8 ms·
“Most of the time, I don’t feel like a girl, I feel like a programmer”
- trav4225 10y ago"When you create targets, quotas, there’s a danger these get filled but not by the best people." It was a refreshing surprise to see a quote like that in an article like this!
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- trav4225 10y agoJust to clarify: by "an article like this", I meant "an article on this topic". :)
- tomp 10y ago> I was recently talking to a guy who works in the city who bragged about “collecting all the flags” through his exploits on Tinder. If I had to work with chauvinists like that, it would be a different story.” Some people have sex for fun, some have sex for money, others pursue yet other goals. What happened to sex-positive feminism? Oh, right, I forgot - non-judgement is reserved for women only...
- ybrah 10y agoSlut shaming for men is apparently okay
- yompers888 10y agoI wholeheartedly believe that the reason for your post's low score is not the opinion represented, but the fact that you express it without any explanation of your thought process. Please explain what you mean, and how you judge the author to have meant that, so that you at least give the possibility of a positive discussion.
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- ktRolster 10y agoHe's not treating the women as people, he's treating them as objects. The reason it would make her feel uncomfortable is because he would probably look at her the same way, because objectifying isn't something you just turn on and turn off. Also, it's not really a topic you should bring up at work.
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- stcredzero 10y agoobjectifying isn't something you just turn on and turn off. You can't. Objectification isn't a sin. It isn't inherently evil. Much like stereotyping, it's an epiphenomenon of our finite human brains. We naturally tend to jump to conclusions and take mental shortcuts from external signifiers. (Stereotyping.) We naturally process our goal seeking in terms of instrumental causes and effects, and we sometimes forget to take into account the subjective experience of other people in our plans. (Objectification.) This is why cultures have manners that encourage active mental compensations for the deficiencies of our brains. Are these manners as received from tradition perfect? No. There needs to be some further iteration. But I would contend that taking brand new stances of vilification and shaming will be just as toxic and problematic as such stances were in the past. Not defending any actions in the article. I just want to straighten out the way people process these concepts: Objectification and stereotyping are information processing problems, not moral ones. They are not sins!
- foldr 10y agoEither you think it's ok to sexually objectify women in the workplace or you don't. I think your comment is basically a long-winded way of saying that you're ok with it, but you could have just said so without all the patronizing verbiage and pseudoscience. It makes no sense whatsoever to think about sexual objectification in terms of "information processing". If men can understand other men as more than purely sexual beings, then they can do the same with women. I hardly think that taking the non-sexual aspects of any particular woman into account is going to lead to some kind of information overload.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoI can see her not wanting to work with a guy who would view her as a flag to collect.
- Kluny 10y agoUnless I misunderstand, "collecting the flags" refers to being flagged for every possible thing that you can get flagged for - scamming, using fraudulent profiles, being aggressive, being abusive, etc. Someone who is collecting flags is intentionally violating the terms of service and making the Tinder experience unpleasant for others. Feel free to pursue whatever goals you want, but not at the expense of other people's enjoyment. That doesn't have anything to do with gender.
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- Joky 10y agoIt seems to me that it is really about "national flag": http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flag%20collecting http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flag%20collec...
- dang 10y agoResentful nitpicking is a poor genre to begin with, and swerving straight into gender flamewar makes this an outright bad comment for HN. We all know what comes of this, and none of it's good (edit: and in the time it took me to write this, you'd already provoked five of it), so let's please not re-rehearse it.
- harryjo 10y ago"rehearse" ?
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- sndean 10y ago> as though as the lone female developer you are “representing” all women developers. If you make a mistake it’s because you’re a girl, not because you’re junior. Or tired or hungover or having a bad day.” Couldn't this be true for any group though? Not to lessen what she's trying to say, but if you're in any way a minority in a field, aren't you in some way representing that whole group?
- sageabilly 10y agoTurn this around: If you're a man, aren't you in some way representing all men? (Answer: no. Same with anyone, regardless of minority status. Just because I'm a member of a minority doesn't mean the entire minority is homogeneous.)
- mc32 10y agoWhat you say is true. We only really represent ourselves and when it comes to it, no one is going to help you but yourself --but other people will generalize from your identifiable characteristics (ethnicity, sex, school, height, demeanor, style, speech, etc.) because that's the way we all do things every day.
- return0 10y agoBut you 're not turning it around, because men are not minority. Think this though: If you 're greek in some way you 're assumed to be representing all greeks.
- sndean 10y agoI was thinking more along the lines of how a newly-hired male nurse is perceived by female nurses. If he screws up, is it likely that they'll think "men don't make good nurses" and ignore the fact that he's new? So, no I'm not suggesting that I represent all men. I'm saying it's possible a male nurse may in some way be representing all male nurses to his female nurse coworkers.
- ikurei 10y agoIt is not only true of women, but it's specially true for them. If a work mate is a member of the Jewish/Mormon/atheist minority, I may not even know. And if I know, it's easier to forget. If I am a man (and I am), I am not gonna forget that the person next to me is a woman. It may be also true of, for instance, rate. There was no black people, and very few Asian and Latin American, where I studied and in most companies I've worked for. I, of course, don't consider myself a bigot (who does), but I guess I'm as likely to hold that kind of bias against black people than woman. Or significantly more, since I have worked with several women, and I have never worked with a black person (obviously not American).
- hyperliner 10y agoGood points. But it's sad to see this biased statement in a great article discussing the negative effects of bias: “It’s easier to create a software-based business: there are low start-up costs, things move quickly, its dynamic – the people doing it tend to be younger, more liberal.” Younger? More liberal? hmmm.
- bpchaps 10y ago"..except when I blog" My favorite and most technical women coworkers in the past never, ever mention gender and actively avoid discussions about it. Professionally, it's irrelevant and their quality of work and attitude completely overshadows the quality of work of those who make gender an issue. A very technical ex of mine would even go as far as calling those who make their gender relevant, even towards posts like this one, idiots. The problem with these anti-label canned posts (sorry, but when I see info graphics like that, "canned" feels pretty accurate) is that they give off the same vibe as a the usual "I'm $LABEL, so treat me as such" crowd. There are clear problems with gender issues in tech, but I can't shake the feeling that posts like this are more damaging than good.
- AdeptusAquinas 10y agoI feel the problem with such a response is that it feels like 'if I don't acknowledge the problem, or refuse to see it, then its not a problem'.
- bpchaps 10y agoThat wasn't how I meant it to come off, and apologies if it came out that way. I'm not suggesting that we don't acknowledge the problem. I'm more suggesting that the problem is completely elsewhere, so locally addressing it does harm, rather than good. I have bipolar which causes ADD-like symptoms. When I try to address these problems with requests like "Please don't install three TVs in my peripheral vision", I'm often ignored, laughed at, or my problems are completely minimized (eg, "My cousin was given an ADD misdiagnosis at 2, so clearly that's the case with you", "Grow a thicker skin.", "Get used to it."). How can we expect to address gender issues if we can't even discuss mental health issues? The problem doesn't start and end in employment, so treating it as a problem within employment and implementing "fixes" on top of employment/employment culture will only make things more complex and exclusionary (particularly for the fringe). As with security, adding a layer of complexity can often have incredibly undesired results, while making the implementers (HR) feel good and secure with their "fix". It would be nice as a culture to address things from the problem sources, not just the symptoms. Any time I try to have similar serious discussions at workplaces, nobody wants to talk about the root. It's incredibly frustrating, particularly since protecting the fringe is something I'm personally vested in.
- Bartweiss 10y agoOverall, I really like this. It's a fairly judicious take on the industry, acknowledging that there is some unpleasant stuff but not painting it as a universal experience (or, worse, darkly alluding to autism and acting like this is about biology over culture). There were two things that threw me off, though. First, the citation of the github study. I don't know if the author or the editor put it in, but it's a woefully incomplete, cherry-picked result that shouldn't have made the press in the first place and shouldn't be repeated. Second, the thing about IDEs. I don't disagree that they're bad, but is that really a diversity issue? Most of the straight white male engineers I know hate most IDEs with a burning passion. The general issue seems to be that they're hard to build and ill-considered, not that they're made by the wrong people. Still, this is a good take on the real-but-limited role of gender in tech, and the role of code as a tool rather than an end in itself. Thanks for sharing it.
- facepalm 10y agoThat infographic needs a lot of citations. The reasons they give for the low amount of women in STEM have not really been verified, it's just popular opinion. The story about performance of boys and girls in STEM is also more complicated.
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- riotdash 10y agoDoes anyone see problem with these retarded feminist blogs and posts? While they constantly keep on reminding us how gender should not matter and how she/her/someone "feels more like a programmer than a girl", still every second they advertise these discriminatory "ONLY girls/lesbians/black women" programming/tech clubs and they spend million times more writing blog posts and whines about how there are so few female in the field instead of googling for i.e. C/C++/Java/Node.js/iOS tutorials and actually learning something useful.