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I completely agree that communication and people skills are necessary to be a great programmer. But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I firs

I completely agree that communication and people skills are necessary to be a great programmer. But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I first had to spend 4 years taking relatively intensive courses in math and computer science (even longer if you go back to elective courses in high school), and empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. Sure there are other paths into the industry, but no matter how you get here, the fact is that learning to code is intensive. Consider also that a large portion of the population can't pass a FizzBuzz programming interview (at least if Jeff Atwood is to be believed). And if you can't write FizzBuzz, no amount of empathy in the world is going to make you a good programmer. So yes, "soft skills" are tremendously important. But "hard skills" take priority. And whatever the cause may be, the fact is that right now there is a larger proportion of men than women who possess those hard skills.

pavlov 9y ago
...empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. When you put it that way, it is a shocking indictment of how little the current educational system actually serves the needs of the software industry. Most of us work on things that interact with, and affect, real people. Yet engineers are usually hired based on how well they can memorize data structures that they will almost never need in their actual daily work. It's frustrating for the engineers who expected to work on awesome abstract CS problems, and instead have to deal with messy systems that contain messy data that users care about.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  Everything that everyone works on affects people. Programming is no different than any other profession in that regard.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    That's obviously not true, as there are major differences between professions. The work of an architect or event planner affects people directly and intimately in everyday interactions. The work of a mathematician or sociologist doesn't. Programmers' work is closer to the former group, but educational and hiring practices pretend it's more like the latter.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      Is it really though. Typically programmers do not interact directly other than with other of their kind (yes I used the tribalism adjective). software architects and testers neither. This opposed to analysts, marketing who directly engage with clients and management who interact with their own group as well as at least people they manage.
pg314 9y ago
> But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I first had to spend 4 years taking relatively intensive courses in math and computer science (even longer if you go back to elective courses in high school), and empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. Sure there are other paths into the industry, but no matter how you get here, the fact is that learning to code is intensive. If you look at the number of maths majors compared to the number of computer science majors, this argument isn't very persuasive. The former had more than 40% women in 2012, the latter less than 20%. [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/ http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...
- freetime2 9y ago
  Couple of thoughts on the percentage of female math majors... First - a significant percentage of math majors eventually go into teaching. I wasn't able to find the exact percentage, but 3 of the 5 most common jobs for math majors are in teaching. Second - the types of math courses that undergraduate CS majors take is different from the types of courses that math majors take - especially math majors who are planning to go into teaching. CS degrees tend to focus more on discrete math and algorithms, whereas as math degrees focus on... well... I don't actually know what math degrees require. This is pure anecdote (and probably bound to piss off a few math majors), but I remember taking a group theory course in my 4th year and all of the math majors in the course seemed to struggle far more than the CS majors in the course. So if you consider that math major often means teacher, then no I don't think that data point about 40% of math majors being female does much to dispel traditional gender stereotypes. https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/ https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/
- yorwba 9y ago
  Scott Alexander has written an article on the whole issue http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger..., where he addresses the difference between math majors and computer science majors: Here’s another fun thing you can do with this theory: understand why women are so well represented in college math classes. Women are around 20% of CS majors, physics majors, engineering majors, etc – but almost half of math majors! This should be shocking. Aren’t we constantly told that women are bombarded with stereotypes about math being for men? Isn’t the archetypal example of children learning gender roles that Barbie doll that said “Math is hard, let’s go shopping?” And yet women’s representation in undergraduate math classes is really quite good. I was totally confused by this for a while until a commenter directed me to the data on what people actually do with math degrees. The answer is mostly: they become math teachers. They work in elementary schools and high schools, with people. Then all those future math teachers leave for the schools after undergrad, and so math grad school ends up with pretty much the same male-tilted gender balance as CS, physics, and engineering grad school.

pavlov 9y ago

...empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. When you put it that way, it is a shocking indictment of how little the current educational system actually serves the needs of the software industry. Most of us work on things that interact with, and affect, real people. Yet engineers are usually hired based on how well they can memorize data structures that they will almost never need in their actual daily work. It's frustrating for the engineers who expected to work on awesome abstract CS problems, and instead have to deal with messy systems that contain messy data that users care about.

chrisco255 9y ago
Everything that everyone works on affects people. Programming is no different than any other profession in that regard.
- pavlov 9y ago
  That's obviously not true, as there are major differences between professions. The work of an architect or event planner affects people directly and intimately in everyday interactions. The work of a mathematician or sociologist doesn't. Programmers' work is closer to the former group, but educational and hiring practices pretend it's more like the latter.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Is it really though. Typically programmers do not interact directly other than with other of their kind (yes I used the tribalism adjective). software architects and testers neither. This opposed to analysts, marketing who directly engage with clients and management who interact with their own group as well as at least people they manage.

pg314 9y ago

> But consider that in order to get a job as a programmer, I first had to spend 4 years taking relatively intensive courses in math and computer science (even longer if you go back to elective courses in high school), and empathy was not an important factor in getting through my coursework or examinations. Sure there are other paths into the industry, but no matter how you get here, the fact is that learning to code is intensive. If you look at the number of maths majors compared to the number of computer science majors, this argument isn't very persuasive. The former had more than 40% women in 2012, the latter less than 20%. [1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/ http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

freetime2 9y ago
Couple of thoughts on the percentage of female math majors... First - a significant percentage of math majors eventually go into teaching. I wasn't able to find the exact percentage, but 3 of the 5 most common jobs for math majors are in teaching. Second - the types of math courses that undergraduate CS majors take is different from the types of courses that math majors take - especially math majors who are planning to go into teaching. CS degrees tend to focus more on discrete math and algorithms, whereas as math degrees focus on... well... I don't actually know what math degrees require. This is pure anecdote (and probably bound to piss off a few math majors), but I remember taking a group theory course in my 4th year and all of the math majors in the course seemed to struggle far more than the CS majors in the course. So if you consider that math major often means teacher, then no I don't think that data point about 40% of math majors being female does much to dispel traditional gender stereotypes. https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/ https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/
yorwba 9y ago
Scott Alexander has written an article on the whole issue http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger..., where he addresses the difference between math majors and computer science majors: Here’s another fun thing you can do with this theory: understand why women are so well represented in college math classes. Women are around 20% of CS majors, physics majors, engineering majors, etc – but almost half of math majors! This should be shocking. Aren’t we constantly told that women are bombarded with stereotypes about math being for men? Isn’t the archetypal example of children learning gender roles that Barbie doll that said “Math is hard, let’s go shopping?” And yet women’s representation in undergraduate math classes is really quite good. I was totally confused by this for a while until a commenter directed me to the data on what people actually do with math degrees. The answer is mostly: they become math teachers. They work in elementary schools and high schools, with people. Then all those future math teachers leave for the schools after undergrad, and so math grad school ends up with pretty much the same male-tilted gender balance as CS, physics, and engineering grad school.