15 ms·

It is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues. Predictably, the top comment on this post that tries to

It is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues. Predictably, the top comment on this post that tries to move forward on a very real problem that has been empirically established is an appeal to stick with the status quo. I'm sorry, but companies have always focused on making money. Saying that the way to handle this very specific problem is to focus on making money is an appeal to brush the problem aside completely. The top comment, for good measure, even obliquely swipes at active events taken by small local groups to tackle the issue, such as Girls Who Code, because men might be silently stewing over their existence...[1] I am opting for a top level comment here because my frustration is less with the comment itself than that the community as a whole has voted this comment to the top. [1] Before I get kneejerk responses that the comment didn't specify the group, let me belabor the point that the context of this discussion is SPECIFICALLY women's difficulties working within the masculine tech culture, so MinorityCodingClub trivially translates to WomenCodingClub, which sounds an awful lot like Girls Who Code, which has been gaining prominence of late. It is a cowardly oblique swipe at these sort of organizations. It's a cop out not to name the organization that you have a problem with explicitly, an attempt to lash out at such organizations while maintaining the comfortable position of plausible deniability. Everyone gets it though. So I won't countenance "shocked and appalled" denials that organizations like Girls Who Code were the target of the swipe.

draw_down 10y ago
Yeah. These issues get talked about so much in our industry, but I don't understand how they're supposed to change if the way we're expecting to fix it is just "business as usual, but uh, don't do discrimination". Obviously there is something wrong with how we got here.
- anothercomment 10y ago
  There is not "obviously" something wrong. Would you say there is obviously something wrong with the plumbing industry that keeps women away? Or is it just that the smell of shit is too unpleasant? Likewise, some aspects of tech could simply be unpleasant to women, and there are reasons why men are more likely to put up with unpleasant work (like the need to feed a family). I have personally experienced a lot of unpleasant aspects of the tech industry (let's just say the movie "Office Space" is not far off the mark), unrelated to gender. Mind you, I am not claiming nothing is wrong (although personally I consider it unlikely), just that it is not obvious, because there are other explanations for the gender ratio that don't involve "wrongness".
  - draw_down 10y ago
    Oh, OK.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    For any given job where biology is not a factor (which is all of them except weight lifting and highly athletic sports), cultural norms are. Women take care of children, typically, and their shit does not smell like roses. So you need a new hypothesis.
    - anothercomment 10y ago
      So you think women don't go into plumbing because of cultural norms? Really? Ok, I wish somebody would study that and find the reasons. The baby argument doesn't hold, though, because it makes a huge difference if it is your own baby. Better comparison would perhaps be care of the elderly, which involves cleaning up shit but also has a social component.
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        If the argument there is so few women coders why isn't it also why are there so many male garbage collectors (I could list a great many undesirable jobs here), prisoners, homeless and combat fatalities? Is the goal to balance those out as well?
        XorNot 10y ago
        Yes.
    - shawn-furyan 10y ago
      This is a 14 day old troll account. I would recommend against expending much effort to persuade a troll, or taking it seriously at all. That being said, you're correct, but the troll is offering ridiculous arguments because it is trying to spread FUD, not because it is genuinely trying to elucidate the issues.
anothercomment 10y ago
Actually the title and the interview didn't mention "women's difficulties with the masculine tech culture", and none of the women who were interviewed brought it up, either. It seems to be kind of implied by the approach (why ask only women), which is exactly what annoys people because it is such a sweeping accusation. I wonder in discussions like this, how many people who bemoan the masculine tech culture consider themselves to be part of the problem? Do you consider yourself part of the problem and too masculine? Or do you think it is only the other men who are to blame?
- shawn-furyan 10y ago
  14 day old anonymous troll account intentionally distorting several claims I made.
  - anothercomment 10y ago
    you wrote: "the context of this discussion is SPECIFICALLY women's difficulties working within the masculine tech culture" In what way did I misrepresent that? It is the only one of your claims that I referred to. Btw just because an account is young it is not automatically a troll account. Watch your ageism.
jknoepfler 10y ago
I share your frustration, but I've found the landscape to be more complex than most people are willing to give it credit for. For example, my partner and I disagree on the value of things like "Girls who Code" or "Women in Computer Science" groups. I (male) tend to think "can't hurt seems like a decent idea, I'm sure there are unique challenges faced by people with two X-chromosomes in computer science that I'm not aware of, I'll take people's claims that it's valuable on face value - if smart people are doing it in reasonably large numbers, and I can't see obvious harm, then I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to disparage it." She, on the other hand, despises those groups. She hates being singled out for her sex, and thinks sex shouldn't even be on the table for discussion. She just wants to work and be respected as an engineer, has never had any problem being respected as an engineer by her peers, and feels insulted every time she's invited to do something "on behalf of people with vaginas," (her words). Interestingly, she also despises overtly feminine genderization and tends to think people who call themselves "girls" and dress/perform in an overtly feminine way are stupid (and acknowledges that this is unfair)... so I don't know. Is the whole thing targeted at the gendering of engineering rather than the physical sex of programmers? I don't really know. I don't think the people participating in it have a very clear view of that either, judging from the conversations I have with people. At the end of the day I just try to take encourage everyone to blind themselves as much as possible when evaluating applications, reviewing code (impossible, generally), or assigning grades. edit: after thinking about this a little more I should specify that we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals, and acknowledge that our personal views/experience on sex in computer science might miss a whole chunk of the spectrum of women's experience in communities where gender and sex are a bigger deal. My community expects women to be good at math and science every bit as much as men; that's not everyone's situation.
- shawn-furyan 10y ago
  I don't want to speak for my wife, but she has been actively involved in Girls Who Code, and seems to have thought that it was worthwhile. As I understand it, it's more about letting girls know that programming is an option, rather than being about segregating female engineers. I think this is necessary because I have personally seen the assumption that men are engineers and women are support people limit the careers of women who were more accomplished and competent than men in more prestigious engineering roles. From my perspective, there's a lot of bullshit mythmaking in programming that plausibly dissuades many, IMO disproportionately women, from approaching the field, and which seems to have a tendency to funnel women to less prestigious/respected roles tangential to engineering. Response to parent's edit: > we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals I can see why you would draw that conclusion, but your assumption is pretty wide of the mark in my case. I grew up very poor in the deep South.
FT_intern 10y ago
> It is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues Is it? The implication is that tech is worse than other professions in this regard. But it has never been compared to other industries full of young people. Color me skeptical but I don't believe that a field full of introverted immigrants with language barriers would have a bigger harassment issue than the business/sales/administration fields that are full of extroverted Americans and frat boys. My experience is that the diversity in nationality in the tech field has made it difficult for in-groups to form. Whereas in-groups form more rapidly in fields where people come from more similar backgrounds (fields with higher American %). When not part of an in-group, people engage in less risky behavior.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Yes, it is. The tech industry is bad at it, period. Other industries being better or worse doesn't change that fact.
  - iends 10y ago
    I don't know. My wife is a dentist and we go to a lot of dental conferences together. Vendors ALWAYS think I'm the doctor and she's my assistant when we first walk up. Even women.
  - ploxiln 10y ago
    What it changes is the discussion of solutions. Is this a societal problem, or a problem just for the computer technology industry? Where do we attempt to apply fixes? Are we adding a bunch of strange work-arounds far from the root of the problem? Does it make sense if they are not actually working?
- cthalupa 10y ago
  I only have experience in a few fields, and none of them are sales/administration, but my experience is that tech has been far worse. Introversion is no guard against sexism, and I'd argue, it might actually make some facets of it worse. I don't think introversion in specific is bad, but the way it manifests in tech in this male-dominated industry often results in a lack of experience and understanding in how to work with women, and sets them up as very heavily other-ed. Only in tech have I seen such a need for inclusiveness to be so stressed and pushed for - education, smaller businesses, and similar, it has been a much more natural thing. There's a hell of a lot more challenges that women face in tech than outright harassment. Unintentional sidelining, the bar for proof being much higher, general unwarranted skepticism in their abilities, etc.
cbsmith 10y ago
I will say, a lot of the feedback in the article does come across as, "don't manage people poorly".
falcolas 10y ago
When the first response FTA indicates that the "biggest factor [...] has been when an employer promises changes to how the tech team is managed and then doesn’t deliver on them", the comment of "manage better" is absolutely relevant. The only real bits which are solely relevant to women in the whole thing DO revolve around sexual harassment, which leads me to believe that an enforced policy of "don't harass people" would go a long way. We're not perfect yet. There are stupid men through the industry who sexually harass women. There are stupid men and women who have internal biases against women. There aren't enough women studying tech in the colleges to provide a truly diverse workforce in tech. These are all problems which need to be addressed, but they will not be positively addressed by shaming people: comments like "the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues", "men might be silently stewing over their existence", and "It is a cowardly oblique swipe at these sort of organizations" don't advance the conversation, they attempt to shame people into agreeing with you. WRT Girls Who Code; it is not small nor local anymore. It's nationwide and well represented in tech company volunteer activities, so I've found. At least for women; they frown on male volunteers in my experience.
mtreis86 10y ago
Which was the top comment when you wrote this? Your comment is now self-referencing.
- cbsmith 10y ago
  Awkward...
- niuzeta 10y ago
  I believe the GP was referring to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13969465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13969465
aaron695 10y ago
> It is a cowardly oblique swipe at these sort of organizations How is it cowardly? They have publically stated business shouldn't support "MinorityCodingClub". It's brave in this environment to go against this status quo. Cowardice is using words like cowardice because you disagree, it's a weasel word use to undermine people, not arguments. > which sounds an awful lot like Girls Who Code, This is a classic kara collecting, stating the obvious like it's not obvious. We all know what they mean because that's exactly they are implying. This comment is why this issue will never more forward, it's all emotive fud.

draw_down 10y ago

Yeah. These issues get talked about so much in our industry, but I don't understand how they're supposed to change if the way we're expecting to fix it is just "business as usual, but uh, don't do discrimination". Obviously there is something wrong with how we got here.

anothercomment 10y ago
There is not "obviously" something wrong. Would you say there is obviously something wrong with the plumbing industry that keeps women away? Or is it just that the smell of shit is too unpleasant? Likewise, some aspects of tech could simply be unpleasant to women, and there are reasons why men are more likely to put up with unpleasant work (like the need to feed a family). I have personally experienced a lot of unpleasant aspects of the tech industry (let's just say the movie "Office Space" is not far off the mark), unrelated to gender. Mind you, I am not claiming nothing is wrong (although personally I consider it unlikely), just that it is not obvious, because there are other explanations for the gender ratio that don't involve "wrongness".
- draw_down 10y ago
  Oh, OK.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  For any given job where biology is not a factor (which is all of them except weight lifting and highly athletic sports), cultural norms are. Women take care of children, typically, and their shit does not smell like roses. So you need a new hypothesis.
  - anothercomment 10y ago
    So you think women don't go into plumbing because of cultural norms? Really? Ok, I wish somebody would study that and find the reasons. The baby argument doesn't hold, though, because it makes a huge difference if it is your own baby. Better comparison would perhaps be care of the elderly, which involves cleaning up shit but also has a social component.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      If the argument there is so few women coders why isn't it also why are there so many male garbage collectors (I could list a great many undesirable jobs here), prisoners, homeless and combat fatalities? Is the goal to balance those out as well?
      - XorNot 10y ago
        Yes.
  - shawn-furyan 10y ago
    This is a 14 day old troll account. I would recommend against expending much effort to persuade a troll, or taking it seriously at all. That being said, you're correct, but the troll is offering ridiculous arguments because it is trying to spread FUD, not because it is genuinely trying to elucidate the issues.

anothercomment 10y ago

Actually the title and the interview didn't mention "women's difficulties with the masculine tech culture", and none of the women who were interviewed brought it up, either. It seems to be kind of implied by the approach (why ask only women), which is exactly what annoys people because it is such a sweeping accusation. I wonder in discussions like this, how many people who bemoan the masculine tech culture consider themselves to be part of the problem? Do you consider yourself part of the problem and too masculine? Or do you think it is only the other men who are to blame?

shawn-furyan 10y ago
14 day old anonymous troll account intentionally distorting several claims I made.
- anothercomment 10y ago
  you wrote: "the context of this discussion is SPECIFICALLY women's difficulties working within the masculine tech culture" In what way did I misrepresent that? It is the only one of your claims that I referred to. Btw just because an account is young it is not automatically a troll account. Watch your ageism.

jknoepfler 10y ago

I share your frustration, but I've found the landscape to be more complex than most people are willing to give it credit for. For example, my partner and I disagree on the value of things like "Girls who Code" or "Women in Computer Science" groups. I (male) tend to think "can't hurt seems like a decent idea, I'm sure there are unique challenges faced by people with two X-chromosomes in computer science that I'm not aware of, I'll take people's claims that it's valuable on face value - if smart people are doing it in reasonably large numbers, and I can't see obvious harm, then I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to disparage it." She, on the other hand, despises those groups. She hates being singled out for her sex, and thinks sex shouldn't even be on the table for discussion. She just wants to work and be respected as an engineer, has never had any problem being respected as an engineer by her peers, and feels insulted every time she's invited to do something "on behalf of people with vaginas," (her words). Interestingly, she also despises overtly feminine genderization and tends to think people who call themselves "girls" and dress/perform in an overtly feminine way are stupid (and acknowledges that this is unfair)... so I don't know. Is the whole thing targeted at the gendering of engineering rather than the physical sex of programmers? I don't really know. I don't think the people participating in it have a very clear view of that either, judging from the conversations I have with people. At the end of the day I just try to take encourage everyone to blind themselves as much as possible when evaluating applications, reviewing code (impossible, generally), or assigning grades. edit: after thinking about this a little more I should specify that we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals, and acknowledge that our personal views/experience on sex in computer science might miss a whole chunk of the spectrum of women's experience in communities where gender and sex are a bigger deal. My community expects women to be good at math and science every bit as much as men; that's not everyone's situation.

shawn-furyan 10y ago
I don't want to speak for my wife, but she has been actively involved in Girls Who Code, and seems to have thought that it was worthwhile. As I understand it, it's more about letting girls know that programming is an option, rather than being about segregating female engineers. I think this is necessary because I have personally seen the assumption that men are engineers and women are support people limit the careers of women who were more accomplished and competent than men in more prestigious engineering roles. From my perspective, there's a lot of bullshit mythmaking in programming that plausibly dissuades many, IMO disproportionately women, from approaching the field, and which seems to have a tendency to funnel women to less prestigious/respected roles tangential to engineering. Response to parent's edit: > we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals I can see why you would draw that conclusion, but your assumption is pretty wide of the mark in my case. I grew up very poor in the deep South.

FT_intern 10y ago

> It is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues Is it? The implication is that tech is worse than other professions in this regard. But it has never been compared to other industries full of young people. Color me skeptical but I don't believe that a field full of introverted immigrants with language barriers would have a bigger harassment issue than the business/sales/administration fields that are full of extroverted Americans and frat boys. My experience is that the diversity in nationality in the tech field has made it difficult for in-groups to form. Whereas in-groups form more rapidly in fields where people come from more similar backgrounds (fields with higher American %). When not part of an in-group, people engage in less risky behavior.

st3v3r 10y ago
Yes, it is. The tech industry is bad at it, period. Other industries being better or worse doesn't change that fact.
- iends 10y ago
  I don't know. My wife is a dentist and we go to a lot of dental conferences together. Vendors ALWAYS think I'm the doctor and she's my assistant when we first walk up. Even women.
- ploxiln 10y ago
  What it changes is the discussion of solutions. Is this a societal problem, or a problem just for the computer technology industry? Where do we attempt to apply fixes? Are we adding a bunch of strange work-arounds far from the root of the problem? Does it make sense if they are not actually working?
cthalupa 10y ago
I only have experience in a few fields, and none of them are sales/administration, but my experience is that tech has been far worse. Introversion is no guard against sexism, and I'd argue, it might actually make some facets of it worse. I don't think introversion in specific is bad, but the way it manifests in tech in this male-dominated industry often results in a lack of experience and understanding in how to work with women, and sets them up as very heavily other-ed. Only in tech have I seen such a need for inclusiveness to be so stressed and pushed for - education, smaller businesses, and similar, it has been a much more natural thing. There's a hell of a lot more challenges that women face in tech than outright harassment. Unintentional sidelining, the bar for proof being much higher, general unwarranted skepticism in their abilities, etc.

cbsmith 10y ago

I will say, a lot of the feedback in the article does come across as, "don't manage people poorly".

falcolas 10y ago

When the first response FTA indicates that the "biggest factor [...] has been when an employer promises changes to how the tech team is managed and then doesn’t deliver on them", the comment of "manage better" is absolutely relevant. The only real bits which are solely relevant to women in the whole thing DO revolve around sexual harassment, which leads me to believe that an enforced policy of "don't harass people" would go a long way. We're not perfect yet. There are stupid men through the industry who sexually harass women. There are stupid men and women who have internal biases against women. There aren't enough women studying tech in the colleges to provide a truly diverse workforce in tech. These are all problems which need to be addressed, but they will not be positively addressed by shaming people: comments like "the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues", "men might be silently stewing over their existence", and "It is a cowardly oblique swipe at these sort of organizations" don't advance the conversation, they attempt to shame people into agreeing with you. WRT Girls Who Code; it is not small nor local anymore. It's nationwide and well represented in tech company volunteer activities, so I've found. At least for women; they frown on male volunteers in my experience.

mtreis86 10y ago

Which was the top comment when you wrote this? Your comment is now self-referencing.

cbsmith 10y ago
Awkward...
niuzeta 10y ago
I believe the GP was referring to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13969465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13969465

aaron695 10y ago

> It is a cowardly oblique swipe at these sort of organizations How is it cowardly? They have publically stated business shouldn't support "MinorityCodingClub". It's brave in this environment to go against this status quo. Cowardice is using words like cowardice because you disagree, it's a weasel word use to undermine people, not arguments. > which sounds an awful lot like Girls Who Code, This is a classic kara collecting, stating the obvious like it's not obvious. We all know what they mean because that's exactly they are implying. This comment is why this issue will never more forward, it's all emotive fud.