5 ms·

When I was about 10, I loved the idea of technology. I knew (loosely) about 50 people (all male) who were interested in computers and technology. There were no

When I was about 10, I loved the idea of technology. I knew (loosely) about 50 people (all male) who were interested in computers and technology. There were no sign posts, ads, encouragement - it was binary: you were either interested or you weren't. I fought my parents and got a job at 8 to get a computer because my parents wouldn't buy me a glorified toy. When I watched an old documentary from the 70s a few months ago, they had boys going around junk shops sniffing at junk parts to put together their own systems. Now, revisionists talk about women being barred, ostracised, etc - but the only people I ever saw ostracised were the geeks like me. We didn't care what gender you were: you either were interested or you weren't. Even my nerdy female friends thought I was odd back then. I hear these revisionists like you and it annoys and disappoints me. When we were in computing classes, girls and boys wanted to be my friend in equal measure. When we left the room, us nerds were scorned by both sexes in equal measure. It most probably doesn't surprise me, but my wife (the same age as me) was in the same boat as me - but I didn't meet her until we were adults. In short, I never met a girl in my childhood that was interested in computing. I am not inclined to agree with the "social conditioning" excuse as everyone I knew motivated themselves. Two years of paper round tells you how dedicated I was.

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malandrew 11y ago
Ditto. I get incredibly irritated with this naïve revisionism. I spent a lot of my child hood seeking out broken and junk electronics anywhere it could be found, including dumpster diving behind the high school and businesses. One of the opening scenes in Robert Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds is most instructive. In the first few minutes, you're introduced to a 10 year old kid named Edwin Chin. Take a good long look at that kid, imagine yourself being back at that time and ask yourself, "What adult, except an adult nerd, would ever encourage any kid, male or female, to be like Edwin?". I was like Edwin myself. The number of people that I knew that were adults interested in computers and technology was exactly one, Murali Mani, and I lived in Chappaqua, NY, which was the very model of a privileged well educated community. This was a community where many people worked at IBM's headquarters at the time, but every person I knew that worked for IBM, were suits. The successful people at IBM were not the engineers, but the suits. No one encouraged you to be an engineer. Everyone encouraged you to be interested in being a doctor, a lawyer or a suit. Engineering really only started to become a desirable career around the first dot-com boom. And even in the first dot-com boom, mostly founding engineers did very well. After the founding engineers, suits still took home a lot of the winnings. It was only post-dot-com bubble that engineering truly became a desirable career that people encouraged and supported you in pursuing instead of pushing you to be a doctor, lawyer or suit. Beyond Murali, exactly no one encouraged me to get involved with computers. I eventually moved to Raleigh, NC and went to a small private school, that like most private schools, preps you for university. Tech and engineering was never a focus even when I graduated in 2000 at the height of the first bubble. Guy or girl, you were not encouraged to go into tech at all. You would be more likely to be encouraged to play a musical instrument, do art or some sport than do anything tech related. The revisionists really need to spend some time reading Meredith Patterson's "When Nerds Collide" essay, since most of their real beef is not with hacker culture, but with bro culture that became a part of tech at best a few years after the first dot com bubble. https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c#.9v8oka2x5 https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c... Another thing worth considering about computing history is that that there is a huge huge huge difference between computing pre mini-computer and post-mini computer. The culture in tech from the 80s and 90s didn't destroy the culture in tech pre-1980s described in this article because #patriarchy, but because the tech industry 1980s was entirely wiped out like dinosaurs with the move from 5" HDDs to 3.5" HDDs and the move from mainframes to hobby personal computers. Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" and AnnaLee Saxenian's "Regional Advantage" will do far more to explain why the engineering/computing world pre-1980s disappeared than any revisionist explanation.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Thanks for the nerd collide link, as its something that has been itching at the back of my mind as of late.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  Please see my response to RustyNails above. I feel like you're rebutting an argument that the original poster never made.
- kaitai 11y ago
  I grew up in a pretty different milieu -- no IBM employees, no friends into computers. My dad knew one woman who worked at Cray and I visited her office once. Very super cool. I never bought a computer until I was in grad school as I was able to dumpster dive them all until then, other than the first, which my mom bought. But I'll tell you this: being a girl, I never hung out with the boy computer nerds doing computer nerd stuff because they didn't seem to want to hang out with a girl. (I did hang out with the boy math nerds, so I don't think it's all boy/girl junior high awkwardness.) So I'm probably one of those people who didn't exist especially in the grandparent post, a non-existent girl computer nerd motivated by herself, because I too was too socially awkward to come in and somehow magically charm a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because they figured since I was a girl I probably hated them and computers. Thank god for college and moving away from hometown.
  - malandrew 11y ago
    Curious to hear more about the difference between the boy computer nerds and the boy math nerds, especially the differences in the computer or math based hanging out activities (i.e. extra curricular subject matter activities) Also, re: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because they figured since I was a girl I probably hated them and computers."... Did they say things along those lines or was this an assumption you made at the time? You clearly didn't hate computers, so I don't know how they would figure that unless you never demonstrated your interest in computers to them. If they were actively discriminating against you because you were a girl, I'd expect you to have said something like: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because I was a girl despite the fact that they knew I loved computers."
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
I had those experiences as a youthful nerd too. There are some fond memories and some bitter ones. I'm not sure why you think that your experiences as a youthful nerd make some sort of point about racism and sexism in modern tech-corporate culture, though. I mean, your entire post seems like a non sequitur in the context of the post you're responding to.
- malandrew 11y ago
  I think the article posted is excellent and was an amazingly good read. The comment that I and rustynails replied to added absolutely nothing of value and was an admonishing post suggestive that the lack of surface diversity* in our industry is largely the result of discrimination and not other factors like base rates and natural nerd proclivities. The people described in the article worked as computers and mathematicians at NASA because of: - talent - born, raised and lived in the right place at the right time (propinquity) - self interest (they applied for jobs doing work they were interested in performing) - health (reasonably good enough not to be a distraction) - education People who worked as engineers in Silicon Valley since the mini-computer revolution have done so because of: - talent - born, raised and lived in the right place at the right time (propinquity) - self interest (they applied for jobs doing work they were interested in performing) - health (reasonably good enough not to be a distraction) - education Notice that those two lists are largely the same? While I'm not saying discrimination isn't at play or non-existent, it's at best a minor factor relative to lots of other issues. Let's take what is likely to be one of the biggest issues that everyone loves to conveniently ignore, base rates: In Hampton, Virginia, the birthplace of NASA, the African American population is 49.8% and in Virginia it's 19.7%, whereas in the Bay Area it's about 6.7%, most of which is largely concentrated in Alemeda, Contra Costa and Solano counties. Furthermore, these counties are not the locus of Silicon Valley, San Francisco (5.8%), San Mateo (3.0%) and Santa Clara (2.9%) are. Even the entire state of California is only about 6.5% black. This means, that to have a percentage of the Silicon Valley work force be black at approximately the same rate as the rest of the United States, black people need to move here either for work or for school. As someone who's moved countries 4 times and states 2 times, this is non-trivial and unpleasant for those without a disposition to tolerate such a jarring change where you're an adult and responsible for supporting yourself and financing your own move. You lose support networks of family and friends. It's a non-trivial cost, especially if you need to move belongings. You need to rebuild and re-purchase the things you didn't bring. The base rates above are the general population. If you assume that most people in tech have a bachelor degree or better (we no this isn't universally true since many software engineers are self taught), then the base rates gets worse. For people between 25 and 29 years of age, about 20% of black people have a bachelors degree versus 15% for Hispanics, 40% for white people and 58% for Asians. Furthermore, 52% of college students attend a university within 100 miles of home and only 15.5% attend a university farther than 500 miles away. And a mere ~1.5% of Americans move across state lines each year. Honestly, most people debating diversity as so incredibly awful at understanding statistics and performing a basic root cause analysis. It's like people start asking the 5 Whys, but the moment diversity is involved people's minds automatically short circuit and jump straight to because #racism or because #patriarchy. I'm not saying neither of those contribute to the problem, but they are far from the biggest factors. There are a LOT of filters that do a lot to modify/distort the available pool of people who would get even as far as applying for a job (which is for the most part a prerequisite for discrimination, active or unconscious) Basically, if you want to make it so racial diversity in tech approximates the general population in the US, the best solution is not to try to change Silicon Valley, but to help more places like Silicon Valley exist in places with base rates that more closely match the racial distribution you believe is ideal. AnnaLee Saxenian's books are instructive if you're curious how such regions are formed: "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" and "The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy". A big part of what you need to move is money (i.e. you need a robust angel investor and venture capital industry). * surface diversity - when you define diversity based on genetics and not content of character and live experiences. yes, I'm aware that you could argue that recruiting mostly from people who live in the same city, county or state is a form of unconscious bias, but you're going to have a hard time arguing against that one ( http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/05/28/you-cant-look-for-a-job-from-a-remote-location-it-doesnt-work/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/05/28/you-cant-look-... ) Hampton, Virginia http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51650.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51650.html Santa Clara County http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06085.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06085.html San Mateo County http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06081.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06081.html San Francisco County http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/race-gap-narrows-in-college-enrollment-but-not-in-graduation/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/race-gap-narrows-in-col... http://www.thecollegesolution.com/where-most-students-end-up-attending-college/ http://www.thecollegesolution.com/where-most-students-end-up... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/why-are-so-many-americans-staying-put.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/why-are-so-many-a...
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malandrew 11y ago

Ditto. I get incredibly irritated with this naïve revisionism. I spent a lot of my child hood seeking out broken and junk electronics anywhere it could be found, including dumpster diving behind the high school and businesses. One of the opening scenes in Robert Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds is most instructive. In the first few minutes, you're introduced to a 10 year old kid named Edwin Chin. Take a good long look at that kid, imagine yourself being back at that time and ask yourself, "What adult, except an adult nerd, would ever encourage any kid, male or female, to be like Edwin?". I was like Edwin myself. The number of people that I knew that were adults interested in computers and technology was exactly one, Murali Mani, and I lived in Chappaqua, NY, which was the very model of a privileged well educated community. This was a community where many people worked at IBM's headquarters at the time, but every person I knew that worked for IBM, were suits. The successful people at IBM were not the engineers, but the suits. No one encouraged you to be an engineer. Everyone encouraged you to be interested in being a doctor, a lawyer or a suit. Engineering really only started to become a desirable career around the first dot-com boom. And even in the first dot-com boom, mostly founding engineers did very well. After the founding engineers, suits still took home a lot of the winnings. It was only post-dot-com bubble that engineering truly became a desirable career that people encouraged and supported you in pursuing instead of pushing you to be a doctor, lawyer or suit. Beyond Murali, exactly no one encouraged me to get involved with computers. I eventually moved to Raleigh, NC and went to a small private school, that like most private schools, preps you for university. Tech and engineering was never a focus even when I graduated in 2000 at the height of the first bubble. Guy or girl, you were not encouraged to go into tech at all. You would be more likely to be encouraged to play a musical instrument, do art or some sport than do anything tech related. The revisionists really need to spend some time reading Meredith Patterson's "When Nerds Collide" essay, since most of their real beef is not with hacker culture, but with bro culture that became a part of tech at best a few years after the first dot com bubble. https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c#.9v8oka2x5 https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c... Another thing worth considering about computing history is that that there is a huge huge huge difference between computing pre mini-computer and post-mini computer. The culture in tech from the 80s and 90s didn't destroy the culture in tech pre-1980s described in this article because #patriarchy, but because the tech industry 1980s was entirely wiped out like dinosaurs with the move from 5" HDDs to 3.5" HDDs and the move from mainframes to hobby personal computers. Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" and AnnaLee Saxenian's "Regional Advantage" will do far more to explain why the engineering/computing world pre-1980s disappeared than any revisionist explanation.

digi_owl 11y ago
Thanks for the nerd collide link, as its something that has been itching at the back of my mind as of late.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Please see my response to RustyNails above. I feel like you're rebutting an argument that the original poster never made.
kaitai 11y ago
I grew up in a pretty different milieu -- no IBM employees, no friends into computers. My dad knew one woman who worked at Cray and I visited her office once. Very super cool. I never bought a computer until I was in grad school as I was able to dumpster dive them all until then, other than the first, which my mom bought. But I'll tell you this: being a girl, I never hung out with the boy computer nerds doing computer nerd stuff because they didn't seem to want to hang out with a girl. (I did hang out with the boy math nerds, so I don't think it's all boy/girl junior high awkwardness.) So I'm probably one of those people who didn't exist especially in the grandparent post, a non-existent girl computer nerd motivated by herself, because I too was too socially awkward to come in and somehow magically charm a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because they figured since I was a girl I probably hated them and computers. Thank god for college and moving away from hometown.
- malandrew 11y ago
  Curious to hear more about the difference between the boy computer nerds and the boy math nerds, especially the differences in the computer or math based hanging out activities (i.e. extra curricular subject matter activities) Also, re: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because they figured since I was a girl I probably hated them and computers."... Did they say things along those lines or was this an assumption you made at the time? You clearly didn't hate computers, so I don't know how they would figure that unless you never demonstrated your interest in computers to them. If they were actively discriminating against you because you were a girl, I'd expect you to have said something like: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because I was a girl despite the fact that they knew I loved computers."

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

I had those experiences as a youthful nerd too. There are some fond memories and some bitter ones. I'm not sure why you think that your experiences as a youthful nerd make some sort of point about racism and sexism in modern tech-corporate culture, though. I mean, your entire post seems like a non sequitur in the context of the post you're responding to.

malandrew 11y ago
I think the article posted is excellent and was an amazingly good read. The comment that I and rustynails replied to added absolutely nothing of value and was an admonishing post suggestive that the lack of surface diversity* in our industry is largely the result of discrimination and not other factors like base rates and natural nerd proclivities. The people described in the article worked as computers and mathematicians at NASA because of: - talent - born, raised and lived in the right place at the right time (propinquity) - self interest (they applied for jobs doing work they were interested in performing) - health (reasonably good enough not to be a distraction) - education People who worked as engineers in Silicon Valley since the mini-computer revolution have done so because of: - talent - born, raised and lived in the right place at the right time (propinquity) - self interest (they applied for jobs doing work they were interested in performing) - health (reasonably good enough not to be a distraction) - education Notice that those two lists are largely the same? While I'm not saying discrimination isn't at play or non-existent, it's at best a minor factor relative to lots of other issues. Let's take what is likely to be one of the biggest issues that everyone loves to conveniently ignore, base rates: In Hampton, Virginia, the birthplace of NASA, the African American population is 49.8% and in Virginia it's 19.7%, whereas in the Bay Area it's about 6.7%, most of which is largely concentrated in Alemeda, Contra Costa and Solano counties. Furthermore, these counties are not the locus of Silicon Valley, San Francisco (5.8%), San Mateo (3.0%) and Santa Clara (2.9%) are. Even the entire state of California is only about 6.5% black. This means, that to have a percentage of the Silicon Valley work force be black at approximately the same rate as the rest of the United States, black people need to move here either for work or for school. As someone who's moved countries 4 times and states 2 times, this is non-trivial and unpleasant for those without a disposition to tolerate such a jarring change where you're an adult and responsible for supporting yourself and financing your own move. You lose support networks of family and friends. It's a non-trivial cost, especially if you need to move belongings. You need to rebuild and re-purchase the things you didn't bring. The base rates above are the general population. If you assume that most people in tech have a bachelor degree or better (we no this isn't universally true since many software engineers are self taught), then the base rates gets worse. For people between 25 and 29 years of age, about 20% of black people have a bachelors degree versus 15% for Hispanics, 40% for white people and 58% for Asians. Furthermore, 52% of college students attend a university within 100 miles of home and only 15.5% attend a university farther than 500 miles away. And a mere ~1.5% of Americans move across state lines each year. Honestly, most people debating diversity as so incredibly awful at understanding statistics and performing a basic root cause analysis. It's like people start asking the 5 Whys, but the moment diversity is involved people's minds automatically short circuit and jump straight to because #racism or because #patriarchy. I'm not saying neither of those contribute to the problem, but they are far from the biggest factors. There are a LOT of filters that do a lot to modify/distort the available pool of people who would get even as far as applying for a job (which is for the most part a prerequisite for discrimination, active or unconscious) Basically, if you want to make it so racial diversity in tech approximates the general population in the US, the best solution is not to try to change Silicon Valley, but to help more places like Silicon Valley exist in places with base rates that more closely match the racial distribution you believe is ideal. AnnaLee Saxenian's books are instructive if you're curious how such regions are formed: "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" and "The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy". A big part of what you need to move is money (i.e. you need a robust angel investor and venture capital industry). * surface diversity - when you define diversity based on genetics and not content of character and live experiences. yes, I'm aware that you could argue that recruiting mostly from people who live in the same city, county or state is a form of unconscious bias, but you're going to have a hard time arguing against that one ( http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/05/28/you-cant-look-for-a-job-from-a-remote-location-it-doesnt-work/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/05/28/you-cant-look-... ) Hampton, Virginia http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51650.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51650.html Santa Clara County http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06085.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06085.html San Mateo County http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06081.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06081.html San Francisco County http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/race-gap-narrows-in-college-enrollment-but-not-in-graduation/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/race-gap-narrows-in-col... http://www.thecollegesolution.com/where-most-students-end-up-attending-college/ http://www.thecollegesolution.com/where-most-students-end-up... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/why-are-so-many-americans-staying-put.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/why-are-so-many-a...

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