
How to Be a ‘Woman Programmer’ - hudibras
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/how-to-be-a-woman-programmer.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&src=twrhp&pagewanted=all
======
lomegor
Wow, it seems most of the comment here, as of now, decided to overlook the
parts of the article that explicitly state problems that are most suffered by
women. For example, how this woman had a boss who stroke her hair, or how
another boss hated to hire women. That kind of pressure does not exist for
most men in the industry.

Yes, men suffer from high performance demands in business, but this is not
oppression Olympics. Nobody is trying to figure out who has it 'worse'. All
this article is saying, is that, as a woman, she has suffered a lot of
pressure that is based on her gender, and she even presents examples of it.
Men can suffer too because of their gender, but that doesn't mean there isn't
a "women in tech" problem, it means we have a "women in tech" problem and a
"men in tech" problem.

And it's also true that there is a small pool of women CS graduates. But that
doesn't prove that discrimination isn't real. You can also say that the reason
the US only has one black president has to do with a smaller pool of black men
running for elections, but it'd be ludicrous to say that proves discrimination
against black people isn't real.

Then there's one comment of someone implying that the "women in tech" problem
is just men wanting to get more women around them, which is not only really
men-centric, but also completely ignorant to the article where a WOMAN is
explaining the topic and trying to find a solution.

It's incredible how Lewis's Law holds true even for HN.

~~~
revelation
That argument was not an attempt in what you so non-chalantly call "oppression
Olympics", but rather to illustrate what some people might ascribe to
discrimination is really just common-place.

You are also misunderstanding the "small pool of women CS graduates". It's not
to suggest that theres no discrimination, but that theres possibly not much
you can do at the stage of post-graduation. That this is a result of
discrimination that starts very early in childhood and teenage years.

~~~
simonv3
Think about all the kids who don't see women in the tech fields and thus don't
see it as a viable career path.

The "small pool of women CS graduates" argument is bunkt because CS is a
meritocracy - so many men prove themselves through code rather than having
gone to a college, and the only reason women don't is because they're
discouraged at every turn - upon being hired, in the work place, at social
gatherings.

Why does the graduates argument pose a problem for women while its so often
celebrated when men skipped college or dropped out of college and became
successful within our field?

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Why does the graduates argument pose a problem for women while its so often
celebrated when men skipped college or dropped out of college and became
successful within our field?_

Is there a large pool of women who download python, work "learn python the
hard way", and put some repos on github?

If not, then just as there is a small pool of female CS graduates, there is
also a small pool of female autodidacts.

~~~
simonv3
Good job! You've discovered that the problem isn't one of women not getting
into colleges.

Edit: I'm not saying it's not part of the problem, but the problem is
obviously not just that.

------
ktavera
I'm getting really tired of this ignorant "tech is sexist" garbage. women
represent a minority of the already small pool of CS graduates. This is not
due to discrimination but to individual choice of what a student wants to do
with their life. Fewer women CS grads means a smaller ratio of women to men in
the tech industry.

The author blindly says that VC's want "a couple of guys that can build an app
in a weekend". VC's and tech companies in general want a couple of PEOPLE that
can build an app in a weekend. I find it impossible to believe that a tech
company would turn down a brilliant "woman programmer" just because she was a
woman. It is already hard enough to find good developers, no reason to reduce
the pool further with discrimination.

~~~
rxp
And... you're satisfied with that explanation? "There are fewer women in
technical careers, because fewer women choose to go into technical careers,
QED"? You're not even a little bit curious about why that might be the case?

~~~
babarock
Aren't you curious why the majority of programmers have dark hair or brown
eyes? Sometimes it doesn't matter.

I do not necessarily agree with my grandparent comment, but are you advocating
going out of your ways to find a problem out of statistics?

I'm also fed up with the whole "sexism in tech" bla bla. I don't want more
women in tech. I want more talented, more dynamic, more interested or more
passionate people in tech. More humble people. More beer lovers (there's no
such thing as too many beer buddies). More video game players. More runners I
can go jogging with. More team players. Less people only in it for the money.
Less pointy haired bosses. Less consultants and less auditors.

These are my own personal preferences and guess what? In each single case I
don't care about the sex of people in the industry.

By now, the "sexism in tech" has caused much more gender segregation than it
did any good. Now we're afraid to talk at a conference or at the office. We
never make any joke that might be remotely sexual around female coworkers
(note that my female friends usually take it really well).

So to answer your question, we should be satisfied with that explanation. More
women want to come, they're welcome to join. It's not going to be easy for
them, but guess what, it's not easy for guys as well.

And to make one last thing really clear: I believe that there are a few
problems women deal with in the industry, and we should be doing something
about them. I'm thinking about uneven salaries or about the way they get
treated if their nickname is ever slightly girlish.

So to make it clear, I care about women already in the industry. We should
help them with these minor inconveniences. But I'm not going out of my ways to
figure out why aren't women joining and what should I do to help them.

~~~
simonv3
>Now we're afraid to talk at a conference or at the office. We never make any
joke that might be remotely sexual around female coworkers (note that my
female friends usually take it really well).

Welcome to how it feels to be a woman, or a person of color, or gay, or any
other person who his regularly discriminated against by society and a culture
that elevates the white male simply for being white and male.

By ignoring the problem and not talking about it, you're perpetuating it.
There is no societal problem that has been solved by not talking about it, and
somehow, that is all I ever see people in the tech world suggest we do.

It's sad and narrow minded.

You say that you don't care about the sex about the person in the industry,
but sexism isn't a superficial problem person to person - very little people
are going to admit to being sexist or even think that they are - it's an
institutional problem.

Every time that you don't say something, or you make an argument like this
one, you are sending the message to people who are being discriminated against
that the people who say something sexist are okay to do so.

So stop saying it's okay to not talk about. Please.

~~~
babarock
"Welcome to how it feels to be a woman, or a person of color, or gay, or any
other person who his regularly discriminated against by society and a culture
that elevates the white male simply for being white and male." I'm not white.
At all. I understand discrimination for having been at both ends on several
occasions.

"By ignoring the problem and not talking about it, you're perpetuating it."
Either I agree with you or I'm part of the problem? And you call me narrow
minded!

"Every time that you don't say something, or you make an argument like this
one, you are sending the message to people who are being discriminated against
that the people who say something sexist are okay to do so." Did you even read
my comment? I said I'm not spending time pondering why there aren't women in
tech, because I don't necessarily want more women in tech. That's, by
definition, the opposite of sexist.

Do I think women in tech face some challenges that men don't? yes.
(Incidentally, I also think that men in tech face challenges that women don't.
It goes both ways). What I'm fed up with is people instrumentalizing the
sexism issue to create more drama, problems, and good ol' American hypocrisy
(we prefer the term "political correctness").

~~~
simonv3
"Either I agree with you or I'm part of the problem? And you call me narrow
minded!"

Yep. I'm pretty narrow minded when it comes to thinking everyone deserves the
same chances as I got.

"Did you even read my comment? I said I'm not spending time pondering why
there aren't women in tech, because I don't necessarily want more women in
tech. That's, by definition, the opposite of sexist."

Is it? You're letting the status quo be because you don't think it's having an
effect on the tech we produce? On the problems we're trying to solve? You
think that people not mentioning repression, how they are being made to feel
uncomfortable and not at ease, is a great way to produce the best products?

------
draugadrotten
Yet another article that perpetuates the myth that ONLY women are faced with
high performance demands in business:

"This strange illness meanwhile left the female survivors with an odd glow
that made them too visible, scrutinized too closely, held to higher standards.
It placed upon them the terrible burden of being not only good but the best."

This is a very common argument and it is false. Many corporate cultures are
performance-based, and it is simply not true that ONLY women are expected to
be the best. Many or even all men can feel this same expectation in
performance-based professions, but they will not blame their sex.

~~~
npc
1\. No one ever said that only women are faced with high performance demands,
you're very obviously making a strawman and you should feel bad for it.

2\. Arguments like "This is a very common argument and it is false" and "it is
simply not true that..." are merely bald assertions of fact and would not be
convincing even if you were arguing against an opinion that someone actually
held

3\. "Many or even all men can feel this same expectation in performance-based
professions, but they will not blame their sex" is dog whistling for the idea
that women are somehow conspiring to use anti-sexism to apologize for poor
performance. Also, how you can claim to know the feelings of "many or even all
men", and compare them to the feelings of women is beyond me.

4\. I have never seen a man complain about sexism in tech, but many women
have. There are only three explanations: a) women in tech are somehow
unreasonably seeing sexism where there is none, which given that it happens to
numerous women but no men requires an explanation that isn't cheap handwaving
b) women in tech are trying to use complaints of sexism to get ahead unfairly,
which I will happily dismiss as being needlessly cynical and misogynist c)
there is sexism in tech, which given that sexism exists to some degree in most
every place is not an unreasonable thing to think

5\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat> might be a good read

------
venomsnake
So I have this female friend that interviewed a few days ago in a small
embedded device workshop - so they ask her to implement bubble sort in C. She
manages this and then they as k her can you work with oscilloscope and she
answers "No but I can learn fast" then they dismiss her and unofficially tell
her that they won't hire her because girls don't like working close to
hardware.

So bias against women is alive and well. She was discarded for a non issue.

~~~
wavefunction
Sounds like she really dodged a bullet!

~~~
djcapelis
That would probably be more comforting if bullets weren't as prevalent in the
field.

------
Aardwolf
How to Be a ‘Woman Programmer’ in two easy steps - a short introductory guide

1) Be a Woman 2) Program

~~~
stefantalpalaru
3) ?

4) write your memoirs, two novels and an op-ed in NYT

------
gwwar
A few points:

1) It's 2013. If you work with men that don't know women are people, find a
new job. If they did something excessively stupid or harmful, you should sue
them to discourage them from harassing other women. Interviewing is a two way
street, you should not only prove that you're able to do a job, but also find
out if you want to work with these people.

2) Why learn from asshole managers? The internet exists. Learning a new
framework is easier than ever with superb documentation and tutorials. For the
fundamentals, some CS courses are fully available online. You can even go back
to school.

3) Yes, it is a numbers game. There are a small number of women who major in
CS/EE, and from that pool of people there are an even smaller percentage who
stick with it and get jobs in tech. Now as to _why_ fewer women are majoring
in CS than in the past is something we should be investigating.

4) Seeing that it's mostly men who have jobs in tech, it makes sense that
you'll see a small representation of women in VC backed companies.

5) If VC's are unconsciously discriminating against people who don't look like
Mark Zuckerberg, what's stopping you from bootstrapping? The costs of starting
a software company are smaller than ever.

~~~
simonv3
On 3) why is it that in a field where people are lauded (especially here on
HN) when they drop out of college or skip college all together and are
successful, we continue to come back to the "there are less women graduates"
argument?

~~~
gwwar
The lack of credentials are usually forgiven when he or she is a
founder/entrepreneur or an early hire. If they happen to be successful (which
is rare) why wouldn't we celebrate that? Everyone loves an underdog story.

Now with that in mind, would you hire someone that didn't have a degree?

A degree is a basic filter. How do you prove you have some knowledge about
computers and programming? Traditionally it's a degree. If someone already has
a bias that women can't program, the chances that she'll land an interview
without a degree is slim to none.

In any case, a proper university will teach you the fundamentals. They will
give you tools that will help you continue learning in the future, like how to
recognize categories of problems, and a general sense of how things are
abstracted from high level languages down to the bare metal. Learning
"practical" knowledge of current languages/frameworks should be easy after
that.

If I'm hiring for an open developer position and they have no degree (in
CS/Math/Physics), it's usually a red flag for me.

------
migrantgeek
Why are there so many articles about women in tech? I think it's just a wish
of some guys in tech to have more women around.

If it's just diversity we're after let's get some black and hispanic people
among the ranks.

I've worked with a lot of women over the years but never a black or hispanic
person. Ever. I'm sure they exist though the numbers have to be much lower
than women and I don't see any articles about "let's get minorities into
tech".

I really do believe the hype about pulling women into tech is some
subconscious desire to be around more women.

------
keithpeter
Quote from original article

" _We women found ourselves nearly alone, outsiders in a culture that was
sometimes boyishly puerile, sometimes rigorously hierarchical, occasionally
friendly and welcoming._ "

I'd like to know more about the companies that were friendly and welcoming.
Can any general principles be found about how to make an organisation feel so?
Could those principles be articulated as a guide to others?

------
jdp23
Somewhat off-topic, but:

Her novel "The Bug" is good reading; it captures the frustration of trying to
chase down an intermittent impossible-to-reproduce bug.

~~~
greenyoda
And it's one of the few novels that realistically portrays the lives of
software developers. The book is set in the mid-1980s, so it's also an
interesting look back into programming in an earlier era (nostalgic for those
of us who were there).

------
dsr_
For what it's worth, I'm looking for a senior sysadmin in Cambridge, MA. I
have not yet seen a single resume from an identifiable female, and would
certainly welcome a good candidate. (Of any gender, or whatever: gender is not
linked to Linux and networking skills in any manner I'm aware of.)

Could it be that my ad is putting women off? I don't know. I'll ask our
existing female employees.

------
kephra
It always surprises me that gender prejudice turned by 180 between 1970 and
1980. Programmer was a cheap woman job: Typist, data typist, COBOL programmer
was a typical career. It was believed that men can not even type 40 years ago,
when I started to become a coder. Suddenly programmer became a male job. And
the code quality dropped drastically from 1 bug per 10000 lines to 1 bug per
1000 lines. _hey_ Code had to be bug free !BEFORE! it was submitted to the
compiler in a typical female team.

So the male programmer prejudice brought less quality for a higher price.

~~~
jrokisky
This is sexism.

------
joyeuse6701
Replace programmer with nearly any profession and replace women with any
minority group in that profession during the 80s and the article will largely
be the same. It's the same old story (which is disturbing on a few levels).
Male programmers will be defensive because they are villains in this anecdote.
The article polarized men as evil and women as good, their perspective of
reality does not align with this post 2000 femininist narrative, which is why
so many bristle at articles like this. However I'm sure male or female
programmers can empathize with the misery of a belittle workplace environment.
It's frustrating and definitely can urge you to lash out.

~~~
blocking_io
_The article polarized men as evil and women as good_

Where?

------
revelation
Of course venture capitalists are looking for "a couple of guys who can write
an app over a weekend". That is just a succinct, snarky description of their
business model: find competent people that are willing to risk everything for
a very, very tiny chance of success and work tirelessly at it.

With how our society educates and segregates people by gender very early on,
it turns out that the vast majority of the people venture capitalists are
looking for are male. And then couple that with the ratio in a VCs favorite
field, computing.

------
elisehein
While unrelated to the topic of discrimination, I just wanted to take this
chance and say that Ellen Ullman writes beautifully -- I recognised her
signature style before seeing the author's name at the bottom.

Here is another beautiful excerpt from a book of her's that I'm sure everyone
can relate to [http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/26/close-
to-t...](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/26/close-to-the-
machine-ellen-ullman/)

------
sp332
_But no matter how strong the social structure, there is always that cheek-
slapped moment when you are alone with the anti-woman prejudice: the joke, the
leer, the disregard, the invisibility, the inescapable fact that the moment
you walk through the door you are seen as lesser, no matter what your
credentials._

Is this a "tech" thing, or our society in general? I've seen (many) stories of
this kind of thing from women just walking down the street.

~~~
king_jester
Both. How work is structured and the kind of work available to you are very
linked to society at large. The kind of interpersonal relationships you have
at work may mirror those outside of work as well, with the caveat is that it
is difficult for most people to switch jobs or kinds of work to avoid contact
with people that are harmful to them physically/emotionally/mentally.

------
ffibra
*female programmer

fixed

------
andyl
Yet another article on Gender politics. Where is the advocacy for
black/hispanic/old programmers?

Having said that, I wish there were less politics on HN. I read "Hacker News"
for technology and startups, not social engineering.

~~~
jvm
Considering sexism and racism in your own industry to be "special interest"
topics of no interest is probably the surest sign of being a proud beneficiary
of those dynamics. They're of paramount concern to anyone who doesn't benefit.
I'm not at all disagreeing that more advocacy based on race would be useful
too, but I do disagree vehemently with the idea that the solution is to cut
off discussion.

If you're wondering why as a young or male or white person with no "political"
concern for the rights of others would still consider this useful information,
the answer is that bright women and minorities are underpriced and
undervalued, and understanding how to create a workplace that respects them
will allow you to attract the best talent.

~~~
andyl
I'm an old person. It is quite impossible for me to get a job as a developer,
or anything else really. And - I don't care. I focus on doing excellent work,
not on grievances, whining, or complaining.

The world is enormous, and there is unstoppable demand for excellent work. So-
called discrimination doesn't change that.

'Waa, people don't treat me nice!' That's loser talk.

~~~
zem
"that's loser talk" pretty much works out to victim-blaming. you're saying
that it's the fault of the people being discriminated against for not being
tough enough to be successful anyway.

