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> To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity. This is very PC, but BS nonetheless. At the stage when people can be profitably hired by start-ups

by fab13n 15y ago

> To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity. This is very PC, but BS nonetheless. At the stage when people can be profitably hired by start-ups, the male/female ratio is nowhere near 50% among technical candidates. I'm not saying that frat culture isn't harmful, nor would I dare to guess why women are underrepresented among development professionals; but defending a thesis with such grossly false assertions can only harm it.

RandallBrown 15y ago
there are a hell of a lot more girls in frat culture than there are in programmer culture.
- aspir 15y ago
  The problem is that you're trying to link a recreational culture predominantly consisting of 18-22 year olds with a degree of affluence to that of a lifelong trade career. They just aren't compatible. No one will ever list "10 years of social experience" on a cover letter or resume. It would be absurd. It's equally absurd to view these two cultures in the same light, or to make one more like the other.
dsr_ 15y ago
I would dare to guess that women are underrepresented among developers PRECISELY because of this culture and the underlying assumptions and attitudes. Gender is irrelevant to logical analysis, which is the foundation of programming. If you don't have parity in your pool of candidates, there's a cause, and it's probably social. Nursing and teaching used to be men's work. Women weren't thought to be capable of it. Too weak. Too sensitive. Too illogical. Women aren't going into software development? Then there's a problem. Don't be part of it.
- othermaciej 15y ago
  > Nursing and teaching used to be men's work. Women weren't thought to be capable of it. Too weak. Too sensitive. Too illogical. Do you have any citations for that? My impression is that nursing and teaching were considered women's work before they even existed as distinct professions. Nursing was originally done by women's religious orders, and was founded in its modern form by a woman, Florence Nightingale. And teaching was open to women in America since at least colonial times. Better examples might be law and medicine, high-status professions that were once all-male but now are considerably more gender-balanced than software development. I don't know the reason for the disparity, but I doubt it's because software engineers on average act more fratty than lawyers.
  - Alex3917 15y ago
    With teaching, there have been laws aimed at preventing men from teaching for well over 100 years now. That's why the vast majority of elementary school teachers are women. In the era of modern American schooling, there has never been a period where women were not dominant. I suppose you could make an argument that historically most itinerant teachers were probably men, but this really seems like a very different job than what we currently consider teaching.
    - ghurlman 15y ago
      [citation needed] Please? I'm curious if this is local to you, or a more widespread thing.
      - Alex3917 15y ago
        Not sure if it applies to other countries outside America. I don't have a cite offhand unfortunately, you'd have to read some books about the history of education in America.
        egillie 15y ago
        Could you give an example of one of the laws? This is new to me too
        Alex3917 15y ago
        If I remember correctly there were many laws specifying that men were to be paid less than women and were to be subject to other degrading treatment. It's hard to find a good example of an actual law though because until recently virtually all states regulated education at the local level.
        egillie 15y ago
        Do you remember the name of one of the books? I found some evidence of the opposite happening to attract men to the profession in OK, but I can easily believe that what you described happened in other states. And it's a pretty infuriating idea... To quote Steinem: “there are very few jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all the other jobs should be open to both sexes.
- aidenn0 15y ago
  Yes there is a problem this is obvious. However... as long as women make up such a tiny minority of CS graduates there is no short-term financial incentive for companies to not just market directly to men. For example, if a certain recruiting tactic would double the number of qualified male applicants, but halve the number of qualified female applicants, it is clearly a short-term gain for a company. That's why the statement quoted in the grandparent post is wrong. Obviously it's bad for the industry to have a culture that is so exclusionary of 50% of the population, but that's more of a long-term goal. There is very little any company can do to e.g. increase the number of women graduating from CS programs in the next 3 years, since that number is more-or-less fixed now.
  - anichan 15y ago
    That's a good point. I suspect that a higher proportion of women in CS would solve a lot of the issues we're seeing right now in regards to sexism. But at the same time, it's really difficult to attract more women into CS when the atmosphere isn't welcoming of women in the first place. It's a bit of a cycle really.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    Yes there is a problem this is obvious. However... as long as women make up such a tiny minority of CS graduates there is no short-term financial incentive for companies to not just market directly to men. Many commenters on this site, pg included, have noted that the economics of hiring are rationally biased to false negatives. This makes sense, because the price of false positives is so high. Unfortunately, this tends to accentuate societal factors, such as prejudice.
    - kls 15y ago
      I would argue that with developers, the cost of a false negative is higher. It is just that most companies don't understand the loss walking out the door. Interviews are fraught with 1001 ways to get a negative from a top 10 developer. The cost of hiring a bad one and figuring out they are bad is about 2 weeks pay, the cost of passing over a quality developer is the loss of a rare find and probably that developers social circle. Do not underestimate the cost of false negatives in relation to developers.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  > "Gender is irrelevant to logical analysis" Brain chemistry is relevant to logical analysis. Gender has significant effects on brain chemistry. There are also social problems that contribute. But the gender ratio would not be 50-50 even in a completely egalitarian society. Women like my wife [0] are rare, partly because of "brogrammers" chasing them off, but also because a smaller proportion of women are interested in the particular types of analysis that are relevant to programming. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Dove http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Dove
  - Stwerp 15y ago
    Do you mean sex or gender? (Remember, words are assigned gender but cannot have sex.) I'm not going to try to argue the brain chemistry thing^, but the social/culture aspect is a large problem and (as you bring up) can also partially explain why there are few women as well as men choosing to live effeminately in programming or technical jobs. ^Edit for clarity: Because I think its a totally loaded statement and don't want to even start down that path, not because I agree and assume its fact.
  - pharrington 15y ago
    "Gender has significant effects on brain chemistry." Quantify how sex affects the brain in specific ways that effect the likelihood of developing an interesting in programming and being an effective programmer. Until we can do this, essentially saying "physiology affects your organs" is a pretty empty statement.
    - Produce 15y ago
      That's like saying that until we can quantify how far Paris is from London, "Paris is far from London" is a pretty empty statement. Pretty sure that people understood that locations can be some distance away from each other before they could quantify exactly how much distance.
      - pharrington 15y ago
        Huh? If someone knows neither where Paris nor London are, then yes, saying "Paris is far from London" indeed isn't useful. Is the distance between them a two hour drive? Do they lie half-way around the world from each other? Except in pathological cases, we barely know how physiology affects large scale behavior, let alone how particular brain functions influence how one's interests develop and how they excel at activities, especially in the midst of the confounding environmental factors such as upbringing, schooling, and culture. We don't know where Paris or London are on the map.
- moldbug 15y ago
  You'd dare to be wrong: http://134.173.180.115/berger/pdf/Halpern2007.SciSexDif.Pub.pdf http://134.173.180.115/berger/pdf/Halpern2007.SciSexDif.Pub....
  - asciilifeform 15y ago
    Do you see any evidence that the rank-and-file software developer lives on the far-right-edge of the bell curve? Software developers are largely male for the same reason that construction crews and prisoners are - rather than the reason Nobel Prize winners in Physics are. What, if anything, there is to be gained by encouraging women to join men in wasting their lives away in the IT salt mines, is another question entirely.
    - rada 15y ago
      What, if anything, there is to be gained by encouraging women to join men in wasting their lives away in the IT salt mines, is another question entirely. You make more than your peers and your boss. It takes a couple days to land multiple job offers, in any economy, all you have to do is stop saying no. The work is intellectually gratifying and the results are immediately visible. You are largely immune from corporate politics. The list goes on and on. How can you be stuck in the salt mines when it's been the programmers' market for so long? I am genuinely interested - I hear this sentiment every once in a while and it always baffles me. I've done web development for 10 years (NYC/Midwest) and it's been nothing but gravy. Some lumps, yes, but gravy nonetheless.
      - asciilifeform 15y ago
        > How can you be stuck in the salt mines... > The work is intellectually gratifying Most likely, this is where we differ. The only programming work that I find truly gratifying happens to be my 100%-non-monetizable life project. (http://www.loper-os.org http://www.loper-os.org) Everything else is just a way to pay the bills. That is to say, salt mine labor. In order to eat and pay rent, I burn my prime waking hours working on things other than my life project. I understand that, given our present social structure, this is unavoidable. But I don't have to pretend to like it. I suppose this makes me a "bad prostitute," rather than a "good" one. Programming sucks. So I am not particularly upset that there aren't more women doing the work, just as the lack of female coal miners is likewise not a cruel injustice.
- 127 15y ago
  You are trying to build a narrative that it's men stopping women from participating in software development. I find that problematic and harmful. Where is your proof, other than pure conjecture? My own conjecture is that women don't want to do software development because it's boring and difficult. I'm sure they could if they wanted to, they just do not. With a few notable exceptions to the rule.
  - anichan 15y ago
    It might not be the primary reason but it certainly doesn't help. Back in high school, I was really excited to join the robotics team and I really had a passion for it but I only stayed in it for a year before quitting. I was the only girl on the team and the attitude people took with me was infuriating. It felt like such a boy's club. Sure, you can just pass it off as "boys will be boys", high school boys are stupid and immature. But even the adult mentors were so exclusionary. I had to fight tooth and nail to be involved in the programming and building aspect of the competition even though just wanted to stick me to making their website look pretty. It took me a couple of years to get that bad taste out of my mouth. I initially didn't even go into college for a STEM degree before I worked myself up to take Computer Engineering. When you have experiences like that in high school and you hear stories about sexism in the workforce, it's intimidating to enter a field even if you do enjoy it. I'm glad I made the choice I did but the vibe other women get from degrees like CS isn't conducive to promoting a better gender balance.
    - 127 15y ago
      Thanks, it is interesting to hear from personal experience what it is like.
    - JanezStupar 15y ago
      Not that this applies to you, but I have seen a female programmer (co worker) invoke the chauvinist card, when in fact she was no good as programmer. She wanted to be involved, she wanted to do cool stuff. But she didn't have the basics dialed at all and didn't have the work ethic to pick it up at an accelerated pace. As far as I have seen the guys in hard fields (as AI and Robotics) are pretty selective bunch and will not allow someone with average skills amongst them. You have to be flat out and you have to impress them with your skills. Be a gal or a guy, but if you haven't done you're homework beforehand then you're not welcome in their club. On the other hand, competent and driven engineers have in my opinion always been accepted as an equal. But I have only met a handful of women willing to put in the necessary work.
- xal 15y ago
  I think that's debatable based on geography. You point to nurses and teaching being precedents but that was only true in certain geographies. The low interest in of women in programming is a global phenomenon. It's important that we discuss the actual cause here if we want any hope in solving this. Let me throw out another one that I find has less weaknesses then the usual arguments: There is a tremendous lack of female programming role models. Yep, chicken and egg problem, but no one said this would be easy. Perhaps what we can do is start celebrating the ones we got more? I'm thinking of Marissa Mayer as a potential starting point but I don't know a lot about this part of psychology.
  - Kadin 15y ago
    > The low interest in of women in programming is a global phenomenon. I'm not sure that's completely true. I've been told that the gender imbalance in CompSci programs is less severe in India than it is in the U.S., for instance, relative to the overall gender imbalance in their workforce. But in general it wouldn't surprise me if there is higher worldwide correlation among companies in software development than in other industries, because software development is so new, and because so many of the dominant companies are concentrated in the U.S. Other industries, e.g. healthcare, operate in very different environments from country to country, so you would expect them to be less highly correlated.
  - foobie 14y ago
    "The low interest in of women in programming is a global phenomenon." Huh. Source? according to this: http://www.frauen.inf.ethz.ch/stats/international_stat_frauen.pdf http://www.frauen.inf.ethz.ch/stats/international_stat_fraue... "there is a wide range in participation in computing by women.... it is difficult to do a direct comparison between countries. ... participation is between 10% and 40% in most countries and courses, with a wide spread in this range. There are some countries and courses where women's participation is below 10%, some with participation above 40%, and a few where women are in the majority." ( I believe in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, women are in the majority )
- fleitz 15y ago
  It's more than just women. I've been programming for 10 years and I don't like the culture. It's not the brogrammer stuff either. It's more the incredibly negative attitudes and litany of social faux pas. Programming isn't the only job that pays well and rewards the highly intelligent. Women probably aren't going into software dev because they're socially acclimated enough to realize what a bad deal it is. Software skills change like the wind, and there is always a fresh crop. Yesterday it was rails, today it's node. People who can hack people like programmers hack computers have far more valuable skills. Social skills don't become obsolete, a rolodex is far more reusable than most pieces of code.
  - ZephyrP 15y ago
    If holding power over others and perpetuating inequitable power balance in capitalistic structures is your ultimate goal, I certainly would never admit to it as you just did. As a programmer I mega-cringed when I read this and would certainly never work for you or any company you worked for if I read this. So please, be more dismissive. (Re: Downvotes - So I guess we should just treat programmers with derision and those with rolodexes as the bosses, case settled!)
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    - capsule_toy 15y ago
      Probably because people are reading the parent post completely differently than how you interpreted it. Nowhere did I think he was suggesting inequitable power balances. I'm pretty sure he just meant good social, sales, and marketing skills are more important than coding skills.
  - capsule_toy 15y ago
    Build up your own rolodex and be on the list of names people turn to when they need programming work done. Most developers I've met don't really care that you know Rails but not Node. They care that you're a good programmer. It's really only HR departments and lazy companies that strictly adhere to "5 years experience in Node only!" It also isn't one culture that permeates through all of programming. Go find a place with the right cultural fit for you.
__alexs 15y ago
It's not controversial that aggression scares away the less aggressive as far as I know... Are women less agressive than men on average? Maybe. Are women less aggressive than the kinds of guys who come up with "Gangbang Interviews"? Probably. Is a sociologist going to get funding for a study that obviously stupid? Probably not.
eli 15y ago
Three things: 1) I don't think it makes sense to scare away any potentially awesome developers. My experience is that the problem is getting enough qualified and motivated people to apply, not sorting through too many applicants. (But I suppose YMMV) 2) Look at the other comments here. I'd estimate that 50%+ of developers are offended by this behavior, regardless of their own gender. I'm a guy, but I would not work for a company that is openly hostile towards women. 3) I think getting the office culture right is critically important for a startup. I think promoting a frat culture among developers is bad for business. If nothing else, imagine what effect it would have on your ability to hire and retain non-developer staff.
dhconnelly 15y ago
I think you're missing the point, which is: this attitude, which alienates 50% of humans, handicaps you, and ALL OF US in the development community, by 50%.
lkrubner 15y ago
I think you misread that paragraph. He does not seem to be writing only about programmers, but about everyone that a startup might need to hire. Read this again: "Shapiro, who has blogged in the past about sexism in the tech industry, notes that "it is a widely understood truth that the single biggest challenge to a successful startup is attracting the right people. To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity." " His point, as I understand it, is that if a startup has a bro culture, then women won't want to work there. That includes women in marketing, women in sales, women in HR, women as project managers, etc. And yes, it is a serious issue. Even if you accept the (highly questionable) thesis that only men like to program, are you willing to argue that a growing company will never need women in marketing, sales, HR, management, etc? In that light, he is quite right when he says: "To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity."
- ghurlman 15y ago
  And not just women either. It's ridiculous to assume that 100% of the best/qualified programmers would want to work at a place like that.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Be realistic, there isn't really any culture that 100% of the best/qualified programmers would want to work in.
    - ghurlman 15y ago
      Nor did I want to try and produce some sort of WAG percentage of programmers that would/wouldn't want to.
    - pjscott 15y ago
      But the thing is, a company don't need 100% of the best programmers; in the extreme case of a small startup, you just need a handful of them to get off the ground. If you can make an environment that a few people love, even if most people wouldn't like it, that could be a competitive advantage in hiring. Companies like the ones that the article criticizes may actually be doing themselves a favor, even as they alienate people who find that kind of environment off-putting. Huh. When I started writing this comment, I did not expect to come to that conclusion.
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crazygringo 15y ago
There is one theory which says that men genetically tend to be more "outliers" while women genetically tend more towards the average. Thus there are far more men than women who are wildly rich and successful, but also far more men than women who are failures or in jail. If we're talking about start-ups who need to hire from the top 10% of programmers, who might be from the top 0.5% of the population in terms of logical ability, then this theory would actually partially explain the dearth of female programmers. Again, this is just a theory. But at the same time, blatant cultural insensitivity certainly isn't helping.
- gte910h 15y ago
  What a horrible idea if you need that mystical 1:200 soul to pull it off.
  - crazygringo 15y ago
    I dunno... places like Apple and Facebook are very vocal about recruiting only "A" talent, which is probably far less than 1 in 200 people from the general population. From my understanding, Jobs credits the whole execution of the Macintosh to it.
    - gte910h 15y ago
      Sure, they say that. Do they get that? No.
- eli 15y ago
  I'm curious, do you think logical ability is the main thing that separates good developers from bad ones?
  - crazygringo 15y ago
    Well I'm just repeating a theory I found interesting, not necessarily arguing for it. But while programming obviously involves teamwork, communication, etc., fundamentally it really is about building castles of logical processes, and I'd say your "pure" programming skill is limited mainly by one's logical ability. Slapping together enterprise components might not need it so much... I'm talking more about complex algorithms, architectures, etc.
zeroonetwothree 15y ago
Do you really think that all men enjoy this type of culture?
gte910h 15y ago
I would contend if you add women to the men with some social intelligence who would run, not walk from this "opportunity", you're probably killing far past 50% of your audience.
nikcub 15y ago
he is including guys who wouldn't work with dickish 'brogrammers'
SideburnsOfDoom 15y ago
> the male/female ratio is nowhere near 50% among technical candidates. Yeah, the handicap is already baked in.
dudeguy999 15y ago
Geek culture scares away far more females than frat culture, empirically.
darthpanda 15y ago
Well here's where they are very well represented - marketing and design. Two very important fields. Without those you just have a lonely little application or website. Never mind management where they are rising very fast. Programmers aren't an island.

by fab13n 15y ago

RandallBrown 15y ago

there are a hell of a lot more girls in frat culture than there are in programmer culture.

aspir 15y ago
The problem is that you're trying to link a recreational culture predominantly consisting of 18-22 year olds with a degree of affluence to that of a lifelong trade career. They just aren't compatible. No one will ever list "10 years of social experience" on a cover letter or resume. It would be absurd. It's equally absurd to view these two cultures in the same light, or to make one more like the other.

dsr_ 15y ago

I would dare to guess that women are underrepresented among developers PRECISELY because of this culture and the underlying assumptions and attitudes. Gender is irrelevant to logical analysis, which is the foundation of programming. If you don't have parity in your pool of candidates, there's a cause, and it's probably social. Nursing and teaching used to be men's work. Women weren't thought to be capable of it. Too weak. Too sensitive. Too illogical. Women aren't going into software development? Then there's a problem. Don't be part of it.

othermaciej 15y ago
> Nursing and teaching used to be men's work. Women weren't thought to be capable of it. Too weak. Too sensitive. Too illogical. Do you have any citations for that? My impression is that nursing and teaching were considered women's work before they even existed as distinct professions. Nursing was originally done by women's religious orders, and was founded in its modern form by a woman, Florence Nightingale. And teaching was open to women in America since at least colonial times. Better examples might be law and medicine, high-status professions that were once all-male but now are considerably more gender-balanced than software development. I don't know the reason for the disparity, but I doubt it's because software engineers on average act more fratty than lawyers.
- Alex3917 15y ago
  With teaching, there have been laws aimed at preventing men from teaching for well over 100 years now. That's why the vast majority of elementary school teachers are women. In the era of modern American schooling, there has never been a period where women were not dominant. I suppose you could make an argument that historically most itinerant teachers were probably men, but this really seems like a very different job than what we currently consider teaching.
  - ghurlman 15y ago
    [citation needed] Please? I'm curious if this is local to you, or a more widespread thing.
    - Alex3917 15y ago
      Not sure if it applies to other countries outside America. I don't have a cite offhand unfortunately, you'd have to read some books about the history of education in America.
      - egillie 15y ago
        Could you give an example of one of the laws? This is new to me too
        Alex3917 15y ago
        If I remember correctly there were many laws specifying that men were to be paid less than women and were to be subject to other degrading treatment. It's hard to find a good example of an actual law though because until recently virtually all states regulated education at the local level.
        egillie 15y ago
        Do you remember the name of one of the books? I found some evidence of the opposite happening to attract men to the profession in OK, but I can easily believe that what you described happened in other states. And it's a pretty infuriating idea... To quote Steinem: “there are very few jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all the other jobs should be open to both sexes.
aidenn0 15y ago
Yes there is a problem this is obvious. However... as long as women make up such a tiny minority of CS graduates there is no short-term financial incentive for companies to not just market directly to men. For example, if a certain recruiting tactic would double the number of qualified male applicants, but halve the number of qualified female applicants, it is clearly a short-term gain for a company. That's why the statement quoted in the grandparent post is wrong. Obviously it's bad for the industry to have a culture that is so exclusionary of 50% of the population, but that's more of a long-term goal. There is very little any company can do to e.g. increase the number of women graduating from CS programs in the next 3 years, since that number is more-or-less fixed now.
- anichan 15y ago
  That's a good point. I suspect that a higher proportion of women in CS would solve a lot of the issues we're seeing right now in regards to sexism. But at the same time, it's really difficult to attract more women into CS when the atmosphere isn't welcoming of women in the first place. It's a bit of a cycle really.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  Yes there is a problem this is obvious. However... as long as women make up such a tiny minority of CS graduates there is no short-term financial incentive for companies to not just market directly to men. Many commenters on this site, pg included, have noted that the economics of hiring are rationally biased to false negatives. This makes sense, because the price of false positives is so high. Unfortunately, this tends to accentuate societal factors, such as prejudice.
  - kls 15y ago
    I would argue that with developers, the cost of a false negative is higher. It is just that most companies don't understand the loss walking out the door. Interviews are fraught with 1001 ways to get a negative from a top 10 developer. The cost of hiring a bad one and figuring out they are bad is about 2 weeks pay, the cost of passing over a quality developer is the loss of a rare find and probably that developers social circle. Do not underestimate the cost of false negatives in relation to developers.
lotharbot 15y ago
> "Gender is irrelevant to logical analysis" Brain chemistry is relevant to logical analysis. Gender has significant effects on brain chemistry. There are also social problems that contribute. But the gender ratio would not be 50-50 even in a completely egalitarian society. Women like my wife [0] are rare, partly because of "brogrammers" chasing them off, but also because a smaller proportion of women are interested in the particular types of analysis that are relevant to programming. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Dove http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Dove
- Stwerp 15y ago
  Do you mean sex or gender? (Remember, words are assigned gender but cannot have sex.) I'm not going to try to argue the brain chemistry thing^, but the social/culture aspect is a large problem and (as you bring up) can also partially explain why there are few women as well as men choosing to live effeminately in programming or technical jobs. ^Edit for clarity: Because I think its a totally loaded statement and don't want to even start down that path, not because I agree and assume its fact.
- pharrington 15y ago
  "Gender has significant effects on brain chemistry." Quantify how sex affects the brain in specific ways that effect the likelihood of developing an interesting in programming and being an effective programmer. Until we can do this, essentially saying "physiology affects your organs" is a pretty empty statement.
  - Produce 15y ago
    That's like saying that until we can quantify how far Paris is from London, "Paris is far from London" is a pretty empty statement. Pretty sure that people understood that locations can be some distance away from each other before they could quantify exactly how much distance.
    - pharrington 15y ago
      Huh? If someone knows neither where Paris nor London are, then yes, saying "Paris is far from London" indeed isn't useful. Is the distance between them a two hour drive? Do they lie half-way around the world from each other? Except in pathological cases, we barely know how physiology affects large scale behavior, let alone how particular brain functions influence how one's interests develop and how they excel at activities, especially in the midst of the confounding environmental factors such as upbringing, schooling, and culture. We don't know where Paris or London are on the map.
moldbug 15y ago
You'd dare to be wrong: http://134.173.180.115/berger/pdf/Halpern2007.SciSexDif.Pub.pdf http://134.173.180.115/berger/pdf/Halpern2007.SciSexDif.Pub....
- asciilifeform 15y ago
  Do you see any evidence that the rank-and-file software developer lives on the far-right-edge of the bell curve? Software developers are largely male for the same reason that construction crews and prisoners are - rather than the reason Nobel Prize winners in Physics are. What, if anything, there is to be gained by encouraging women to join men in wasting their lives away in the IT salt mines, is another question entirely.
  - rada 15y ago
    What, if anything, there is to be gained by encouraging women to join men in wasting their lives away in the IT salt mines, is another question entirely. You make more than your peers and your boss. It takes a couple days to land multiple job offers, in any economy, all you have to do is stop saying no. The work is intellectually gratifying and the results are immediately visible. You are largely immune from corporate politics. The list goes on and on. How can you be stuck in the salt mines when it's been the programmers' market for so long? I am genuinely interested - I hear this sentiment every once in a while and it always baffles me. I've done web development for 10 years (NYC/Midwest) and it's been nothing but gravy. Some lumps, yes, but gravy nonetheless.
    - asciilifeform 15y ago
      > How can you be stuck in the salt mines... > The work is intellectually gratifying Most likely, this is where we differ. The only programming work that I find truly gratifying happens to be my 100%-non-monetizable life project. (http://www.loper-os.org http://www.loper-os.org) Everything else is just a way to pay the bills. That is to say, salt mine labor. In order to eat and pay rent, I burn my prime waking hours working on things other than my life project. I understand that, given our present social structure, this is unavoidable. But I don't have to pretend to like it. I suppose this makes me a "bad prostitute," rather than a "good" one. Programming sucks. So I am not particularly upset that there aren't more women doing the work, just as the lack of female coal miners is likewise not a cruel injustice.
127 15y ago
You are trying to build a narrative that it's men stopping women from participating in software development. I find that problematic and harmful. Where is your proof, other than pure conjecture? My own conjecture is that women don't want to do software development because it's boring and difficult. I'm sure they could if they wanted to, they just do not. With a few notable exceptions to the rule.
- anichan 15y ago
  It might not be the primary reason but it certainly doesn't help. Back in high school, I was really excited to join the robotics team and I really had a passion for it but I only stayed in it for a year before quitting. I was the only girl on the team and the attitude people took with me was infuriating. It felt like such a boy's club. Sure, you can just pass it off as "boys will be boys", high school boys are stupid and immature. But even the adult mentors were so exclusionary. I had to fight tooth and nail to be involved in the programming and building aspect of the competition even though just wanted to stick me to making their website look pretty. It took me a couple of years to get that bad taste out of my mouth. I initially didn't even go into college for a STEM degree before I worked myself up to take Computer Engineering. When you have experiences like that in high school and you hear stories about sexism in the workforce, it's intimidating to enter a field even if you do enjoy it. I'm glad I made the choice I did but the vibe other women get from degrees like CS isn't conducive to promoting a better gender balance.
  - 127 15y ago
    Thanks, it is interesting to hear from personal experience what it is like.
  - JanezStupar 15y ago
    Not that this applies to you, but I have seen a female programmer (co worker) invoke the chauvinist card, when in fact she was no good as programmer. She wanted to be involved, she wanted to do cool stuff. But she didn't have the basics dialed at all and didn't have the work ethic to pick it up at an accelerated pace. As far as I have seen the guys in hard fields (as AI and Robotics) are pretty selective bunch and will not allow someone with average skills amongst them. You have to be flat out and you have to impress them with your skills. Be a gal or a guy, but if you haven't done you're homework beforehand then you're not welcome in their club. On the other hand, competent and driven engineers have in my opinion always been accepted as an equal. But I have only met a handful of women willing to put in the necessary work.
xal 15y ago
I think that's debatable based on geography. You point to nurses and teaching being precedents but that was only true in certain geographies. The low interest in of women in programming is a global phenomenon. It's important that we discuss the actual cause here if we want any hope in solving this. Let me throw out another one that I find has less weaknesses then the usual arguments: There is a tremendous lack of female programming role models. Yep, chicken and egg problem, but no one said this would be easy. Perhaps what we can do is start celebrating the ones we got more? I'm thinking of Marissa Mayer as a potential starting point but I don't know a lot about this part of psychology.
- Kadin 15y ago
  > The low interest in of women in programming is a global phenomenon. I'm not sure that's completely true. I've been told that the gender imbalance in CompSci programs is less severe in India than it is in the U.S., for instance, relative to the overall gender imbalance in their workforce. But in general it wouldn't surprise me if there is higher worldwide correlation among companies in software development than in other industries, because software development is so new, and because so many of the dominant companies are concentrated in the U.S. Other industries, e.g. healthcare, operate in very different environments from country to country, so you would expect them to be less highly correlated.
- foobie 14y ago
  "The low interest in of women in programming is a global phenomenon." Huh. Source? according to this: http://www.frauen.inf.ethz.ch/stats/international_stat_frauen.pdf http://www.frauen.inf.ethz.ch/stats/international_stat_fraue... "there is a wide range in participation in computing by women.... it is difficult to do a direct comparison between countries. ... participation is between 10% and 40% in most countries and courses, with a wide spread in this range. There are some countries and courses where women's participation is below 10%, some with participation above 40%, and a few where women are in the majority." ( I believe in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, women are in the majority )
fleitz 15y ago
It's more than just women. I've been programming for 10 years and I don't like the culture. It's not the brogrammer stuff either. It's more the incredibly negative attitudes and litany of social faux pas. Programming isn't the only job that pays well and rewards the highly intelligent. Women probably aren't going into software dev because they're socially acclimated enough to realize what a bad deal it is. Software skills change like the wind, and there is always a fresh crop. Yesterday it was rails, today it's node. People who can hack people like programmers hack computers have far more valuable skills. Social skills don't become obsolete, a rolodex is far more reusable than most pieces of code.
- ZephyrP 15y ago
  If holding power over others and perpetuating inequitable power balance in capitalistic structures is your ultimate goal, I certainly would never admit to it as you just did. As a programmer I mega-cringed when I read this and would certainly never work for you or any company you worked for if I read this. So please, be more dismissive. (Re: Downvotes - So I guess we should just treat programmers with derision and those with rolodexes as the bosses, case settled!)
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  - capsule_toy 15y ago
    Probably because people are reading the parent post completely differently than how you interpreted it. Nowhere did I think he was suggesting inequitable power balances. I'm pretty sure he just meant good social, sales, and marketing skills are more important than coding skills.
- capsule_toy 15y ago
  Build up your own rolodex and be on the list of names people turn to when they need programming work done. Most developers I've met don't really care that you know Rails but not Node. They care that you're a good programmer. It's really only HR departments and lazy companies that strictly adhere to "5 years experience in Node only!" It also isn't one culture that permeates through all of programming. Go find a place with the right cultural fit for you.

__alexs 15y ago

It's not controversial that aggression scares away the less aggressive as far as I know... Are women less agressive than men on average? Maybe. Are women less aggressive than the kinds of guys who come up with "Gangbang Interviews"? Probably. Is a sociologist going to get funding for a study that obviously stupid? Probably not.

eli 15y ago

Three things: 1) I don't think it makes sense to scare away any potentially awesome developers. My experience is that the problem is getting enough qualified and motivated people to apply, not sorting through too many applicants. (But I suppose YMMV) 2) Look at the other comments here. I'd estimate that 50%+ of developers are offended by this behavior, regardless of their own gender. I'm a guy, but I would not work for a company that is openly hostile towards women. 3) I think getting the office culture right is critically important for a startup. I think promoting a frat culture among developers is bad for business. If nothing else, imagine what effect it would have on your ability to hire and retain non-developer staff.

dhconnelly 15y ago

I think you're missing the point, which is: this attitude, which alienates 50% of humans, handicaps you, and ALL OF US in the development community, by 50%.

lkrubner 15y ago

I think you misread that paragraph. He does not seem to be writing only about programmers, but about everyone that a startup might need to hire. Read this again: "Shapiro, who has blogged in the past about sexism in the tech industry, notes that "it is a widely understood truth that the single biggest challenge to a successful startup is attracting the right people. To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity." " His point, as I understand it, is that if a startup has a bro culture, then women won't want to work there. That includes women in marketing, women in sales, women in HR, women as project managers, etc. And yes, it is a serious issue. Even if you accept the (highly questionable) thesis that only men like to program, are you willing to argue that a growing company will never need women in marketing, sales, HR, management, etc? In that light, he is quite right when he says: "To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity."

ghurlman 15y ago
And not just women either. It's ridiculous to assume that 100% of the best/qualified programmers would want to work at a place like that.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Be realistic, there isn't really any culture that 100% of the best/qualified programmers would want to work in.
  - ghurlman 15y ago
    Nor did I want to try and produce some sort of WAG percentage of programmers that would/wouldn't want to.
  - pjscott 15y ago
    But the thing is, a company don't need 100% of the best programmers; in the extreme case of a small startup, you just need a handful of them to get off the ground. If you can make an environment that a few people love, even if most people wouldn't like it, that could be a competitive advantage in hiring. Companies like the ones that the article criticizes may actually be doing themselves a favor, even as they alienate people who find that kind of environment off-putting. Huh. When I started writing this comment, I did not expect to come to that conclusion.

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crazygringo 15y ago

There is one theory which says that men genetically tend to be more "outliers" while women genetically tend more towards the average. Thus there are far more men than women who are wildly rich and successful, but also far more men than women who are failures or in jail. If we're talking about start-ups who need to hire from the top 10% of programmers, who might be from the top 0.5% of the population in terms of logical ability, then this theory would actually partially explain the dearth of female programmers. Again, this is just a theory. But at the same time, blatant cultural insensitivity certainly isn't helping.

gte910h 15y ago
What a horrible idea if you need that mystical 1:200 soul to pull it off.
- crazygringo 15y ago
  I dunno... places like Apple and Facebook are very vocal about recruiting only "A" talent, which is probably far less than 1 in 200 people from the general population. From my understanding, Jobs credits the whole execution of the Macintosh to it.
  - gte910h 15y ago
    Sure, they say that. Do they get that? No.
eli 15y ago
I'm curious, do you think logical ability is the main thing that separates good developers from bad ones?
- crazygringo 15y ago
  Well I'm just repeating a theory I found interesting, not necessarily arguing for it. But while programming obviously involves teamwork, communication, etc., fundamentally it really is about building castles of logical processes, and I'd say your "pure" programming skill is limited mainly by one's logical ability. Slapping together enterprise components might not need it so much... I'm talking more about complex algorithms, architectures, etc.

zeroonetwothree 15y ago

Do you really think that all men enjoy this type of culture?

gte910h 15y ago

I would contend if you add women to the men with some social intelligence who would run, not walk from this "opportunity", you're probably killing far past 50% of your audience.

nikcub 15y ago

he is including guys who wouldn't work with dickish 'brogrammers'

SideburnsOfDoom 15y ago

> the male/female ratio is nowhere near 50% among technical candidates. Yeah, the handicap is already baked in.

dudeguy999 15y ago

Geek culture scares away far more females than frat culture, empirically.

darthpanda 15y ago

Well here's where they are very well represented - marketing and design. Two very important fields. Without those you just have a lonely little application or website. Never mind management where they are rising very fast. Programmers aren't an island.