
How A 17-Year-Old Girl Won a Hackathon - njl
http://evolver.fm/2013/04/30/how-a-17-year-old-girl-won-a-hackathon-and-what-it-means-for-women-in-tech/
======
Jun8
Let me tell you a story:

The FIRST Robotics Competition high school team (Mechanicats, from Chicago)
and I were testing our robot late one night this February. While we were
munching pizza, exhausted, a girl from the team came to me and asked if I
enjoyed what I do (I'm the software mentor for the team). The reason for the
question, she said, was that she was torn about what to study in college. She
told me that her grandmother, who lived in California, told her that she
should learn programming! The grandma said she heard that, since there are so
few women in tech, her chances would be much greater in getting a good job. I
was flabbergasted (this is a South Side school and she's not coming from a
well-off family, how the grandma came with this info is anybody's guess). I
told her that's absolutely true and she should go for it. She's now enrolled
in the rPi based python class I'll start next week.

So there you go, there's the solution to the "too few women in tech". Show
young women that this is an _huge_ opportunity, they should seize it. Tell
them about the $5k for women in Hacker School. Tell them to participate in
hackathons. Unfortunately, many of people focus on negative aspects of this
situation. They have a lot to learn from my student's grandmother.

Please teach this to as many girls you can influence.

~~~
stmchn
I'm still not sure how I feel to be getting these advantages though. I feel
like, the more advantages like this are offered, the more it dilutes my actual
accomplishments. I feel like there's a subtext of resentment and doubt saying
"Well, she only accomplished that because she received certain privileges."

I recently won a competition, which is great and all, but I always wonder in
the back of my mind if I won it because I was the only woman in the
competition.

And I know that's probably crazy but judging some of the HN comments about
these kind of things, people clearly do think that way. I just want to be
recognized solely for what I accomplish and not "Good for you, you're a FEMALE
software developer!"

~~~
pizza
> _the more advantages like this are offered, the more it dilutes my actual
> accomplishments_

plight of all assisted minorities, gender-wise or racial

~~~
guylhem
> plight of all assisted minorities, gender-wise or racial

Is that supposed to be ironic????

What's worse in your opinion, a competition that's hard to enter, or a
competition that hard to enter _AND_ where, in rare the case you succeed, you
will be denied having won on your own, by your talent alone?

That's the reason I'm somehow against all the "levelling the field"
initiatives and outreach programs. I don't care about losers, the one who
can't get in the competition.

I care about the winners, and making sure they get the glory they deserve.

------
noonespecial
_However, she points out that “women in tech” stories are also simply “tech
stories.” Good point._

As I always whisper to my own daughter, "the computer can't tell you're a
girl."

~~~
gradstudent
I get what you're trying to do, or at least I think I do, but I also
simultaneously think there's something not-quite-right with your statement. I
think you need to be careful that you're not reinforcing to your daughter that
being a girl is a kind of disability. One that she doesn't have to try and
hide from the computer, only people.

~~~
noonespecial
One of the joys of family is built in context, a refuge from having to vet
every possible meaning of the words you choose for fear of being
misunderstood. I have nearly two decades to get my point across.

------
taroth
Anyone else find the tone of this article to be condescending?

"Let’s focus on how one teenage girl, Jennie Lamere, defeated a room full of
smart, motivated, experienced, full-grown men. This would seem to be
instructive to the greater argument about women in technology, and besides, it
has the added bonus of being -> based in fact rather than opinion <-"

As if the argument for women is based primarily on opinion.

“It’s also important to note that Jennie’s idea is a completely universal,
gender-neutral one"

Is it? Last time I checked gender-biased ideas can be just as valuable as
gender-neutral ones. Why does Jennie need to 'prove' herself capable of
producing gender-neutral ideas?

~~~
icambron
I think this misreads the tone in several ways.

> As if the argument for women is based primarily on opinion.

I'm not sure I buy the article's notion that hackathons aren't based on
opinion, but your swing misses the mark in the other direction. It's pretty
silly to fault someone for pointing out that the evidence is especially strong
for a point you agree on. A lot of people really do have question about women
in tech, why they're in the position they're in, what could be done to improve
it, what successes _really_ count, etc. So inasmuch as this is an objective
measure of one girl's ability to succeed on an even playing field, it's pretty
interesting. The article isn't expressing shock or anything, just promoting
the strength of the data point it's presenting. It's a bit like an article
came out saying, "discovery of additional irrefutable evidence that evolution
happened" and you're like, "Ha! As if the theory of evolution was based on
refutable evidence..."

> “It’s also important to note that Jennie’s idea is a completely universal,
> gender-neutral one"

I read that to mean that she competed with the men on their own terms, not by
building something in a different category that had to be compared apples to
oranges. She was running the same race. If she built a system for tracking
Barbie dolls, she'd be in the position of, "isn't that cute, she made
something no else here cares about..." like it's really the Best Woman Project
award. The quote is preemtively shooting down potential "that wasn't real"
counters.

------
flootch
_“This is a terrific story, and proof that young girls are an untapped
resource of innovation,” said Change The Ratio co-founder Rachel Sklar, when
we told her the news._

It seemed this young woman acted identically to any young individual
interested in tech.

Learned about tech. Lived tech. Talked tech. Practiced, practiced, practiced.

Didn't need any self-victimizing pink ghetto look at me give me an advantage
because I'm a poor damsel in tech crapola.

~~~
danilocampos
Can you expand more on "self-victimizing," what you think that is, and how it
expresses itself?

~~~
flootch
Heh, I thought that was your job.

If you actually are interested, see this post and all of the comments:
[http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-
helps-...](http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-helps-female-
programmers-cower-in-fear/)

I admit I don't understand the downvotes.

danilocampus invited me to a comment war, I graciously declined with a bit of
humor.

~~~
danilocampos
So, Github unveiled a diversity initiative. Which would appear to be their
prerogative...

Can you help me connect the dots between that and people making victims out of
themselves?

~~~
flootch
See [http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-
helps-...](http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-helps-female-
programmers-cower-in-fear/#comment-878837582)

Women aren't frail damsels that need your condescending efforts, or need your
overly protective assumptions that are mainly patriarchy disguised as a cape
to help them cross a puddle that you can manage.

The key to more women in tech is outreach and education, not patronization and
tales that they are frail, and need protection and special treatment.

You can have the last word, but next time, try reading the link I share with
you.

~~~
mnicole
No one's saying women need to be coddled; the problem is that people recognize
that the current state of the industry/the internet are _jerks_. You can only
tell people to ignore bullying so long, especially when those doing the
bullying aren't being punished, but those that are being victimized by it are
being told to instead change this perceived weakness about _themselves_.

People should not have to worry about being made fun of while they're trying
to learn something difficult. Recently we had that female Mozilla employee
whose code (for a personal project, no less) was made fun of by three semi-
prominent developers on Twitter. The consensus on HN was that there was
nothing wrong with her code, but that she was being picked on solely for being
a girl. In bringing the issue up, two of the three apologized, with the third
going the route of "It isn't my fault you are offended,".

 _That_ is why it is important to foster good relationships, positivity and
trust early-on. It has nothing to do with treating anyone like a princess and
everything to do with the truth of how people treat women online (and off) and
allowing these girls to find mentors and people that inspire them that they
can better relate to.

The commenter you linked to doesn't realize that within that repo, there's a
Team of everyone that signed up for this, allowing them to start projects and
teach amongst themselves. That is the end-game here; allow people to learn
without concern. No one seemed to have a problem with the concept of private
repos before this and the Ada Initiative's private repo was highly successful;
I wonder why.

~~~
mnicole
Instead of feeding the trolls responding to one aspect of my post that nobody
actually has any evidence of either way (David brings it up with the weak
defense that he thinks people are too quick to rush to sexism and _that's_ a
"problem" -- as if being quick to be an unnecessary asshole isn't the
overarching issue to begin with), here are some relevant quotes from her
initial post that illustrate why the private repos are important:

> _I’m lucky to have friends in this industry that know_ me in person and
> through _my work, and thus feel more compelled to speak up._

> I evangelize open source whenever I meet new coders or go to meetups. I tell
> them to make something that they would find useful and put it out there.
> _Can you imagine if one of these new open sourcerers took my advice and got
> this response, without the support I had. Can you imagine?_

And her follow-up:

> The emails I got really stuck out to me. _Some people had their own stories
> that were way worse than mine. Sadly, several said that this is why they’d
> never open sourced anything._

~~~
flootch
Exsqueeze me?

Two people disagree with you what the consensus of that discussion was. Both
people provide links. You did not.

Who is more likely remembering the discussion correctly? The folks that
provide links to it, or the person that vaguely remembers it?

And we are trolls and you are not?

This must be feminist logic, because I see this sort of stuff at feminist
websites everyday.

~~~
mnicole
> I see this sort of stuff at feminist websites everyday.

And I'm the troll. Figure your life out, dude.

~~~
flootch
Disagreeing with the nonsense that passes for argument at feminist websites
doesn't make me a troll.

Quite the contrary, it places me squarely in the majority these days. Figure
my life out? Feminism needs to figure out why so many people (including me)
agree with so many feminist goals while disagreeing with feminist tactics.

------
dmschulman
One thing I picked up regarding the article itself and not the story:

"If you remember one thing from this article, it should be that the father of
this prize-winning girl hacker (Paul Lamere, director of developer community
for The Echo Nest, which publishes Evolver.fm) did not, as one might suspect,
force, cajole, or otherwise convince his daughter to take up hacking."

Jennie's father is a part of the website which published an article about
Jennie. It doesn't detract from my understanding of the story much, but I felt
this fact diminished Jennie's accomplishment in some small way. Not in any
meaningful way of course, but I wonder if this story would have been published
if Jennie's father was not part of Evolver.fm's parent company.

------
joyeuse6701
The article is focused on the creator, a 17 year old girl, and is less focused
on the invention. The title illustrates the bias. How a young girl (two
underdog classes) won a challenge. The title seems to reinforce the idea that
being either and/or both is handicap in this environment and I dare say it is
not!

------
archon
What she built is pretty cool. Good job Jennie.

> "The best part is the feeling of accomplishment and knowing that I made a
> hack that people reacted positively to."

Amazing what positive feedback can do.

------
j4pe
Just one more data point from this hackathon:

Jen is as smart and motivated a 17-year-old I've ever met, and she solved a
real pain point of mine with nothing but one day of a two-day hackathon and a
greasemonkey script.

But.

If I were her, and the judges were commanding applause from the audience with
specific references to my age and gender (this happened twice) instead of my
app and skill - if I became this symbolic object of a story we all want to
tell - I don't know how I'd feel about that. I wonder how she feels about it,
especially in light of stmchn's comment on winning.

Personally, I wish we lived in a world where this headline could read "Smart
kid wins with cool hack." I guess when stories like this are no longer news,
we'll know we've achieved normalcy.

~~~
pizza
Exactly. I wish instead of articles like "[minority | disadvantaged | young |
old] person wins hackathon" there were articles like "[Intelligent] Person
makes cool thing, wins hackathon."

------
EdJiang
Having run almost a dozen hackathons for high school and college students, I'm
not surprised at all to hear this story.

At our last CodeDay in Seattle, a 17-year old HS student built an app that's
received over 175,000 downloads on Google Play.
[http://www.geekwire.com/2013/student-programmer-creates-
succ...](http://www.geekwire.com/2013/student-programmer-creates-successful-
app-codeday-seattle-meet-sidebar/)

We've run CodeDay in five cities so far, with 30-100 students attending each
event. If anything, it's a good sign that we can change the culture at the
high school level and get more students into technology.

~~~
zachlatta
Hey!

I went to the first CodeDay in LA a few weeks ago and it was quite fun! I'm
looking forward to future CodeDays!

~~~
EdJiang
Awesome! Feel free to contact me or the local organizers if you want to help
us host more of them!

~~~
zachlatta
Can you shoot me an email at zchlatta (at) gmail.com? I can't seem to find
your email anywhere online.

------
greatquux
I was pretty flabbergasted to hear she's learned more at hackathons than her
AP Computer Science class. What the hell are we doing in our educational
system then? Is any of it actually worth anything if it's not resulting in
real learning?

~~~
err_badprocrast
Introductory (aka prerequisite) computer science classes seem to be aimed at
people who're learning from nothing. If you already know C++ in depth (or
whatever language is used), a lot of it is just language-specific feature
review.

YMMV, this is judged from local state college/community college.

about the education system, I'm of the opinion that high school is mostly a
waste of time; I dropped out 2 years early and got a GED instead. (Don't try
this at home.)

~~~
zachlatta
How did getting out of high school early go for you? I'm finding that high
school is seriously lacking. To supplement, I've been working on my computer
science major at a local community college. Unfortunately, doing both college
and high school is extremely time consuming and I've been looking for
alternatives to high school.

~~~
err_badprocrast
Depending on what you want to do and how overqualified for school you are, a
GED is a valid alternative to graduating IMO. That said, you potentially lose
a lot of social interaction and sports/clubs which I found to be the most
valuable parts of high school.

Personally I was easily able to get 3650 on the GED (out of 4000) which is
enough to automatically get into state schools. I have no clue how it would
work at a more prestigious school, but at the time that really wasn't
something I was concerned with.

I don't feel qualified to say whether it was a good idea because I dropped out
after I ended up in foster care (long story, my parents kicked me out after I
told DHS about some incidents). Regrettably I wasted several years after this
doing nothing but smoking weed and playing video games due to a general lack
of motivation. I'm back working on stuff now after quitting games altogether -
splitting focus is apparently an impossible task for me.

------
thom
I'm going to go ahead and assume she won it the same way anyone else wins a
hackathon, and not bother clicking the link.

------
achew22
By being better than the competition. That is the answer.

------
shirro
Some messages in there for me as a parent. Make time for chatting with my kids
informally and away from distractions like tv and Internet. I have been for a
few short hikes with my youngest and I probably should be doing more
activities like that instead of us both sitting in front of a screen. Also if
I treat girls like real human beings and talk to them about life, art,
science, tech or anything else and value their opinions they turn out to be
just as competent as boys which shouldn't really be surprising.

------
coherentpony
It's possible to win a hackathon? I thought these things were for fun, not for
competition.

~~~
igorgue
It depends, some of them are just for fun, others they have prizes and someone
has to win, I generally don't care about it and most attendees don't either.

------
needacig
Good for her!

