22 ms·

The power of role models

190 points by max_ 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
hd4 10y ago
This is a fine and good idea, as long as the central pillar is that we remain meritocratic first, everything else should come after that.
- jordanlev 10y ago
  What if we start from an assumption though that things are currently not meritocrous? Doesn't that then imply if we want to get to a place of full meritocracy some things need to be done that are different than the status quo?
  - trentnix 10y ago
    I would assume that the solution wouldn't be to double down on bias hoping that bias in the opposite direction will somehow result in harmony. That's like a cable news network letting polemics on opposite sides of an issue (as if there are only to ways to look at an issue in the first place) scream at each other for a segment and then patting themselves on the back for their "balance". After all, they "presented both sides"! If some organization isn't meritocrous in how it promotes people and participation, the solution is to make it so. And it will take time for the effects of the previous bias to unwind.
    - CJefferson 10y ago
      I disagree. There are a number of papers (and I'm very afraid I'm on my phone right now, so I can't cite them. I am sorry for that) which show that things like severe gender imbalance are not self-correcting systems in the case of extreme bias -- you have to push them back closer to 50/50, but then the system will remain balanced. This makes (to me) intuitive sense -- current staff / managers will tend to employ, and promote, people "like them", creating a self-perpetuating system.
      - RodericDay 10y ago
        Anyone with any knowledge of system dynamics knows that it's entirely possible that a strategy of "forcing" diversity for a while (say, a generation) may be optimal in terms of correcting the damage caused by many generations of forced exclusion.
      - GauntletWizard 10y ago
        I'd love to see those papers; I intuit the same result, but I don't trust my intuition on social issues. The problem is going to remain - Where do we draw the line? Where does pressure towards the center start to hurt progress because of pushback? I'd posit that much of the "Black Lives Matter" debate is actually this debate - But that the communities are speaking past one another. The places where Black Lives Matter is considered axiomatic are already past that line, while the places where it's viewed with disdain are where racism is still firmly rooted.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    But why would we start from that assumption? Developer hiring is pretty rigorous compared to a lot of fields where the process boils down to "turn up, is the candidate presentable and interested, do they avoid saying anything dumb in the interview, do they have a good CV, hired". People are asked to actually demonstrate their skills during the hiring process, for instance, something a lot of job interviews lack. Moreover, the demand for skilled talent is enormous. All sorts of people who are kind of weird or anti-social get hired as programmers when they would struggle to get hired as, say, business analysts or salespeople, simply because people want software and beggars can't be choosers. In such an environment, implying that the industry is not meritocratic or hopelessly biased against women is especially silly. Women programmers are sought after everywhere. They already have the playing field tipped in their favour in precise, specific, concrete ways. The idea that there's some impossible to see glass barriers stopping them from getting into programming is never nailed down with specifics, probably because no such barriers exist.
  - DalaiObama 10y ago
    If you pick your starting assumption, you can reach any conclusion you desire.
- bitexploder 10y ago
  This is an interesting area sort of like affirmative action. If we don't cede some ground to the notion meritocracy, might that not delay the length of time it takes to increase diversity in the field? Will this create the best possible computing and technology world possible -- cutting out or limiting half the population? That is the point Rob is subtly making. We may have to trade a little merit now for increased diversity and a stronger future world of computing. To be clear merit is the easiest way to go about things. That said, I have a daughter and am not sure I would want her in my field as it stands right now (high end infosec). It is even more male dominated than typical engineering and dev. Things to think long and hard about. edit: we are also assuming things are an in general meritocracy in technology amd I suspect that isn't true, but that is a different but relatef discussion.
  - jfaucett 10y ago
    What is the point of diversity? You're just drawing arbitrary lines based on skin color or gender or sexual orientation. If you drew those lines somewhere else say, favorite color/food, political affiliation, mathematical abilities, etc. you'd have a completely different categorization. This is why a meritocracy is so important. There is no smaller minority group than the individual, basing outcomes on anything else is inherently arbitrarily discriminatory.
    - stale2002 10y ago
      The purpose of diversity is to promote a meritocracy. Non-diverse environments are unmeritocratic. They drive away half of the talent. If half of the good talent is unwelcome, and leaves, then the environment by definition isn't as good or meritocratic as it could be.
    - bitexploder 10y ago
      The biggest point to me is thinking if this would make technology better, increasing th pool of practioners. Increasing the odds of advancement. Diversity isn't the end outcome desired. Better technology is. Diversity (widest possible pool qualified of humans participating). It is not clear if diversity will help, but it seems like it would. I don't think there is anything inherent to male brains that makes them better at STEM fields.
- arximboldi 10y ago
  I think you mean phallocratic.
- projektir 10y ago
  Meritocracy paradoxically seems to lead to worse results overall. Remember that measuring merit is effectively impossible in any kind of reliable and systematic fashion. Which means its measured by heuristics, and heuristics are very sensitive to preconceptions, stereotypes, etc.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Meritocracy paradoxically seems to lead to worse results overall An extreme opinion stated as if it's a fact. Can you show me the phalanx of companies systematically beating their competition by deliberately hiring incompetent but genetically "diverse" people?
    - stale2002 10y ago
      No... You don't hire incompetent people. You hire competent people. The "competition" is the one that is hiring the incompetent people, by missing out on half of the talent. Focusing on diversity makes your company MORE competent, not less.
      - camelite 10y ago
        No. Focusing on competence AKA merit makes your company more competent. Focusing on something else necessarily hinders your ability to focus on competence.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  Well, the trouble with that, we would be asked to believe, is that we all have unconscious biases that lead us to recruit / promote people who are more like ourselves. In my experience this does seem to be the case.
- senthil_rajasek 10y ago
  Diversity is a social issue. Meritocracy is not a good tool to fix social issues.
  - MomentarySanity 10y ago
    Computer science is not a social issue. It's a technical issue. So meritocracy is a good tool for it.
- geofft 10y ago
  Absent a reason to believe that there should be more well-known men in computing than women, we have quite a distance to go to achieve a meritocracy. I haven't heard any plausible theories for this. The best I've heard is plausible theories for why, given existing biases in society, more men are entering and succeeding in the field than women. That's usually used to argue that some individual company or process isn't at fault for having an imbalanced output. But that's hardly a meritocracy when you know you're leaving qualified people behind, neither for the company, nor at all for the field as a whole! (Incidentally, the term "meritocracy" is from a dystopian essay trying to satirize the concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy )
- sho_hn 10y ago
  People who raise their index finger to lament that, in the best of cases, do it speaking from a place of confidence that in a meritocratic system they are securely competitive. It's a little bit about where that confidence comes from and why not everyone enjoys that confidence.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- stale2002 10y ago
  Exactly. We need to be meritocratic. And the current world that we live in is NOT meritocratic, as half of the good talent is getting driven out of the industry. The way to promote meritocracy IS to support women. Anti diversity initiatives and environments are unmeritocratic.
  - alphapapa 10y ago
    Imagine a company which exists entirely online: no physical office, all employees work from home over the Internet. Imagine that all employees and managers and executives use gender-ambiguous screennames, and no one is allowed to ask any questions which would reveal identity, gender, etc. (Perhaps there's a small HR department that handles the real identities, but it's not allowed to share them with anyone else, nor to influence hiring or promotion.) Imagine that all hiring and promotion is done purely based on performance. It's impossible for identity or gender or race, etc. to be a factor in hiring or promotion. Would such an environment be "unmeritocratic"?
    - stale2002 10y ago
      This would be much more meritocratic than our current system. And it would result in much better diversity. You don't even have to be as extreme as your example (nobody could work in the conditions that you mentioned). Things like blind resume screening have been shown to significantly reduce hiring bias, and more companies should be doing it. Also, the biggest discrimination problems in tech aren't even direct hiring discrimination problems. One big reason why companies are not very diverse is that companies tell their employees "refer your friends!" and then they are surprised when the white men only refer other white men. Making efforts to specifically reach out to women, and making sure they apply to your company (without lowering any bars or anything), work very well in increasing diversity.
      - Shubley 10y ago
        I work in conditions very similar to what he mentioned. I work with several people remotely, have for months, have made paying projects, haven't heard their voices ever (or even seen photos of them in some cases). Thinking on it, in some cases I literally don't know the person's ethnic background. One of my guys could be black or white or Indian and I wouldn't know. Even his name is a strange three-letter thing I haven't heard before. Huh. So yeah, you can work like this.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Pike is arguing the opposite - that computing should become less meritocratic. Hence promoting women "just because". I think I'll continue to promote people who seem to do good work, regardless of their gender. If some women lose interest in computing because they lack role models, too bad for them: there are plenty of female programmers in eastern Europe and Russia who don't seem to care.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    No, the fact that Pike doesn't accept the same premises you do about the nature of merit in the technology industry doesn't mean that he believes tech should become less meritocratic. A different set of priors creates a condition where gender parity results in more meritocracy.
    - zigzigzag 10y ago
      Only with an absurd definition of "merit". Yes, if you define "merit" as including particular genes in your DNA, then you can get away with Pike's attitude and still claim to be merit-based. But hello, reality check, Pike is advocating for something that is not only immoral but also explicitly illegal. The law says that people should be assessed on their skill at the job and not selected due to their gender. Like, whether they write good code or not. The industry has a lot of different ways of measuring merit that are gender neutral - Pike is saying ignore those ways and promote bad coders over good, "just because" they're women.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        No part of this engages with my comment. You can't convincingly dismiss the entire class of arguments about how "merit" is evaluated as facially absurd, unless your definition of "merit" is "whatever produces the set of circumstances we're currently living in now". Arguments of that form have a name; they're called "the just-world fallacy".
        ygaf 10y ago
- donovanm 10y ago
  Was software engineering ever meritocratic? It certainly doesn't seem so to me. Never mind the problem of how to evaluate who's the best which seems impossible.
dominotw 10y ago
>Nor were they wallflowers. what does wallflowers mean here? definition 3 ? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wallflower http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wallflower
- pdq 10y ago
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wallflower https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wallflower Definition 2
  - dominotw 10y ago
    oh ok. What is wrong with being shy. 'none of them were wallflowers' seems like such an odd thing to say. As a shy person myself, hate this .
    - geofft 10y ago
      The definition says that you might refrain from either shyness (your own preference not to participate) or unpopularity (others' preference that you do not participate). I think the latter was more what was meant here. I'm extremely shy in certain situations (for instance, I hate introducing myself to people at parties, bars, etc.), but if I'm in a meeting for a group I'm involved with, I will absolutely say as much as I'm allowed to say.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      Pike was pointing out that the women present participated as one would expect of any professional in such a meeting. Do you think there are benefits to being shy in such a context?
      - dominotw 10y ago
        >Do you think there are benefits to being shy in such a context? One doesn't decide to be shy after doing cost/benefit analysis of a situation, it's a character trait. In this particular context women have 'confidence gap'[1] so its kind of stange to brush them off as 'wallflowers' 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-confidence-gap/359815/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-con...
4ad 10y ago
> The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is [...] to promote them. [...] To push them into positions of influence. I am all for equality in chances for all people, men and women, black and white, gay and straight, anything really, but this affirmative action "promote X because she is a women" (or black, or XXX) is something I will fight against with all my being and all my forces until the day I die. I strongly feel this type of insidious thinking is the most dangerous thing facing humanity today, worse than global warming, the united states, or global war. I will never be silent against this rampant so-called-positive sexism.
- skrebbel 10y ago
  Why? I mean, you took two paragraphs to write "I disagree", but you forgot the ", because".
  - notamy 10y ago
    Not gp commenter, but I think the point is that while yes, having more women (or <insert group here> for a different discussion) would be a good thing, they shouldn't simply be put into these positions by virtue of the "minority" (quoted for lack of a better word) traits ALONE. Rather, would it not be better to have people with <whatever trait> who are incredibly competent / qualified / etc. who would be a better role model to those with <whatever trait> who want to get into the field?
    - projektir 10y ago
      Incredibly competent is a very high bar to place on a group of people that already has trouble breaking in. That seems like a very good way to keep that group out. I think we already have this problem: it sometimes seems like nobody really wants women unless they are insanely competent. I'm sorry, that's not how it works. You don't get to keep a giant population down and then just extract the occasional diamonds and ignore the rest. You need to pull the entire thing if you want those diamonds to be created. > they shouldn't simply be put into these positions by virtue of the "minority" (quoted for lack of a better word) traits ALONE Why do people always state this as if it's the only possible reality? You go from "on minority basis ALONE" to "incredibly competent" in one fell swoop. I seriously hope you don't have people in your organization that are so incompetent that the only reason you could think of promoting them is because they're in an underprivileged group. Because otherwise, your statement doesn't make any sense. It's like you are already signing up for a reality where members of underprivileged group cannot possibly be the kinds of members you'd very much want to have. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that among the group of cool people that you have in your organization, maybe notice the women sometimes. And don't expect them to be "incredibly competent". Just competent enough. The same way you treat everyone else.
tonyedgecombe 10y ago
"In my long career, I had never before been in a room like that, and the difference in tone, conversation, respect, and professionalism was unlike any I have experienced." Back when I was contracting I visited a lot of sites, my heart would sink when it was an all male team, you just knew the tone would be different.
- kachnuv_ocasek 10y ago
  Yeah, let's just shun these people solely because of our prejudice based on gender.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    Nobody was shunned, this was just a reflection on my experience, it may have been the same if it was an all female team although I didn't encounter that.
skywhopper 10y ago
Programming used to be a field with significant numbers of women, including true pioneers like Grace Hopper. IIRC, female computer science majors peaked in the 80s, and have been declining since. Even with those low numbers these days, a lot of women who are interested in programming and computer science are chased away early on, or they quickly move into more welcoming fields. So it's true that among senior staff, women are even less well represented. This isn't just a bad thing for the women who are harassed, mistreated, or just made to feel unwelcome. It's a bad thing for the industry. If women are unwelcome, we're throwing away half of the talented engineers before they even get started. For all those reasons, Rob is right that role models are important. But even more important: we need to stop chasing women from the field. You have to stop the bleeding before you can start improving. The recent stories out of Uber make it clear that the technology industry is at risk of moving backwards if we aren't already.
- ErikVandeWater 10y ago
  Are there any good sources that analyze the causes exodus of women from computer science? To solve these kinds of problems it would be helpful to learn the cause of the change.
  - geofft 10y ago
    Here's a survey paper with a bunch of citations: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1soIYek-YEIvqtu9brv3ecdPbuVzQKp_GhAozC06UrLo/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1soIYek-YEIvqtu9brv3ecdPb...
  - sanjeetsuhag 10y ago
    I recommend reading "Unlocking the Clubhouse : Women in Computing" by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. A good NPR story on this topic : http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/22/487069271/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/22/487069271/episo... TL;DR: It was the rise of the personal computer. Boys got more access to personal computers thereby allowing them to get farther in the field.
Oxitendwe 10y ago
>The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is not to recruit them, important though that is, but to promote them. To create role models. To push them into positions of influence. I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another. This is antithetical to everything most people believe about fairness and equality. And what of the girls who learn that their role models have been given a handicap, pushed upwards beyond their skill by well-meaning but naive men? What sort of message will that send to them? None of this is even mentioning the basic question of, what do we even get out of trying to "correct" disparities in employment demographics? How do we even know that women as a demographic have an equal interest in computer science to men? If they don't, what do we get out of "correcting" the disparity by given them special treatment, handicaps, incentives, etc? Pushing people into positions of influence based on their gender is nothing other than deeply sexist, discriminatory to people who don't need to be pushed, and should be absolutely unacceptable to anyone who actually cares about equality.
- exolymph 10y ago
  An essay that winds around to a similar point: https://status451.com/2016/11/06/exclusive-inclusivity/ https://status451.com/2016/11/06/exclusive-inclusivity/
- tptacek 10y ago
  If you disagree with Pike's implied priors, do so directly; don't huff about how logic that starts from a different set of premises to yours ends at a bad place when you swap the premises out from under it. One very simple, coherent way to arrive at Pike's position without sacrificing the notion of merit is to accept the idea that it's very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being suited to men, and thus the gender gap must itself be an indication that something other that merit is systematically advantaging men and disadvantaging women. You're welcome to argue that point (or any other), but don't pretend that you've beaten it by default.
  - rationalcult 10y ago
Kenji 10y ago
Imagine if someone wrote a text like that about males. Imagine someone would point out how incredibly respectful and professional florist meetings are if there is a larger than usual percentage of men. They'd be lynched, called misogynists and sexists. I deeply resent everyone who contributes to this petty fight among the genders.
RodericDay 10y ago
> In my long career, I had never before been in a room like that, and the difference in tone, conversation, respect, and professionalism was unlike any I have experienced. I can't prove it was the presence of women that made the difference - it could just be that astronomers are better people all around, a possibility I cannot really refute - but it seemed to me that the difference stemmed from the demographics. I feel exactly the same way. After undergrad, I assembled a board game group with my male friends. Some girls (girlfriends, invited drop-ins) became regulars, and for a long while, the group was pretty much 50/50. It had never been so good. Eventually some things happened, people moved away, and eventually the group became 100% male, nerdy guys. It was a pale shadow of its own self. I eventually lost interest in it altogether, and we get together very infrequently now. It had nothing to do with dating or romance. I never bothered figuring exactly what it was that made the group better. As far as I'm concerned, diversity for the sake of diversity is a noble goal. Many other professional and educational anecdotes contribute to this last belief, not just this board game example, but it is representative.
- Shubley 10y ago
  >As far as I'm concerned, diversity for the sake of diversity is a noble goal. Diversity of what? Age? Political stance? Language? Accent? Socioeconomic status? Wealth? Religion? Food preference? IQ? Personality traits? Or - none of the above? How do you choose which are important and which aren't? Or which come before the others? Do you dump a Catholic man to get another atheist who happens to be a woman? How do you choose between a Francophone young man, and an anglophone old man? Or maybe it would be good to view individuals as individuals and not pre-judge people based on their DNA?
rdtsc 10y ago
Great point on role models. I like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper. I can't tell how much she appeals to women but I find her inspiring. One thing I like about her is she worked within an a huge bureaucratic organization, the Navy, and she figured out how to get things done. She is the one who came up with a principle of "It is easier to ask forgiveness than get permission".
throw_away_777 10y ago
In my opinion, the solution proposed in the article of: " choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because" is counter-productive. These kind of suggestions cause people to question why a minority got promoted, if it was because of qualifications or because of reverse racism. Reverse racism is still racism, and it breeds resentment.
- Kenji 10y ago
  Wow, really?? What a radical thought in progressiveland. This is what it has come to. People have to hide behind throwaway accounts to speak their mind about the most basic matters that should be blatantly obvious to anyone.
- msie 10y ago
  If it comes down to the flip of a coin, why not add more diverse opinions if the team is male-heavy. Likewise if the team is female-heavy.
  - Oxitendwe 10y ago
    >If it comes down to the flip of a coin, why not add more diverse opinions if the team is male-heavy. Likewise if the team is female-heavy. What is the value of having an equal number of men and women? What is a "diverse opinion"? If you hire a woman over a man because of the "diverse opinion" you expect her to bring, and her opinions end up being the same as the men on her team, will you be disappointed at the lack of ideological diversity you expected her to provide? Will she feel marginalized for her opinions not being "diverse" enough? These feel like reasonable questions - you are implying having gender diversity will bring ideological diversity, that is, men have different ideas than women, and that this difference is valuable. However, won't that assumption also lead to women feeling that their value is diminished if their opinions aren't different enough from men, if that is the basis upon which you hire them?
    - gaius 10y ago
      If you hire a woman over a man because of the "diverse opinion" you expect her to bring Right, this is what I like to call the Google Fallacy. If you have a team that represents all genders, races, etc etc but they are all recent graduates of the same handful of CS programmes, then where does the diversity of opinions actually come from? This is why Google keeps making products and abandoning them when they fail to gain traction, or produce public disgust like Glass. To be actually diverse companies must move beyond the tickybox culture of just looking at gender and colour and look at actual lived experiences.
mzzter 10y ago
> It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely. They don't need to be chosen "just because" :/ they should be chosen based on merit, otherwise, how good of a role model would that person become?
- Rusky 10y ago
  I read that as "just because" among otherwise equally-qualified candidates, as a counter to an unintentional bias in the other direction.
chrismealy 10y ago
If you look at what happened in law and medicine (IIRC they're at about parity now, up from nearly zero women 50 years ago), things can change incredibly fast.
factsaresacred 10y ago
> It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely. 'Just because' what? You're asking for 'more women excelling in the field' but promoting somebody just because isn't going to make them excel. If, on the other hand, brilliant women were not being promoted 'just because' that would suggest a problem. But is this so?
- geofft 10y ago
  Most of the people I've worked with who have been given promotions have been given promotions "just because," i.e., they've been there for a while, they seem to do good work, and more work needs to be done. See also McKinsey's finding: "Several diversity officers and experts told us that despite their best efforts, women are often evaluated for promotions primarily on performance, while men are often promoted on potential." https://www.mckinsey.com/womenineconomy https://www.mckinsey.com/womenineconomy (PDF)
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks. you're all idiots.
skookumchuck 10y ago
The article suggests that power in computing is something men have to give. It isn't. Computing is a market based economy. Anyone can start a computing company, and run it as they please. I.e. women can start computing companies, and hire women. Women do not need permission from men to do this, nor do they need favor from men.
- afarrell 10y ago
  But they do need capital.
  - skookumchuck 10y ago
    There's no shortage of women with money.
    - SwellJoe 10y ago
      Compared to the number of men with money, there sure as hell is. 95% (that number is me talking out of my ass, but, I can tell you I only met one female investing partner at a VC, and no female angels, the entire time I lived there, and countless men) of investors in Silicon Valley are men. The whole ecosystem is hugely weighted toward men making decisions.
      - superioritycplx 10y ago
        Are you saying male investors won't invest in a promising start up because it's female-run?
        SwellJoe 10y ago
        I responded to someone who said "There's no shortage of women with money." So, in this particular comment, I am saying exactly what I said: There is a severe shortage of women with money who are making decisions in the tech funding industry. I'll go even further to suggest that the gap is even larger in tech investing than it is in tech in the general case. But, since you asked: I will now say that there are biases in our industry that perhaps those of us not subject to them do not see. Those biases adversely impact the ability of women (and some people of color) to rise to positions of influence in the tech industry. I don't believe this is a controversial assertion (despite all of my comments to this effect being voted down). I consider the matter well-known to anyone who's willing to listen to the people it affects.
hkon 10y ago
I never hear people speak about fixing the nursing gender gap....
- DanBC 10y ago
  That's because you haven't looked. Here's a post I made four years ago that mentions programmes to increase men in nursing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6210618#6210989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6210618#6210989 Or from user Anechoic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5350093#5350655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5350093#5350655 Or from dgabriel five years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3452516#3453224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3452516#3453224 or this from dragonwriter three years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980431#6982189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980431#6982189 There are hundreds of these posts on HN.
- Omniusaspirer 10y ago
  I think it will fix itself frankly, the job is way too good not to. Easy 6 figures with a 2 year degree, huge ability to rise into management, lots of different areas to work if you dislike the standard floor nursing. Men can't stay blind to that forever.
- uiri 10y ago
  The first result when I googled "gender gap in nursing"[1] talks about how men in nursing earn more money and tend to move up the career ladder faster than women. If women in tech were consistently paid more and promoted faster than their male counterparts, I don't think we would see the same hand-wringing about diversity in our field either. [1] https://www.nurse.com/blog/2015/08/10/nurses-speak-out-about-gender-pay-gap/ https://www.nurse.com/blog/2015/08/10/nurses-speak-out-about...
- SolaceQuantum 10y ago
  Do you often talk to nurses or folk in the nursing field? It's actually a significant issue with several scholarships and organizations pushing for more diversity in nursing and making up for the gender gap.
- kstenson 10y ago
srssays 10y ago
Is 'diversity' selfish? Perhaps women/teenage girls aren't interested in becoming programmers, because they don't find it to be an interesting or fulfilling career.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  As anecdata, one daughter felt that pursuing computing wasn't socially acceptable ( she was a cheerleader and all ) and another felt the first instructor was an abject misogynist. Perhaps women find better things to do :) I'm starting to think there is something wrong with those of us who pursue this.
  - facepalm 10y ago
    Do people typically enter the field via an instructor/lessons?
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      You have me at a loss- I'd say there are certainly alternatives. If I had to guess, I'd say most go that way, but that's purely a guess. Good point though - neither of them tried to self-learn in high school.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    And was it men who made your daughter feel like computing wasn't socially acceptable? Or was it her female friends in the cheerleading squad?
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      Yes. And it was her, her ... calculus of status.
  - skookumchuck 10y ago
    For another anecdata, when I grew up being into computers meant social rejection, from boys as well as girls. I still recall meeting women in nightclubs and when they ask what I do, I say programming, they shrink and look away. I learned to hide what I did for a living during initial encounters.
rationalcult 10y ago
Hear me out before you downvote me to oblivion. Diversity talk is the war against middle class and men. That's how elite stay in power. There is no need to "FORCE" women into tech and become managers. I would argue that 99% women are mediocre and so are 99% men. Those who are smart rise to the top automatically. You are saying that because women have the vagina, promote them. I worked for three large tech companies. One went down in flames as we all know and sold for pieces. I see two fold problems in the US and Asian/Indian women joining this diversity cult. 1) Most of these women are at-wall or post-wall women. They are single, pumped and dumped over the years and no man in sight. These women are depressed internally. Getting these women into tech is not going to solve any problem. In fact, thousands of lives may be destroyed because of failing businesses. It has happened with Yahoo, HP, and others and will follow the pattern. Of course, there are smart women. They know their value and may rise to the top chain due to their talent. 2. In last 10 or so years, there seems to be the war against men. Ever notice how easy life is for women? Money, sex, shelter, divorce, courts, state et al. What about men? These white-knight pussy hungry betas, who are vouching for women, are actually worse. That's what you get from broken families and not having fatherly figures. Most, if not all, are the product of single mothers and/or beta fathers. I am not saying women should not work in tech. I am saying forcing them to be in tech or promoting them because they are women is going to end in disaster.
ryanmarsh 10y ago
"but it seemed to me that the difference stemmed from the demographics" feminine social primacy != equality Why is this part of the narrative of women in STEM? Do people not realize this language is counterproductive?
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
The problem isn't gender per se; the problem is how we define success and how leadership works. We're up to our neck in all sort of hubris sprung from the cultural emphasis on ambition at any cost. As Charlie Sheen might say, "Winning."[1] [1] if you don't see his story as a parody, intentional or otherwise, look again... But if diversity is your yardstick, then it's surprising how much better the military services are at it than tech. Indeed, if I were an ambitious woman, I am not sure that's not the path to take for tech.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Why would diversity the yardstick? The yardstick is creating useful products. (Edit: no there can not be more yardsticks in the long run - a company needs to survive. It gets paid for great products, not for virtue signalling).
  - grzm 10y ago
    There can easily be more than one yardstick. Edit: Yes, a company needs to survive. Which products or services a company provides are simple examples of choices that are not purely based on profit. Similarly, there's plenty of variety in how companies are run while still being able to survive. Maximizing profit at the expense of all else is a choice some do make, but that's not the only way to run a business.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      Since we cannot disentangle rents from non-rents profits, I doubt there will ever be a coherent set of ideas on the subject.
      - grzm 10y ago
        Would you elaborate? I think it's often the case that complicated, entangled subjects can be understood once an attempt is made to do so. First attempts may miss the mark, but eventually useful progress can be made. And such disentanglement doesn't need to be complete or perfect to be useful. Or am I completely missing the mark? Do I understand you to mean that as there's currently no method for disentanglement that one can only use profit as a yardstick? That other values a business owner may have, such as employee satisfaction, or health, or retention, can't be measured or discussed? I don't mean to put words in your mouth. I'm trying to unpack what you've said.
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corporateslave 10y ago
Women's brains aren't as mathematical as men's. why is this so hard to believe.
chroma 10y ago
The idea of publicizing more role models seems fine, but Pike crossed a line here: > It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely. Doing this would violate the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits hiring discrimination based on, "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin".[1] I'm also sure such a practice would be extremely counterproductive. 1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2
- justin66 10y ago
  Hiring to correct a disparity in the proportion of men vs women on a team, to make it somewhat less ridiculously uneven in its tilt toward men, would be quite easy to defend in court. I'd be interested in knowing if any court cases of "zomg reverse discrimination" have ever been won by white dudes under those circumstances.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Either the courts would apply the law and Pike/Google would receive the punishment, or they wouldn't and the clear written intent of the law would have been subverted. If Congress wanted to systematically disadvantage men in favour of women they should have called it the "Female Rights Act". With respect to your question the answer is yes, such cases have been won, like this one: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/men-rights-unruh-act-women-discrimination http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/men-rights-unruh...
    - justin66 10y ago
      I'm looking at the article, and the material: 1) Doesn't involve the Civil Rights Act 2) Doesn't involve hiring at all 3) Involves settlements rather than court wins I strongly suspect that you don't like quotas, or intentional correction of a massive gender disparity in hiring, and so on, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong about the limits of the Civil Rights Act with regards to hiring. Hiring more women after realizing "we have a huge gender disparity problem" seems to me (not a lawyer) the sort of thing a company's employment lawyers would be happy to defend in court. If there are any real counterexamples, yeah, that'd be interesting to read about.
nielsabel 10y ago
“Science has been done without women for centuries, and it obviously worked.” – Luboš Motl Can we please just stop all this PC bullshit. Robo Pike obviously doesn't realize that the reason these women attending that meeting are so excellent is because there are so few of them. I.e. only those survived/came so far who have actual skills. The same goes for computer science. The women who are really skilled and who really want to work in this field WILL work in this field. Which, of course, means there will be less of them. I mean, we already got enough incompetent men in sotware engineering/computer science. Do we really need to flood the field with incompetent women? And on top of that, celebrate their non-achievement of being a woman? Regarding role models: why can't women simply choose a male role model? Is the gender of their role models really that much more important than their achievements? Shouldn't you look up to someone because, let's say, they are especially skilled in their field instead of their genitals? (Same goes for men choosing a female role model) Look at it from the other way around: has any man in fashion ever complained about there not being enough male role models in fashion (a field clearly dominated by women)? And the only ones who ever complained about impoliteness are women and effeminates. If you judge people by hurt feelings instead of actual skills, then you end up with shit like being banned from the golang community for pointing out that someone's English is incomprehensible! If women have something to contribute to the respective field, then they are more than welcome. If not, then they can simply fuck off (just as all those incompetent men).
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  I also find the whole "women in tech" problem very ignorant and kind of a first world problem, possibly invented by VCs PR companies for whatever reason (larger hiring pools?). It cannot possibly be a priority for someone who is even a little bit aware of what's going on in the world. And that's not even considering what states expect from women and how much propaganda and incentives are in place to make sure they do not pursue a career, but raise children.
- dang 10y ago
  This aggressive rant crosses the line on HN. If you can't contain your anger enough to post substantively and with respect for opposing views, you're not welcome to post here. It's not in your interest to do this anyhow, since it undercuts everything you're saying.
alphapapa 10y ago
An interesting analogy: a workplace or professional field is like a jar of water. Injustice is like tinted water (injustice being hiring or promoting someone less qualified at the expense of someone more qualified). Some blue-tinted water has been added to the jar. There are two proposed solutions to fix the problem: 1. Add red-tinted water to the jar to counter-balance the existing blue-tinted water in the jar. 2. Add more clean water to the jar to dilute the blue-tinted water. Question: Which solution would result in clearer water?
antingate2 10y ago
Am I only one tired of seeing this SJW stuff in Hacker news all the time? You are qualified you'll get hired.
jeffdavis 10y ago
Do aspiring computer scientists and engineers look up to managers? If not, then how does promoting them help?
DelaneyM 10y ago
To those expressing concern that this proposal represents "reverse sexism" or is anti-meritocratic: Merit is equal parts nature and nurture. "Pushing women into positions of influence" can also be interpreted as identifying high-performers capable of filling senior roles and then helping them get there. This does mean giving them an unfair advantage, but only in the sense that life is unfair in general. Ultimately they are the most capable individuals for the roles they assume, and lifting them to that level pays dividends for our entire industry. If you believe in both bolstering the meritocracy and furthering gender equality (as I do), this should be your reaction. Positioning a meritocratic ideal as in opposition to equal representation is just veiled misogyny.
- Oxitendwe 10y ago
  >To those expressing concern that this proposal represents "reverse sexism" or is anti-meritocratic: Nobody is arguing that this is "reverse sexism", merely sexism. If you don't think disadvantaging men in particular is sexism, then I don't think it's possible for us to have meaningful discourse on this if we can't even agree on what words mean. >"Pushing women into positions of influence" can also be interpreted as identifying high-performers capable of filling senior roles and then helping them get there. He specifically used the phrasing "It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team". That is not consistent with your interpretation - yours is that he is advocating for identifying people who are fit for management roles, who happen to be women, and then using their resources to make it easier for them to get there. Instead, his phrasing quite unambiguously advocates selecting women over men when hiring. I would love to hear your argument for why this is both not sexist and also valuable to society at large. >This does mean giving them an unfair advantage, but only in the sense that life is unfair in general. Ultimately they are the most capable individuals for the roles they assume, and lifting them to that level pays dividends for our entire industry. So, unfairly discriminating against people makes them "the most capable individuals for the roles they assume"? >If you believe in both bolstering the meritocracy and furthering gender equality (as I do), this should be your reaction. Positioning a meritocratic ideal as in opposition to equal representation is just veiled misogyny. As I have said in innumerable other comments, that equal representation is even desirable, much less possible, rests on the assumption that all demographics have equal interest and potential. This has not been proven, and to advocate intentionally disadvantaging people based on their sex when you don't even know if the group to whose benefit this is all for even wants to be here I find naive at best and bigoted at worst.
codewiz 10y ago
No mention of Margherita Hack? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margherita_Hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margherita_Hack

190 points by max_ 10y ago

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hd4 10y ago

This is a fine and good idea, as long as the central pillar is that we remain meritocratic first, everything else should come after that.

jordanlev 10y ago
What if we start from an assumption though that things are currently not meritocrous? Doesn't that then imply if we want to get to a place of full meritocracy some things need to be done that are different than the status quo?
- trentnix 10y ago
  I would assume that the solution wouldn't be to double down on bias hoping that bias in the opposite direction will somehow result in harmony. That's like a cable news network letting polemics on opposite sides of an issue (as if there are only to ways to look at an issue in the first place) scream at each other for a segment and then patting themselves on the back for their "balance". After all, they "presented both sides"! If some organization isn't meritocrous in how it promotes people and participation, the solution is to make it so. And it will take time for the effects of the previous bias to unwind.
  - CJefferson 10y ago
    I disagree. There are a number of papers (and I'm very afraid I'm on my phone right now, so I can't cite them. I am sorry for that) which show that things like severe gender imbalance are not self-correcting systems in the case of extreme bias -- you have to push them back closer to 50/50, but then the system will remain balanced. This makes (to me) intuitive sense -- current staff / managers will tend to employ, and promote, people "like them", creating a self-perpetuating system.
    - RodericDay 10y ago
      Anyone with any knowledge of system dynamics knows that it's entirely possible that a strategy of "forcing" diversity for a while (say, a generation) may be optimal in terms of correcting the damage caused by many generations of forced exclusion.
    - GauntletWizard 10y ago
      I'd love to see those papers; I intuit the same result, but I don't trust my intuition on social issues. The problem is going to remain - Where do we draw the line? Where does pressure towards the center start to hurt progress because of pushback? I'd posit that much of the "Black Lives Matter" debate is actually this debate - But that the communities are speaking past one another. The places where Black Lives Matter is considered axiomatic are already past that line, while the places where it's viewed with disdain are where racism is still firmly rooted.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  But why would we start from that assumption? Developer hiring is pretty rigorous compared to a lot of fields where the process boils down to "turn up, is the candidate presentable and interested, do they avoid saying anything dumb in the interview, do they have a good CV, hired". People are asked to actually demonstrate their skills during the hiring process, for instance, something a lot of job interviews lack. Moreover, the demand for skilled talent is enormous. All sorts of people who are kind of weird or anti-social get hired as programmers when they would struggle to get hired as, say, business analysts or salespeople, simply because people want software and beggars can't be choosers. In such an environment, implying that the industry is not meritocratic or hopelessly biased against women is especially silly. Women programmers are sought after everywhere. They already have the playing field tipped in their favour in precise, specific, concrete ways. The idea that there's some impossible to see glass barriers stopping them from getting into programming is never nailed down with specifics, probably because no such barriers exist.
- DalaiObama 10y ago
  If you pick your starting assumption, you can reach any conclusion you desire.
bitexploder 10y ago
This is an interesting area sort of like affirmative action. If we don't cede some ground to the notion meritocracy, might that not delay the length of time it takes to increase diversity in the field? Will this create the best possible computing and technology world possible -- cutting out or limiting half the population? That is the point Rob is subtly making. We may have to trade a little merit now for increased diversity and a stronger future world of computing. To be clear merit is the easiest way to go about things. That said, I have a daughter and am not sure I would want her in my field as it stands right now (high end infosec). It is even more male dominated than typical engineering and dev. Things to think long and hard about. edit: we are also assuming things are an in general meritocracy in technology amd I suspect that isn't true, but that is a different but relatef discussion.
- jfaucett 10y ago
  What is the point of diversity? You're just drawing arbitrary lines based on skin color or gender or sexual orientation. If you drew those lines somewhere else say, favorite color/food, political affiliation, mathematical abilities, etc. you'd have a completely different categorization. This is why a meritocracy is so important. There is no smaller minority group than the individual, basing outcomes on anything else is inherently arbitrarily discriminatory.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    The purpose of diversity is to promote a meritocracy. Non-diverse environments are unmeritocratic. They drive away half of the talent. If half of the good talent is unwelcome, and leaves, then the environment by definition isn't as good or meritocratic as it could be.
  - bitexploder 10y ago
    The biggest point to me is thinking if this would make technology better, increasing th pool of practioners. Increasing the odds of advancement. Diversity isn't the end outcome desired. Better technology is. Diversity (widest possible pool qualified of humans participating). It is not clear if diversity will help, but it seems like it would. I don't think there is anything inherent to male brains that makes them better at STEM fields.
arximboldi 10y ago
I think you mean phallocratic.
projektir 10y ago
Meritocracy paradoxically seems to lead to worse results overall. Remember that measuring merit is effectively impossible in any kind of reliable and systematic fashion. Which means its measured by heuristics, and heuristics are very sensitive to preconceptions, stereotypes, etc.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Meritocracy paradoxically seems to lead to worse results overall An extreme opinion stated as if it's a fact. Can you show me the phalanx of companies systematically beating their competition by deliberately hiring incompetent but genetically "diverse" people?
  - stale2002 10y ago
    No... You don't hire incompetent people. You hire competent people. The "competition" is the one that is hiring the incompetent people, by missing out on half of the talent. Focusing on diversity makes your company MORE competent, not less.
    - camelite 10y ago
      No. Focusing on competence AKA merit makes your company more competent. Focusing on something else necessarily hinders your ability to focus on competence.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
Well, the trouble with that, we would be asked to believe, is that we all have unconscious biases that lead us to recruit / promote people who are more like ourselves. In my experience this does seem to be the case.
senthil_rajasek 10y ago
Diversity is a social issue. Meritocracy is not a good tool to fix social issues.
- MomentarySanity 10y ago
  Computer science is not a social issue. It's a technical issue. So meritocracy is a good tool for it.
geofft 10y ago
Absent a reason to believe that there should be more well-known men in computing than women, we have quite a distance to go to achieve a meritocracy. I haven't heard any plausible theories for this. The best I've heard is plausible theories for why, given existing biases in society, more men are entering and succeeding in the field than women. That's usually used to argue that some individual company or process isn't at fault for having an imbalanced output. But that's hardly a meritocracy when you know you're leaving qualified people behind, neither for the company, nor at all for the field as a whole! (Incidentally, the term "meritocracy" is from a dystopian essay trying to satirize the concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy )
sho_hn 10y ago
People who raise their index finger to lament that, in the best of cases, do it speaking from a place of confidence that in a meritocratic system they are securely competitive. It's a little bit about where that confidence comes from and why not everyone enjoys that confidence.
deleted 10y ago
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stale2002 10y ago
Exactly. We need to be meritocratic. And the current world that we live in is NOT meritocratic, as half of the good talent is getting driven out of the industry. The way to promote meritocracy IS to support women. Anti diversity initiatives and environments are unmeritocratic.
- alphapapa 10y ago
  Imagine a company which exists entirely online: no physical office, all employees work from home over the Internet. Imagine that all employees and managers and executives use gender-ambiguous screennames, and no one is allowed to ask any questions which would reveal identity, gender, etc. (Perhaps there's a small HR department that handles the real identities, but it's not allowed to share them with anyone else, nor to influence hiring or promotion.) Imagine that all hiring and promotion is done purely based on performance. It's impossible for identity or gender or race, etc. to be a factor in hiring or promotion. Would such an environment be "unmeritocratic"?
  - stale2002 10y ago
    This would be much more meritocratic than our current system. And it would result in much better diversity. You don't even have to be as extreme as your example (nobody could work in the conditions that you mentioned). Things like blind resume screening have been shown to significantly reduce hiring bias, and more companies should be doing it. Also, the biggest discrimination problems in tech aren't even direct hiring discrimination problems. One big reason why companies are not very diverse is that companies tell their employees "refer your friends!" and then they are surprised when the white men only refer other white men. Making efforts to specifically reach out to women, and making sure they apply to your company (without lowering any bars or anything), work very well in increasing diversity.
    - Shubley 10y ago
      I work in conditions very similar to what he mentioned. I work with several people remotely, have for months, have made paying projects, haven't heard their voices ever (or even seen photos of them in some cases). Thinking on it, in some cases I literally don't know the person's ethnic background. One of my guys could be black or white or Indian and I wouldn't know. Even his name is a strange three-letter thing I haven't heard before. Huh. So yeah, you can work like this.
zigzigzag 10y ago
Pike is arguing the opposite - that computing should become less meritocratic. Hence promoting women "just because". I think I'll continue to promote people who seem to do good work, regardless of their gender. If some women lose interest in computing because they lack role models, too bad for them: there are plenty of female programmers in eastern Europe and Russia who don't seem to care.
- tptacek 10y ago
  No, the fact that Pike doesn't accept the same premises you do about the nature of merit in the technology industry doesn't mean that he believes tech should become less meritocratic. A different set of priors creates a condition where gender parity results in more meritocracy.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Only with an absurd definition of "merit". Yes, if you define "merit" as including particular genes in your DNA, then you can get away with Pike's attitude and still claim to be merit-based. But hello, reality check, Pike is advocating for something that is not only immoral but also explicitly illegal. The law says that people should be assessed on their skill at the job and not selected due to their gender. Like, whether they write good code or not. The industry has a lot of different ways of measuring merit that are gender neutral - Pike is saying ignore those ways and promote bad coders over good, "just because" they're women.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      No part of this engages with my comment. You can't convincingly dismiss the entire class of arguments about how "merit" is evaluated as facially absurd, unless your definition of "merit" is "whatever produces the set of circumstances we're currently living in now". Arguments of that form have a name; they're called "the just-world fallacy".
      - ygaf 10y ago
donovanm 10y ago
Was software engineering ever meritocratic? It certainly doesn't seem so to me. Never mind the problem of how to evaluate who's the best which seems impossible.

dominotw 10y ago

>Nor were they wallflowers. what does wallflowers mean here? definition 3 ? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wallflower http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wallflower

pdq 10y ago
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wallflower https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wallflower Definition 2
- dominotw 10y ago
  oh ok. What is wrong with being shy. 'none of them were wallflowers' seems like such an odd thing to say. As a shy person myself, hate this .
  - geofft 10y ago
    The definition says that you might refrain from either shyness (your own preference not to participate) or unpopularity (others' preference that you do not participate). I think the latter was more what was meant here. I'm extremely shy in certain situations (for instance, I hate introducing myself to people at parties, bars, etc.), but if I'm in a meeting for a group I'm involved with, I will absolutely say as much as I'm allowed to say.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    Pike was pointing out that the women present participated as one would expect of any professional in such a meeting. Do you think there are benefits to being shy in such a context?
    - dominotw 10y ago
      >Do you think there are benefits to being shy in such a context? One doesn't decide to be shy after doing cost/benefit analysis of a situation, it's a character trait. In this particular context women have 'confidence gap'[1] so its kind of stange to brush them off as 'wallflowers' 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-confidence-gap/359815/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/the-con...

4ad 10y ago

> The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is [...] to promote them. [...] To push them into positions of influence. I am all for equality in chances for all people, men and women, black and white, gay and straight, anything really, but this affirmative action "promote X because she is a women" (or black, or XXX) is something I will fight against with all my being and all my forces until the day I die. I strongly feel this type of insidious thinking is the most dangerous thing facing humanity today, worse than global warming, the united states, or global war. I will never be silent against this rampant so-called-positive sexism.

skrebbel 10y ago
Why? I mean, you took two paragraphs to write "I disagree", but you forgot the ", because".
- notamy 10y ago
  Not gp commenter, but I think the point is that while yes, having more women (or <insert group here> for a different discussion) would be a good thing, they shouldn't simply be put into these positions by virtue of the "minority" (quoted for lack of a better word) traits ALONE. Rather, would it not be better to have people with <whatever trait> who are incredibly competent / qualified / etc. who would be a better role model to those with <whatever trait> who want to get into the field?
  - projektir 10y ago
    Incredibly competent is a very high bar to place on a group of people that already has trouble breaking in. That seems like a very good way to keep that group out. I think we already have this problem: it sometimes seems like nobody really wants women unless they are insanely competent. I'm sorry, that's not how it works. You don't get to keep a giant population down and then just extract the occasional diamonds and ignore the rest. You need to pull the entire thing if you want those diamonds to be created. > they shouldn't simply be put into these positions by virtue of the "minority" (quoted for lack of a better word) traits ALONE Why do people always state this as if it's the only possible reality? You go from "on minority basis ALONE" to "incredibly competent" in one fell swoop. I seriously hope you don't have people in your organization that are so incompetent that the only reason you could think of promoting them is because they're in an underprivileged group. Because otherwise, your statement doesn't make any sense. It's like you are already signing up for a reality where members of underprivileged group cannot possibly be the kinds of members you'd very much want to have. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that among the group of cool people that you have in your organization, maybe notice the women sometimes. And don't expect them to be "incredibly competent". Just competent enough. The same way you treat everyone else.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago

"In my long career, I had never before been in a room like that, and the difference in tone, conversation, respect, and professionalism was unlike any I have experienced." Back when I was contracting I visited a lot of sites, my heart would sink when it was an all male team, you just knew the tone would be different.

kachnuv_ocasek 10y ago
Yeah, let's just shun these people solely because of our prejudice based on gender.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  Nobody was shunned, this was just a reflection on my experience, it may have been the same if it was an all female team although I didn't encounter that.

skywhopper 10y ago

Programming used to be a field with significant numbers of women, including true pioneers like Grace Hopper. IIRC, female computer science majors peaked in the 80s, and have been declining since. Even with those low numbers these days, a lot of women who are interested in programming and computer science are chased away early on, or they quickly move into more welcoming fields. So it's true that among senior staff, women are even less well represented. This isn't just a bad thing for the women who are harassed, mistreated, or just made to feel unwelcome. It's a bad thing for the industry. If women are unwelcome, we're throwing away half of the talented engineers before they even get started. For all those reasons, Rob is right that role models are important. But even more important: we need to stop chasing women from the field. You have to stop the bleeding before you can start improving. The recent stories out of Uber make it clear that the technology industry is at risk of moving backwards if we aren't already.

ErikVandeWater 10y ago
Are there any good sources that analyze the causes exodus of women from computer science? To solve these kinds of problems it would be helpful to learn the cause of the change.
- geofft 10y ago
  Here's a survey paper with a bunch of citations: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1soIYek-YEIvqtu9brv3ecdPbuVzQKp_GhAozC06UrLo/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1soIYek-YEIvqtu9brv3ecdPb...
- sanjeetsuhag 10y ago
  I recommend reading "Unlocking the Clubhouse : Women in Computing" by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. A good NPR story on this topic : http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/22/487069271/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/22/487069271/episo... TL;DR: It was the rise of the personal computer. Boys got more access to personal computers thereby allowing them to get farther in the field.

Oxitendwe 10y ago

>The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is not to recruit them, important though that is, but to promote them. To create role models. To push them into positions of influence. I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another. This is antithetical to everything most people believe about fairness and equality. And what of the girls who learn that their role models have been given a handicap, pushed upwards beyond their skill by well-meaning but naive men? What sort of message will that send to them? None of this is even mentioning the basic question of, what do we even get out of trying to "correct" disparities in employment demographics? How do we even know that women as a demographic have an equal interest in computer science to men? If they don't, what do we get out of "correcting" the disparity by given them special treatment, handicaps, incentives, etc? Pushing people into positions of influence based on their gender is nothing other than deeply sexist, discriminatory to people who don't need to be pushed, and should be absolutely unacceptable to anyone who actually cares about equality.

exolymph 10y ago
An essay that winds around to a similar point: https://status451.com/2016/11/06/exclusive-inclusivity/ https://status451.com/2016/11/06/exclusive-inclusivity/
tptacek 10y ago
If you disagree with Pike's implied priors, do so directly; don't huff about how logic that starts from a different set of premises to yours ends at a bad place when you swap the premises out from under it. One very simple, coherent way to arrive at Pike's position without sacrificing the notion of merit is to accept the idea that it's very unlikely that computer technology is unique among the professions in being suited to men, and thus the gender gap must itself be an indication that something other that merit is systematically advantaging men and disadvantaging women. You're welcome to argue that point (or any other), but don't pretend that you've beaten it by default.
- rationalcult 10y ago

Kenji 10y ago

Imagine if someone wrote a text like that about males. Imagine someone would point out how incredibly respectful and professional florist meetings are if there is a larger than usual percentage of men. They'd be lynched, called misogynists and sexists. I deeply resent everyone who contributes to this petty fight among the genders.

RodericDay 10y ago

> In my long career, I had never before been in a room like that, and the difference in tone, conversation, respect, and professionalism was unlike any I have experienced. I can't prove it was the presence of women that made the difference - it could just be that astronomers are better people all around, a possibility I cannot really refute - but it seemed to me that the difference stemmed from the demographics. I feel exactly the same way. After undergrad, I assembled a board game group with my male friends. Some girls (girlfriends, invited drop-ins) became regulars, and for a long while, the group was pretty much 50/50. It had never been so good. Eventually some things happened, people moved away, and eventually the group became 100% male, nerdy guys. It was a pale shadow of its own self. I eventually lost interest in it altogether, and we get together very infrequently now. It had nothing to do with dating or romance. I never bothered figuring exactly what it was that made the group better. As far as I'm concerned, diversity for the sake of diversity is a noble goal. Many other professional and educational anecdotes contribute to this last belief, not just this board game example, but it is representative.

Shubley 10y ago
>As far as I'm concerned, diversity for the sake of diversity is a noble goal. Diversity of what? Age? Political stance? Language? Accent? Socioeconomic status? Wealth? Religion? Food preference? IQ? Personality traits? Or - none of the above? How do you choose which are important and which aren't? Or which come before the others? Do you dump a Catholic man to get another atheist who happens to be a woman? How do you choose between a Francophone young man, and an anglophone old man? Or maybe it would be good to view individuals as individuals and not pre-judge people based on their DNA?

rdtsc 10y ago

Great point on role models. I like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper. I can't tell how much she appeals to women but I find her inspiring. One thing I like about her is she worked within an a huge bureaucratic organization, the Navy, and she figured out how to get things done. She is the one who came up with a principle of "It is easier to ask forgiveness than get permission".

throw_away_777 10y ago

In my opinion, the solution proposed in the article of: " choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because" is counter-productive. These kind of suggestions cause people to question why a minority got promoted, if it was because of qualifications or because of reverse racism. Reverse racism is still racism, and it breeds resentment.

Kenji 10y ago
Wow, really?? What a radical thought in progressiveland. This is what it has come to. People have to hide behind throwaway accounts to speak their mind about the most basic matters that should be blatantly obvious to anyone.
msie 10y ago
If it comes down to the flip of a coin, why not add more diverse opinions if the team is male-heavy. Likewise if the team is female-heavy.
- Oxitendwe 10y ago
  >If it comes down to the flip of a coin, why not add more diverse opinions if the team is male-heavy. Likewise if the team is female-heavy. What is the value of having an equal number of men and women? What is a "diverse opinion"? If you hire a woman over a man because of the "diverse opinion" you expect her to bring, and her opinions end up being the same as the men on her team, will you be disappointed at the lack of ideological diversity you expected her to provide? Will she feel marginalized for her opinions not being "diverse" enough? These feel like reasonable questions - you are implying having gender diversity will bring ideological diversity, that is, men have different ideas than women, and that this difference is valuable. However, won't that assumption also lead to women feeling that their value is diminished if their opinions aren't different enough from men, if that is the basis upon which you hire them?
  - gaius 10y ago
    If you hire a woman over a man because of the "diverse opinion" you expect her to bring Right, this is what I like to call the Google Fallacy. If you have a team that represents all genders, races, etc etc but they are all recent graduates of the same handful of CS programmes, then where does the diversity of opinions actually come from? This is why Google keeps making products and abandoning them when they fail to gain traction, or produce public disgust like Glass. To be actually diverse companies must move beyond the tickybox culture of just looking at gender and colour and look at actual lived experiences.

mzzter 10y ago

> It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely. They don't need to be chosen "just because" :/ they should be chosen based on merit, otherwise, how good of a role model would that person become?

Rusky 10y ago
I read that as "just because" among otherwise equally-qualified candidates, as a counter to an unintentional bias in the other direction.

chrismealy 10y ago

If you look at what happened in law and medicine (IIRC they're at about parity now, up from nearly zero women 50 years ago), things can change incredibly fast.

factsaresacred 10y ago

> It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely. 'Just because' what? You're asking for 'more women excelling in the field' but promoting somebody just because isn't going to make them excel. If, on the other hand, brilliant women were not being promoted 'just because' that would suggest a problem. But is this so?

geofft 10y ago
Most of the people I've worked with who have been given promotions have been given promotions "just because," i.e., they've been there for a while, they seem to do good work, and more work needs to be done. See also McKinsey's finding: "Several diversity officers and experts told us that despite their best efforts, women are often evaluated for promotions primarily on performance, while men are often promoted on potential." https://www.mckinsey.com/womenineconomy https://www.mckinsey.com/womenineconomy (PDF)

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks. you're all idiots.

skookumchuck 10y ago

The article suggests that power in computing is something men have to give. It isn't. Computing is a market based economy. Anyone can start a computing company, and run it as they please. I.e. women can start computing companies, and hire women. Women do not need permission from men to do this, nor do they need favor from men.

afarrell 10y ago
But they do need capital.
- skookumchuck 10y ago
  There's no shortage of women with money.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    Compared to the number of men with money, there sure as hell is. 95% (that number is me talking out of my ass, but, I can tell you I only met one female investing partner at a VC, and no female angels, the entire time I lived there, and countless men) of investors in Silicon Valley are men. The whole ecosystem is hugely weighted toward men making decisions.
    - superioritycplx 10y ago
      Are you saying male investors won't invest in a promising start up because it's female-run?
      - SwellJoe 10y ago
        I responded to someone who said "There's no shortage of women with money." So, in this particular comment, I am saying exactly what I said: There is a severe shortage of women with money who are making decisions in the tech funding industry. I'll go even further to suggest that the gap is even larger in tech investing than it is in tech in the general case. But, since you asked: I will now say that there are biases in our industry that perhaps those of us not subject to them do not see. Those biases adversely impact the ability of women (and some people of color) to rise to positions of influence in the tech industry. I don't believe this is a controversial assertion (despite all of my comments to this effect being voted down). I consider the matter well-known to anyone who's willing to listen to the people it affects.

hkon 10y ago

I never hear people speak about fixing the nursing gender gap....

DanBC 10y ago
That's because you haven't looked. Here's a post I made four years ago that mentions programmes to increase men in nursing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6210618#6210989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6210618#6210989 Or from user Anechoic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5350093#5350655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5350093#5350655 Or from dgabriel five years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3452516#3453224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3452516#3453224 or this from dragonwriter three years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980431#6982189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980431#6982189 There are hundreds of these posts on HN.
Omniusaspirer 10y ago
I think it will fix itself frankly, the job is way too good not to. Easy 6 figures with a 2 year degree, huge ability to rise into management, lots of different areas to work if you dislike the standard floor nursing. Men can't stay blind to that forever.
uiri 10y ago
The first result when I googled "gender gap in nursing"[1] talks about how men in nursing earn more money and tend to move up the career ladder faster than women. If women in tech were consistently paid more and promoted faster than their male counterparts, I don't think we would see the same hand-wringing about diversity in our field either. [1] https://www.nurse.com/blog/2015/08/10/nurses-speak-out-about-gender-pay-gap/ https://www.nurse.com/blog/2015/08/10/nurses-speak-out-about...
SolaceQuantum 10y ago
Do you often talk to nurses or folk in the nursing field? It's actually a significant issue with several scholarships and organizations pushing for more diversity in nursing and making up for the gender gap.
kstenson 10y ago

srssays 10y ago

Is 'diversity' selfish? Perhaps women/teenage girls aren't interested in becoming programmers, because they don't find it to be an interesting or fulfilling career.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
As anecdata, one daughter felt that pursuing computing wasn't socially acceptable ( she was a cheerleader and all ) and another felt the first instructor was an abject misogynist. Perhaps women find better things to do :) I'm starting to think there is something wrong with those of us who pursue this.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Do people typically enter the field via an instructor/lessons?
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    You have me at a loss- I'd say there are certainly alternatives. If I had to guess, I'd say most go that way, but that's purely a guess. Good point though - neither of them tried to self-learn in high school.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  And was it men who made your daughter feel like computing wasn't socially acceptable? Or was it her female friends in the cheerleading squad?
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    Yes. And it was her, her ... calculus of status.
- skookumchuck 10y ago
  For another anecdata, when I grew up being into computers meant social rejection, from boys as well as girls. I still recall meeting women in nightclubs and when they ask what I do, I say programming, they shrink and look away. I learned to hide what I did for a living during initial encounters.

rationalcult 10y ago

Hear me out before you downvote me to oblivion. Diversity talk is the war against middle class and men. That's how elite stay in power. There is no need to "FORCE" women into tech and become managers. I would argue that 99% women are mediocre and so are 99% men. Those who are smart rise to the top automatically. You are saying that because women have the vagina, promote them. I worked for three large tech companies. One went down in flames as we all know and sold for pieces. I see two fold problems in the US and Asian/Indian women joining this diversity cult. 1) Most of these women are at-wall or post-wall women. They are single, pumped and dumped over the years and no man in sight. These women are depressed internally. Getting these women into tech is not going to solve any problem. In fact, thousands of lives may be destroyed because of failing businesses. It has happened with Yahoo, HP, and others and will follow the pattern. Of course, there are smart women. They know their value and may rise to the top chain due to their talent. 2. In last 10 or so years, there seems to be the war against men. Ever notice how easy life is for women? Money, sex, shelter, divorce, courts, state et al. What about men? These white-knight pussy hungry betas, who are vouching for women, are actually worse. That's what you get from broken families and not having fatherly figures. Most, if not all, are the product of single mothers and/or beta fathers. I am not saying women should not work in tech. I am saying forcing them to be in tech or promoting them because they are women is going to end in disaster.

ryanmarsh 10y ago

"but it seemed to me that the difference stemmed from the demographics" feminine social primacy != equality Why is this part of the narrative of women in STEM? Do people not realize this language is counterproductive?

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

The problem isn't gender per se; the problem is how we define success and how leadership works. We're up to our neck in all sort of hubris sprung from the cultural emphasis on ambition at any cost. As Charlie Sheen might say, "Winning."[1] [1] if you don't see his story as a parody, intentional or otherwise, look again... But if diversity is your yardstick, then it's surprising how much better the military services are at it than tech. Indeed, if I were an ambitious woman, I am not sure that's not the path to take for tech.

facepalm 10y ago
Why would diversity the yardstick? The yardstick is creating useful products. (Edit: no there can not be more yardsticks in the long run - a company needs to survive. It gets paid for great products, not for virtue signalling).
- grzm 10y ago
  There can easily be more than one yardstick. Edit: Yes, a company needs to survive. Which products or services a company provides are simple examples of choices that are not purely based on profit. Similarly, there's plenty of variety in how companies are run while still being able to survive. Maximizing profit at the expense of all else is a choice some do make, but that's not the only way to run a business.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    Since we cannot disentangle rents from non-rents profits, I doubt there will ever be a coherent set of ideas on the subject.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Would you elaborate? I think it's often the case that complicated, entangled subjects can be understood once an attempt is made to do so. First attempts may miss the mark, but eventually useful progress can be made. And such disentanglement doesn't need to be complete or perfect to be useful. Or am I completely missing the mark? Do I understand you to mean that as there's currently no method for disentanglement that one can only use profit as a yardstick? That other values a business owner may have, such as employee satisfaction, or health, or retention, can't be measured or discussed? I don't mean to put words in your mouth. I'm trying to unpack what you've said.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

corporateslave 10y ago

Women's brains aren't as mathematical as men's. why is this so hard to believe.

chroma 10y ago

The idea of publicizing more role models seems fine, but Pike crossed a line here: > It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team, just because, or promoting women more freely. Doing this would violate the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits hiring discrimination based on, "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin".[1] I'm also sure such a practice would be extremely counterproductive. 1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2

justin66 10y ago
Hiring to correct a disparity in the proportion of men vs women on a team, to make it somewhat less ridiculously uneven in its tilt toward men, would be quite easy to defend in court. I'd be interested in knowing if any court cases of "zomg reverse discrimination" have ever been won by white dudes under those circumstances.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Either the courts would apply the law and Pike/Google would receive the punishment, or they wouldn't and the clear written intent of the law would have been subverted. If Congress wanted to systematically disadvantage men in favour of women they should have called it the "Female Rights Act". With respect to your question the answer is yes, such cases have been won, like this one: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/men-rights-unruh-act-women-discrimination http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/men-rights-unruh...
  - justin66 10y ago
    I'm looking at the article, and the material: 1) Doesn't involve the Civil Rights Act 2) Doesn't involve hiring at all 3) Involves settlements rather than court wins I strongly suspect that you don't like quotas, or intentional correction of a massive gender disparity in hiring, and so on, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong about the limits of the Civil Rights Act with regards to hiring. Hiring more women after realizing "we have a huge gender disparity problem" seems to me (not a lawyer) the sort of thing a company's employment lawyers would be happy to defend in court. If there are any real counterexamples, yeah, that'd be interesting to read about.

nielsabel 10y ago

“Science has been done without women for centuries, and it obviously worked.” – Luboš Motl Can we please just stop all this PC bullshit. Robo Pike obviously doesn't realize that the reason these women attending that meeting are so excellent is because there are so few of them. I.e. only those survived/came so far who have actual skills. The same goes for computer science. The women who are really skilled and who really want to work in this field WILL work in this field. Which, of course, means there will be less of them. I mean, we already got enough incompetent men in sotware engineering/computer science. Do we really need to flood the field with incompetent women? And on top of that, celebrate their non-achievement of being a woman? Regarding role models: why can't women simply choose a male role model? Is the gender of their role models really that much more important than their achievements? Shouldn't you look up to someone because, let's say, they are especially skilled in their field instead of their genitals? (Same goes for men choosing a female role model) Look at it from the other way around: has any man in fashion ever complained about there not being enough male role models in fashion (a field clearly dominated by women)? And the only ones who ever complained about impoliteness are women and effeminates. If you judge people by hurt feelings instead of actual skills, then you end up with shit like being banned from the golang community for pointing out that someone's English is incomprehensible! If women have something to contribute to the respective field, then they are more than welcome. If not, then they can simply fuck off (just as all those incompetent men).

zzzcpan 10y ago
I also find the whole "women in tech" problem very ignorant and kind of a first world problem, possibly invented by VCs PR companies for whatever reason (larger hiring pools?). It cannot possibly be a priority for someone who is even a little bit aware of what's going on in the world. And that's not even considering what states expect from women and how much propaganda and incentives are in place to make sure they do not pursue a career, but raise children.
dang 10y ago
This aggressive rant crosses the line on HN. If you can't contain your anger enough to post substantively and with respect for opposing views, you're not welcome to post here. It's not in your interest to do this anyhow, since it undercuts everything you're saying.

alphapapa 10y ago

An interesting analogy: a workplace or professional field is like a jar of water. Injustice is like tinted water (injustice being hiring or promoting someone less qualified at the expense of someone more qualified). Some blue-tinted water has been added to the jar. There are two proposed solutions to fix the problem: 1. Add red-tinted water to the jar to counter-balance the existing blue-tinted water in the jar. 2. Add more clean water to the jar to dilute the blue-tinted water. Question: Which solution would result in clearer water?

antingate2 10y ago

Am I only one tired of seeing this SJW stuff in Hacker news all the time? You are qualified you'll get hired.

jeffdavis 10y ago

Do aspiring computer scientists and engineers look up to managers? If not, then how does promoting them help?

DelaneyM 10y ago

To those expressing concern that this proposal represents "reverse sexism" or is anti-meritocratic: Merit is equal parts nature and nurture. "Pushing women into positions of influence" can also be interpreted as identifying high-performers capable of filling senior roles and then helping them get there. This does mean giving them an unfair advantage, but only in the sense that life is unfair in general. Ultimately they are the most capable individuals for the roles they assume, and lifting them to that level pays dividends for our entire industry. If you believe in both bolstering the meritocracy and furthering gender equality (as I do), this should be your reaction. Positioning a meritocratic ideal as in opposition to equal representation is just veiled misogyny.

Oxitendwe 10y ago
>To those expressing concern that this proposal represents "reverse sexism" or is anti-meritocratic: Nobody is arguing that this is "reverse sexism", merely sexism. If you don't think disadvantaging men in particular is sexism, then I don't think it's possible for us to have meaningful discourse on this if we can't even agree on what words mean. >"Pushing women into positions of influence" can also be interpreted as identifying high-performers capable of filling senior roles and then helping them get there. He specifically used the phrasing "It may take proactive behavior, like choosing a women over a man when growing your team". That is not consistent with your interpretation - yours is that he is advocating for identifying people who are fit for management roles, who happen to be women, and then using their resources to make it easier for them to get there. Instead, his phrasing quite unambiguously advocates selecting women over men when hiring. I would love to hear your argument for why this is both not sexist and also valuable to society at large. >This does mean giving them an unfair advantage, but only in the sense that life is unfair in general. Ultimately they are the most capable individuals for the roles they assume, and lifting them to that level pays dividends for our entire industry. So, unfairly discriminating against people makes them "the most capable individuals for the roles they assume"? >If you believe in both bolstering the meritocracy and furthering gender equality (as I do), this should be your reaction. Positioning a meritocratic ideal as in opposition to equal representation is just veiled misogyny. As I have said in innumerable other comments, that equal representation is even desirable, much less possible, rests on the assumption that all demographics have equal interest and potential. This has not been proven, and to advocate intentionally disadvantaging people based on their sex when you don't even know if the group to whose benefit this is all for even wants to be here I find naive at best and bigoted at worst.

codewiz 10y ago

No mention of Margherita Hack? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margherita_Hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margherita_Hack