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It’s hard to know if an environment is hostile to you or not if there are no examples of safety. For example I would hesitate to join a magic the gathering grou

It’s hard to know if an environment is hostile to you or not if there are no examples of safety. For example I would hesitate to join a magic the gathering group if I didn’t first check that they’re friendly to newbies. Especially because I know magic the gathering can vary in experience and that a group that isn’t friendly is not an outlier. If I think about it this way I can understand why a woman might not want to join a company with no other women engineers; how is she supposed to know she’ll be treated with respect, and won’t be pushed to something like management or product, if there are no examples to go off of? It likely worsens broadly if a woman knows exactly 0 women who are engineers as she grows up and considers a career for herself. She might not know any engineering is a viable path.

selestify 5y ago
I don't disagree at all with making programming welcoming to newbies, but if Magic the Gathering were something you were really interested in picking up, wouldn't you look around for a newbie-friendly group to join instead of just giving up on the game altogether? How many of us started tinkering with programming at a young age out of pure curiosity or interest in how cool it is, without any regards for how viable of a career path it is later in life? It seems most of us who did just that were boys. At some point you have to consider that there's perhaps an innate aggregate imbalance in how interested each gender is in programming, or in how much each gender responds to financial incentives -- which would explaian both why countries that are more gender equal and more prosperous tend to have a greater degree of gender imbalance in STEM.
fn-mote 5y ago
> I can understand why a woman might not want to join a company with no other > women engineers; how is she supposed to know she’ll be treated with respect Hate to say it, but 0 female engineers _is_ evidence... The assumption going in changes from "this is going to be ok" to "what is wrong with this workplace?" (Of course this depends on team size, etc., but this is my own personal read going in.)
snarkypepperoni 5y ago
> It likely worsens broadly if a woman knows exactly 0 women who are engineers as she grows up and considers a career for herself. She might not know any engineering is a viable path. This was why I didn't get into STEM initially. It's not that I thought that engineering culture was toxic per se, but rather because the women I knew growing up didn't have careers, much less careers in technology.

selestify 5y ago

I don't disagree at all with making programming welcoming to newbies, but if Magic the Gathering were something you were really interested in picking up, wouldn't you look around for a newbie-friendly group to join instead of just giving up on the game altogether? How many of us started tinkering with programming at a young age out of pure curiosity or interest in how cool it is, without any regards for how viable of a career path it is later in life? It seems most of us who did just that were boys. At some point you have to consider that there's perhaps an innate aggregate imbalance in how interested each gender is in programming, or in how much each gender responds to financial incentives -- which would explaian both why countries that are more gender equal and more prosperous tend to have a greater degree of gender imbalance in STEM.

fn-mote 5y ago

> I can understand why a woman might not want to join a company with no other > women engineers; how is she supposed to know she’ll be treated with respect Hate to say it, but 0 female engineers _is_ evidence... The assumption going in changes from "this is going to be ok" to "what is wrong with this workplace?" (Of course this depends on team size, etc., but this is my own personal read going in.)

snarkypepperoni 5y ago

> It likely worsens broadly if a woman knows exactly 0 women who are engineers as she grows up and considers a career for herself. She might not know any engineering is a viable path. This was why I didn't get into STEM initially. It's not that I thought that engineering culture was toxic per se, but rather because the women I knew growing up didn't have careers, much less careers in technology.