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How Women Mentors Make a Difference in Engineering
- Ihateyouallhn 9y agoFuck you cunts telling me to who to care about while you circle jerk each other while pretending to make a difference
- partycoder 9y agoWhile I think more women, and underrepresented groups in general, is a good idea. However I am against treating them any differently in a professional setting, for better or worse. This means, if you have a standard for defining someone is not compliant or aligned with the company, it should be the same for everyone.
- DamnYuppie 9y agoTo me, your comment is very much in line with the core tenet of equality which would be that we should strive to treat everyone the same regardless of gender or race. As such I am not sure why you are being down voted without people leaving comments.
- ue_ 9y agoI've said it before, but it's notoriously hard to determine which comments will be downvoted and which will be upvoted. I have seen almost the exact same sentiment on HN before (edit: upvoted, floating near the top of the thread), and it is very irritating when you try to contribute only to have someone out of an elite group of 500+ point people click that little button to grey out your comment. Downvoting isn't helpful, it's a dirty little feature implemented to police certain opinions, usually via chilling effect. I upvoted GP.
- wolco 9y agoThe greyed out comments stand out because they look different. They are usually the comments that get my attention.
- fapjacks 9y agoI use a homegrown browser extension I call "Anti-HN B.S." -- which ostensibly stands for "behavior shaping" -- which completely removes my point score and all comment greying from all posts. This has helped me to express opinions here which I know are controversial and suspect will be downvoted. I also find that I am much more thoughtful when approaching comments generally when there is no downvote association.
- Mz 9y agoIs there a link available to this extension where it can be downloaded? (Not that I am in a position to use it personally at the moment, but I would be happy to post it on my blog on the theory that someday I might use it, and, in the mean time, others might find it of interest.)
- fapjacks 9y agoHello! I've gone ahead and uploaded the source to Github [0]. For anybody that needs instructions: Just clone it somewhere, visit chrome://extensions in your Chrome-based browser, click the "Enable developer mode" checkbox, then "Load unpacked extension" and select the "antihnbs" directory where you cloned it. [0] https://github.com/fapjacks/antihnbs https://github.com/fapjacks/antihnbs
- Mz 9y agohttp://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/hn-tools.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/hn-tools.html It is now listed down below "Useful HN-related tools."
- ben_jones 9y agoWould you care to open source it? I'd be happy to clean it up a bit in my free time. I often find myself obsessing over small things in communities I view highly, such as HN, and would benefit a lot from it.
- fapjacks 9y ago
- partycoder 9y agoI do think however that efforts should be made to make the demographics of STEM graduates more similar to the general population demographics, via programs to motivate people to apply to STEM fields or scholarships, etc. I think at that level (education) intervention is fine. However at the workplace, recruiting processes should have an equality of opportunity. People with the same qualifications, skills, etc. should have equal opportunity. And actually that's the law (EEO).
- sintaxi 9y agoYour second paragraph contradicts the first.
- partycoder 9y agoNo, it doesn't. The problem with diversity starts very early in the process. By the time graduates apply for jobs there is already a significant lack of diversity. This is why I think it makes sense to focus the diversification effort earlier in the process, in education.
- ben_jones 9y agoShould this be the case in all professions and areas of academia. Geology perhaps? Gender studies? Carpentry, flight attendant, congressman and senators? Genuinely curious your thoughts are.
- fapjacks 9y agoNobody talks about the gender divide in psychology, for instance, and I suspect that's because nobody perceives psychology as being where the money and power is.
- wolco 9y agoI didn't downvote but I am in favor of treating different people differently. If women succeed more when they have someone to emulate this should be encouraged. If men succeed more on their own leave them alone. The last thing we need is the notion that to be fair everyone needs a mentor or no one can have one. An integer not the same as a boolean even if they both have the value of one.
- partycoder 9y agoWith this point you are entering some sharp edged territory. Let's say you have a team that is majority women, and you have 2 candidates for promotion: a man and a woman. The EEO law says sex should not be a criteria for promotion. However if you promote the women based on sex (e.g: following your idea that women work better with women mentors) this could be considered an EEO violation (sex discrimination). So if you want to abide by the law, you need a promotion criteria that's better than "women work better with women".
- wolco 9y agoYou pick the best for the role regardless or the business with suffer. Not sure why women needing a mentor to learn would alter that. The sharp edge raises the question are women more valuable or less than men? Does this change the value. On one hand men don't need mentors to succeed that provides more value. On the other hand women who can act as mentors to other women are more valuable than men. In the end it doesn't matter to the business because both cases provide value in different ways. But it could make a big difference to the individual. Treat everyone differently because everyone has different needs and they learn in different ways.
- dang 9y agoIt's because such comments break the HN guidelines by treading into classic flamewar territory with nothing genuinely new to say. This ruins threads and degrades the site. A few people get all excited (perhaps 0.1% because they've never seen this before and 99.9% who just love repeating it) while the rest of us keel over from tedium. Since HN's mandate is to gratify intellectual curiosity, that violates it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- exstudent2 9y agoAh classic dang! Abusing your mod powers to punish and down talk anyone who questions your narrative. The comment in question is absolutely on topic and relevant. You just don't like it so claim it's against "site policy". It's ridiculous that you don't allow debate on these topics. And yes, I know I'm perma-banned for not being feminist enough for you. I just wanted to point out your systematic pushing of a political agenda to those who dare browse with show dead.
- dang 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004
- exstudent2 9y agoAnd yet anyone can scroll through your comment history to see who you ban...
- ben_jones 9y agoSo I went back and read the entire article and I think I agree with what you're saying (after initially disagreeing). His comment did not extend the natural discussion that would follow from reading the article and did play into the common narratives that are too often unproductively rehashed. I still believe that silent down votes do not contribute to intelligent discussions either. If someone can take a minute to read an article, its comments, and down vote, they should also be able to politely explain to the commenter in question how and why that comment may be detracting from the discussion. That way the commenter may defend his position or adapt his behavior to better contribute within the community.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Mz 9y agoI am a woman and I can essentially agree with this, at least in theory, assuming that you consider the possibility of changing the standard to one that is reasonable if it comes to light that the standard unfairly favors one demographic over others for reasons unrelated to actual job performance (by which I really mean "needs of the job"). Current job metrics have a tendency to assume that a privileged man with a stay-at-home wife is doing the job. The assumption is that she will take care of things like grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc and he will only take time off in a dire emergency, not for any kind of routine maintenance of his health or life. Women fall behind in part because we typically lack our own wife taking care of the women's work for us. But job standards don't change to accommodate the fact that the work force is no longer dominated by married men with full time wives taking care of the home fires. This causes everyone to suffer, not just women with jobs, but it tends to disproportionately hurt women. There is enormous precedent and social pressure such that women tend to still do the lion's share of the housework, etc, even if they also work full time. So "treat everyone the same" can work, but only if we start reassessing job expectations that are rooted in an assumption that "Well, you have a wife at home taking care of certain things, so you don't need time and energy for those things."
- jeandejean 9y agoWhat about single men? They don't have a slave wife at home but still can manage to perform well. I think your comment in biased on what you assume on men, as if they were privileged idle dreamers. But guess what they're not, and they don't make a fuss for everything they're doing.
- Mz 9y agoThis is not just me making assumptions based on my life. I have read quite a bit about this and had classes in, for example, Women's History. When I had a corporate job, I successfully got my teen/young adult sons to take over the women's work so I could give more to my job. I felt it benefited all of us more than them getting crappy entry level jobs that didn't serve their goals in any way. They agreed with my conclusion. Also, your comment seems awfully close to an ad hominem. It is dismissive of me personally and does not really bring substantial argument to bear.
- jansho 9y agoTreat everyone equally, yes. But in male-dominated areas such as engineering, the default culture tends to be male-oriented too. For example, bro culture. Not all females can navigate through this easily. Few girls choose the engineering field, and fewer still actually become engineers. This suggests that something not right is going on. When the issue of gender equality pops up, often the assumption is that women are asking to be treated differently - which translates to special treatment. This is far from the case (and too many women do not stand up for themselves for fear of being seen this way.) Instead, the default culture needs to be more open and considerate about diversity. That obviously means it's not going to happen overnight - the minority group needs to be normalised first, and a big part of this is to have a large presence - aha, catch 22! However, an empowered minority group can accelerate this and even encourage more to join in, thereby resulting a stronger presence and support network - hopefully leading to the normalisation of women in engineering, and greater equality. Women mentorships can very well be the key to such empowerment.
- ben_jones 9y agoI think we also need to consider the deeper psychological and anthropological triggers for the behavior in order to more efficiently facilitate this change. Sometimes I wonder if in order to enact change quickly we make the wrong decisions and policies. I think it's a complex problem and not a boolean flag that can be flipped.
- jansho 9y agoAbsolutely. Sometimes I wonder the same thing, perhaps current schemes and policies (not all?) result in more dissent between the gender groups.
- davidf18 9y agoStudies about education are famously not done well and are hard to replicate (this is true of other fields as well). Instead of having a psychologist who has never done engineering do the study, have actual engineers. Different people respond differently. Engineering is one of those fields that if you screw up, many, many people can die so it takes a certain kind of personality and I believe it is someone who is very passionate about doing it. The same is true with medicine.
- ASpring 9y agoThe claim that an engineer would run this study better is baseless. Most CS faculty I know do not have the experience necessary to plan and run a well thought out randomized controlled experiment with human subjects. There is definitely some good work done by CS professors on CS education but in general a Psych faculty member will be better equipped to run a study such as the one cited.
- pottersbasilisk 9y agoPsychology is under a replication crisis. Is CS under the same ?
- mining 9y agoThey're not comparable disciplines. One (in theory) involves trivially replicable experiments (just rerun the binary) and the other does not.
- davidf18 9y agoThe article was not referring to CS but engineering. EE, ME, Civil, Chem, Aero, Industrial, http://engineering.illinois.edu/academics/rankings.html http://engineering.illinois.edu/academics/rankings.html My EE profs at Illinois were capable to run studies and they understand the rigors of the domain which a psychologist would not understand. The study is in a very emotional area and the findings get lots of publicity advancing careers but making it more likely the results are biased. I have also worked in CS and studied it so I can say it is not engineering.
- nowarninglabel 9y agoPart of the problem here, which the article doesn't quite reach, is that the possible pool of mentors is growing but those women are themselves lacking in the confidence they need to become mentors. Encourage your female engineering senior managers and leaders to knowing that they are respected and capable of being role models and mentors to others if they choose!
- DamnYuppie 9y agoAt my current company everyone at a manager or above level becomes a career advisor for several younger resources. Every advisor has to go through HR training to do this and they are expected to spend a not insignificant amount of time each year helping each advisee. Also every non-manager has a career advisor. I believe that this system really helps push people to focus on helping others in the organization and really making them focus on how others can be successful even if their path wouldn't be the same as theirs. Another aspect of the current system is the advisees can request to have different advisors if they feel others are better suited to understanding their background and goals. I like to naively think that this system benefits both the advisor and advisee and both can get a tremendous benefit from the relationship. Overall having a mentor and mentoring others is a great tool for personal and professional growth. On several occasions I have had to really think about how to discuss options with my advisees who have different cultural backgrounds from myself.
- tyingq 9y agoMy female engineer friends tell me that female mentors work well for them, but that female bosses often don't. They all cite some sort of attitude where the boss had to gut it out in an unfair sexist world, and don't have much sympathy. Anecdotal of course, but if true to any significant measure, would make mentors even more important.
- winebot 9y agoYou would think that people who experienced sexism would be more likely to be inclined to help out...
- tyingq 9y agoI thought it odd as well. These are mostly women in IT at non tech companies.
- mercer 9y agoMy experience is that the opposite is often true: quite a number of those who overcame <x> tend to have the least sympathy for people struggling with <x>. I've met ex-poor people who attribute their success to simple 'trying harder' than other poor people. I've met socially successful people who attribute it to learning 'a few simple tricks' and 'getting out of the comfort zone'. I've met ex-depressed people proclaim that if only others would meditate and/or believe in themselves it would solve all their negative feelings. I've met gays who argued that if only these sexually-confused individuals would let themselves be themselves, and move somewhere more free if need be, their struggle would be over. I've met Christians who attribute their new-found wholesomeness to simple being more repentant than everyone else in church. In each of these cases, the conclusion was that 'these people', whether poor, socially anxious, depressed, gay or in existential crises, are just not trying hard enough (lazy). In fact, I'd go as far as claiming that, considering myself someone who has had a decent breadth and depth of experience with these groups, easily more than 50% of the ex-somethings I've met are more on the side of judging their ex-peers instead of supporting them. I'm sure there's fascinating research in this area. I catch myself doing similar things and while I have some theories I can't fully explain why I do it. Protecting/polishing my ego? Keeping some clean narrative and sense of progression in my head?
- yakult 9y ago“Often, science is messy and things don’t turn out neatly,” Dasgupta says. But in this study, “it was very gratifying how clean the results were.” This is an unfortunate choice of words in the age of p-hacking and publication bias.