4 ms·

Why are women being pushed away from the tech industry?

4 points by lkrubner 9y ago

lkrubner 9y ago
An excerpt: Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose there was overwhelming evidence that 95% of women were terrible at technology and 5% of women were awesome at technology. There are roughly 7 billion people on the planet, roughly 3.5 billion women, roughly 1.5 billion women who work outside the house for a wage. In this scenario, where only 5% of women love technology, there are 75 million working women who are awesome at technology. According to the Bureau Of Labor Statics, the USA had 1,256,200 software developers in 2016. The BLS also tracks some other minor categories, such as Web Developer, which have about 150,000 jobs. Lump all the sub-categories together, and let’s say there are 2 million such jobs in the USA. Let’s be wildly generous and double the number for the EU, and triple it for Asia. That gives 12 million software developer jobs in all of the advanced and developing economies. So even with exaggerated assumptions about women’s inherent weakness in technology, we still end up with a scenario where every single programming job in the world can be filled by a woman who will be awesome at the job. There is no need for men, at all, in the tech industry.
- lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
  And thus you hit on exactly why the problem exists in the first place. The tech industry has been acting as a cushy jobs program for mediocre men for decades now and there's real panic about the push for an expanded talent pool driving them permanently out of work.
oceanghost 9y ago
We're ignoring the elephant in the room here: Tech jobs by and large are abusive. My theory is that men are more tolerant of abuse, or more ignorant they're experiencing it.
- eindiran 9y ago
  What exactly do you mean by abusive?
  - lkrubner 9y ago
    They might mean the often long hours. The "death marches" that have been written about here: https://www.amazon.com/Death-March-Developers-Impossible-1999-06-15/dp/B01FIZ9I4U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1515183545&sr=8-2&keywords=software+death+march https://www.amazon.com/Death-March-Developers-Impossible-199...
  - oceanghost 9y ago
    I would have to write nothing less than a book to explain exactly what I mean. Put succintly, a lot of tech culture is a lie meant just to keep you working long hard hours.

4 points by lkrubner 9y ago

An excerpt: Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose there was overwhelming evidence that 95% of women were terrible at technology and 5% of women were awesome at technology. There are roughly 7 billion people on the planet, roughly 3.5 billion women, roughly 1.5 billion women who work outside the house for a wage. In this scenario, where only 5% of women love technology, there are 75 million working women who are awesome at technology. According to the Bureau Of Labor Statics, the USA had 1,256,200 software developers in 2016. The BLS also tracks some other minor categories, such as Web Developer, which have about 150,000 jobs. Lump all the sub-categories together, and let’s say there are 2 million such jobs in the USA. Let’s be wildly generous and double the number for the EU, and triple it for Asia. That gives 12 million software developer jobs in all of the advanced and developing economies. So even with exaggerated assumptions about women’s inherent weakness in technology, we still end up with a scenario where every single programming job in the world can be filled by a woman who will be awesome at the job. There is no need for men, at all, in the tech industry.

lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
And thus you hit on exactly why the problem exists in the first place. The tech industry has been acting as a cushy jobs program for mediocre men for decades now and there's real panic about the push for an expanded talent pool driving them permanently out of work.

oceanghost 9y ago

We're ignoring the elephant in the room here: Tech jobs by and large are abusive. My theory is that men are more tolerant of abuse, or more ignorant they're experiencing it.

eindiran 9y ago
What exactly do you mean by abusive?
- lkrubner 9y ago
  They might mean the often long hours. The "death marches" that have been written about here: https://www.amazon.com/Death-March-Developers-Impossible-1999-06-15/dp/B01FIZ9I4U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1515183545&sr=8-2&keywords=software+death+march https://www.amazon.com/Death-March-Developers-Impossible-199...
- oceanghost 9y ago
  I would have to write nothing less than a book to explain exactly what I mean. Put succintly, a lot of tech culture is a lie meant just to keep you working long hard hours.