
Nevertheless, She Coded - lmcnish14
https://dev.to/thepracticaldev/nevertheless-she-coded
======
unknownsavage
The grandstanding is corny at best. Take the first example:

> Despite continued assaults on the credibility of her contributions to modern
> computer science as the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace
> coded.

Yet in reality she was very much respected in her day, and despite her
challenges received widespread support. The first "assaults" on her scope of
her contributions came over 100 after her death, and not some sexism she had
to fight and overcome.

~~~
tomlock
She never attended University. Do you think she just wasn't interested in
attending?

~~~
magic_beans
Women weren't exactly welcomed into universities in the 19th century, even the
geniuses.

~~~
walshemj
they where explicitly barred until relatively recently

------
zephyrthenoble
I'm frankly quite surprised by the initial wave of comments disparaging this
message.

The facts are that women are poorly represented in the tech community[1], and
do make less than men[2]. Any attempt to let women feel more accepted and
bring about much needed change should be championed, not picked apart and
belittled because you feel like you are personally being attacked when people
are just asking for help.

1\. [http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/28/google-
release...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/28/google-releases-
employee-diversity-figures/9697049/)

2\. [https://www.cnet.com/news/biggest-pay-gap-in-america-
compute...](https://www.cnet.com/news/biggest-pay-gap-in-america-computer-
programmers/)

~~~
sheepmullet
Perhaps there are disparaging comments because people love to quote misleading
statistics... kind of just like you did.

From the glassdoor wage gap study you mentioned in [2]:

> After taking into account differences in education and experience, men
> working at tech companies overall make 5.9 percent more than women do

From a brief scan of the study they didn't control for hours worked and they
are already down to 5.9%

Since full-time men work 5% longer than full-time women[3] just adjusting for
hours worked almost entirely eliminates the gap.

[3] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/06/30/new-
repo...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/06/30/new-report-men-
work-longer-hours-than-women/#2f35760118b4)

Edit: Sorry I put the overall adjusted US pay gap of 5.4% when I meant to put
the adjusted tech pay gap of 5.9% from the glassdoor study.

~~~
ajross
So... your response to finding an uncorrected variable in the study (which I
don't see the value of, honestly, given that tech workers are near-uniformly
salaried in this country) is to go out and cherry pick a "correction" from an
_entirely unrelated_ study that confirms your worldview? Who's quoting
misleading statistics now?

Yeah, I've gone through and scanned that BLS report you linked to (actually
you didn't, you linked to Forbes, but this is what they were talking about):
[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf)

It doesn't say what you think it does at all. This isn't a study of men vs.
women working identical jobs and doing less work, this is a finding that
_across the entire workforce_ , a men's "work day" is somewhat longer than a
woman's. Which is to say: Women are more likely to work part time jobs.

~~~
sheepmullet
> which I don't see the value of, honestly, given that tech workers are near-
> uniformly salaried in this country

You can't see how working extra hours can increase productivity enough to
warrant a small increase in pay?

~~~
evgen
So, would you like me to link in the HUNDREDS of articles posted to HN over
the past two years going over how working more does not equate to working
better and how hours worked is a bad proxy for productivity. Should I? Or are
you going to just concede the point right here and now and retract your
statement?

~~~
sheepmullet
Frankly, I don't understand how those hundreds of articles are relevant.

Could you distill the overall argument?

Comparing two individuals based on hours worked is different to looking at
populations.

And we aren't talking about 60-80 hour weeks (burnout zone).

Unless you are arguing women as a group are significantly more efficient
compared to men?

------
phlakaton
If ever I had a notion that an expression of solidarity for women in tech was
unnecessary or quixotic, the response to this article on this very forum would
be sufficient to dispel it.

~~~
xor1
From what I've seen, there are less African-American and non-white hispanic
men in tech than there are white and Asian women, yet I never see this
discussed. Is this not an important issue as well? Will skewed racial ratios
only be handled after gender parity has been achieved? Or do they not matter
at all?

~~~
danso
The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for
racial diversity. This particular piece focuses on gender because of today's
being International Women's Day.

[http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-cant-
silicon-...](http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-cant-silicon-
valley-solve-its-diversity-problem)

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/20/9179853/tech-diversity-
sco...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/20/9179853/tech-diversity-scorecard-
apple-google-microsoft-facebook-intel-twitter-amazon)

[https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/thought-on-
diversity...](https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/thought-on-diversity-
part-2-why-diversity-is-difficult-3dfd552fa1f7#.g7677qfr1)

~~~
xor1
>The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for
racial diversity

Why don't I ever see it being discussed on HN?

~~~
danso
Uh, does it not seem logical that if there are fewer black/Hispanic minorities
in tech, that there will be fewer blog posts from that perspective?

But just because you don't ever see it discussed on HN doesn't mean that it
isn't. Try out the HN search engine:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=racism&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=racism&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=african%20american&sort=byPopu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=african%20american&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Here's a discussion last year on the YC blog post that was titled, "YC Open
Office Hours for Black and Hispanic Founders"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228326)

------
dongslol
I wish comments were scored in a way that was weighted by the degree of
bravery it took to write them.

What a shame that most of the top comments here are boring, stand-up-for-the-
vulnerable types agreed with by the majority— "women face difficulties in
tech, and we should help them whenever we can"—while the downvoted posts are
the ones trying (not necessarily successfully) to arrive at politically
incorrect truths.

~~~
Mz
It is incredibly hard to have a good discussion about this topic. I think it
is getting better on Hacker News, but there is still a lot of work to do.

I sometimes write about such topics, but can't get much traction. A few of my
pieces have gotten a few thousand page views, mostly on HN, but most of what I
write is largely ignored. If you want something meatier, you might enjoy my
personal blog.

Best.

~~~
dongslol
I'll check it out.

------
chrisbrandow
I just had a conversation with a friend of mine today about the issues she is
facing as a "woman in tech". It was some stuff that really surprised me. On
today of all days.

Treatment of women as full-fledged peers is definitely something that needs
better attention in our industry.

~~~
dashundchen
I am always amazed by the stories I hear. It's a common yet toxic mentality
where women are told they can't or shouldn't do something, or aren't cut out
for STEM because they are female.

I recently saw this surface on HN in the basement of this thread, discussing
the appointment of Jennifer Widom as the dean of Stanford Engineering. Many
posters speculated, without knowledge of her credentials, that she was
unqualified compared to her male peers and only selected because she's a
woman.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779165)

I don't know how it escapes them that this attitude is the literal definition
of sexism, and that women in tech have to fight this constantly.

I saw it happen all the time in engineering school. I even occasionally see it
in workplace. So many of my female classmates and coworkers are talked down
to, discouraged and have their skills written off by their male counterparts
(nevertheless, they persist). No wonder the share of women in STEM fields
dwindles, the culture can be absolutely toxic.

I don't doubt that many people are honestly being unintentionally sexist. But
it's on everyone to constructively call out this behavior and support a
healthier culture in the school and workplace. At the very least, why would
one want to write off the ideas and talent of half the population?

~~~
RodericDay
There's this nerd fiction favorite called "Snow Crash". I read it early on,
and this line always stuck with me:

> _It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type
> espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be
> sexists._

It's really very true.

~~~
Tycho
Isn't the genre science fiction?

------
danso
Loved this anecdote:

[https://dev.to/thepracticaldev/nevertheless-she-
coded/commen...](https://dev.to/thepracticaldev/nevertheless-she-
coded/comments/459)

> _The first thing I coded was an Everquest 7-page website in plain-old HTML.
> I was 15 and I had figured out HTML from right-clicking and wondering if
> 'View Source' was how it was made._

I went into computer engineering because I loved video games and wanted to
write games. I believe my one of my first webpages was a Final Fantasy fanpage
with Microsoft FrontPage, uploaded to my dad's Prodigy web space. I don't know
what the actual stats are in terms of girls playing video games, but I
wouldn't be surprised to see a correlation between that childhood activity and
a later interest in programming.

------
bsder
I really wish they would quit promulgating this because it's actually
counterproductive:

"women face continued pay disparity"

Seeing this statement tells me _immediately_ that the author is grinding an
ax.

In some fields of engineering (EE, for example), women actually get paid more
(104% last I checked). And, when you control for experience, time off for
family, etc., pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappear.

Complaining about discrimination or harassment? Sure, go for it. Lack of child
care and having undue burden with family health issues? The stats back you up.

However, attempting to promulgate something which is not true hurts the
overall movement when there is so much that is true and needs to be fixed.

~~~
KirinDave
> And, when you control for experience, time off for family, etc., pay
> disparities in most tech fields almost disappear.

Okay, so spoiler alert, I'm grinding an axe right now.

It's completely ridiculous to imply that analysts are not normalizing for
hours worked. That's one of the most basic things they do, and you really
should provide proof in the form of a study that both published its
methodology and has been done in the last 5 years that didn't account for
this, setting aside that one clickbait publicity stunt from Glassdoor. People
keep citing other studies that "don't do this" and it's not true, or point to
the national average and say that extends to knowledge work and that's absurd.

"The pay gap" is not simply lockstep salary progression. It was just the most
obviously unfair and lowest-hanging fruit. That's only the start of it. The
fact that women are often passed over for promotion because industries frown
on maternity leave, the fact that harassment leaves women with fewer
mentorship opportunities, the fact that many environments treat interviews
like hazing, all these things add up to create aforementioned gap.

Your quote up at the top _is_ the root of the pay gap. It's your belief that
someone who works a reasonable sum of hours but then goes to have a child
_should_ be paid less. You believe that someone who takes time off for a
reasonable work-life balance or a family emergency _should_ be paid less. That
attitude is bad for everyone, but it's especially bad for women in much of
western society's current form.

And yes, there are still places where women DO get paid less for the same
work. That is not done yet. And until it's so rare that it's unheard of, we're
going to keep pointing it out.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Can you cite a study that controls for time off, degree type, experience that
still shows a large disparity in pay?

 _It 's your belief that someone who works a reasonable sum of hours but then
goes to have a child should be paid less._

The question isn't whether someone who takes time off to raise a child should
be paid less, it is whether someone with more overall work experience should
be paid more. My wife took 10 years off to raise kids. Is she entitled to the
exact same salary as a co-worker who continuously worked for that time,
increasing their skills? What about a 5 year gap? 1 year?

~~~
KirinDave
I think the question is, "Can the person do the work and contribute to the
environment they're being paid to be a part of." It is not some sort of game
where dollars = experience.

From that perspective, the answer should be, "Yes they do deserve equal pay
for equal work, why is that so challenging?"

~~~
x1798DE
Paying people more for having more experience isn't some weird fetish that
companies engage in. It's done that way because people with more relevant
experience _generally_ get better at the thing they're experienced in (or have
more breadth of knowledge, etc). If you try to pay someone with 10 years
experience the salary of someone with 1 years' experience, you will either
have a very hard time finding people to hire or you will end up hiring someone
who is not very good at their job.

So yes, if someone takes 10 years off to raise children or to go yachting
around the world or to help sick children, they will probably not command the
same salary that their (otherwise identical) co-worker who stayed in the field
for those 10 years would command, because they likely won't be capable of
"equal work". Anyone doing anything else would be _systematically overpaying
their workers_ , and are likely to be out-competed by companies paying market
wages.

~~~
KirinDave
> So yes, if someone takes 10 years off to raise children or to go yachting
> around the world or to help sick children, they will probably not command
> the same salary that their (otherwise identical) co-worker who stayed in the
> field for those 10 years would command, because they likely won't be capable
> of "equal work". Anyone doing anything else would be systematically
> overpaying their workers, and are likely to be out-competed by companies
> paying market wages.

I'm confused by your patronizing tone. You seem to think I don't know that
this is common practice.

See, the point of the prior post was: I disagree with this premise. The
question should be, "How well does this person do the job" not "how well does
this person match my preconceptions about how an expert in this job should
look." This is especially the case in the world of software and software
products, where we're notoriously bad at identifying talent and educating
people.

Anyone who's designed tech interviews with a high technical standard can tell
you that years worked is at best a weak signal.

~~~
gspetr
> "How well does this person do the job"

And people use experience and continued employment as proxy. Sorry, companies
have not figured out a better method in general.

If you only look at women who never married and never had children the pay gap
is tiny.

------
dethswatch
Warren violated the rules- it has _nothing_ to do with her gender.

Whether her points are validate or not, the rules were followed as they would
have been with any man.

If she wants to get her opinion out, she can hold a press conference outside
the Senate or simply call Maddow, like she did- a friendly audience that would
allow her to speak as long as they had time for.

~~~
mgbmtl
Said rules are not applied systematically, and there is clear bias in how they
are applied.

~~~
1_2__3
I look forward to your evidence of sexism there then, since otherwise any
inconsistency is entirely irrelevant to the "strong woman stood up to men"
narrative (and please realize I say that as an enthusiastic Warren supporter).

------
curyous
The whole premise of this article as espoused in the first sentence, seems
rather divorced from reality, to me.

~~~
proaralyst
How do you see that? What do you disagree with?

~~~
aaron-lebo
It's the little things.

For example, the inclusion of Elizabeth Warren and McConnell's line. What
McConnell did (attempt to shut down resistance of the opposite party) was
wrong-headed and undemocratic, but the only thing it had to do with gender was
the use of a pronoun (edit: yodon is right).

Nobody would have paid much attention to it if he'd said "nevertheless he
persisted", but a partisan attack was made into something about gender when
there's no reason to believe it was so.

What does it really have to do with coding, anyway? It's inclusion says more
about the author's goals than it does about the topic.

~~~
st3v3r
"What McConnell did (attempt to shut down resistance of the opposite party)
was wrong-headed and undemocratic, but the only thing it had to do with gender
was the use of a pronoun"

If that were true, then why were the several men who spoke after her, and read
the exact same letter, not disciplined?

~~~
Jimmie_Rustle
They did not read the part that McConnell objected to as that was already read
by Warren.

------
msimpson
I've handled the hiring of almost all Web developers within my company for the
last half decade, and in that time I have hired absolutely zero women. Yet,
this has nothing to do with discrimination and much more to do with the
applicants themselves and the numbers by which they apply.

During this time, I've seen Web design positions attract females applicants by
about a two-thirds majority, whereas Web development positions attract only
one in twenty (if that). And yet, those who have applied seem to fit into two
distinct categories of undesirables:

First, the designer, with a design degree, who learned to code from some two-
week academy that now feels the need to apply for a position well beyond their
skill level. Or second, the mathematics major (or similar) who feels their
knowledge of topics only related to programming in general is satisfactory
enough to hit the ground running as a Web developer of all things...

So I'll be happy to discuss the potential of a wage gap if I ever seem to hire
a true female Web developer.

~~~
spopejoy
In truth, your real issue is you don't value an integrated workplace. Once you
decide that it is a top priority to have a diverse workforce, you will find
ways to attract, grow, and retain diverse talent.

You clearly have not decided this is important to you, which is your choice.
However, because you choose not to pursue it, you are now concluding that you
are entirely blameless for your objectively abysmal performance in hiring
women. That is not a valid conclusion.

My experience is that once I chose to prioritize hiring women, a bunch of my
own hidden biases, assumptions and yes, values, became clear. I realized that
I had missed opportunities to hire women in the past. I realized that I had
connected values I shared with people I hired as objectively "good" when in
fact they just matched mine. I have a high opinion of my skills, so it's
perhaps natural that I would do so, but in the end it actively hurt my
abilities to recruit a diverse workforce. It was actually quite painful to
realize I was the reason for not hiring women in many cases.

The other thing to realize is women, like all humans, have their own biases,
and instinctively suss out those organizations that are seriously hiring
women, and avoid those that don't. So until you decide that you want to
recruit women, _and succeed in doing so_ , you will continue to have a
terrible record for hiring women.

~~~
msimpson
> Your real issue is you don't value an integrated workplace ...

> You decide that it is a top priority to have a diverse workforce ...

> You will find ways to attract, grow, and retain diverse talent ...

> You clearly have not decided this is important to you ...

> You choose not to pursue it ...

> You are now concluding that you are entirely blameless ...

> I chose to prioritize hiring women ...

> I realized that I had missed opportunities ...

> I realized that I had connected values I shared with people I hired as
> objectively "good" ...

> I have a high opinion of my skills ...

> I was the reason for not hiring women ...

In truth, your real issue is that you project your own failures in an
amazingly presumptuous manner.

Whereas I merely left a comment detailing my factual observations regarding
hiring for a specific type of position advertised equally to both men and
women on services like LinkedIn and Craigslist.

------
jondubois
I couldn't name a single programmer, man or woman who worked on any Apollo
mission. The problem is not that women are under-recognized as coders, it's
just that engineers as a class of workers are often under-recognized.

Humans just don't care enough about intelligence unfortunately. Everyone knows
about Neil Armstrong though.

------
asher_
These types of articles seem to always get the same mixture of responses. The
biggest problem that I see is that everyone starts with completely different
sets of assumptions and they are almost never up front about them.

The lack of cited sources in articles like these leads people to bolster or
criticize particular studies that they have read or heard about, usually
without referencing those. Many of these studies are either flawed or contain
assumptions that some people don't agree with, so this ends up going nowhere
also.

Are there any really good studies on this topic that we may discuss as a
common point of reference? Once that take into account all the facts, and
don't start with assumptions like the following:

1\. There should be equal numbers of men and women in tech (or there is some
other ratio that is preferred or correct). 2\. Women and men in tech should -
on average - be paid the same.

Some people have these assumptions as part of their personal belief systems,
but they entail a whole bunch of other assumptions that are not prima facie
true.

One other huge weakness in these kinds of studies is that they measure the
things that are easy to measure; things like education and experience. If
companies are hiring compensating employees rationally, they would use these
only as heuristics, and have some measure of how much an individual employee
would contribute to the company as the determining factor.

Measuring job skill, as well as all the other skills that go into being a good
employee is really hard, but until a study tries to actually do this, they are
coming up with conclusions that aren't at all useful in the real world.

------
Zikes
> Gender inequality has permeated the technology and computer science fields
> since their earliest beginnings.

It's true. The earliest "computers" were overwhelmingly women.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer#Wartime_computi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer#Wartime_computing_and_the_invention_of_electronic_computing)

~~~
prepend
Those were secretarial jobs and not equivalent to today's computer
programmers, like Ada Lovelace.

~~~
panglott
Those were secretarial jobs because the men designing the hardware thought
that was the hard stuff, and that designing software was basically secretarial
work. When they discovered that designing software was hard, they forced the
women out. [http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-
how-...](http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-
how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D)

~~~
dobbin
It's a common pattern throughout history and one that really annoys me. People
argue that the pay gap isn't real because men choose more highly-valued
positions, but the reality is that positions favoured by women are inherently
considered low-value. If some type of "women's work" somehow starts to become
respectable or starts to pay better, it stops being "women's work" and the
women are pushed out. If women start entering a respectable field and the
field becomes "women's work", it stops being respectable. You can see it with
the salaries of doctors in Russia, and the narrowing definition of what is
considered "hard science" or STEM as women enter these fields in the US. It
has very little to do with how difficult or important the work is.

~~~
mmel
I'm curious, what used to be considered a "hard science" that is now no longer
considered so due to (or corralated with) the influx of women into that field?

~~~
astrodust
There might be confusion about causality here. Generally women find more
success in a field that's not jammed full of highly competitive men who push
anyone weaker out of the way. Where they move on to some other target, the
playing field becomes more fair.

~~~
strictfp
Your theory sounds more plausible to me. I'm male and find an all-male
environment incredibly competitive, toxic and tiring to myself. It's very hard
to get reasonable discussions and almost always degenerates into competition.

So I can imagine that you just bail if you aren't conditioned to put up with
that kind of crap.

------
weirdshape
There are disparities in pay and representation between men and women in the
tech industry, favouring men. Are we then to work to create parity in pay and
representation between men and women in the fastest possible way? Some people
say yes. Some people say companies need to immediately go out of their way to
hire more women, hire a more racially diverse staff and carefully calibrate
their pay so that, ideally, your company diversity is a reflection of the
diversity of the country you're in. But to me this seems really really wrong.
Is it because I'm bigoted? Maybe. I don't think it's just that though, I
honestly think its a really unfair approach, my own regrettable biases aside.
To do that to tech would be unfair to many people, and also, would only be
because tech is lucrative.

------
Pigo
"continued pay disparity"

here we go...

~~~
CryoLogic
I studied economics in college, and worked with a professor who was
researching the "pay gap".

We found that adjusting for a number of factors (profession, experience,
education, etc.) the pay gap actually closes significantly.

That isn't to say some companies _don 't_ have pay gap, but it is largely
overblown and often dissimilar pay is a result of other factors.

tl;dr 70 cents on the dollar is not a real thing when you use your data
correctly (at least in USA).

~~~
cbhl
If men become doctors and women become nurses, or if men become Software
Engineers and women become Test Engineers, then there's still something wrong
with the world.

"Adjusting for profession" ignores the cultural context of terms like "pay
gap" \-- we come from a world where women couldn't work certain jobs at all.

~~~
brighteyes
> If men become doctors and women become nurses, or if men become Software
> Engineers and women become Test Engineers, then there's still something
> wrong with the world.

Imagine that doctors and nurses were paid the same. Would you still think
that?

Other than salary, neither being a doctor or a nurse is "better". One is more
technical, the other involves more personal contact, but neither of those is
better, just different.

The same is true for Software Engineers and Test Engineers. It's snobbery to
say one is better.

We should be lobbying to get nurses paid more.

~~~
edblarney
This is sarcasm, right?

~~~
flukus
"Higher skill" would be a better description, although I'd say the gap is a
lot smaller with test engineers than nurses.

------
pkd
I personally don't find anything flag worthy in this. Can the mods please
unflag this?

~~~
KirinDave
I concur. There is nothing flagworthy here. This is only controversial because
people doing flagworthy things are trying to inject politics into a
celebration of people who write code and build software.

------
tzs
> Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had arrived on the Senate floor on Tuesday,
> Feb. 8, 2017 to debate the confirmation of attorney general nominee Jeff
> Sessions.

Feb 8, 2017 was a Wednesday, not a Tuesday.

------
cholantesh
Why was this flagged?

------
elastic_church
Don't recruiters keep stats on the offers and demographics that people get?

I had heard wage gap wasn't an accurate disparity in software engineering
jobs. Like there isnt a cabal of people at every company conspiring against
equally qualified candidates based on gender.

In HIRED's report it seemed more common that people underbid themselves, and
more often than not the company still gave people higher offers if they had
underbid but these were still lower offers than for people that bid higher or
overbid.

Lets work on it but we have to get the discussion right first. I think
villifying a sexist boogeyman isn't going to get us anywhere if a persistent
reality is more nuanced.

~~~
oconnor663
I think we have to be really careful to avoid putting words in other people's
mouths with these things.

> I think villifying a sexist boogeyman isn't going to get us anywhere

I don't think anyone is denying that sexist rhetoric exists, or that a pay gap
exists. It could be "vilifying a sexist boogeyman" to say that one is
primarily caused by the other, and it's fair to criticize articles that say
that. But I don't think this article says anything like that. I think it
addresses them separately.

~~~
elastic_church
The article is based on the circumstances that perpetuate a wage gap under the
guise that the awareness of gender discrimination applies to wages for
programmers.

I like the cause: awareness of gender discrimination, harassment and awareness
of contributions in the workforce.

I think the wage gap is tangential to these circumstances, when there is
evidence to the contrary for equally qualified individuals in software
engineering roles. This isn't saying that gender based averages won't reveal
the existence of a gap, it is saying that the current discussion misses the
mark, as if this is a form of harassment that is either deliberate or
unconscious bias that people simply aren't aware of, when there are other
circumstances that are more nuanced and likely more prevalent, in the field of
"coding".

------
dijit
I'm desperate to push the "women aren't victims" narrative.

If we tell them they're victims enough then they'll believe it. There is
evidence of this in other things for instance refugees who are told that
they're victims are less likely to integrate.

I'm more focused on pointing out that we're all equal. If you're a woman on my
team, I'm incredibly sorry but I'm not going to celebrate your feminity any
more than I'd celebrate my other colleagues manliness. You do your job and
I'll reward everyone with good pay, a bonus and a cake or two.

~~~
dang
Your comments in this thread have broken the site guidelines which ask you not
to do classic flamewars "unless you have something genuinely new to say". This
isn't new—it's a tedious trope we've all heard a zillion times and nothing is
to be gained by repeating it. Please don't do this here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13821991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13821991)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
dijit
I'm geniuinely not trying to bait or flamewar, but what's the trope I'm
parroting?

I haven't seen people using the same arguments as me before.

Unless you're referring to my refugee sentence which has, at least some,
connections to reality[0]

[0]:
[http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4fe039762.pdf](http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4fe039762.pdf)

------
hl5
The only reason this garbage gets published is because it's trendy to
discriminate against white males.

~~~
kampkrusty
Can you quantify this discrimination?

~~~
hl5
[http://smallbusiness.chron.com/tax-incentives-using-
minority...](http://smallbusiness.chron.com/tax-incentives-using-
minorityowned-business-30659.html)

~~~
hl5
[http://abc7.com/education/race-based-school-budget-cuts-
spar...](http://abc7.com/education/race-based-school-budget-cuts-spark-
outrage-in-noho/1818792/)

~~~
hl5
[http://www.fox5dc.com/news/244420583-story](http://www.fox5dc.com/news/244420583-story)

~~~
hl5
[http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/03/black-lives-matter-
philly-...](http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/03/black-lives-matter-philly-bans-
white-people-from-its-meetings/)

------
sattoshi
This is the first thread of hn that I would label as cancer.

"Pay gap is fake" "Prove it" _Cites stuff_ "Unrelated/invalid" *Conversation
derails

Scrollinf half way, i saw this easily 5 times.

It's as if people stick to their beliefs despite any arguments that are made.

