
The Difficulty of Hiring Women - fogus
http://codemonkeyism.com/women-tech-responsible/
======
dkarl
I remember a few days before the start of my freshman year of high school, I
was at the college library making copies of math competition tests so I could
start practicing for the upcoming season of competition. While I was there, I
saw a girl who was on the math team the year before in junior high, so I told
her what I was doing and asked her if she wanted some practice tests. She
said, "No," and just walked away, but there was a world in that "No." She was
offended. She was _insulted_. She had been pretty good at the math
competitions in junior high, but she quickly fell behind in high school and
then quit the math team/club. She did drama and speech instead. She still took
honors math classes and aced them, and I even heard she did engineering in
college, but she would never admit to actually liking it enough to go beyond
what was required by classwork.

Similarly, the girls I met in college who were getting degrees in math and
engineering never admitted to having an interest in those subjects beyond
doing well in their classes and getting degrees. The two girls in the math
program were keen to express their interest in the money they would make as
actuaries or what-not. They had to like math, or they never would have chosen
to be math majors, but they never showed any sign of it, and (stung by my
previous experience) I was scared to even imply that they might.

So yeah, there is a huge fear of nerdiness among women, and I don't think the
"nerd chic" thing helps at all. There's no celebration in "nerd chic" culture
of honestly frumpy people (there can't be in any "___ chic" culture, "___
chic" will never help anyone who isn't chic) so of all the girls I've known
who I suspected of secretly liking math, _maybe_ one of them would have felt
at home there.

I went to high school in a small city (large town, really) in a rural area,
and I went to college at a non-elite public school (went there for the honors
program) so you guys who went the elite route may have seen vastly different
things. In terms of numbers, though, I suspect my experience was more
representative.

~~~
telemachos
_So yeah, there is a huge fear of nerdiness among women_

I suppose my only problem with your story (or the conclusions you draw from
it, really) is that you could substitute "men" or "boys" or "people" or "high
school students" or "college students" for "women" without any real problem.
_Lots of people_ are afraid to appear smart in public.

~~~
untamedmedley
The difference here is probably the degree to which this affects each gender.
While no man wants to limit his options in women, being in a relationship
probably doesn't define his sense of self-worth the way it does with women. Of
course, not all women are this way, but women often sacrifice bits of
themselves in the name of love. We are more likely to:

1\. Give up time with our friends/hobbies to be completely there for a
boyfriend, all the time.

2\. Move to a new city to be with a guy (who sometimes isn't even planning to
marry us), giving up any career progress made to date.

And that's even before adding a layer of geekiness that I've found acts as man
repellent to most "mainstream" male populations. I cannot just go to a party
and start talking about how happy I am that Mass Effect 2 is coming to PS3 now
that I sold my 360, nor can I go any deeper than "I like computers" with most
guys. It's just not all that hot. But the chick who has a fantasy football
team (and doesn't know it's filled with D-list players) gets the welcome mat
(eta: because sports is accepted in the mainstream).

~~~
dkarl
_While no man wants to limit his options in women, being in a relationship
probably doesn't define his sense of self-worth the way it does with women._

I don't know if that's true, or if that's an incorrect assumption based on how
often we do things that sabotage our chances of being in relationships. I'm
thinking of high school, when I obsessed over girls and pretty much did
consider myself a worthless failure for not being able to talk to girls and
get them to like me, yet behaved in such a way that you would think I was bent
on keeping them away from me. A big part of the reason I worked so hard on
math and science was that I had a vague but deep-seated conviction that being
really good at something would eventually impress some girl and help me get
with her. Perhaps that notion is what girls need to be programmed with the way
boys are.

------
tptacek
It is obviously true that the applicant pool for tech jobs is dominated by
male candidates.

It is less obvious but equally true that women are mistreated in interviews
more often then men are. I did not believe this even a little bit up to 2004.
I had, after all, hired women; once, I even hired one as my boss. Then I
watched a woman go through a series of tech interviews with other people.
Oops.

This person has the same broken mental model that I had: "I'm fair to both
women and men, and I get very few women applicants, so the problem must be
lower in the stack." There clearly are problems lower in the stack, but that's
not all that's wrong.

~~~
mmelin
Perhaps you could expand on how women are mistreated in interviews?

Are you saying that even though you thought you were treating men and women
fairly, you were actually mistreating the women you were interviewing? Or are
you saying that "other people" mistreat women in interviews - which begs the
question how you know that those other people are actually treating women
differently than men (they could just be assholes to everyone, I mean).

~~~
tptacek
I don't think I've mistreated anyone in an interview (except that when I
started interviewing in the '90s, I treated them as excuses to demonstrate how
smart I was, which was a waste of everyone's time).

But, no, when you ask someone whether they're _really_ going to be able to
take care of their kids and handle the demands of the job you're interviewing
them for, you're clearly not being an equal-opportunity douchebag.

I have many more examples than that, some of them worse, but I'm not going to
give you a bulleted list; I expect most people who've known women who've
interviewed widely have similar examples.

~~~
juliamae
I'm curious how an interviewer would even know if the woman _has_ kids. I'm a
female dev and have never been asked about kids while interviewing, and if I
had kids, I certainly wouldn't talk about them on an interview.

Making the assumption that all women will have kids and are mostly likely
going to put raising them over their career is incredibly sexist - that goes
beyond "not being an equal-opportunity douchebag".. that's like "doesn't
understand women and probably has never had a meaningful relationship with
one." The woman is best off not working with such an ass imo.

~~~
tptacek
Yeah, funny that. You could infer one of a couple very bad interview tactics
from what I wrote. I feel no need to correct whichever assumption you make.

You clearly have the presence of mind to laugh this off, but my thoughts trend
more towards torches and pitchforks.

~~~
jacquesm
> I treated them as excuses to demonstrate how smart I was

you just did that again ;)

~~~
tptacek
Huh?

------
pavelludiq
Im male. When i first got interested in computers(back when my age was a
single digit), i didn't follow role models, i just got drawn to these
machines, almost instinctively, and not just computers, cars, electronics, any
kind of machines. I had my technical influence of course, my dad knew a lot
about machines and electronics, but i think its something a bit deeper. Men
have been making tools for hundreds of thousands of years, in my complete lack
of experience in genetics, i think its foolish to dismiss genetic factors.
Which is not to say that role models and culture have no effect, i just think
that it has less of an effect than genes.

Bottom line is that my politically correct(i hope) opinion is that while women
positively have the ability do be good developers(physicists, mathematicians,
engineers), and even though some of them DO become good, most lack this
internal drive(almost an obsession) I've had since before i can remember.

~~~
wccrawford
When I got into computers, I didn't realize there COULD be role models for
that. I had never heard of any successful programmers. I couldn't name anyone
famous for anything related to computers.

That certainly didn't stop me from being interested.

~~~
frgbhnmnjh
But the lack of role models is the reason I didn't get that job - it was
nothing to do with me not working in school.

It was all somebody else's fault - those damn role models.

Oh, that and 'da-man' keeping me down.

Actually the lack of women in tech is probably because they realize earlier
than guys that if they do a psychology degree they only have to study
6hours/week and get to be a manager over all the engineer types.

------
johngalt
Why are there so few male nurses?

Why are there so few male daycare providers?

Why are there so few male teachers?

Why are the so few female pest control techs?

Why do so few women work on a fishing boat?

Why do so few women work on an oil rig?

Why do so few men work at a bank branch?

Why are there so few male domestic violence shelters?

Boys and Girls are different. They have different goals, risks and pressures.
If a certain career path lines up with gender based goals/pressures then
people self select into that path.

Bias does exist, but overall the pendulum has swung in favor of women. I'd
argue that a woman has a much easier time becoming a programmer, than a man
becoming a daycare provider.

------
Arun2009
IMO, a large part of underrepresentation of women in software is due to the
following self-reinforcing stereotype.

1\. For historical reasons, men got a head-start in the software sector.

2\. Software sector came to be seen as a male-dominated field.

3\. Both the recruiters and candidates adjust their behavior based on the
"knowledge" that software-jobs are more suited for men than women.

I think such accidental clustering happens in many other fields. For e.g.,
here is a situation where men are the victims:
<http://www.nurseweek.com/news/features/01-05/men.html>

~~~
scott_s
The really curious thing is that the _first_ programmers were women. This was
back in the ENIAC days, before anyone appreciated how difficult it would be to
"program" a general purpose computer, before the word "software" existed, or
even before "program" was a verb. The ENIAC designers figured the programming
part would be easy.

See Section II, starting on page 8:
<http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf>

------
wccrawford
"I would like to hire more women, but the number of job applications from
women were well below 5 percent."

Wait, WHY do you want more women? Are they more skilled somehow? Because if
not, that's sexist. You should be hiring the best person for the job, not
looking for people that fit a certain concept in your mind.

~~~
sanswork
A good mix of genders can lead to a healthier office life and better work.

All male and all female offices are not ideal for various(and sometimes
different) reasons.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Could you perhaps state those reasons?

[edit: sorry for asking. Didn't realize asking a poster to explain their
reasoning was frowned upon here. ]

~~~
juliamae
I'm a female dev who has mostly worked in male-dominated teams. I'm currently
working in a female-dominated team. The differences are extreme, with the
largest being that the mostly-female team has a really difficult time taking
criticism and giving criticism (saying 'no' to bad ideas). They're too
optimistic and not realistic enough IMO. But what do I know, I'm just the dev!
:\

~~~
dkarl
I'm not surprised that giving criticism is harder, since women are socialized
to give feedback indirectly, through body language and other social signs, and
even when speaking about a problem not to do so plainly. Simply saying what
you think is treated as a "masculine" trait. I imagine the ways of
communicating that are treated as appropriately "feminine" are much less
effective in a technical context.

Do you consciously model ways to give criticism that your female coworkers
will feel comfortable with? Does it help them open up and criticize each
other? What works? (This is a subject I have an interest in in a personal
context as well, since I sometimes get baffled and frustrated by indirect
communication and would like to be better at coaxing women to be more direct,
which is hard if the relationship isn't already close.)

Also, I'm surprised that women have a hard time taking criticism. I didn't
expect that at all. Can you say more?

