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How I, a woman in tech, benefited from sexism in Silicon Valley

321 points by florianmari 9y ago

rsp1984 9y ago
I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes. Thanks for saying this. I feel the exact same way, and I'm male.
daeken 9y ago
When I was 16, I was in a horrible car accident. I was out of school for something like 6 weeks. During that time, I built a project that got me into Forbes a few months later, and into my first real job. I benefited greatly from that car accident. Would I like to thank the responsible parties? No. This justification is ridiculous. Just because sexism makes things easier for some doesn't make the statement "Sexism isn’t making it harder for women to enter tech." any less ridiculous. Sexism makes the entire industry worse. It holds down some talented people (e.g. the vast majority of women with an interest in security, the men in her examples, and likely any unattractive women in similar situations to her examples (as they're judged far more harshly, again subconsciously)), while lifting up others who are less talented.
- urbanj 9y ago
  The reason you're getting downvoted is that Hacker News is mainly populated by lonely insecure men who are social rejects and project their inadequacies onto women. dang et al - I hold you all personally responsible for the toxic cesspool Hacker News has become. You have failed.
antirez 9y ago
About the Selection Leader story, it may not be that we have a different scale for men and women, but just that, since people are aware of a potential negative bias towards women, they unconsciously try to avoid the error of giving a worse score to the woman, so they ended boosting the score as a "protection" mechanism. Since we are human it is very hard to avoid this kind of mistakes, especially given that the whole discrimination problem is handled with such a tension that people over-react in all the directions at this point.
- 77pt77 9y ago
  > since people are aware of a potential negative bias towards women Except reality seems to be the opposite[1] > Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. > Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract
Aqua 9y ago
IMHO the very idea of forcefully pulling women into the tech field is the root of evil here. This philosophy gives birth to the stereotype that women are “worse” than men in engineering and science, because someone who is employed based on their sex, orientation, color, etc. rather than actual skills and competences makes life miserable for their team members who then start thinking that some particular group is generally worse than the other. Stop shoving tech down their throat and absurd stereotypes and sexism will disappear on their own without the need of silencing someone’s view by force.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  It's not gonna happen. There is a whole movement for "getting girls into coding" - conferences, organizations, workshops... You might say they don't really care what girls feel. But it's more complicated than that: these people think that girls have been conditioned, and the can be reeducated to like tech. That's an ideological issue, hard to debate because it's based on deep convictions. So no, they won't stop shoving tech down their throats.
  - froindt 9y ago
    It is a tricky issue. I have a bunch of friends who were involved in these programs in college. I didn't quite get it until one of them pointed at the computer engineering and software engineering programs on campus. Of all the engineering fields, theirs had the most unbalanced ratio of men and women. That's not to say I think it must be exactly 50/50, and I definitely agree merit should be the consideration in hiring. But if young girls go to a general "learn about engineering" event and see 90% men presenting, go over a number of years, and never see a woman in computer or software engineering present, they probably wouldn't be very interested in those programs. And if they got to college and started in the program, they are one of (literally) about 2 women in the ~100 freshman, they do have additional challenges to face in the program. Numerous times I've seen women in engineering groups bring up a point, get it poo-poo'd, only for a man to think of it a few minutes later and advance the team on the project. Watch for it, it happens more than you'd think. They will likely also face some degree of awkward guys asking them for dates, really awkward social interactions with some members of their major members, etc. There's a study (I can't find it right now) which looked at the composition of groups in engineering classes. IIRC, groups with 1/4 woman member had very low participation levels by the woman, but comparable levels with 2/4.
LifeQuestioner 9y ago
As a women in tech i'm starting to see another of these posts and thing URG Another* Give some some more interesting tech posts dammit! I've suffered sexism everywhere - not just in tech. Maybe i'm different because I enjoy writing code on my weekends, enjoy looking up the latest machine learning tools - that I really just ignore the sexism, because I want to make more things. As long as you're not explicitly stopping me writing interesting things, say what you like about me. Stop me from writing stuff I want, and i'll just leave with my hefty portfolio of diverse projects. I was the kid in school who would play football with other guys who would try and stop me, I just learnt to play better than them, because I loved playing, more than I cared about their sexism. (note, not trying to belittle anyone, I understand these are real issues and each story is different! Mine is in no way representitive). But I hate the rhetoric even coming from women's posts - that seems to put us down ourselves. Even if there's sexism, as i've encountered from a kid, I'm staying because I love to code and make new things and it's a natural part of where the world is at the moment. I can change it, by staying and breaking people's perceptions.
- deorder 9y ago
  Not only that, but many men suffer(ed) from these kind of biases / prejudices as well. For example macspoofing's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988299 I had the same experience. Being into computers used to be "uncool". Tech becoming more accepted by the general people is a pretty recent thing.
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    At the risk of incurring some pushback (which has happened when I've posted this topic before), some of the situations highlighted when discussing sexism against females ("in tech", usually, based on where I read them), has been something I and others have experienced as well, even though I'm not a female. The stories of "getting ignored in meetings" and "having your ideas glossed over until someone else ('a man') puts them forward" resonate with me and other men I know as well. There are real power dynamics in some companies/orgs which usually mean that not only do ideas generally only get to come from men, but usually only certain types of men: the men who 'fit in' with management already. But when pointing this out, I've been accused of ignoring sexism, or trying to downplay sexism, or trying to say it doesn't exist. None of those are true; I know it's a thing, but sometimes some of the symptoms seen may not actually be the result of gender bias (or race bias), but 'culture bias'. Sometimes someone's just being a jerk, not a 'sexist jerk', but if there's a gender difference, somehow 'sexism' is automatically applied to the equation, which may not always be warranted. The impact of the biases I've experienced is still likely less detrimental than the effects of sexism on women in tech.
randallsquared 9y ago
> I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. Every time I think I might be working too much, I hear that it's ordinary to work way more than I ever do, and I am reassured...
- macspoofing 9y ago
  hackathons aren't work. They're supposed to be fun (though not everyone will enjoy them) and are attended by the younger crowd. You won't see many 40-year old engineers with kids and a spouse going there.
  - kruttin 9y ago
    I'm 40 without kids and I still agree. I completely avoid hackathons at work because I hate the idea of being forced to be "creative" and doing optional work. I'd rather focus on my hobbies. I do applaud the youngins for being naive and enthusiastic though.
JamesMcMinn 9y ago
I usually avoid commenting on these sort of posts because frankly I don't believe I have a lot I can add to the discussion, but this is an interesting read, and I think the final paragraph is probably correct in how it frames the current situation - neither "side" will be happy until both are happy. The question isn't "should we be doing something?", it's "how do we do it?" and how do we have that discussion without it turning into something else? At the same time, we've also got to remember that this isn't just an issue in tech, it's an issue across the whole of society, and as an industry we should be looking at the broader picture, because this isn't an issue that technology can face alone, but it is one that affects tech more than many other industries. I really hope this is something we, as a society and industry, can improve upon. I'm lucky enough to work with a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds and cultures, and they're all great at what they do, but very very few of them are female. I'd love to think that I was above any bias (both positive and negative) that this introduces, but the fact is, I'm probably not because I'm only human. Until we can make tech more balanced, it's a bias that I will have to consider and try to overcome.
macspoofing 9y ago
>I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They are useless and detrimental to health. These are almost exclusively for kids in school or just out of school. Like camping - those that hate them, really hate them, and for others it's a lot fun. If you hate them, don't do them, they aren't necessary. You can be a perfectly good engineer without them. >I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy, unattractive, and without much of a social life. Female engineers? Oh man. She must have missed the generic Scientist-guy and Engineer-guy of the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Rick Moranis made a career playing those guys. The engineer bro-culture and a certain social status that is assigned to software or computer engineers and geekdom in general is a new phenomena. It was not cool to want to be a computer engineer or a geek for the vast majority of the last half century. It sort of reminds me of the praise the Wonder Woman movie got for being a breakthrough moment for women. I couldn't help but think, where were all these people in the 80s when nerds and geeks were made fun of for reading Wonder Woman and other comic books. My sister and her friends made fun of me and my friends for that! Nobody hid or put up walls to these comics from anybody. >I’ve read Megan McArdle’s essay and relate with her feeling of isolation as I’m often the only woman in an environment dominated by men. That wasn't quite the point of the essay though it is an interesting interpretation. >What we need to do is to make it easier for women to stay in tech...I don’t know how we can make it more fun to women in tech. That's kind of the crux of the problem. Nobody knows how to fix the undetectable, secret societal pressures that steer women away from STEM and into Humanities. Also, it's a job. It won't be fun for the vast majority of people. Why do jobs have to be fun? My father worked on the line at a factory all his life - it wasn't fun.
- _pmf_ 9y ago
  > The engineer bro-culture and a certain social status that is assigned to software or computer engineers and geekdom in general is a new phenomena. And it's restricted to the US (maybe Canada and the UK, too?). In Europe, software developers are nerds, period.
  - pluma 9y ago
    Nope. At least not to the same extent as in the 90s. Yes, they often have nerdy hobbies or interests but outside of e.g. free software and Linux, there's a fairly wide representation of the same culture as in the US. I'd argue Ruby and JS are almost entirely filled by them (which makes sense considering their popularity is quite recent compared to C, Perl or Python).
userbinator 9y ago
Every time this subject gets brought up, I keep wondering why it seems to be nearly exclusive to the US; East Europe and Asia in particular, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164600 I while ago, visited a Chinese software/hardware company and half if not more of the employees I saw were female. To my knowledge, there is essentially no explicit "we need more girls in tech" movement there.
- jules 9y ago
  The top comment in that thread has a hypothesis.
- masondixon 9y ago
  Yeh, US is pretty intense for social justice. I'd love to see a timeline and some kind of justification as to why it became such a strong force. I remember not even knowing what "social justice" mean't. Like all the people's time and energy invested in social justice today...what would these same people have been investing their energy in before 2010s? What I see is that people love being outraged, purpose-driven, and procrastination. And with social justice, while you're procrastinating, you can be outraged, and you can join a movement and gain a purpose. Social media is probably to blame.
  - urbanj 9y ago
    Wow you've missed the point completely - techbro. Hilarious. In China there are fewer barriers to women entering the tech industry - it is not perceived there to be a bastion of bro-ness. Therefore there are more women in the tech. Morons like you are in tech and fighting hard to prevent more capable people coming in because you know, deep down, how easy it would be to outcompete you. Oh - and do some reading on the suffragette movement, the fight against slavery, the fight against racism if you need to know how social justice was before you stopped sucking on your mama's teet. Asshole
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  The explanation I heard was in poorer countries, women are more likely to choose careers by how well they pay, instead of how interested they are in the field. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... seems to agree (ctrl+F 'Galkin')
masondixon 9y ago
> Lowering your hiring standards for women can give people like me the lingering self doubt that maybe I wasn’t good enough. Worse, it gives many techbros reasons to believe that his female colleagues aren’t as good as his, and act accordingly. As a male, this has always been my main argument against affirmative action. Too many SV white-knights feel they are helping simply because they are well intentioned. But good intentions do not always lead to the best outcomes. And the costs are these "lingering self doubts", and teams being suspicious of "diversity hires". Self-respect is very hard to quantify, but there is a distinct need for humans to be respected and authentically appreciated, and the extreme advocacy for females is sapping away this motivating force that is essential to work and life.
- skj 9y ago
  "If I got hired by a company with a diversity program, I'd wonder if I was as good as engineer as everyone else." - men who never wonder if they got their positions because they fit the image people have when they think of this industry
  - masondixon 9y ago
    Less women studied CS than men and less apply. The image used to be merit. Now its all fucked up.
- collyw 9y ago
  Personally I feel that its bad idea for the fact that affirmative action is sexist / racist. You end up selecting people based on their skin color / sex rather than their ability.
  - skj 9y ago
    The bit that leaves out is that this already happens without affirmative action.
    - masondixon 9y ago
77pt77 9y ago
This text is the anecdotal version of this [1] paper > The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring > Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. > Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. > Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  > The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring If anyone seriously thinks sexist hiring is the main reason, they can't have thought about this for a very long time. The horrible work-life balance in early phase academia, at the exact point when you are usually trying to start a family, is a much bigger issue. Especially since women in academia are often in relationships with men in academia, the question of "whose career do we down-prioritize" is answered as much by biology as by the wishes of the couple in question. Another one that is also a much bigger issue than sexist hiring is that many of the "gender affirmative actions" that universities usually have are actually quite damaging to women scientists. E.g. we have one at my local university that says all PhD defense committees must include one woman. Typically what happens is that the easiest way to achieve this is to ask a local female professor to be the committee administrator. That is just one example of how female scientists get handed a lot more non-research tasks, in the name of "gender equality", than their male counterparts. Other examples include project management and outreach activities, where departments are typically falling head-over-heels with an implicit but unintended "Look, we actually have a woman working here! Doing actual real work!" vibe.
_pmf_ 9y ago
As I said in another comment: in addition to people in favor of affirmative action and people opposed to affirmative action, there's the large class of people who are in favor of affirmative action, but against the political correctness pressure of having to act like they believe this in for the benefit of all instead of the explicit benefit of the affected minority. I am for affirmative action (as originally intended), and I treat coworkers whom I assume (in my flawed prejudiced manner) to have gotten here through AA with the same respect as if I did not assume that they were hired because of AA (and stop respecting them if they don't prove themselves as suitable for the job, as I would do with non AA coworkers), but I refuse to sign the "any kind of diversity magically improves everything" manifesto.
spodek 9y ago
Reading The Myth of Male Power led to situations like these make a lot more sense. It offers a different perspective than the predominant view that I find more consistent with experience. I read it because I thought for sure the author was misguided and I would find flaws and problems. Instead I found myself learning and growing. https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0425181448/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1486666400&sr=8-1&keywords=amazon+myth+of+male+power https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0425181448/ref=sr_1_...
- anujdeshpande 9y ago
  On that same note, there's a recent documentary called "The Red Pill" about men's rights.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
imartin2k 9y ago
"I have the feeling that we’ve been only addressing one side of the story. It’s the side where women are victims. I’m here to tell the story of how I, as a woman in tech, benefited from sexism and that men can be victims too." Something that keeps bugging me - and this is in no way limited to tech - how being a victim has become an identity to many, which is almost worn as a badge. While I do what I can to emphasize with every individual who has been exposed to discrimination, harassment (and while as a white man I experienced most likely much less of this, although not nothing), a scenario in which everyone walks around all day long feeling as the victim (followed by the inevitable selective perception and confirmation bias) cannot function. I recently listened to a philosophy podcast which started with a line which has since been stuck in my head "In a time in which being a victim offers so much social capital...". (edit: I recalled the quote slightly inaccurately, but the point was the same: "In a culture in which there is so much social currency connected to being a victim..." In case you are curious, it's episode #105 of philosophizethis.org) I don't know what to do about it and I in no way want to diminish the harm that those who feel like victims experienced. But whenever victimhood is becoming an identity, things are getting out of hand. (the feeling of being a systemic/structural victim can be found on all sides of the political/ideological/gender spectrum of course).
- ethanwillis 9y ago
  What's the podcast?
  - imartin2k 9y ago
    http://philosophizethis.org/ http://philosophizethis.org/ Sadly i dont remember anymore which episode it was. One of the most recent ones. edit: #105. and as i've now listened to the quote again, i realize it was slightly different, but same point: "In a culture in which there so much social currency connected to being a victim..."
- 77pt77 9y ago
  > In a time in which being a victim offers so much social capital I think this only applies to specific subgroups and not the general population. I don't think many people would care about a hedge fund manager that was bullied in school for example.
jlebrech 9y ago
equal opportunity is like being given better equipment at the start of a videogame where everyone else has to learn the game's mechanics. at some point you never learned some of those early game skills to get past a certain point.
MichaelBurge 9y ago
The industry is legally forbidden from discussing this subject, so all discussions here or elsewhere will inevitably miss the point. And as members of the public, Google will tell us whatever mitigates their risk the best. You want freedom of speech and the ability to make arguments, you don't work for a public company. And trying to debate it, is like trying to debate Galileo while the inquisition is in the room. Corporations are required to save all electronic records for SOX auditing, and the State of California might decide to help themselves to those records when their Attorney General is trying to make a name for himself by bringing a gender discrimination lawsuit. That's why you fire people who make a habit of saying incriminating things in easily-searchable electronic format. For a similar reason, they should probably fire every Google employee who talked about it on the public internet. Very high chance of being troublemakers who draw attention from the government.
danso 9y ago
> Sexism isn’t making it harder for women to enter tech. From my personal experiences, sexism makes it even easier for women to enter tech, though I understand that my experiences don’t generalize to that of other women. The OP may have personally benefited from sexism. I don't understand why that leads to the assertion of "Sexism isn't making it harder for women to enter tech" when her experience seems to better support, "Sexism doesn't necessarily make it harder for women to enter tech" Edit: Not being pedantic for pedantic' sake. The OP's assertion inherently contradicts the assertions of women who do believe that they were hindered by sexism. So I'm genuinely confused if the OP believes that assertion as it is written, or if it's a case of imprecise wording.
rayiner 9y ago
The focus on individuals, of either gender, is short sighted. I've worked as an engineer in a male dominated environment, and a lawyer in gender balanced ones. When I think of what I'd want my daughter to do, I can't help but think she'd have an easier time maximizing her potential in the latter field, where she doesn't have to deal with the awkwardness of being the only woman on her team, or working only for men team leaders. Today, much of the pipeline in law is both gender balanced and gender blind. There are no programs to encourage girls to take the LSAT, no gnashing of teeth about not enough women graduating with JDs or applying to law firms. It's not perfect (only a third of new partners are women, versus half of new associates) but we're light years ahead of tech. It wasn't always that way. Fifty years ago, only 5% of women were lawyers (long after they were legally permitted to join the bar). People rolled out the same tropes--the work was too detail oriented and analytical for women, who preferred to work with people and children. They wouldn't want to deal with the stress and long hours. Etc. That turned out to be bunk. Now, people who want to maintain the idea that women are predisposed to not going into tech have to resort to distinguishing what were archetypally "male" fields like law by redefining those fields to be women-friendly ones. The legal profession fixed the problem of historic discrimination in the field by not being gender blind. Schools and law firms gnashed teeth about their gender ratios, like tech schools and companies are doing now. And while that may have been "unfair" to certain individuals at certain moments in time, it was the only way to fix society's earlier sins. A skewed gender ratio that is the product of past discrimination is itself a form of discrimination. If you want to claim to have leveled the playing field, then you have to actually level it and see if it stays level on its own. In law and medicine, that turned out to be the case. I don't expect the situation will be different in tech.
- anujdeshpande 9y ago
  I am a little concerned with the 'may have been "unfair" to certain individuals' bit of your post. It takes a lot of effort to not react to such incidents- either non-violently or in the worst case violently. This pent up frustration at being part of a pseudo meritocracy is reflected in unfortunate places - - "Oh why do you care about this appraisal <girl's name>, you can marry and settle rich" (unfortunately this actually happened to someone I know). My point being - the people that might be victims of your 'may have been "unfair"' approach, end up as not-nice people who are proponents of the sexism that we are trying to end here.
zelos 9y ago
>I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes. I think that's a very small section of the tech world, though. I've never seen or heard about that kind of behaviour outside of SV startup scene. Admittedly I'm a dull corporate developer, working in decidedly untrendy technologies in London.
dandare 9y ago
Who wants to play an Arguman game with me? Not specifically about the diversity memo but about positive discrimination in general. http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-immoral/26988 http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-imm...
deleted 9y ago
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g_lass 9y ago
A company I used to work at has a 25% female target that was informally backed up by fewer promotion points for the hiring manager if not met. That means, if you are a woman (as I am), and you're one of the four applicants then you'll be hired. Even worse, we had intern slots that were female only. They weren't advertised as such, but male applicants were ignored. Is this how we get "diversity"?
- kruttin 9y ago
  I work at a company who set a similar target for gender diversity. They met it. However, I get the feeling they were doing it in a way that temporarily discriminated. In our product department I would say the split is 60/40 men to women. Racially it's mostly Caucasian but with a decent proportion of Asians. We recently started our internship program for the summer and I noticed something odd. Out of the 20 or so internship all but 3 were women, and almost all of them were Asian. Perhaps to correct discrimination and lack of diversity you have to discriminate in the other direction. It's a sad state of affairs and I feel it's going to be this way for a while longer. However, this whole thing has left me with a bad taste in my mouth in regard to tech. After graduating years ago I never thought that my company, industry, etc would turn into a political clusterfuck.
creo 9y ago
I have similar view to her. Its kinda harder for me to say it because im a man. There is also a story behind my view. It goes like this: Im a runner. Not very good, not very fast, just average. Most of the time, im in the middle of my category. All local races are like 80% man and 20% woman. So while im in the middle, my female colleague running same pace is almost always on the podium. It works in her favor. IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT SHES BETTER/WORSE OR FAVORED/DISCRIMINATED. It just doesn't mean anything, So why we have that kinda ridiculous talk in IT? Who benefits from dividing communities?
- dsfjksdf 9y ago
  It starts to matter once the winners of the race get serious amounts of money.
  - creo 9y ago
    If it is about money than im disappointed.
- Sholmesy 9y ago
  Yes, but biologically men are faster runners. We can measure this by comparing times from various athletes/general population. It is very difficult to quantify skill at creating software. I don't know if these two things are comparable, I think you might be implying that men are biologically better at creating software. Maybe they are, but I'd like to see the study, as I don't believe that to be the case.
  - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
    The problem with this whole conversation is people add their worst cast assumptions and value judge that. When Damore said people have different traits, he meant it in a statistical way https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1502146696203-Screen-Shot-2017-08-07-at-65310-PM.png https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1502146696203-S... And he definitely didn't say men are better. That was the assumption added by people who propagated the message. If you haven't read the original, please try to read it, and I mean really, read it, not skim over it and make judgment. And please try to be open minded and don't add your own assumptions about what other people meant such as: "I think you might be implying that men are biologically better at creating software."
jansho 9y ago
Someone here mentioned that women are being pressured to join STEM, and that this is "evil." A bit strong but I agree that this may backfire on us. Who doesn't want a more open environment where everyone can feel comfortable in. But lately, I'm sensing the diversity discussion shifting from "we are the victims" (IMO while true, not very useful) to "we are better than you." That does no service to anyone at all; suddenly we see each other in gender camps and there's a battle line drawn in between. Hey I also don't want to be identified by my gender only thanks. It's a difficult subject because the issue is actually real. I've experienced it myself, and wish that things are different. I fully support incentives to get more women into tech, but the way we're going about it now is perhaps too much in the face. Let's not forget that diversity means inclusion of all groups, so that the majority and the many minorities are considered for. It may seem messy but IMO the best we can do is to be compassionate to one another, which yes, may mean some (acceptable) give-and-take from everyone.
arkh 9y ago
> I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy, unattractive, and without much of a social life. Seriously? I agree with the lack of social life. But how come most of the tech people on TV (especially SF) are women? And it's not a new trend (Stargate, X-Files etc.). Maybe the author does not think they are attractive because she does not use the same criteria most male use. > I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. I let you on a little secret: most male programmers hate those too. If you want to make tech attractive to women you have to improve its work/life balance: less hours. So 9/5 jobs which are already available in lot of huge corporations. But yes that's less glamorous or rewarding than the startup scene. And about the chicken and egg problem? Just start your own company.
- Inconel 9y ago
  I also didn't really get the author's point about all the unattractive female engineers on TV. I actually think the opposite is the problem, for both men and women, that the engineers or scientists you see on TV tend to be ridiculously good looking people, only now they're wearing thick framed glasses.
js8 9y ago
This kind of reminds me of this episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Opportunities_(Yes_Minister) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Opportunities_(Yes_Minis... I think the authors have nailed it. There is a lot of posturing, but at the end of the day, most people for whom it is all done, ostensibly, do not want quotas or special favors.
raisinbread1234 9y ago
"You are a sexist" is the new weapon for women these days. Just say that and every common sense argument loses and everyone just shuts their mouth.
- dijit 9y ago
  That's not the common insult. However on twitter; "Mansplaining" is a quick way to shut down conversation leading to sometimes funny[0] dialog between my girlfriend and folks on twitter. [0]: https://twitter.com/libsecure/status/833457782275833857 https://twitter.com/libsecure/status/833457782275833857
0xfaded 9y ago
I want to point out this passage: "But I was accepted, while all of my friends weren’t. I just thought that it was because I prepped a lot for the interviews and my preparation paid off." It's likely that the preparation did pay off and possible that the author was as smart as her friends but not confident enough to believe it. I've always been a snarky know-it-all, and honestly when I don't have the answers I tend to extrapolate (read bs). It was only after talking to a long time friend who identified as having impostor syndrome I realised that this behaviour could be harmful. She is a software engineer, beat me in school and should be running rings around me. Take it from a snark, confidence doesn't always mean smarter.
diegoperini 9y ago
Can be off-topic but this piece must resonate more. "I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes. I don’t like feeling like a piece of furniture to add to the company’s diversity. I don’t like my male teammates to think that I got to where they are only because I’m female. I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy, unattractive, and without much of a social life."
bracebreak22 9y ago
I just recently left a tech start-up where the "look at how awesome and diverse we are" rhetoric was so bad that I couldn't take it anymore. When I first joined the company, I didn't even bat an eye that every single employee was a white guy (Hispanic male here). It was only later after their recruiter who, I befriended, told me I was their first "diversity hire". I laughed and took it tongue in cheek. However, over time, they formed a "diversity team" to emphasize in making the company more diverse. Later on, I came to find out that this company did not care about the individuals joining the company, but rather the "diversity quota" they set to meet. Instead of hearing "we hired a great engineer who is great in xyz", we would instead hear the likes of "Susan accepted our offer letter, we finally have a female engineer on our team"; "Tim will be joining our Product team. Hooray for gay!" (Yes, this was actually posted on a slack channel one of the founders). It became clear that this company was more worried about having mascots rather than seeking talented diverse individuals. I pissed me off so much at how condescending the founders would be when communicating with "non-traditional" employees and how they thought they were such great, progressive leaders.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  This is disgusting, I am sure you are no different from your peers in skills (and probably even better than the average developers around you) and it's just not fair that you have to go through this. People should be totally confident that they got the job because they did a good job and the employer liked them for who they are but this whole diversity system makes people doubt themselves, consciously or subconsciously. I hope you're now working at a place where there's no such bullshit, and wish you all the best.
bracebreak22 9y ago
I just recently left a tech start-up where the "look at how awesome and diverse we are" rhetoric was so bad that I couldn't take it anymore. When I first joined the company, I didn't even bat an eye that every single employee was a white guy (Hispanic male here). It was only later after their recruiter who, I befriended, told me I was their first "diversity hire". I laughed and took it tongue in cheek. However, over time, they formed a "diversity team" to emphasize in making the company more diverse. Later on, I came to find out that this company did not care about the individuals joining the company, but rather the "diversity quota" they set to meet. Instead of hearing "we hired a great engineer who is great in xyz", we would instead hear the likes of "Susan accepted our offer letter, we finally have a female engineer on our team"; "Tim will be joining our Product team. Hooray for gay!" (Yes, this was actually posted on a slack channel one of the founders). It became clear that this company was more worried about having mascots rather than seeking talented diverse individuals. I pissed me off so much at how condescending the founders would be when communicating with "non-traditional" employees and how they thought they were such great, progressive leaders.
brad0 9y ago
> I don’t like feeling like a piece of furniture to add to the company’s diversity. This is a great point. Companies are still sexist when there's a 2:1 chance a female will be hired over males with equivalent skills. I'm happy there's some discourse around these topics right now.
babesh 9y ago
I think I have seen a similar pattern in interviews where men actually give women higher scores for the same performance as men but women would have no compunction giving the same women the actual lower score they deserve. The reason is that the men don't want to appear sexist. The same goes for promotions. On the flip side, there is discrimination against women too with less pay for equal work. Prettier women would also get more 'attention' from coworkers which could be especially an issue if it were from a higher up.
la6470 9y ago
I just discovered a statistical scientific study that says white men have lower IQ than asians and they are predisposed to addiction violence and conquering other countries for spices. I don't want to stereotype but maybe maybe this is a probability and reason why there are so much more asians in our universities. Oh no I sent out this in the internet echo chamber and it was to be promptly deleted.
had2makeanacct 9y ago
I always look at affirmative action in the US with the perspective of someone looking at the reservations given to the "lower castes" in India to make up for the oppression of the past. If a "general category" (upper caste) guy and a "lower caste" guy with the same financial history appear for an examination to get into a Law College, Engineering College, Medical, etc then they lower caste person needs to achieve much less scores to get in. They have seats reserved for them which can never be transferred to a general category person even if no reservation caste person decides to appear for the exam. You can't blame people if they are apprehensive about going to a doctor who comes from the lower caste, you'll always doubt his skills because he had it easier.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  The thinking is long term. You have a large segment of your population that is economically underutilized. Getting more of them educated in this generation will help even more get educated in the next generation until eventually, you don't have this drain on your economic output caused by hundreds of years of discrimination. The problem of undereducated doctors has always existed because only an already wealthy and historically advantaged few could go through the process of medical education without their family starving. After a few generations, doctors will be drawn from a much larger pool, and the ones who make it will be of higher quality.
  - had2makeanacct 9y ago
    That sounds good in theory but there are a plethora of jobs that the general category people can't get now, there's no way this is equality. I didn't do a good job explaining the situation it was just an overview, I'd be okay with this but in practise this is really harmful and will go on because they hold the votes.
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      Who said anything about equality? The goal is to become a developed country with broad access to healthcare and economic access, which will lead to faster scientific development that benefits everybody. The fastest way to get that is not to help the already wealthy a little but to help the people disadvantaged merely due to accident of birth a lot. More equality is a relatively inconsequential side benefit. You could either make yourself slightly wealthier now and die with all the other wealthy people with today's life expectancy, or you could live significantly longer by increasing the number of people who participate in economic and scientific development. There might be problems in the implementation of those programs, and that's what you should focus on fixing; however, the general idea is obviously correct to any logical long term thinker.
needlessly2 9y ago
>“She’s good for a woman, so even though she doesn’t do as well as that guy, she still gets the same scores because she’s in the women’s league.” But it would still be viewed as sexist if the interviewers gave her lower scores. The only way not to be sexist is if you absolutely assess it right. Not too high and not too low. (not saying the author is calling them sexist)
needlessly2 9y ago
>I think this whole claiming that being a victim as a self-fulfilling prophecy is flawed. It's hard to say a trans woman who's been murdered or raped had it coming. wow, looks like things have escalated fast. We've gone from Google employees who earn 100k+ salaries as software engineers to rape...
- norea-armozel 9y ago
  That's the thing. You can't arbitrarily say that the line stops at one thing in terms of saying people are to blame for their misfortune when the same can be said for anyone that becomes a victim in any other circumstance. Either victims legitimately exist as a consequence of unfairness and injustice or they don't exist at all. It's really something that has to be said because it's the thing that I see too often stated in fluffier terms by New Agers (aka The Secret). One's attitude can no more stop the power of a bullet any more than one's attitude can stop the one who set that bullet in motion. Ultimately, we always have victims and we always have a choice to accept that they deserve justice when they are harmed.
  - needlessly2 9y ago
    >You can't arbitrarily say that the line stops at one thing I never said that or implied that. You misinterpreted. It makes zero sense to bring up rape when talking about this Google manifesto. I do think sexism and racism occur in the tech industry. However, not comparable in extremity to rape. This trivializes the experiences that rape victims actually do face. I'm not a moderator of course, so say what you want. But it makes your talking points looking appear ridiculous and nonsensical. Perhaps, your comments would be more relevant in the Binary Capital case.
    - norea-armozel 9y ago
      My comment was in reply to another comment which wasn't directly related to the letter that Damore wrote. I think you really need to read the comment I'm replying to before asserting anything else because I think you're confused. Try from the beginning and read.
gremsith 9y ago
It's just Mos Eisley, baby. It's not racism. It's not sexism. It's because I don't like you. And my friend, he doesn't like you either. Some things don't change, baby. Mos Eisley don't change. Some things never change.
akhilcacharya 9y ago
I genuinely wonder how much of this experience can be attributed to being in Stanford CS instead of Random State U CS.
matt_the_bass 9y ago
One thing that surprises me is how often society does not actively seek out candidates from underrepresented groups across all aspects of life. Often candidates from such groups are superior to candidates from the majority groups. Probably because they've had to work harder to acheive. Two anecdotal examples: 1. My work often enters into the world of super yachts. There are very few female yacht captains. Yet nearly all that i've met have been the best of the best. I suspect that in such a male dominated career path, the female captain had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts to get there. If I had a super yacht, I actively seek a female captain as i'd want the best of the best for my yacht. Yet of the largest, most expensive yachts none have a female captain. And female captains have a hard time finding good positions. 2. At my company we get significantly more male applicants than female applicants for our tech positions. As a whole though I'd say that average female applicant we get is better than the average male applicant and we've offer jobs to a significantly higher percentage of female applicants than male applicants. Sadly we get very few female applicants. Again I suspect it's because they had to work twice as hard as the their male counterparts to get to where they are. We didn't offer them positions because they were female. We offered them positions because they were the best candidate. Please note I'm not saying that it is a good thing that they have experienced sexism along their career paths.

321 points by florianmari 9y ago

rsp1984 9y ago

I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes. Thanks for saying this. I feel the exact same way, and I'm male.

daeken 9y ago

When I was 16, I was in a horrible car accident. I was out of school for something like 6 weeks. During that time, I built a project that got me into Forbes a few months later, and into my first real job. I benefited greatly from that car accident. Would I like to thank the responsible parties? No. This justification is ridiculous. Just because sexism makes things easier for some doesn't make the statement "Sexism isn’t making it harder for women to enter tech." any less ridiculous. Sexism makes the entire industry worse. It holds down some talented people (e.g. the vast majority of women with an interest in security, the men in her examples, and likely any unattractive women in similar situations to her examples (as they're judged far more harshly, again subconsciously)), while lifting up others who are less talented.

urbanj 9y ago
The reason you're getting downvoted is that Hacker News is mainly populated by lonely insecure men who are social rejects and project their inadequacies onto women. dang et al - I hold you all personally responsible for the toxic cesspool Hacker News has become. You have failed.

antirez 9y ago

About the Selection Leader story, it may not be that we have a different scale for men and women, but just that, since people are aware of a potential negative bias towards women, they unconsciously try to avoid the error of giving a worse score to the woman, so they ended boosting the score as a "protection" mechanism. Since we are human it is very hard to avoid this kind of mistakes, especially given that the whole discrimination problem is handled with such a tension that people over-react in all the directions at this point.

77pt77 9y ago
> since people are aware of a potential negative bias towards women Except reality seems to be the opposite[1] > Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. > Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract

Aqua 9y ago

IMHO the very idea of forcefully pulling women into the tech field is the root of evil here. This philosophy gives birth to the stereotype that women are “worse” than men in engineering and science, because someone who is employed based on their sex, orientation, color, etc. rather than actual skills and competences makes life miserable for their team members who then start thinking that some particular group is generally worse than the other. Stop shoving tech down their throat and absurd stereotypes and sexism will disappear on their own without the need of silencing someone’s view by force.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
It's not gonna happen. There is a whole movement for "getting girls into coding" - conferences, organizations, workshops... You might say they don't really care what girls feel. But it's more complicated than that: these people think that girls have been conditioned, and the can be reeducated to like tech. That's an ideological issue, hard to debate because it's based on deep convictions. So no, they won't stop shoving tech down their throats.
- froindt 9y ago
  It is a tricky issue. I have a bunch of friends who were involved in these programs in college. I didn't quite get it until one of them pointed at the computer engineering and software engineering programs on campus. Of all the engineering fields, theirs had the most unbalanced ratio of men and women. That's not to say I think it must be exactly 50/50, and I definitely agree merit should be the consideration in hiring. But if young girls go to a general "learn about engineering" event and see 90% men presenting, go over a number of years, and never see a woman in computer or software engineering present, they probably wouldn't be very interested in those programs. And if they got to college and started in the program, they are one of (literally) about 2 women in the ~100 freshman, they do have additional challenges to face in the program. Numerous times I've seen women in engineering groups bring up a point, get it poo-poo'd, only for a man to think of it a few minutes later and advance the team on the project. Watch for it, it happens more than you'd think. They will likely also face some degree of awkward guys asking them for dates, really awkward social interactions with some members of their major members, etc. There's a study (I can't find it right now) which looked at the composition of groups in engineering classes. IIRC, groups with 1/4 woman member had very low participation levels by the woman, but comparable levels with 2/4.

LifeQuestioner 9y ago

As a women in tech i'm starting to see another of these posts and thing URG Another* Give some some more interesting tech posts dammit! I've suffered sexism everywhere - not just in tech. Maybe i'm different because I enjoy writing code on my weekends, enjoy looking up the latest machine learning tools - that I really just ignore the sexism, because I want to make more things. As long as you're not explicitly stopping me writing interesting things, say what you like about me. Stop me from writing stuff I want, and i'll just leave with my hefty portfolio of diverse projects. I was the kid in school who would play football with other guys who would try and stop me, I just learnt to play better than them, because I loved playing, more than I cared about their sexism. (note, not trying to belittle anyone, I understand these are real issues and each story is different! Mine is in no way representitive). But I hate the rhetoric even coming from women's posts - that seems to put us down ourselves. Even if there's sexism, as i've encountered from a kid, I'm staying because I love to code and make new things and it's a natural part of where the world is at the moment. I can change it, by staying and breaking people's perceptions.

deorder 9y ago
Not only that, but many men suffer(ed) from these kind of biases / prejudices as well. For example macspoofing's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988299 I had the same experience. Being into computers used to be "uncool". Tech becoming more accepted by the general people is a pretty recent thing.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  At the risk of incurring some pushback (which has happened when I've posted this topic before), some of the situations highlighted when discussing sexism against females ("in tech", usually, based on where I read them), has been something I and others have experienced as well, even though I'm not a female. The stories of "getting ignored in meetings" and "having your ideas glossed over until someone else ('a man') puts them forward" resonate with me and other men I know as well. There are real power dynamics in some companies/orgs which usually mean that not only do ideas generally only get to come from men, but usually only certain types of men: the men who 'fit in' with management already. But when pointing this out, I've been accused of ignoring sexism, or trying to downplay sexism, or trying to say it doesn't exist. None of those are true; I know it's a thing, but sometimes some of the symptoms seen may not actually be the result of gender bias (or race bias), but 'culture bias'. Sometimes someone's just being a jerk, not a 'sexist jerk', but if there's a gender difference, somehow 'sexism' is automatically applied to the equation, which may not always be warranted. The impact of the biases I've experienced is still likely less detrimental than the effects of sexism on women in tech.

randallsquared 9y ago

> I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. Every time I think I might be working too much, I hear that it's ordinary to work way more than I ever do, and I am reassured...

macspoofing 9y ago
hackathons aren't work. They're supposed to be fun (though not everyone will enjoy them) and are attended by the younger crowd. You won't see many 40-year old engineers with kids and a spouse going there.
- kruttin 9y ago
  I'm 40 without kids and I still agree. I completely avoid hackathons at work because I hate the idea of being forced to be "creative" and doing optional work. I'd rather focus on my hobbies. I do applaud the youngins for being naive and enthusiastic though.

JamesMcMinn 9y ago

I usually avoid commenting on these sort of posts because frankly I don't believe I have a lot I can add to the discussion, but this is an interesting read, and I think the final paragraph is probably correct in how it frames the current situation - neither "side" will be happy until both are happy. The question isn't "should we be doing something?", it's "how do we do it?" and how do we have that discussion without it turning into something else? At the same time, we've also got to remember that this isn't just an issue in tech, it's an issue across the whole of society, and as an industry we should be looking at the broader picture, because this isn't an issue that technology can face alone, but it is one that affects tech more than many other industries. I really hope this is something we, as a society and industry, can improve upon. I'm lucky enough to work with a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds and cultures, and they're all great at what they do, but very very few of them are female. I'd love to think that I was above any bias (both positive and negative) that this introduces, but the fact is, I'm probably not because I'm only human. Until we can make tech more balanced, it's a bias that I will have to consider and try to overcome.

macspoofing 9y ago

>I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They are useless and detrimental to health. These are almost exclusively for kids in school or just out of school. Like camping - those that hate them, really hate them, and for others it's a lot fun. If you hate them, don't do them, they aren't necessary. You can be a perfectly good engineer without them. >I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy, unattractive, and without much of a social life. Female engineers? Oh man. She must have missed the generic Scientist-guy and Engineer-guy of the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Rick Moranis made a career playing those guys. The engineer bro-culture and a certain social status that is assigned to software or computer engineers and geekdom in general is a new phenomena. It was not cool to want to be a computer engineer or a geek for the vast majority of the last half century. It sort of reminds me of the praise the Wonder Woman movie got for being a breakthrough moment for women. I couldn't help but think, where were all these people in the 80s when nerds and geeks were made fun of for reading Wonder Woman and other comic books. My sister and her friends made fun of me and my friends for that! Nobody hid or put up walls to these comics from anybody. >I’ve read Megan McArdle’s essay and relate with her feeling of isolation as I’m often the only woman in an environment dominated by men. That wasn't quite the point of the essay though it is an interesting interpretation. >What we need to do is to make it easier for women to stay in tech...I don’t know how we can make it more fun to women in tech. That's kind of the crux of the problem. Nobody knows how to fix the undetectable, secret societal pressures that steer women away from STEM and into Humanities. Also, it's a job. It won't be fun for the vast majority of people. Why do jobs have to be fun? My father worked on the line at a factory all his life - it wasn't fun.

_pmf_ 9y ago
> The engineer bro-culture and a certain social status that is assigned to software or computer engineers and geekdom in general is a new phenomena. And it's restricted to the US (maybe Canada and the UK, too?). In Europe, software developers are nerds, period.
- pluma 9y ago
  Nope. At least not to the same extent as in the 90s. Yes, they often have nerdy hobbies or interests but outside of e.g. free software and Linux, there's a fairly wide representation of the same culture as in the US. I'd argue Ruby and JS are almost entirely filled by them (which makes sense considering their popularity is quite recent compared to C, Perl or Python).

userbinator 9y ago

Every time this subject gets brought up, I keep wondering why it seems to be nearly exclusive to the US; East Europe and Asia in particular, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164600 I while ago, visited a Chinese software/hardware company and half if not more of the employees I saw were female. To my knowledge, there is essentially no explicit "we need more girls in tech" movement there.

jules 9y ago
The top comment in that thread has a hypothesis.
masondixon 9y ago
Yeh, US is pretty intense for social justice. I'd love to see a timeline and some kind of justification as to why it became such a strong force. I remember not even knowing what "social justice" mean't. Like all the people's time and energy invested in social justice today...what would these same people have been investing their energy in before 2010s? What I see is that people love being outraged, purpose-driven, and procrastination. And with social justice, while you're procrastinating, you can be outraged, and you can join a movement and gain a purpose. Social media is probably to blame.
- urbanj 9y ago
  Wow you've missed the point completely - techbro. Hilarious. In China there are fewer barriers to women entering the tech industry - it is not perceived there to be a bastion of bro-ness. Therefore there are more women in the tech. Morons like you are in tech and fighting hard to prevent more capable people coming in because you know, deep down, how easy it would be to outcompete you. Oh - and do some reading on the suffragette movement, the fight against slavery, the fight against racism if you need to know how social justice was before you stopped sucking on your mama's teet. Asshole
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
The explanation I heard was in poorer countries, women are more likely to choose careers by how well they pay, instead of how interested they are in the field. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... seems to agree (ctrl+F 'Galkin')

masondixon 9y ago

> Lowering your hiring standards for women can give people like me the lingering self doubt that maybe I wasn’t good enough. Worse, it gives many techbros reasons to believe that his female colleagues aren’t as good as his, and act accordingly. As a male, this has always been my main argument against affirmative action. Too many SV white-knights feel they are helping simply because they are well intentioned. But good intentions do not always lead to the best outcomes. And the costs are these "lingering self doubts", and teams being suspicious of "diversity hires". Self-respect is very hard to quantify, but there is a distinct need for humans to be respected and authentically appreciated, and the extreme advocacy for females is sapping away this motivating force that is essential to work and life.

skj 9y ago
"If I got hired by a company with a diversity program, I'd wonder if I was as good as engineer as everyone else." - men who never wonder if they got their positions because they fit the image people have when they think of this industry
- masondixon 9y ago
  Less women studied CS than men and less apply. The image used to be merit. Now its all fucked up.
collyw 9y ago
Personally I feel that its bad idea for the fact that affirmative action is sexist / racist. You end up selecting people based on their skin color / sex rather than their ability.
- skj 9y ago
  The bit that leaves out is that this already happens without affirmative action.
  - masondixon 9y ago

77pt77 9y ago

This text is the anecdotal version of this [1] paper > The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring > Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. > Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. > Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
> The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring If anyone seriously thinks sexist hiring is the main reason, they can't have thought about this for a very long time. The horrible work-life balance in early phase academia, at the exact point when you are usually trying to start a family, is a much bigger issue. Especially since women in academia are often in relationships with men in academia, the question of "whose career do we down-prioritize" is answered as much by biology as by the wishes of the couple in question. Another one that is also a much bigger issue than sexist hiring is that many of the "gender affirmative actions" that universities usually have are actually quite damaging to women scientists. E.g. we have one at my local university that says all PhD defense committees must include one woman. Typically what happens is that the easiest way to achieve this is to ask a local female professor to be the committee administrator. That is just one example of how female scientists get handed a lot more non-research tasks, in the name of "gender equality", than their male counterparts. Other examples include project management and outreach activities, where departments are typically falling head-over-heels with an implicit but unintended "Look, we actually have a woman working here! Doing actual real work!" vibe.

_pmf_ 9y ago

As I said in another comment: in addition to people in favor of affirmative action and people opposed to affirmative action, there's the large class of people who are in favor of affirmative action, but against the political correctness pressure of having to act like they believe this in for the benefit of all instead of the explicit benefit of the affected minority. I am for affirmative action (as originally intended), and I treat coworkers whom I assume (in my flawed prejudiced manner) to have gotten here through AA with the same respect as if I did not assume that they were hired because of AA (and stop respecting them if they don't prove themselves as suitable for the job, as I would do with non AA coworkers), but I refuse to sign the "any kind of diversity magically improves everything" manifesto.

spodek 9y ago

Reading The Myth of Male Power led to situations like these make a lot more sense. It offers a different perspective than the predominant view that I find more consistent with experience. I read it because I thought for sure the author was misguided and I would find flaws and problems. Instead I found myself learning and growing. https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0425181448/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1486666400&sr=8-1&keywords=amazon+myth+of+male+power https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0425181448/ref=sr_1_...

anujdeshpande 9y ago
On that same note, there's a recent documentary called "The Red Pill" about men's rights.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

imartin2k 9y ago

"I have the feeling that we’ve been only addressing one side of the story. It’s the side where women are victims. I’m here to tell the story of how I, as a woman in tech, benefited from sexism and that men can be victims too." Something that keeps bugging me - and this is in no way limited to tech - how being a victim has become an identity to many, which is almost worn as a badge. While I do what I can to emphasize with every individual who has been exposed to discrimination, harassment (and while as a white man I experienced most likely much less of this, although not nothing), a scenario in which everyone walks around all day long feeling as the victim (followed by the inevitable selective perception and confirmation bias) cannot function. I recently listened to a philosophy podcast which started with a line which has since been stuck in my head "In a time in which being a victim offers so much social capital...". (edit: I recalled the quote slightly inaccurately, but the point was the same: "In a culture in which there is so much social currency connected to being a victim..." In case you are curious, it's episode #105 of philosophizethis.org) I don't know what to do about it and I in no way want to diminish the harm that those who feel like victims experienced. But whenever victimhood is becoming an identity, things are getting out of hand. (the feeling of being a systemic/structural victim can be found on all sides of the political/ideological/gender spectrum of course).

ethanwillis 9y ago
What's the podcast?
- imartin2k 9y ago
  http://philosophizethis.org/ http://philosophizethis.org/ Sadly i dont remember anymore which episode it was. One of the most recent ones. edit: #105. and as i've now listened to the quote again, i realize it was slightly different, but same point: "In a culture in which there so much social currency connected to being a victim..."
77pt77 9y ago
> In a time in which being a victim offers so much social capital I think this only applies to specific subgroups and not the general population. I don't think many people would care about a hedge fund manager that was bullied in school for example.

jlebrech 9y ago

equal opportunity is like being given better equipment at the start of a videogame where everyone else has to learn the game's mechanics. at some point you never learned some of those early game skills to get past a certain point.

MichaelBurge 9y ago

The industry is legally forbidden from discussing this subject, so all discussions here or elsewhere will inevitably miss the point. And as members of the public, Google will tell us whatever mitigates their risk the best. You want freedom of speech and the ability to make arguments, you don't work for a public company. And trying to debate it, is like trying to debate Galileo while the inquisition is in the room. Corporations are required to save all electronic records for SOX auditing, and the State of California might decide to help themselves to those records when their Attorney General is trying to make a name for himself by bringing a gender discrimination lawsuit. That's why you fire people who make a habit of saying incriminating things in easily-searchable electronic format. For a similar reason, they should probably fire every Google employee who talked about it on the public internet. Very high chance of being troublemakers who draw attention from the government.

danso 9y ago

> Sexism isn’t making it harder for women to enter tech. From my personal experiences, sexism makes it even easier for women to enter tech, though I understand that my experiences don’t generalize to that of other women. The OP may have personally benefited from sexism. I don't understand why that leads to the assertion of "Sexism isn't making it harder for women to enter tech" when her experience seems to better support, "Sexism doesn't necessarily make it harder for women to enter tech" Edit: Not being pedantic for pedantic' sake. The OP's assertion inherently contradicts the assertions of women who do believe that they were hindered by sexism. So I'm genuinely confused if the OP believes that assertion as it is written, or if it's a case of imprecise wording.

rayiner 9y ago

The focus on individuals, of either gender, is short sighted. I've worked as an engineer in a male dominated environment, and a lawyer in gender balanced ones. When I think of what I'd want my daughter to do, I can't help but think she'd have an easier time maximizing her potential in the latter field, where she doesn't have to deal with the awkwardness of being the only woman on her team, or working only for men team leaders. Today, much of the pipeline in law is both gender balanced and gender blind. There are no programs to encourage girls to take the LSAT, no gnashing of teeth about not enough women graduating with JDs or applying to law firms. It's not perfect (only a third of new partners are women, versus half of new associates) but we're light years ahead of tech. It wasn't always that way. Fifty years ago, only 5% of women were lawyers (long after they were legally permitted to join the bar). People rolled out the same tropes--the work was too detail oriented and analytical for women, who preferred to work with people and children. They wouldn't want to deal with the stress and long hours. Etc. That turned out to be bunk. Now, people who want to maintain the idea that women are predisposed to not going into tech have to resort to distinguishing what were archetypally "male" fields like law by redefining those fields to be women-friendly ones. The legal profession fixed the problem of historic discrimination in the field by not being gender blind. Schools and law firms gnashed teeth about their gender ratios, like tech schools and companies are doing now. And while that may have been "unfair" to certain individuals at certain moments in time, it was the only way to fix society's earlier sins. A skewed gender ratio that is the product of past discrimination is itself a form of discrimination. If you want to claim to have leveled the playing field, then you have to actually level it and see if it stays level on its own. In law and medicine, that turned out to be the case. I don't expect the situation will be different in tech.

anujdeshpande 9y ago
I am a little concerned with the 'may have been "unfair" to certain individuals' bit of your post. It takes a lot of effort to not react to such incidents- either non-violently or in the worst case violently. This pent up frustration at being part of a pseudo meritocracy is reflected in unfortunate places - - "Oh why do you care about this appraisal <girl's name>, you can marry and settle rich" (unfortunately this actually happened to someone I know). My point being - the people that might be victims of your 'may have been "unfair"' approach, end up as not-nice people who are proponents of the sexism that we are trying to end here.

zelos 9y ago

>I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes. I think that's a very small section of the tech world, though. I've never seen or heard about that kind of behaviour outside of SV startup scene. Admittedly I'm a dull corporate developer, working in decidedly untrendy technologies in London.

dandare 9y ago

Who wants to play an Arguman game with me? Not specifically about the diversity memo but about positive discrimination in general. http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-immoral/26988 http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-imm...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

g_lass 9y ago

A company I used to work at has a 25% female target that was informally backed up by fewer promotion points for the hiring manager if not met. That means, if you are a woman (as I am), and you're one of the four applicants then you'll be hired. Even worse, we had intern slots that were female only. They weren't advertised as such, but male applicants were ignored. Is this how we get "diversity"?

kruttin 9y ago
I work at a company who set a similar target for gender diversity. They met it. However, I get the feeling they were doing it in a way that temporarily discriminated. In our product department I would say the split is 60/40 men to women. Racially it's mostly Caucasian but with a decent proportion of Asians. We recently started our internship program for the summer and I noticed something odd. Out of the 20 or so internship all but 3 were women, and almost all of them were Asian. Perhaps to correct discrimination and lack of diversity you have to discriminate in the other direction. It's a sad state of affairs and I feel it's going to be this way for a while longer. However, this whole thing has left me with a bad taste in my mouth in regard to tech. After graduating years ago I never thought that my company, industry, etc would turn into a political clusterfuck.

creo 9y ago

I have similar view to her. Its kinda harder for me to say it because im a man. There is also a story behind my view. It goes like this: Im a runner. Not very good, not very fast, just average. Most of the time, im in the middle of my category. All local races are like 80% man and 20% woman. So while im in the middle, my female colleague running same pace is almost always on the podium. It works in her favor. IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT SHES BETTER/WORSE OR FAVORED/DISCRIMINATED. It just doesn't mean anything, So why we have that kinda ridiculous talk in IT? Who benefits from dividing communities?

dsfjksdf 9y ago
It starts to matter once the winners of the race get serious amounts of money.
- creo 9y ago
  If it is about money than im disappointed.
Sholmesy 9y ago
Yes, but biologically men are faster runners. We can measure this by comparing times from various athletes/general population. It is very difficult to quantify skill at creating software. I don't know if these two things are comparable, I think you might be implying that men are biologically better at creating software. Maybe they are, but I'd like to see the study, as I don't believe that to be the case.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  The problem with this whole conversation is people add their worst cast assumptions and value judge that. When Damore said people have different traits, he meant it in a statistical way https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1502146696203-Screen-Shot-2017-08-07-at-65310-PM.png https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1502146696203-S... And he definitely didn't say men are better. That was the assumption added by people who propagated the message. If you haven't read the original, please try to read it, and I mean really, read it, not skim over it and make judgment. And please try to be open minded and don't add your own assumptions about what other people meant such as: "I think you might be implying that men are biologically better at creating software."

jansho 9y ago

Someone here mentioned that women are being pressured to join STEM, and that this is "evil." A bit strong but I agree that this may backfire on us. Who doesn't want a more open environment where everyone can feel comfortable in. But lately, I'm sensing the diversity discussion shifting from "we are the victims" (IMO while true, not very useful) to "we are better than you." That does no service to anyone at all; suddenly we see each other in gender camps and there's a battle line drawn in between. Hey I also don't want to be identified by my gender only thanks. It's a difficult subject because the issue is actually real. I've experienced it myself, and wish that things are different. I fully support incentives to get more women into tech, but the way we're going about it now is perhaps too much in the face. Let's not forget that diversity means inclusion of all groups, so that the majority and the many minorities are considered for. It may seem messy but IMO the best we can do is to be compassionate to one another, which yes, may mean some (acceptable) give-and-take from everyone.

arkh 9y ago

> I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy, unattractive, and without much of a social life. Seriously? I agree with the lack of social life. But how come most of the tech people on TV (especially SF) are women? And it's not a new trend (Stargate, X-Files etc.). Maybe the author does not think they are attractive because she does not use the same criteria most male use. > I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. I let you on a little secret: most male programmers hate those too. If you want to make tech attractive to women you have to improve its work/life balance: less hours. So 9/5 jobs which are already available in lot of huge corporations. But yes that's less glamorous or rewarding than the startup scene. And about the chicken and egg problem? Just start your own company.

Inconel 9y ago
I also didn't really get the author's point about all the unattractive female engineers on TV. I actually think the opposite is the problem, for both men and women, that the engineers or scientists you see on TV tend to be ridiculously good looking people, only now they're wearing thick framed glasses.

js8 9y ago

This kind of reminds me of this episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Opportunities_(Yes_Minister) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Opportunities_(Yes_Minis... I think the authors have nailed it. There is a lot of posturing, but at the end of the day, most people for whom it is all done, ostensibly, do not want quotas or special favors.

raisinbread1234 9y ago

"You are a sexist" is the new weapon for women these days. Just say that and every common sense argument loses and everyone just shuts their mouth.

dijit 9y ago
That's not the common insult. However on twitter; "Mansplaining" is a quick way to shut down conversation leading to sometimes funny[0] dialog between my girlfriend and folks on twitter. [0]: https://twitter.com/libsecure/status/833457782275833857 https://twitter.com/libsecure/status/833457782275833857

0xfaded 9y ago

I want to point out this passage: "But I was accepted, while all of my friends weren’t. I just thought that it was because I prepped a lot for the interviews and my preparation paid off." It's likely that the preparation did pay off and possible that the author was as smart as her friends but not confident enough to believe it. I've always been a snarky know-it-all, and honestly when I don't have the answers I tend to extrapolate (read bs). It was only after talking to a long time friend who identified as having impostor syndrome I realised that this behaviour could be harmful. She is a software engineer, beat me in school and should be running rings around me. Take it from a snark, confidence doesn't always mean smarter.

diegoperini 9y ago

Can be off-topic but this piece must resonate more. "I don’t like those 48 hour coding hackathons without sleep or shower. They are useless and detrimental to health. I don’t like techbros’ hangouts, with beers, playing pool, and occasional jerking off jokes. I don’t like feeling like a piece of furniture to add to the company’s diversity. I don’t like my male teammates to think that I got to where they are only because I’m female. I don’t like the representation of female engineers on TV, always nerdy, unattractive, and without much of a social life."

bracebreak22 9y ago

I just recently left a tech start-up where the "look at how awesome and diverse we are" rhetoric was so bad that I couldn't take it anymore. When I first joined the company, I didn't even bat an eye that every single employee was a white guy (Hispanic male here). It was only later after their recruiter who, I befriended, told me I was their first "diversity hire". I laughed and took it tongue in cheek. However, over time, they formed a "diversity team" to emphasize in making the company more diverse. Later on, I came to find out that this company did not care about the individuals joining the company, but rather the "diversity quota" they set to meet. Instead of hearing "we hired a great engineer who is great in xyz", we would instead hear the likes of "Susan accepted our offer letter, we finally have a female engineer on our team"; "Tim will be joining our Product team. Hooray for gay!" (Yes, this was actually posted on a slack channel one of the founders). It became clear that this company was more worried about having mascots rather than seeking talented diverse individuals. I pissed me off so much at how condescending the founders would be when communicating with "non-traditional" employees and how they thought they were such great, progressive leaders.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
This is disgusting, I am sure you are no different from your peers in skills (and probably even better than the average developers around you) and it's just not fair that you have to go through this. People should be totally confident that they got the job because they did a good job and the employer liked them for who they are but this whole diversity system makes people doubt themselves, consciously or subconsciously. I hope you're now working at a place where there's no such bullshit, and wish you all the best.

bracebreak22 9y ago

brad0 9y ago

> I don’t like feeling like a piece of furniture to add to the company’s diversity. This is a great point. Companies are still sexist when there's a 2:1 chance a female will be hired over males with equivalent skills. I'm happy there's some discourse around these topics right now.

babesh 9y ago

I think I have seen a similar pattern in interviews where men actually give women higher scores for the same performance as men but women would have no compunction giving the same women the actual lower score they deserve. The reason is that the men don't want to appear sexist. The same goes for promotions. On the flip side, there is discrimination against women too with less pay for equal work. Prettier women would also get more 'attention' from coworkers which could be especially an issue if it were from a higher up.

la6470 9y ago

I just discovered a statistical scientific study that says white men have lower IQ than asians and they are predisposed to addiction violence and conquering other countries for spices. I don't want to stereotype but maybe maybe this is a probability and reason why there are so much more asians in our universities. Oh no I sent out this in the internet echo chamber and it was to be promptly deleted.

had2makeanacct 9y ago

I always look at affirmative action in the US with the perspective of someone looking at the reservations given to the "lower castes" in India to make up for the oppression of the past. If a "general category" (upper caste) guy and a "lower caste" guy with the same financial history appear for an examination to get into a Law College, Engineering College, Medical, etc then they lower caste person needs to achieve much less scores to get in. They have seats reserved for them which can never be transferred to a general category person even if no reservation caste person decides to appear for the exam. You can't blame people if they are apprehensive about going to a doctor who comes from the lower caste, you'll always doubt his skills because he had it easier.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
The thinking is long term. You have a large segment of your population that is economically underutilized. Getting more of them educated in this generation will help even more get educated in the next generation until eventually, you don't have this drain on your economic output caused by hundreds of years of discrimination. The problem of undereducated doctors has always existed because only an already wealthy and historically advantaged few could go through the process of medical education without their family starving. After a few generations, doctors will be drawn from a much larger pool, and the ones who make it will be of higher quality.
- had2makeanacct 9y ago
  That sounds good in theory but there are a plethora of jobs that the general category people can't get now, there's no way this is equality. I didn't do a good job explaining the situation it was just an overview, I'd be okay with this but in practise this is really harmful and will go on because they hold the votes.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Who said anything about equality? The goal is to become a developed country with broad access to healthcare and economic access, which will lead to faster scientific development that benefits everybody. The fastest way to get that is not to help the already wealthy a little but to help the people disadvantaged merely due to accident of birth a lot. More equality is a relatively inconsequential side benefit. You could either make yourself slightly wealthier now and die with all the other wealthy people with today's life expectancy, or you could live significantly longer by increasing the number of people who participate in economic and scientific development. There might be problems in the implementation of those programs, and that's what you should focus on fixing; however, the general idea is obviously correct to any logical long term thinker.

needlessly2 9y ago

>“She’s good for a woman, so even though she doesn’t do as well as that guy, she still gets the same scores because she’s in the women’s league.” But it would still be viewed as sexist if the interviewers gave her lower scores. The only way not to be sexist is if you absolutely assess it right. Not too high and not too low. (not saying the author is calling them sexist)

needlessly2 9y ago

>I think this whole claiming that being a victim as a self-fulfilling prophecy is flawed. It's hard to say a trans woman who's been murdered or raped had it coming. wow, looks like things have escalated fast. We've gone from Google employees who earn 100k+ salaries as software engineers to rape...

norea-armozel 9y ago
That's the thing. You can't arbitrarily say that the line stops at one thing in terms of saying people are to blame for their misfortune when the same can be said for anyone that becomes a victim in any other circumstance. Either victims legitimately exist as a consequence of unfairness and injustice or they don't exist at all. It's really something that has to be said because it's the thing that I see too often stated in fluffier terms by New Agers (aka The Secret). One's attitude can no more stop the power of a bullet any more than one's attitude can stop the one who set that bullet in motion. Ultimately, we always have victims and we always have a choice to accept that they deserve justice when they are harmed.
- needlessly2 9y ago
  >You can't arbitrarily say that the line stops at one thing I never said that or implied that. You misinterpreted. It makes zero sense to bring up rape when talking about this Google manifesto. I do think sexism and racism occur in the tech industry. However, not comparable in extremity to rape. This trivializes the experiences that rape victims actually do face. I'm not a moderator of course, so say what you want. But it makes your talking points looking appear ridiculous and nonsensical. Perhaps, your comments would be more relevant in the Binary Capital case.
  - norea-armozel 9y ago
    My comment was in reply to another comment which wasn't directly related to the letter that Damore wrote. I think you really need to read the comment I'm replying to before asserting anything else because I think you're confused. Try from the beginning and read.

gremsith 9y ago

It's just Mos Eisley, baby. It's not racism. It's not sexism. It's because I don't like you. And my friend, he doesn't like you either. Some things don't change, baby. Mos Eisley don't change. Some things never change.

akhilcacharya 9y ago

I genuinely wonder how much of this experience can be attributed to being in Stanford CS instead of Random State U CS.

matt_the_bass 9y ago

One thing that surprises me is how often society does not actively seek out candidates from underrepresented groups across all aspects of life. Often candidates from such groups are superior to candidates from the majority groups. Probably because they've had to work harder to acheive. Two anecdotal examples: 1. My work often enters into the world of super yachts. There are very few female yacht captains. Yet nearly all that i've met have been the best of the best. I suspect that in such a male dominated career path, the female captain had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts to get there. If I had a super yacht, I actively seek a female captain as i'd want the best of the best for my yacht. Yet of the largest, most expensive yachts none have a female captain. And female captains have a hard time finding good positions. 2. At my company we get significantly more male applicants than female applicants for our tech positions. As a whole though I'd say that average female applicant we get is better than the average male applicant and we've offer jobs to a significantly higher percentage of female applicants than male applicants. Sadly we get very few female applicants. Again I suspect it's because they had to work twice as hard as the their male counterparts to get to where they are. We didn't offer them positions because they were female. We offered them positions because they were the best candidate. Please note I'm not saying that it is a good thing that they have experienced sexism along their career paths.