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What makes an occupation people-oriented vs things-oriented? Is a software developer who makes a dating app doing one or the other? What about the designer? Is

What makes an occupation people-oriented vs things-oriented? Is a software developer who makes a dating app doing one or the other? What about the designer? Is being a doctor one or the other? You need to be able to say difficult things to people, and a lot of doctors will tell you they're doing it to help people. But doing surgery is presumably technical in nature. Is there an acknowledged way these categories are determined?

simonh 5y ago
This is detailed on page 15 of the paper. They used the ISCO, which is an internationally recognised standard for classifying occupations.
Alex3917 5y ago
> Is a software developer who makes a dating app doing one or the other? What about the designer? Both are thing oriented because you’re doing work for people as an abstraction, not individual people. User stories might be based on actual people, but they’re ultimately meant as archetypes.
brailsafe 5y ago
It's my impression that the more you want money for things or your family, the more you'll succeed in software engineering, because it can be awfully dismal and you almost never see the human impact your drudgery serves. I don't really care about things much compared to any of my previous colleagues, and as such there's no amount of money that can compel me to do a programming job I've learned to hate.
11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
I think categories need to be more granular. 'doctors' A quick LinkedIn search for Surgeon shows that about 70% of surgeons in the SFBA are male. 80% of pediatricians are female. 'engineers' Prior searches showed that 90% of electrical engineers were male. 50% of SQE were female.
stickfigure 5y ago
Sure, the grey zones might be hard to pick out but it does seem like there are some clear extremes. "Locomotive engineers and operators" is 92% male yet "Registered nurses" is 87% female. If you look at all the male-dominant and female-dominant occupations, there does seem to be some sort of pattern which (for lack of more precise terminology) seems to be well-described as "people-oriented" and "thing-oriented". Go through the list, look at the entries which are either <20% female or >80% female, and tell me if you don't see the same pattern: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Though it does seem obvious, it's pretty dangerous to go looking for patterns in the data. More scientific to define the criteria before knowing the results so you can have a hypothesis to test, not just an observation to make.
  - dbsmith83 5y ago
    No, looking at the data is observation or analysis by definition...whether or not you make a prediction about it. Experimentation is when you make a hypothesis first (after observation) and then test it. Looking at data is not a test--it's either observation or analysis.
  - piva00 5y ago
    Dangerous? That's how science... Works? You look for patterns, you get some data, you find more patterns, you create a hypothesis and you test it. What is dangerous about analysing data? Or do you mean it's dangerous to form absolute conclusions just on a subset of available data?
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      The danger is that you will come to a conclusion that is objectively wrong. P-hacking is a known issue in many scientific fields. So is drawing conclusions from over collection of data without repetition of the study... As the number of data points you collect approaches infinity, the chance of finding at least one meaningful-seeming correlation approaches 100% because having an unlimited number of data points to bash against each other makes you more likely to observe an improbable correlation.
exporectomy 5y ago
From TFA: "the people vs things dimension is a continuous scale, but in our analyses we only used categories that are predominantly one or the other. All things-oriented jobs have a clear technical component, ranging from locomotive engine driver to astronomer and all people-oriented jobs have a clear component of providing help to individuals." It also identified "face to face interactions" as a requirement for being people-oriented. So dating app developer is clearly not included.
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
What makes an occupation people-oriented vs things-oriented?... Is being a doctor one or the other? I speant most of the last 18 months in and out of the hospital, and I noticed that doctors are more things oriented, and nurse practitioners are more people oriented. Even though they do the same job. I want the nurse practitioner when I'm feeling awful, I want the doctor to explain their thought process in technical detail. Even if it's over my head. And to be clear, I didn't read the article, but I had doctors and nurse practitioners of different sexes.
tomp 5y ago
It comes down to how much you talk on the job. Probably to people (as opposed to, screens).
philwelch 5y ago
> What makes an occupation people-oriented vs things-oriented? … Is being a doctor one or the other? Depends on the specialty. Scott Alexander once observed: > A look at percent female physicians by subspecialty is instructive. The specialty with the most women is pediatrics, followed by child psychiatry, followed by obstetrics, followed by – you get the picture. The specialties with the least women are the various surgeries – the ones where your patient is immobilized, anaesthetized, opened up, and turned into a not-quite-color-coded collection of tubes and wires to poke and prod at – the ones that bear more than a passing resemblance to engineering. Source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/ —please note that the bulk of the piece is not strongly focused on this particular issue and is not a very representative context for this point. Scott restated the same point in a better context later on in https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge..., but left out the “not-quite-color-coded collection of tubes and wires” bit which makes the point significantly less punchy and quotable. … For the record, there’s a similar pattern in veterinary medicine. The majority of vets who treat pets are women, but livestock veterinarians are predominantly men. IOW, whether or not animals are treated more like people or things correlates to a significant disparity in the predominant sex of the veterinarian treating them.
popcube 5y ago
do not this depends on how to teach kids? we can let spmeone concern people become doctor, we can let someone like find and resolve problem become doctor, too.
- vixen99 5y ago
  This occurred to many people some time ago and subsequently it's been shown that while this is surely a factor in some instances it is not true in the main. Biological differences probabilistically motivate preferences.
vesuvianvenus 5y ago
>"Is a software developer who makes a dating app doing one or the other? What about the designer?" I'd look at this from a... step back. "Software Developer" is all you need to know. For example a Mechanical Engineer designing a product on a CAD-- Product A is a machine interface Product B is a car seat for young children. One could argue Product B is more people-oriented. But that's irrelevant. We're talking about the occupation, not the product. The occupation is making things primarily on a computer in this case. Software Developer --> Spends XX% of time working with Things (computer) and XX% of time working with People vs <other occupation> --> Spends XX% of time working with Things (<occupation-pertinent inanimate object(s)>) and XX% of time working with People ...And sure, there are different types of Software Engineers ("SWE")-- Some SWEs are heads down programming 80% of time w/ 20% of meetings (for example). Solutions Engineers ("SE") are the reverse-- 20/80. The latter is more social. But to become a SE is dependent on SWE skills, therefore I consider it a variant of the primary category of SWE, whose main focus is working on a computer. Not working face-to-face with a human to participate with them in some social activity (such as sales, nursing, management, or a job with a lot of meetings).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  James Damore got fired for suggesting that.

simonh 5y ago

This is detailed on page 15 of the paper. They used the ISCO, which is an internationally recognised standard for classifying occupations.

Alex3917 5y ago

> Is a software developer who makes a dating app doing one or the other? What about the designer? Both are thing oriented because you’re doing work for people as an abstraction, not individual people. User stories might be based on actual people, but they’re ultimately meant as archetypes.

brailsafe 5y ago

It's my impression that the more you want money for things or your family, the more you'll succeed in software engineering, because it can be awfully dismal and you almost never see the human impact your drudgery serves. I don't really care about things much compared to any of my previous colleagues, and as such there's no amount of money that can compel me to do a programming job I've learned to hate.

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago

I think categories need to be more granular. 'doctors' A quick LinkedIn search for Surgeon shows that about 70% of surgeons in the SFBA are male. 80% of pediatricians are female. 'engineers' Prior searches showed that 90% of electrical engineers were male. 50% of SQE were female.

stickfigure 5y ago

Sure, the grey zones might be hard to pick out but it does seem like there are some clear extremes. "Locomotive engineers and operators" is 92% male yet "Registered nurses" is 87% female. If you look at all the male-dominant and female-dominant occupations, there does seem to be some sort of pattern which (for lack of more precise terminology) seems to be well-described as "people-oriented" and "thing-oriented". Go through the list, look at the entries which are either <20% female or >80% female, and tell me if you don't see the same pattern: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm

exporectomy 5y ago
Though it does seem obvious, it's pretty dangerous to go looking for patterns in the data. More scientific to define the criteria before knowing the results so you can have a hypothesis to test, not just an observation to make.
- dbsmith83 5y ago
  No, looking at the data is observation or analysis by definition...whether or not you make a prediction about it. Experimentation is when you make a hypothesis first (after observation) and then test it. Looking at data is not a test--it's either observation or analysis.
- piva00 5y ago
  Dangerous? That's how science... Works? You look for patterns, you get some data, you find more patterns, you create a hypothesis and you test it. What is dangerous about analysing data? Or do you mean it's dangerous to form absolute conclusions just on a subset of available data?
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    The danger is that you will come to a conclusion that is objectively wrong. P-hacking is a known issue in many scientific fields. So is drawing conclusions from over collection of data without repetition of the study... As the number of data points you collect approaches infinity, the chance of finding at least one meaningful-seeming correlation approaches 100% because having an unlimited number of data points to bash against each other makes you more likely to observe an improbable correlation.

exporectomy 5y ago

From TFA: "the people vs things dimension is a continuous scale, but in our analyses we only used categories that are predominantly one or the other. All things-oriented jobs have a clear technical component, ranging from locomotive engine driver to astronomer and all people-oriented jobs have a clear component of providing help to individuals." It also identified "face to face interactions" as a requirement for being people-oriented. So dating app developer is clearly not included.

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

What makes an occupation people-oriented vs things-oriented?... Is being a doctor one or the other? I speant most of the last 18 months in and out of the hospital, and I noticed that doctors are more things oriented, and nurse practitioners are more people oriented. Even though they do the same job. I want the nurse practitioner when I'm feeling awful, I want the doctor to explain their thought process in technical detail. Even if it's over my head. And to be clear, I didn't read the article, but I had doctors and nurse practitioners of different sexes.

tomp 5y ago

It comes down to how much you talk on the job. Probably to people (as opposed to, screens).

philwelch 5y ago

> What makes an occupation people-oriented vs things-oriented? … Is being a doctor one or the other? Depends on the specialty. Scott Alexander once observed: > A look at percent female physicians by subspecialty is instructive. The specialty with the most women is pediatrics, followed by child psychiatry, followed by obstetrics, followed by – you get the picture. The specialties with the least women are the various surgeries – the ones where your patient is immobilized, anaesthetized, opened up, and turned into a not-quite-color-coded collection of tubes and wires to poke and prod at – the ones that bear more than a passing resemblance to engineering. Source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/ —please note that the bulk of the piece is not strongly focused on this particular issue and is not a very representative context for this point. Scott restated the same point in a better context later on in https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge..., but left out the “not-quite-color-coded collection of tubes and wires” bit which makes the point significantly less punchy and quotable. … For the record, there’s a similar pattern in veterinary medicine. The majority of vets who treat pets are women, but livestock veterinarians are predominantly men. IOW, whether or not animals are treated more like people or things correlates to a significant disparity in the predominant sex of the veterinarian treating them.

popcube 5y ago

do not this depends on how to teach kids? we can let spmeone concern people become doctor, we can let someone like find and resolve problem become doctor, too.

vixen99 5y ago
This occurred to many people some time ago and subsequently it's been shown that while this is surely a factor in some instances it is not true in the main. Biological differences probabilistically motivate preferences.

vesuvianvenus 5y ago

>"Is a software developer who makes a dating app doing one or the other? What about the designer?" I'd look at this from a... step back. "Software Developer" is all you need to know. For example a Mechanical Engineer designing a product on a CAD-- Product A is a machine interface Product B is a car seat for young children. One could argue Product B is more people-oriented. But that's irrelevant. We're talking about the occupation, not the product. The occupation is making things primarily on a computer in this case. Software Developer --> Spends XX% of time working with Things (computer) and XX% of time working with People vs <other occupation> --> Spends XX% of time working with Things (<occupation-pertinent inanimate object(s)>) and XX% of time working with People ...And sure, there are different types of Software Engineers ("SWE")-- Some SWEs are heads down programming 80% of time w/ 20% of meetings (for example). Solutions Engineers ("SE") are the reverse-- 20/80. The latter is more social. But to become a SE is dependent on SWE skills, therefore I consider it a variant of the primary category of SWE, whose main focus is working on a computer. Not working face-to-face with a human to participate with them in some social activity (such as sales, nursing, management, or a job with a lot of meetings).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

alisonkisk 5y ago
James Damore got fired for suggesting that.