
Sex and the Startup: Men, Women, and Work - zdw
http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sex-and-the-startup-men-women-and-work
======
h1karu
Being a woman in tech is only an obstacle course if you can't code.

If you wrote 3/4th of the startup's codebase and you're a female then you're
not going to feel like a second class citizen. You're going to feel very much
needed by the company and you're going to have the equity to show for it.

>men as stars who must be courted, and women as casual, lower- or no-value
workers

What this article doesn't point out is that far fewer women are qualified to
do the kind of tech work that is required to build a software start-up. This
is not because women are less intelligent but rather because 10 or 15 years
ago they bought into a stereotype that caused them to shy away from studying
computer science. Now it seems they've finally caught on that 'geek is sheek'
but they lack the decade or two of hard core computer science skills so all
they can do is try to fulfill the more superficial roles within a tech company
which means that for the large part they really are low-to-no value workers.

There are exceptions to this rule of course, some women can code very well,
some women are expert graphic artists, have deep UX experience, are thought
leaders in mission critical areas etc and I think those women are generally
valued in the company to the same degree as the fetishized hacker.

~~~
manicdee
> If you wrote 3/4th of the startup's codebase and you're a female then you're
> not going to feel like a second class citizen. You're going to feel very
> much needed by the company and you're going to have the equity to show for
> it.

Your qualification to make this statement is that you are a woman who has
written 3/4 of the company's code, right?

Or are you performing a thought experiment and feeling good about the outcome
so you figure that's good enough to substitute for fact?

Women didn't buy into the stereotype of the sociopathic gynophobic male who
chooses to program computers because he can't talk to people, they were
excluded from the market by the stereotype being used as selection criteria.
Now there are enough women who are interested enough in an IT career that
they'll put up with the trolls who infest IT, and as a result we're seeing
more and more of the trollish behaviour outed.

Unfortunately due to the ingrained bias against women, these new employees are
generally only allowed to feed from the edge of the trough: they are corralled
into the superficial roles and prevented from providing any real value to the
company.

There are exceptions to this of course, some employers are less gender-biased
and allow the women to participate in the meritocracy of the technical
workplace. Women feel valued in these companies because they are allowed to
perform to their abilities, rather than expected to conform to the fetishised
stereotype.

~~~
h1karu
> Your qualification to make this statement is that you are a woman who has
> written 3/4 of the company's code, right?

3/4 was just a number I pulled out of my ass, but the point is if you're
bringing hella value to the company you get treated like you're someone they
can't afford to lose no matter what your gender. For example if you have
impressive github open source contributions, experience scaling distributed
systems, strong web-dev skills, infosec skills, and you've been a core member
at a venture backed startup or two then you can get a job as a lead developer.
There is no gender discrimination at that level of experience.

You need to know a hell of lot more than just HTML/CSS/ and a scripting
language/framework... you need to understand how the Internet works and how
computers work in general at a deep level, and you need experience dealing
with the kinds of technical challenges that a startup might face as it tries
to grow towards web scale. I could name off some solid examples of women who
fit this bill but there's no reason to name names.

Women are not excluded from the market because of a sterotype they're excluded
because in general they don't have the actual skills needed to do the job, and
the reason they don't have the skills is because they didn't grow up hacking
computers. They didn't grow up hacking computers because 10 or 15 years ago
they bought into the stereotype that computer hacking is something for nerdy
guys only. It just wasn't cool to major in CS back then so not enough women
were into it, and you just can't get good at this stuff without > 1 decade of
experience minimum.

It is about stereotypes but it's women who were doing the stereotyping and
were not getting CS degrees when they should have. Now they just don't have
the skillset because they haven't been doing it long enough it's as simple as
that

~~~
manicdee
> 3/4 was just a number I pulled out of my ass, but the point is if you're
> bringing hella value to the company you get treated like you're someone they
> can't afford to lose no matter what your gender. For example if you have
> impressive github open source contributions, experience scaling distributed
> systems, strong web-dev skills, infosec skills, and you've been a core
> member at a venture backed startup or two then you can get a job as a lead
> developer. There is no gender discrimination at that level of experience.

[citation needed]

You don't need to name names, just get those people to post their success
stories, then point to those stories.

10 of 15 years ago is when I was watching the number of women in IT related
degrees in Uni dropping significantly, mostly because of the harassment they
were receiving and the attractiveness of other careers such as sewer
maintenance over IT (aka "working with gynophobes"). They weren't buying any
stereotype, they just didn't like being seen as sex objects that can write
software. It was the men buying the stereotype.

~~~
h1karu
citation is not needed just go to open source conferences and meet some of the
highly skilled female developers. All of them have really excellent jobs. When
you go down the (admittedly tiny) list of significant female open source
contributors and kernel hackers you can check them off one by one they all
have incredible jobs.

The problem is that there are so few women in open source, so few highly
qualified software women in general relative to the number of men. You can
still meet them though at conferences and whatnot.

If women were being scared away from a CS degree because of harassment they
should have taken that complaint to the Dean or something. You don't need
college to achieve this anyway you just need determination and time. All the
material you need to educate yourself is available for free.

>They weren't buying any stereotype, they just didn't like being seen as sex
objects that can write software

You can say that about anything though.. there's no evidence that CS majors
think of women as "just sex objects" any more than EE majors, math majors, or
English majors. It sounds like you're just making excuses trying to blame men
for women's decision to not take computer science seriously.

You can just as easily flip it around.. Perhaps many women felt that being
associated with the stereotype of a "nerd in front of a computer" was would
detract from their sex appeal.

------
carsongross
I get the feeling that The Great Nerd Haranguing of 2013-2014 is going to have
exactly the opposite effect of what the haranguers intend.

------
zxcvvcxz
> Deploying terms for engineers that invoke sexual dominance signals that the
> startup at some subconscious level wants to emulate a model of power where
> men perform while others watch and wait, intent on servicing their needs.

You mean like every other organization in society?

------
pron
It seems that in order to prove that all allegations of sexism in Silicon
Valley startup culture are categorically false, some people here have been
flagging posts by women today. This means that this story won't make it to the
front page, because unless the story is about companies cooperating with the
government to eavesdrop on innocent citizens or fighting movie piracy, there's
really nothing to discuss here (or, alternatively, this subject is too
"controversial").

~~~
sergiotapia
How about, "I'm just tired of hearing about it and if I wanted more
information on the subject I would subscribe to a website specific to that."?

~~~
brianbarker
Then why the hell are all these lame StackOverflow questions making the front
page? If I wanted a SO answer I'd go to that site, not HN.

