11 ms·

Born for it – How the image of software developers came about

120 points by oivviopolite 11y ago

badapple13 11y ago
I understand that people of Asian descent are overrepresented by a factor of 5.3x at Google and that people of European descent are underrepresented by a factor of 0.87x at Google, but I think the author goes too far by attributing this to malice on behalf of the Asians. Clearly asians could be doing more for the rest of us, but I don't follow the authors subtle undertone that this is their fault. What do you guys think?
- x5n1 11y ago
  Considering how underrepresented minorities, whether Asian or otherwise, are in management and IT in the Western world, I would not start crying foul over this small irregularity. If anything Google needs more different minorities if anything, for instance Latinos and Blacks.
  - brandmeyer 11y ago
    > If anything Google needs more different minorities if anything, for instance Latinos and Blacks. This is a much bigger problem than just the software industry in the US. I'm a Navy veteran, as a nuclear reactor plant mechanic. I remember being shocked in MEPS (the enlistment and entry processing center for all branches of the armed forces) by the number of black men enlisting in the Army and Marine infantry - it's much higher than the local population would suggest. But of the roughly thousand or so people I worked with as Nukes in the Navy, I can recall only one black man. The trend is just as strong in college. While I'm working as a software engineer today, my degree isn't in CS: its in Mechanical Engineering. The same trend applies there, too. I've worked with a grand total of one black engineer professionally, and he was an intern! There is a serious problem in this country with our failure to attract black and latino talent to engineering. Its pretty frustrating to see all the media attention focused on bringing women into CS, while almost zero attention is being focused on the lack of black and latino engineers. I can't point to any single factor that is driving this trend. But it must happen in High School or earlier, since it's already totally broken by the time folks are graduating HS.
    - proksoup 11y ago
      America is not an equal system, money matters. It's a vicious cycle. If you're looking for one factor, I think it's dollars and cents.
    - douche 11y ago
      Engineering, from my recollections, had probably the highest wash-out rates of any major when I was in college. It sure looks like a huge part of that is because of the math requirements - a lot of engineering programs throw you in the deep end right at the beginning, with calculus and differential equations, and then you're pretty much hosed in the subsequent coursework if that doesn't click, or you come in woefully unprepared. And overwhelmingly, high schools do a piss-poor job of teaching mathematics to a level that would prepare someone to hit the ground running well enough to survive the initial stages of an engineering major and get through to the interesting stuff. AP Calculus students from top high schools struggle mightily with it, Flying Spaghetti Monster help you if you never mastered, or even were exposed to those concepts at weaker schools. Computer science isn't much different. All the math coursework hazing is why I have a history degree and a minor in CS - the minor let you take all the interesting stuff, without the 4-5 semesters of poorly taught, mostly useless math department coursework.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - riprowan 11y ago
        > engineering programs throw you in the deep end right at the beginning I started as a EE. My diff EQ professor literally did the stunt "look to your left, look to your right, of the three of you, only one will pass my class." I was the only caucasian to pass, but I made a D, and rather than re-take the class I decided that EE wasn't for me. There was only one way to ace that class, and that's to live inside it. I have a very good mind for math, but I was also interested in lots of other things: music, theater, philosophy, humanities, business, politics. The same semester I had made a D in Diff EQ I had also taken a Phil 101 (Logic) class which I aced. I was also a walk-on in a play that semester. The dean of the engineering school called me to his office to tell me I wasn't the sort of student the EE program was looking for. I left and got an MIS degree, where I could develop as a much more rounded student. Looking back some 30 years later, I realize now that the dean was literally telling me that they don't want well-rounded EE students. He was literally telling me, in spite of being in the top 1/3 of my class (math-wise) the very fact that I wasn't willing to forgo Logic and my theater activities to become a better calculus student made me a misfit. The whole point of making Diff EQ so amazingly difficult was specifically to weed out those who did anything but study Diff EQ. So in the end, I made the right decision for myself and my career. And I've learned a healthy suspicion of companies that tend to exclusively hire ace engineering students.
  - home_boi 11y ago
    >If anything Google needs more different minorities if anything, for instance Latinos and Blacks. Why? I think equal opportunity is a better goal than equal representation. Forced equal representation can quickly deteriorate to racism/sexism. Inequality in the name of equality.
    - x5n1 11y ago
      I seriously don't think there can be anything such as equal opportunity. As there is bias at every part of the hiring process. Equal representation means that more or less wealth is being directed far and wide to people that represent all groups. Having money means having power to affect policies and politics as well as economics. So for creating any sense of equality in society it's a fact that there needs to be more or less equal representation. Yes there is IQ disparity which probably decreases chances further of finding elite employment. But there are outliers in every population, enough to create equal representation.
      - home_boi 11y ago
        You can segment the human population in any way and assign equal power to each of these groups. Why segment the population by race? Life is inherently unfair. There will always be differences in power. The goal can't be to assign equal power to everyone because it is impossible. The best goal is to ensure that there isn't a huge difference in power. Equal opportunity provides that guarantee.
        majormajor 11y ago
        In regard to the US, the obvious answer is that some races were literally oppressed on that very basis for decades/centuries. That was not a passive activity. So is it any real surprise that it might have long-lasting effects that need active, rather than passive, countering? EDIT: your comment reads differently after your addition of the second paragraph so now I don't know if I'm disagreeing with you or answering a rhetorical question or what. Regardless...
        11y ago
- Joof 11y ago
  I'm not sure that there is an undertone that it's their fault. At best, it's because Asians value school and mathematics more and Google prefers high GPA and ability to solve mathematical and algorithmic problems. I suspect there are also a lot of Asians in the world and Google will pull talent from other countries. To continue your analogy: "I'm not Asian, so I'm not good at math, but perhaps if I were Asian I could be. Those guys do math all the time and they love it; its impossible for a Caucasian guy like me to be any good at it. I spent 10 hours on my calculus work and Li did it in 30 minutes and got a higher grade. I'm just not Asian."
  - CardenB 11y ago
    Google doesn't really select for high GPA.
    - Joof 11y ago
      I'm curious as to whether or not this is objectively true when measured. It doesn't have to be intentional, but a reputation for that (which it certainly had at one point) could have the equivalent effect.
    - rifung 11y ago
      Maybe they don't select for high GPA but students with high GPAs in high school presumably have a higher chance of getting into a top 10 college and I imagine Google prefers students from top schools
      - ktRolster 11y ago
        I think they only care if it's your first (or maybe second) job. After that, experience is more important.
    - bitwize 11y ago
      Naw, they just select for advanced degrees from God-tier schools, something those C students just happen not to be able to reach for.
- parennoob 11y ago
  > I understand that people of Asian descent are overrepresented by a factor of 5.3x at Google and that people of European descent are underrepresented by a factor of 0.87x at Google, but I think the author goes too far by attributing this to malice on behalf of the Asians. The linked article [1] literally does not even contain the word "Asian". Am I missing something here? [1] http://martinfowler.com/articles/born-for-it.html http://martinfowler.com/articles/born-for-it.html
  - lstamour 11y ago
    I read it as race being used as a stand-in or counter-example to that of gender. It's a point you have to think about, it provokes conversation rather than being an argument that stands on its own.
    - Jtsummers 11y ago
      The point could have been delivered more clearly then. Instead it came off as an odd non sequitur that seemed to be about an entirely different article.
mikekchar 11y ago
Reading articles like this is so strange for me because I have such a hard time understanding the perspective. To give some background, I started in the late 80's and early 90's in Canada. There were very few womon in my CS program (I recall it was 5 our of 140 in the graduating class), but even still in my early career, I was never on a team without women. I would say that between 10-20% of the programmers I worked with were women of various cultural backgrounds. That's not a huge percentage, but compared to the numbers graduating it was quite high. In the first 15 years I worked as a programmer I can only think of a single female programmer that wasn't particularly competant. Everybody else was excellent. I often had conversations with them about why they got into programming and the vast majority of women I worked with said the same thing: programming was the best way to get into management. They felt that every other avenue was blocked by the old boys club and that as a programmer there was no ceiling. As such, these programmer often came with other skills that those of use who were just looking for the new technical hotness (myself included) did not have. I think eveybody I worked with highly valued that diversity. This is not to say that there weren't women who were just in it for the programming. I met several women in the course of my early career who had very similar interests and abilities to myself. It's just that in the companies I worked in 80-90% of the men would be obsessive-compulsive technophiles and 80-90% of the women would be level-headed get-the-job-done types. Those women usually did very well and were promoted quickly (and the technically-minded ones struggled to get into management, just like the technically-minded men). Fast forward a couple of decades and I find the landscape seems different. At my present position we have yet to hire a single female programmer. The thing is that nobody applies. When we do get female applicants they often look excellent and I think we have given job offers to every women we have interviewed. Usually they are good enough that we try to stretch our budget to get them. We have been overbid (by a substantial margin) with every single female candidate. So while it seems like the available female candidates are still of high quality, they are in much higher demand than 20 or 30 years ago. On the other hand, I have noticed a dramatic shift in the types of male applicants we get. Like I said, 20-30 years ago male programmers were often fit the stereotypical mold (in my experience -- YMMV). These days I would say that more than half of the applicants we interview have very little interest in programming outside of it being a high paying job. So you get some cultural mismatches. You end up with the old guard saying things like, "You're not a real programmer" when they are talking to someone who is cutting and pasting stuff from stack overflow. Of course, we used to say the same thing to the guys who were cutting and pasting from MSDN or passing off GNU software as their own. It's just that having the alpha dog barking at the pups to get them in line was the normal way of working. I wonder if in the midst of this cultural change, women are getting a bit lost. On the one hand you are getting a lot more men coming into the field who are not technical primadonnas. So it is easy for a lot of women who get interested in programming late in life to identify with those men the most. However, I think along with that cultural change we get a lot of baggage. The old boys club gets sucked in along with it. Where I used to hear women tell me how great the computer industry is because there was no ceiling, now they tell me that they are actively and often blatantly discriminated against. At the same time, they see the technical alpha dogs barking up a storm and think, "I don't want to get anywhere near that person". I suppose at the end of this long (and I guess pointless) rant, it's just one more perspective. I really wish more women would get into the field because I miss working with women. There seems to be huge demand too. I hope we can get over this cultural speed bump and make it happen.
DKnoll 11y ago
I don't disagree with the thesis of the article, but the creators of the ENIAC were given no mention and they skipped right to the 'computer girls' as if they were fully responsible for it's genesis.
- jonathankoren 11y ago
  Because the article isn't about the ENIAC at all. It's about how programming transitioned from being a menial (and thus women's) job, to a prestigious (and thus male) job.
  - DKnoll 11y ago
    Programming was a 'women's job' at the time because men were intended for combat. It's exactly the same reason women were working in factories which, in peacetime, was traditionally a men's job. This is not to say that it was right, but at the same time it wasn't due to lesser ability... it was because they were still at home and not delivering the munitions whose trajectory they were calculating. I would like to add that suggesting that the majority of programmers were/are the 'majority' (in a societal sense) in the west is also disingenuous. It seems a bit self-serving for the author to not mention that technology, even at the time, was a place where many homosexual but otherwise 'socially-awkward, white, male programmers' thrived and made incredible bounds. If you think women suffered from marginalisation in the 40s and 50s (they did)... imagine being a homosexual. Whether the article is about the ENIAC or not, you need to consider all facts when you make a factual statement, even if they do not serve your thesis. Edit: sorry if I'm a bit passionate about this... I wrote my grade 5 speech on the ENIAC and I've always held the men and women who designed and operated it in incredibly high esteem. Some crazy old man said something once about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' and I feel that is very relevant when discussing the ENIAC.
    - jonathankoren 11y ago
      The facts don't back this up the assertion that this was an inherently transitory effect. Women fell out of computer science starting 1985, and hasn't gained any year since.[0] Turing was prosecuted as soon as his usefulness in the war effort ended, so I don't think they made that many bounds. And if we're going to have a good ol' oppression-off how about blacks? They weren't anywhere in programming, and sadly still aren't. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
cb18 11y ago
So many mysteries of the modern world become quite understandable when you allow yourself the luxury of understanding the relevance of intelligence. It varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. The modern tendency is to feverishly avert one's eyes from this fact, but it must be reckoned with eventually. I believe we'll all be better off when we can stop the hand wringing of why isn't group X doing activity Y. The sooner we can get on with building a society that is better for everyone while taking everyone's capabilities into account the better. Not to say there are strict limits on capabilities, but groups with higher average intelligence are obviously going to win more Physics Nobels.
- kenjackson 11y ago
  knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. This is so untrue, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. The overwhelming consensus by scientists at reputable top universities don't allege this at all. But I'm sure you can find it at fringe or less reputable state universities.
  - cb18 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellig... This is a false statement: The overwhelming consensus by scientists at reputable top universities don't allege this at all.
    - kenjackson 11y ago
      I figured that this is where it came from. These are generally fringe researchers, led by the author herself, Gottfredson. As was commonly noted at the time... few who signed it were measurement experts. Note the lack of prestigious programs of the signatories. This is the Wall Street Journal fringe. Certainly not the mainstream of top researchers in the field.
      - 11y ago
exclusiv 11y ago
I don't deny that there is some history in the current representation of programmers but I don't buy that socially awkward white males are somehow oppressing diversity in general as some would suggest. When they supposedly aren't, it's a brogrammer problem and blatant sexism. Everyone wants to find someone to blame. Granted this was 9 years ago, but when I was in computer engineering we had a few classes with only 1 female. All the nerdy types flocked to her and were very inclusive with team projects. I'm a partner in a 6 yr old business and I've just recently started to see more women programmers. Most of my job postings would get zero female applicants. However, my last 2 engineering hires were women that came through our internal network and they've been excellent. Account managers and project managers - generally women applicants. Engineers = male nerds of all types. I welcome more female engineers but it's challenging to hire them if there aren't enough and they don't apply. EDIT: spelling
- coffeandcode 11y ago
  I don't think the article was really putting socially awkward white males to blame. I believe it tried to say that the diversity (or lack of it) of the field is a result of the shift in targeting a certain type of person for the programmer's job. And this accumulated over time reinforcing the notion until recently that it's sort of a no girls land. I can't help but feel that you're kinda shifting the blame when you say that there are just not enough female candidates otherwise you'd be perfectly happy to hire them and of course you would be. Maybe the problem really is in the way career possibilities are presented to children from early on. My brother is a programmer with years of experience - he got a pc when very young that I really didn't have access to and he was making fun of me when I got into a coding job because I it didn't really suit me, even though I have a CS degree. That doesn't mean he is to blame, it's just how we are brought up. Arts and humanities go girls, STEM go boys.
  - blah5432 11y ago
    diversity (or lack of it) of the field is a result of the shift in targeting a certain type of person for the programmer's job Based on... which facts exactly? Edit: As far as I can see, the picture is that there's a bunch of socially inept males that some shadowy powers carefully select to make a mysoginistic getto to keep women at bay. This is utterly ridiculous, no matter which amount of social science "evidence" you put into it. I'll be retired by then, but I'm pretty sure enough time will put this crazy notion to rest.
puppetmaster3 11y ago
Programming is a dead end job, mostly for immigrants. What you want is an MBA.
- azazqadir 11y ago
  You wouldn't have Facebook, Google, Hacker news, Twitter or even Internet without programmers.
  - puppetmaster3 11y ago
    Built by suckers!
eva1984 11y ago
First of all..The stereotype is mainly nerdy, socially-awkward male...but is it overall white? No. Actually the percentage of white people in software is lower than the overall demographics. I can understand why white is singled out here, because it helps to drive the rhetoric of the discussion to racism and sexism, but fundamentally the problem is much more complex. My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of samples), are video games, myself included. It is stereotyping, but it is statistically significant. Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. That is the a big reason that I got to know different parts of computer hardwares, collecting parts from markets and assemble them, and eventually being thrown into this industry. As to girls, they may not have same level of motivation as the boys had. It was in the days, when computer programming was still kind of niche profession and by no means had that much of influence as it cast on the society today, so self-motivation is important. Fundamentally, if we want to really solve the gender issue in this industry, it is not the duty of those established software companies to force reverse sexism to artificially inflate the gender ratio, it is the early stage education system to introduce programming to wider range of people. Once it becomes universal parts of people's curriculum, the problem will be there no longer. Disclaimer: Male, Asian, not born in US, but works here.
- halomru 11y ago
  >Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. This used to be true for decades, but by now the majority of people who play computer games are female. Social games and mobile games were a game changer in this regard. It will be interesting to see how that affects interest in programming in the future.
  - azazqadir 11y ago
    True, especially for Facebook games. Majority of them are female. Though hardcore PC gamers and console gamers are still male in majority.
  - douche 11y ago
    Yeah, but people aren't tweaking the autoexec.bat files and frigging around with virtual memory settings, tweaking drivers and dealing with crazy work-arounds for their social smartphone games, the way a lot of us did cutting our teeth on PC games. I picked up a tremendous amount of various computer trivia digging around making games work, and basically internalized a lot of debugging techniques before getting out of short-pants, so to speak.
probably_wrong 11y ago
Yes, I am a nerd. Yes, I am socially awkward, and I did start programming around 10. And here is yet another article pointing out that all the fun I'm having in my career now is something that should make me feel ashamed or guilty. "People like you are the reason why women won't program! Why can't you go to a bar like everyone else?" I know it's my own bias, but no one was writing articles for me when I was "sticking out like a 'sore thumb'" in HS for being smart and nerdy instead of cool. I totally agree that there's a problem of disrespect towards those who are new (apparently more if they are women), and I'm cool with focusing on fixing that. But describing the abundance of nerds in the field as "what can we do about it?", as if that was a problem? Give me a break. </rant>
- fsloth 11y ago
  "And here is yet another article pointing out that all the fun I'm having in my career now is something that should make me feel ashamed or guilty" The article does not state anything like that. Unless you have kids and are actively stopping your daughter from using a computer. 'But describing the abundance of nerds in the field as "what can we do about it?", as if that was a problem? Give me a break.' If there is a societal bias from stopping people trying things they might be actually good at based on their sex organs I see that as a problem. It's not about categorizing being a nerd as 'good' or 'bad'. It's being aware and negating filters based on obsolete stereotypes.
- Infinitesimus 11y ago
  I don't think the author intends for anyone to feel guilty at all. The article's conclusion is more along the lines of: "We're a self-selected group in the programming world now and we often unconsciously project messages that make others who have the potential to diversify the group feel cut out based on metrics that actually have no relevance to their ability to execute programming tasks well" Highlighted by the often off-hand comments like "oh you don't know that?", "this is so easy!" etc. I think it's more about messaging to let people know "Hey you don't have to be like me and love video games, have made your own arduino project, be active on github, and all that noise to be a good programmer"
- CrashFaster 11y ago
sgift 11y ago
The idea that some people are born for some things is very prevailent. Usually, it is called "talent" and nobody cries foul. As a completely tech-unrelated example: Art schools usually ask you for a portfolio when you apply to show that you are "talented" in art, which would be as if I needed a certificate as a doctor to study medicine. Sometimes these things seem to be accepted, sometimes not. Weird.
- mpweiher 11y ago
  And the opposing viewpoint, the "blank slate" hypothesis is completely untenable. Steven Pinker wrote a big book on it, and even if you just read the introduction and maybe the first chapter it will become obvious how ridiculous the idea is...and it doesn't get any "better" for the BSH afterwards. See also: "Anyone who thinks psychological sex diffs are wholly learned has lot of explaining to do" https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/33284/stewart-williams-thomas-2013api.pdf https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachme...
- fsloth 11y ago
  The problem with the "talent" hypothesis is that it's self enforcing. People mirror extremely strongly the people around them and only the most strong willed can ignore this effect. If there is any reinforcement from the external environment of negative bias this will affect the outcomes of training in any discipline or art. There isn't any scientific metric for artfulness so art schools can use any gauge they feel like to filter out prospective students.

120 points by oivviopolite 11y ago

I understand that people of Asian descent are overrepresented by a factor of 5.3x at Google and that people of European descent are underrepresented by a factor of 0.87x at Google, but I think the author goes too far by attributing this to malice on behalf of the Asians. Clearly asians could be doing more for the rest of us, but I don't follow the authors subtle undertone that this is their fault. What do you guys think?

x5n1 11y ago
Considering how underrepresented minorities, whether Asian or otherwise, are in management and IT in the Western world, I would not start crying foul over this small irregularity. If anything Google needs more different minorities if anything, for instance Latinos and Blacks.
- brandmeyer 11y ago
  > If anything Google needs more different minorities if anything, for instance Latinos and Blacks. This is a much bigger problem than just the software industry in the US. I'm a Navy veteran, as a nuclear reactor plant mechanic. I remember being shocked in MEPS (the enlistment and entry processing center for all branches of the armed forces) by the number of black men enlisting in the Army and Marine infantry - it's much higher than the local population would suggest. But of the roughly thousand or so people I worked with as Nukes in the Navy, I can recall only one black man. The trend is just as strong in college. While I'm working as a software engineer today, my degree isn't in CS: its in Mechanical Engineering. The same trend applies there, too. I've worked with a grand total of one black engineer professionally, and he was an intern! There is a serious problem in this country with our failure to attract black and latino talent to engineering. Its pretty frustrating to see all the media attention focused on bringing women into CS, while almost zero attention is being focused on the lack of black and latino engineers. I can't point to any single factor that is driving this trend. But it must happen in High School or earlier, since it's already totally broken by the time folks are graduating HS.
  - proksoup 11y ago
    America is not an equal system, money matters. It's a vicious cycle. If you're looking for one factor, I think it's dollars and cents.
  - douche 11y ago
    Engineering, from my recollections, had probably the highest wash-out rates of any major when I was in college. It sure looks like a huge part of that is because of the math requirements - a lot of engineering programs throw you in the deep end right at the beginning, with calculus and differential equations, and then you're pretty much hosed in the subsequent coursework if that doesn't click, or you come in woefully unprepared. And overwhelmingly, high schools do a piss-poor job of teaching mathematics to a level that would prepare someone to hit the ground running well enough to survive the initial stages of an engineering major and get through to the interesting stuff. AP Calculus students from top high schools struggle mightily with it, Flying Spaghetti Monster help you if you never mastered, or even were exposed to those concepts at weaker schools. Computer science isn't much different. All the math coursework hazing is why I have a history degree and a minor in CS - the minor let you take all the interesting stuff, without the 4-5 semesters of poorly taught, mostly useless math department coursework.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - riprowan 11y ago
      > engineering programs throw you in the deep end right at the beginning I started as a EE. My diff EQ professor literally did the stunt "look to your left, look to your right, of the three of you, only one will pass my class." I was the only caucasian to pass, but I made a D, and rather than re-take the class I decided that EE wasn't for me. There was only one way to ace that class, and that's to live inside it. I have a very good mind for math, but I was also interested in lots of other things: music, theater, philosophy, humanities, business, politics. The same semester I had made a D in Diff EQ I had also taken a Phil 101 (Logic) class which I aced. I was also a walk-on in a play that semester. The dean of the engineering school called me to his office to tell me I wasn't the sort of student the EE program was looking for. I left and got an MIS degree, where I could develop as a much more rounded student. Looking back some 30 years later, I realize now that the dean was literally telling me that they don't want well-rounded EE students. He was literally telling me, in spite of being in the top 1/3 of my class (math-wise) the very fact that I wasn't willing to forgo Logic and my theater activities to become a better calculus student made me a misfit. The whole point of making Diff EQ so amazingly difficult was specifically to weed out those who did anything but study Diff EQ. So in the end, I made the right decision for myself and my career. And I've learned a healthy suspicion of companies that tend to exclusively hire ace engineering students.
- home_boi 11y ago
  >If anything Google needs more different minorities if anything, for instance Latinos and Blacks. Why? I think equal opportunity is a better goal than equal representation. Forced equal representation can quickly deteriorate to racism/sexism. Inequality in the name of equality.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    I seriously don't think there can be anything such as equal opportunity. As there is bias at every part of the hiring process. Equal representation means that more or less wealth is being directed far and wide to people that represent all groups. Having money means having power to affect policies and politics as well as economics. So for creating any sense of equality in society it's a fact that there needs to be more or less equal representation. Yes there is IQ disparity which probably decreases chances further of finding elite employment. But there are outliers in every population, enough to create equal representation.
    - home_boi 11y ago
      You can segment the human population in any way and assign equal power to each of these groups. Why segment the population by race? Life is inherently unfair. There will always be differences in power. The goal can't be to assign equal power to everyone because it is impossible. The best goal is to ensure that there isn't a huge difference in power. Equal opportunity provides that guarantee.
      - majormajor 11y ago
        In regard to the US, the obvious answer is that some races were literally oppressed on that very basis for decades/centuries. That was not a passive activity. So is it any real surprise that it might have long-lasting effects that need active, rather than passive, countering? EDIT: your comment reads differently after your addition of the second paragraph so now I don't know if I'm disagreeing with you or answering a rhetorical question or what. Regardless...
        11y ago
Joof 11y ago
I'm not sure that there is an undertone that it's their fault. At best, it's because Asians value school and mathematics more and Google prefers high GPA and ability to solve mathematical and algorithmic problems. I suspect there are also a lot of Asians in the world and Google will pull talent from other countries. To continue your analogy: "I'm not Asian, so I'm not good at math, but perhaps if I were Asian I could be. Those guys do math all the time and they love it; its impossible for a Caucasian guy like me to be any good at it. I spent 10 hours on my calculus work and Li did it in 30 minutes and got a higher grade. I'm just not Asian."
- CardenB 11y ago
  Google doesn't really select for high GPA.
  - Joof 11y ago
    I'm curious as to whether or not this is objectively true when measured. It doesn't have to be intentional, but a reputation for that (which it certainly had at one point) could have the equivalent effect.
  - rifung 11y ago
    Maybe they don't select for high GPA but students with high GPAs in high school presumably have a higher chance of getting into a top 10 college and I imagine Google prefers students from top schools
    - ktRolster 11y ago
      I think they only care if it's your first (or maybe second) job. After that, experience is more important.
  - bitwize 11y ago
    Naw, they just select for advanced degrees from God-tier schools, something those C students just happen not to be able to reach for.
parennoob 11y ago
> I understand that people of Asian descent are overrepresented by a factor of 5.3x at Google and that people of European descent are underrepresented by a factor of 0.87x at Google, but I think the author goes too far by attributing this to malice on behalf of the Asians. The linked article [1] literally does not even contain the word "Asian". Am I missing something here? [1] http://martinfowler.com/articles/born-for-it.html http://martinfowler.com/articles/born-for-it.html
- lstamour 11y ago
  I read it as race being used as a stand-in or counter-example to that of gender. It's a point you have to think about, it provokes conversation rather than being an argument that stands on its own.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    The point could have been delivered more clearly then. Instead it came off as an odd non sequitur that seemed to be about an entirely different article.

mikekchar 11y ago

Reading articles like this is so strange for me because I have such a hard time understanding the perspective. To give some background, I started in the late 80's and early 90's in Canada. There were very few womon in my CS program (I recall it was 5 our of 140 in the graduating class), but even still in my early career, I was never on a team without women. I would say that between 10-20% of the programmers I worked with were women of various cultural backgrounds. That's not a huge percentage, but compared to the numbers graduating it was quite high. In the first 15 years I worked as a programmer I can only think of a single female programmer that wasn't particularly competant. Everybody else was excellent. I often had conversations with them about why they got into programming and the vast majority of women I worked with said the same thing: programming was the best way to get into management. They felt that every other avenue was blocked by the old boys club and that as a programmer there was no ceiling. As such, these programmer often came with other skills that those of use who were just looking for the new technical hotness (myself included) did not have. I think eveybody I worked with highly valued that diversity. This is not to say that there weren't women who were just in it for the programming. I met several women in the course of my early career who had very similar interests and abilities to myself. It's just that in the companies I worked in 80-90% of the men would be obsessive-compulsive technophiles and 80-90% of the women would be level-headed get-the-job-done types. Those women usually did very well and were promoted quickly (and the technically-minded ones struggled to get into management, just like the technically-minded men). Fast forward a couple of decades and I find the landscape seems different. At my present position we have yet to hire a single female programmer. The thing is that nobody applies. When we do get female applicants they often look excellent and I think we have given job offers to every women we have interviewed. Usually they are good enough that we try to stretch our budget to get them. We have been overbid (by a substantial margin) with every single female candidate. So while it seems like the available female candidates are still of high quality, they are in much higher demand than 20 or 30 years ago. On the other hand, I have noticed a dramatic shift in the types of male applicants we get. Like I said, 20-30 years ago male programmers were often fit the stereotypical mold (in my experience -- YMMV). These days I would say that more than half of the applicants we interview have very little interest in programming outside of it being a high paying job. So you get some cultural mismatches. You end up with the old guard saying things like, "You're not a real programmer" when they are talking to someone who is cutting and pasting stuff from stack overflow. Of course, we used to say the same thing to the guys who were cutting and pasting from MSDN or passing off GNU software as their own. It's just that having the alpha dog barking at the pups to get them in line was the normal way of working. I wonder if in the midst of this cultural change, women are getting a bit lost. On the one hand you are getting a lot more men coming into the field who are not technical primadonnas. So it is easy for a lot of women who get interested in programming late in life to identify with those men the most. However, I think along with that cultural change we get a lot of baggage. The old boys club gets sucked in along with it. Where I used to hear women tell me how great the computer industry is because there was no ceiling, now they tell me that they are actively and often blatantly discriminated against. At the same time, they see the technical alpha dogs barking up a storm and think, "I don't want to get anywhere near that person". I suppose at the end of this long (and I guess pointless) rant, it's just one more perspective. I really wish more women would get into the field because I miss working with women. There seems to be huge demand too. I hope we can get over this cultural speed bump and make it happen.

DKnoll 11y ago

I don't disagree with the thesis of the article, but the creators of the ENIAC were given no mention and they skipped right to the 'computer girls' as if they were fully responsible for it's genesis.

jonathankoren 11y ago
Because the article isn't about the ENIAC at all. It's about how programming transitioned from being a menial (and thus women's) job, to a prestigious (and thus male) job.
- DKnoll 11y ago
  Programming was a 'women's job' at the time because men were intended for combat. It's exactly the same reason women were working in factories which, in peacetime, was traditionally a men's job. This is not to say that it was right, but at the same time it wasn't due to lesser ability... it was because they were still at home and not delivering the munitions whose trajectory they were calculating. I would like to add that suggesting that the majority of programmers were/are the 'majority' (in a societal sense) in the west is also disingenuous. It seems a bit self-serving for the author to not mention that technology, even at the time, was a place where many homosexual but otherwise 'socially-awkward, white, male programmers' thrived and made incredible bounds. If you think women suffered from marginalisation in the 40s and 50s (they did)... imagine being a homosexual. Whether the article is about the ENIAC or not, you need to consider all facts when you make a factual statement, even if they do not serve your thesis. Edit: sorry if I'm a bit passionate about this... I wrote my grade 5 speech on the ENIAC and I've always held the men and women who designed and operated it in incredibly high esteem. Some crazy old man said something once about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' and I feel that is very relevant when discussing the ENIAC.
  - jonathankoren 11y ago
    The facts don't back this up the assertion that this was an inherently transitory effect. Women fell out of computer science starting 1985, and hasn't gained any year since.[0] Turing was prosecuted as soon as his usefulness in the war effort ended, so I don't think they made that many bounds. And if we're going to have a good ol' oppression-off how about blacks? They weren't anywhere in programming, and sadly still aren't. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

cb18 11y ago

So many mysteries of the modern world become quite understandable when you allow yourself the luxury of understanding the relevance of intelligence. It varies among races, knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. The modern tendency is to feverishly avert one's eyes from this fact, but it must be reckoned with eventually. I believe we'll all be better off when we can stop the hand wringing of why isn't group X doing activity Y. The sooner we can get on with building a society that is better for everyone while taking everyone's capabilities into account the better. Not to say there are strict limits on capabilities, but groups with higher average intelligence are obviously going to win more Physics Nobels.

kenjackson 11y ago
knowledge of this is scientifically sound, it is the consensus of everyone who studies it seriously. This is so untrue, I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. The overwhelming consensus by scientists at reputable top universities don't allege this at all. But I'm sure you can find it at fringe or less reputable state universities.
- cb18 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellig... This is a false statement: The overwhelming consensus by scientists at reputable top universities don't allege this at all.
  - kenjackson 11y ago
    I figured that this is where it came from. These are generally fringe researchers, led by the author herself, Gottfredson. As was commonly noted at the time... few who signed it were measurement experts. Note the lack of prestigious programs of the signatories. This is the Wall Street Journal fringe. Certainly not the mainstream of top researchers in the field.
    - 11y ago

exclusiv 11y ago

I don't deny that there is some history in the current representation of programmers but I don't buy that socially awkward white males are somehow oppressing diversity in general as some would suggest. When they supposedly aren't, it's a brogrammer problem and blatant sexism. Everyone wants to find someone to blame. Granted this was 9 years ago, but when I was in computer engineering we had a few classes with only 1 female. All the nerdy types flocked to her and were very inclusive with team projects. I'm a partner in a 6 yr old business and I've just recently started to see more women programmers. Most of my job postings would get zero female applicants. However, my last 2 engineering hires were women that came through our internal network and they've been excellent. Account managers and project managers - generally women applicants. Engineers = male nerds of all types. I welcome more female engineers but it's challenging to hire them if there aren't enough and they don't apply. EDIT: spelling

coffeandcode 11y ago
I don't think the article was really putting socially awkward white males to blame. I believe it tried to say that the diversity (or lack of it) of the field is a result of the shift in targeting a certain type of person for the programmer's job. And this accumulated over time reinforcing the notion until recently that it's sort of a no girls land. I can't help but feel that you're kinda shifting the blame when you say that there are just not enough female candidates otherwise you'd be perfectly happy to hire them and of course you would be. Maybe the problem really is in the way career possibilities are presented to children from early on. My brother is a programmer with years of experience - he got a pc when very young that I really didn't have access to and he was making fun of me when I got into a coding job because I it didn't really suit me, even though I have a CS degree. That doesn't mean he is to blame, it's just how we are brought up. Arts and humanities go girls, STEM go boys.
- blah5432 11y ago
  diversity (or lack of it) of the field is a result of the shift in targeting a certain type of person for the programmer's job Based on... which facts exactly? Edit: As far as I can see, the picture is that there's a bunch of socially inept males that some shadowy powers carefully select to make a mysoginistic getto to keep women at bay. This is utterly ridiculous, no matter which amount of social science "evidence" you put into it. I'll be retired by then, but I'm pretty sure enough time will put this crazy notion to rest.

puppetmaster3 11y ago

Programming is a dead end job, mostly for immigrants. What you want is an MBA.

azazqadir 11y ago
You wouldn't have Facebook, Google, Hacker news, Twitter or even Internet without programmers.
- puppetmaster3 11y ago
  Built by suckers!

eva1984 11y ago

First of all..The stereotype is mainly nerdy, socially-awkward male...but is it overall white? No. Actually the percentage of white people in software is lower than the overall demographics. I can understand why white is singled out here, because it helps to drive the rhetoric of the discussion to racism and sexism, but fundamentally the problem is much more complex. My 2 cents about why women are underrepresented in software industry is that not too many of them are interested in the beginning. One big drive of male programmers, according to my observation (hundreds of samples), are video games, myself included. It is stereotyping, but it is statistically significant. Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. That is the a big reason that I got to know different parts of computer hardwares, collecting parts from markets and assemble them, and eventually being thrown into this industry. As to girls, they may not have same level of motivation as the boys had. It was in the days, when computer programming was still kind of niche profession and by no means had that much of influence as it cast on the society today, so self-motivation is important. Fundamentally, if we want to really solve the gender issue in this industry, it is not the duty of those established software companies to force reverse sexism to artificially inflate the gender ratio, it is the early stage education system to introduce programming to wider range of people. Once it becomes universal parts of people's curriculum, the problem will be there no longer. Disclaimer: Male, Asian, not born in US, but works here.

halomru 11y ago
>Gamers are overwhelmingly MALE. This used to be true for decades, but by now the majority of people who play computer games are female. Social games and mobile games were a game changer in this regard. It will be interesting to see how that affects interest in programming in the future.
- azazqadir 11y ago
  True, especially for Facebook games. Majority of them are female. Though hardcore PC gamers and console gamers are still male in majority.
- douche 11y ago
  Yeah, but people aren't tweaking the autoexec.bat files and frigging around with virtual memory settings, tweaking drivers and dealing with crazy work-arounds for their social smartphone games, the way a lot of us did cutting our teeth on PC games. I picked up a tremendous amount of various computer trivia digging around making games work, and basically internalized a lot of debugging techniques before getting out of short-pants, so to speak.

probably_wrong 11y ago

Yes, I am a nerd. Yes, I am socially awkward, and I did start programming around 10. And here is yet another article pointing out that all the fun I'm having in my career now is something that should make me feel ashamed or guilty. "People like you are the reason why women won't program! Why can't you go to a bar like everyone else?" I know it's my own bias, but no one was writing articles for me when I was "sticking out like a 'sore thumb'" in HS for being smart and nerdy instead of cool. I totally agree that there's a problem of disrespect towards those who are new (apparently more if they are women), and I'm cool with focusing on fixing that. But describing the abundance of nerds in the field as "what can we do about it?", as if that was a problem? Give me a break. </rant>

fsloth 11y ago
"And here is yet another article pointing out that all the fun I'm having in my career now is something that should make me feel ashamed or guilty" The article does not state anything like that. Unless you have kids and are actively stopping your daughter from using a computer. 'But describing the abundance of nerds in the field as "what can we do about it?", as if that was a problem? Give me a break.' If there is a societal bias from stopping people trying things they might be actually good at based on their sex organs I see that as a problem. It's not about categorizing being a nerd as 'good' or 'bad'. It's being aware and negating filters based on obsolete stereotypes.
Infinitesimus 11y ago
I don't think the author intends for anyone to feel guilty at all. The article's conclusion is more along the lines of: "We're a self-selected group in the programming world now and we often unconsciously project messages that make others who have the potential to diversify the group feel cut out based on metrics that actually have no relevance to their ability to execute programming tasks well" Highlighted by the often off-hand comments like "oh you don't know that?", "this is so easy!" etc. I think it's more about messaging to let people know "Hey you don't have to be like me and love video games, have made your own arduino project, be active on github, and all that noise to be a good programmer"
CrashFaster 11y ago

sgift 11y ago

The idea that some people are born for some things is very prevailent. Usually, it is called "talent" and nobody cries foul. As a completely tech-unrelated example: Art schools usually ask you for a portfolio when you apply to show that you are "talented" in art, which would be as if I needed a certificate as a doctor to study medicine. Sometimes these things seem to be accepted, sometimes not. Weird.

mpweiher 11y ago
And the opposing viewpoint, the "blank slate" hypothesis is completely untenable. Steven Pinker wrote a big book on it, and even if you just read the introduction and maybe the first chapter it will become obvious how ridiculous the idea is...and it doesn't get any "better" for the BSH afterwards. See also: "Anyone who thinks psychological sex diffs are wholly learned has lot of explaining to do" https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/33284/stewart-williams-thomas-2013api.pdf https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachme...
fsloth 11y ago
The problem with the "talent" hypothesis is that it's self enforcing. People mirror extremely strongly the people around them and only the most strong willed can ignore this effect. If there is any reinforcement from the external environment of negative bias this will affect the outcomes of training in any discipline or art. There isn't any scientific metric for artfulness so art schools can use any gauge they feel like to filter out prospective students.