
Women: Learn to Program This Summer - jl
http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/women-learn-to-program-this-summer
======
adenadel
Here's the blog post explaining why Jessica is doing this

[http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-
summer...](http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer-
hackers-program)

------
dang
All: there's room on HN for good-faith debate, but not for ideological
flamebait (regardless of which flavor), so can you please not post that? It's
tedious, off topic, and boy does it suck the oxygen out of a thread.

Here's a test: ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity there is in your
comment or your motivation for posting. If you don't find much, please hold
off until you do. Intellectual curiosity is the reason this site exists [1],
and it's a fragile factor nowadays amid the rage and hysteria online. Keep HN
curious.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
moffet2018
hey dang, ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity is there in this promo
post?! quite disingenuous on your side.

~~~
dang
It's true that moderation comments are out-of-band for the site. But they're
necessary, because the system can't right itself without them. If it helps at
all, they're even more tedious to write than they are to read.

Edit: mlevental points out that you were referring to the article, not my
comment. I think there's plenty of intellectual curiosity in what Jessica
wrote, especially in the blog post explaining why she did it. In fact, I'd say
it's obvious. That commenters don't always respond to curiosity with curiosity
of their own is a separate issue.

Certainly it's also a promotional post in the sense of wanting to call
attention to the program, but that sort of mix is common on HN, and it's where
it is on the front page because users upvoted it.

~~~
mlevental
the person you're responding to here is trying to point out that the article
is disingenuous and so only can generate the same. I don't agree/disagree.
just clarifying.

~~~
root_axis
What about the article is disingenuous? It doesn't even seem to be making any
arguments.

~~~
CydeWeys
Seriously. It's 100% factual. "I'm ponying up money for so-and-so program.
Here are the qualifications and stipulations."

It's only disingenuous if she's lying about these things and actually not
doing this, which seems like an absurd accusation.

~~~
throwawaylolx
The downvoted user clearly claims dang is disingenuous, not the article...

------
ajiang
EDIT: To clarify that the money is going directly to private individuals, as
per Austen.

Incredible, thanks for putting your money where your values are @jl.

As for the numerous comments in this post around reverse sexism / reverse
discrimination:

1\. This is a private individual giving personal capital to other private
individuals, supporting a personal cause. It is hard to both claim principles
of free market and rally against this.

2\. Private companies making hiring decisions are correcting for an indefinite
history of bias. That doesn't mean they're hiring unqualified individuals,
simply that they're making sure they put in measure to correct for biases and
can identify individuals with the great qualifications that in the past would
have been past up due to arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like
'bad culture fit'.

3\. None of this is to say that you personally are not experiencing a
challenging time or are not subject to bias in any way. None of this should
diminish your personal challenges in the work environment. That should be
addressed. This particular individual (@jl) and this particular company
(Lambda School) are just not addressing that particular cause at this moment.
And that should be ok.

~~~
commandlinefan
> arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'.

You make it sound like there are people out there saying to themselves, "I
know I should stop discriminating against under-represented minorities, but I
just can't seem to stop myself" as if discriminating were addictive like
smoking. If somebody used to discriminate and wants to stop, the solution is
to stop discriminating, not discriminate in the other direction. But this
isn't somebody who used to reject people under vague euphemisms and needs this
"nicotine patch" to help them kick the habit - this is somebody who's creating
new euphemisms to discriminate in a way that's socially acceptable.

~~~
jschwartzi
That's not exactly what OP means. What's actually going on is that we have
certain expectations around candidates' behavior and the wording they use on
their resumes and the way that they respond to technical interviews. These are
behaviors that are ingrained for most white men but tend to be less ingrained
for women and non-white men. So our hiring processes are subtly biased against
anyone who isn't like us.

The interview process is all about being biased against certain candidates.
But what often happens is that the biases we hold when interviewing and
working with candidates don't matter to the job but happen to exclude people
who would otherwise do quite well.

It's not like interviewers are all twirling their waxed mustaches and
snickering about how many women they've excluded. But what they do is listen
to how someone describes a problem or how they behave during a whiteboard
interview and interpret that negatively simply because it's different from
what they were expecting. And so they don't hire the person because they're a
"bad culture fit." Some women have been trained by our culture to use less
assertive terms to avoid showing dominance in a discussion. And they tend to
wait for you to finish before they talk.

Or suppose that the people at the company tend to wear a certain gamut of
colors because they're all white and blue-ish and grey-ish colors tend to look
better on white guys. So when someone shows up with a redder shirt that person
might be taken as "too flamboyant" when in reality they're just picking a good
neutral color for their skin tone. It just happens to be a significantly
different tone from the rest of the office.

It could even be as subtle as discomfort with inexact or flowery speech. I had
a lead who would get very uncomfortable when I would talk in metaphor and use
metaphors and different words to describe things in terms that he wasn't used
to. He would try to get me to tone it down. But everyone else on the team was
perfectly okay with it so I kept doing it. That's another form of useless
bias, because I was understood and could do my job but probably wouldn't have
been as hire-able if I had talked like that during my interview.

My point and OP's point is that discrimination is frequently not overt. We
have to look past these superficial differences and really think about whether
someone can do the job. And we also need to be exposed to more candidates who
are not like this. So a program like this stuffs the pipeline and gets us more
exposure, and it's now up to us to challenge our existing biases and try a
more diverse array of people out.

~~~
crumpets
>non-white men

I assume Asian men are actually "white men" for the purposes of your example?

~~~
jschwartzi
Can you explain a little more what you mean by this or where the disagreement
is? I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Thanks!

~~~
hnxs
If you ever make it out to the bay, you’ll see that white men, Asian men, and,
to a much lesser extent (though much more represented than everyone other than
the first two), Asian women make up the majority of the engineering workforce
here.

~~~
johnisgood
Which clearly demonstrates that just because you belong to a minority, it does
not mean you will be "oppressed" or whatever the current narrative is. There
are successful groups of people belonging to a minority, i.e. it is not the
fact of belonging to a minority that is the problem, is it?

~~~
simonh
What consists of a minority is of course contingent and relative. A group that
is a minority in one setting can be the majority in another. In one situation
a group can be the oppressed, in another 'they' (different individuals but of
the same 'group') can be the oppressors. Unfortunately that's human nature,
but it doesn't mean we have to just sit back and accept it.

If course it's also possible to overcome obstacles like these. Some people are
very successful at doing so, but unfortunately others are not and shouldn't
really have to.

------
seancoleman
My girlfriend, a nurse of 10+ years, just started learning to code on her own,
built her first (basic) website
([https://www.nataliepeterson.dev](https://www.nataliepeterson.dev)) and is
applying to Lambda School already. I sent this to her this morning and she was
elated.

Programs like this really work.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
For whatever reason this website feels so personal. Instant flashbacks to the
2000s. I love it.

Hint for picking a random image when clicking on the image: The currently
shown image should be excluded from the list of images to draw from. This
prevents the problem that sometimes clicks appear to do nothing, although in
reality the same image was randomly picked again.

~~~
seancoleman
Great suggestion. I will pass along the feedback to the developer :)

~~~
jxub
A carrousel could work as well

------
40acres
Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination
and gatekeeping work not just in our industry but in society as a whole.

How can we simultaneously be an industry built on free an open source software
and yet try to put up walls around our industry when efforts are made to make
it more accessible to others?

The barriers to programming are being lowered and this is an excellent thing.
More diverse companies, different types of people to bounce ideas on, new
perspectives. This is what our industry needs more than ever, and yet so many
feel a threat veiled by concerns of affirmative action and 'reverse
discrimination'.

We need to acknowledge the barriers that have existed in our industry but may
be blind to you personally because you never had to deal with it. For one,
access to a PC for a long time was restricted to those with low incomes. My
mother saved her income tax refund for two years to buy our first PC, the one
I learned to program on. The schools I attended didn't have a computer lab
until my junior year of high school. It's a great thing that programming is
being spread to those who did not have access before. If software is eating
the world everyone had better become familiar.

~~~
manfredo
This, I feel, is a disingenuous summary of the concerns with explicitly
discriminatory policies voiced in the comments here. The issue is not that
people don't want to make coding more accessible. The issue most serm to be
taking is that many places are pursuing diversity by deliberately making it
less accessible for undesireable demographics. See my company's policies for
one example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19464944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19464944)

I don't take any issue with boot camps that are exclusive to women, but I can
definitely see how people are worried that it reinforces the general atttide
that "white/Asian men in tech = bad, women & URM in tech = good"

Barriers aren't just being lowered. The're also being erected for some types
of people.

~~~
spamizbad
Is there any evidence of a "general attitude" that white and asian men are bad
in technology? Because if they are, they must be incredible at what they do as
they keep getting hired in droves. I think the view is they're
overrepresented, but the "bad" part of that is the overrepresentation, not the
race or gender.

For example the American Association of Educators is trying to encourage more
men to become elementary school teachers, where women are drastically
overrepresented (It makes tech look like a utopian melting pot). By doing so,
they're not saying women are bad, but they are saying the profession would
benefit significantly from more male participation, particularly when
addressing concerns specific to young boys who are more likely to struggle in
school.

~~~
manfredo
Sure, but are they explicitly discriminating against women in hiring teachers
in order to increase the percentage of male teachers? Because more and more
that's what's going on in tech companies (with the genders reversed).

~~~
wsy
Of course. If a man and a women apply for the same primary school teacher
position with the same skill level, they will hire the man.

~~~
manfredo
But do they explicitly deny women jobs for a position where they would have
hired a man? As in do men get two chances to pass an interview when women get
one? Do they have blanket policies to not hire women of certain backgrounds
where they do hire men of those backgrounds?

~~~
wsy
I don't know that. But even what I described disadvantages female teachers,
and rightfully so.

~~~
manfredo
Well in my company we are using those policies. And besides just because it's
happening to women in other industries does not make it any less immoral.

------
yakshaving_jgt
I have several female friends who find Affirmative Action campaigns so off-
putting, they decide against joining the industry.

One friend recently complained to me that all the AA enthusiasts just want to
talk about feminism and women in the workplace, and not about actually writing
code. She was incensed because she was invited to a 'Girls Code' meetup, where
women would learn about algorithms by modelling their own menstrual cycles[0].
She was (understandably) frustrated, saying that her interests extend beyond
what comes out of her genitals.

This is anecdotal, sure, but amongst my social circle, this seems to be the
rule rather than the exception.

I sense a bazillion downvotes coming my way. You may think these opinions I am
passing along are incredibly incorrect, but they _are_ the opinions of
_women_.

[0]: [https://imgur.com/a/jFLU0C8](https://imgur.com/a/jFLU0C8)

EDIT: It took no time at all for the downvotes to arrive, as expected. There
is no such thing as the sisterhood. Feminists will immediately cast out any
woman who doesn't hold the "right" opinions.

~~~
exolymph
I am also a woman and feel similarly, although it didn't deter me from working
in the industry (or at least adjacent to it).

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
Thanks for chiming in. I’m not a woman, but I think it’s important to
highlight these opinions because people like you and my friends _do_ exist,
although you’d never think it from the typical discourse on this topic.

From the discussion/debate I’ve had in the past, I perceive a strong overlap
between people who would aggressively dismiss these women’s opinions, and also
people who say we should “just listen to women”.

I have no agenda to push women into tech specifically, but coincidentally most
of the people I have mentored and brought into tech have been women. This is
likely because I’m in tech, and I’ve always spent more time with women. It
puts me in an awkward position when I encourage a woman to attend an event
like Rails Girls (which I had _heard_ is an excellent experience for women),
and then that woman comes back and says she hated it, and that very few of the
women there actually wanted to do any programming, and that most of them just
wanted to talk about gender politics.

In any case, I’m glad you weren’t deterred.

------
rosterface
I recently completed a very difficult job search where I unfortunately had to
lean on my ethnicity (I’m Mexican) to pass through very overt screening
against white men. I was shocked to hear from multiple companies, large and
small, that they did not want men and white men in particular.

Now we see a YC co-founder giving 40 women $9000 to learn to program.

Where does it end? I was really sad that while I personally can survive in
this environment (if I abandon my ideals of not being judged by my genetics),
many good men who are passionate about their work are being pressured from all
sides.

I honestly don’t see how any of this is legal but it’s such a taboo to talk
about that fixing the problem seems impossible without a major shift back to
valuing skills above demographics.

~~~
manfredo
I can confirm your observations. At my company we have a couple policies.

1\. We only accept applicstions from candidate from non-traditional
backgrounds if they're diverse. Diverse is defined as any of the following:
women, black, Hispanic, or native American - maybe also veterans but I'm not
sure. Non-traditional background means coming from a coding boot camp, or
majoring in a non-computing related field. I think after 3 years industry
experience candidates are considered traditional even if they came from one of
those two.*

2\. Diverse candidates get two attempts to pass the technical phone interview,
non diverse get one.*

That said, when it comes to the hiring decision we don't discriminate. No
disrespect for those candidates considered diverse, just take what you get.
And I'm Cuban myself (but not visibly Latino) so I may have benefitted from
that part of my identity myself.

Untimely I think the lower representation of Black and Hispanic people in tech
roles is reflective of education rates. I suspect that were incomes and
education more equal that would make representation in tech more equal. There
also geography. Not many tech companies in the south where most black people
live.

As for women thats a more difficult situation. I think that there's strong
evidence to back up the claim that women may not choose to enter tech on their
own volition. I think the solution to that is to emphasize the value of fields
other than tech. Being coder at Google doesn't make a person any more valuable
than a lawyer, marketer, salesperson, etc. Sure they may make more money, but
that's the product of the labor market. And not to mention the average lawyer
probably makes more than the average coder.

I've anecdotally seen a growing portion of coding boot camp that are exclusive
to certain demographics. I wonder how much of that is due to policies like
these. Especially for boot camps that only charge if the graduates get jobs in
tech, I can see how it would be disadvantageous to admit white and Asian men.

* Edit: I just checked and these policies also apply to people with referrals. So one could justify this by saying we treat diverse candidates as though they have a referral.

~~~
pacala
> Diverse candidates get two attempts to pass the technical phone interview,
> non diverse get one.

These rhyme with soviet era policies circa 1950-1960 in Eastern Europe. At
universities, there was an admission exam for 'healthy origin' people for the
majority of the spots, and then another exam where everybody, including those
failing the first time, could compete for the scraps. We all know how that
turned out economically speaking.

Seeing the same policies in XXI century USA is surreal.

~~~
manfredo
To be fair, the tech companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The
media has been heavily pushing the narrative that women are underrepresented
at these tech companies - and they are compared to the general population. But
I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT,
criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to
mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers that
are women. Same sort of deal with URM.

Ironically, the concern over discrimination in tech is itself the cause of a
significant amount of explicit discrimination.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT,
> criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to
> mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers
> that are women.

If the industry is systematically unfavorable to women, hiring at the same
percentage as the industry as a whole (which is what matching the “percentage
of tech workers that are women” is) is indicative of being fully on-line with
the average degree to which the industry is systematically unfavorable to
women.

It would be inconsistent to criticize the industry but not firms that were
dead in the middle of the pack.

~~~
kyle-rb
I don't think the person you're replying to is criticizing the industry
though. From what I can tell, they're saying it's not the industry's fault
that it lacks women.

That's how I see it anyway: mainly based on the fact that women make up only
around 20% of CS majors, I don't think the issue lies in the hiring practices
of most tech companies.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I don't think the person you're replying to is criticizing the industry
> though.

No, but the people _they_ are criticizing for criticizing firms hiring at
industrt-average proprotions _are_ also criticizing the industry, which is the
issue.

------
DBYCZ
Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit
a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in
science.

If STEM women found Coding as interesting as they did Medicine (which is
arguably more competitive and prestigious), we wouldn't have any shortage of
women writing code. There is nothing wrong with either way, just let people do
what they like to do.

~~~
ajross
What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"?
If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the
anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't
feel welcome?

I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact,
always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their
"interests" was used to exclude them from medicine as recently as our parents'
generation.

So... given a choice between "tech is fundamentally different from medicine
and chicks don't like it" and "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with
resepect to gender inclusion", I'm taking the later as the obvious hypothesis.

~~~
camelNotation
It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality
paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question,
constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at
higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now?
There is no problem to solve.

~~~
ajross
> There is no problem to solve.

Which is exactly what people said about unrepresented demographics in career
XXX, for _literally every XXX of the past few centuries in which the
representation has since normalized_. The example above was medicine, but we
can play it with any high-status career you want: law, government, corporate
middle management, academics, finance... Back up a hundred years and there
were effectively no women (or african americans, pick your demographic) in
those careers. Now they're much closer to parity.

And in all those cases, small-c conservatives interested in preserving the
status quo trotted out all sorts of arguments just like this. _And they were
wrong every time._

So tell me again how your cool bit of jargon makes this all go away like
magic?

~~~
SuoDuanDao
The gender equality paradox is the observation that offering men and women
more freedom increases the degree to which they self-select. In other words,
offering people more freedom of choice increases the under-representation.

The alternative - shaming women who do not go into tech - is unpalatable to
most.

~~~
ajross
The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. It's being
vastly misapplied here, and the authors of that study (it was one study) would
be horrified to see this rhetoric.

Go back and look at the scatter plot. It's a weak, but real correlation. The
random deltas between nations are well above the significance of the gender
signal. There's good science to be argued about there.

But it's being used here _to justify an outrageous outlier_. Women aren't just
"less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that study, they're
outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude. Nothing from that study
argues for this kind of effect, nothing at all.

~~~
tth3uoku
>The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. Lumping
everyone who mentions it together and othering them does not seem
constructive.

>Women aren't just "less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that
study, they're outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude.

How can you be sure? Men are on average more interested in working with
things, and women are on average more interested in working with people [1].
"...non-biology STEM majors showed lower [people-orientation] and higher
[thing-orientation] interests than biology and health majors."[2] Self-
efficacy and competence beliefs tend to be a factor that keep women away from
tech [3]. The Gender Equality Paradox also mentions competency as a factor.

1\.
[https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364](https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364)
2\.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00018...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001879115001062?via%3Dihub)
3\.
[https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/will-i-...](https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/will-
i-fit-in-and-do-well-the-importance-of-social-belongingness-and-selfefficacy-
for-explaining-gender-differences-in-interest-in-stem-and-
heedmajors\(2365274b-6054-49ac-a75b-12285c508204\).html)

------
cotelletta
A while back I saw a coworker virtue signal about the parallels between tech
and nursing. There were gender problems in both, and it was the same cause, he
said.

Except, it's not the same cause at all, it's just the same blame. Watch:

Not enough women in tech: "men, it's your fault, stop being so crude and
competitive. Change your working style to suit and attract women. Stop making
crude jokes and having arguments."

Not enough men in nursing: "men, it's your fault, stop being such cowards who
think a social job is not manly. Don't listen to your friends if they mock
you, it's toxic masculinity."

What would actually be equality is if the first was paired with:

"Women nurses, stop being so catty and learn to be more stoic to attract men
in the workplace. Change your habits and social style to be more factual and
problem oriented."

Or the second paired with:

"Women in tech, stop listening to your girlfriends who think tech is not
glamorous and cute. Value your own self worth and improve your self
sufficiency. Don't be a mean girl."

The fact that this very simple gender swap is treated as invalid demonstrates
how intellectually bankrupt the diversity movement is. Their justifications
only come after the fact, after they've already decided who qualifies for
sympathy and victimhood, and who doesn't.

Despite all this concern about subtle implicit bias, about societal pressure
and messages invisibly reinforced by society... Somehow gender studies experts
have still not noticed that some of the most implicitly gendered terms are
expectations that only men are meant to live up to: to not be a coward and not
be a creep.

If a woman values her own comfort and safety over self sacrificing? That does
not make her a coward. If a woman expects to be welcomed and to be able to
join a social interaction a priori? Not entitlement, not creepy.

50 years of gender studies, and society is only more willing to entertain such
pandering and double standards at the expense of men.

H L Mencken was right: men are stupid because they actually think concepts
like honor and duty are real, instead of just a stick used to shame them into
submission.

No thank you. "Historically marginalized" and "traditionally underrepresented"
is a giant excuse built upon the soft bigotry of low expectations. The only
people consistently marginalized have been the poor, and I've never seen more
spoiled, clueless, unaware adults than at "diverse" tech events.

~~~
slphil
I don't quite agree, but I see where you're coming from. Instead I tend to see
them as being just different behaviors, with bystanders (clueless rubes and
cynical manipulators alike) causing conflict in order to support their own
inflated diversity bureaucracy.

The only thing that really has to be noticed in order to see the problem here
is that almost all of the women writing blog posts about how women should go
into STEM did not themselves go into STEM. Yesterday I saw a video about an
organization trying to get women to go into STEM. All of the women involved in
the program had degree in _____ studies, communications, etc.

It's OK to be extremely cynical about this.

That said, I don't have a problem with women working whatever job they want.
Just don't expect me to play along with the self-esteem parade and grievance
bureaucracy that tends to come along for the ride.

------
hhs
I think this is wonderful.

Makes me think of Eleanor Roosevelt. She started by focusing on a group. But
there were a lot of problems in her times and she recognized that, and she
went on to tackle so many things like anti-poverty and unemployed youth.

I wonder if Jessica Livingston will do something similar, since it's written
in the FAQ: _" Since neither I nor Lambda School have tried this before, I
wanted to reduce the number of variables. If it works this summer, we may
expand it next summer."_

------
TheAdamAndChe
There will be benefits to this program for those who participate, and I wholly
wish those women who have the opportunity to participate the best of luck.

However, I also worry about the motives behind the program. A huge part of
feminism is a push towards gender equality[1]. Discriminating against half of
the population while aiming for equality is an odd way to behave.

I know the blog post did not mention gender equality as a goal, but I just
completely fail to see how discrimination like this will lead to anything but
increased inter-gender conflict and the persistence of stereotypes in the
field.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism)

~~~
rubicon33
I don't understand why you're getting down voted for this comment. Isn't the
goal equal opportunity? Providing artificial silo'd environments seems at odds
to the goal of an unbiased, fair workplace.

But I guess I'll just get down voted too.

~~~
manfredo
In much of silicon valley, the goal is equal outcomes not equal opportunity.
Often times explicitly unequal opportunity is necessary to achieve equal
outcomes.

------
dmitrygr
California's Unruh Civil Rights Act specifically outlaws discrimination based
on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, disability,
medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation.
This law applies to all businesses in California.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act)

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
This doesn't apply here. It's no different from me writing a check for someone
to go to college.

------
peterwwillis
So, this brings up some questions in my mind:

1) Who is it being offered to? Clearly, women in college. The majority of
people in college are privileged (in this country, anyway) so you're offering
free money to potentially privileged people. Is it possible to prioritize
women who need the money over ones that could pay for it?

2) If I offered $9,000 in training for welding to someone in college, they
might take that too. It's well known that the things people study in college
and careers they prepare for often don't always result in what they do for the
rest of their working life. Is it possible to prioritize individuals who
demonstrate a consistent/continued interest in being in the industry, rather
than random students looking for a free ride?

3) Where is this being marketed? To insiders who already are in a position to
want to be in the industry and find a place there? Or underprivileged and
minority communities that might need more of a hand to find out about such
opportunities before they can work towards them?

Basically, I think it's a nice idea, but I think it can be tuned to optimize
doing the most good with some minor tweaks.

------
harrisonjackson
I like to take the most positive outlook on these sorts of things... What a
fantastic opportunity for 40 women!

In my career and life, I've been fortunate to have a lot of great
opportunities - some that I sought out and some that fell into my lap. I've
tried to pay it forward when I can and I am sure that these women will too
given the chance.

The impact of these 40 scholarships could be 40 more technical cofounders or
mentors or inventors - and that is a great thing for the community. I hope
that 1+ of these ladies offer me a great opportunity or create an amazing
product that I love :D

------
leereeves
I honestly do think this is a good idea. She saw a need, identified a way to
help, and is generously contributing. And if some women feel more comfortable
or learn better in a boot camp for women only, I wish them the best.

And yet it makes me and many others angry, not for what it is, but because of
the social context in which it occurs. There's an all too common attitude
these days that success for white people, men, and above all white men is
something to oppose.[1,2] That cruelty toward men is acceptable.[3] That "it's
impossible to be racist toward whites or sexist toward men". That sitting
comfortably is "manspreading" and masculinity is toxic.

The world is divided in part because of efforts like this. Is more division
really something to celebrate?

1: [https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-
privilege-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-privilege-of-
beto-orourke)

2: [https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-
orourke...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-orourke-and-
the-other-white-male-dems-running-to-be-president-in-2020-can-you-not)

3: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-
jeon...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-jeong-new-
york-times.html)

~~~
renholder
> _That cruelty toward men is acceptable._

To be fair, in more socially progressive countries, this is actually being
countered/fought against[0].

The article linked is in Swedish, so you can use your choice of translator to
decypher the text; but this is a demonstration of not only your point but the
fact that people are actually starting to take a stand against the narrative
that cruelty towards men is anywhere _near_ being acceptable, in an equal and
just society.

[0] - [https://www.metro.se/artikel/anna-bj%C3%B6rklund-dumpa-
inte-...](https://www.metro.se/artikel/anna-bj%C3%B6rklund-dumpa-inte-din-
kille)

~~~
leereeves
Psychologists telling a man who is being abused that _he_ should change?

Was the widespread social justice outrage lost in translation? Where are the
public calls to revoke the psychologists' licenses and shut down the website
where they give advice?

All I see is one article that doesn't mention any significant public response
at all. While it's nice that someone is speaking against it, it's not nearly
enough, and only confirms my point that abusing men is still generally
tolerated.

------
black-tea
People: do whatever you want to do this summer. There are virtually zero
barriers to entry for programming today. They've been minimal for a good
twenty years now as it is.

------
DantesKite
In general, making it easier for more people to get into programming feels
feels like a good thing to me. Programming is a game-changer in terms of its
ability to amplify talents and interests. It's the longest lever I know of.

What stops people from getting into programming, however, is a bit more
difficult to determine, but there does seem to be patterns. Less women and
blacks compared to asians and whites.

Oddly enough, trying to figure out the causes of these differences intersects
a broad range of fields from evolution to sexual discrimination to access to
resources.

And because there's so much uncertainty, the explanation quickly turns into
politics.

~~~
princekolt
My personal 2c is that it is a lot about perception and awareness. You need to
be aware a certain thing exists and how it works before you can aspire to do
it. I'm sure you've met people in the past that had jobs you didn't even know
existed. And invariably since some populations have been less present in tech,
less of that population will be exposed to it, and thus aspire to work in it.

Sometimes the smallest influences can have a big impact, both positively and
negatively.

------
dzink
Spreading this as far and wide as I can. Coding is as critical as literacy for
the next 20 years and there are too many programs and teachers that teach it
poorly, alienating large segments of the population. Lambda is among the best.
I hope they can scale past 40 students for this in the future.

~~~
gridlockd
> Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years...

I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also
employ about 75% non-coders. You need sales, marketing, accounting,
management, HR, legal - and even the IT guys often truck along fine with
little to no coding skills.

If you need code written to perform your task that usually just means the UI
of your application isn't powerful enough. So get a coder to add that feature
to the UI. You don't need to become a coder yourself.

Here's why we really need "more coders" all the time:

\- the web frontend is getting reinvented every year

\- the latest trends in infrastructure design ("terascale micro-micro-micro-
services as a service") need attention

\- the latest devices and platform SDKs need to be dealt with

\- the insane amount of technical debt accumulated through all this churn
needs to be paid off

Which is all fine only as long as the money keeps rolling in.

~~~
jimbokun
Jessica made a really good point, that female founders without any coding
knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or
her. Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable
someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good
potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.

~~~
gridlockd
> Jessica made a really good point, female founders without any coding
> knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or
> her.

If I followed this line of reasoning, then I couldn't hire a lawyer without
knowing law, I couldn't hire a marketing person without knowing marketing, I
couldn't hire a sales person without knowing sales, and so on and so forth. I
would argue that knowledge in law, sales and marketing are far more important
to a founder, yet people obsess over coding.

> Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable
> someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good
> potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.

I don't think that's true. To _accurately_ judge someone else's competence,
you have to be at least on their level. Secondly, it's credentials like work
experience and education that you go by when hiring. I'm aware that a lot of
software developers are often forced to pass lots of silly programming tests,
but that's known to not result in better hiring.

If you are a founder and non-technical, you shouldn't hire a random developer
anyway. You should have a technical co-founder that you can trust and you
should focus on literally everything else. You'll need to do a thousand
things, but writing code isn't really one of them.

~~~
filoleg
>To accurately judge someone else's competence, you have to be at least on
their level

If you want to be as accurate as possible, then yes. But there is a whole
spectrum of accuracy in-between those two options, and being "somewhat ok"
(which is what this program, I assume, is supposed to help the attendees
achieve) is better than "completely guessing, because I have zero relevant
knowledge"

------
MagicPropmaker
There was a lawsuit in 2018. I'm not sure what the outcome was:

[https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech-
scholarships-m...](https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech-scholarships-
man-tax-violate-california-discrimination-laws-lawsuit/)

~~~
salmonellaeater
The plaintiffs lost.

> Judgment was entered as follows: Judgment entered for FS ISAC Inc and
> against Allison, Rich ;Hamilton, James

[https://unicourt.com/case/ca-sd-allison-vs-fs-isac-
inc-86101...](https://unicourt.com/case/ca-sd-allison-vs-fs-isac-inc-861010)

------
tmaly
I am working on an effort to build a course for my younger daughter. Its less
ambitious than this, but she is having a lot of fun learning.

I am targeting visual programming with Scratch 3

------
mettamage
If it's an online programming class, then why not extent the offer to people
based outside the US? This US protectionism thing is driving me crazy.

I'll offer my services to Lambda School and/or YC for free if that means I can
extent this offer to EU people, provided that my living expenses are covered.
I'm in between jobs so I have the perfect schedule for it.

I'm from the EU.

~~~
adingus
It says why in the article. You should read it.

~~~
dang
Could you please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)?
They include: _Please don 't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article.
"Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The
article mentions that."_

(This is nowhere near the worst guideline violation in this thread, but it's
such a precise one.)

~~~
adingus
Are you insinuating I didn't read the guidelines?

------
nck4222
I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this one.

On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for
many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is
well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from
learning, or opportunities denied because of gender.

On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services to
individual women, who may or may not be disadvantaged, simply because they're
women, doesn't sit well with me either. Frankly, it seems likely that anyone
who applies to lambda school (either gender), probably lean towards the more
advantaged end than the less advantaged end. So it seems likely this is going
to result in women with plenty of advantages already, receiving $9000 worth of
education for free, while explicitly denying this opportunity to men, and
continuing to disadvantage members of both groups.

So, I guess my question is, why is this morally OK? If this was targeted
specifically to disadvantaged people, or disadvantaged women, or if it was a
non-profit, it seems like this would be an easier call for me.

~~~
commandlinefan
> discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender.

Is there any evidence that this is happening, though? I've never seen anybody,
even anecdotally claim "I'm a woman (who is qualified) and I've been unable to
find employment". Mostly what I see is people trying to work backwards and
say, "if group X makes up Y% of the population and only Z% of programmers,
that in itself must be evidence of discrimination".

~~~
UncleMeat
I was once sitting on a plane wearing a shirt branded with a major tech
company. The person next to me asked if I was a software engineer and I said
yes. They excitedly started telling me about how they were doing all this work
to groom their young son (age like 6) to go into tech. This person also had a
similarly aged daughter and he was doing none of this for her.

Perhaps the son really did love this stuff and perhaps the daughter was given
the opportunity to do other things. Perhaps this was a one-off coincidence.
But my experience is _littered_ with this stuff. It happened even to me. I've
got two parents who were both software engineers and I was given toys as a
child that were designed to develop technical skills and my sister wasn't.

The research community does not have a better explanation for the disparity
than social bias.

~~~
Pyxl101
> The research community does not have a better explanation for the disparity
> than social bias

That's not really true. There is a lot of research showing that men and women
have different interests and make different life choices, and that these
choices impact career demographics. One of the most well-researched
differences is that men tend to be more interested in "things", especially
mechanical things, and women tend to be more interested in "people".

Here is a journal article from Frontiers in Psychology that investigates how
these differences-in-interest impact STEM field participation: "All STEM
fields are not created equal: People and things interests explain gender
disparities across STEM fields" (1):

> In the current study, we investigated the gender differences in interests as
> an explanation for the differential distribution of women across sub-
> disciplines of STEM as well as the overall underrepresentation of women in
> STEM fields. (...) We found gender differences in interests to vary largely
> by STEM field, with the largest gender differences in interests favoring men
> observed in engineering disciplines (d = 0.83–1.21), and in contrast, gender
> differences in interests favoring women in social sciences and medical
> services (d = −0.33 and −0.40, respectively).

> Importantly, the gender composition (percentages of women) in STEM fields
> reflects these gender differences in interests. The patterns of gender
> differences in interests and the actual gender composition in STEM fields
> were explained by the people-orientation and things-orientation of work
> environments, and were not associated with the level of quantitative ability
> required. (...)

Some studies show that these things-vs-people differences begin to manifest
extremely early in life, before humans could be influenced by social factors.
One famous study of this phenomenon is "Sex differences in human neonatal
social perception" (2):

> Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present
> study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of
> biological or sociocultural differences between the two sexes. 102 human
> neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and
> cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking
> time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object).
> Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the
> physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger
> interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that
> sex differences are in part biological in origin.

It is also known that testosterone levels affect decision-making and career
choices, and that women tend to be more financially risk-averse than men.
Since men's testosterone levels tend to be much higher than women's, and since
men are less risk-averse, that results in demographic differences. For an
investigation of this, see the article "Gender differences in financial risk
aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone" (3). For another
study on sex and brain differences see (4). There is a lot of research out
there exploring the differences between men and women, and how those
differences play out in our lives.

Every person should be supported in choosing whatever career interests them,
and should not be judged based on demographics. I'm not advocating for any
kind of discrimination. I am just observing that even with total equality of
opportunity, if there _are_ biological trends in interest differences, then we
will see differences in overall job demographics.

(1)
[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full)
(2)
[https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf](https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf)
(3)
[https://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full](https://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full)
(4)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/)

~~~
fzeroracer
How does this explain for example, the following two points I will assert:

1\. Software Engineering has become more social over time. The idea of the
loner software developer has sort of vanished as open offices become the norm
and the collaborative nature of software engineering grows.

2\. Women majors in computer science has dropped like a rock over the past few
decades [1]

These two points seem to refute your explanations, considering software
development at one time had a signiciant amount of developers that were women.
If women were somehow biologically uninclined to be software engineers, the
statistics don't seem to follow this train of thought.

[1]
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
women-stopped-coding)

------
AmIDev
IMHO, this is the right approach to boost the ratio of women in technology.
That is, by teaching coding to those women who don't know it.

Most companies seem to focus on improving ratio of women in their company
itself, by targeting say female CS undergrads, which doesn't help increase the
ratio of women in tech(as these women have already made the choice to be in
tech). To be clear, this approach makes perfect sense from the company's
perspective, but it ain't helping the greater cause.

------
wtmt
Off topic, but I found this circular reference apt for a post about learning
programming, and thus quite amusing too. This post links to "Why I started the
Summer Hackers Program" [1] and that post has a link to this one.

[http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-
summer...](http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer-
hackers-program)

------
danielscrubs
I can tell you that my female, former classmates that graduated CS are earning
way more than the males do. It's trivial to get a male developer with a 5-year
degree, but a female one? If media focused on that instead of the negative
things, more females would go into the CS-programmes, which would solve this
debate once and for all.

------
chaoxu
How are the 9000 dollars given? Because someone might be in the US under
certain visa issues. (For example, OPT, F1, etc).

------
75dvtwin
I read the blog-post, but it does not make clear to me why Jessica chose to
offer the money to _women_ only.

> " Specifically, she can’t build the first version of her product and is
> forced to find a cofounder who can. Because she can't judge technical
> ability, she'll often choose the wrong person for the job. And in a startup,
> if you choose the wrong programmer or cofounder and have to replace them,
> the delay alone can be enough to kill the company. …"

I have met a number of people who cannot program, but believe that they have a
great idea (only if somebody could just build that app for them …).

Even random neighbors who learn that I write mobile apps just sort of assume,

that I do not have my own ideas -- and instead, just program somebody else's
ideas into life (sort of like I am a typist, but an author of the novel, I am
typing -- has to be somebody else).

All that gender-bias in recent, US, tech grants does, is re-enforces the
stigma that women in US are 'special-needs', as far as it comes to technology.

This is not a good stigma to have, and it cannot be broken by appeal to a
moral high.

As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter would
qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What explanation is
there ?

As few on this thread, I think there are better way to identify people who
born into (or became over time) into a very unfair and disadvantageous
environment.

And giving those, the extra help, offering them generosity -- is nothing but
heart warming. And deserves huge applauds and replication.

There are boys and girls from disadvantaged environments, some lost parents to
cancer, to car accidents, to wars, to terrorist attacks.

Some are in different countries suffering from horrible illnesses (that were
caused by environment catastrophes).

Some were unlucky to be born to drug abusing parents.

\---

It does take more work, may be more passion, to reach out to those -- but I
think it would better society more.

~~~
iliketosleep
> As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter
> would qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What
> explanation is there ?

There are explanations, but whether they are valid or not is a matter of
debate. Here is one possible explanation: _Women have faced all kinds of
discrimination which has, for the most part, kept them out of the industry.
Even if we 're not actively discriminating against women now, bias still
remains in this male-dominated industry. Therefore, it's necessary to do
something in order to bring women back in, and we all have to do our part - in
some cases this could mean men making way for women. This is the basic
principle of affirmative action policies - it's about doing what we can to
correct our historic mistakes. For it to work we must all play our part, and
sometimes we must make small sacrifices for the greater good_

~~~
philonoist
That is not enough of a reason. Don't punish me for mistakes done by somebody
in the past. Punish me for my mistakes alone.

"Even if we're not actively discriminating against women now, bias still
remains in this male-dominated industry."

This rhetoric is just to confuse people. Any non-active discrimination removes
the burden on those who are not facing the bias. Period. Getting equality by
stepping over other's heads and pushing them down? Sorry, that is not
equality. That is oppression. These non-active biases are something women have
every right and power to overcome by themselves. They should not be served in
platter. They should burden themselves to do so.

"Therefore, it's necessary to do something in order to bring women back in,
and we all have to do our part - in some cases this could mean men making way
for women."

Its funny how we write "we _all_ have to do our part" only to not see women
sacrifice anything in the end. The word "all" is clever way to escape this
sexism against men. Also the word "small" downplays the sacrifices of men in
the due process and assumes patronizing attitude in deciding the pains behind
such sacrifices don't matter for men. If in order to support your livelihood,
I have to kill my hunger, my opportunities, my chances, my support to family
then you are part of the problem, not me.

"...it's about doing what we can to correct our historic mistakes."

Past is past. History remains and can never be corrected. It is the present
that we should correct and see to it that there is no further active
discrimination.

I do think women should stop blaming others and put their efforts to the point
of testing their limits instead of insulting men but I am slandered with
'victim blaming'. Ha!

These people cannot make the whole world believe their perpetual victimization
just so they can steal free affirmative action. Either prove your mettle and
talent to get your money or get out.

Studies have shown that women move away from STEM, both in studies and career
as countries are more gender egalitarian. Countries with less egalitarian
societies have more women in STEM[0].

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/countries-
with-l...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/countries-with-less-
gender-equity-have-more-women-in-stem-huh/)

------
dgzl
I don't think throwing money and free services at women while we sit on our
knees begging them to join us the best way to get them interested.

I'm generally against equality of outcome, and support equality of
opportunity, which this is not.

------
happppy
People are only learning to program because they saw good money, every other
person now a days is just learning to program to get into programming job even
though they have 0 interest in programming. Due to all this, CS is very
saturated, and there will be one day when every other person will be a
programmer, jobs will be few so competition will be high but pays will be
less. If you were that interested in programming you would have known it when
you are choosing your career paths. You saw money, you came in, nothing else.
And what's with this women learn to program, I never saw any Men learn to
program. They say it like CS schools do not accept girls when they apply,
idiots.

------
allen37
A great message. I love HN for this very reason. Just today I noticed an
article about an Army interrogator turned concientious objector. At the latter
portion of my military career I too was an interrogator. I avoided posting
because I realized the topic was too hot and likely to become political. It
didn't hurt my feelings, I simply moved on with my day.

~~~
dang
We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465697)
and marked it off-topic. Nothing wrong with your comment at all, it just
shouldn't be at the top of this thread. Mine shouldn't either, but it's up
there for different reasons unfortunately.

------
grondilu
Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly
straightforward manner? I mean, most programming languages have extensive
documentation, tutorials and so on (at least FOSS dynamical languages like
Python, Rust, Perl...). From my personal experience and what I can guess about
hackers I've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it :
the web is full of resources for whoever wants to learn.

Now, if for some reason women don't take this road and "need" someone to hold
their hand in order to learn programming, I would argue that maybe those women
don't have the intrinsic motivation to do so and trying to force it upon them
may be a gross waste of time and resources.

Not to mention that programming can be a tedious and lame job (sitting in
front of a computer all day is often mentioned as a genuine nightmare), so if
you have to do it, you'd better love it in the first place.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I 've talked
to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of
resources for whoever wants to learn._

I would love to learn to code. It's the reason I originally joined HN closing
in on a decade ago. (Proof: my first post, the day I joined:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713015))

But I have found that one barrier to me getting anywhere is a lack of ability
to ask questions and get meaningful answers. Men often have male friends that
they can shoot the breeze with and casually mention some coding thing and get
some kind of reply from one or more people.

And my experience is that men don't talk to me that way. I don't have any
buddies I can shoot the breeze with who will go "Oh, yeah, that thing is a
known issue and you need to do yadda." Men shooting the breeze with me are
inevitably hitting on me, even if they are married.

I've been here a long time. People here mostly don't hit me up via private
email and things like that to just chat about a thing. When I have explicitly
said "You can email me to discuss that further." I never get emails to discuss
that further. Instead, I get inquiries into when I next plan to vacation in
their part of the world and suggestions that I would enjoy visiting their
lovely country (and, hint, hint, they would love to have coffee with me should
I happen to casually drop by their country on vacay, because that's clearly
how desperately poor women who can't pay their damn bills spend their time,
globe trotting to hook up with random internet strangers who apparently
thought "Wow, a woman speaking to me. She must be looking for sex!").

I've occasionally had brief stints of being able to have casual conversations
in a chat environment with a guy who happened to be an IT guy. I found it
enormously, incredibly, mind-blowingly useful and valuable to get those casual
comments of "Oh, are you doing X? Cuz, you know, X don't work. Did you think
of yadda?" But most of the time, I simply don't have access to that kind of
conversation.

Nearly a decade of hanging on HN has failed to magically give me such access.
Anytime I comment on how frustrated I am about such things, I am inevitably
pissed all over by people acting like I am making shit up -- because, yes,
clearly, this is how you welcome women into the bro coders club, by pissing on
them at every available opportunity.

I still would like to learn to code. I spend a lot of time online. I think men
vastly underestimate how much support they have access to. A small comment
here and there by someone knowledgeable can save you hours and hours and hours
of time by pointing you in the right direction. As a woman, I mostly can't get
access to those types of comments. Men are too busy trying to figure out how
to ask for my phone number.

I really don't know how to adequately describe the ginormous Wall of China
style deafening silence that faces me and that helps keep me poor, unable to
figure out coding and a zillion other things that drive me crazy.

To be clear, I'm not posting this to just whine about my pathetic life. That's
inevitably the interpretation most people make of such comments by me. It's
frankly just another means to shut me out, dismiss me and invalidate my
points.

I'm posting it to try to elucidate the fact that guys have more access to
support than they seem to appreciate. I can't join a chat or slack channel and
count on getting help because I posted a question. I can count on being
dismissed, sexually harassed and treated like an unwelcome intruder.

And that's a giant barrier that men mostly don't seem to face. Men can talk to
other men casually and get loads of useful information that is simply not
accessible to me. If it were, I think I would already be a coder with several
published projects.

Edit:

There are multiple people replying here to

A. Tell me "It's simple! Just don't tell people you are a girl!"

B. Generally be dismissive, as if I don't have a real problem and otherwise
act like I don't have a point.

To people here actually interested in solving the problem space here: Please
note how shitty it is for all the replies to me to be dismissive, not listen,
etc. Please note how such replies are part of the problem, not part of the
solution.

I'm not planning to engage such replies. They are not useful and they tend to
not even be made in good faith.

The short version of why I don't hide my gender online: I am trying to make
business connections. I cannot hide my gender in person.

If I have to hide my gender to try to connect and then I arrange an in person
meet-up and they are shocked and appalled to learn I'm actually a woman and I
never told them that, this is not going to go good places for my career by any
stretch of the imagination. They will feel lied to, betrayed and like I'm not
trustworthy. No, they won't want to work with me if I can't so much as admit
to the simple fact of my gender.

I also cannot even get paid if I do work online and need to hide my full name
so as to hide my gender. You can only hide your gender successfully if you are
basically posting anonymously and not trying to make real world, meaningful
connections.

Geez. How is that not blindingly obvious on the face of it?

~~~
grondilu
> Men can talk to other men casually and get loads of useful information that
> is simply not accessible to me.

That is just hard to understand. If your gender is an issue, why even make it
public in the first place? I mean, ever heard of the saying "On the Internet,
nobody knows you're a dog." ?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog)

~~~
the_af
Her username here is Doreen, and I assume that's her name. Why should she have
to hide it?

If she has to hide her sex in order to get meaningful answers, that right
there is a huge impediment us men in tech never have to experience.

------
alexashka
'breaking into the startup world' \- sigh... How do you break into being a
domain expert via 5-10+ years of experience?

What do people think start-ups are exactly? Random people with no domain
expertise coding their way to great products?

~~~
jimbokun
Jessica explicitly says in her blog post that many of the women who consider
applying to YCombinator have a lot of useful business skills and domain
expertise for the business they want to start, but are held back because they
can't code an initial version of the product.

~~~
alexashka
My comment was in regards to a young daughter asking how she could break into
the start-up world. The author suggested that coding was a good idea.

The author went on to mention that learning in the span of a summer would help
pick a good team member or even build a prototpe him/herself.

We know from both studies and personal experience, that tech interviews just
don't work all that well. This is tech interviews done by professional
programmers and managers. We don't know how to pick people who are good vs
talk like they're good!

This is not anecdotal - it is well known via studies, done by top
psychologists.

Given that - how would a summer coding bootcamp help pick a co-founder? It's
certainly better than nothing. It is also not clear how much one would benefit
from 3 months versus taking one of the many excellent online courses and
working at your own pace, such as Harvard's CS50, freely available on youtube.

Regarding building your own prototype after 3 months of programming - I just
want to throw my hands up in the air of this wishful thinking that 3 months is
anywhere close to enough time. You will need someone who's tech savvy, and
then you're right back to the same difficulties.

------
pj_mukh
There are so many women I know that are cognitively over-qualified for the
jobs they are in, and kind of stuck because of finances. I am sending this to
all of them.

------
chasingthewind
I think this is really commendable. When you put your money where your mouth
is you really show that you're serious about your values. All the best to the
forty future winners of this grant!

~~~
writepub
This is excellent marketing at best, and nothing to do with values. Lambda
school is a YC portfolio company, and this program/post has gotten YC and LS
oodles of positive press. The gender of this batch is designed to generate
positive buzz, there was never any restriction on admissions before this
announcement, no bias in getting into LS. So what exactly is this supposed to
achieve?

Great marketing, guys and gals!

Cheers

~~~
austenallred
Well, that's one way to look at the world.

Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday, so if this
was a marketing stunt it was a very inefficient and expensive one.

~~~
rudedogg
> Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday

This seems weird; did you account for the time (since it's only around noon?)

~~~
dang
Fridays are lower traffic on HN too. Maybe that generalizes.

