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> Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men. Have you considered survival bias? The women that were bothered would have left

> Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men. Have you considered survival bias? The women that were bothered would have left those conditions in greater numbers. The problem in not caring about this statistical filtering is that it creates a blind spot for your company. It is harder to empathize with the unknown. When you build products that extend the world's social experience, this becomes a severe competitive danger.

koonsolo 9y ago
> When you build products that extend the world's social experience, this becomes a severe competitive danger. Sorry, but that is just bullshit. I'm currently making a tool to create RPGs. I'm the sole male developer. To my surprise, I have more women creating games in it than men. It seems that they really love the whole storytelling aspect of it. So to say that you can only build something that is only useful to people similar to yourself, is just plain wrong. I'm a programmer building something for non-programmers. If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them, see how they use your product, look at their interests etc. Is it really mandatory to hire the same demographic as a product manager???
- espadrine 9y ago
  > If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them That is absolutely good advice. Note that I only said it was harder to empathize with the unknown. However, an obvious result of the Two Generals' Problem is that you can only communicate through common knowledge. Getting it takes more work than having it. For instance, it is likely that when you first built the tool, you made its UI use a language you understand. Let's say there is suddenly a large amount of interest in having that tool from a country with a language and culture you do not know. Learning the specifics of that culture takes more work than having someone with that knowledge in your company. They may know what keyboard those people have, how they expect their right-to-left language to be input, how they react to specific UIs. A company that has this knowledge in-house is more likely to get that market than one which relies on surveys. For companies that target a large number of markets with shifting needs, it makes diversity a business requirement to outpace competitors.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  As a counterpoint, lots of women have loved fantasy novels for a really long time. However, until recently, the vast majority of the authors were male, and it's still a majority. The result is that there is a lot of fantasy with badly written female characters who occupy damsel roles more often than hero roles. Said fantasy is nevertheless read by women for lack of options, but they'd like better fantasy with better female characters better. It's not impossible for men to write good female characters, of course, it's just something that a man is less likely to be able to pull off, or to focus on.
MichaelGG 9y ago
Do you have evidence for that? Are there really solid cases where, say, 20% female team handled certain features far better than a 5% female team, due to their gender? I see this implicit assumption everywhere that diversity comes up, yet at best I've only seen studies indicating better workplace environment or higher productivity on mixed teams. But never anything in detail. And why does diversity fail so hard when it comes to physical activities?
- anonymouskimmer 9y ago
  Because all physical activities I can think of (other than some complex team exercises) are really basic in the physical attributes they require. Off the top of my head, spelunking would likely be a pretty diverse physical activity. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/homo-naledi-small-spelunkers-required-how-an-advert-led-to-the-discovery-of-homo-naledi https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/homo-naledi-...

koonsolo 9y ago

> When you build products that extend the world's social experience, this becomes a severe competitive danger. Sorry, but that is just bullshit. I'm currently making a tool to create RPGs. I'm the sole male developer. To my surprise, I have more women creating games in it than men. It seems that they really love the whole storytelling aspect of it. So to say that you can only build something that is only useful to people similar to yourself, is just plain wrong. I'm a programmer building something for non-programmers. If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them, see how they use your product, look at their interests etc. Is it really mandatory to hire the same demographic as a product manager???

espadrine 9y ago
> If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them That is absolutely good advice. Note that I only said it was harder to empathize with the unknown. However, an obvious result of the Two Generals' Problem is that you can only communicate through common knowledge. Getting it takes more work than having it. For instance, it is likely that when you first built the tool, you made its UI use a language you understand. Let's say there is suddenly a large amount of interest in having that tool from a country with a language and culture you do not know. Learning the specifics of that culture takes more work than having someone with that knowledge in your company. They may know what keyboard those people have, how they expect their right-to-left language to be input, how they react to specific UIs. A company that has this knowledge in-house is more likely to get that market than one which relies on surveys. For companies that target a large number of markets with shifting needs, it makes diversity a business requirement to outpace competitors.
CydeWeys 9y ago
As a counterpoint, lots of women have loved fantasy novels for a really long time. However, until recently, the vast majority of the authors were male, and it's still a majority. The result is that there is a lot of fantasy with badly written female characters who occupy damsel roles more often than hero roles. Said fantasy is nevertheless read by women for lack of options, but they'd like better fantasy with better female characters better. It's not impossible for men to write good female characters, of course, it's just something that a man is less likely to be able to pull off, or to focus on.

MichaelGG 9y ago

Do you have evidence for that? Are there really solid cases where, say, 20% female team handled certain features far better than a 5% female team, due to their gender? I see this implicit assumption everywhere that diversity comes up, yet at best I've only seen studies indicating better workplace environment or higher productivity on mixed teams. But never anything in detail. And why does diversity fail so hard when it comes to physical activities?

anonymouskimmer 9y ago
Because all physical activities I can think of (other than some complex team exercises) are really basic in the physical attributes they require. Off the top of my head, spelunking would likely be a pretty diverse physical activity. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/homo-naledi-small-spelunkers-required-how-an-advert-led-to-the-discovery-of-homo-naledi https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/homo-naledi-...