
Born for it – How the image of software developers came about - oivviopolite
http://martinfowler.com/articles/born-for-it.html
======
eva1984
First of all..The stereotype is mainly nerdy, socially-awkward male...but is
it overall white? No. Actually the percentage of white people in software is
lower than the overall demographics. I can understand why white is singled out
here, because it helps to drive the rhetoric of the discussion to racism and
sexism, but fundamentally the problem is much more complex.

My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that
not too many of them are interested in the beginning.

One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of
samples), are video games, myself included. It is stereotyping, but it is
statistically significant. Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. That is the a big
reason that I got to know different parts of computer hardwares, collecting
parts from markets and assemble them, and eventually being thrown into this
industry. As to girls, they may not have same level of motivation as the boys
had. It was in the days, when computer programming was still kind of niche
profession and by no means had that much of influence as it cast on the
society today, so self-motivation is important.

Fundamentally, if we want to really solve the gender issue in this industry,
it is not the duty of those established software companies to force reverse
sexism to artificially inflate the gender ratio, it is the early stage
education system to introduce programming to wider range of people. Once it
becomes universal parts of people's curriculum, the problem will be there no
longer.

Disclaimer: Male, Asian, not born in US, but works here.

~~~
fsloth
"My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that
not too many of them are interested in the beginning.

One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of
samples), are video games, myself included."

I think you are drawing a false statistical conclusion here.

The basic hypothesis you are making is: "In the population of women, there is
a lower average aptitude for programming than in the population of males".
"This hypothesis is based on sampling my coworkers, and the general
population".

Let's take as given that the statistical aptitude for programming in the
general population is much lower than in the population of professional
software engineers. Basically, if all of the women you've met and are using as
a basis for your hypothesis are not your co-workers, then you are sampling
from completely different sets.

If we presume you are familiar with n women (and they are picked randomly from
the general population) then yes, it is very likely that they have a lower
aptitude for programming than the set of your male colleagues. But this lower
aptitude would apply _to any random set_ picked from the general population
irrespective of sex, or any other factor.

" it is the early stage education system to introduce programming to wider
range of people"

Yes, this.

~~~
eva1984
That is not what I saying.

Basically hypothesis: back in the day, programming is niche and needs self-
motivation -> More boys were interested in video games -> Became programmers
latter.

And if you really read through my post, the sampling is here not to be about
women programmers...it is about gamers population in male programmer.

~~~
fsloth
Yeah, I think my sampling does not reflect what you originally said. I think I
need to refresh on my statistics before trying any back-of-the envelope
sampling next time.

------
probably_wrong
Yes, I am a nerd. Yes, I am socially awkward, and I did start programming
around 10. And here is yet another article pointing out that all the fun I'm
having in my career now is something that should make me feel ashamed or
guilty. "People like you are the reason why women won't program! Why can't you
go to a bar like everyone else?"

I know it's my own bias, but no one was writing articles for me when I was
"sticking out like a 'sore thumb'" in HS for being smart and nerdy instead of
cool.

I totally agree that there's a problem of disrespect towards those who are new
(apparently more if they are women), and I'm cool with focusing on fixing
that. But describing the abundance of nerds in the field as "what can we do
about it?", as if that was a problem? Give me a break.

</rant>

~~~
Infinitesimus
I don't think the author intends for anyone to feel guilty at all.

The article's conclusion is more along the lines of: "We're a self-selected
group in the programming world now and we often unconsciously project messages
that make others who have the potential to diversify the group feel cut out
based on metrics that actually have no relevance to their ability to execute
programming tasks well"

Highlighted by the often off-hand comments like "oh you don't know that?",
"this is so easy!" etc. I think it's more about messaging to let people know
"Hey you don't have to be like me and love video games, have made your own
arduino project, be active on github, and all that noise to be a good
programmer"

------
exclusiv
I don't deny that there is some history in the current representation of
programmers but I don't buy that socially awkward white males are somehow
oppressing diversity in general as some would suggest. When they supposedly
aren't, it's a brogrammer problem and blatant sexism. Everyone wants to find
someone to blame.

Granted this was 9 years ago, but when I was in computer engineering we had a
few classes with only 1 female. All the nerdy types flocked to her and were
very inclusive with team projects.

I'm a partner in a 6 yr old business and I've just recently started to see
more women programmers. Most of my job postings would get zero female
applicants. However, my last 2 engineering hires were women that came through
our internal network and they've been excellent.

Account managers and project managers - generally women applicants. Engineers
= male nerds of all types. I welcome more female engineers but it's
challenging to hire them if there aren't enough and they don't apply.

EDIT: spelling

~~~
eaq
> All the nerdy types flocked to her

Is it unimaginable that this might be uncomfortable?

~~~
cronjobber
Yes, we clearly need to tell nerds they can't interact with females,
because...

...help me out here. Because nerds are icky?

~~~
Terr_
Perhaps the label "creepy", which some argue is disproportionately reliant on
the attractiveness of the subject rather than what they say or do.

~~~
exclusiv
So true. There was a funny skit on SNL where Tom Brady and another guy said
the exact same things and Tom was welcomed while the other guy was creepy and
hit with a lawsuit.

[http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/sexual-
harassme...](http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/sexual-
harassment/2751966)

------
DKnoll
I don't disagree with the thesis of the article, but the creators of the ENIAC
were given no mention and they skipped right to the 'computer girls' as if
they were fully responsible for it's genesis.

~~~
jonathankoren
Because the article isn't about the ENIAC at all. It's about how programming
transitioned from being a menial (and thus women's) job, to a prestigious (and
thus male) job.

~~~
DKnoll
Programming was a 'women's job' at the time because men were intended for
combat. It's exactly the same reason women were working in factories which, in
peacetime, was traditionally a men's job. This is not to say that it was
right, but at the same time it wasn't due to lesser ability... it was because
they were still at home and not delivering the munitions whose trajectory they
were calculating.

I would like to add that suggesting that the majority of programmers were/are
the 'majority' (in a societal sense) in the west is also disingenuous. It
seems a bit self-serving for the author to not mention that technology, even
at the time, was a place where many homosexual but otherwise 'socially-
awkward, white, male programmers' thrived and made incredible bounds. If you
think women suffered from marginalisation in the 40s and 50s (they did)...
imagine being a homosexual.

Whether the article is about the ENIAC or not, you need to consider all facts
when you make a factual statement, even if they do not serve your thesis.

Edit: sorry if I'm a bit passionate about this... I wrote my grade 5 speech on
the ENIAC and I've always held the men and women who designed and operated it
in incredibly high esteem. Some crazy old man said something once about
'standing on the shoulders of giants' and I feel that is very relevant when
discussing the ENIAC.

~~~
jonathankoren
The facts don't back this up the assertion that this was an inherently
transitory effect. Women fell out of computer science starting 1985, and
hasn't gained any year since.[0]

Turing was prosecuted as soon as his usefulness in the war effort ended, so I
don't think they made that many bounds. And if we're going to have a good ol'
oppression-off how about blacks? They weren't anywhere in programming, and
sadly still aren't.

[0]
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
women-stopped-coding)

~~~
oneweekwonder
> and sadly still aren't.

I have to disagree with you. I'm from Africa, and I can point you to many
African programmers.

Maybe in your country where blacks is a minority(?) you don't see black
programmers. But in the last 10 years of my programming career. I worked next
to black competent peers.

~~~
jonathankoren
You're right. I did make a US centric statement. I think in my university
career there was never more than 2 in my department in one year, and 1 of them
was an African international student.

------
mikekchar
Reading articles like this is so strange for me because I have such a hard
time understanding the perspective.

To give some background, I started in the late 80's and early 90's in Canada.
There were very few womon in my CS program (I recall it was 5 our of 140 in
the graduating class), but even still in my early career, I was never on a
team without women. I would say that between 10-20% of the programmers I
worked with were women of various cultural backgrounds. That's not a huge
percentage, but compared to the numbers graduating it was quite high.

In the first 15 years I worked as a programmer I can only think of a single
female programmer that wasn't particularly competant. Everybody else was
excellent. I often had conversations with them about why they got into
programming and the vast majority of women I worked with said the same thing:
programming was the best way to get into management. They felt that every
other avenue was blocked by the old boys club and that as a programmer there
was no ceiling. As such, these programmer often came with other skills that
those of use who were just looking for the new technical hotness (myself
included) did not have. I think eveybody I worked with highly valued that
diversity.

This is not to say that there weren't women who were just in it for the
programming. I met several women in the course of my early career who had very
similar interests and abilities to myself. It's just that in the companies I
worked in 80-90% of the men would be obsessive-compulsive technophiles and
80-90% of the women would be level-headed get-the-job-done types. Those women
usually did very well and were promoted quickly (and the technically-minded
ones struggled to get into management, just like the technically-minded men).

Fast forward a couple of decades and I find the landscape seems different. At
my present position we have yet to hire a single female programmer. The thing
is that nobody applies. When we _do_ get female applicants they often look
excellent and I think we have given job offers to every women we have
interviewed. Usually they are good enough that we try to stretch our budget to
get them. We have been overbid (by a substantial margin) with every single
female candidate. So while it seems like the available female candidates are
still of high quality, they are in _much_ higher demand than 20 or 30 years
ago.

On the other hand, I have noticed a dramatic shift in the types of male
applicants we get. Like I said, 20-30 years ago male programmers were often
fit the stereotypical mold (in my experience -- YMMV). These days I would say
that more than half of the applicants we interview have very little interest
in programming outside of it being a high paying job. So you get some cultural
mismatches. You end up with the old guard saying things like, "You're not a
real programmer" when they are talking to someone who is cutting and pasting
stuff from stack overflow. Of course, we used to say the same thing to the
guys who were cutting and pasting from MSDN or passing off GNU software as
their own. It's just that having the alpha dog barking at the pups to get them
in line was the normal way of working.

I wonder if in the midst of this cultural change, women are getting a bit
lost. On the one hand you are getting a lot more men coming into the field who
are not technical primadonnas. So it is easy for a lot of women who get
interested in programming late in life to identify with those men the most.
However, I think along with that cultural change we get a lot of baggage. The
old boys club gets sucked in along with it. Where I used to hear women tell me
how great the computer industry is because there was no ceiling, now they tell
me that they are actively and often blatantly discriminated against. At the
same time, they see the technical alpha dogs barking up a storm and think, "I
don't want to get anywhere near that person".

I suppose at the end of this long (and I guess pointless) rant, it's just one
more perspective. I really wish more women would get into the field because I
miss working with women. There seems to be huge demand too. I hope we can get
over this cultural speed bump and make it happen.

~~~
jacalata
So what percentage of male programmers that you worked with were excellent?

~~~
mikekchar
Obviously there is a range of abilities. I would say that all except one
person I know at the very top end of the range were male. If I extend the
range down to where I would include the women that I previously called
"excellent", I think that would include about half of the men I've worked
with. Basically, good solid developers who could be trusted to get things
done, knew enough to know what they did and didn't really understand, and
could find out the things they didn't understand in a relatively short time
frame.

So for the women I know, the distribution seems to be compressed and shifted
to the right a bit. I have absolutely no idea if that matches with other
people's experience. Or, indeed, if my experience with male workers matches
their experience.

~~~
jacalata
I was wondering if your experience backed up the theory I've heard that men
are happy to be average programmers but women who aren't excellent don't stay
in the profession. Sounds like it does.

------
sgift
The idea that some people are born for some things is very prevailent.
Usually, it is called "talent" and nobody cries foul. As a completely tech-
unrelated example: Art schools usually ask you for a portfolio when you apply
to show that you are "talented" in art, which would be as if I needed a
certificate as a doctor to study medicine. Sometimes these things seem to be
accepted, sometimes not. Weird.

~~~
fsloth
The problem with the "talent" hypothesis is that it's self enforcing. People
mirror extremely strongly the people around them and only the most strong
willed can ignore this effect. If there is any reinforcement from the external
environment of negative bias this will affect the outcomes of training in any
discipline or art.

There isn't any scientific metric for artfulness so art schools can use any
gauge they feel like to filter out prospective students.

------
badapple13
I understand that people of Asian descent are overrepresented by a factor of
5.3x at Google and that people of European descent are underrepresented by a
factor of 0.87x at Google, but I think the author goes too far by attributing
this to malice on behalf of the Asians. Clearly asians could be doing more for
the rest of us, but I don't follow the authors subtle undertone that this is
their fault. What do you guys think?

~~~
x5n1
Considering how underrepresented minorities, whether Asian or otherwise, are
in management and IT in the Western world, I would not start crying foul over
this small irregularity. If anything Google needs more different minorities if
anything, for instance Latinos and Blacks.

~~~
brandmeyer
> If anything Google needs more different minorities if anything, for instance
> Latinos and Blacks.

This is a much bigger problem than just the software industry in the US. I'm a
Navy veteran, as a nuclear reactor plant mechanic. I remember being shocked in
MEPS (the enlistment and entry processing center for all branches of the armed
forces) by the number of black men enlisting in the Army and Marine infantry -
it's much higher than the local population would suggest. But of the roughly
thousand or so people I worked with as Nukes in the Navy, I can recall only
one black man. The trend is just as strong in college. While I'm working as a
software engineer today, my degree isn't in CS: its in Mechanical Engineering.
The same trend applies there, too. I've worked with a grand total of one black
engineer professionally, and he was an intern! There is a serious problem in
this country with our failure to attract black and latino talent to
engineering. Its pretty frustrating to see all the media attention focused on
bringing women into CS, while almost zero attention is being focused on the
lack of black and latino engineers.

I can't point to any single factor that is driving this trend. But it must
happen in High School or earlier, since it's already totally broken by the
time folks are graduating HS.

~~~
douche
Engineering, from my recollections, had probably the highest wash-out rates of
any major when I was in college. It sure looks like a huge part of that is
because of the math requirements - a lot of engineering programs throw you in
the deep end right at the beginning, with calculus and differential equations,
and then you're pretty much hosed in the subsequent coursework if that doesn't
click, or you come in woefully unprepared. And overwhelmingly, high schools do
a piss-poor job of teaching mathematics to a level that would prepare someone
to hit the ground running well enough to survive the initial stages of an
engineering major and get through to the interesting stuff. AP Calculus
students from top high schools struggle mightily with it, Flying Spaghetti
Monster help you if you never mastered, or even were exposed to those concepts
at weaker schools.

Computer science isn't much different. All the math coursework hazing is why I
have a history degree and a minor in CS - the minor let you take all the
interesting stuff, without the 4-5 semesters of poorly taught, mostly useless
math department coursework.

~~~
riprowan
> engineering programs throw you in the deep end right at the beginning

I started as a EE. My diff EQ professor literally did the stunt "look to your
left, look to your right, of the three of you, only one will pass my class." I
was the only caucasian to pass, but I made a D, and rather than re-take the
class I decided that EE wasn't for me.

There was only one way to ace that class, and that's to live inside it. I have
a very good mind for math, but I was also interested in lots of other things:
music, theater, philosophy, humanities, business, politics. The same semester
I had made a D in Diff EQ I had also taken a Phil 101 (Logic) class which I
aced. I was also a walk-on in a play that semester.

The dean of the engineering school called me to his office to tell me I wasn't
the sort of student the EE program was looking for. I left and got an MIS
degree, where I could develop as a much more rounded student.

Looking back some 30 years later, I realize now that the dean was literally
telling me that they _don 't want_ well-rounded EE students. He was literally
telling me, in spite of being in the top 1/3 of my class (math-wise) the very
fact that I wasn't willing to forgo Logic and my theater activities to become
a better calculus student made me a misfit. The _whole point_ of making Diff
EQ so amazingly difficult was specifically to weed out those who did anything
_but_ study Diff EQ.

So in the end, I made the right decision for myself and my career. And I've
learned a healthy suspicion of companies that tend to exclusively hire ace
engineering students.

------
puppetmaster3
Programming is a dead end job, mostly for immigrants. What you want is an MBA.

~~~
azazqadir
You wouldn't have Facebook, Google, Hacker news, Twitter or even Internet
without programmers.

~~~
puppetmaster3
Built by suckers!

