

Why so many politically correct people on HN? - discolemonade

Not everybody, of course. But enough to discern a pattern. Programming requires the kind of intellectual rigor and purity that’s incompatible with political correctness. On a good number of the threads, you don’t see enough of the kind of reductionist thinking that one would apply to hacking, applied to just ideas in general. Two examples: every once in a while, the topic of how difficult it is to learn to program well will pop up. And the general consensus often seems to be that anybody can learn to hack well and that learning how to program well has little to do with how smart you are. It’s hard to see how anybody who knows how to program can deny that abstract thinking capacity is a serious factor in learning how to code; and that it isn’t distributed evenly. Second is the issue of why there are so few female hackers or women in technology overall. How many millions of dollars have been pumped into efforts to get girls interested in tech. The results are always dismal. The thinking, even on here, seems to be that women don’t have enough good role models. Hard to believe if you think about it for a second. So few people are willing to admit that the reason women generally don’t get into tech is because they’re not interested in it. I don’t know many females in my life who’d rather spend hours focusing on impersonal abstractions rather than people. It’s generally not a female inclination. This phenomenon plays itself out in college classrooms all over America. How many female nerds do you know? Would be great if more people were honest about what they really believed.
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terrywilcox
You've missed the bus on female nerds vs. male nerds.

My wife is a senior Oracle DBA. She's very technical. She has great Unix
skills on top of her Oracle knowledge.

I know plenty of women like that in tech. Intelligent, highly skilled,
motivated. In fact, almost all of the women I've worked with in software
development fit that description.

On the other hand, the majority of men I've worked with in software
development are just putting in time. They're working 15/30, collecting their
pay, running their fantasy football league from their desk. They don't really
understand what they do, but there's always someone willing to carry them.

Why the imbalance? The women who aren't interested in tech move on to
something else, leaving behind the good ones. The men who aren't interested in
tech linger on, becoming a burden (Wally!).

I wish the uninterested, uninspired men would move on as well. It's no fun
having a team lead who spends his days surfing porn, YouTube, and NASCAR.

~~~
diolpah
This is so far removed from my experience as to make me wonder if you live on
the same planet I do.

Specifically, I have met _one_ female developer in my entire life, and I have
been in a hiring position for 11 years now.

Additionally, I have yet to meet even one male developer who cares about
NASCAR, fantasy football, or works to simply punch the clock.

In my world( that would be the web technology and retail automation industries
of Orange County and Phoenix ), female developers effectively don't exist, and
male developers care deeply for the technology they use and create.

~~~
terrywilcox
I live in Calgary where, despite the old boy network, we have a large number
of female IT professionals and engineers. They still face barriers, but it's
improving.

Your hiring experience sounds unusual. You never get resumes from women? You
never interview guys who sound good on paper, but turn out to be duds?

~~~
diolpah
You raise an interesting point on the male developers, and I admit I may be
suffering from filter bias - I have interviewed plenty of guys who have no
passion for the business, but never hired them, so I am making claims about
the guys I actually work with.

As for the females, I can honestly say I have received maybe one or two
resumes from a female for a developer position, in my life.

~~~
terrywilcox
If you're not receiving resumes from women, you may want to examine your job
advertising, benefits, and reputation in the industry.

The way you advertise jobs will have a large influence on the type of people
who apply. Word of mouth through your all-male developer network isn't likely
to reach female developers. The tone of your ads may discourage women from
applying (a PDF study: dbem.ws/Sex%20biased%20ads.pdf).

The benefits you offer may also discourage women. Vacation time, flexible
hours, and maternity leave tend to be as important to mothers or would-be
mothers as health and dental coverage (as a father those things are also
important to me, but I know dads who don't care). If you've got benefits that
only a young single guy could love, you'll get young single guys applying.

And then there's your reputation. Software development is a surprisingly
small, connected industry. If you've only interviewed one female developer in
11 years (the maximum if you've only ever met one), that statistic is out
there. Perhaps women don't apply because they've heard you don't hire women or
don't even interview them.

If you're not getting female developers applying for jobs, you're missing out
on half the talent out there. You may want to check your network on LinkedIn
and find out where they are working and why. And more importantly, why they're
not interested in working for you.

------
bluekeybox
> So few people are willing to admit that the reason women generally don’t get
> into tech is because they’re not interested in it. I don’t know many females
> in my life who’d rather spend hours focusing on impersonal abstractions
> rather than people.

You're partly right, I think, but you have to take into account group
psychology. People like being in groups. A lot of women probably don't go into
tech (or condition themselves not to be interested in tech) because there are
few women in tech at present. For example, assuming you are a male, pick any
occupation (even a well-paid one) where 95% of employees are women, then spend
a few weeks there. Very soon you will be tired of listening to other women
talk about nails, babies, and other female business. Now the same applies, in
reverse, to women who are afraid of joining a male-dominated field. It's a
self-perpetuating pattern.

------
viraptor
> Would be great if more people were honest about what they really believed.

Why are you implying we're not? I do believe there is no big issue with female
developers, apart from the fact they (still) don't fit the typical female role
idea in the minds of too many people. Most girls will follow the group and do
what their older friends / family / ... did and where they feel they should
be. And that simply does not include "nerdy" positions.

Then again there's the thing discussed a couple of months ago - too many
developer communities are just unused to women developers and create weird
situations. Bring up some project on typical forums and mention the name of a
woman leading it. See how many will turn into "look, it's made by a woman and
she's pretty too" threads, forgetting the project itself completely. Point it
out and you'll meet with lots of aggression :(

Surprisingly, I did meet a few women leading interesting software projects and
a number of developers - majority of them in eastern Europe. In UK, I haven't
met any... (apart from those who migrated) Just a data point.

> the reason women generally don’t get into tech is because they’re not
> interested in it

This is the interesting part. The real question is - are they not interested
because society makes them think they shouldn't be or because women are
naturally different from men in a way that makes them not interested. I think
we'll only find out once "geek girl" stops being a bad thing for teenagers and
guys in development stop being more interested in the "woman" part of "woman
developer" (in work context at least).

Whether we really need to fight that hard to change the current situation is a
completely different question though. Maybe it just needs time and 1-2
generations to correct itself.

~~~
groby_b
The interesting part is that (IIRC) CS has the lowest number of women in all
tech fields. You can find plenty of women in other tech fields.

------
groby_b
Sigh. There is no such thing as a "female inclination". I know, it's almost
unbelievable, but there's no secret rule book on what women have to like.

I wish I had the answer why women are not interested, but from what I see from
inside the industry as well as from what I hear from my non-tech gfs, there
are many components.

Missing role models are one of them. Before you go dismiss that off hand
because it doesn't fit your world view, how many female role models can you
name? How many male ones? Notice something there?

Then there is the fact that quite a few guys get very defensive if you even
mention the idea of interesting women in tech. It comes across as not wanting
them around.

In my previous industry (games) you can also add in that many places are a
frat house on steroids - not too appealing to a lot of women.

------
johnny22
because I believe it has more to do with social conditioning than any sort of
natural inclination.

does that mean i'm politically correct?

------
hugacow
I believe that development is still a profession in its infancy. Or maybe it
is an infantile profession. The books written on it may as well be saying that
we should be leeching people to cure AIDS. Nothing considered of much
substance deals with people's personalities, tendencies, etc. Everything is
about some process applied to everything like a hammer. And it doesn't work or
it isn't new-and-shiny so someone else will invent some other language or tool
or process and that will be the hot thing. Are we trying on clothes for a
fashion show or are we trying to solve problems? Why in the hell do we need a
new version of Mac OS, Windows, Linux, ...? Wouldn't the old version have
gotten it done 1000000 times faster? Solving problems does not and should not
involve new and shiny. We should all focus on: (1) our differences: we are not
the same and we change- we should do work in a way that best utilizes our
potential productivity- psychology/neurology should play into planning teams
and projects, (2) better data collection and reporting: we should all be
analyzing metrics about development and the services and products we provide,
with A/B testing, feedback loop, etc. (3) Solving problems together: we need
to limit forking to small R&D groups that do A/B testing and present their
findings back to the core group, imo. (Why is Linux still not the most popular
OS for the Desktop? imo, the reasons are variation and lack of cohesion in the
community- not because it is mostly a free and volunteer effort. Linux sucks
on the Desktop because we aren't working together on it- we don't _have_ to
use it, so why should we? Limit options and focus!) ... So basically, you are
saying that we are skirting around the fact that you have to have a certain
type of mind to do well in development, and I agree, but I think that is a
problem, not a solution.

