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I am not sure if the article was very convincing. 72 women being promoted to managerial roles for 100 men doesn't quite support "Women developers hoping to move

by jeswin 4y ago

I am not sure if the article was very convincing. 72 women being promoted to managerial roles for 100 men doesn't quite support "Women developers hoping to move into management have far fewer role models who look like them than their male counterparts" - the numbers presented imply that 3 out of 7 will be women. The prescriptions are a bit worse. I have absolutely no interest in sharing details about my private life in a work setting; nor do I like being forced to socialize. The fundamental problem (in my opinion) remains one that PG mentioned nearly ten years ago: "If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us." "It's already too late. What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that. God knows what you would do to get 13-year-old girls interested in computers. I would have to stop and think about that." He was called Sexist for this.

civilized 4y ago
It is a tiny bit sexist to be honest - not catastrophically so or anything, but a bit. Getting 13-year-old girls interested in computers turns out to be not that hard. Lots of programs do it. (Maybe it's harder to get them interested at the same rates as boys, but I wouldn't die on that hill.)
lapcat 4y ago
> "If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us." 1) Founders are entrepreneurs. The article seems to be focused on non-entrepreneurial roles, which is a very different situation. 2) We don't seem to have the same attitude about other professions such as medicine, law, stock trading, etc. Do successful surgeons have to operate at age 13? Do successful lawyers have to try cases at age 13? No, that's nuts. So why in tech do we have such a fetish about teenage hackers? This already seems like a kind of bias, and maybe we should correct that.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >So why in tech do we have such a fetish about teenage hackers? Same reason it happens for teenage artists, musicians, etc. It's possible, and where there's a possibility, you can bet there will be a bunch of profiteers and elitists trying to push it as the new normal. You can bet your sweet dollars if it was possible to do so as surgeons (by changing the culture and opening up possibilities), the same would happen there. Of course, it also completely discredits that people can become amazing at something starting from nothing in old age.
  - ddarden 4y ago
    There does seem to be two different mindsets. In most cases everyone has a combination of both of them. The first is the “shakedown” mindset. This is where you are in a situation where you have to try very quickly to figure out what level a person is at so that you can figure out how much info to give them or how to communicate. Some people take the shakedown mindset to an extreme and use it almost exclusively. They tend to by hyper-competitive. Then you have the collaborative mindset. This is where a person is in a more naturally open mindset and they more readily assume that everyone around them are contributors, people they can learn from, non-threatening, etc. The prevailing mindset on HN is probably collaborative. One common misconception, is that what would benefit the group is less shakedown and more collaborative. But that isn’t always true. It is possible that we should teach shakedown skills. How to perform shakedown in a positive way. A way that would naturally lead to the collaborative process. Truly everyone has something to contribute but contribution has to be delivered at the correct collaborative level to be effective.
- rustybelt 4y ago
  If surgeons were able to begin honing their craft at 13, they’d probably be better than the ones who started in their twenties. Programming’s low barrier to entry creates issues that don’t apply to other professions. How many virtuoso pianists didn’t start playing until adulthood?
  - lapcat 4y ago
potamic 4y ago
72 out of 100 (40%) is in fact heavily skewed in the favour of women. The gender ratio for technical degrees is less than 20%, which means half of women are likely promoted over men.
- itsdrewmiller 4y ago
  Those numbers are for corporate America in general, no for the tech industry specifically: https://wiw-report.s3.amazonaws.com/Women_in_the_Workplace_2019.pdf https://wiw-report.s3.amazonaws.com/Women_in_the_Workplace_2...
sandyarmstrong 4y ago
Do you really believe that the majority of software engineers were "hacking on computers at age 13"? Can we stop pretending that everyone coding for a living is a passionate embodiment of the hacker ethos? Even thinking of myself (for whom open source was very important personally and career-wise), I didn't learn how to program until college. There are plenty of opportunities to improve diversity in tech at many stages of the pipeline. Hiring and retention are part of that pipeline. I think it's disingenuous to imply that tech companies are not at fault in any way here, and that there's nothing they can do short of time travel or investing in middle school education. I'm not saying everything in the article is the right answer, but there are a lot of good suggestions.

by jeswin 4y ago

civilized 4y ago

It is a tiny bit sexist to be honest - not catastrophically so or anything, but a bit. Getting 13-year-old girls interested in computers turns out to be not that hard. Lots of programs do it. (Maybe it's harder to get them interested at the same rates as boys, but I wouldn't die on that hill.)

lapcat 4y ago

> "If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us." 1) Founders are entrepreneurs. The article seems to be focused on non-entrepreneurial roles, which is a very different situation. 2) We don't seem to have the same attitude about other professions such as medicine, law, stock trading, etc. Do successful surgeons have to operate at age 13? Do successful lawyers have to try cases at age 13? No, that's nuts. So why in tech do we have such a fetish about teenage hackers? This already seems like a kind of bias, and maybe we should correct that.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>So why in tech do we have such a fetish about teenage hackers? Same reason it happens for teenage artists, musicians, etc. It's possible, and where there's a possibility, you can bet there will be a bunch of profiteers and elitists trying to push it as the new normal. You can bet your sweet dollars if it was possible to do so as surgeons (by changing the culture and opening up possibilities), the same would happen there. Of course, it also completely discredits that people can become amazing at something starting from nothing in old age.
- ddarden 4y ago
  There does seem to be two different mindsets. In most cases everyone has a combination of both of them. The first is the “shakedown” mindset. This is where you are in a situation where you have to try very quickly to figure out what level a person is at so that you can figure out how much info to give them or how to communicate. Some people take the shakedown mindset to an extreme and use it almost exclusively. They tend to by hyper-competitive. Then you have the collaborative mindset. This is where a person is in a more naturally open mindset and they more readily assume that everyone around them are contributors, people they can learn from, non-threatening, etc. The prevailing mindset on HN is probably collaborative. One common misconception, is that what would benefit the group is less shakedown and more collaborative. But that isn’t always true. It is possible that we should teach shakedown skills. How to perform shakedown in a positive way. A way that would naturally lead to the collaborative process. Truly everyone has something to contribute but contribution has to be delivered at the correct collaborative level to be effective.
rustybelt 4y ago
If surgeons were able to begin honing their craft at 13, they’d probably be better than the ones who started in their twenties. Programming’s low barrier to entry creates issues that don’t apply to other professions. How many virtuoso pianists didn’t start playing until adulthood?
- lapcat 4y ago

potamic 4y ago

72 out of 100 (40%) is in fact heavily skewed in the favour of women. The gender ratio for technical degrees is less than 20%, which means half of women are likely promoted over men.

itsdrewmiller 4y ago
Those numbers are for corporate America in general, no for the tech industry specifically: https://wiw-report.s3.amazonaws.com/Women_in_the_Workplace_2019.pdf https://wiw-report.s3.amazonaws.com/Women_in_the_Workplace_2...

sandyarmstrong 4y ago

Do you really believe that the majority of software engineers were "hacking on computers at age 13"? Can we stop pretending that everyone coding for a living is a passionate embodiment of the hacker ethos? Even thinking of myself (for whom open source was very important personally and career-wise), I didn't learn how to program until college. There are plenty of opportunities to improve diversity in tech at many stages of the pipeline. Hiring and retention are part of that pipeline. I think it's disingenuous to imply that tech companies are not at fault in any way here, and that there's nothing they can do short of time travel or investing in middle school education. I'm not saying everything in the article is the right answer, but there are a lot of good suggestions.