
As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People - kgwgk
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/as-a-woman-in-tech-i-realized-these-are-not-my-people
======
Mz
_I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that
Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys
stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel
network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking
him to describe every step in loving detail.

At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked
the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more
of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job
as the guys around me._

I actually think some portion of this is strongly culturally determined. Women
focus on the private stuff, and I don't think it is just because our brains
are full of estrogen. I think a large share of this is
culturally/experientially derived.

The guy who built the neural network? That may have been _his_ means to deal
with a failed romance. He just didn't say that because his love life is not
the business of his office mates. This is a distinction I think men are taught
to make more than women: These people you work with? They aren't your friends,
your BFF, or your soul mates. These are just people you WORK with and if you
bond with them, you need to bond over the WORK.

At least, that's my current working hypothesis.

~~~
brandonmenc
> I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for
> free.

This is how you get good at it. If you don't like it as a hobby, maybe it's
not a good job fit for you.

~~~
mcv
I disagree. There are many excellent programmers who don't do it as a hobby. I
used to, especially before I was a professional programmer, but I can't find
the time or energy for it anymore. Better keep it professional and do
something else as a hobby.

------
nyxtom
I want to refute this notion that you have to work 24/hrs a day, 7 days a
week. A lot of company cultures that are like that seem to be much more
competitive and tends to favor young single kids ready to pour in late nights.
I say this as a male, who is also somewhat young (late 20s), but I'm also
married and I have a kid, and I'm a full-time software engineer who works
remotely. In other words, I have a life before/after code, and
responsibilities to take care that have nothing to do with building a fiber-
channel network in my basement because at the moment I don't even have a
basement. I think this is actually more indicative of the culture as a whole
within a particular company and even its location, not necessarily any gender
bias because a lot of people outside that bubble have similar experiences that
have nothing to do with gender. That being said, it's just a weekend and
sounds like watercooler talk. There are some nights that I feel like I want to
hack on something after everyone goes to sleep, there are others where I just
want to read a book. Humanity is a spectrum, it would be a shame to try and
put people into relative boxes. It's worth noting that if you don't feel like
you fit into a company's culture, it doesn't automatically mean you don't fit
into the field at all.

STEM is a massively broad set of professions with culture dynamics and social
influences that can vary widely from company to location. Let's not assume
that one particular bubble like Google Mountain View is indicative of what all
companies and professions in STEM look like.

~~~
yeukhon
+1. I lost most of the passion to hack on new things except doing the job and
learn on the job (that's fun). I only hack/write code outside of work when I
have a reason to or whenever I feel like to. I rather spend time outdoor or
read a book or go to a show/museum whatever or spend time with my baby niece.

The notion software engineers spend weekend making new electronic gadgets or
come up with a new awesome library is so stereotype, regardless of gender
(there are many talented women enjoy hacking outside of their work hours).
This culture manifests in startups, almost always. I come on HN and I find
some peer pressure: why can't I be cool like these people make new app and get
recognition and have a shiny resume?

Nah. Stop that thought.

I am still burnt out (for 6-7 years since college I didn't sleep much, used to
code every night, tried to fix every problems threw at me), so pardon me. Will
I ever recover? No, because I don't want that life anymore. For me, home is
where I should relax, and my relaxation technique is not coding every night.

~~~
nyxtom
Indeed! Speaking of stereotypes it seems :) Most nights I am pretty burnt out
from work that I rarely want to hack on anything. But when I've had enough
sleep and an article/project or coursera class peaks my interest I'll take a
look. But in general, I would say that's pretty par for the course for me as
well. These days with the kid and everything I try and plan for those nights.

------
tenaciousDaniel
I thought I had read everything I wanted to read about this topic, but that
was actually a really interesting take on it.

I have no problem putting a couple of stopgaps on my behavior to make sure I'm
accommodating to the women in my office. I just don't like (hate in fact) the
infusion of leftist politics.

------
ucaetano
I have never seen any career that is so deeply tied to a certain culture as
CS/SWE and a certain culture that I'll call X, to avoid any discussions on
naming and so on.

I see far more diversity in tastes and interests in most other majors and
careers, while in CS/SWE, X seems to hold a monopoly.

CS/SWE goes far beyond a career, usually becoming close to a religion or way
of life. I rarely see doctors, lawyers, or most professions engaging in their
practice outside work as a hobby, but in CS/SWE, you're evaluated by your
hobbie-contributions on GitHub, your postings to HackerNews, etc.

There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all
this non-work community.

And that brings us to X, a set of interests and values that permeate CS/SWE
workers, and frequently makes those interested in CS/SWE feel unwelcome if
they don't take part in X.

It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman (or any of the other
identities/genders/etc.), if you don't like X (which might include sci-fi,
fantasy, video-games, board games, certain types of discussions, and a lot
more), there's a good chance that you might not feel like you belong in CS/SWE
(this isn't universal, and I've seen many teams that embrace cultural
diversity pretty well).

Sadly, for whatever reasons (I have my own hypothesis that the rise of male-
dominated gaming culture in the 80's and its further attachment to CS studies
due to the overlap between coding and gaming is the cause) X is male-
dominated. So even if men who don't take part in X feel unwelcome, the impact
is bigger on women, as they have a much lower representation in X.

One of the key pieces of information that led me to think like this, was this:
[http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-
bachel...](http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachelors-
degrees-women-usa.png)

I don't claim any authority on this, or even that this is correct. These are
just my own (low-n) observations, and I'm pretty sure a good part (if not all)
of it probably doesn't stand up to reality.

So I'm probably all wrong here, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

My gut feeling is that I shouldn't post this, as the previous discussions here
about this issue are borderline flamewars, from both sides, but I still have
hope that some good discussions are possible here.

~~~
jasode
_> There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in
all this non-work community._

There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality: the
jobs at non-software companies where programmers are a _cost center_. E.g.
enterprisey - line-of-business - type of programming. _Actually, the "back-
office" type of software dev is the majority of programming jobs out there_.
Yes, there may be a few "enterprise" managers here or there that might be
impressed with extra-curricular programming but it's often not a reasonable
scenario. (E.g. virtually no programmer that knows a 4GL like SAP ABAP
language (business process programming) will be maintaining a github profile
full of ABAP code.)

It's the founders and managers at tech companies that value the developers
that _enjoy_ programming on their own. The founders themselves often started
programming as kids and so it makes the most sense to them to try and attract
programmers with the same enthusiasm.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be strictly a 9-to-5 Mon-Fri programmer.
That life approach meshes better with companies outside of Silicon Valley.

~~~
tptacek
It meshes fine with virtually all companies. Companies that attempt to cram 60
hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it: their employees burn
large amounts of time doing nonproductive stuff while maintaining "face time",
and quality suffers terribly as people do shoddy work to maintain the
preferred cadence.

Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes
that the 10-hour-day 6-day-a-week people are, in general, spending all that
time productively.

~~~
jasode
_> Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks
suffer for it:_

Sorry for not being clear. I'm not talking about burning 60+ hours _for the
company_.

I'm talking about the attraction to programming personalities that _truly
enjoy programming on their own time_. E.g... The programmer spends exactly 40
hours for Google/Facebook/Microsoft and _another 20_ on his weekend
programming side project _because he enjoys it_.

On the other hand... if you're a Peoplesoft/SAP programmer, no hiring manager
cares that you don't write that code "for fun" on your own time as a hobby.

~~~
tptacek
Plenty of seriously hardcore people do not spend 20 hours on their weekends
writing more code. Obviously, there are lots of programmers who do, but I
think what's happening here is pretty simple: the people who have "writing
more computer code" as their personal hobby are excited to feel superior to
those who don't.

~~~
jasode
_> I think what's happening here is pretty simple: the people who have
"writing more computer code" as their personal hobby are excited to feel
superior to those who don't._

Maybe some of that sentiment is happening. That's orthogonal to the point that
programmers who enjoy programming as a passion (that's a dangerous word)
naturally will _prefer_ hiring programmers who enjoy it beyond the boundaries
of a 40-hour job.

It's just human affinity. Think of rock bands starting up in a garage. The
singer + bass player + drummer are looking to add a guitarist. If they
interview a guitarist and he says, _" well, I'll just strum whatever and it
don't matter if I play with you guys or on a cruise ship or a Las Vegas lounge
bar -- guitar is just a job"_, he won't get an offer to join. For the band
members, _music is their life_.

Since programming is often "fun" and software engineering is similar to
"artistry", it's natural for programmers who enjoy coding for fun to want to
hang around other programmers who enjoy it in a similar degree. This culture
is especially true for startups. As the company matures, it becomes less
important.

~~~
tptacek
Sucks if you're a new parent who codes, doesn't it?

~~~
robertlagrant
I'm a new parent who codes, and it is difficult, but not impossible. I would
note that you keep attempting to analyse (or rather, guess) the emotions of
people you disagree with, and it might be better to stay logical and
systematic in order to communicate effectively.

~~~
bartof303
I didn't notice that in any of tptacek comments. It might be better if you
resist projecting?

------
xienze
Great article and hits on what I think is the main difference between men and
women: men seem to be far more likely to become obsessive and devote massive
amounts of time to hobbies and study. I mean if you're not popular and girls
aren't interested in you, what else are you going to do? And spending years
being obsessed with computers is naturally going to lead you down a path
towards a degree and job in computers, hence more men in computing (as an
example).

~~~
Boothroid
I was very popular with girls for about 2 years between 14-16, but was still
hugely geeky. The idea that there are lonely men out there that think 'I can't
get girls, I'll become a geek instead!' Laughable.

~~~
fiblye
And then you became unpopular with girls suddenly? Because you became more or
less geeky, or what? And what does being "very popular" at 14 have to do with
adults being lonely?

I have no clue what your intention was with that post.

~~~
Boothroid
I think I became uglier as I grew up. My point was that my popularity with
girls was independent of my geekiness. They fancied me in spite of my
geekiness because I was beautiful (for about 2 years, I lament their loss).
Not getting girls didn't make me any more or less geeky, just less happy.

------
smrtinsert
That's fine. Many of us don't spend weekends building tech setups in basements
- in fact I strive not to. My coworkers don't as well.

You don't have to mainly identify as a profession in order to practice it, and
I suspect as we improve work life balance, we wont in general.

~~~
chrisco255
Our field rapidly evolves. If I don't spend at least 10-20 hours a week
improving my skills and experience new tech, I can find myself obsolete in 5
years time.

~~~
sigstoat
spend that 10-20 hours to move into something besides web/mobile.

~~~
chrisco255
I'd prefer to spend it learning AI or Ethereum...those are both rabbit holes
in and of themselves. How many hours to become experts in either? 1000-2000?

------
neo4sure
"And the sexual harassment, while annoying, was just that: annoying. I cannot
recall that it ever affected my work, nor that I lost any sleep over it."

This says it all. Most women are not like this author. They will loose sleep
over it and rightly so.

~~~
Archio
Here's what I don't understand. Traditionally male-dominated fields rife with
harassment issues - like law and medicine - now have much less of a problem,
because the gender ratio has been somewhat normalized. Tech companies are
actually becoming MORE male dominated - yet medicine and law would be put to
shame by the sheer amount of mental and financial resources that tech
companies pour into diversity efforts nowadays.

What is different about the tech industry that girls graduating high school
are happy to go into studying medicine or law, but don't want to study
computer science? It seems the problem starts far before most people think
that it does.

~~~
dsfjksdf
Law and medicine are high status jobs, with a lot of people interactions. Yes,
programmers have meetings. Not the same level of interaction as medicine, by a
long stretch.

There are many TV shows glorifying medicine and law. How many TV shows glorify
the job of a programmer? How would you make a TV show glorifying the job of a
programmer?

~~~
Archio
So why do young men study CS in college if programmers aren't glorified? Not
to mention that being a "nerd" and "computer whiz" has never been a culturally
attractive label, no matter what people might say today.

~~~
true_religion
Men in America, but not in the world in general, are more money conscious than
status conscious. They're more likely to salve the idea of not having a
respectable job with thinking about how much money they are making.

~~~
mcv
I doubt it. There are a lot of men who care a great deal about status. I've
even heard of men who don't want to date women who make more money than them,
because they feel it hurts their status. If they cared more about money,
they'd gladly date a richer woman.

The problem is this patriarchal idea that men should be the main breadwinner.
Our culture tells them they've failed at being men if they're not the main
breadwinner. It also tells them they need to go all-out making money, which
makes it easier for employers to convince them to make long hours. At the same
time, women have this cultural role of mothers, where they should be concerned
with having children, and put their children before their job, and therefore
can't be expected to work as hard as men.

Alright, that doesn't explain why women are more prominent in other hard-
working jobs like medicine and law. Still, it's a cultural prejudice that's
still very much felt in much of society.

~~~
dsfjksdf
It's usually the other way round - women don't want to date men who earn less.
You probably heard your version from the feminists.

~~~
mcv
Quite the contrary. This is the first time I hear of women who refuse to date
a man who earns less than them (excepting gold diggers, of course), and I've
heard about men who don't want to date women who earn more than them, from men
who think women should not earn more than them.

~~~
dsfjksdf
Women marrying up is historically the biggest driver of equality in Western
societies (poor people becoming richer). Economist have identified it as a
problem because as women get richer and they don't want to marry down, that
mechanism for "equality" is increasingly lost.

So there have been studies about this phenomenon (women not wanting to marry
down), but I am too lazy to Google for them.

Also, financial troubles of the husband are the strongest indicator for
impeding divorce. And breakups are usually initiated by women.

Every time this comes up I wonder if I should launch a dating site for rich
women seeking a "houseman" for a partner. But somehow I am still not convinced
yet that there is really such a huge market.

~~~
mcv
Yeah, but that's part of the old patriarchal system where men make money and
women stay at home. In this age of double incomes, it should be irrelevant.
Still, some people cling to the old patriarchy.

~~~
dsfjksdf
It's not just that, it is that women have the greater bargaining chip in the
relationship. They have the womb for creating babies, so they can make more
demands. Also, they make the greater investment into kids (at first, at least,
over time it can change), which also warrants "compensation".

~~~
mcv
I'm not sure what they're supposed to be bargaining about in your view. Have
you ever been in a long term relationship? Because what you're describing does
not sound like a healthy relationship.

~~~
dsfjksdf
Do you have kids? Who got to stay home with the kids? Who got to work only
part time when the kids grew older? Who pays the rent? That sort of thing.

And, as always: on average...

If you don't see it, I don't think I can convince you. There is much to learn
about how the world turns.

~~~
mcv
I have kids, yes. We take care of them together. We both work 4 days a week.
She pays the mortgage, I pay childcare.

In a healthy relationship, this is stuff you work out together, not through
demands and womb-based bargaining chips.

------
vings
As a trans woman in tech, who was also raised in a very gender normative
environment (i.e. I was expected to conform to gender norms for boys as a
child), I certainly see her point. I got into technology a child mostly
because that what I could do within the environment's "boy" social role.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and relative to pretty much all cis women of
the same age, I have many more years of experience of playing around with
technology in my free time, and many _fewer_ years spent doing the
"empathising" activities which the author refers to in the article - exactly
the kind of activities which girls are often nudged towards. As a consequence
I am pretty good with technology.

And yet the more that I grow as a person, connect with who I am, and grow in
my options, the more I find playing around with tech less fulfilling than e.g.
spending time on relationships. I'd spend evenings tinkering with Linux when I
was 13, but I'd be unsatisfied as hell doing that today. And I envy women and
girls raised in environments that were more conducive towards them engaging in
empathising and self-expressive activities - if that were me, it's unlikely
I'd have gone down a tech track.

We need equality and freedom, but men and women are biologically different.

And it's not a coincidence that my first HN comment in years of reading is on
an empathising topic, not a technology one... Women can be great engineers, we
just rarely care to become them, unless circumstances unnaturally push us
towards it - I suspect this is why it is developed countries which have the
fewest women in tech, as wealthy people have the most options to choose from.
Of course this is all generalisations and averages and there are true
exceptions on both sides.

~~~
sudosteph
Holy stereotypes, batman.

> Women can be great engineers, we just rarely care to become them

How do you presume to know what the majority of women care to be? I'm a woman,
and I want to be a great engineer. I was extremely fortunate to grow up in an
environment with a female technical role model (my mom), so I easily saw
myself going this way, despite the societal emphasis on empathetic skills the
rest of the world expected from me. Others were not so lucky.

It's hard to care to be something that you were never properly exposed to. I
got that chance, you got that chance, but many women did not.

~~~
vings
Allow me to clarify some things in my post:

I intentionally worked on the basis of stereotypes or generalisations. If 60%
of group A wants prefers X over Y while only 40% of group B prefers X over Y,
it's accurate to speak in general terms, even if there are many individual
exceptions. Any discussion of women in technology _in general_, as opposed to
individual women in tech, inherently relies on the ability to make
generalisations.

As to how I presume it, I was basing my thoughts on the the science of gender
differences. Take a look for example here:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-
Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests)

In particular, "Results showed that men prefer working with things and women
prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the
Things-People dimension."

By "care to become them", I meant less the _desire_ to be a good engineer, and
more _actually_ enjoying the hours spent in lone engineering. It's one thing
to want to be a good engineer in the abstract, or to enjoy holding an
engineering role at a company (and some engineering roles in some company
cultures are much more people-oriented than other engineering roles), and it's
another thing to be somebody who would happily spend a weekend understanding
some algorithm, and evenings developing some new open source library as a side
project. There are definitely some women who will enjoy these over the
alternatives, but not many, and far fewer than there are men, as shown by the
huge differences in the Things-People dimension and the huge differences in
how many men versus women actually do those things.

And I'll speak just for myself: sitting away at a screen chopping away at some
problem often just isn't emotionally fulfilling. And I don't think women who
are not engineers really envy those who spend their time this way.

I definitely support initiatives to expose more girls and women to technology,
and to raise the profiles of minority group role models in tech. And perhaps
the lesson of the Things-People difference is not that engineering isn't for
most women, but rather that engineering needs to be done in a more emotionally
connected and social way, for example with pair programming.

~~~
sudosteph
> I don't think women who are not engineers really envy those who spend their
> time this way

Again, you are presuming to know what the majority of women feel. Your
personal preference for "emotionally fulfilling" work is just that, personal
preference. As for the study you linked, it's impossible to seperate the
influence of gendered socialization and inequal exposure to potential
interests from "biological" sources as causes for the differences.

Applying these types of weak generalizations to justify differences which are
better explained by sexism is not helping women in any way. Maybe if you had
experienced childhood as a a female you would understand how toxic female
socialization really can be. Stop telling other women what we prefer to be or
care about, and just help make a world where girls are not told they need to
be "emotionally fulfilled" to enjoy a job. Because that's the one that still
exists and prevents women from exploring technical work.

Many girls worldwide are still groomed for being caretakers responsible for
doing emotional labor and household labor for family when they could be
exploring their own interests. I know women, in America, who were raised in
this manner and it was very hard for them to to break away from that
expectation and work for themselves instead. They wrestled with guilt and
their family accused them of selfishness, but they decided rightly that their
destiny is theirs and it was wrong for their family to treat them like a
servant (notably their brothers were not treated that way). It's easy to
conflate the effects of that type of socialization with biological
dispositions, but nobody is helped by doing so.

~~~
vings
I really appreciate your perspective, and agree that I could grow in my
empathy for the harmful aspects of female socialisation. It's admittedly hard
for me to not view it as butterflies, rainbows and dance classes, but that's
just the "grass is greener" effect from my own experience. (I also had no
sisters and didn't observe it directly in my own family.) I support everyone
liberating themselves in the way that they need to.

I can totally agree that all of the studies and data that we have are taken
from within the culture itself, and so it's pretty much impossible to see the
biology through the culture. I often notice myself that biological
explanations are used by dominant groups in order to reduce their
responsibility, even if they may not be the most scientifically accurate ways
of looking at things.

------
ianai
I somewhat regret reading this article. She says she realized tech wasn't for
her when she realized doing IT in her off-hours was unpalatable. Here's my
question: Why? Why doesn't she like working on technical hobbies outside of
work? That might prove more interesting.

As for myself, her sentiment seems in line with the kids in HS who called my
type the nerds/geeks/other term for loser. I also think that's where society
needs to change. If society treated me more inclusively I might feel more
inclined to be social. I was savagely bullied all through k-12. If I had not
experienced that I would be much more comfortable expressing myself and being
around people in general. I think 'techies' being more inclusive to other
walks of life would happen if we, 'techies', weren't ostracized early in life.

(Having said that, I'm personally very open and 'liberal' in the more non-
political sense. But I'm also making almost no efforts to socialize currently.
I want to move far away from where I currently live.)

I wish she had elaborated on her valuation of personal hobbies in the same
field as work. Instead I feel like she dressed up a personal anecdote around
several paragraphs but failed to get to the meat of the issue.

~~~
Mz
_She says she realized tech wasn 't for her when she realized doing IT in her
off-hours was unpalatable. Here's my question: Why?_

Because she is actually extremely competitive, something typically thought of
as a male trait:

 _Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys
around me._

She didn't want a job where she was going to be considered second rate. She
wanted to be in a job where she would be "the best" and get accolades for it,
etc. She realized she didn't love tech enough to have the biggest bragging
rights, so she went someplace where she could outcompete others.

You know, like Bro culture gets accused of being.

~~~
flukus
> She didn't want a job where she was going to be considered second rate. She
> wanted to be in a job where she would be "the best" and get accolades for
> it, etc. She realized she didn't love tech enough to have the biggest
> bragging rights, so she went someplace where she could outcompete others.

That's the opposite of extremely competitive. Extremely competitive people
don't go into the easy lane and the certainly aren't worried about putting in
extra time to be the best. Extremely competitive people will seek out
challenges and put in a lot more training effort.

~~~
slededit
With rare exceptions like Michael Jordon's baseball career - most competitive
people don't seek out situations they can't win.

~~~
ianai
I think the previous comment was about lack of commitment to trying to
compete. I don't know exactly what she was doing or where, but I think it's
possible to have a work/life balance in IT.

------
noncoml
The memo was making the point that because men have more affinity to things
than women, Google should not try for a 50/50 balance between men and women.

The author here says that she enjoyed her work but left because the
predominant male co-workers had affinity to things and couldn't relate with
them.

If anything the author makes a case for Google's current strategy of striving
for 50/50 men women balance, since that would result in the author being able
to relate better with the co-workers.

The solution to author's problem is more targeted diversity.

Did I mis-interpret something?

~~~
the8472
The google memo argued that altering the job to be more people-focused instead
of thing-focused - e.g. more pair programming - would achieve the same goal
without what may be seen as affirmative action.

~~~
noncoml
> The google memo argued that altering the job to be more people-focused
> instead of thing-focused - e.g. more pair programming - would achieve the
> same goal without what may be seen as affirmative action.

While it did mentioned that, it didn't really argue that. After all this is
something that happens after you are in the company.

The main argument was that Google should stop conscious efforts to increase
representation of women.

Quoting from "Suggestions":

"we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases"

"Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as
misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the
homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts."

~~~
Boothroid
And quite honestly I don't think anyone has done me any special favours
because I have a penis - in fact in my experience possession of a vagina is a
fast track to the top, simply because companies are so desperate to even
things up.

I've had to work hard for what I've got. How is it fair that someone without
the same passion and possibly also without the same ability to deliver should
be given opportunities purely to meet this week's fashionable quota?

------
mpweiher
This is a wonderful personal story that gels very well with a large study on
"Why Women Leave Engineering"

[https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid...](https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tide%20Why%20Women%20Leave%20Engineering.pdf)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952078)

------
zby
Similar to the diagnosis by Jordan Peterson:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE-
xFXuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE-xFXuo)

Personally I think it is oversimplification - the thing is that - yes there is
a root cause in biology - but than that root cause is multiplied by social
circumstances. If there are few women in tech - then it is costly for
employers to adjust to them (stuff like adding women sizes t-shirts) - plus it
is also cheaper intellectually for people to judge women stereotypically. Plus
there is that thing that if women are more agreeable than man - than people
tend to target them more (with stuff like interruptions etc).

~~~
ucaetano
> yes there is a root cause in biology

No.

Proof: [http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-
bachel...](http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachelors-
degrees-women-usa.png)

If there was a root cause in biology, in 1980 there wouldn't be the same % of
women in CS as in business, or almost the same as social sciences. Or almost
the same as there are women in math/stats today.

Something happened in the early 80's. I have a hypothesis for that, tied to
the rise of video-games, sci-fi, etc. that eventually came to dominate CS. But
don't have any non-anedoctal evidence for that.

~~~
js8
Actually, you're wrong. This doesn't disprove anything, unfortunately, because
there also can be a feedback effect from people preferring fields with more
people of their own gender (that is for example women will prefer jobs with
more women over jobs with less women, ceteris paribus). In the presence of
such feedback effects, even if the ratio of men and women who intent to work
in some field is the same, you will get a dynamical system where the actual
ratio can vary a great deal over time.

~~~
ucaetano
> because there also can be a feedback effect from people preferring fields
> with more people of their own gender

No, that would mean that women in business, architecture, physical sciences,
etc. would not have increased.

The fact that women in CS followed closely several other fields (business,
architecture, etc.) means that % of women already on the field is not
relevant.

The fact that other fields that use skills similar to CS (math, stats,
physical sciences) have much higher women ratios, show that there is no
inherent biological factor impacting it.

~~~
SamReidHughes
No it doesn't, because they're different fields, some of which are pre-med
related. And amidst programming itself there's different behaviors. Way more
men design their own programming languages.

~~~
rjsw
Maybe worth looking at the proportions in other countries too, "pre-med" isn't
the first step to becoming a doctor worldwide. I gather that Law differs a
fair bit too.

~~~
SamReidHughes
I bet that would not be useful because the cultural effects seem to be much
different in magnitude even between European countries.

------
radiowave
As appealing as I find the idea of building a fibre-channel network at home,
the fact that people in computing (like me) routinely do these kind of things
is also an aspect of a culture within the field, not an essential
characteristic of the field itself. Do surgeons have watercooler conversations
along the lines of, "You'll never guess what I dissected at the weekend..." ?

~~~
robertlagrant
Probably, because they have to work weekends!

------
gyardley
The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life
outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is
nothing but a pernicious myth. So is the idea that you've got to be some
ridiculous super-genius. All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable
of learning on the job.

When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful
candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time, and especially
when interviewers at tech companies unconsciously favor candidates that match
what their 'stereotypical' candidate looks like, well, then you get a
situation like the one described in the article. But this isn't natural or
normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself.

~~~
xienze
No one said you have to be obsessive, but it helps.

~~~
gyardley
No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building
products for others unlike yourself.

The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset
and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better
off it'll be.

~~~
ralfn
Are you absolutely sure you arent just convincing yourself?

As someone who does actually love all this stuff so much that work doesnt
start and hobby doesnt really stop... We meet and work with people like you
all the time. We like the diversity. There are many ways to contribute to the
end result and any smart company hires both of us.

But your resentment is mean spirited. Get over yourself. We are not driving
any one away. From operations to sales we are all needed to make the engine
work. But if you come here arguing that those who love their job should be
fired so there is place for you without you trying so hard, that just silly.
Here is the thing: from all disciplines i know there are people who love and
breathe their job. If thats not the case in engineering for you, then you
likely want to find the field that does make you that happy.

That might just be a smarter plan than trying to convince yourself by
convincing us that in a field dominated by people who love it, you can be
competitive while considering it just a safe career path. You'll just end up
miserable.

~~~
tptacek
Absolutely nobody has argued that people who code in their spare time should
be fired. That's something you introduced, pointlessly and disruptively, to
the thread.

What a tire fire all these threads are. And people are surprised they get
flagged!

~~~
jholman
I think that's very close to what gyardley argued.

First paragraph is a claim that people who code in their spare time are
liabilities rather than assets. Second paragraph is a claim that the tech
industry as a whole should _recognize_ this, and take steps to make sure there
aren't too many around.

That's not actually arguing for firing (I mean, it might be arguing for that,
but not necessarily), but it's at a minimum arguing for actively choosing non-
hobby-programmers over hobby-programmers for programming jobs.

ralfn is not the one who turned this thread into a tire fire. If it is one,
which I dispute, the culprits would be some combination of you and now me.

~~~
gyardley
'Coding in your spare time' isn't quite as extreme as having no life outside
of tech. Hey, I code a bit in my spare time too, so let me clarify.

It's the people who don't do anything else but code that I've, in my
experience, had real issues with - they might make great computer scientists,
but as a group they're not very good in a team of software developers.
Arrogance, problems cooperating with others, excessive nitpicking, 'engineer's
disease', poor social skills...

I'm not saying you're _guaranteed_ to have any or all of those problems if all
you do 24/7 is code, but I've seen it one hell of a lot, and I'm perplexed why
this type of person tends to be preferred over more well-rounded individuals.
It's not like they're actually better at their jobs.

I'm not arguing for going through an organization and sacking everyone who
codes on the weekend. But I strongly suspect that if interviewers didn't
glorify the obsessive 24/7 coder, either deliberately or subconsciously as
'what a real developer looks like', we'd have both a much more diverse tech
industry and a much more functional one.

~~~
qb45
> much more diverse tech industry and a much more functional one.

As a Darwinist of sorts, I'm afraid that if this actually were true, we would
be seeing some serious disruption of those nerds by much more functional
diverse teams. The cat's been of the bag for so many years that somebody
_ought to_ have exploited it by now. But so far, it seems that one poster
child example of a company which made tons of money bringing computing to the
masses is Apple, under the lead of no one else but You Know Who, and
(allegedly) with quite obsessive, arrogant, nitpicking and abrasive people
working under him.

~~~
ubernostrum
_The cat 's been of the bag for so many years that somebody ought to have
exploited it by now._

I'd like to send you over here: [http://danluu.com/tech-
discrimination/](http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/)

And to the real-world examples of the market needing quite a long time to
correct for sufficiently strong biases in the culture.

------
iLemming
Watching this "drama" it feels to me like some kid in kindergarten said
something like: "boys have penises and girls have vaginas, boys prefer toy
soldiers and girls like playing with dolls". What's the damn deal about that,
I still don't get it? There are many other things to be angry at. Why in the
world people stuck arguing about this shit?

------
drzaiusapelord
>But it’s less male, and it suits me better.

That's not maleness, that's autism spectrumness. That's tech's real problem.
Most of us are on the spectrum somewhere and are socially a complete and utter
mess. More 'normal' people can do this job but they don't want to as its
endless workaholism and obsession for the most part and keeping up with
obsessives isn't fun nor are they pleasant to be around.

As someone who works hard to break out of the geek/aspergers mold and to be a
more rounded person I very much relate with this woman. Weaponized autism, for
lack of a better word, is something that is very unpleasant to be on the
receiving end of. I don't recommend a tech career to anyone at this point.
There are much better and healthier ways to make a living.

------
sp332
And absolutely no curiosity as to what causes the differences. Naturalistic
fallacy got this author hard.

------
danso
> _James Damore should probably have used fewer words with high negative
> emotional indices, when more neutral ones were available. But he was
> basically making the same point that I am: that women seem to have less
> interest in working with inanimate objects, and that ignoring this is going
> to lead to a lot of useless or even counterproductive diversity
> initiatives._

Hard to take this piece seriously. I've worked in tech and in journalism.
Women are decently-represented in investigative journalism [0], and being
successful in that means being highly motivated to work, 7 days a week for
long hours, with "inanimate objects" such as documents, legal codes, and
Lexis-Nexis, e.g. Jane Mayer [1] and Lucy Morgan [2]. Perhaps the reason why
the OP can't recall of many women at her workplace building fiber-channel
networks in their basement over the weekend is that:

1) It's rare even for men to do that. I went through engineering school; there
were students like that, some of whom would later go on to excel. But many
students such as myself weren't as obsessive yet were able to be successful
and confident too.

2) There weren't many women in her workplace period.

Maybe the implication is that women can get obsessed with something like
journalism because it's not the "inanimate objects" they're obsessed with, but
the real-life people who are impacted. OK. I don't work at Google but I
imagine that is a quality they would want in their workforce if they hope to
make their computing services integral and ubiquitous to human existence.

I can identify with the OP's selection-bias. As a Vietnamese-American, I've
gotten a few surprised responses from other Vietnamese about being a
journalist. Part of that may be because there aren't many Vietnamese relative
to other ethnic groups in America. And to a relatively poor ethnic group, a
poor-paying field like journalism isn't super attractive to Vietnamese
immigrant parents. There aren't a ton of (well-known) Vietnamese journalist
heroes to emulate either; none so far have won a Pulitzer (in editorial
journalism, at least). But why I became interested in journalist is easy: my
high school had a great program, and it was fun.

From my vantage point, the idea that women could succeed and enjoy tech is far
less hypothetical. For starters, women are represented well in STEM (just not
computer science), and tech is a highly lucrative field today. But more
importantly, unlike aspiring Vietnamese-American journalists, women have
actual heroes and paragons of the field to look-up to. Not just the long-dead,
such as Ada Lovelace and Admiral Grace Hopper. The engineer who (among many
other huge accomplishments) came up with the very concept of "software
engineering" was a woman [3].

I know the memo author's and the OP's point is not that women can't _at all_
exceed in engineering. But the situation isn't that women have sometimes done
well with computers, like a few WNBA players might be able to give NBA players
a tough challenge. The situation with computers is that women have been
_pioneers_. The memo's author does not provide sufficient evidence for us to
believe that biological factors are what make engineering unappealing to
women. So efforts to make engineering appealing to women are not just done out
of an obligatory guilt-trip, but could be essential to a company's continued
success and innovation.

[0]
[http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/blog/1761/investigative_...](http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/blog/1761/investigative_reporting%27s_gender_problem/)

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-
operatio...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations)

[2]
[http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/lucy_morgan_in...](http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/lucy_morgan_inducted_florida_newspaper_hall_of_fame.php)

[3] [https://medium.com/@verne/margaret-hamilton-the-engineer-
who...](https://medium.com/@verne/margaret-hamilton-the-engineer-who-took-the-
apollo-to-the-moon-7d550c73d3fa)

~~~
tzs
I think that in the context of the article having less interest in working
with inanimate object means wanting to work with the objects is not a reason
one takes the job.

Yes, successful investigative journalists work with documents. But do they
become investigative journalists because they want to work with documents? Or
do they become investigative journalists because they want to uncover the
truth behind stories, and documents are simply tools used as part of that?

Compare documents to cars. There are many people who like cars, and because of
that seek out a career where they get to work with cars and don't really car
what the cars are being used for.

~~~
danso
> _But do they become investigative journalists because they want to work with
> documents? Or do they become investigative journalists because they want to
> uncover the truth behind stories, and documents are simply tools used as
> part of that?_

Does it matter? A major component of investigative journalism is following
document trails and understanding records/laws. If you don't have the stomach
for it, your chances for success are greatly diminished.

It's not different from tech. Programming could be reduced to a "tool" for
success, too.

------
noncoml
Why are all posts regarding the google memo getting flagged? This kind of
censorship is getting annoying.

~~~
parenthephobia
This isn't censorship, this is HN readers saying they're not _so_ interested
in the memo that they need to have another post about it every hour.

~~~
noncoml
There is a difference between flagging and not upvoting.

If it is upvoted enough to reach first page then it means there are HN readers
who _are_ interested.

~~~
sctb
Users flag stories they think shouldn't be on Hacker News. It may be because
there's a zillion stories and opinions already and a particular one doesn't
contain significant new information, or because a particular discussion is
mostly uncivil, divisive, and damaging to the community.

We've turned the flags off on this one and ask that users please take care to
post civilly and substantively.

~~~
reitanqild
Thanks!

I've learned a lot from HN, even changed my views on at least one big issues
(legalizatiin of certain drugs) thanks to what I read here.

That happened because 1. reasonable discussion where allowed and 2. I read
both sides and decided the other side where right.

It wouldn't have happened if every discussion about it had been flagged off
the site.

------
bitJericho
"I built a fiber-channel network in my basement". I want to know more about
this. Can the OP write more about this?

~~~
JohnTHaller
Of the two stories, that's the one I'd want to know more about. Not because
I'm specifically interested in building a fiber-channel network in the
basement I don't have. But it's a bit fascinating that someone took the time
to do it on their own just to learn and I think it would be interesting to
learn about their motivations and experience. Plus, we've all heard kind of a
lot of stories about doomed relationships and seeing concerts, and it takes
something unique to make those interesting after a while.

------
cocktailpeanuts
Why is this flagged? I think it provides a great perspective, and it's not
from a privileged white bro.

~~~
sctb
One reason users flag stories is because the discussion is rife with things
like "privileged white bro" being tossed around without consideration. If
we're going to hope for a reasonable discussion, we have to comment
thoughtfully and substantively.

------
joelrunyon
Why is this flagged?

~~~
kristofferR
Because it's an interesting discussion where people have divergent opinions.

Only benign topics where "everyone" agree are allowed to stay here on a HN.

------
manbearpigg
I am so sick of the phrase "women in tech".

