
In which I answer all of the questions (2012) - taylorbuley
http://sarajchipps.com/post/55986333661/in-which-i-answer-all-of-the-questions
======
zeno334
The Cornell study she links to doesn't really address whether gender diversity
leads to better results. It talks about informational diversity, value
diversity, and a bunch of other stuff all rather gender neutral. It also finds
that it's informational diversity that seems to have the biggest positive
impact. I'm not sure if gender diversity is necessarily that important to info
diversity. The first page or so of that study is also fairly interesting in
that it references a bunch of other studies which when taken together paint a
rather ambiguous picture regarding the positive impact of any kind of
diversity.

I don't feel her second point says much about the need for gender diversity
either. It seems to me that it's the people who use the internet that actually
write this history rather than the people who merely build the architecture. I
think it would be far more useful to see gender diversity in online arts,
writing, social activism and so on, rather than in the teams who build that
blog engine that allows all genders to express their ideas.

I don't see how the last point has anything to do with gender either. If it's
technology that will produce most jobs in the future then we should encourage
all people to take more training in technology.

I read the article precisely because I was interested in an answer to that why
question and also because I was happy to read that she does not think asking
this question is offensive (it's often the opposite). I'm not very satisfied
with her answer though. I'd appreciate it if someone else could contribute to
this discussion.

~~~
waterhouse
That study is really quite interesting. Here's my summary.

They looked at the effects of a few kinds of diversity on assigned work
groups. They looked at "informational diversity", which they measured using
educational background, job background, and position in the company; "social
category diversity", which they took to be age and gender; and "value
diversity", which they measured with a questionnaire.

Looking at their regression analyses, we see:

Informational diversity significantly increases actual performance (a number
of .30), mildly decreases group efficiency (-.05), and mildly increases
perceived performance (0.05), satisfaction (0.09), intent to remain (0.06),
and commitment (.10).

Social category diversity moderately increases perceived performance (.16),
satisfaction (.14), intent to remain (.12), and commitment (.16), while mildly
decreasing actual performance (-.07) and group efficiency (-.03).

Value diversity moderately decreases group efficiency (-.17), actual
performance (-.12), perceived performance (-.10), satisfaction (-.11), intent
to remain (-.19), and commitment (-.19).

------
heterogenic
How about just "because disregarding/discouraging half of our potential talent
means half the geniuses, half the coding buddies and work friends, half the
workhorses and half the inspirations. It is a virtual certainty that in those
millions of missing engineers is a software revolution we never rode. We are
all missing shoulders to stand on, and see less far as a result.".

Even if you disregard the engineering shortage, doubling the pool and taking
the to half __dramatically __shifts the curve of ability and passion of our
workmates. We 're all missing out.

~~~
Dewie
It's way more than 50%, though. What about the whole culture surrounding
things like programming? Is it your average Joe (man) that is a programmer?
No, it seems to be predominantly _nerds_. So what about people who, due to
circumstances and upbringing, were never introduced to programming? Maybe they
would have liked it better, or found it more approachable, if they didn't have
to be and act like _nerds_ to fit in? Maybe they had other hobbies that the
typical _nerd_ who might be a programmer doesn't, so these two people never
really get to meet and have a _oh, I might be interested in that applied logic
thing_ moment.

This goes of course for any profession that has a specific culture attached to
it.

Is the industry missing out on _50%_ of the talent pool? In this day and age,
where basically everyone has the _opportunity_ to at least try something like
programming, but wherein it is incredibly easy to isolate yourself from lots
of types of people and viewpoints and live in your own bubble, and based on
how free we _really_ are as individuals, even though we legally have most
freedoms... that figure could be anywhere from 30% to 95%, depending on your
viewpoint.

------
jasallen
For what it's worth, my opinion is that Jeff was replying to Shanley with what
he considered to be a better approach to the topic. I think the lack of
attribution was an oversight, and I don't think anything in Jeff's post
"plagiarizes" or comes close to it.

I also find Shanley's demeanor extremely rude, off-putting and
counterproductive to a discussion on _any_ topic.

~~~
dbloom
> I also find Shanley's demeanor extremely rude, off-putting and
> counterproductive to a discussion on any topic.

Linus Torvalds is even worse according to your definition of bad demeanor.
Would you say that this helps or hurts his advocacy?

~~~
Domenic_S
Hurts. Same with Steve Jobs. But those fellow are mostly revered _despite_
their attitude, because of their accomplishments. I'd find it hard to believe
anyone who claims that a bad demeanor helps one's cause, male or female.

------
huu
To anyone wondering, this is relevant to Jeff Atwood's recent blog post
([http://blog.codinghorror.com/what-can-men-
do/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/what-can-men-do/)) where he quotes Sara's
article.

~~~
zorpner
It's perhaps worth noting that there's a minor internet explosion happening
right now about that article -- Shanley Kane wrote an article with the same
title back in November ([https://medium.com/tech-culture-
briefs/a1e93d985af0](https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0))
which was tweeted by Anil Dash on Tuesday
([https://twitter.com/anildash/status/458829201039429632](https://twitter.com/anildash/status/458829201039429632)).
Jeff Atwood made a series of negative replies (since deleted, but
screenshotted here:
[https://twitter.com/shanley/statuses/459725773822103552](https://twitter.com/shanley/statuses/459725773822103552)),
then wrote his own article with the same title without any credit or link to
Shanley.

~~~
SheepSlapper
Which I find humorous, because I just finished reading both, and the only
thing the two articles share are their titles. Shanley's article is written
with an actively aggressive tone towards men, while Jeff's seems much more
reasoned and thought out. And both articles answer the question "what can men
do" differently. So why the hullabaloo?

~~~
zorpner
If the two articles existed in isolation, I would be inclined to agree (though
I think Jeff's is actually pretty poorly thought out -- as the man himself
said:
[https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/273551344533639169](https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/273551344533639169)).
But there's a clear, obvious chain of events here that starts with Jeff
reading Shanley's post, criticizing it, then writing his own version _with the
same title_ without acknowledging why.

~~~
SheepSlapper
For the record, I don't like either piece (cards on the table, I don't really
care for Sara's either). Jeff thinks we shouldn't drink at work functions,
because men + women + booze = sexism or something, and Shanley wants us to
reverse the (perceived) discrimination with some sort of affirmative action
for ladies.

I was just pointing out that the two pieces have the same topic and the same 4
word title (because Jeff was being snarky. If that's a crime, lock me up _now_
). Otherwise, they couldn't be more different. Shouting "plagiarism" in this
case seems pretty disingenuous, and feels like people are manufacturing
outrage just for outrage's sake. Being that this is the internet, I can't
fathom why I expected anything different...

~~~
zorpner
After talking with a couple of the commenters in question, it sounds like some
people are using "plagiarism" not to mean that he specifically stole words
from her post verbatim, but to mean that he "rewrote" what she wrote without
giving her credit. It's not how I'd use the term, but I think that's what
people are getting at with it.

It's gotten a little weirder now, since Atwood is communicating with people
about it but appears to be justifying not crediting Shanley by saying she was
too negative, which is a little appalling:
[https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/459796782164103168](https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/459796782164103168)

EDIT: Also, I just read this, which addresses a lot of the things I didn't
like in Jeff Atwood's post better than I can:
[http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-
do/](http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/)

~~~
SheepSlapper
He used the same title and wrote on the same topic. That's where the
similarities end. Shanley says:

* Get company funds diverted to the cause

* Start a feminist bookclub for men

* Get better management training in your company

* Get women hired

* Don’t speak at events or on panels where women speakers aren’t represented

* Encourage diversity at conferences you go to

Jeff says:

* Abide by the Hacker School Rules

* Really listen

* If you see bad behavior from other men, speak up

* Don't attempt romantic relationships at work

* No drinking at work events

The _only_ place they overlap in their respective messages is each of them
saying "be the change you want to see in the world" in their own way. So I
still don't get the plagiarism claims, even with the warped definition.

As for Atwood saying that he didn't link to her piece because it was too
negative: There are two very different tones to take when writing about this
(or most any) topic. Jeff, in his piece, acknowledges the issue and maintains
a pretty even keel. Yes, it's a problem, here's how I think we can fix it. On
the other side, Shanley is writing in a very aggressive tone towards men. It
feels less like she's trying to affect social change, and more like she's
shouting at passing men from the top of a soapbox.

Truth is, if I were writing a piece that was taking a subtle jab at Shanley's
writing, I wouldn't link to her either. If I felt like she was trying to
contribute seriously to the issue, then I would in a heartbeat, but that's not
how her piece reads.

Edit regarding your edit: I agree with some of the issues the author had about
Atwood's take on things, though I think claiming that Jeff not linking to
Shanley is yet another way men dismiss or marginalize is grasping at straws.
Imaginary straws.

~~~
zecho
It doesn't feel like Shanley is shouting and random men, she is shouting at
them.
[https://twitter.com/shanley/status/458817975500304384](https://twitter.com/shanley/status/458817975500304384)

Jeff called her out on it, making an unfortunately cliched reference to Letter
from Birmingham Jail and people got heated again. His point has been
constantly missed but he's not backing from it too much and in some places the
meta discussion about the discussion has been somewhat enlightening itself.
Jeff and I had a very good conversation on twitter about it with a woman
saying we were tone policing, which I didn't even know was a thing people felt
when talking but it is apparently.

------
lobotryas
I'm glad that Sarah is being so open on this topic because, after reading the
entire article, I remain unconvinced. Please allow me to share my experience.

I'm part of a small multicultural team of 8 engineers, 4 of which are women.
The team is a professional outfit, makes consistent effort to remain
inclusive, and ensures that everyone has a comfortable way of voicing their
opinions, thoughts and other intellectual contributions. Despite this, all 4
of our female engineers prefer to avoid product discussion (be it 1:1 face-to-
face, group, email, etc) and as such, their contributions amount primarily to
SVN commits of what they're asked to build. In my 4+ years of working closely
with them I never observed them having an impact on our deliverables that
could be attributed to their gender.

Our operations team of 30+ people has only 2 female system administrators.
This is a pair of fantastic individuals who are kind, positive and wicked-
smart. Their experience and skills command respect and people like them
because they're enjoyable to work with. In my observation, they have these
qualities because they are:

a) Excellent engineers

b) Excellent human beings

Both of the above traits can be displayed equally well by both men and women,
making gender a completely moot point in the comparison.

I completely agree that we need more excellent engineers and more excellent
human beings in our line of work regardless of their gender, however nothing
I've seen so far indicates to me that we need more women specifically.

~~~
lobotryas
As an addendum, I'd like to see more discussion regarding _cultural diversity_
in Engineering Teams. Our R&D team of 150+ people has only

* 1 African-American male

* 2 Latino-American males

That seems really worrying, especially given the demographics of California.

~~~
offbrand
You really contradict yourself here. Why is it worrying that your cultural
diversity isn't representative of the demographics of California and yet it
doesn't worry you that women are under represented?

~~~
lobotryas
Because we're going to have a discussion on diversity regardless of my
personal convictions and I would prefer that we focus on being more inclusive
of minorities and spreading "hacker culture" to low income neighborhoods (ie:
people for whom the barrier to entry may be as high as simply being unable to
afford a computer to code on).

------
verdi327
I don't understand. I get the idea for us to self organize and bring about
more diversity to the tech industry. What is lost on me with all these
posts/comments/arguments is that they act as if white males are trying to stop
women and other minorities from entering the field. More than most fields,
getting a job as a developer is based on objective facts. Can you solve x
problem. Especially in a market where good talent is hard to come by, I can't
imagine an employer saying, "well, you have the technical chops, but i'm not
going to hire you bc you're a woman". This just doesn't happen.

Yes, let's be open minded and work on making programming as accessible to as
many ppl as we can. But, let's not start affirmative action here.

~~~
Fishkins
Of course they won't say "well, you have the technical chops, but I'm not
going to hire you bc you're a woman." What they might say is "she isn't
technically qualified" when an identical technical demonstration by a man
would have been perceived as proficient. Unless your technical assessments are
purely-objective exercises graded by a machine, you or your coworkers are
probably subject to these biases without realizing it.

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-
prognosis/201...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-
prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-
matters/) (there a other similar studies; that's just one example)

edit: "Bad culture fit" can also be a reason for not hiring whose underlying
cause has to do with gender or other diversity.

------
buckbova
> Women in 10 years need to be able to provide for themselves, and their
> families

I had women professors in college. I have a woman software manager. I work
with many women. And these women generally wanted to work in software
development. Of course we aren't "building the internet" over here or making
"internet history". Just some Joe and Jane Schmos plugging away.

I see no need to push an agenda for more women in tech. More women will
continue to join the field, but I wouldn't expect it to be representative of
the population.

~~~
offbrand
The agenda is to make the tech community a more hospitable place for women who
WANT to be in tech. It's not an agenda to force women into the industry just
for the sake of numbers.

~~~
buckbova
Depends on who you ask. Some people are advocating just that.

[https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0](https://medium.com/tech-
culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0)

>Get women hired. Make your workplace give a fuck about hiring diverse teams.
You are in a wonderful position to advocate and agitate for more diversity in
your workplace. Draw attention to your company’s demographics internally,
bring in speakers on building team diversity, start a committee dedicated to
auditing and improving the hiring process. Oh and make sure this doesn’t just
end up in a position where you just hire a few white women and call it a day.
Not good enough.

I don't agree with diversity for the sake of diversity. So no, I'll hire the
most qualified candidate regardless of race/gender.

~~~
ewoodrich
>Oh and make sure this doesn’t just end up in a position where you just hire a
few white women and call it a day. Not good enough.

This doesn't sound like they are encouraging employers to hire less qualified
candidates just to check off boxes.

~~~
lobotryas
However that does sometimes become the end result due to a shortage of good,
diverse candidates. In the end you have "hire anyone who meets these
demographic criteria just so we can check diversity off our list and call
ourselves 'inclusive'".

------
badman_ting
It seems obvious to me that there are good reasons we should want more women
in tech. I just don't think we should expect things to be so different once
that is the case, we'll still have (most of) the same shitty problems. It's a
worthy goal, because we should have all kinds of people in our field, and they
should not feel excluded or unwelcome. But I doubt things will be any better,
we will continue to have the same sorts of recurrent problems… just with more
women.

------
rememberlenny
I respect Sara a lot.

Her points here are about woman, but Sara's actions reflect a consist effort
to educate people on the fringes.

------
owenversteeg
I agree with this, but I have to say that my favorite piece of writing on the
subject still has to be Lea Verou's blog post:
[http://pensieve.verou.me/post/54853162595/on-women-in-
tech](http://pensieve.verou.me/post/54853162595/on-women-in-tech) It's also a
bit more substantial than this (fairly short) piece.

If you're not interested in the subject matter, you should at least look at
the article to see all the typographic features in the font.

------
geekam
Apart from the gender, plagiaristic issue, I think Jef Atwood really needs to
learn about analogies. He was trying to conflate Autism with Sexism in his
post.(And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1
ratio?)

In the post about Aaron Swartz, he compared that to rage-quitting, even though
he stated that he "understands depression is a serious disease".

~~~
ia
He wasn't doing that at all. His point was that autism skews male and then
suggests that the traits of Aspergers make good programmers. It was a comment
on why there are more men than women in tech fields. Relevant excerpt below:

"In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have
traits of Aspergers. Aspergers is a spectrum disorder; the more severe the
symptoms, the closer it is to autism. And did you know that autism skews
heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio?

Interesting. I might even go so far as to say some of those traits are what
makes one good at programming."

~~~
rhizome
He's confusing his correlation, tantamount to saying being a White Protestant
are traits that makes one a good President of the United States. That the
historical traditions of programming may have selected for those traits does
not mean that the traits make one better at programming than others. It may
just be that hiring managers came up through that history and select for
culture fit based upon their identity.

------
csense
I think educating our young about technology, computer science, the hacker
mindset, etc. is a good thing.

As a kid, I'd really wished there'd been more mentoring, education, and
general support available for young hackers. I would have been seriously
pissed about discrimination -- and I daresay rightly so -- if exactly the
sorts of things I wanted to participate in had existed, but had been closed to
me because I was the wrong race (white) and gender (male).

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the "get girls to code" idea. "Get
young people to code" is a better idea, since it's more inclusive.

It's always seemed strange to me how many people seem to think that the right
way to solve discrimination is with more discrimination, just in the opposite
direction.

~~~
chc
> _It 's always seemed strange to me how many people seem to think that the
> right way to solve discrimination is with more discrimination, just in the
> opposite direction._

Is that as strange as believing that ignoring a problem will make it go away?
Because the only alternatives I can see to "Actively try to attract more of
the underrepresented group" are "Do nothing about the gender inequality" —
which obviously won't fix it — and "Try to push away more of the
overrepresented group," which is not what anyone wants.

Also, your use of the word "discrimination" here is a bit odd. It seems to
imply that men are being excluded from tech by these programs, which is
demonstrably not the case.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I think that's a false dichotomy. Don't attract discrimination by the opposite
discrimination. Attract discrimination primarily _by exposing and removing the
discrimination_. Also (in this example) try to nurture more talented females,
growing their skills to the point that they can be hired even in head-to-head
competition with males.

~~~
chc
I think you need to define what you mean by "discrimination" here, because the
obvious definition of "excluding someone based on certain traits" doesn't work
here. Men are very much _not_ being excluded from tech fields, nor is anyone
attempting to do so, so what do you mean when you say "discrimination"?

And how to you "expose and remove the discrimination" in this case?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If I'm hiring for a programmer position, and I have a man and a woman who have
applied, and I don't hire the man _because he 's a man_, that's
discrimination. (Note that this is identical to hiring the woman _because I
don 't have enough women_.)

What I meant by "expose and remove discrimination" is point out that the team
atmosphere is hostile to women, and start disciplining people until that
changes. Or, realize that Fred is automatically rating resumes lower if it has
a feminine name, and confronting Fred on that. Or... you get the idea. If
there's something going on (other than lack of viable candidates) that leads
to fewer female programmers, find it out and fix it.

The remaining problem is lack of viable candidates. To fix that you have to
fix problems outside of your own organization - problems in the education
system, in homes, and in society in general. That's a tall order, and it's
beyond any one person's power. But still, when you see obstacles that
differentially harm females (or blacks, or gays, or whoever), don't just
ignore them. Do what you can to expose and try to fix them.

------
JacksonGariety
There are plenty of people who don't want women in tech, but no blog post will
be able to change all of them. They have traditional values and that is their
right.

Thankfully, their time is passing. All we can do now is get more young women
into technology out of high-school/college.

I'd love to see someone, anyone's thoughts on encouraging young women to
become interested. I think it's possible, but I think programming needs a
makeover of culture before that happens.

~~~
sukuriant
If memory serves me, it's more of this generation that doesn't like women in
tech. The one before us, or perhaps two before us, was very female-friendly.
In fact, some famous photographs of computers and people working on them,
display women in them, actively working. The modern perspective is that the
lady is the equivalent of a Booth Woman, just there for eye candy; but a
historical account from the woman herself was that she as an active
participant and it wasn't strange for her at all to be on the team. I don't
remember exactly what article it was, so if anyone could bring it up. A quick
glance at Wikipedia suggests it was in the 40's (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Timeline_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Timeline_of_women_in_computing_worldwide)
)

------
droob
If your response is "I hire based on merit alone so this is invalid," a) good
for you, but that's demonstrably untrue in aggregate and b) you're basically
saying "LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU THERE'S NO PROBLEM HERE."

