8 ms·

Confessions of a Failed Female Coder

97 points by Caveman_Coder 9y ago

psyc 9y ago
The article makes numerous assertions that school/work do not cater to the ways women learn/work best. I was on the edge of my seat expecting the author to hint at the ways women do learn/work best, but it never arrived. Was I just not reading closely enough? Edit: I wasn't reading closely enough. So my next question is, what would it take to have more women teaching CS and software development?
- 21 9y ago
  Yes, you weren't paying attention :) She mentioned it a few times - girls like colaborative learning, not lone-wolf learning, and she also put a link in - https://ncgsblog.org/2016/09/12/how-girls-learn-best/ https://ncgsblog.org/2016/09/12/how-girls-learn-best/
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Does this also apply to other branches of engineering, medicine and lawyers.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      There are some degrees/fields that involve more group projects and classes that are more discussion-based than pure lecture. I almost certainly did less work purely by myself for my MBA than my engineering degrees. But pretty much any degree that isn't hands-on/apprenticeship based is going to involve a lot of individual reading/studying/cranking through problems/etc.
- l3k 9y ago
  I think it was the collaborative learning rather than isolated learning and debugging she talked about. I agree that it also wasn't very clear to me so I could be wrong.
- rbatty 9y ago
  She does say: that girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure although I suppose you have to imagine what a tech classroom/work environment would look like if it supported folks with such learning preferences since she doesn't fully spell that out. *editted formatting
  - grzm 9y ago
    Please don't use code blocks (indentation) to quote text. it causes side-scrolling in browsers, making it difficult to read on desktop machines and nigh impossible on mobile devices. A common method of quoting text on HN is prefixing the line with a ">". I personally like also wrapping it in asterisks to italicize the quote.
    - revmoo 9y ago
      Hey HN can I offer some CSS to fix that
  - lucidguppy 9y ago
    Pair programming and github projects seem like it would help. And also line them up for real-world working conditions.
  - ivanhoe 9y ago
    Somehow most of the female programmers that I know well enough are not at all like this, so lets please not turn this into one-size-fits-all model and force it on every woman out there.
    - lscotte 9y ago
      I completely agree. I've worked with many good and bad programmers, both men and women, and it was usually only junior programmers and the bad ones that could not do their work without being 'collaborative' with others. Gender, like race, etc has nothing to do with it.
- zvrba 9y ago
  She "hints" at this in a couple of sentences: > Rather, I was frustrated because the course consisted of lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world, the expectation that coursework required coding and debugging for hours after school threatened my ability to excel in other classes or in varsity sports (in spite of being a textbook nerd, it turned out I was good enough at rowing for a few colleges to recruit me), or to spend time buried in random books. and > that girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure I notice an inconsistency here: if women are "prone to perfectionism", why were "hours of debugging" a problem? ... Re fear of failure: computers are brutal. It either works or it doesn't, esp. when you're restricted to "artificial" problems as is often the case in university courses. It forces you to think in a strict and disciplined way (re. the above quote about "debugging for hours"). Yes, it can make you feel stupid because the negative feedback is immediate, and there's a lot of it, especially in the beginning. Even for me, as a professional developer with ~20 yrs of experience, working with computers consists of mostly noticing just negative feedback. "The code works" is a non-event for 90% of the time. Of course it works, I engineered it to work. The 10% of cases when it is an event is in cases when I've used something new according to documentation and it actually worked! Yay! However, "the code doesn't work" is an event in 100% of the cases. It requires analysis, drilling, fixing, maybe even leads to a bigger refactoring because a more fundamental issue was discovered, etc. IMHO, and gender aside, if the person can't endure a constant stream of negative feedback, they should probably choose another field of work.
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    I'm not sure either quote applies necessarily to females specifically. At best seems to just be how this particular person is.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Well that's how courses work you have to know how to add 2+2 before going onto Calculus you cant expect to jump straight in to say a key role writing a Map reduce system for a major telcos billing system.
- dudul 9y ago
  What surprised me the most is that my understanding was that schools are actually designed to favor the way girls learn. Seating still for hours, listening to somebody, remembering the whole thing to be able to spit it out the next day is not how little boys should be taught things. And I don't even think it's great for girls, but they seem better equipped to deal with it.
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  It's odd, because girls outperform boys in school in every subject, in every grade, and have for decades. Schools already conform very well to girl-centric learning - perhaps because the majority of school teachers are women. Arguments like this always start from the assumption that inequality is a result of failed education. It's like the people making these arguments have never met a boy or a girl. Boys and girls behave differently, think differently, and value different things. Of course, we should strive to make environments inclusive as possible, and everyone should be free to pursue their (legal) ambitions, but why do we have to assume that any gender imbalance is a result of bias? Women become pediatricians more than other types of doctor. Is that because pediatricians are less sexist than other subtypes of medicine, or because women are naturally more interested in taking care of children?
ctoth 9y ago
I donated to the Mouse program[0] she mentioned in the article, it looks like a pretty good idea. [0] https://mouse.org/ https://mouse.org/
zvrba 9y ago
> Rather, I was frustrated because the course consisted of lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world From my personal experience, exactly such courses have proven to have the most long-term value to me.
- sidlls 9y ago
  That's an interesting way to underscore the point that these courses reinforce a kind of bias.
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    Definitely. Though not necessarily a bias between male and female. Just a bias for people who can work well [enough] with that sort of learning.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      And it's not just courses. Many types of work bias toward people who are just fine with locking themselves in a room/the library stacks/a lab for a week to work through some problem. It's a completely different mindset from someone who likes doing sales or PR work. It's not that there aren't people who can do a good job with both. But some things certainly come more naturally to some people than they do to others.
      - skinnymuch 9y ago
        100% agree with your entire comment. People are just different. I recently learned guitar for the first time using one of those Guitar Hero games but you play with a real electric guitar. Two friends commented how if I haven't gotten to learning it after multiple attempts, gamification won't work. But it did. This isn't the first time gamification has worked on me. For whatever reason, gamification [and accountability] work[s] great for me.
        ghaff 9y ago
politician 9y ago
> The ’80s were also the era of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the rise of the archetype of the lone, antisocial hacker in a garage spending all-nighters building machines that were at many times ambiguous and without a clear path to success. Without going into too much more detail because this essay is already longer than it needs to be, this can be seen as the linchpin in which computer science took a hard turn toward learning and work environments that either pushed many women away entirely or resulted in them feeling like misfit puzzle pieces when they did take on coding. I would appreciate if someone clarified the argument that the author is making above, because as it reads, she's implying that women don't excel when tasked with individual work involving "ambigious and unclear paths to success". That certainly isn't how she meant it to be interpreted, right?
- bartread 9y ago
  The thing is that's not how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs actually worked either (also Steve wasn't a programmer). This idea of the "lone, antisocial hacker" doesn't make any kind of sense in terms of the history I've read or experienced. E.g, take a look at Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. These guys - and they were almost invariably guys - were nothing if not sociable, at least with eachother. What they were not is mainstream (there's a hipster gag in here somewhere but it's just too cheap and easy). Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had partners, and later teams. They might not have been the easiest people to deal with but "antisocial"? I don't think so. I suppose in the 1980s it became possible to become a lone hacker simply because you actually could have an affordable computer at home in your bedroom. Even then though, there was a lot of socialising with other hackers at school (and a lot of bragging). Programming, at least in my experience, has never been an exclusively solo pursuit (although I wouldn't go so far as to describe what a lot of what went on at my school as "collaboration").
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I'd add that a lot of "lone time" characterizes a lot of STEM generally--but also historians, writers, and others. It may be a particular stereotype around programming but I'm not sure it's any truer, or perhaps even as true, with software development as it is with a lot of other fields. Caroline works in an area (digital advertising/marketing) that involves lots of collaboration and working with people. I'm not sure there's just about any field in engineering or science in which at least individual contributors do the same degree of working with other people as opposed to working through problems individually. Although she mentions it, I think Caroline also glosses over the shift that happens in the 80s a bit too quickly. She writes: >The ’80s did see a masculinization of computer science as a field, but I think it’s simplistic to assert that it happened because pop culture pushed PCs as “for boys.” I don't actually think that's the argument--or to the degree people do make that argument it's the most pertinent one. What did happen with gamers and the rise of the PC is that people who were interested in coding as a profession were increasingly expected to have started learning things on their own and to enjoy it as a hobby. This isn't really true to nearly the same degree of any other STEM field. Although I can't prove it, this seems to me the most logical explanation for why women entering CS peaked around that time.
bartread 9y ago
I don't know that you can call yourself a "failed coder" when, let's be honest, it could be argued you didn't try that hard to be a coder in the first place - it wasn't that you made your living do it but realised in doing so that you were bad at it. I'm not sure bailing out on a high school computing course, because it sucked (I'm not sure being a boy would have made any difference here), is nearly enough qualification to label oneself a "failed coder". I will share this from my own experience of computing courses at school though, and this is admittedly going back to the late 80s/early 90s: they sucked. They were boring as hell. I had a year of IT classes in year 9 and I got crap grades throughout because I was totally unengaged and, frankly, already operating at a considerably more sophisticated level than the course material. I wanted to solve real problems and write video games, not bugger around with word processing and spreadsheets and deeply basic (no pun intended) programming "problems". And that's not (just) being arrogant: it applied to plenty of the other card-carrying nerds in the room, although some of them were definitely better at playing the game and being willing to jump through the hoops. This was in a boys' school, btw. I actually diverged from Comp Sci for quite a while: going into 6th form the schools merged and I realised there was no chance of me getting a girlfriend if I was into computers. Bad decision and, ironically, made no difference in that direction anyway. What it did do was ensure that I didn't even consider CompSci as an undergrad degree. Another bad decision, later corrected with a post-grad conversion course. And so I finally ended up working as a programmer, which is what I'd always wanted to do, despite my best efforts in other directions. Anyway, a roundabout way of getting to the point: clearly there's a lot the industry can do to make itself more attractive to females. I've worked with precious few female engineers over the years but enough to know the good ones are as good as any man I've worked with, and I'm sure a similar distribution of skill applies for women as for men. And this is the thing: as well as making the industry a more pleasant place for women to work, we need more women at the top of the funnel. For whatever reason or set of reasons - which I don't pretend to understand - girls are much more likely to either choose not to study, or drop out of studying, Computer Science. If we don't fix that we are always going to have a gender imbalance: I'd argue that one way to normalise women as engineers is to ensure there are more women doing engineering.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  Yeah I basically wrote a post highlighting your first paragraph and being a guy who essentially failed at coding in high school and came out of it not barely being able to code something simple like a questionnaire. Overall we definitely need to get more women into STEM and programming specifically. I'm not sure about this post though.
Santosh83 9y ago
I suspect its more a cultural/historical thing. Comparatively fewer women go for computer science because they have far lesser role models and mentors and icons of their own sex to look upon. Just like how only few men manage to dig into women dominated occupations. Rather than anything inherent in women that puts them at a disadvantage vis-a-vis men with regards to computer science or "hard" science in general.
- fsociety 9y ago
  Yes I think that’s a large part of it too. Our brains are so adaptable to whatever environment we live in. You know I’m still waiting for an Aaron Sorkin film on Ada Lovelace. Aaron, if you’re reading this, can you just go ahead and make that film already?
- orangecat 9y ago
  That may be part of it, but as Scott Alexander noted (Section IV in http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...), not that many decades ago women had few role models in most professions. But that didn't stop women from quickly advancing in medicine, law, and many other fields.
- walshemj 9y ago
  And if you are a high performer at high school /uni in the UK women are more likely to go into medicine, law or the city where you can earn more than a train driver
chillingeffect 9y ago
Nuance is the most amazing thing. It's in abundance in this article.
niruk 9y ago
You only fail when you accept that you have failed.
GhostVII 9y ago
It's interesting that a lot of her experiences are similar to what the Google manifesto said - that currently, computer science is more targeted towards the way men learn and work than the way women learn and work. Although she was focusing more on the education side of things versus the work side, the core message seems to be that men and women learn and work differently, and that needs to be addressed to get more women in computer science. She is "perpetuating gender stereotypes" similar to the Google manifesto. Hopefully she doesn't get fired for it.
- taysic 9y ago
  I am all for discovering new learning techniques to help woman but as a woman who got my degree in computer science, I can't help but doubt this. I would describe much of the subject matter in my classes to appear "dry" or unenthused at times but I've talked to men who perceived computer science in the same way - and only came to learn it and appreciate it later in their lives. There were subjects I was required to take such as EE which did not interest me whatsoever. But with CS, I was genuinely enthused and a "lack of collaborative work" was certainly not stopping me personally. (If anything, I really liked solo work) I think what could have helped me was simply a bit more humor and light heartedness in my classes. College moved fast for me and I would have benefited from more opportunities to ask "dumb" questions in a friendly setting. I wonder how else they could address "perfectionism and a fear of failure".
  - hackinthebochs 9y ago
    You're probably just not representative of the typical woman. In any discussion of how to improve gender representation in CS there's always some women that chime in to say they were drawn to the field for the same reasons that men were. I think you and people like you are better represented by the 15% of women that do go into CS despite whatever keeps other women out. Unfortunately, programs to make CS appeal to girls will almost certainly ignore people like you.
    - taysic 9y ago
      This is the part I am unconvinced about - that "collaboration" is the issue at all. It seems like an easy go-to based on older assumptions. But plenty of woman I know I think would love tech but know nothing about it - but rather than what I feel are misconceptions that they would not enjoy it or could not meaningfully contribute.
skinnymuch 9y ago
Isn't the title pretty clickbaity? I had to cheat my way through 2.5 years of comp sci in HS before I dropped AP Comp Sci BC. I never programmed a thing in all that time. I either copied from others or had a friend write any code for me. During the AP test I spent maybe 15 min on the written programming parts just writing the basics of Java and inserting BS in hopes of getting some points. Calling me a failed coder would be weird at that point. I was never a coder really. Just like if I got bad grades in science classes I wouldnt be a failed scientist. I myself ended up trying to code PHP a couple more times. I didn't even think I knew the hang of HTML for years (I know there's not much to get). Until I did finally get the hang of basic coding then intermediate coding and so on, I never considered myself a failed coder before I got the hang of it. I had my own reasons for "failing" at my high school coding (technically I got As but I knew nothing), just dividing things up by how genders might function or learn wouldn't have helped me. For example I personally had massive anxiety and confidence issues. Not to dismiss issues with females not being in programming enough. We definitely need to get more women into STEM and programming.
- reboog711 9y ago
  You sound like Manager material. Or maybe Entrepreneur. In the real world it is perfectly legitimate to 'hire someone' to do your work for you and claim it as your own.
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    Maybe my verbosity got the better of me. I'm a programmer now. I'm not the best. But for web dev and certain crawling and automation I focus on, I can more than handle myself. Programming isn't my only hat, but that is part of what I do now. And for some time I exclusively freelanced as a programmer.
dnautics 9y ago
I think beyond just "educational style" something we should consider is the way we socialize reward in young men and young women. This is a gross generalization (but when your metrics are bulk - as opposed to individual - results, as in number of entrants or number of employees, generalizations matter), but socially and educationally we train boys seek reward for building or doing things and train girls to seek reward for being something. By the very nature of the software industry, in particular, the rapid engineering cycle, will skew towards building and doing over a state of being. I am not suggesting that these socializations are an inherent part of being male or female (and I would emphasize that you've got a serious problem if you're stereotyping an individual based on the bulk socialization), but I would suggest that if bulk gender parity is important, then forcing it without changing, or at the very least identifying/recognizing/selecting individuals who have deviated from, the pervasive gendered socialization is likely to cause serious problems. As a side note, I personally find the consequences of this early socialization are also highly reflected in the very way that the gender debate manifests itself.
- tiggybear 9y ago
  I think there is a lot to be said for the way a good deal of men and women are raised. I'm not even that old, but my parents treated their sons and daughters differently in some subtle and some not so-subtle ways. I've also heard from many of my friends and family that despite believing that men and women are just as capable, they will likely coddle their daughters more than their sons. Even in my family, in many instances the girls were "taken care of" more. If my or my brothers' cars broke down, it was 'figure it out on your own, get rides from friends, get a second job till you can afford to fix it, etc.' If my sisters' cars broke down, parents were immediately helping pay to get it fixed ('we can't have their cars breaking down on the side of the road! they could get raped/kidnapped/etc')! Whether or not you think this is a valid way to parent, there's no question that this will force boys raised in the manner to be more self-sufficient that girls raised in this manner (and obviously, not all men and women are raised in this manner...and not all men and women raised in the manner will act like this...I'm looking at probability distributions of the population). It's not a matter of capability, it's a matter of all humans being lazy and we often don't learn to be independent and self-sufficient until we are forced to. Another example is the dating market. No one wants to have to approach strangers, put themselves out there, and face rejection. It sucks! But constantly putting yourself out there will cultivate leadership and social skills and it can help build your confidence in the face of rejection. Even though men and women are equally as capable of all of those skills, the people that practice those skills more in their day-to-day lives will be better at them when those skills are needed in a business context.
cpt1138 9y ago
I would be very surprised if there truly were any normative studies showing differences in the way women vs men learn. Maybe individually for this woman it didn’t suit her style. Personally I think everyone deserves individualized instruction but in the US at least we don’t value education that much.
0xbear 9y ago
“I also, as an ex-Googler, know that the company places a high value on internal open dialogue and personal expression” That’s only true as long as your “open dialogue” and “personal expression” aligns with the prevailing liberal dogma. Step off the officially sanctioned path and the same thing will happen to you as happened to Damore.
- walshemj 9y ago
  mm you mean go of the deep end into far right politics this isn't setting up a Branch of young conservatives in the London google offices is it.
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    No. Just show up to work in a pro-Trump baseball hat, or speak openly against illegal immigration, and see what happens. No one cares about the London office.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      You would get fired quicker turning up with a pro Union t-shirt I bet and I bet those on H1B visas in google would be very negative against illegal immigrants.
  - mirko22 9y ago
    How did Damore went of to deep end of far right politics?
    - walshemj 9y ago
      You need me to explain that to you? google and all sv countries are majority centre right at best.
      - WillPostForFood 9y ago
        I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are in the UK and not SV to make a statement like that. The Bay Area is on the vanguard of the far left. SV companies range from far left, to left. Anyone vaguely center right pretends to be a libertarian otherwise they'd never get a job or invited to parties.
_nothing 9y ago
I agree with others that the author's experience may not be as significant to the wider discussion of female programmers as she thinks it is. I'm a developer now; I could not have made it through a Computer Science major in college. I'd always been drawn to technology and my dad highly encouraged me to pursue IT, but I just didn't find CS itself interesting to me. I was highly, highly averse to the idea of "lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world, the expectation that coursework required coding and debugging for hours after school threatened my ability to excel in other classes or in varsity sports". Maybe it is in fact a particularly "male" engineer thing to want to focus only on excelling at one's trade while neglecting everything else in one's life. I was not like that. So I studied Neuroscience and Psychology because they felt more applicable and "hands-on". I dissected cadavers, ran behavioral tests on rats, crunched data. Then later I discovered that I really did enjoy programming itself; I realized I loved building things. Now I feel like I could sit through dry lectures on fundamental and complex CS topics that my younger self would find boring. It sounds like the author liked building things too. Maybe if her program had been focused on that instead of other things, she would have felt more motivated. To me, this seems like a classic case of someone deciding that they're simply not good at math because they were taught it the wrong way or weren't shown why it was relevant.
jansho 9y ago
There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in her post: > Despite the cargo shorts and the loner attitude, I learned like a girl. And: > it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. Hmm, it sounds more like she has a different learning style, which is not necessarily down to her femaleness. That said, I think that at a fundamental level, there are differences in how men and women think. But none are better than the other, we know that we gain richer insights when we take both into account. But in this current political climate, it's unwise to go too deep about this, because it can so easily slip into the really nasty domains. Remember the time when phrenology was used to justify gender and race discrimination? This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says, but I bet that he knew exactly what he was doing. Playing games is pathetic, dude. I can sympathise with the writer as I have a similar story too. I'm permanently put off from going into engineering, but I've accepted that and moved on. (Incidentally it's education and design, to better design learning experiences for everyone!) And that's OK, the burden of guilt of "letting down your kind" is also terrible. Life's too short and there are so many other interesting, under-explored areas ... and you can still get involved in tech. The best bit about tech? It's just a tool.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  Is there a specific part of what you're referring to with > This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says, but I bet that he knew exactly what he was doing. Playing games is pathetic, dude. I haven't read the manifesto and don't want to procrastinate now. Are you saying he knew his stuff about women being inferior for the work Googlers do (which I wholly disagree with) was him partially BSing and just stirring shit up or trying to get his sexist viewpoint across with any excuse possible?
  - jansho 9y ago
    I haven't read it either, and won't like to. After his arrogant/weird responses, I'm sure it's pure intellectual bullshit. I don't know what his exact motive was, but he sure seems to enjoy the storms he's caused. I just dislike people like that.
erik_seaberg 9y ago
> The result of this is that STEM education is taught in a way that gives girls an opportunity to collaborate, as well as allow them to access the broader ideas, people, and goals that bring coding off the screen and into the real world. Contrast this with "Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." I think there's a big difference between nerdy obsession and grudgingly making something valuable. If nobody hired coders, it would still be my hobby.
zengid 9y ago
> "Rather, I was frustrated because the course consisted of lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world, the expectation that coursework required coding and debugging for hours after school threatened my ability to excel in other classes or in varsity sports" Just taking this at face value, I think she failed because she was afraid of failing. I've always learned better from having to struggle with something than having someone explain to me how to do it. Its that torturous process of trial and error that unconsciously guides someone towards a solution. Being able to do that on your own is ultimately the hallmark of a professional. That being said, I _am_ a man, and if what she is claiming is true (men learn more through lone-wolf trial/error, women learn better through collaborative team-work) then I can't say much about why trial/error is so important. Maybe its just more important to me and my context. I think she has a really interesting point about the importance of putting the 'person' into the equation. I really prefer to watch a tech-talk over a blog post because hearing someone talk about something in a informal language gives a lot of life to whatever they're talking about. Their body language and tone conveys a lot of information about the technology: are they holding 'religious' assumptions?; is it a hard-learned lesson to avoid some pitfall?; are they avoiding talking about negatives to try and sell something?.. Watching the Q&A portion of a talk can be especially enlightening. You really get to see whether they're full of shit or legitimate based on how they react to critical questions.
- taysic 9y ago
  Well I'm a woman and I learned coding by myself in exactly the way you describe. I personally don't think it has anything to do with gender. I didn't find many study partners within my major that I could relate to so I just studied by myself. This continued to lay the groundwork for a continuing self-education after college. I don't think this is so weird, but certainly it's nice whenever you have a supportive group around yourself. I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeking that out but I can't say I needed it either. If anything, I came to prefer the independence of working on my own much more.
  - zengid 9y ago
    I agree with you. I asked my wife what she thought of gender affecting learning, and what she said was quite convincing: individuals have different ways of learning, and gender isn't the only determining factor.
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- deleted 9y ago
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rocqua 9y ago
> girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure. This does not quite jive with enrollment at my university. I am thinking specifically of maths as compared to other STEM fields. Of all seriously theoretical courses, maths has the most women, last time I checked, it was pretty close to 50/50. Yet, math is much less collaborative than physics, that is the understanding has to be your own. If there is a people part to either, I'd argue its physics because it is closer to an application. I suppose one might say that maths has more of a people part, because much of math in practice is communication. That feels like stretching a definition though. When looking at the enrollment numbers, what is most striking is the difference between CS and maths. Whereas maths is about 50/50, CS seems to be below 10% female. As far as subject manner is concerned, I'd say these two studies are very close. And yet, maths is way more popular. Based on this, I'd argue that the low enrollment in CS has nothing to do with the subject matter, and much more to do with how comfortable women feel in either group.
- marktangotango 9y ago
  My understanding is you get a lot secondary ed math majors, which tends to skew female. In my area at least.
- searealist 9y ago
  Most math majors are there to become math teachers, which is very people oriented. If you consider only PhD programs for math then it becomes very male dominated.
  - michaelt 9y ago
    If the near-50-50 gender ratio in math is explained by math teachers, wouldn't we expect a similar ratio in physics?
    - searealist 9y ago
      I'm not sure what you are claiming.
maxxxxx 9y ago
I am more the lone wolf type myself. I am fine with collaborating, actually enjoy it when needed, but I prefer doing the majority of my work alone or with a small team and banging my/our head against a problem until I/we have figured it out. What's starting to bother me is that there is a trend where extroverted people (like her I assume) try to change education and workplaces to suit their style but introverted people get pushed aside. A ton of people sitting in a room and talking is good, working alone is bad, not inclusive and biased. Am I the only one who actually enjoys working alone and is this a bad thing? Do we have to accommodate extroverts everywhere and always? I don't complain about HR and marketing not being inclusive towards shy introverts. Sometimes I am starting to feel like a small minority although I am a white middle aged male.
- kwipkwip 9y ago
  I am a female software engineer who is an introvert too. It's wrong to assume that men want to work alone and women want to work with people... it ignores a lot individuals like me. I currently work in an open office environment and find it very hard to concentrate with people around me. I don't want people to assume that bc I'm female I want to work with people. I really really don't. People should stop trying to force women as a category into computer science, and just focus on the individual.
  - anifit01 9y ago
    >People should stop trying to force women as a category into computer science, and just focus on the individual. That would be ideal. I think the reason they have to "force" anything is because of the gender gaps that get reported. But yes, any manager shouldn't make assumptions about how someone wants to work, or will excel at work, based on gender. Separately, I hope the gender gaps in computer science or math etc. can be corrected by exposing boys and girls to education and career choices in a gender neutral manner, which I don't think happens enough. Edit to clarify.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      But then you should also expose people to education and career choices in a personality type neutral manner. School was a pretty tough ride for me because I am shy and introvert although I am a white male. Gender and race are not the only dimensions along which people can get discriminated. There are also looks, being outgoing or not, athletic skills, fashion tastes and many others.
anifit01 9y ago
I fail to understand how this is a men VS women issue, as comments here are interpreting this. As evidenced by this part in the article, it is more a this person issue. Or their learning style, as one comment has already pointed out. >It wasn’t my teacher’s fault; she tried hard to engage me and figure out why I wasn’t connecting well with the work. Nor was I facing discrimination or isolation based on my gender — it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. I felt compelled to make a comment myself because I am a woman, and I am kind of tired of broad, sweeping generalizations about women and how they learn or want to work. I think there's something to note here, though, and that she was driven towards a particular field because of her childhood experiences. She sounds like someone who would have benefitted from guidance at that age. Human experiences are complex, and not only because of the number of varying factors that can shape and impact them. I don't think its simply about sex differences.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  I didn't understand this either. What exactly does it mean to "learn like a girl"?
TACIXAT 9y ago
I am curious what approaches can be taken to make education more approachable for people who learn collaboratively and have a social focus. If anyone has example curricula changes or teaching approaches that they could share it would be greatly appreciated.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
TimTheTinker 9y ago
This was an excellent article and a nuanced, well-articulated perspective. Too bad it got modded down almost immediately.
purplezooey 9y ago
Instantly I stop reading anything that mentions Damore's memo, because the whole thing is pointless pot stirring.

97 points by Caveman_Coder 9y ago

psyc 9y ago

The article makes numerous assertions that school/work do not cater to the ways women learn/work best. I was on the edge of my seat expecting the author to hint at the ways women do learn/work best, but it never arrived. Was I just not reading closely enough? Edit: I wasn't reading closely enough. So my next question is, what would it take to have more women teaching CS and software development?

21 9y ago
Yes, you weren't paying attention :) She mentioned it a few times - girls like colaborative learning, not lone-wolf learning, and she also put a link in - https://ncgsblog.org/2016/09/12/how-girls-learn-best/ https://ncgsblog.org/2016/09/12/how-girls-learn-best/
- walshemj 9y ago
  Does this also apply to other branches of engineering, medicine and lawyers.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    There are some degrees/fields that involve more group projects and classes that are more discussion-based than pure lecture. I almost certainly did less work purely by myself for my MBA than my engineering degrees. But pretty much any degree that isn't hands-on/apprenticeship based is going to involve a lot of individual reading/studying/cranking through problems/etc.
l3k 9y ago
I think it was the collaborative learning rather than isolated learning and debugging she talked about. I agree that it also wasn't very clear to me so I could be wrong.
rbatty 9y ago
She does say: that girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure although I suppose you have to imagine what a tech classroom/work environment would look like if it supported folks with such learning preferences since she doesn't fully spell that out. *editted formatting
- grzm 9y ago
  Please don't use code blocks (indentation) to quote text. it causes side-scrolling in browsers, making it difficult to read on desktop machines and nigh impossible on mobile devices. A common method of quoting text on HN is prefixing the line with a ">". I personally like also wrapping it in asterisks to italicize the quote.
  - revmoo 9y ago
    Hey HN can I offer some CSS to fix that
- lucidguppy 9y ago
  Pair programming and github projects seem like it would help. And also line them up for real-world working conditions.
- ivanhoe 9y ago
  Somehow most of the female programmers that I know well enough are not at all like this, so lets please not turn this into one-size-fits-all model and force it on every woman out there.
  - lscotte 9y ago
    I completely agree. I've worked with many good and bad programmers, both men and women, and it was usually only junior programmers and the bad ones that could not do their work without being 'collaborative' with others. Gender, like race, etc has nothing to do with it.
zvrba 9y ago
She "hints" at this in a couple of sentences: > Rather, I was frustrated because the course consisted of lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world, the expectation that coursework required coding and debugging for hours after school threatened my ability to excel in other classes or in varsity sports (in spite of being a textbook nerd, it turned out I was good enough at rowing for a few colleges to recruit me), or to spend time buried in random books. and > that girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure I notice an inconsistency here: if women are "prone to perfectionism", why were "hours of debugging" a problem? ... Re fear of failure: computers are brutal. It either works or it doesn't, esp. when you're restricted to "artificial" problems as is often the case in university courses. It forces you to think in a strict and disciplined way (re. the above quote about "debugging for hours"). Yes, it can make you feel stupid because the negative feedback is immediate, and there's a lot of it, especially in the beginning. Even for me, as a professional developer with ~20 yrs of experience, working with computers consists of mostly noticing just negative feedback. "The code works" is a non-event for 90% of the time. Of course it works, I engineered it to work. The 10% of cases when it is an event is in cases when I've used something new according to documentation and it actually worked! Yay! However, "the code doesn't work" is an event in 100% of the cases. It requires analysis, drilling, fixing, maybe even leads to a bigger refactoring because a more fundamental issue was discovered, etc. IMHO, and gender aside, if the person can't endure a constant stream of negative feedback, they should probably choose another field of work.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  I'm not sure either quote applies necessarily to females specifically. At best seems to just be how this particular person is.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Well that's how courses work you have to know how to add 2+2 before going onto Calculus you cant expect to jump straight in to say a key role writing a Map reduce system for a major telcos billing system.
dudul 9y ago
What surprised me the most is that my understanding was that schools are actually designed to favor the way girls learn. Seating still for hours, listening to somebody, remembering the whole thing to be able to spit it out the next day is not how little boys should be taught things. And I don't even think it's great for girls, but they seem better equipped to deal with it.
ImSkeptical 9y ago
It's odd, because girls outperform boys in school in every subject, in every grade, and have for decades. Schools already conform very well to girl-centric learning - perhaps because the majority of school teachers are women. Arguments like this always start from the assumption that inequality is a result of failed education. It's like the people making these arguments have never met a boy or a girl. Boys and girls behave differently, think differently, and value different things. Of course, we should strive to make environments inclusive as possible, and everyone should be free to pursue their (legal) ambitions, but why do we have to assume that any gender imbalance is a result of bias? Women become pediatricians more than other types of doctor. Is that because pediatricians are less sexist than other subtypes of medicine, or because women are naturally more interested in taking care of children?

ctoth 9y ago

I donated to the Mouse program[0] she mentioned in the article, it looks like a pretty good idea. [0] https://mouse.org/ https://mouse.org/

zvrba 9y ago

> Rather, I was frustrated because the course consisted of lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world From my personal experience, exactly such courses have proven to have the most long-term value to me.

sidlls 9y ago
That's an interesting way to underscore the point that these courses reinforce a kind of bias.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  Definitely. Though not necessarily a bias between male and female. Just a bias for people who can work well [enough] with that sort of learning.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    And it's not just courses. Many types of work bias toward people who are just fine with locking themselves in a room/the library stacks/a lab for a week to work through some problem. It's a completely different mindset from someone who likes doing sales or PR work. It's not that there aren't people who can do a good job with both. But some things certainly come more naturally to some people than they do to others.
    - skinnymuch 9y ago
      100% agree with your entire comment. People are just different. I recently learned guitar for the first time using one of those Guitar Hero games but you play with a real electric guitar. Two friends commented how if I haven't gotten to learning it after multiple attempts, gamification won't work. But it did. This isn't the first time gamification has worked on me. For whatever reason, gamification [and accountability] work[s] great for me.
      - ghaff 9y ago

politician 9y ago

> The ’80s were also the era of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the rise of the archetype of the lone, antisocial hacker in a garage spending all-nighters building machines that were at many times ambiguous and without a clear path to success. Without going into too much more detail because this essay is already longer than it needs to be, this can be seen as the linchpin in which computer science took a hard turn toward learning and work environments that either pushed many women away entirely or resulted in them feeling like misfit puzzle pieces when they did take on coding. I would appreciate if someone clarified the argument that the author is making above, because as it reads, she's implying that women don't excel when tasked with individual work involving "ambigious and unclear paths to success". That certainly isn't how she meant it to be interpreted, right?

bartread 9y ago
The thing is that's not how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs actually worked either (also Steve wasn't a programmer). This idea of the "lone, antisocial hacker" doesn't make any kind of sense in terms of the history I've read or experienced. E.g, take a look at Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. These guys - and they were almost invariably guys - were nothing if not sociable, at least with eachother. What they were not is mainstream (there's a hipster gag in here somewhere but it's just too cheap and easy). Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had partners, and later teams. They might not have been the easiest people to deal with but "antisocial"? I don't think so. I suppose in the 1980s it became possible to become a lone hacker simply because you actually could have an affordable computer at home in your bedroom. Even then though, there was a lot of socialising with other hackers at school (and a lot of bragging). Programming, at least in my experience, has never been an exclusively solo pursuit (although I wouldn't go so far as to describe what a lot of what went on at my school as "collaboration").
- ghaff 9y ago
  I'd add that a lot of "lone time" characterizes a lot of STEM generally--but also historians, writers, and others. It may be a particular stereotype around programming but I'm not sure it's any truer, or perhaps even as true, with software development as it is with a lot of other fields. Caroline works in an area (digital advertising/marketing) that involves lots of collaboration and working with people. I'm not sure there's just about any field in engineering or science in which at least individual contributors do the same degree of working with other people as opposed to working through problems individually. Although she mentions it, I think Caroline also glosses over the shift that happens in the 80s a bit too quickly. She writes: >The ’80s did see a masculinization of computer science as a field, but I think it’s simplistic to assert that it happened because pop culture pushed PCs as “for boys.” I don't actually think that's the argument--or to the degree people do make that argument it's the most pertinent one. What did happen with gamers and the rise of the PC is that people who were interested in coding as a profession were increasingly expected to have started learning things on their own and to enjoy it as a hobby. This isn't really true to nearly the same degree of any other STEM field. Although I can't prove it, this seems to me the most logical explanation for why women entering CS peaked around that time.

bartread 9y ago

I don't know that you can call yourself a "failed coder" when, let's be honest, it could be argued you didn't try that hard to be a coder in the first place - it wasn't that you made your living do it but realised in doing so that you were bad at it. I'm not sure bailing out on a high school computing course, because it sucked (I'm not sure being a boy would have made any difference here), is nearly enough qualification to label oneself a "failed coder". I will share this from my own experience of computing courses at school though, and this is admittedly going back to the late 80s/early 90s: they sucked. They were boring as hell. I had a year of IT classes in year 9 and I got crap grades throughout because I was totally unengaged and, frankly, already operating at a considerably more sophisticated level than the course material. I wanted to solve real problems and write video games, not bugger around with word processing and spreadsheets and deeply basic (no pun intended) programming "problems". And that's not (just) being arrogant: it applied to plenty of the other card-carrying nerds in the room, although some of them were definitely better at playing the game and being willing to jump through the hoops. This was in a boys' school, btw. I actually diverged from Comp Sci for quite a while: going into 6th form the schools merged and I realised there was no chance of me getting a girlfriend if I was into computers. Bad decision and, ironically, made no difference in that direction anyway. What it did do was ensure that I didn't even consider CompSci as an undergrad degree. Another bad decision, later corrected with a post-grad conversion course. And so I finally ended up working as a programmer, which is what I'd always wanted to do, despite my best efforts in other directions. Anyway, a roundabout way of getting to the point: clearly there's a lot the industry can do to make itself more attractive to females. I've worked with precious few female engineers over the years but enough to know the good ones are as good as any man I've worked with, and I'm sure a similar distribution of skill applies for women as for men. And this is the thing: as well as making the industry a more pleasant place for women to work, we need more women at the top of the funnel. For whatever reason or set of reasons - which I don't pretend to understand - girls are much more likely to either choose not to study, or drop out of studying, Computer Science. If we don't fix that we are always going to have a gender imbalance: I'd argue that one way to normalise women as engineers is to ensure there are more women doing engineering.

skinnymuch 9y ago
Yeah I basically wrote a post highlighting your first paragraph and being a guy who essentially failed at coding in high school and came out of it not barely being able to code something simple like a questionnaire. Overall we definitely need to get more women into STEM and programming specifically. I'm not sure about this post though.

Santosh83 9y ago

I suspect its more a cultural/historical thing. Comparatively fewer women go for computer science because they have far lesser role models and mentors and icons of their own sex to look upon. Just like how only few men manage to dig into women dominated occupations. Rather than anything inherent in women that puts them at a disadvantage vis-a-vis men with regards to computer science or "hard" science in general.

fsociety 9y ago
Yes I think that’s a large part of it too. Our brains are so adaptable to whatever environment we live in. You know I’m still waiting for an Aaron Sorkin film on Ada Lovelace. Aaron, if you’re reading this, can you just go ahead and make that film already?
orangecat 9y ago
That may be part of it, but as Scott Alexander noted (Section IV in http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...), not that many decades ago women had few role models in most professions. But that didn't stop women from quickly advancing in medicine, law, and many other fields.
walshemj 9y ago
And if you are a high performer at high school /uni in the UK women are more likely to go into medicine, law or the city where you can earn more than a train driver

chillingeffect 9y ago

Nuance is the most amazing thing. It's in abundance in this article.

niruk 9y ago

You only fail when you accept that you have failed.

GhostVII 9y ago

It's interesting that a lot of her experiences are similar to what the Google manifesto said - that currently, computer science is more targeted towards the way men learn and work than the way women learn and work. Although she was focusing more on the education side of things versus the work side, the core message seems to be that men and women learn and work differently, and that needs to be addressed to get more women in computer science. She is "perpetuating gender stereotypes" similar to the Google manifesto. Hopefully she doesn't get fired for it.

taysic 9y ago
I am all for discovering new learning techniques to help woman but as a woman who got my degree in computer science, I can't help but doubt this. I would describe much of the subject matter in my classes to appear "dry" or unenthused at times but I've talked to men who perceived computer science in the same way - and only came to learn it and appreciate it later in their lives. There were subjects I was required to take such as EE which did not interest me whatsoever. But with CS, I was genuinely enthused and a "lack of collaborative work" was certainly not stopping me personally. (If anything, I really liked solo work) I think what could have helped me was simply a bit more humor and light heartedness in my classes. College moved fast for me and I would have benefited from more opportunities to ask "dumb" questions in a friendly setting. I wonder how else they could address "perfectionism and a fear of failure".
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  You're probably just not representative of the typical woman. In any discussion of how to improve gender representation in CS there's always some women that chime in to say they were drawn to the field for the same reasons that men were. I think you and people like you are better represented by the 15% of women that do go into CS despite whatever keeps other women out. Unfortunately, programs to make CS appeal to girls will almost certainly ignore people like you.
  - taysic 9y ago
    This is the part I am unconvinced about - that "collaboration" is the issue at all. It seems like an easy go-to based on older assumptions. But plenty of woman I know I think would love tech but know nothing about it - but rather than what I feel are misconceptions that they would not enjoy it or could not meaningfully contribute.

skinnymuch 9y ago

Isn't the title pretty clickbaity? I had to cheat my way through 2.5 years of comp sci in HS before I dropped AP Comp Sci BC. I never programmed a thing in all that time. I either copied from others or had a friend write any code for me. During the AP test I spent maybe 15 min on the written programming parts just writing the basics of Java and inserting BS in hopes of getting some points. Calling me a failed coder would be weird at that point. I was never a coder really. Just like if I got bad grades in science classes I wouldnt be a failed scientist. I myself ended up trying to code PHP a couple more times. I didn't even think I knew the hang of HTML for years (I know there's not much to get). Until I did finally get the hang of basic coding then intermediate coding and so on, I never considered myself a failed coder before I got the hang of it. I had my own reasons for "failing" at my high school coding (technically I got As but I knew nothing), just dividing things up by how genders might function or learn wouldn't have helped me. For example I personally had massive anxiety and confidence issues. Not to dismiss issues with females not being in programming enough. We definitely need to get more women into STEM and programming.

reboog711 9y ago
You sound like Manager material. Or maybe Entrepreneur. In the real world it is perfectly legitimate to 'hire someone' to do your work for you and claim it as your own.
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  Maybe my verbosity got the better of me. I'm a programmer now. I'm not the best. But for web dev and certain crawling and automation I focus on, I can more than handle myself. Programming isn't my only hat, but that is part of what I do now. And for some time I exclusively freelanced as a programmer.

dnautics 9y ago

I think beyond just "educational style" something we should consider is the way we socialize reward in young men and young women. This is a gross generalization (but when your metrics are bulk - as opposed to individual - results, as in number of entrants or number of employees, generalizations matter), but socially and educationally we train boys seek reward for building or doing things and train girls to seek reward for being something. By the very nature of the software industry, in particular, the rapid engineering cycle, will skew towards building and doing over a state of being. I am not suggesting that these socializations are an inherent part of being male or female (and I would emphasize that you've got a serious problem if you're stereotyping an individual based on the bulk socialization), but I would suggest that if bulk gender parity is important, then forcing it without changing, or at the very least identifying/recognizing/selecting individuals who have deviated from, the pervasive gendered socialization is likely to cause serious problems. As a side note, I personally find the consequences of this early socialization are also highly reflected in the very way that the gender debate manifests itself.

tiggybear 9y ago
I think there is a lot to be said for the way a good deal of men and women are raised. I'm not even that old, but my parents treated their sons and daughters differently in some subtle and some not so-subtle ways. I've also heard from many of my friends and family that despite believing that men and women are just as capable, they will likely coddle their daughters more than their sons. Even in my family, in many instances the girls were "taken care of" more. If my or my brothers' cars broke down, it was 'figure it out on your own, get rides from friends, get a second job till you can afford to fix it, etc.' If my sisters' cars broke down, parents were immediately helping pay to get it fixed ('we can't have their cars breaking down on the side of the road! they could get raped/kidnapped/etc')! Whether or not you think this is a valid way to parent, there's no question that this will force boys raised in the manner to be more self-sufficient that girls raised in this manner (and obviously, not all men and women are raised in this manner...and not all men and women raised in the manner will act like this...I'm looking at probability distributions of the population). It's not a matter of capability, it's a matter of all humans being lazy and we often don't learn to be independent and self-sufficient until we are forced to. Another example is the dating market. No one wants to have to approach strangers, put themselves out there, and face rejection. It sucks! But constantly putting yourself out there will cultivate leadership and social skills and it can help build your confidence in the face of rejection. Even though men and women are equally as capable of all of those skills, the people that practice those skills more in their day-to-day lives will be better at them when those skills are needed in a business context.

cpt1138 9y ago

I would be very surprised if there truly were any normative studies showing differences in the way women vs men learn. Maybe individually for this woman it didn’t suit her style. Personally I think everyone deserves individualized instruction but in the US at least we don’t value education that much.

0xbear 9y ago

“I also, as an ex-Googler, know that the company places a high value on internal open dialogue and personal expression” That’s only true as long as your “open dialogue” and “personal expression” aligns with the prevailing liberal dogma. Step off the officially sanctioned path and the same thing will happen to you as happened to Damore.

walshemj 9y ago
mm you mean go of the deep end into far right politics this isn't setting up a Branch of young conservatives in the London google offices is it.
- 0xbear 9y ago
  No. Just show up to work in a pro-Trump baseball hat, or speak openly against illegal immigration, and see what happens. No one cares about the London office.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    You would get fired quicker turning up with a pro Union t-shirt I bet and I bet those on H1B visas in google would be very negative against illegal immigrants.
- mirko22 9y ago
  How did Damore went of to deep end of far right politics?
  - walshemj 9y ago
    You need me to explain that to you? google and all sv countries are majority centre right at best.
    - WillPostForFood 9y ago
      I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are in the UK and not SV to make a statement like that. The Bay Area is on the vanguard of the far left. SV companies range from far left, to left. Anyone vaguely center right pretends to be a libertarian otherwise they'd never get a job or invited to parties.

_nothing 9y ago

I agree with others that the author's experience may not be as significant to the wider discussion of female programmers as she thinks it is. I'm a developer now; I could not have made it through a Computer Science major in college. I'd always been drawn to technology and my dad highly encouraged me to pursue IT, but I just didn't find CS itself interesting to me. I was highly, highly averse to the idea of "lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world, the expectation that coursework required coding and debugging for hours after school threatened my ability to excel in other classes or in varsity sports". Maybe it is in fact a particularly "male" engineer thing to want to focus only on excelling at one's trade while neglecting everything else in one's life. I was not like that. So I studied Neuroscience and Psychology because they felt more applicable and "hands-on". I dissected cadavers, ran behavioral tests on rats, crunched data. Then later I discovered that I really did enjoy programming itself; I realized I loved building things. Now I feel like I could sit through dry lectures on fundamental and complex CS topics that my younger self would find boring. It sounds like the author liked building things too. Maybe if her program had been focused on that instead of other things, she would have felt more motivated. To me, this seems like a classic case of someone deciding that they're simply not good at math because they were taught it the wrong way or weren't shown why it was relevant.

jansho 9y ago

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in her post: > Despite the cargo shorts and the loner attitude, I learned like a girl. And: > it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. Hmm, it sounds more like she has a different learning style, which is not necessarily down to her femaleness. That said, I think that at a fundamental level, there are differences in how men and women think. But none are better than the other, we know that we gain richer insights when we take both into account. But in this current political climate, it's unwise to go too deep about this, because it can so easily slip into the really nasty domains. Remember the time when phrenology was used to justify gender and race discrimination? This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says, but I bet that he knew exactly what he was doing. Playing games is pathetic, dude. I can sympathise with the writer as I have a similar story too. I'm permanently put off from going into engineering, but I've accepted that and moved on. (Incidentally it's education and design, to better design learning experiences for everyone!) And that's OK, the burden of guilt of "letting down your kind" is also terrible. Life's too short and there are so many other interesting, under-explored areas ... and you can still get involved in tech. The best bit about tech? It's just a tool.

skinnymuch 9y ago
Is there a specific part of what you're referring to with > This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says, but I bet that he knew exactly what he was doing. Playing games is pathetic, dude. I haven't read the manifesto and don't want to procrastinate now. Are you saying he knew his stuff about women being inferior for the work Googlers do (which I wholly disagree with) was him partially BSing and just stirring shit up or trying to get his sexist viewpoint across with any excuse possible?
- jansho 9y ago
  I haven't read it either, and won't like to. After his arrogant/weird responses, I'm sure it's pure intellectual bullshit. I don't know what his exact motive was, but he sure seems to enjoy the storms he's caused. I just dislike people like that.

erik_seaberg 9y ago

> The result of this is that STEM education is taught in a way that gives girls an opportunity to collaborate, as well as allow them to access the broader ideas, people, and goals that bring coding off the screen and into the real world. Contrast this with "Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." I think there's a big difference between nerdy obsession and grudgingly making something valuable. If nobody hired coders, it would still be my hobby.

zengid 9y ago

> "Rather, I was frustrated because the course consisted of lone work on exercises that seemed to have little application to the real world, the expectation that coursework required coding and debugging for hours after school threatened my ability to excel in other classes or in varsity sports" Just taking this at face value, I think she failed because she was afraid of failing. I've always learned better from having to struggle with something than having someone explain to me how to do it. Its that torturous process of trial and error that unconsciously guides someone towards a solution. Being able to do that on your own is ultimately the hallmark of a professional. That being said, I _am_ a man, and if what she is claiming is true (men learn more through lone-wolf trial/error, women learn better through collaborative team-work) then I can't say much about why trial/error is so important. Maybe its just more important to me and my context. I think she has a really interesting point about the importance of putting the 'person' into the equation. I really prefer to watch a tech-talk over a blog post because hearing someone talk about something in a informal language gives a lot of life to whatever they're talking about. Their body language and tone conveys a lot of information about the technology: are they holding 'religious' assumptions?; is it a hard-learned lesson to avoid some pitfall?; are they avoiding talking about negatives to try and sell something?.. Watching the Q&A portion of a talk can be especially enlightening. You really get to see whether they're full of shit or legitimate based on how they react to critical questions.

taysic 9y ago
Well I'm a woman and I learned coding by myself in exactly the way you describe. I personally don't think it has anything to do with gender. I didn't find many study partners within my major that I could relate to so I just studied by myself. This continued to lay the groundwork for a continuing self-education after college. I don't think this is so weird, but certainly it's nice whenever you have a supportive group around yourself. I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeking that out but I can't say I needed it either. If anything, I came to prefer the independence of working on my own much more.
- zengid 9y ago
  I agree with you. I asked my wife what she thought of gender affecting learning, and what she said was quite convincing: individuals have different ways of learning, and gender isn't the only determining factor.

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rocqua 9y ago

> girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure. This does not quite jive with enrollment at my university. I am thinking specifically of maths as compared to other STEM fields. Of all seriously theoretical courses, maths has the most women, last time I checked, it was pretty close to 50/50. Yet, math is much less collaborative than physics, that is the understanding has to be your own. If there is a people part to either, I'd argue its physics because it is closer to an application. I suppose one might say that maths has more of a people part, because much of math in practice is communication. That feels like stretching a definition though. When looking at the enrollment numbers, what is most striking is the difference between CS and maths. Whereas maths is about 50/50, CS seems to be below 10% female. As far as subject manner is concerned, I'd say these two studies are very close. And yet, maths is way more popular. Based on this, I'd argue that the low enrollment in CS has nothing to do with the subject matter, and much more to do with how comfortable women feel in either group.

marktangotango 9y ago
My understanding is you get a lot secondary ed math majors, which tends to skew female. In my area at least.
searealist 9y ago
Most math majors are there to become math teachers, which is very people oriented. If you consider only PhD programs for math then it becomes very male dominated.
- michaelt 9y ago
  If the near-50-50 gender ratio in math is explained by math teachers, wouldn't we expect a similar ratio in physics?
  - searealist 9y ago
    I'm not sure what you are claiming.

maxxxxx 9y ago

I am more the lone wolf type myself. I am fine with collaborating, actually enjoy it when needed, but I prefer doing the majority of my work alone or with a small team and banging my/our head against a problem until I/we have figured it out. What's starting to bother me is that there is a trend where extroverted people (like her I assume) try to change education and workplaces to suit their style but introverted people get pushed aside. A ton of people sitting in a room and talking is good, working alone is bad, not inclusive and biased. Am I the only one who actually enjoys working alone and is this a bad thing? Do we have to accommodate extroverts everywhere and always? I don't complain about HR and marketing not being inclusive towards shy introverts. Sometimes I am starting to feel like a small minority although I am a white middle aged male.

kwipkwip 9y ago
I am a female software engineer who is an introvert too. It's wrong to assume that men want to work alone and women want to work with people... it ignores a lot individuals like me. I currently work in an open office environment and find it very hard to concentrate with people around me. I don't want people to assume that bc I'm female I want to work with people. I really really don't. People should stop trying to force women as a category into computer science, and just focus on the individual.
- anifit01 9y ago
  >People should stop trying to force women as a category into computer science, and just focus on the individual. That would be ideal. I think the reason they have to "force" anything is because of the gender gaps that get reported. But yes, any manager shouldn't make assumptions about how someone wants to work, or will excel at work, based on gender. Separately, I hope the gender gaps in computer science or math etc. can be corrected by exposing boys and girls to education and career choices in a gender neutral manner, which I don't think happens enough. Edit to clarify.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    But then you should also expose people to education and career choices in a personality type neutral manner. School was a pretty tough ride for me because I am shy and introvert although I am a white male. Gender and race are not the only dimensions along which people can get discriminated. There are also looks, being outgoing or not, athletic skills, fashion tastes and many others.

anifit01 9y ago

I fail to understand how this is a men VS women issue, as comments here are interpreting this. As evidenced by this part in the article, it is more a this person issue. Or their learning style, as one comment has already pointed out. >It wasn’t my teacher’s fault; she tried hard to engage me and figure out why I wasn’t connecting well with the work. Nor was I facing discrimination or isolation based on my gender — it was an all-girls school, and every single other woman who took that computer science class that year became an engineer or scientist. I felt compelled to make a comment myself because I am a woman, and I am kind of tired of broad, sweeping generalizations about women and how they learn or want to work. I think there's something to note here, though, and that she was driven towards a particular field because of her childhood experiences. She sounds like someone who would have benefitted from guidance at that age. Human experiences are complex, and not only because of the number of varying factors that can shape and impact them. I don't think its simply about sex differences.

nerdponx 9y ago
I didn't understand this either. What exactly does it mean to "learn like a girl"?

TACIXAT 9y ago

I am curious what approaches can be taken to make education more approachable for people who learn collaboratively and have a social focus. If anyone has example curricula changes or teaching approaches that they could share it would be greatly appreciated.

deleted 9y ago

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TimTheTinker 9y ago

This was an excellent article and a nuanced, well-articulated perspective. Too bad it got modded down almost immediately.

purplezooey 9y ago

Instantly I stop reading anything that mentions Damore's memo, because the whole thing is pointless pot stirring.