8 ms·

As a man, I'm embarrassed that this is the top comment on HN. This talk about "a generation of men being sacrificed" is absurd. Men still dominate the IT indust

by csallen 10y ago

As a man, I'm embarrassed that this is the top comment on HN. This talk about "a generation of men being sacrificed" is absurd. Men still dominate the IT industry at all levels. To say that we're being sacrificed en masse is hyperbolic to say the least. It reminds me of the way that the Trump campaign makes its points about the state of the world. Furthermore, so many men in tech are quick to explain away statistics about women/minorities being hired less by saying, "There's no bias! It's because they're not as skilled!" But when stats show that women advance faster, the story flips, and suddenly it's, "This proves bias! There's no way it's due to skill!" Come on, HN, we're better than this.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ixtli 10y ago
Specifically, we're better than allowing anecdotes to masquerade as data, even when we feel vague discomfort coming from the general direction of the issue being discussed.
harlanlewis 10y ago
Absolutely. It's not a hard argument to make that women (and many other underrepresented people) are subjected to a stricter filter in the tech world, playing with a deck socially and structurally stacked against them. It's no surprise at all that people who can find success despite playing on a harder difficulty level will be among the most capable. An article like this is actually heartening, as it indicates that achievement and ability are internally recognized. And now I've broken one of my cardinal rules (don't engage with social flamewar threads on HN), but you're exactly right - many of these comments are too embarrasing to let pass. edit: calex just made this point far better than I in another comment in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12687015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12687015
- ixtli 10y ago
  I thought a similar thing when I read this. Somewhat sad, but my first thought was that the second we near parity with the discrepancy between wage and representation between genders in IT/Engineering you'll see claims of "reverse" sexism. Then I read the discussion here.
- tajen 10y ago
  The whole equality story was, at the beginning, "If there's more men passing one stage (IQ tests, high school diploma or promotion), then it's biased against women. Then suddenly when women are promoted more often than men, your story becomes "Women are just smarter than men, it's normal". Can't you just have a little compassion for men who didn't have the skills and deserve to be pushed and taught a little bit? And the prejudice about "men are stupid" is repeated in many innocent settings: - https://snag.gy/qDceHS.jpg https://snag.gy/qDceHS.jpg - https://pics.onsizzle.com/i-wish-i-was-strong-like-him-i-wish-i-3621297.png https://pics.onsizzle.com/i-wish-i-was-strong-like-him-i-wis... - Everyone can cite 10 qualities of women, especially smartness [1]. - You can't quote any quality attributed to men. There's none, no quality attributed to men in any newspaper, in any document, in any culture. "What about muscles?" The thing about muscles is, women reckon we have strength because it would be hard to deny it and it helps construct the idea that we're violent. But muscles also help build the image of men being stupid, and it doesn't give us a skill. This prejudice does have real-world effects: - Men are twice more likely to be homeless or to fail their studies, - Men are 30 times more likely to land in prison. THIRTY times! But somehow, women succeed to capture all the work we do for equality. The fact you're unconscious about male difficulties shows how much work there's left to do about male equality. The progress we've made for women about equality of chances and freedom of pursuing good jobs, we now need to make it for men too. Since you're talking about politics, the fact that the only way to "vote for men equality" is to vote for Trump is a horrible abomination: I want equality, I'm keen to vote for a woman, but if that means that she'll do even more to accentuate the "privileged path" for women and accentuate messages breeding hate between women and men, then you're asking a voter to make... a dangerous choice. [1] Qualities that are generally attributed to women: "Women are better at multitasking" – where scientific studies are much more gray-area than that; "Women are better at communication" – where in fact it's males who are handicapped about communication and who deserve some equality budget for "education to communication" and "education to feelings"; "Women are better at tastes and decoration" which harms the participation of many interested men in decoration topics; "Women are more mature, earlier" when in fact this maturity is judged on a biased set of responsabilities; "Women are better at raising children" which creates unprecedented disadvantages for men who want the custody of their child, and finally, "Women are better at school" when in fact it's teacher bias which gives them better marks ( http://www.bbc.com/news/education-32302022 http://www.bbc.com/news/education-32302022 ) – As you can see I'm very well documented on every quality which is theoretically attributed to women and where, in fact, it's just that many papers are unfairly condescending towards men.
- sbov 10y ago
  I generally agree, but what I can't explain is: if it really is because they are better because of this stricter filter, I would expect the stricter filter to apply to the promotion process too. So, why isn't it? Edit: maybe it's a sign of things getting "better". Women already working are on average better at what they do, and as people become more aware of the problem it's easier for them to become promoted because the filter isn't as strict when compared to X years ago.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    It is also easier to show actual results at the promotion stage. At the hiring stage, it is mostly a crapshoot, and they don't really know if you are good or not, so it is easier for biases to get in the way.
mhuffman 10y ago
As a man, I am embarrassed that you can't see the point he was making. It's not that "Wimmin' are takin' our jerbs!", he was just pointing out that promoting women because they have a vagina is just as bad as promoting someone because they have a penis or white skin. Why not promote how well you do your job?
- throw-me-away 10y ago
  And there you go, immediately assuming that women are only promoted for being women.
  - mhuffman 10y ago
    Wow! Did you even read my comment? I was saying that opposite of that!
    - throw-me-away 10y ago
      So your comment says that women are currently being promoted due to skill? If so, I don't see it, and apparently neither does anyone else.
      - mhuffman 10y ago
        > So your comment says that women are currently being promoted due to skill? That statistically can not be the case, right? There are about 50/50 men women in the country. They are the same in every way but genitals. So about half of those rising through the ranks should be men and about half women. Right? I mean this is literally the argument that sexism explains our current workforce distribution, so I presume the argument holds the other way around?
        throw-me-away 10y ago
        #1: I don't believe the genders are the same in every way but genitals. There are lots of other physiological and psychological differences, so I've never bought the argument that every industry should have a perfect 50-50 representation. It wouldn't be surprising to me if there was some intrinsic advantage (either environmental or biological) women had over men as managers. #2: In a system in which women are discriminated against, it takes extra grit for women to push through, get hired, and do the work anyway. These are women who really want it very badly. The cream of the crop. Therefore it's not surprising to see them perform better than their male peers on average. #3: In a system in which women have historically been discriminated against, there will be lots of men with jobs they don't deserve. When women begin to enter the workforce in greater numbers, these men will be the first to lose their jobs to rising women. I could go on. There are plenty of reasons why women might be getting promoted faster. One should not immediately jump to the conclusion that it's solely due to affirmative action quotas with no evidence to back that up. The world is more complex than that.
dominotw 10y ago
>Come on, HN, we're better than this. Can the mods delete the GP comment, seems off topic.
FT_intern 10y ago
To be fair, women anecdotes about how they have been supposedly oppressed are frequently upvoted. It appears that you are more opposed to his stance on the issue.
facepalm 10y ago
Could you link to a statistic showing women get hired less? How do you know they are not simply applying less?
bluecalm 10y ago
Oh c'mon. Instead of being embarrassed at least try to understand the point. It's a fact that women are preferred for promotion in many places just because they are women because of affrimative action often called "striving for diversity". It's also a fact many men feel they are discriminated against in such settings. It doesn't mean there aren't problems and discrimination against women but you act like his point is not valid and not even worth acknowledging. You just feel "embarrassed". You should feel that way but not because of the comment but because your attitude.
- csallen 10y ago
  I understood tajen's point very well. He has provided a few personal anecdotes, and from there he extrapolates that an entire generation of men has been "sacrificed". He then goes on to claim that "women are equal in the minds of most men." This, despite the fact that, per the very article we're discussing, 94% of senior devs are men, 92% of IT managers are men, and 93% of the heads of IT are men. This, despite the fact that studies continue to show that simply changing the name on a resume from a man's to a woman's has significant negative effects. None of tajen's ridiculous assertions are supported by any evidence whatsoever. It's hyperbolic unsubstantiated fear-mongering in an attempt to minimize another group's problems while magnifying his own. He has to resort to such tactics, otherwise women's problems will be treated with greater urgency than men's (as they should be). I was embarrassed to see these comments at the top of HN, and I'm happy that people have since come to their senses and downvoted them to where they belong.
  - tajen 10y ago
    > This, despite the fact that, per the very article we're discussing, 94% of senior devs are men, 92% of IT managers are men, and 93% of the heads of IT are men. Yep. It's not incompatible. Maybe most women don't want to spend their life in front of a computer. Maybe, as Margeritte Yourcenar used to mention, being a head of IT is a shit life and women are more clever than men in not trying to get so high. Maybe if you start with an all-male community and overpromote women, then 10 years is still not enough to become head of IT. Those numbers are little proof of discrimination. We need to know the mean-time-to-promotion. > This, despite the fact that studies continue to show that simply changing the name on a resume from a man's to a woman's has significant negative effects. This is a much more serious offense, and straight illegal in any developed economy (I hope). But if I had to hire a woman in my company, I'd be very afraid that hiring a woman leads to an (unwarranted) harassment accusation against the CEO like it so often did (GitHub and so many others, I'm looking at you), so I'd probably weigh whether it's worth sticking with a discrimination lawsuit risk. I'd probaboy still hire the woman, though, for ethics. But I would probably keep her in a separate room from me, just to dodge sexual harassment claims. What a f'cked world we live in. Can't even have a normal behaviour with women. > None of taken's ridiculous assertions are supported by any evidence whatsoever. Thank you for the insult, which tells a lot about the soundness of your personality. My evidence is: - Around me, I see women be promoted, it's a pretty strong fact, - OP's study says women are promoted faster than men, so it corroborates my supposedly "magnified own problems" (If men aren't allowed to have problems, wtf), - There are laws that require companies to promote women as much as men and to reach quotas of managers. - ...along with the dozen other comments with factual references and links I've posted today. My position is very well documented because of people like you, and you're welcome if you want to discuss facts. On the other hand, if a rational reasoning triggers so much of your emotions, then it means you're associating my position with macho personalities like Trump, fascists or racists, and that means you're making a generalization about me. Did you know that generalizations trump the acurate perception? I'm much more in favour of women's rights than you think – I just can't stand the men-disparaging that we repeat over and over.

by csallen 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ixtli 10y ago

Specifically, we're better than allowing anecdotes to masquerade as data, even when we feel vague discomfort coming from the general direction of the issue being discussed.

harlanlewis 10y ago

Absolutely. It's not a hard argument to make that women (and many other underrepresented people) are subjected to a stricter filter in the tech world, playing with a deck socially and structurally stacked against them. It's no surprise at all that people who can find success despite playing on a harder difficulty level will be among the most capable. An article like this is actually heartening, as it indicates that achievement and ability are internally recognized. And now I've broken one of my cardinal rules (don't engage with social flamewar threads on HN), but you're exactly right - many of these comments are too embarrasing to let pass. edit: calex just made this point far better than I in another comment in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12687015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12687015

ixtli 10y ago
I thought a similar thing when I read this. Somewhat sad, but my first thought was that the second we near parity with the discrepancy between wage and representation between genders in IT/Engineering you'll see claims of "reverse" sexism. Then I read the discussion here.
tajen 10y ago
The whole equality story was, at the beginning, "If there's more men passing one stage (IQ tests, high school diploma or promotion), then it's biased against women. Then suddenly when women are promoted more often than men, your story becomes "Women are just smarter than men, it's normal". Can't you just have a little compassion for men who didn't have the skills and deserve to be pushed and taught a little bit? And the prejudice about "men are stupid" is repeated in many innocent settings: - https://snag.gy/qDceHS.jpg https://snag.gy/qDceHS.jpg - https://pics.onsizzle.com/i-wish-i-was-strong-like-him-i-wish-i-3621297.png https://pics.onsizzle.com/i-wish-i-was-strong-like-him-i-wis... - Everyone can cite 10 qualities of women, especially smartness [1]. - You can't quote any quality attributed to men. There's none, no quality attributed to men in any newspaper, in any document, in any culture. "What about muscles?" The thing about muscles is, women reckon we have strength because it would be hard to deny it and it helps construct the idea that we're violent. But muscles also help build the image of men being stupid, and it doesn't give us a skill. This prejudice does have real-world effects: - Men are twice more likely to be homeless or to fail their studies, - Men are 30 times more likely to land in prison. THIRTY times! But somehow, women succeed to capture all the work we do for equality. The fact you're unconscious about male difficulties shows how much work there's left to do about male equality. The progress we've made for women about equality of chances and freedom of pursuing good jobs, we now need to make it for men too. Since you're talking about politics, the fact that the only way to "vote for men equality" is to vote for Trump is a horrible abomination: I want equality, I'm keen to vote for a woman, but if that means that she'll do even more to accentuate the "privileged path" for women and accentuate messages breeding hate between women and men, then you're asking a voter to make... a dangerous choice. [1] Qualities that are generally attributed to women: "Women are better at multitasking" – where scientific studies are much more gray-area than that; "Women are better at communication" – where in fact it's males who are handicapped about communication and who deserve some equality budget for "education to communication" and "education to feelings"; "Women are better at tastes and decoration" which harms the participation of many interested men in decoration topics; "Women are more mature, earlier" when in fact this maturity is judged on a biased set of responsabilities; "Women are better at raising children" which creates unprecedented disadvantages for men who want the custody of their child, and finally, "Women are better at school" when in fact it's teacher bias which gives them better marks ( http://www.bbc.com/news/education-32302022 http://www.bbc.com/news/education-32302022 ) – As you can see I'm very well documented on every quality which is theoretically attributed to women and where, in fact, it's just that many papers are unfairly condescending towards men.
sbov 10y ago
I generally agree, but what I can't explain is: if it really is because they are better because of this stricter filter, I would expect the stricter filter to apply to the promotion process too. So, why isn't it? Edit: maybe it's a sign of things getting "better". Women already working are on average better at what they do, and as people become more aware of the problem it's easier for them to become promoted because the filter isn't as strict when compared to X years ago.
- stale2002 10y ago
  It is also easier to show actual results at the promotion stage. At the hiring stage, it is mostly a crapshoot, and they don't really know if you are good or not, so it is easier for biases to get in the way.

mhuffman 10y ago

As a man, I am embarrassed that you can't see the point he was making. It's not that "Wimmin' are takin' our jerbs!", he was just pointing out that promoting women because they have a vagina is just as bad as promoting someone because they have a penis or white skin. Why not promote how well you do your job?

throw-me-away 10y ago
And there you go, immediately assuming that women are only promoted for being women.
- mhuffman 10y ago
  Wow! Did you even read my comment? I was saying that opposite of that!
  - throw-me-away 10y ago
    So your comment says that women are currently being promoted due to skill? If so, I don't see it, and apparently neither does anyone else.
    - mhuffman 10y ago
      > So your comment says that women are currently being promoted due to skill? That statistically can not be the case, right? There are about 50/50 men women in the country. They are the same in every way but genitals. So about half of those rising through the ranks should be men and about half women. Right? I mean this is literally the argument that sexism explains our current workforce distribution, so I presume the argument holds the other way around?
      - throw-me-away 10y ago
        #1: I don't believe the genders are the same in every way but genitals. There are lots of other physiological and psychological differences, so I've never bought the argument that every industry should have a perfect 50-50 representation. It wouldn't be surprising to me if there was some intrinsic advantage (either environmental or biological) women had over men as managers. #2: In a system in which women are discriminated against, it takes extra grit for women to push through, get hired, and do the work anyway. These are women who really want it very badly. The cream of the crop. Therefore it's not surprising to see them perform better than their male peers on average. #3: In a system in which women have historically been discriminated against, there will be lots of men with jobs they don't deserve. When women begin to enter the workforce in greater numbers, these men will be the first to lose their jobs to rising women. I could go on. There are plenty of reasons why women might be getting promoted faster. One should not immediately jump to the conclusion that it's solely due to affirmative action quotas with no evidence to back that up. The world is more complex than that.

dominotw 10y ago

>Come on, HN, we're better than this. Can the mods delete the GP comment, seems off topic.

FT_intern 10y ago

To be fair, women anecdotes about how they have been supposedly oppressed are frequently upvoted. It appears that you are more opposed to his stance on the issue.

facepalm 10y ago

Could you link to a statistic showing women get hired less? How do you know they are not simply applying less?

bluecalm 10y ago

Oh c'mon. Instead of being embarrassed at least try to understand the point. It's a fact that women are preferred for promotion in many places just because they are women because of affrimative action often called "striving for diversity". It's also a fact many men feel they are discriminated against in such settings. It doesn't mean there aren't problems and discrimination against women but you act like his point is not valid and not even worth acknowledging. You just feel "embarrassed". You should feel that way but not because of the comment but because your attitude.

csallen 10y ago
I understood tajen's point very well. He has provided a few personal anecdotes, and from there he extrapolates that an entire generation of men has been "sacrificed". He then goes on to claim that "women are equal in the minds of most men." This, despite the fact that, per the very article we're discussing, 94% of senior devs are men, 92% of IT managers are men, and 93% of the heads of IT are men. This, despite the fact that studies continue to show that simply changing the name on a resume from a man's to a woman's has significant negative effects. None of tajen's ridiculous assertions are supported by any evidence whatsoever. It's hyperbolic unsubstantiated fear-mongering in an attempt to minimize another group's problems while magnifying his own. He has to resort to such tactics, otherwise women's problems will be treated with greater urgency than men's (as they should be). I was embarrassed to see these comments at the top of HN, and I'm happy that people have since come to their senses and downvoted them to where they belong.
- tajen 10y ago
  > This, despite the fact that, per the very article we're discussing, 94% of senior devs are men, 92% of IT managers are men, and 93% of the heads of IT are men. Yep. It's not incompatible. Maybe most women don't want to spend their life in front of a computer. Maybe, as Margeritte Yourcenar used to mention, being a head of IT is a shit life and women are more clever than men in not trying to get so high. Maybe if you start with an all-male community and overpromote women, then 10 years is still not enough to become head of IT. Those numbers are little proof of discrimination. We need to know the mean-time-to-promotion. > This, despite the fact that studies continue to show that simply changing the name on a resume from a man's to a woman's has significant negative effects. This is a much more serious offense, and straight illegal in any developed economy (I hope). But if I had to hire a woman in my company, I'd be very afraid that hiring a woman leads to an (unwarranted) harassment accusation against the CEO like it so often did (GitHub and so many others, I'm looking at you), so I'd probably weigh whether it's worth sticking with a discrimination lawsuit risk. I'd probaboy still hire the woman, though, for ethics. But I would probably keep her in a separate room from me, just to dodge sexual harassment claims. What a f'cked world we live in. Can't even have a normal behaviour with women. > None of taken's ridiculous assertions are supported by any evidence whatsoever. Thank you for the insult, which tells a lot about the soundness of your personality. My evidence is: - Around me, I see women be promoted, it's a pretty strong fact, - OP's study says women are promoted faster than men, so it corroborates my supposedly "magnified own problems" (If men aren't allowed to have problems, wtf), - There are laws that require companies to promote women as much as men and to reach quotas of managers. - ...along with the dozen other comments with factual references and links I've posted today. My position is very well documented because of people like you, and you're welcome if you want to discuss facts. On the other hand, if a rational reasoning triggers so much of your emotions, then it means you're associating my position with macho personalities like Trump, fascists or racists, and that means you're making a generalization about me. Did you know that generalizations trump the acurate perception? I'm much more in favour of women's rights than you think – I just can't stand the men-disparaging that we repeat over and over.