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Well, due to the outrageous skew in gender, I think you have to read these things more deeply. There are offices with 18 or 20 men and 0 women or 1 woman. Tha

Well, due to the outrageous skew in gender, I think you have to read these things more deeply. There are offices with 18 or 20 men and 0 women or 1 woman. That doesn't happen statistically - certainly not with the incentives of exceedingly high salaries and a field that is open to all (by means of a computer science undergraduate program.) Look at something that is much harder than becoming a software engineer: becoming an MD in the United States. It has far higher mental and educational requirements; it's simply harder. An MD can learn C++ (to code their medical application) much faster than a C++ engineer can learn even a tiny part of the MD's domain expertise. Here is the gender breakdown of MD's: http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gender/ http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gender/ Women comprise 34% of MD's to 66% men. That is a statistical skew, but nowhere near the 93% male that programmers face. In essence when you reply to a comment here on HN you could carelessly say "he" referring to an OP without referring to their first name, whereas if this were a forum for physicians you would not make that assumption because it's not skewed enough for you to do so. (Here on HN there are lots of female engineers but they don't usually announce themselves explicitly.) So software engineering has a gender problem. Now we're getting an interview about what some people cite for leaving an industry in which they can make six figures within their first five years, with nothing more than an undergraduate education or the equivalent self-learning of 25% of one. So it is important to read the interviews extremely carefully and with a very open mind. For example, what are some of the worst things about being a software engineer: insane hours; intense mental focus (it is impossible not to take your work home with you and I am sure many programmers routinely dream of the tasks they are working on); coupled with bull-pen open space offices: However, open office plans[1] were not cited by the women in this interview. Zero mentions as far as I can see (I re-skimmed and also searched inline for "open'). The word hour or hours does not occur a single time. So even though it appears that the issues cited are independent of gender, it is imperative to read these interviews very deeply. There could be more to them than meets the eye. I don't know what it is, but it has to be in these interviews, lurking beneath the surface. Read more deeply. [1] such as the monstrosity pictured here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan

yourapostasy 10y ago
Does software engineering have a gender problem, or a social validation problem? It is no secret that women in nations where software engineering is likely to be a significant source of employment are far more socially attuned than men are; whether this is by nurture or nature is grist for another mill at another time. It is also no secret that software engineers rank lower on social validation than doctors. Empirically, look at a sampling of org charts, and statistically, pure software engineers (not counting Fellow-type positions, for example) rarely call the shots. Not that they should as a rule: I'm pointing out the reality. Regardless of the US reality for doctors, with the constraints imposed upon them by the dysfunctionally-broken US healthcare policies, the social perception of doctors is "doctors call the shots". The phrase "doctor's orders" carries enormous cultural weight behind it. To empirically test a weak form of this hypothesis, compare the number of women managers who were originally trained as programmers to women software engineers. If there is a statistically significant deviation, then some Maxwell's Demon-like mechanism at work performs a sorting function that emerges this deviation, gradually exerting an inexorable pull upon women programmers into management. A stronger experimental confirmation of this hypothesis would require someone with far more training in such psycho-social factors discrimination to devise an experiment to empirically test. I'm not discounting the very real challenges women software engineers face. Personally, I have not witnessed first-hand any of the workplace vibe-killers described, and I've been in a lot of different workplaces by dint of my wandering consulting career, but I can believe it happens because I've also seen some really bad behavior in the species, and generally I tend to attract clients with pretty solid corporate cultures. But women tend as a statistical aggregate to pay attention to the nuances of social rankings far more than most men realize, and especially men in software engineering realize.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Putting "It is no secret" before a claim doesn't validate it, please provide some support/context for "[female devs] are far more socially attuned than men are". Also, a phrase like "doctor's orders" is common, because most members of the public will have occasion to see a doctor, the profession having existing for a long time. There's no saying "CTO's orders", yet this is obviously a position of power. Also, your observances wrt men and social ranking could easily be confounded if you don't have a complete knowledge of the filters on the men & women you see in IT.

yourapostasy 10y ago

Does software engineering have a gender problem, or a social validation problem? It is no secret that women in nations where software engineering is likely to be a significant source of employment are far more socially attuned than men are; whether this is by nurture or nature is grist for another mill at another time. It is also no secret that software engineers rank lower on social validation than doctors. Empirically, look at a sampling of org charts, and statistically, pure software engineers (not counting Fellow-type positions, for example) rarely call the shots. Not that they should as a rule: I'm pointing out the reality. Regardless of the US reality for doctors, with the constraints imposed upon them by the dysfunctionally-broken US healthcare policies, the social perception of doctors is "doctors call the shots". The phrase "doctor's orders" carries enormous cultural weight behind it. To empirically test a weak form of this hypothesis, compare the number of women managers who were originally trained as programmers to women software engineers. If there is a statistically significant deviation, then some Maxwell's Demon-like mechanism at work performs a sorting function that emerges this deviation, gradually exerting an inexorable pull upon women programmers into management. A stronger experimental confirmation of this hypothesis would require someone with far more training in such psycho-social factors discrimination to devise an experiment to empirically test. I'm not discounting the very real challenges women software engineers face. Personally, I have not witnessed first-hand any of the workplace vibe-killers described, and I've been in a lot of different workplaces by dint of my wandering consulting career, but I can believe it happens because I've also seen some really bad behavior in the species, and generally I tend to attract clients with pretty solid corporate cultures. But women tend as a statistical aggregate to pay attention to the nuances of social rankings far more than most men realize, and especially men in software engineering realize.

Chris2048 10y ago
Putting "It is no secret" before a claim doesn't validate it, please provide some support/context for "[female devs] are far more socially attuned than men are". Also, a phrase like "doctor's orders" is common, because most members of the public will have occasion to see a doctor, the profession having existing for a long time. There's no saying "CTO's orders", yet this is obviously a position of power. Also, your observances wrt men and social ranking could easily be confounded if you don't have a complete knowledge of the filters on the men & women you see in IT.