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Perhaps it sounds a bit sexist, but I don't know many women that are actually intrigued by CS/CE. The females in my graduating class are very good at what they
by fein 15y ago
Perhaps it sounds a bit sexist, but I don't know many women that are actually intrigued by CS/CE. The females in my graduating class are very good at what they do, and very zealous about their work, but this is really the exception to the rule and not the rule itself. The motivating reason for this has nothing to to with the antisocial "nerd barrier", but with the nature of the work. Can we start to gripe about why there aren't more men in the fashion industry?
The point of view taken here is effectively that the author doesn't encourage women to enter these fields because of the possibility of encountering an awkward social situation and being exposed to equal opportunity employment, however this issue is going to arise in ANY male dominated career.
The point about needing to connect in fields outside of ones work is also an incredible load of shit. I have more social interactions with friends that are completely outside of the tech world than those within. I'm a gearhead as well as a developer, and my girlfriend has begun to introduce me to the world of hair fashion (I color her roots on occasion). Because of these experiences, I end up with plenty of social interactions with loads of individuals that give me strange looks when I go on about the newest framework I'm playing with, or the excitement over a new linux kernel.
People have different interests, its as simple as that. Sometimes, people only want to live their work and nothing else. You should be encouraged to do what you love, not discouraged because of some superficial office drama.
- wpietri 15y agoIt's disappointing to see someone in a technical context be so handwavey. "Girls aren't interested in math, simple as that," is a way of being ok with ignorance, not an actual argument. One should be suspicious of that style of argument at all times, but doubly so when it's convenient to the speaker.
- fein 15y agoYou call it handwavey, I call it first hand experience. I'm not here to analyze why society seems to operate in this way, I'm here to state the unfortunately obvious state of the field. Blame it on television, stereotypes, biology, the stigma of the tech fields... I don't care. The fact of the matter is that CS/CE doesn't seem to be something that a significantly large portion of women actually enjoy.
- wpietri 15y agoExactly. You're ok with your ignorance. Which you somehow think exempts you from having to do anything about the problem.
- marshray 15y agoI think if you're going to call someone ignorant, you should back it up with facts or at least put some effort into explaining your own opinion.
- wpietri 15y agoSure! The hacker way is to continuously tinker with systems to improve them. As part of that process, we seek knowledge through analysis, especially the sort of knowledge that provides knobs to tweak. Fein explicitly says "I'm not here to analyze" the system he's participating in. He even goes on to list some potential causes of the negative outcome we're discussing, and then says he doesn't care about the root causes. It's those root causes that he's ignorant of. Not just accidentally ignorant, but admittedly and willfully ignorant of. I don't think that's coincidence. It's a natural human tendency be willfully ignorant of uncomfortable truths. If Fein actually took time to understand the problems keeping women out of CS, he might discover that he was part of the problem, or that the power to improve the situation is in his hands. That's certainly what I discovered when I dug into this stuff. I say his sort of willful ignorance, however understandable is, is exactly the opposite of what hackers are all about.
- iwasapivot 15y agoYour entire post is contained in its first twelve words.
- wickedchicken 15y ago> The females in my graduating class are very good at what they do, and very zealous about their work, but this is really the exception to the rule and not the rule itself. s/females/people/. This yields the same result. > Can we start to gripe about why there aren't more men in the fashion industry? You've never met anyone from NYU, have you?