
How I, a woman in tech, benefited from sexism in Silicon Valley - florianmari
http://huyenchip.com/2017/08/09/sexism-in-silicon-valley.html
======
imartin2k
"I have the feeling that we’ve been only addressing one side of the story.
It’s the side where women are victims. I’m here to tell the story of how I, as
a woman in tech, benefited from sexism and that men can be victims too."

Something that keeps bugging me - and this is in no way limited to tech - how
being a victim has become an identity to many, which is almost worn as a
badge. While I do what I can to emphasize with every individual who has been
exposed to discrimination, harassment (and while as a white man I experienced
most likely much less of this, although not nothing), a scenario in which
everyone walks around all day long feeling as the victim (followed by the
inevitable selective perception and confirmation bias) cannot function.

I recently listened to a philosophy podcast which started with a line which
has since been stuck in my head "In a time in which being a victim offers so
much social capital...". (edit: I recalled the quote slightly inaccurately,
but the point was the same: "In a culture in which there is so much social
currency connected to being a victim..." In case you are curious, it's episode
#105 of philosophizethis.org)

I don't know what to do about it and I in no way want to diminish the harm
that those who feel like victims experienced. But whenever victimhood is
becoming an identity, things are getting out of hand.

(the feeling of being a systemic/structural victim can be found on all sides
of the political/ideological/gender spectrum of course).

~~~
scandox
> things are getting out of hand

I think this is interesting because we have to ask ourselves: what is it that
we're worried about? What do we imagine will happen when everybody thinks of
themselves as being victimised? Some kind of cultural apocalypse? I doubt it.
Our culture will be "weakened" in some ill-defined way and we'll be "beaten"
or "taken over" by some other, more confident culture? I don't buy it.

Being a victim is not a purely objective matter. It is part subjective
assessment and part social consensus. Social consensus actually determines
most of how we react to it. I think at the moment the consensus is undergoing
a major change and that feels uncomfortable for those who felt the balance was
OK.

When the consensus stabilizes then people who claim victimhood that is without
merit will be ignored. Sadly, some legitimate grievances will also be ignored.
And the cycle will doubtless continue.

In the meantime probably the great majority of people will continue to NOT
think of themselves as victims.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
> Some kind of cultural apocalypse? I doubt it.

I don't believe there will be a cultural apocalypse necessarily, but I am
afraid there will be a gradual degradation of our culture. I'm afraid we will
move away from a society that tries to be meritocratic towards one that
accepts all sorts of norms so nobody gets offended. That lack of social
continuity would lead to everyone walking on egg shells all the time to avoid
offending everyone, thus destroying any chance of a sense of community
forming.

I'm also afraid of historical wrongs committed by my grandparents being used
to further legitimize racism against whites and sexism against men, simply
because of "white privilege". I'm afraid of a culture forming that says
they're for "diversity," "equality," and "multiculturalism" while completely
suppressing any person who varies culturally in the wrong way, or who
questions diversity systems that were designed in a different time when
blatant racism and sexism was much more commonplace.

> Social consensus actually determines most of how we react to it.

At one time, it was a social consensus that blacks and whites were segregated.
At another time, perceived socialists were pushed out of the labor pool just
because of their viewpoints on what a society should be. Social consensus is a
terrible metric on whether or not something is right or wrong, and people who
raise legitimate questions on the current social consensus(that only seems to
reflect the cultures of the east and west coasts of America, btw) shouldn't be
fired or forced out of the labor pool for discussing those norms in a polite,
rational manner.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>At one time, it was a social consensus that blacks and whites were
segregated. At another time, perceived socialists were pushed out of the labor
pool just because of their viewpoints on what a society should be. Social
consensus is a terrible metric on whether or not something is right or wrong,
and people who raise legitimate questions on the current social consensus(that
only seems to reflect the cultures of the east and west coasts of America,
btw) shouldn't be fired or forced out of the labor pool for discussing those
norms in a polite, rational manner.

This. Society changes fast relative to a human lifetime. Creating a society
where PCness becomes the target metric is an invitation to return to the
practices of casting people out based on hearsay and rumors like was done in
the McCarthy days.

------
77pt77
This text is the anecdotal version of this [1] paper

> The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically
> attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring

> Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated
> hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied
> profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in
> biology, engineering, economics, and psychology.

> Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all
> four fields _preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified
> males_ with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the
> exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference.

> Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced
> mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental
> leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world
> academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic
> science careers.

[1]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically
> attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring

If anyone seriously thinks sexist hiring is the main reason, they can't have
thought about this for a very long time.

The horrible work-life balance in early phase academia, at the exact point
when you are usually trying to start a family, is a much bigger issue.
Especially since women in academia are often in relationships with men in
academia, the question of "whose career do we down-prioritize" is answered as
much by biology as by the wishes of the couple in question.

Another one that is also a much bigger issue than sexist hiring is that many
of the "gender affirmative actions" that universities usually have are
actually quite damaging to women scientists. E.g. we have one at my local
university that says all PhD defense committees must include one woman.
Typically what happens is that the easiest way to achieve this is to ask a
local female professor to be the committee administrator.

That is just one example of how female scientists get handed a lot more non-
research tasks, in the name of "gender equality", than their male
counterparts. Other examples include project management and outreach
activities, where departments are typically falling head-over-heels with an
implicit but unintended "Look, we actually have a woman working here! Doing
actual real work!" vibe.

~~~
RhysU
> The horrible work-life balance in early phase academia, at the exact point
> when you are usually trying to start a family, is a much bigger issue.

It is unpleasant for both genders. As a male this horrible phase was a factor
in me not keeping on the academic track, though not the only one.

> Especially since women in academia are often in relationships with men in
> academia, the question of "whose career do we down-prioritize" is answered
> as much by biology as by the wishes of the couple in question.

That sounds like a trade-off made by two intelligent adults working in tandem
to better their family's place in the world.

I watched my wife perform with a professional ballet company 3 months after
giving birth to our older child.

If the couple wants to prioritize the woman's career, certainly post partum
lecturing, research, and mentoring can be resumed with full gusto in a similar
time frame.

------
LifeQuestioner
As a women in tech i'm starting to see another of these posts and thing _URG_
Another*

Give some some more interesting tech posts dammit!

I've suffered sexism everywhere - not just in tech. Maybe i'm different
because I enjoy writing code on my weekends, enjoy looking up the latest
machine learning tools - that I really just ignore the sexism, because I want
to make more things.

As long as you're not explicitly stopping me writing interesting things, say
what you like about me. Stop me from writing stuff I want, and i'll just leave
with my hefty portfolio of diverse projects.

I was the kid in school who would play football with other guys who would try
and stop me, I just learnt to play better than them, because I loved playing,
more than I cared about their sexism.

(note, not trying to belittle anyone, I understand these are real issues and
each story is different! Mine is in no way representitive).

But I hate the rhetoric even coming from women's posts - that seems to put us
down ourselves.

Even if there's sexism, as i've encountered from a kid, I'm staying because I
love to code and make new things and it's a natural part of where the world is
at the moment. I can change it, by staying and breaking people's perceptions.

~~~
freetime2
So this probably isn't a legitimate concern on my part, apologies in advance
if this comes out sounding offensive or just plain dumb. But it's an honest
thought that I've had as a male in tech...

One of the things that scares me about all of the outreach programs,
networking events, mentoring programs, etc. is that I worry it's going to
bring in a lot of people into the industry who don't really enjoy programming
but are in it for the prestige, money, etc. Computer programming is the only
productive thing that I've ever enjoyed doing in my life. I taught myself to
program as a teenager, studied CS in college and loved it, and have been
working in industry ever since. I don't ever want to manage people, or meet
with customers, or do anything else - I only want to write code.

Say what you will about the "frat boy monoculture" \- for all of its
shittiness at least it's mostly made up of people who are passionate about
code, largely self-taught and self-motivated, and enjoy what they do. And
almost all of the women programmers that I've worked with (and it sounds like
the parent poster as well) have been the same... maybe even more so since they
have had to deal with so much more shit along the way and are still here. And
I don't want that to change (the part about working with passionate, fun
people.. The discrimination and bias part needs to stop).

~~~
wcummings
>Say what you will about the "frat boy monoculture" \- for all of its
shittiness at least it's mostly made up of people who are passionate about
code, largely self-taught and self-motivated, and enjoy what they do.

Having worked at companies that employ tons of recent grads, I haven't found
this to be the case at all. Pretty much everyone I've worked with who has a
college degree (so almost everyone) is more "brogrammer" than "hacker" and
didn't write code until they went to school. Many don't know their way around
a UNIX environment and have never written code outside IntelliJ on a fancy
macbook. They'll tell you lisp is scary because it has too many parens, and
call software "apps". They don't use or are actively hostile to Free Software
and uncritically consume marketing. This is the "frat boy monoculture", I find
little redeeming about it, to say nothing of the _bigotry_.

I find the opposite is true of the weirdos, slackers and dropouts, who taught
themselves for fun and were working when their better educated but less
cultured peers were in school, but that is a small cohort.

~~~
needlessly2
>Many don't know their way around a UNIX environment and have never written
code outside IntelliJ on a fancy macbook

i'm pretty sure you mean Windows. Developing on Windows is mostly driven by
Wizards, IDEs, and other GUIs.

------
rayiner
The focus on individuals, of either gender, is short sighted. I've worked as
an engineer in a male dominated environment, and a lawyer in gender balanced
ones. When I think of what I'd want my daughter to do, I can't help but think
she'd have an easier time maximizing her potential in the latter field, where
she doesn't have to deal with the awkwardness of being the only woman on her
team, or working only for men team leaders. Today, much of the pipeline in law
is both gender balanced and gender blind. There are no programs to encourage
girls to take the LSAT, no gnashing of teeth about not enough women graduating
with JDs or applying to law firms. It's not perfect (only a third of new
partners are women, versus half of new associates) but we're light years ahead
of tech.

It wasn't always that way. Fifty years ago, only 5% of women were lawyers
(long after they were legally permitted to join the bar). People rolled out
the same tropes--the work was too detail oriented and analytical for women,
who preferred to work with people and children. They wouldn't want to deal
with the stress and long hours. Etc. That turned out to be bunk. Now, people
who want to maintain the idea that women are predisposed to not going into
tech have to resort to distinguishing what were archetypally "male" fields
like law by redefining those fields to be women-friendly ones.

The legal profession fixed the problem of historic discrimination in the field
by not being gender blind. Schools and law firms gnashed teeth about their
gender ratios, like tech schools and companies are doing now. And while that
may have been "unfair" to certain individuals at certain moments in time, it
was the only way to fix society's earlier sins.

A skewed gender ratio that is the product of past discrimination is itself a
form of discrimination. If you want to claim to have leveled the playing
field, then you have to actually level it and see if it stays level on its
own. In law and medicine, that turned out to be the case. I don't expect the
situation will be different in tech.

~~~
js8
> A skewed gender ratio that is the product of past discrimination is itself a
> form of discrimination.

I don't agree. What is your definition of discrimination? My definition is
that it is giving different preference to individuals based on some prejudice
- that is, believed (regardless whether true or not) average attribute of the
group they come from.

But if someone has a different preference, it's not a discrimination, even if
the preference is "I don't want to go to a field where there is too few
women". In other words, I don't believe "self-discrimination" is a form of
discrimination.

> If you want to claim to have leveled the playing field, then you have to
> actually level it and see if it stays level on its own.

But didn't this already happened in tech? In the 80s U.S., there were more
women in tech (computing) than today. Since then, the numbers have decreased.

~~~
ponci
The "preference" of wanting to fit in isn't unique for women, especially not
in your teens. I've read a number of stories about how geeks, maybe primarily
in the US, felt ostracized in high school. But even though I was a geek in
high school that didn't matter much for what you did. Since playing sports,
socializing and other actives were not heavily associated with school. I seem
to hear plenty of stories online like "I didn't think exercise was for me, but
now I've started biking, weightlifting, climbing etc". Would you say that
geeks who don't do certain things in high school in the US were "self-
discriminating"?

~~~
js8
> Would you say that geeks who don't do certain things in high school in the
> US were "self-discriminating"?

You can say that, but I don't see how it's harmful, unlike a discrimination
against a different person. If someone has a preference based on incorrect
world-view (in your example, association with school) and only later corrects
this, that's OK. Trying to fix this by ignoring the earlier preference would
be to succumb to a hindsight bias. Just because today you think your
preferences were wrong in the past doesn't mean that they were wrong at the
time.

In other words, preferences cannot be wrong, because there is no objective
function to evaluate them against other than how your mind feels about them.
The decisions based on those preferences can be wrong, but you won't know
until you make them.

Anecdotally, I have read quite a lot of articles where women explained why
they don't want to work in IT. Often, I get a feeling that the real reason why
is a different one than what they say (they for example mention sexism or
communication problems, where I think the real reason is that they just don't
enjoy computers that much). But regardless what the truth is, it is their
preference and it should be respected.

~~~
ponci
You seem to assume that preference is one sided. I can understand that you
might not think it is a problem. What I can't understand how you think (if
that is what you think) that the condition are the same. Even in your scenario
men don't have to overcome "self-discrimination" to become interested in
computers, women do. And they have to do so at a time in their lives where
most people, maybe geeks especially, are insecure about themselves. And even
if we assume that it is only women, and not men, who suffered from this "self-
discrimination" we don't really do a good job of letting them correct it
later. Instead people insist on focusing on "hacker culture", "having coded
since you were young" and "being the right kind of computer geek" long after
finishing high school.

~~~
js8
I am sorry, I don't understand your point. You're using the word "self-
discriminate" as it would be a thing - even though my whole point was that it
isn't a thing.

I mean high school jocks (men) also "self-discriminate" against using
computers. I don't see where I am one-sided. Everybody makes some choices,
sometimes they are misinformed, and sometimes they change the choice later,
and sometimes they regret.

Also you shouldn't forget that many men (lot more than women) tend to risk and
make some really bad choices in their youth (like driving motorcycles,
participating in crime..).

> Instead people insist on focusing on "hacker culture", "having coded since
> you were young" and "being the right kind of computer geek" long after
> finishing high school.

I don't think they are, particularly. I think if you feel that way, you just
need to go out more. In any field, many people who are really good at it
started at the early age.

Although you could perhaps claim that this feeling of wrong choices in youth
affects women more, because they tend to self-doubt more. But, it's a feeling,
it won't return you the time. Society can try to make people avoid bad
choices, but only so much.

------
Aqua
IMHO the very idea of forcefully pulling women into the tech field is the root
of evil here. This philosophy gives birth to the stereotype that women are
“worse” than men in engineering and science, because someone who is employed
based on their sex, orientation, color, etc. rather than actual skills and
competences makes life miserable for their team members who then start
thinking that some particular group is generally worse than the other. Stop
shoving tech down their throat and absurd stereotypes and sexism will
disappear on their own without the need of silencing someone’s view by force.

~~~
bArray
I'm of the opinion that the very act of trying to artificially create equal
outcome, _is itself sexism_. Currently we have both biased opportunity and
biased outcome aimed at artificially drawing more women into tech.

I cringe every time I see a tech woman's award. "Applaud X for her achievement
in creating Y, that wasn't good enough for the main award but it's the best
women can do".

Society is sick, somehow (almost) everybody fell asleep at the wheel and
forgot that equal opportunity trumps equal outcome. It drives people from all
backgrounds to work harder and means we don't end up presenting "okay" as the
best that's out there. We don't artificially add 10% to men's Olympic times,
why should be being doing the equivalent in employment? Can't we just hire the
best person for the job, not for quotas?

And lastly, where are the people complaining about unfair treatment of Asians
in the US, or women only companies? These shouts of discrimination are
extremely polarized.

~~~
coldtea
> _I 'm of the opinion that the very act of trying to artificially create
> equal outcome, is itself sexism._

The predominant view (with enough dominance to get someone fired from Google
for challenging it) is that there are no differences between the sexes that
can be considered legitimate at all (cultural, in preferences, evolutionary
tendencies, etc.), and thus any non-equal outcome much inevitably be the
result of suppression.

I don't doubt oppression against women existed and exists (in various forms).

I doubt:

a) that it is an one way street (women have immense power over their children,
including male children, and a particular role later in sexual selection,
which is hardly a male-dominated "sport") that are not questioned at all in
modern societies (e.g. not in the era of arranged marriages). It's assumed
that "patriarchy" is bad, but not that "matriarchy" can be bad as well.

b) that there are no legitimate, at least in the context of evolution and
culture, differences in preferences between sexes that are not attributable to
downright oppression or some "anti-woman" notion.

Women are men, in essence, that just happen to lack penises, and men are
women, in essence, that just happen to lack vaginas. Differences in
development, body types, capabilities, evolutionary roles, hormonal content,
etc., are not to be considered beyond this a priori fact.

~~~
foldr
No, the predominant view is that there is no evidence that women are
genetically predisposed to be worse at programming (on average) than men.

The idea that women might be worse at programming for biological reasons is an
entirely post-hoc hypothesis deriving from the current gender distribution in
the field. As lots of other STEM fields have seen a sharp increase in the
number of women over the past decades, while computer science and software
engineering have not, the grounds for thinking that biological differences
between men and women are relevant are extremely shaky, and really are nothing
more than pseudoscientific rationalizations of the status quo.

Please lets not have any more of this absurd straw man argument that men and
women must be equally good at programming because men and women are exactly
the same. No-one thinks this.

~~~
deecewan
I have no real knowledge on this, but what if women just don't, as a
generalistic point of view, find programming as interesting? There are plenty
of things I don't find that interesting, or enthralling enough to pursue a
career in. Midwifery, primary-school teaching, gardening.

Now, I'm not sure if that's just society having pushed me in that direction,
or if I, as a human, just don't enjoy those. If it's the former, maybe it
needs some work. If it's the latter, does 'equal outcome' really work?

I don't see as big a push to equal out the playing fields in things such as
janitorial work. This may be due to the fact that it's not as cognitive, which
I understand. I think we need _more_ women in tech to expand our (currently
male) viewpoint. But I'm not sure that aggressively targetting people who may
not be as interested, from either gender, is the way to do it.

~~~
foldr
>I have no real knowledge on this, but what if women just don't, as a
generalistic point of view, find programming as interesting?

If you have no reason to think that this is true, what is the point of
speculating about it?

~~~
coldtea
The same goes for the opposite notion.

~~~
foldr
Not really. Men and women are both human, and you'd expect them to be the same
in any given respect absent evidence to the contrary.

------
macspoofing
>I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They
are useless and detrimental to health.

These are almost exclusively for kids in school or just out of school. Like
camping - those that hate them, really hate them, and for others it's a lot
fun. If you hate them, don't do them, they aren't necessary. You can be a
perfectly good engineer without them.

>I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy,
unattractive, and without much of a social life.

Female engineers? Oh man. She must have missed the generic Scientist-guy and
Engineer-guy of the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Rick Moranis made
a career playing those guys. The engineer bro-culture and a certain social
status that is assigned to software or computer engineers and geekdom in
general is a new phenomena. It was not cool to want to be a computer engineer
or a geek for the vast majority of the last half century. It sort of reminds
me of the praise the Wonder Woman movie got for being a breakthrough moment
for women. I couldn't help but think, where were all these people in the 80s
when nerds and geeks were made fun of for reading Wonder Woman and other comic
books. My sister and her friends made fun of me and my friends for that!
Nobody hid or put up walls to these comics from anybody.

>I’ve read Megan McArdle’s essay and relate with her feeling of isolation as
I’m often the only woman in an environment dominated by men.

That wasn't quite the point of the essay though it is an interesting
interpretation.

>What we need to do is to make it easier for women to stay in tech...I don’t
know how we can make it more fun to women in tech.

That's kind of the crux of the problem. Nobody knows how to fix the
undetectable, secret societal pressures that steer women away from STEM and
into Humanities.

Also, it's a job. It won't be fun for the vast majority of people. Why do jobs
have to be fun? My father worked on the line at a factory all his life - it
wasn't fun.

~~~
mdpopescu
> Also, it's a job. It won't be fun for the vast majority of people. Why do
> jobs have to be fun? My father worked on the line at a factory all his life
> - it wasn't fun.

Thank you. I thought I was the only one exasperated by this (relatively new,
as far as I can tell) idea. I don't know anyone of my parents' age who thought
jobs were fun.

~~~
scrollaway
My father also didn't have fun at his job. Back in his days, people said that
automation would have us all working 2 hours a day by 2000. That didn't
happen.

However, there are now an increasing amount of people who have the luxury to
be able to choose their career, choose a job they'll enjoy and not have to
slave their life away to be allowed to pay for their food and shelter.

So, mdpopescu, _is that so god damn wrong_?

------
bracebreak22
I just recently left a tech start-up where the "look at how awesome and
diverse we are" rhetoric was so bad that I couldn't take it anymore. When I
first joined the company, I didn't even bat an eye that every single employee
was a white guy (Hispanic male here). It was only later after their recruiter
who, I befriended, told me I was their first "diversity hire". I laughed and
took it tongue in cheek.

However, over time, they formed a "diversity team" to emphasize in making the
company more diverse. Later on, I came to find out that this company did not
care about the individuals joining the company, but rather the "diversity
quota" they set to meet. Instead of hearing "we hired a great engineer who is
great in xyz", we would instead hear the likes of "Susan accepted our offer
letter, we finally have a female engineer on our team"; "Tim will be joining
our Product team. Hooray for gay!" (Yes, this was actually posted on a slack
channel one of the founders).

It became clear that this company was more worried about having mascots rather
than seeking talented diverse individuals. I pissed me off so much at how
condescending the founders would be when communicating with "non-traditional"
employees and how they thought they were such great, progressive leaders.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
This is disgusting, I am sure you are no different from your peers in skills
(and probably even better than the average developers around you) and it's
just not fair that you have to go through this.

People should be totally confident that they got the job because they did a
good job and the employer liked them for who they are but this whole diversity
system makes people doubt themselves, consciously or subconsciously.

I hope you're now working at a place where there's no such bullshit, and wish
you all the best.

------
JamesMcMinn
I usually avoid commenting on these sort of posts because frankly I don't
believe I have a lot I can add to the discussion, but this is an interesting
read, and I think the final paragraph is probably correct in how it frames the
current situation - neither "side" will be happy until both are happy. The
question isn't "should we be doing something?", it's "how do we do it?" and
how do we have that discussion without it turning into something else?

At the same time, we've also got to remember that this isn't just an issue in
tech, it's an issue across the whole of society, and as an industry we should
be looking at the broader picture, because this isn't an issue that technology
can face alone, but it is one that affects tech more than many other
industries.

I really hope this is something we, as a society and industry, can improve
upon. I'm lucky enough to work with a lot of people from a lot of different
backgrounds and cultures, and they're all great at what they do, but very very
few of them are female. I'd love to think that I was above any bias (both
positive and negative) that this introduces, but the fact is, I'm probably not
because I'm only human. Until we can make tech more balanced, it's a bias that
I will have to consider and try to overcome.

------
spodek
Reading _The Myth of Male Power_ led to situations like these make a lot more
sense. It offers a different perspective than the predominant view that I find
more consistent with experience.

I read it because I thought for sure the author was misguided and I would find
flaws and problems. Instead I found myself learning and growing.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0425181448/ref=sr_1_...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-
listing/0425181448/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1486666400&sr=8-1&keywords=amazon+myth+of+male+power)

~~~
anujdeshpande
On that same note, there's a recent documentary called "The Red Pill" about
men's rights.

------
g_lass
A company I used to work at has a 25% female target that was informally backed
up by fewer promotion points for the hiring manager if not met. That means, if
you are a woman (as I am), and you're one of the four applicants then you'll
be hired. Even worse, we had intern slots that were female only. They weren't
advertised as such, but male applicants were ignored. Is this how we get
"diversity"?

~~~
kruttin
I work at a company who set a similar target for gender diversity. They met
it. However, I get the feeling they were doing it in a way that temporarily
discriminated.

In our product department I would say the split is 60/40 men to women.
Racially it's mostly Caucasian but with a decent proportion of Asians. We
recently started our internship program for the summer and I noticed something
odd. Out of the 20 or so internship all but 3 were women, and almost all of
them were Asian.

Perhaps to correct discrimination and lack of diversity you have to
discriminate in the other direction. It's a sad state of affairs and I feel
it's going to be this way for a while longer. However, this whole thing has
left me with a bad taste in my mouth in regard to tech. After graduating years
ago I never thought that my company, industry, etc would turn into a political
clusterfuck.

------
arkh
> I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy,
> unattractive, and without much of a social life.

Seriously? I agree with the lack of social life. But how come most of the tech
people on TV (especially SF) are women? And it's not a new trend (Stargate,
X-Files etc.). Maybe the author does not think they are attractive because she
does not use the same criteria most male use.

> I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower.

I let you on a little secret: most male programmers hate those too.

If you want to make tech attractive to women you have to improve its work/life
balance: less hours. So 9/5 jobs which are already available in lot of huge
corporations. But yes that's less glamorous or rewarding than the startup
scene.

And about the chicken and egg problem? Just start your own company.

~~~
Inconel
I also didn't really get the author's point about all the unattractive female
engineers on TV. I actually think the opposite is the problem, for both men
and women, that the engineers or scientists you see on TV tend to be
ridiculously good looking people, only now they're wearing thick framed
glasses.

------
had2makeanacct
I always look at affirmative action in the US with the perspective of someone
looking at the reservations given to the "lower castes" in India to make up
for the oppression of the past. If a "general category" (upper caste) guy and
a "lower caste" guy with the same financial history appear for an examination
to get into a Law College, Engineering College, Medical, etc then they lower
caste person needs to achieve much less scores to get in. They have seats
reserved for them which can never be transferred to a general category person
even if no reservation caste person decides to appear for the exam.

You can't blame people if they are apprehensive about going to a doctor who
comes from the lower caste, you'll always doubt his skills because he had it
easier.

~~~
lern_too_spel
The thinking is long term. You have a large segment of your population that is
economically underutilized. Getting more of them educated in this generation
will help even more get educated in the next generation until eventually, you
don't have this drain on your economic output caused by hundreds of years of
discrimination.

The problem of undereducated doctors has always existed because only an
already wealthy and historically advantaged few could go through the process
of medical education without their family starving. After a few generations,
doctors will be drawn from a much larger pool, and the ones who make it will
be of higher quality.

~~~
had2makeanacct
That sounds good in theory but there are a plethora of jobs that the general
category people can't get now, there's no way this is equality. I didn't do a
good job explaining the situation it was just an overview, I'd be okay with
this but in practise this is really harmful and will go on because they hold
the votes.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Who said anything about equality? The goal is to become a developed country
with broad access to healthcare and economic access, which will lead to faster
scientific development that benefits everybody. The fastest way to get that is
not to help the already wealthy a little but to help the people disadvantaged
merely due to accident of birth a lot. More equality is a relatively
inconsequential side benefit.

You could either make yourself slightly wealthier now and die with all the
other wealthy people with today's life expectancy, or you could live
significantly longer by increasing the number of people who participate in
economic and scientific development.

There might be problems in the implementation of those programs, and that's
what you should focus on fixing; however, the general idea is obviously
correct to any logical long term thinker.

------
masondixon
> Lowering your hiring standards for women can give people like me the
> lingering self doubt that maybe I wasn’t good enough. Worse, it gives many
> techbros reasons to believe that his female colleagues aren’t as good as
> his, and act accordingly.

As a male, this has always been my main argument against affirmative action.

Too many SV white-knights feel they are helping simply because they are well
intentioned. But good intentions do not always lead to the best outcomes.

And the costs are these "lingering self doubts", and teams being suspicious of
"diversity hires".

Self-respect is very hard to quantify, but there is a distinct need for humans
to be respected and authentically appreciated, and the extreme advocacy for
females is sapping away this motivating force that is essential to work and
life.

~~~
collyw
Personally I feel that its bad idea for the fact that affirmative action is
sexist / racist. You end up selecting people based on their skin color / sex
rather than their ability.

~~~
skj
The bit that leaves out is that this already happens without affirmative
action.

~~~
masondixon
Affirmative action is _definitely_ racist and sexist. Without it, _maybe_ it
is in some cases.

------
userbinator
Every time this subject gets brought up, I keep wondering why it seems to be
nearly exclusive to the US; East Europe and Asia in particular, for example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164600)

I while ago, visited a Chinese software/hardware company and half if not more
of the employees I saw were female. To my knowledge, there is essentially no
explicit "we need more girls in tech" movement there.

~~~
masondixon
Yeh, US is pretty intense for social justice. I'd love to see a timeline and
some kind of justification as to why it became such a strong force. I remember
not even knowing what "social justice" mean't.

Like all the people's time and energy invested in social justice today...what
would these same people have been investing their energy in before 2010s?

What I see is that people love being outraged, purpose-driven, and
procrastination. And with social justice, while you're procrastinating, you
can be outraged, and you can join a movement and gain a purpose.

Social media is probably to blame.

------
antirez
About the Selection Leader story, it may not be that we have a different scale
for men and women, but just that, since people are aware of a potential
negative bias towards women, they unconsciously try to avoid the error of
giving a worse score to the woman, so they ended boosting the score as a
"protection" mechanism. Since we are human it is very hard to avoid this kind
of mistakes, especially given that the whole discrimination problem is handled
with such a tension that people over-react in all the directions at this
point.

~~~
77pt77
> since people are aware of a potential negative bias towards women

Except reality seems to be the opposite[1]

> Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all
> four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males
> with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of
> male economists, who showed no gender preference.

> Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest
> advantages for women launching academic science careers.

[1]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract)

------
daeken
When I was 16, I was in a horrible car accident. I was out of school for
something like 6 weeks. During that time, I built a project that got me into
Forbes a few months later, and into my first real job. I benefited greatly
from that car accident. Would I like to thank the responsible parties? No.

This justification is ridiculous. Just because sexism makes things easier for
some doesn't make the statement "Sexism isn’t making it harder for women to
enter tech." any less ridiculous.

Sexism makes the entire industry worse. It holds down some talented people
(e.g. the vast majority of women with an interest in security, the men in her
examples, and likely any unattractive women in similar situations to her
examples (as they're judged far more harshly, again subconsciously)), while
lifting up others who are less talented.

------
creo
I have similar view to her. Its kinda harder for me to say it because im a
man.

There is also a story behind my view. It goes like this: Im a runner. Not very
good, not very fast, just average. Most of the time, im in the middle of my
category. All local races are like 80% man and 20% woman. So while im in the
middle, my female colleague running same pace is almost always on the podium.
It works in her favor. IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT SHES BETTER/WORSE OR
FAVORED/DISCRIMINATED. It just doesn't mean anything, So why we have that
kinda ridiculous talk in IT? Who benefits from dividing communities?

~~~
Sholmesy
Yes, but biologically men are faster runners. We can measure this by comparing
times from various athletes/general population. It is very difficult to
quantify skill at creating software. I don't know if these two things are
comparable, I think you might be implying that men are biologically better at
creating software. Maybe they are, but I'd like to see the study, as I don't
believe that to be the case.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
The problem with this whole conversation is people add their worst cast
assumptions and value judge that.

When Damore said people have different traits, he meant it in a statistical
way [https://video-
images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1502146696203-S...](https://video-
images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1502146696203-Screen-
Shot-2017-08-07-at-65310-PM.png)

And he definitely didn't say men are better. That was the assumption added by
people who propagated the message. If you haven't read the original, please
try to read it, and I mean really, read it, not skim over it and make
judgment.

And please try to be open minded and don't add your own assumptions about what
other people meant such as:

"I think you might be implying that men are biologically better at creating
software."

------
jansho
Someone here mentioned that women are being pressured to join STEM, and that
this is "evil." A bit strong but I agree that this may backfire on us. Who
doesn't want a more open environment where everyone can feel comfortable in.
But lately, I'm sensing the diversity discussion shifting from "we are the
victims" (IMO while true, not very useful) to "we are better than you." That
does no service to anyone at all; suddenly we see each other in gender camps
and there's a battle line drawn in between. Hey I also don't want to be
identified by my gender only thanks.

It's a difficult subject because the issue _is_ actually real. I've
experienced it myself, and wish that things are different. I fully support
incentives to get more women into tech, but the way we're going about it now
is perhaps too much in the face. Let's not forget that diversity means
inclusion of _all_ groups, so that the majority and the many minorities are
considered for. It may seem messy but IMO the best we can do is to be
compassionate to one another, which yes, may mean some (acceptable) give-and-
take from everyone.

------
matt_the_bass
One thing that surprises me is how often society does not actively seek out
candidates from underrepresented groups across all aspects of life. Often
candidates from such groups are superior to candidates from the majority
groups. Probably because they've had to work harder to acheive. Two anecdotal
examples:

1\. My work often enters into the world of super yachts. There are very few
female yacht captains. Yet nearly all that i've met have been the best of the
best. I suspect that in such a male dominated career path, the female captain
had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts to get there. If I had a
super yacht, I actively seek a female captain as i'd want the best of the best
for my yacht. Yet of the largest, most expensive yachts none have a female
captain. And female captains have a hard time finding good positions.

2\. At my company we get significantly more male applicants than female
applicants for our tech positions. As a whole though I'd say that average
female applicant we get is better than the average male applicant and we've
offer jobs to a significantly higher percentage of female applicants than male
applicants. Sadly we get very few female applicants. Again I suspect it's
because they had to work twice as hard as the their male counterparts to get
to where they are. We didn't offer them positions because they were female. We
offered them positions because they were the best candidate.

Please note I'm not saying that it is a good thing that they have experienced
sexism along their career paths.

------
MichaelBurge
The industry is legally forbidden from discussing this subject, so all
discussions here or elsewhere will inevitably miss the point. And as members
of the public, Google will tell us whatever mitigates their risk the best. You
want freedom of speech and the ability to make arguments, you don't work for a
public company. And trying to debate it, is like trying to debate Galileo
while the inquisition is in the room.

Corporations are required to save all electronic records for SOX auditing, and
the State of California might decide to help themselves to those records when
their Attorney General is trying to make a name for himself by bringing a
gender discrimination lawsuit. That's why you fire people who make a habit of
saying incriminating things in easily-searchable electronic format.

For a similar reason, they should probably fire every Google employee who
talked about it on the public internet. Very high chance of being
troublemakers who draw attention from the government.

------
dandare
Who wants to play an Arguman game with me? Not specifically about the
diversity memo but about positive discrimination in general.

[http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-
imm...](http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-
immoral/26988)

------
danso
> _Sexism isn’t making it harder for women to enter tech. From my personal
> experiences, sexism makes it even easier for women to enter tech, though I
> understand that my experiences don’t generalize to that of other women._

The OP may have personally benefited from sexism. I don't understand why that
leads to the assertion of "Sexism isn't making it harder for women to enter
tech" when her experience seems to better support, "Sexism doesn't necessarily
make it harder for women to enter tech"

Edit: Not being pedantic for pedantic' sake. The OP's assertion inherently
contradicts the assertions of women who do believe that they were hindered by
sexism. So I'm genuinely confused if the OP believes that assertion as it is
written, or if it's a case of imprecise wording.

------
0xfaded
I want to point out this passage:

"But I was accepted, while all of my friends weren’t. I just thought that it
was because I prepped a lot for the interviews and my preparation paid off."

It's likely that the preparation did pay off and possible that the author was
as smart as her friends but not confident enough to believe it.

I've always been a snarky know-it-all, and honestly when I don't have the
answers I tend to extrapolate (read bs). It was only after talking to a long
time friend who identified as having impostor syndrome I realised that this
behaviour could be harmful.

She is a software engineer, beat me in school and should be running rings
around me.

Take it from a snark, confidence doesn't always mean smarter.

------
diegoperini
Can be off-topic but this piece must resonate more.

"I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They
are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with
beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes. I don’t like feeling
like a piece of furniture to add to the company’s diversity. I don’t like my
male teammates to think that I got to where they are only because I’m female.
I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy,
unattractive, and without much of a social life."

------
babesh
I think I have seen a similar pattern in interviews where men actually give
women higher scores for the same performance as men but women would have no
compunction giving the same women the actual lower score they deserve. The
reason is that the men don't want to appear sexist. The same goes for
promotions.

On the flip side, there is discrimination against women too with less pay for
equal work. Prettier women would also get more 'attention' from coworkers
which could be especially an issue if it were from a higher up.

------
js8
This kind of reminds me of this episode:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Opportunities_(Yes_Minis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Opportunities_\(Yes_Minister\))

I think the authors have nailed it. There is a lot of posturing, but at the
end of the day, most people for whom it is all done, ostensibly, do not want
quotas or special favors.

------
rsp1984
_I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They
are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with
beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes._

Thanks for saying this. I feel the exact same way, and I'm male.

------
_pmf_
As I said in another comment: in addition to people in favor of affirmative
action and people opposed to affirmative action, there's the large class of
people who are in favor of affirmative action, but against the political
correctness pressure of having to act like they believe this in for the
benefit of all instead of the explicit benefit of the affected minority.

I am for affirmative action (as originally intended), and I treat coworkers
whom I assume (in my flawed prejudiced manner) to have gotten here through AA
with the same respect as if I did not assume that they were hired because of
AA (and stop respecting them if they don't prove themselves as suitable for
the job, as I would do with non AA coworkers), but I refuse to sign the "any
kind of diversity magically improves everything" manifesto.

------
randallsquared
> I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower.

Every time I think I might be working too much, I hear that it's ordinary to
work _way_ more than I ever do, and I am reassured...

~~~
macspoofing
hackathons aren't work. They're supposed to be fun (though not everyone will
enjoy them) and are attended by the younger crowd. You won't see many 40-year
old engineers with kids and a spouse going there.

~~~
kruttin
I'm 40 without kids and I still agree. I completely avoid hackathons at work
because I hate the idea of being forced to be "creative" and doing optional
work. I'd rather focus on my hobbies. I do applaud the youngins for being
naive and enthusiastic though.

------
zelos
>I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They
are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with
beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes.

I think that's a very small section of the tech world, though. I've never seen
or heard about that kind of behaviour outside of SV startup scene. Admittedly
I'm a dull corporate developer, working in decidedly untrendy technologies in
London.

------
akhilcacharya
I genuinely wonder how much of this experience can be attributed to being in
Stanford CS instead of Random State U CS.

------
brad0
> I don’t like feeling like a piece of furniture to add to the company’s
> diversity.

This is a great point. Companies are still sexist when there's a 2:1 chance a
female will be hired over males with equivalent skills.

I'm happy there's some discourse around these topics right now.

------
needlessly2
>“She’s good for a woman, so even though she doesn’t do as well as that guy,
she still gets the same scores because she’s in the women’s league.”

But it would still be viewed as sexist if the interviewers gave her lower
scores. The only way not to be sexist is if you absolutely assess it right.
Not too high and not too low.

(not saying the author is calling them sexist)

------
raisinbread1234
"You are a sexist" is the new weapon for women these days. Just say that and
every common sense argument loses and everyone just shuts their mouth.

~~~
dijit
That's not the common insult.

However on twitter; "Mansplaining" is a quick way to shut down conversation
leading to sometimes funny[0] dialog between my girlfriend and folks on
twitter.

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/libsecure/status/833457782275833857](https://twitter.com/libsecure/status/833457782275833857)

------
needlessly2
>I think this whole claiming that being a victim as a self-fulfilling prophecy
is flawed. It's hard to say a trans woman who's been murdered or raped had it
coming.

wow, looks like things have escalated fast.

We've gone from Google employees who earn 100k+ salaries as software engineers
to rape...

~~~
norea-armozel
That's the thing. You can't arbitrarily say that the line stops at one thing
in terms of saying people are to blame for their misfortune when the same can
be said for anyone that becomes a victim in any other circumstance. Either
victims legitimately exist as a consequence of unfairness and injustice or
they don't exist at all. It's really something that has to be said because
it's the thing that I see too often stated in fluffier terms by New Agers (aka
The Secret). One's attitude can no more stop the power of a bullet any more
than one's attitude can stop the one who set that bullet in motion.
Ultimately, we always have victims and we always have a choice to accept that
they deserve justice when they are harmed.

~~~
needlessly2
>You can't arbitrarily say that the line stops at one thing

I never said that or implied that. You misinterpreted. It makes zero sense to
bring up rape when talking about this Google manifesto. I do think sexism and
racism occur in the tech industry. However, not comparable in extremity to
rape. This trivializes the experiences that rape victims actually do face. I'm
not a moderator of course, so say what you want. But it makes your talking
points looking appear ridiculous and nonsensical. Perhaps, your comments would
be more relevant in the Binary Capital case.

~~~
norea-armozel
My comment was in reply to another comment which wasn't directly related to
the letter that Damore wrote. I think you really need to read the comment I'm
replying to before asserting anything else because I think you're confused.
Try from the beginning and read.

~~~
needless2
i did read that person's comment. Nobody else mentioned rape until you did.

~~~
norea-armozel
Yet my comment was about blaming victims. So can you admit you're an
intellectually dishonest hack that should bow out now and get a job as a CNN
contrarian talking head? I heard there's been some vacancies made.

~~~
needlessly2
okay. stop throwing a tantrum because you were wrong

~~~
norea-armozel
Can you actually prove that I'm wrong or are you going to admit you're a liar?
Because there's a big problem with your non-argument so far since you assume
that the discussion isn't about victim blaming when the grandparent comment
was victim blaming. So yeah, you need to really get your argument out and not
latch onto the inconsequential things in my argument you don't like (like the
tone or whatever). Either stand up and deliver an argument or go away.

Edit: Also down voting me won't make your argument correct.

~~~
needlessly2
i'm actually not down voting you. However, other people are.

------
jlebrech
equal opportunity is like being given better equipment at the start of a
videogame where everyone else has to learn the game's mechanics. at some point
you never learned some of those early game skills to get past a certain point.

