Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night, but I agree with the other poster that EVEN IF you think the male/female curve distribution thing is completely correct without caveats, you just don’t have to be massively intelligent to do software development. You’re building a corporate SAP system, not proving some theorem or unifying the fundamental forces or something.
This isn't about my personal feelings, it's about the insistence that the demographics are not a reflection of the distribution of competence and personal choice, but discrimination. The entire foundation of discrimination against white males is dishonest because proponents refuse to allow for any explanation for overrepresentation beyond unfair hiring practices - which are being used to implement the systemic discrimination that they claim to be fighting.
>You’re building a corporate SAP system, not proving some theorem or unifying the fundamental forces or something.
And regardless of what you're building, you want the most competent employees that you can get for the lowest price if you are operating within a meritocracy. In that case your demographics will be strongly influenced by the distribution of competence, before even considering that the pipeline is skewed because women are simply not choosing to pursue software development - and that's not a problem that needs correcting unless you're playing tribalist team sports.
The anti-tribalists are using mere accusations of tribalism to justify their own vicious, exclusionary tribalism, and simply not allowing for discussion of alternative explanations which could appear to be motivated by tribalism. That's what keeps me up at night.
Look, it’s not helpful when making the case that white males (which I am, BTW) are being discriminated against and that we should feel bad about that and fix it when folks start saying “but actually women aren’t as smart at the high end as men and so…”
My target demographic is people who can distinguish between the phrase you gave, "women aren't as smart at the high end as men" (which is false or even nonsensical) and the premise of my prior comment and the matter under dispute, that most smart people are men (which is true) and that the m:f ratio increases as you raise the bar (which is also true). These are logically distinct.
Then how are we supposed to argue against the false claim that discrimination is the primary driver of demographic underrepresentation if this is the true cause?
