gender and get to work.

[1] [https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-
perce...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-
women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html)

~~~
odiroot
AFAIR the real statistics work even more in your favour. In many countries
many women don't join the work force so the gender ratio is not 50/50 (even
ignoring that in multiple populations men outnumber women until around 40 year
mark).

One anecdote: throughout my childhood I didn't know men are allowed into
education because 100% of my teachers until university were women. On the
other hand pretty much until 2000s basically all the police force were men.

------
projectramo
Okay, so here is the thing: nobody wants to make the labels explicit, or to
think about the minority or female labels.

The reason that has come into style is because people have implicit
associations and biases. And the theory is the best way to deal with them is
to explicitly think about it.

Example.

You're hiring for a position. It is very technical. You see a bunch of
candidates and then you just think some would be better suited to the
technical role than the others.

Now, let's say you think: let me notice the gender.

Oh, this is funny. All the ones I rejected from the technical role as being
"better suited to marketing" happen to be female. Am I being fair to them?

Now you reread the resume only focusing on the actual skills and you find that
some of the people you rejected have stronger technical skills but you
unconsciously downplayed it because of the female name.

(Or, vice versa, you rejected a male name for not being "the marketing type"
when perhaps their resume suggests otherwise).

It would be better to read the resume without the gender clues. (Names
removed, sorority and fraternity info removed, women organization removed etc)
But without that I think we make it explicit just so we have a shot at
examining the things we don't make explicit.

That is the theory, anyway.

~~~
BearGoesChirp
>Now you reread the resume only focusing on the actual skills and you find
that some of the people you rejected have stronger technical skills but you
unconsciously downplayed it because of the female name.

Wasn't there a recent study that removing names led to the percentage of men
being interviewed increasing?

~~~
___another
a recent example: a github conference on diversity, see here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6f1a2d/cult...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6f1a2d/culture_war_roundup_for_week_following_june_3/dig0m7f/)

~~~
opportune
The example itself is interesting (and truly very revealing) but I kind of
wish you hadn't included that reddit thread with it. It was weird seeing some
pretty cringey replies get so heavily upvoted. Perhaps it's just the increased
anonymity of reddit that's the cause, or the particular demo browsing that
subreddit.

------
renlo
My sister was a software engineer. She wasn't ever a part of those women-only
developer groups. She just really liked programming. It wasn't a political
statement, and I don't think I've ever heard her talk about 'sexism in the
workplace' that everyone else seems to love to talk about.

She left her engineering job to raise her children. My mother was completely
against this move though because my mother (also originally a software
engineer) thought it was bad form that an educated female engineer would leave
the workforce and 'waste her life as a stay at home mom' (paraphrased), and
that my sister needed to set a good example as a professional woman or
something.

I kind of think it's all silly that my mother would push for this, but I do
understand it, because when my mother was a software engineer things were
pretty bad. However, I think these days it's pushing the point too far.

~~~
jd75
Of course your sister should make her own choices, but the pressure on a mom
in tech to leave is still absolutely immense. The more of us who tough it out,
the better for our daughters.

~~~
renlo
It would be great if there was more part-time work in tech in general. Seems
as though this would be something everyone (mothers, single or married
men/women) could benefit from.

Not to be too personal, genuinely curious, what do you hope to gain by
'toughing it out'? A better workplace for your daughters? Or to set an example
or something? Coming from someone with a mother who 'toughed it out', I rarely
saw my mother growing up, and only really saw her when she became a consultant
much later.

~~~
jd75
I enjoy making things with code. I like earning a check. Why do you stay in
your job?

It makes me sad to think my kids will think I didn't do enough for them one
day, but dads have been working full-time for ages. You're not the first
person who has pressured me to go part-time, either.

~~~
Caveman_Coder
>It makes me sad to think my kids will think I didn't do enough for them one
day

Why do you assume they will look at your decision to stay home (I won't call
it "not working" since it is arguably more stressful and difficult than
working at an office) and think that you didn't do enough for them?

------
tawayyy
I agree with what Maria says. One huge problem at this point, is that the
"women in tech" problem is completely dominated by activists in this field,
that does not happen to be always very balanced in their visions. Normal
people try to disappear when there are those kind of discussions, because they
escalate easily, and you can get hurt in many ways. So we as a community of
programmers, should try to get more involved to avoid that only people with
extreme over-reacting thoughts handle it.

~~~
notyourday
Worse, lots of those activists aren't themselves "women in tech" rather they
are "women doing <xyz> in companies that identify as 'tech'"

------
yakult
This is a story about misaligned incentives and social status.

Having the special programs lowers the social status of the demographic it
targets, because it suggests those people are not good enough to climb the
ladder through meritocratic means. _At the time_ they do lower the hurdle for
the demographic seeking to enter the industry and/or get ahead, fairly or
otherwise. In otherwords, there is a tradeoff between social status and
initial growth.

Whether this is a favorable trade depends largely on where you sit. If you're
high up already, you would likely prefer the programs to go away since they
hurt your status by associating you with the low-status newbies while not
giving you much. On the other hand if you've just submitted your resume on
BigTechCo's website like a thousand others, it's much more likely to get read
by a human if they have some kind of affirmative action program (at the cost
of somebody else's resume not getting read by a human, of course). Once you
get in, extra programs and mentorship would also be valuble.

Finally, from the company's perspective, it just wants the statistics-
illiterate social media diversity mob off its back while deviating as little
from its current HR formulas as possible (since they obviously worked well
enough to get them big enough to have to worry about this). This means it'll
optimize for visibility and photo-ops and photogenic suit-clad female interns
in its annual reports.

------
sotojuan
There's an interesting dichotomy on the "women in tech" question between "SV
tech" and non-SV tech.

I briefly worked at a tech company making oil industry software in .NET in a
Houston suburb. Not trendy, cubicles, but they paid fine (and unlike my
current job the office was quiet). I quickly noticed that half of my coworkers
were not only women, but a lot were people of color and older (I actually
think I was the only person under 25 there). Many were managers too. The idea
of inclusivity and outreach was never brought up.

I think the difference is that these companies are, for lack of a better word,
more professional. Startups and SV tech companies seem to focus a lot on
culture, people, outings, coworkers being friends, etc. The company I worked
on just required you to not be unpleasant and do your work.

~~~
te_chris
Absolutely. People are rarely willing to talk about class in these
discussions, but the reality is that not only have we created an industry with
a gender imbalance, we've created an industry with a culture that prioritises
the values of one class (middle/upper-class urban men) over everything else.
Thus you have 'casual' workplaces with games consoles, beer, lame forced
socialising, chill zones etc in which some people feel comfortable and others
feel thoroughly excluded from.

~~~
lmm
My experience is exactly the opposite - "professional" workplaces are all
about middle/upper-class values of dress/speech/behaviour and only comfortable
for those with a middle/upper-class cultural/educational background, while the
SV-casual workplace is a lot more welcoming for those of us from
working/lower-middle class.

~~~
sotojuan
There are bad professional places and good professional places - law and
finance and rife with the things you describe. However, my "enterprise .NET
software" experience was not bad. I just wore a button up, pants, and leather
shoes and no one cared about my class background.

If anything, SV tech is commonly full of (and targets as consumers) out-of-
touch-with-working-class urban upper middle class people.

------
Animats
I was discussing this today with a woman who works in tech in SF. She's had
people try to harass her, but it doesn't bother her much; she's comfortable
with pushing back. She's more upset about the startup she worked for tanking
because the people running it were in their 40s and 50s and too slow-moving.

Another woman I know works for a large software company that acquired her
software startup. She does a lot of public speaking, despite being under 5'
tall with a mousy voice. She hasn't had much harassment. But she's mostly in
the US northeast, not SF.

Another is a lawyer with a big law firm in Silicon Valley. She's had problems,
but not really serious ones. She was originally not too comfortable with
confrontation, and was a back-room lawyer drafting contracts. But once she
started doing trial work, she became used to dealing with confrontation
regularly, which improved her success at work.

All three women are horse owners. That seems to help. Women who own horses are
used to dealing with huge, powerful animals with strong personalities. The
skills to deal with this seem to transfer. Bullies don't seem to be a major
problem for horse people.

(Years ago, when I had a horse at the Stanford barn, one of the high-school
girls showed up after school and announced, in frustration, "I just do not
understand teenage boys". I told her "watch the rooster for fifteen minutes
and you'll figure it out." The barn had a rooster and several chickens. The
rooster made a lot of noise, chased the chickens around, and didn't accomplish
much. A rooster is testosterone driving a brain the size of a peanut. The girl
came back later and said "Now I get teenage boys.")

------
jwr
I'm so glad this article made it to HN front page. This is so important!

All kinds of "affirmative action" have two unintended side effects: 1) they
emphasize the artificial divides, 2) they make people who are subject to
affirmative action the subject of suspicion (did he/she get there on his/her
own merit, or because he/she is a woman, black, or otherwise a minority?).

We should strive to stop emphasizing superficial differences between us. What
your sexual identity is or what your skin color is should have no more bearing
on things than what the color of your t-shirt is. That's what we should be
aiming for.

Note that all that I wrote above would likely be received in different ways
depending on whether I said I was black or white (or a man or a woman, pick
your divide). It's another sign of how we're approaching the problem badly.

------
mcfunk
I mean, how nice for you? This article seems to be very much about how there
isn't a problem for people like the OP, because people who don't feel they
benefit from all-women's tech groups are perfectly free not to go to them.

I attend both all-women(/trans/femme) tech meetups and broader meetups. I get
different benefits from each. I don't think anyone advocates for a world in
which women in tech don't ever have to associate with anyone else, and most of
us work in male-dominated spaces to start with, so it seems a little
nonsensical to posit some sort of hyper-separation/man-avoidance or
victimization in woman-run groups (many of whom run events that are not woman-
only as well).

I find it productive to have spaces where the express goal is to uplift women
in tech and to center issues in tech specific to women. The support and
comfort level in these groups is often fantastic.

When men at other meetups stop asking questions like "oh, a women's python
group? Can I come? I'm into that kind of woman" then let's talk about how we
are in some sort of a world where tech groups for women are somehow
counterproductive.

~~~
exodust
> _" oh, a women's python group? Can I come? I'm into that kind of woman"_

But that's funny, depends on who said it and how well you know them. Between
friends or close colleagues, VERY crass and 'vulgar' things are said for
laughs. Or maybe they were being honest? Or... it's offensive and
representative of sexism in tech. The choice is yours.

------
rdtsc
There is an interesting idea that I like there and that is that it's not ok to
talk for people or assume they are victims or part of some victimized class
unless they also identify as such, or they make it a part of their identity.

I imagine it would be rather annoying trying to tell someone about a cool
algorithm you figured out or implemented and instead they come back and say
"Oh but how has your status as a woman played into this algorithm, did you
write it because you were oppressed..." and in reality they really just want
to talk about the cool algorithm.

It would be like someone imposing their assumption about me being an immigrant
and assuming that is the primary part of my identity and somehow that struggle
or issues I've had because of it are front and center and color everything I
do in life. There is a different issue, if I come out and say "yes, this
shapes everything I do, I want to talk about it, and so on". It would feel
patronizing, and even more so if they'd somehow used it to push some kind of
agenda.

------
odiroot
This is a really important blog post.

A lot of commentators from the SV world (and more worryingly recently also
from Western Europe) completely miss the point and actually create new, worse
divides and new, worse discrimination.

I applaud Maria on her strength and bravery to post a piece like this.

------
Naurception
Completely agree with what Maria said. I also cringe at the "WomanInTech" tag.
I would like to be noticed for my engineering skills rather than because I
happen to be female.

I definitely want to see more women in technology. There are social pressures
because of which girls move away from STEM. We need to encourage more
11-12-year-old girls to try out science. Both men and women in tech can help
make that happen.

However, being noticed because of your color of skin or gender and not because
of your ability is demeaning.

~~~
exodust
What's your opinion on artificially inflating the perception of women in
science in order to attract more women to science? It's not a loaded question,
I'm genuinely curious for opinions.

For example if say NASA is 30% women but more women are presented on the NASA
online stories, articles, blogs and scientist profiles, along with a dedicated
domain women.nasa.gov, and other tactics. (Naturally there's no
men.nasa.gov)... all to reinforce the message that "look, women can do this
too" (to use the OP's quote).

Are we moving into the zone that the OP was concerned about? Over-inflated
labels and reactionary agendas that? Or is that fine, do we use whatever tools
and tactics available to bring more women to science, even if it means
promoting an unrealistic or inaccurate impression bordering on disingenuous?

------
thegayngler
As a black man I am going to disagree with some of what she said even if I can
relate on some level. You need support when you are hired especially as an
"under represented" person. If the company didn't think you needed support
they simply wouldn't be offering it. Most of the "not under represented"
people have support that helps them become more successful.

~~~
exodust
Completely lost on your meaning, sorry. I literally have no idea what you
mean. Care to elaborate? "Most of the not under represented people"... say
what?

~~~
unidentified103
Most of the people who claim to be "not underrepresented" \- i.e. they are in
an underrepresented group but they do not lay claim to the title - still
benefit from some of the support that is offered to them from being in that
underrepresented group.

------
ansi7120
I learned long ago that as an Asian(not White, but...) male working in
technology, you are not to express your honest thought on issues with a
designated "victim" class, unless you're a part of the class. Words have
consequences and you can't share your intent with a toneless text. Not only
are you easy to be misunderstood, but oftentimes inadvertently insult. No, not
everyone is thin-skinned or "snowflake" as a denigrating term, but _non-zero_
are. I think many people learned this when Adria Richards got two engineers
fired at the PyCon on an inoffensive(subjective) joke.

Nowadays, I self-censor more than ever. I've seen friends, people in my
networks, or people two-degrees-apart getting torn apart by expressing their
opinion. I don't want to waste the lessons I've learned in proxy. I find
myself either avoid getting in the situation with "dangerous"(i.e., the
"marginalized" group) people, or prefer people I trust when working with
important/interesting project.(you can read _high-profile_ instead). I may be
stymying the junior developer girl's success by not giving her the
opportunities she deserves by preferring "the guys" over her.

Am I a part of the problem? Based on the lambastings on sexism in tech, I
guess I am. In fact, I know I'm perpetuating the diversity problem, and I
should be more inclusive. Of course, I do not harass and work professionally,
but the risk is just too high. Despite low likelihood, the risk of being
misunderstood just _once_ is too high. The optimal strategy is to protect
myself by eliminating any potential situation as much as I can.

My only cowardly push-back is that I don't participate in "Asian-only" event,
or the ilk that promotes exclusivity in the name of diversity, lest I
perpetuate the issue.

Even in HN where I've been active for half of decade I couldn't comment on my
original account.

Kudos to Maria(OP) with her expressions. I just wish I were as brave.

------
jwomers
Great post. Here's a similar post from my wife on being a "Women In Tech":
[https://medium.com/@kawomersley/why-talking-about-
diversity-...](https://medium.com/@kawomersley/why-talking-about-diversity-is-
so-hard-and-how-we-might-make-it-easier-dd7052dae4c)

------
moarrgan
I think that opinion pieces like this make tech seem inaccessible to a lot of
women. I understand that she herself does not like being a "Woman in Tech,"
but I don't think that her proposed solution to the women in tech problem
being throwing away the labels is the right way to go about it.

The author seems to imply that what set her on her course to programming was
that she was a tomboy, and that she "loved lots of really technical, computery
things that only men know about… Teehee…" For some women, that is how they get
into tech. And she's right, those aren't the women who need the support
groups. They love the software or love being one-of-the-guys so much that they
will not notice or deliberately ignore or tolerate or fight back personally
against the harassment. They don't need any special support.

The ones that need these support groups are the same ones that are deterred by
articles like this. Some women go into tech DESPITE the fact that it is male
dominated, not BECAUSE of it. They are the ones who read thinkpieces like this
and say "if all women in tech are so against being woman-like, then maybe tech
isn't for me."

------
mfoy_
I totally agree with the premise of the article.

If the problem is that unconscious bias makes a specific demographic under-
represented in an area, industry, award, etc.. then how does making a target-
demographic-specific area, quota, award, etc. solve that problem?

It just further exacerbates, or even serves to justify, the original bias--
you can continue to perpetuate the original discrimination on the grounds that
there is a specific pool, quota, or designated award for "those people".

These policies strike me as really shitty band-aid solutions that treat the
symptoms, not the causes, and-- if anything-- delay the wound from closing.

~~~
jd75
The policies are better than nothing, because you meet people facing the same
biases you do and realize you aren't a lunatic weirdo.

But in my utopia, everyone takes the implicit associations tests, has the
courage to take in the parts that make them feel bad about themselves, and
starts working on those things.

[https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html)

------
pj_mukh
" Or that twice as many women quit the high tech industry as men?" .... I’m
already here, people. So I’m not the problem you’re trying to solve."

This seems contradictory, women leaving tech is one of the biggest problems,
so even if she is already in tech _keeping_ her because she is a woman is
still a concern.

Its great that she likes to play Diablo II and be one with the boys, but a lot
of women don't but that doesn't make them bad tech workers. That is the crux
of the problem. The insidious cultural requirements that no one has on paper,
but everyone intangibly enforces.

------
Mz
She's right. We need to find ways to be less implicitly exclusionary. It is
vastly more effective than being explicitly inclusionary, which has all the
problems she is decrying.

Longer explanation:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-
exclusi...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-
exclusive.html)

------
Dove
That's how I feel about it, too. There is no war. Women are not oppressed, men
are not oppressors. We're all just people with problems who need support and
compassion.

Besides being morally wrong, a tribal approach is limiting. If you can't learn
from, if you can't make friends and allies with people from all walks of life,
if you must sit in your little castle with the few you count as your tribe --
are you not _obviously_ much poorer for it? I think so.

Believing you are an outsider is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just stand up and
expect to belong. Judit Polgár eschewed women's chess events because she knew
she belonged with the top competitors. And through perseverance and high
expectations, this became obvious to everyone. _That_ is how you change the
world. Boldly expect acceptance, and my experience has been -- you will
receive it. [Source: 20 years on the internet, as a gamer and in tech.]

I think treating someone as disadvantaged, even if they're quadriplegic, does
them no favors. It is a kindness to recognize situations in which they need
help, but it is an unkindness to make invalid a part of their identity. Let
the main story be strength and dignity and independence. And so with those of
us whose problems are slighter.

But there is a troubling trend I want to oppose. People seem to have the
impression that if a member of class A says the wrong thing around a member of
class B, the latter has the right to become vindictively angry. That's . . .
really destructive. I think the policy I'm advocating is the best, but if you
do something else, I'll take it as you mean it. I think most people are trying
to be nice, and understanding and kindness and good old fashioned gettin'
along do a whole lot more good than fighting some battle for cosmic justice by
being a jerk in the break room.

~~~
FooHentai
>Besides being morally wrong, a tribal approach is limiting. If you can't
learn from, if you can't make friends and allies with people from all walks of
life, if you must sit in your little castle with the few you count as your
tribe -- are you not obviously much poorer for it? I think so.

Well put.

I experienced this when moving abroad - Expatriates formed social groups based
on their origin country, and their identities became disproportionately based
upon that.

For those people, interactions with anyone outside the ex-pat group usually
centred around contrasting their home culture with the other party's culture,
inevitably favouring the home country culture. The subtle problems this
introduced for them were many, but they appeared to entirely lack insight into
this or if they had it, admitting so was verboten.

Outsider interactions were constantly tainted with an air of negativity that
left the other party feeling less-than-good about the interaction, and so less
likely to engage in future. The in-group folks frequently became unfairly
disillusioned with their new country because of the distorted negativity field
introduced by their group's favouritism towards the home country culture.
Often members of the group would pack up and head back home, but after a few
years would return having apparently remembered the reasons they left in the
first place.

This behaviour seemed not so bad since the countries in question were
culturally not so far apart (same language, significant shared history,
similar ethnic demographics). I can only imagine how alienating this behaviour
is for migrants in countries with larger cultural differences.

~~~
Dove
Fascinating experience. Thanks for sharing it!

------
redm
I wasn't sure what to expect from the title but I agree with this post more
than almost anything else I've read. Carving people up by gender, race,
religion, just divides us more, even if it's to solve a problem just divides
us more; even if it's under the premise fixing that very issue.

BTW, I am also not a Woman in Tech, for real though.

------
teddyh
A theory: Women-only groups aren’t just “Women-only”, they _also_ exclude
women with these beliefs. But this is far from obvious, so women _at_ these
group gatherings see only themselves, and it becomes an echo chamber where
they believe they represent all women’s views on this subject.

------
banned1
This reminds me of a special award that some folks that were part of a
[special ethnic group] wanted me to compete for. It was "[special ethnic
group] Engineer of the Year Award 20xx".

My boss (who was not part of [special ethnic group]) sent me an email saying
"Hey, there is this award thing that HR is doing and they say since you are of
[special ethnicity] they want you to participate in."

My reply was a Shermanesque statement to my boss, basically saying I was not
interested but to tell HR that I would be happy to run for "Engineer of the
Year Award 20xx." My boss didn't care much but told me that HR said they did
not have that award, and no answer as to why they didn't. At least they did
not tell us that the award existed but I was not allowed to participate!

------
jd75
I like having events where women can get together without getting hit on or
talked down to and where you've often encountered the same kinds of problems.

However. At my last job, there was just constant pressure from HR to go to
these "Women in Tech" things that had nothing to do with writing code. I have
three kids and a full-time job -- if I'm missing time with my kids and making
my husband do more than his share, I need to be learning something both new
_and_ awesome.

One day, I may have time to mentor or help recruit or just mingle for free
hummus (it's always goddamn hummus at the women's things). That day is so not
now.

------
ithilglin909
Yes, yes, and yes. I'm a woman and a also pretty damn good software engineer.
It drives me crazy that nearly every time I tell people what I do they want to
ask me about my experiences of sexism at work (I've never experienced that in
a significant way). I hate that HR people constantly want to talk to me about
how supportive they are.

------
pryphet
Thanks for sharing. I've started to avoid these sorts of events/initiatives
myself because they are a huge time sink. If I'm already disadvantaged, why am
I expected to take on extra volunteer commitments? Especially when my peers
don't face the same pressure to participate in these distractions?

IMO, I think companies should focus on fixing their broken interviewing
process and becoming more transparent about hiring and compensation.

------
buf
Unpopular opinion:

I think when you're in a minority and you are not rising to the top as fast as
you expect, you use your minority as leverage to propel yourself.

I am also in a minority. I've often felt cheated that my career isn't Musk-
esque. And sometimes I even ask the question, "Am I being held back because
I'm [in my minority]?"

Then I snap back to reality.

It's not the minority that holds you back. It's a class system.

~~~
rootlocus
If you think it's the class system that's holding you back from being Elon
Musk, you're the one holding yourself back.

~~~
dang
That's not what buf said. On HN, please be charitable when interpreting
others, in the sense of responding to the strongest plausible interpretation
of their meaning. It makes discussions more interesting and flamewars less
likely.

~~~
rootlocus
Perhaps you can find a more charitable interpretation for my comment? If it's
not what he said, then it doesn't apply to him. But if it does, it is my
personal opinion that people can free themselves of the mindset that how
others see them affects what they can or can not do.

~~~
dang
If I were going to discuss the issue with you, I would! (or at least I hope I
would). But my comments in threads like this are limited to the very different
issue of what builds vs. destroys substantive conversation on HN.

------
influnza
YES!! 100% agree. I hate these labels and after having moved to the US it is
really difficult to stand against them. The environment is so pressing! I am
meeting with my HR to talk about this, because we are having a meeting with
one of our bosses and women in the org. I find it super discriminating. This
article will help me argue my point!

------
contenttypegeek
Well said! I wish more people would think the same way.

I'm a long-time (10 years+), digital nomad. My younger daughter (currently 6)
grew up mostly in Southeast Asia, but also in Europe and to a certain extent,
all over the place (we have been traveling a lot (duh)).

It's interesting to observe that she has absolutely no concept of minority
labels - for her, a Thai Muslim, a Balinese Hindu, an African-American
classmate in Europe or an Arab (presumably Muslim) neighbor from Mauritania
living in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, etc. are all just... people. Regardless
of their sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

You could say 'she is a child, she will be spoiled over time' \- I'm doing
everything in my power to prevent the latter from happening, and don't agree
with the former: she has the concept of sexes, skin colors, and differences in
general (it's obvious from her questions that she does realize there ARE
differences) - she just does not view them as differences in the sense we do
(minority/majority, typical/weird, out-of-place, extreme, etc.).

To her, it just does not make sense to put people into boxes, tell them apart
based on whatever criteria, etc.

!! HOWEVER !!

If she is met with the constant emphasis on how certain groups are different
from the mainstream, she might develop the notion that there is a need for
those boxes after all...

The irony of the situation is that the people that have the biggest power to
steer her into this direction the most are coming from those minority
groups!!!

It's way easier to shield her from the majority attacks (say, a Nazi remark
from a white guy directed toward a black dude, or a guy saying shit like 'all
Muslims are terrorists' etc.) by asserting 'never mind; they are assholes.'

However, if a member of a minority group is pouncing on the fact that he/she
IS a member of a minority group and how everyone should realize this and do
x/y/z then... how I am going to explain that to her in order to forego the
creation of a minority label/box?

~~~
illumin8
Humans have become very good at building in/out social groups. We even did it
when we lived in small villages of homogenous skin colors. I admire what
you're trying to do, but pretending that human nature is different than it has
been for thousands of years is likely to leave you disappointed.

~~~
contenttypegeek
It's an uphill battle, I know... but one we have to wage to our best
abilities.

I'm also trying to avoid being an asshole, but I somehow manage to fail at it
almost every day :) That doesn't mean I will stop trying tomorrow, though.

It would be foolish to believe the segregation/xenophobia etc will ever stop -
it would be still nice if at least the people being attacked would stop the
self-sabotage by emphasizing, rather than leaving behind, their minority
status.

------
stevew20
This is the most well thought out, honest, and non-agendized essay I've ever
read on this subject matter. Bravo, and I hope readers see the value in a
piece such as this!

------
ithilglin909
YES. I’m a software engineer. I’m a woman. I’m not a “female-software-
engineer”. I don’t need people in HR randomly telling me that they support me
(umm, thanks?). I hate that the typical first question after I tell someone
what I do is usually about sexism, not about what I’m working on. I’m not a
victim.

------
tepidandroid
Just want to thank the author of the blog post as well as the more level-
headed engineers (black, white, female, male, whatever) who commented in this
thread.

I feel like i've been slowly losing my mind with the constant oversensitive
rhetoric and white-knighting taking over every aspect of life and the
workplace. Of all fields, engineering was supposed to be about merit. I would
say that in the modern day and age, the vast majority of company cultures
integrate employees just fine and don't give a damn about the colour of your
skin or your sexual orientation. And you know what? I think that's the way it
should be.

Enough with the hand holding and mollycoddling. It only serves to demean the
efforts and accomplishments of those who don't need or want it.

------
notacoward
The thing that makes these kinds of discussions so difficult is that people
often aren't clear (even in their own minds) about _eventual_ goals vs.
_immediate_ actions. Absolutely, inclusion and color/gender/whatever blindness
is where most of us would like to be eventually. Unfortunately, pretending
we're already there doesn't get us there. It just preserves the status quo. As
painful as it is, we have to accentuate and perhaps even exaggerate both the
problem and present remedies. If you're not willing to take even the tiniest
risk of over-correction, you're practically guaranteeing permanent under-
correction.

I'm sure the OP is quite sincere. I find her attitude laudable in its way.
Unfortunately, I also find it a bit non-generalizable and counter-productive.
We don't yet live in a world good enough for that prescription to work.

~~~
toufka
Is that approach not entirely just an opinion of yours though? How can you
state so firmly (in opposition to many here) that "you're practically
guaranteeing permanent under-correction". I think that statement is only true
if those in the majority have no desire for true equity - which then is
begging the question.

If the hypothetical 'truly equitable' personality exists, is it not of some
moral repugnancy to require them to re-engage with a (by definition) racist or
sexist system, even if the racism and sexism being engaged in are to the short
term advantage of society? Are you suggesting the end justifies that
particular means? And is that not precisely a moral failing? And for the sake
of the argument, if you presume some people are more sexist/racist than
others, then you also must allow that some are less sexist/racist than others
- and precisely those hypothetically equitable personalities would be put in a
very real moral quandary by your strategy. And does then requiring
sexist/racist actions that such people would otherwise not have taken part in,
then act to precisely "preserve the status quo" of sexism and racism?

I would just question your confidence that your strategy is the correct one to
get where I think we all want to eventuality arrive. It may be a viable
strategy, but it's not yet clear that it is the only viable strategy. And
though it might be a _fast_ strategy, it too could be a less morally sound
strategy. There are tradeoffs all around, and it's uncharitable to make
declarative decisions about those moral tradeoffs on behalf of others.

~~~
notacoward
> How can you state so firmly (in opposition to many here) that "you're
> practically guaranteeing permanent under-correction"

Because "no more than" usually means "less than" in a vast range of contexts,
with computer programs being a rare exception. This is particularly evident in
matters of justice. "Innocent until proven guilty" and "beyond reasonable
doubt" and all of the restrictions on evidence practically guarantee that some
guilty will go free. Why do we allow that? Because we know that perfect
precision is impossible. We can not simultaneously avoid all false positives
and all false negatives. As a society we have made a conscious choice on which
side to err, and we preclude methods that tend to take us over that line.

The situation as regards equality is the converse. Not only should it be
possible for the ragged edge of real-life outcomes to cross our ideal line
sometimes, but it _must_ be allowed to happen. If we insist that no measure we
take can cross that line, then we limit ourselves to measures that fall short.
We can't solve inequality by continuing to give one group unique protection.

> is it not of some moral repugnancy to require them to re-engage with a (by
> definition) racist or sexist system

In Philosophy 101, a very long time ago, I was introduced to the concept of a
dilemma - a situation in which there are seemingly compelling arguments for
two mutually incompatible positions. Yes, it's wrong _at an individual level_
to make people re-engage with such a system. It's also wrong _at a social
level_ to let them exempt themselves. There is no answer that satisfies both
sets of constraints. Real life is messier than an Ayn Rand novel. As you say,
there are tradeoffs all around. Forcing people to confront the uncomfortable
truth of their own privilege seems like a small price to pay in return for
greater progress toward tangible equality.

~~~
toufka
I think there is no argument that the ragged edge will bump around the ideal
line - and that in a reasonable expectation of how society works.

The question is more of policy and strategy in how to arrive there. And in
that it is unclear that a "fast-and-overshoot" is any 'better' than "slow and
steady" vs any other strategy. You have not shown that any one strategy is
more wrong, nor more right. Nor is there any collective definition of where
'eventual' may lay, preventing the most accurate strategies that might
require, 'going fast, then slowing down, then slightly overshooting, then
correcting'.

More specifically, exactly, this is a 'dilemma', and to frame it as a solved
argument, essentially saying, 'get with the program' is unhelpful. And the
author of the article is pointing out exactly that the "small price to pay" in
some cases is being borne by exactly the group that one says they are trying
to help. And in that, the "small price to pay" may actually not be so small as
to overcome the inherent nature of the dilemma. The dilemma is very real.

Can you not see the perspective that you are telling the article's author that
she should "confront her own privilege" and pay the [moral] price of
intentionally discriminating against someone that she otherwise would not,
because it's somehow better for her in the long run, maybe? That is a very
perverse action that you are forcing onto her, that she may not wish to take,
even if _you_ say it is in her best long-term interest. For how long should
she discriminate, and how strongly, and on what basis? It might actually be in
her moral interest to not engage in such a program at all. And that is
precisely why this dilemma is both difficult and not so easily remedied with
broad strategic declarations.

~~~
notacoward
You're totally twisting and appropriating what I say. For example...

> it is unclear that a "fast-and-overshoot" is any 'better' than "slow and
> steady" vs any other strategy

Nowhere did I say it was unqualifiedly better. I was _refuting_ your
absolutist position that "never overshoot" should be a requirement.

> essentially saying, 'get with the program' is unhelpful

Never said that either. The point I was trying to make is that the OP's own
"program" is not globally applicable or sufficient, therefore that she (and
you) should consider other strategies as well.

> pay the [moral] price of intentionally discriminating against someone

Again, never said. Confronting one's own privilege does not inevitably lead to
discriminating against others. All I'm suggesting is that we _consider_
programs and policies that have _some risk_ of creating outcomes that are
inequitable in some way other than the inequity we already have. It should be
obvious - and I think was to most people - that I'm not saying we should
deliberately create inequity in any direction, or fail to address it when it
occurs. I'm just saying that "never risk harming this group" is too limiting
of the things we might try, and noxiously so when "this group" is the one
already enjoying substantial unearned advantages.

~~~
toufka
Discussion of how best to achieve equity _is_ a 'dilemma', and to frame any
answer to the dilemma as 'correct' is not helpful. Starting off a discussion
by saying, "As painful as it is, we _have_ to accentuate and perhaps even
_exaggerate_ both the problem and present remedies" is a conclusory statement
regarding a philosophical dilemma that disregards the author's perspective (as
well as many others here).

Discussion quickly then becomes both toxic and treacherous even when you are
communicating with those who share your ideals. Be aware of that price.

~~~
notacoward
> as well as many others here

Appeal to popularity.

> Discussion quickly then becomes both toxic and treacherous

...when people rely on misrepresentation and logical fallacies as much as you
have.

There's clearly little more to be said here, so I'll just reiterate my main
points. There's a difference between future goals and present actions, but
people often conflate the two. The OP's "we shouldn't have to do this (in the
future), therefore we shouldn't do this (in the present)" falls into that
trap. Your "we should never risk the slightest overcorrection" falls into a
different trap, of precluding any but the most inadequate of present actions.
As such, it merely reinforces the status quo. Maybe that was the goal. I
wouldn't presume to read your mind as you presume to have read mine, but you
haven't suggested anything positive here. "Pretend we're already equal"
doesn't count.

------
skrebbel
_I don’t want your ‘exclusively for women’ support groups

I want inclusivity, not exclusivity.

You’re victimising me when you do that. You’re indicating that it’s most
likely I need special, extra support. Just because I’m female.

You’re also indicating that “this is a women’s problem, best solved by women”
but that deepens the divide, creating an “us” and a “them”. Just based on
gender…_

This is the core point for me. Indeed, the problem exists, and it needs to be
solved by men, not women. Women generally are already doing the best they can
- even the ones that want to not care and just go about their work - they feel
obliged to write blog posts like this one.

We men must make the changes that make women feel more welcome at the
workplace. One easy to way to start (courtesy of a friend of mine) is to go up
to a female colleague and ask for 1 thing that can make the company more
inclusive, then do that without judging.

(i suspect the same holds for other minorities in tech, but this thread is
about gender)

~~~
Cakez0r
> We men must make the changes that make women feel more welcome at the
> workplace. One easy to way to start (courtesy of a friend of mine) is to go
> up to a female colleague and ask for 1 thing that can make the company more
> inclusive, then do that without judging.

This is exactly the kind of behavior that the author is speaking out against.

 _> It’s hurtful when you say “we need to solve the problem of women in tech”
and “Maria, you’re a woman in tech” in the same breath…_

My take away from this post is that Maria is hired as a software developer and
would like to get on with software development. Not be a champion of diversity
just because she is a woman.

 _> Maybe I’m representative, maybe I’m not, but don’t ask me to represent!_

 _> You’re also indicating that “this is a women’s problem, best solved by
women” but that deepens the divide, creating an “us” and a “them”._

------
twii
I cannot agree more with you! Besides, if men think they are better in tech,
why do I see so much rubbish code produced by them?

Imao it's just men's ego's, sexism and stupidity that creates this
discrimination. It's abject and should change, the sooner the better! (I'm not
female btw)

------
kevintb
It's fascinating that articles like these are kept on Hacker News, but others
like tweets by Susan Fowler or the latest Github post by Coraline Ada are
flagged for being "divisive" and "politcal".

------
icebraining
As in some many things regarding politics (in a broad sense of the word), my
favorite take on this is by _Yes, Minister_ , specifically the "Equal
Opportunities" episode, which overall goes much in the same line as this
article. Of course, the irony being that it was written by a man.

By the way, if you're interested, I beg you not to read the synopsis. Unlike
most, this show has actual actors playing the parts, and they provide a much
richer experience than just knowing the story.

~~~
aembleton
Here's the Equal Opportunities episode:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7KCB6cRruc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7KCB6cRruc)

~~~
icebraining
Yes, but unfortunately that version is heavily cropped to avoid the copyright
detection mechanism.

------
thedz
I'd urge folks in this thread to remember to treat this post as only speaking
for Maria, and not as political capital for your personal POV about Women in
Tech, because, well, that's the entire point of her post.

Not everyone is going to agree on the best way to foster diversity and
inclusiveness, and that's fine.

------
mkalygin
People have a great ability to put labels indeed. Whenever you do something
"untypical", you earn a label. This pisses me off. It's not about women only,
it's about judging people by any set of attributes and making conclusions that
it's unusual to do thing A because you do thing B.

------
eagsalazar2
I know this will never happen but I'd love it if people broke the terms
"sexual harassment" or "sexism" into 3 different more specific descriptions of
what happened to them:

(1) I got hit on (2) I was discriminated against (3) I was sexually assaulted
or coerced

(1) is a lot different than (2) and (3) and a lot of the stories coming out
lately basically boil down to (1), a dude was sexually attracted to a woman
and he let her know he wanted to hook up with her (not including examples
where there were threats or leverage was applied which would fall into (3)).

(2) and (3) are clearly 100% unacceptable and should result in immediate
firing and criminal investigation for (3). (1) OTOH reflects a normal and
healthy human reality: men want to have sex with women. Men and women hook up
via work intros _all the time_. That is ok and even good IMO. If we talk about
(1) separately and without inflammatory language maybe we could as a society
even come up with a set of appropriate norms and rules for how people should
act on their attraction to each other.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I have never heard anyone call (1) sexual harassment as long as it was handled
in an appropriate manner, i.e.

a. There was no power relationship involved. Don't try to hook up with your
subordinates. That is extremely inappropriate.

b. It was not excessively crass. Asking someone out for a drink is okay;
asking them outright for sex is not.

c. It was not done repeatedly in the face of rejection. Hitting on someone
once to see if they are interested is okay; continuing to hit on them after
you have been rejected is not.

~~~
eagsalazar2
I agree with your definition of inappropriate 100%. Don't agree that failing
to be appropriate == sexual harassment. That there is a gap there is exactly
what I'm calling out.

Anyway, I never said (1) was always appropriate, I just said it was different
than (2) and (3) and lumping them all together is polarizing and inflammatory.
If I excused (1) at all the place I'm coming from is that the desire is
healthy and normal and demonizing it and suppressing any sexual expression in
the workplace is not productive and is simply not going to work in any case.
If we talked about (1) separately without the polarizing language yeah there
are definitely tons of ways idiots misbehave or nice guys just screw it up
that we could probably improve on.

------
luord
She's smart, I'm glad she works in tech. We need more _people_ in the field,
I'm hoping for more like her.[1]

[1] This is not an attempt at disparaging people already in the field.

------
roywiggins
> Are XY-ers, who identify as female, welcome at DevelopHER?

If they're not, then DevelopHER is trans-exclusionary and regressive. People
who "identify as" women... are women.

------
ecesena
> So I’m not the problem you’re trying to solve.

I guess the natural question is "how would you go to find and fix the
problem?" (not complaining here, I think the post is great)

------
dimgl
THANK YOU. Holy shit things are getting so ridiculous nowadays.

------
msimpson
> Studies are showing that more diverse teams have higher collective
> intelligence...

Yet the evidence provided for this claim regards preliminary findings of a
singular study conducted six years ago.

> Is it a problem that of computer science degrees earned, only 28% are earned
> by women?

Again, the evidence provided for this claim is an article about an article
about an infographic stating, "Among all students holding B.S. degrees in
Computer Science...28% ARE WOMEN...though we recognize that this has decreased
over the last 25 years, we are encouraged by the increases that are
occurring." However, the source for these figures seems to emanate from this
table:

[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp)

Which illustrates, "Degrees in computer and information sciences conferred by
degree-granting institutions, by level of degree and sex of student: 1970-71
through 2010-11." And shows that between 2010 and 2011 only 17% of bachelors
degrees went to women while 28% of masters degrees went to women. So that
contradicts the figure reported in the graphic as it seems they used the wrong
degree type. Nevertheless, I was at least able to eventually source this
figure even though it holds little bearing on discrimination.

> Or that the rate of women in computing has been steadily in decline since
> 1991?

I cannot even source this statistic and no evidence is provided. Although, it
would seem to be contradictory given what's listed in the above report.

> Or that twice as many women quit the high tech industry as men?

Again, no evidence is provided for this conclusion. However, I do feel that
I've previously read an article to this effect. Although, it was quite faulty
in its conclusions and I believe I left a comment to that effect. So I cannot
even speak to the veracity of this claim without doing a bunch more research.

> Assuming we can agree there is a problem...

Given what's above, we cannot.

> I’d say it’s something like this: the problem is, that the tech industry
> isn’t able to attract and retain enough women.

Well I'd say something like this: attempting to force equality over a
volunteer workforce is unnecessary and meaningless. If women want to become a
larger portion of the tech industry, they are free to get educated and work
their way up just like everyone else. And if they encounter actual
discrimination or harassment along the way, there are laws already in effect
which can be readily enforced.

~~~
djsumdog
I really like how you broke down the sources, statistics and try to put things
in perspective. I really tend to agree here.

There is no mention of pay in this article, but there are plenty of other
sources that dispel the myth that women get paid less than men (it's more like
people of lower confidence simply do not ask for as much money -- both men and
women; see The Confidence Gap).

I also think part of the reason we see fewer women in Tech is they don't want
shitty jobs. We have everything from Dilbert to Office Space to We The Robots,
all showing how terrible life in a cube can be. Women often take jobs that pay
less but are more fulfilling (teachers, nurses, non-profits).

If we want more women in tech, I think we'd need to make tech more fulfilling
and less miserable for everyone.

~~~
richmarr
> _the myth that women get paid less than men_

This is not true.

On the experimental side, studies show candidates with female names are rated
lower and recieve lower starting salaries to male candidates with identical
CVs (see Moss-Racusin et al. 2012)

On the statistical side, check out the data from;

\- the UK's ONS ([http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/blog/the-gender-
pa...](http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/blog/the-gender-pay-gap-has-
almost-closed-for-millennial-women-but-it-comes-shooting-back-when-they-
turn-30/)),

\- the OECD ([https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-
gap.htm](https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm))

You may have your pet theories as to what explains the statistics, and some of
them may partially explain some aspects of a complex phenomenon.... but the
fundamental finding that people are treated differently based on who they are
is repeated over and over, both in research and in human experience.

Some more studies on the subject:

[1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes
(Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010).

[2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders,
inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011).

[3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable
(Heilman et al, 2004).

[4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them
negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).

~~~
djsumdog
A study with Resumes/CVs is a fun thought experiment, but it's not reality.
You need to compare actual wages in actual jobs.

> You may have your pet theories as to what explains the statistic

Please avoid this race to the bottom. I could be wrong. You could be wrong. No
need to say I have "pet theories." The EPA once told DDT was perfectly safe to
spray around humans. We are all wrong about something.

"..under this metric for people with a college degree, there is virtually no
pay gap at all."

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-
checker/post/the-w...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-
checker/post/the-white-houses-use-of-data-on-the-gender-wage-
gap/2012/06/04/gJQAYH6nEV_blog.html)

"When controlled for education and career choices, women make 93% "of what men
earned"

[http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/graduating-to-a-pay-gap-
th...](http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/graduating-to-a-pay-gap-the-earnings-
of-women-and-men-one-year-after-college-graduation.pdf) (p20, 34)

The Confidence Gap is a great article which talks about how people are more
likely to get high wages if they have confidence and ask for it, and how women
have trouble with portraying confidence without being perceived as bitchy:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-
con...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-confidence-
gap/359815/)

~~~
openasocket
> The Confidence Gap is a great article which talks about how people are more
> likely to get high wages if they have confidence and ask for it, and how
> women have trouble with portraying confidence without being perceived as
> bitchy

... So women _are_ being paid less than men?

------
zimpenfish
> Don’t we all, in theory, have the same possibilities for succeeding in tech?

In theory, with all else being equal, yes. But all else isn't equal and we all
don't have the same possibilities (orders of magnitudes of difference, I'd
say.)

------
taylodl
I agree. The problem isn't 'women in tech', it's more like 'assholes in tech'
caused by some perverse glorification of Asperger syndrome (not to disparage
those truly suffering from Asperger's.) It wasn't this way when I started my
career in the mid 80's but somewhere along the way things have gone haywire.

------
LarryPage
Labeling groups of people is like using global variables. You should really
try to avoid it, but sometimes it's needed to work through a problem.

------
joe4353444
If you don't show your code it's hard to take you seriously especially when
you are making a social opinion.

------
hullsean
wow i love this. thx Maria!

------
losteverything
I hate to break this to ya, but we all have labels; most are not self defined.
Most have more than one.

Lose your hearing when addressed by a label. Get tough if you have to.

I remember when we openly said "it's a woman doctor," or "a woman chef"

So its not desired to be addressed by "woman in tech" but it will happen. Just
like the "divorced" group or the "wealthy" or the "rehab" or the DINKs or
whatever.

It is the personal responsibility of the sayer to avoid labels out loud.

Your post helps those that might slip know it is not desirable

We all have such great contributions we can make because we are individuals:
not because we have a label. But don't think they don't exist.

------
3minus1
This whole piece strikes me as rambling and misguided.

> “Woman in tech” is just another label I don’t need

The author agrees there is a shortage of women in tech and that it is a
problem, yet how can you address a problem of underrepresented groups in tech
without talking about those groups and referring to them through the use of
labels? Does she really think we don't need these labels?

> I don’t want your ‘exclusively for women’ support groups

Those support groups are an attempt at solving the problem. Is it possible
those groups are helpful to some women, even if not for you?

> I don’t want your special award

Same as above. This is an attempt at fixing the problem. Maybe it's not
effective and kind of dumb/patronizing in some cases. Is it really where you
should directing your frustrations though. No, if you care about the problem
you should directing your frustrations at the root causes.

> It’s hurtful when you say “we need to solve the problem of women in tech”
> and “Maria, you’re a woman in tech” in the same breath…

I really did not understand the author's point here. People look to women in
tech as pioneers and sources of solutions for getting more women into tech. It
is quite natural to bring up women currently in tech, when thinking of ways to
recruit more women into tech.

I get the author's point, that a lot of this stuff doesn't apply to her. She's
comfortable in her job and doesn't need support groups or awards. It almost
feels like bragging on her part, in the guise of acting annoyed at all this
stuff that she doesn't want/need. Good for her, but not every woman can be
like her, and shooting down attempts at solutions while offering none of her
own is pretty shitty imo.

------
dang
> _So you just don 't like to hear opposing views?_

Personally abrasive escalation takes threads into flamewar, so please edit
such things out of your comments here. As a bonus, the signal/noise ratio of
your comments will get higher.

Edit: fixed now, so I've detached this from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703776)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
root_axis
Fair enough. I can't edit at this time, but noted for the future.

~~~
dang
I'll extend the editing window for you. Always happy to do that to help people
fix stuff like this (in fact we may eventually build some software support for
it).

------
adventured
_edit_

Why did my comment get dislodged from being underneath another comment that I
was replying to?

It's now showing as a stand-alone comment under the thread.

\-------------------------------------------

I'm doing a similar thing. I stopped posting anything personal on Facebook
about a year ago and I never post to Twitter. I'll never go back to posting
personal thoughts on social media, not under any circumstances. It's a wholly
pre-emptive move.

At least in the US, society has become so aggressively censorship-by-threat &
political correctness oriented, with severe consequences to going against
popular opinion, it's not worth the risk to my business interests to stand out
with an opinion that could be unpopular at any point (get caught with an
opinion that is in the minute considered hurtful, hateful, whatever).

I don't agree with unfettered illegal immigration for example; I
overwhelmingly agree with legal immigration and think the US system needs
reformed to facilitate easier immigration. The left now considers that to be
racist, xenophobic, hate-thought, insert-control-vector-label-here.

I don't agree with feminism as a concept, I'm in favor of equality (which -
_in my opinion_ \- nullifies the supposed point of feminism). Many on the left
consider that to be attacking women, holding women down, being sexist, being
anti-women, etc.

This is the only place I post opinions online now.

~~~
mercurysmessage
I don't think you are approaching this right. You are painting an entire group
of people under the same brush... Also, feminism is promoting equality.

~~~
tanilama
Feminism is not simple as that.

> People ask me sometimes, when — when do you think it will it be enough? When
> will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are
> nine.

This is from Justice Ginsburg, and a widely shared quote by a lot of feminist
articles. This claim feels pretty vindictive to me and definitely not about
equality. In the other words, it is not about REDUCE the inequality, it is
about REVERSE the inequality.

~~~
mercurysmessage
So it's fine if there are nine men in court but not nine women? I don't get
your point. Shouldn't it not matter? You are also arguing that one persons
opinion represents an entire group.

~~~
nilkn
It's entirely possible for someone to maintain the position that neither of
those situations is ideal.

------
fche
> Some people want these differences to be highlighted

Those people are political activists.

~~~
dang
That's definitely not always true and probably not in the majority case
either. Please don't escalate a discussion like this straight into political
battle—we want interesting, thoughtful conversation here and the two aren't
compatible.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702833)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
peterwwillis
I think the decision to detach the comment was overzealous. A reply to that
comment on that thread would have been a great opportunity to provide an
informed opposing view, and now it'll be stuck down in the cheap seats where
people involved in the original discussion won't benefit.

The idea of a political activist isn't divisive, it's a core feature of all
politics. Every single person engaged in politics does so to bring attention
to their issue. Of course, not everyone who highlights a difference in some
political sphere is an activist per-se, and marking the distinction may be
useful to help understand a potential bias over a politically divisive issue.

I understand that you're trying to serve the will of your HN overlords, but
can you please ask them to not require you to micro-moderate sociopolitical
posts? Downvotes and replies from peers with power provide more positive
guidance for group behavior than sending "spicy" comments to the back of the
bus.

~~~
dang
Maybe it was a notch too much. Moderation is guesswork. Fortunately there's
plenty of opportunity for people to substantively discuss that aspect and many
others.

Re your last paragraph: neither HN, nor HN moderation, nor the organization
that runs HN, work the way you describe. Just to pick a couple examples, the
threads are sensitive to initial conditions, and no one at YC has told me how
to moderate. HN users more than make up for it though!

------
Caveman_Coder
You can and should have an opinion, its a part of being a discerning human
being trying to navigate this world. It doesn't mean you should never listen
to others opinions, but having your own informed opinion is a good thing. If
others tell you that you can't because you're a white male, tell them to piss
off.

EDIT: Downvotes for saying that a white male should have an opinion??

~~~
richmarr
I haven't downvoted you but... "informed" is a tricky beast. Many people, but
especially white men, especially engineers, think that they're qualified to
comment on fields where they are a novice.

(see Dunning-Kruger and others)

In the field of discrimination, women and minorities are statistically more
experienced; so on the whole you'd expect them to hold more informed opinions
than white men.

At the best of times telling anyone to "piss off" would be poorly advised, but
especially so when the people so dismissed are likely better informed.

~~~
mindcrime
_In the field of discrimination, women and minorities are statistically more
experienced; so on the whole you 'd expect them to hold more informed opinions
than white men._

Maybe so, but I think it would be a mistake to understate the extent to which
white men can experience discrimination. That is, there are far more
parameters on which one can discriminate than just gender and ethnicity. For
example, you could be a white man who is short. Or fat. Or short and fat. Or
an atheist. Or who speaks with a Southern accent. Or a short, fat, atheist who
speaks with a Southern accent.

The point is, _everybody_ experiences at least some discrimination. As such,
Caveman_Coder's position is understandable, even if his language could have
been a little less inflammatory.

~~~
richmarr
Yes, you could _in theory_ be disciminated against for your shortness, or
fatness, or mirth, or fashion sense, opinion, or eyebrow girth.

However...

Have you ever been held captive & forced into labour on the basis of your
atheism?

Has your father ever been told you deserved no democratic vote because of your
weight?

Have you ever told you weren't allowed to marry someone else because of your
height?

Have you ever been held in an internment camp because of an intellectual
opinion?

Have you ever been restricted to a particular school, or public toilet,
because of your accent?

Maybe you see why comparing those characteristics with race/gender/orientation
might not be appropriate.

~~~
mindcrime
I'm not "comparing" anything. Simply pointing out that non-white / non-male
individuals don't have a monopoly on experiencing discrimination. Nothing you
said above contradicts that in any way. I'm not saying that certain group
don't experience _more_ or even _more severe_ discrimination. But this
narrative that seems so prevalent today, the whole "you can't know anything
about discrimination if you're a white male, and by the way, you white males
are the root of all evil" is not supported.

And FWIW, I did not down-vote you. In fact, have a corrective up-vote on me.

~~~
richmarr
You're defending white men against a point that I did not make. I was careful
to make my original comment in a precise and defensible way.

You admit that women and minorities experience more frequent and severe
discrimination. From that follows that a sample of those people are
statistically more likely to have greater experience with discrimination than
an otherwise-similar sample of white men. That's the point I made that
prompted you to reply; I haven't yet seen a criticism of that point but we can
discuss it if you like.

Instead you chose to argue the point "everybody experiences at least some
discrimination". You're probably right, but in doing so you choose a
definition of the word "discrimination" so broad that it becomes much less
meaningful.

The net effect of this type of comment is to minimise the more severe
discrimination experienced by women and minorities. To diminish the power of
their experience.

So, to sum up; you replied to me to argue against a straw man, with the effect
(conscious or not) of minimising the discrimination suffered by women and
minorities.

My best guess is that you feel guilt by association, possibly insecurity.
You're fed up of feeling that and are pushing back in order to feel better.
It's understandable, it's natural.

I've got two points to make here that might help:

(1) There are other ways to make yourself feel better. Listening to people &
helping is a good one. Reframe yourself as someone helping solve the problem,
rather than someone trying to diminish the problem.

(2) Society is not a zero sum game. Raising up women and minorities does not
mean knocking down men, even though sometimes it might feel that way.

Hope that helps. Thanks for the up-vote, right back at you.

~~~
Nadya
_> Instead you chose to argue the point "everybody experiences at least some
discrimination". You're probably right, but in doing so you choose a
definition of the word "discrimination" so broad that it becomes much less
meaningful._

I grew up in a poor, primarily black/latino urban community. Not to anyone's
surprise, the minority groups of the area (whites/asians) received far more
discrimination than the majority groups. That's going to happen basically
_anywhere_. Classic in/out group dynamics that humans display in every society
across the world that I can think of.

This idea that white people only suffer "small amounts of discrimination,
under a broad definition" is a joke. Ever been beaten up just because you were
white and walking through a black neighborhood? Is that "small discrimination"
or am I spreading the definition too broadly? Because to me it sounds like you
grew up in a primarily white suburb and assumed because white people don't
experience much/any discrimination in an area where they are the majority that
they simply can't experience any meaningful amounts of discrimination
_anywhere_.

 _> You admit that women and minorities experience more frequent and severe
discrimination._

And the point that was trying to be made is that white people can be a
minority. So nothing is contradicting this statement or the experience of
white men who have faced discrimination. The problem is that in modern
dialogue, white people are assumed to be the majority _always_ and as such
have no say in discrimination because they can't "possibly have faced any
meaningful amount".

~~~
richmarr
I'm sorry to hear that you had a hard time.

> _This idea that white people only suffer "small amounts of discrimination,
> under a broad definition" is a joke_

...and is not something that I said.

The rest of your comment follows from that fundamental misunderstanding so
I'll stop here.

~~~
Nadya
Which is why mindcrime feels you two are talking past one another; because you
were. You're arguing statistics and the three of us (Caveman_Coder, mindcrime,
and myself) are arguing that using that statistic to be dismissive is not
acceptable. Which may not be what you're trying to argue, but is something it
seems you are defending.

It is used to dismiss any experiences of discrimination faced by white men
because "statistically they're more likely to be better off and experience
less discrimination as a whole" which is not always true on an individual
level or _anywhere_ where being white puts them in the minority.

Let's go all the way back to a great, great grandparent that started this
whole thread [0]. The argument is that white men can experience
discrimination, and to tell people to piss off if they say otherwise. Then you
specifically brought up that white men, statistically, experience less
discrimination as a whole [1]. Which is not the argument put forward. The
argument put forward was: "white men can experience discrimination, piss off
if you say otherwise". Which is why mindcrime responds [2] that it is a
mistake to understate the discrimination that white men can face.

You then follow up in [3] continuing to argue the statistic argument, when
nobody is arguing the statistic. They're saying that being _dismissive of
white men 's experiences of discrimination because of that statistic is
bullshit_ which is the argument made in [0].

It may not have been what you meant - but it is how both myself and mindcrime
interpreted your argument. If you still feel I've completely misread the
discussion that is fine, I only wanted to explain how I came to my position.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703015)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703259)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703837)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14709785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14709785)

~~~
richmarr
Thanks for explaining; very helpful.

The point that failed to land was first thing I said, i.e. that we are poor
judges of our own informed-ness.

Assuming discrimination were uniformly distributed it might be a reasonable
position to suggest to people that they hold firmly to their own opinion (i.e.
telling others to "piss off").

However discrimination is _not_ evenly distributed, which means white men as a
population will be disproportionately affected by overconfidence effects like
Dunning-Kruger and fail to correctly assess their own informed-ness.

~~~
Nadya
I can agree insofar as that. Although I don't think Dunning-Kruger applies, I
do understand what you're trying to convey. But I don't feel it is a strong
argument.

You would have to show that the individual is _not_ "well informed" about
discrimination in order to make that argument. Which is not an easy task and
is also not what is commonly done. The common thing to do is to claim that
they can't possibly be informed, because, for example "they are a cis, white
male". It's just stereotyping using a statistic and is no less wrong than
other forms of stereotyping based on statistics.

I'm not saying you do that, just that it's common and is where the "Oh, piss
off" mentality comes into play.

~~~
richmarr
> Although I don't think Dunning-Kruger applies...

Based on your extensive qualifications in behavioural science I assume? ;)

Sorry, that was a cheap laugh... but you don't get to brush it off without
reasoning though, and Dunning-Kruger isn't the only confidence bias on the
table. For example; system justification bias, state and national-scale in-
group bias, and the ubiguitous availability of white male role models in
almost any profession.

Confidence comes from many places. For example many police forces have trouble
recruiting minority officers, even in areas where those minorities are
majorities. This is usually not for want of trying, and neither is it because
of qualifications. A complex web of motivating and demotivating factors
affects conversion rates throughout the recruitment process that often results
in _unintentional_ systematic bias.

> _You would have to show that the individual is not "well informed" about
> discrimination..._

Not at all.

Caveman_Coder took it upon himself to issue advice to an entire demographic. I
argued that demographic will be affected by disproportionate confidence bias.
Caveman_Coder's advice specifically hinged on a self-assessment of informed-
ness, which will be strongly influenced by confidence bias... making this
advice likely to persist ignorance in a proportion of those people.

There's no reasonable obligation for me to look at individual cases of
informed-ness.

Happy to discuss yours though.

I'm sympathetic to your story about your own experiences growing up, but I'm
skeptical about your claims that you suffered equivalent discrimination to a
minority in a white neighbourhood.

On a national level all of the following indicators show bias against
minorities. To argue that discrimination against whites in your area is
equivalent (in an informed way) you ought to be able to show that a good
portion of these indicators are _reversed_ in your neighbourhood... with data,
or anecdotally if you that's all you have.

\- What proportion of white men are shot by the police in your childhood
neighbourhood, vs black or latino men? What are the stop-and-search
statistics, and for death in police custody? What do the comparative
conviction rates, sentencing, or parole rates look like?

\- What's the data on employment by race? What do callback rates for
black/white/latino résumés look like? Salaries, promotion, etc.

\- What's the data on punishments issued to white/black/latino kids in school
for comparable offences? Suspection & expulsion rates? Data on amount of help
offered when kids struggle?

\- To what comparative extent are white/latino/black votes devalued by
gerrymandering in the area? What voter registration laws are in force, and
what voter de-registration policies are in place?

What data/analysis do you have? Or if you tell me the name of the
neighbourhood I'm happy to have a poke around.

~~~
Nadya
Sorry for the late reply, but it seems you misunderstood what I meant about
Dunning-Kruger in that it has to do with _ability_ or perhaps knowledge in a
defined field but not in something like a _subjective experience_.

It'd be confirmation bias or some other thing but not Dunning-Kruger.

~~~
richmarr
So you're drawing a distinction between expertise and experience and saying
Dunning-Kruger applies to one not the other. Huh. Perhaps we could dig into
that at some point, but you can't ignore the parts of my comment that you
don't like.

Can you demonstrate that a good portion of the indicators I listed in my
previous comment are reversed to favour minorities over whites in white-
minority areas?

If you can't, then your claim to have experienced equivalent discrimination is
incorrect, and uninformed. Perhaps you have a deeper understanding of
discrimination (personal or institutional) than being "beaten up" but so far
you've not shown or hinted at it.

Without that evidence, your argument falls apart, and you come across as an
uninformed white man arguing that uninformed white men should be encouraged to
ignore others. It's an argument with no credibility.

Do you see the problem?

(I'm not being unreasonable, I know getting evidence is work and my offer to
help with some legwork stands, although I suspect it'd be an eye-opening
experience for you)

------
johnpython
SV tech companies are infested with young white brogrammers who only want to
work with people who look like them and share their hobbies/interests. They
call it "cultural fit"

Edit: missed important adjective "white"

~~~
dang
Would you please stop posting flamebait to HN? You've done this repeatedly and
we ban such accounts. If you have a substantive point to make, make it
thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702902)
and marked it off-topic.

------
tengbretson
> Unpopular opinion:

> I think when you're in a minority and you are not rising to the top as fast
> as you expect, you use your minority as leverage to propel yourself.

> I am also in a minority. I've often felt cheated that my career isn't Musk-
> esque. And sometimes I even ask the question, "Am I being held back because
> I'm [in my minority]?" Then I snap back to reality.

> It's not the minority that holds you back. It's a class system.

Here's something that you might not have considered – maybe you're just not
that good?

~~~
dang
Personal attacks are not welcome on Hacker News. We ban accounts that are
repeatedly uncivil, so please don't do this here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702873)
and marked it off-topic.

------
LeozMax
I stopped reading after "agile coach". Yeah, she's not in tech.

~~~
dang
Please don't comment like this here.

------
cjcenizal
> Studies are showing that more diverse teams have higher collective
> intelligence

Absolutely! Discrimination is self-defeating. Why intentionally deprive
yourself or your team of resources?

Or, to take a larger perspective, why deprive _humanity_ of resources? Imagine
how many more Einsteins we'd have if everyone had the same opportunities.

