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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 m

by rada 14y 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 14y 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.
- secoif 14y ago
  Sounds like you desperately need a new profession. If you don't do it for love, you're wasting your life.
  - cellis 14y ago
    This sounds pretty naive. Just because someone doesn't do something they love now, doesn't mean they're wasting their life. It may simply mean they like eating rather than starving.
  - asciilifeform 14y ago
    I don't think you really understood my reply. I have a life project. What is sometimes called a calling. (If you don't, you probably cannot process what I am saying and should disregard this post.) So whenever I am doing some other work - anything at all - other than my calling - to pay for food and housing - I am acting under duress. Which isn't much fun. Of course, some kinds of forced labor suck more than others. I could be felling trees, or laying pipes, or something even more physically unpleasant. So overall, programming for money is far from the worst among possible fates. And often, even persons who lack a calling and for whom all work is just work, "just switching professions" is not an option. For a different perspective on why many programmers stay in their line of work despite hating it, consider this book: "Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors" (http://books.google.com/books/about/Desperate_Journeys_Abandoned_Souls.html?id=X0_S5AtHuY0C http://books.google.com/books/about/Desperate_Journeys_Aband...). It is largely about shipwrecked sailors. One of the more interesting facts about these is how many kept at their profession despite suffering wreck after wreck - witnessing murder, cannibalism, and various other unpleasant things. The explanation offered by the author is that sailors typically entered their trade during childhood, and were largely unfit (by their own estimate as well as that of others) for any other work. I started programming when I was nine years old. And perhaps you did so, or know those who did, at an even earlier age. This is not necessarily true for all such people, but switching professions after having your whole development as a person wrapped around computing can be like being asked to switch to being left- (or right-, as the case may be) handed, late in life.
- Kadin 14y ago
  > just as the lack of female coal miners is likewise not a cruel injustice. It is for someone who really wants to work in a coal mine. (Or, for a more germane example, someone who wants to be an infantry soldier.) Not everyone shares your priorities or ideas on what constitutes rewarding work. Some people might find a well-compensated 9-to-5 job slinging code under fluorescent lights to be just the ticket, and they should get to pursue that to the best of their ability on their own merits. Restricting certain people from (or pushing certain people into) certain jobs based on their gender, skin color, or other irrelevant factors beyond their control is a fairness issue that transcends the particulars of the jobs that they are being restricted from.
  - asciilifeform 14y ago
    But where, then, is the agitation for an end to the discrimination which must surely explain (as per Official Truth) the scarcity of female coal miners and infantry soldiers? Implicit in almost all discussions of unfair discrimination in the programming labour market is the assumption that being a programmer is overall a glorious and pleasant thing, and that a great many people would be happier doing it than they are in their present lives. Notice that no one is angry that >99% of all persons who have sizzled in the electric chair were male.
- mahyarm 14y ago
  What you describe is a complaint about jobs, corporate culture and how market demands change over time, nothing unique to programming. If you had to choose again, what would you've done that wasn't 'salt-mine labor' then?
  - asciilifeform 14y ago
    > What you describe is a complaint about jobs, corporate culture and how market demands change over time, nothing unique to programming "Market demands"? What part of "non-monetizable calling" do you not understand? I'm not sure it even makes sense for me to talk to you at all. It is like trying to describe 15-dimensional geometry to a Flatlander. > If you had to choose again, what would you've done that wasn't 'salt-mine labor' then? I can say only: "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." (Charles Babbage) But if you must know: I'd be an inventor. In the 1880s. Hey, you asked.

by rada 14y ago

asciilifeform 14y 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.

secoif 14y ago
Sounds like you desperately need a new profession. If you don't do it for love, you're wasting your life.
- cellis 14y ago
  This sounds pretty naive. Just because someone doesn't do something they love now, doesn't mean they're wasting their life. It may simply mean they like eating rather than starving.
- asciilifeform 14y ago
  I don't think you really understood my reply. I have a life project. What is sometimes called a calling. (If you don't, you probably cannot process what I am saying and should disregard this post.) So whenever I am doing some other work - anything at all - other than my calling - to pay for food and housing - I am acting under duress. Which isn't much fun. Of course, some kinds of forced labor suck more than others. I could be felling trees, or laying pipes, or something even more physically unpleasant. So overall, programming for money is far from the worst among possible fates. And often, even persons who lack a calling and for whom all work is just work, "just switching professions" is not an option. For a different perspective on why many programmers stay in their line of work despite hating it, consider this book: "Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors" (http://books.google.com/books/about/Desperate_Journeys_Abandoned_Souls.html?id=X0_S5AtHuY0C http://books.google.com/books/about/Desperate_Journeys_Aband...). It is largely about shipwrecked sailors. One of the more interesting facts about these is how many kept at their profession despite suffering wreck after wreck - witnessing murder, cannibalism, and various other unpleasant things. The explanation offered by the author is that sailors typically entered their trade during childhood, and were largely unfit (by their own estimate as well as that of others) for any other work. I started programming when I was nine years old. And perhaps you did so, or know those who did, at an even earlier age. This is not necessarily true for all such people, but switching professions after having your whole development as a person wrapped around computing can be like being asked to switch to being left- (or right-, as the case may be) handed, late in life.
Kadin 14y ago
> just as the lack of female coal miners is likewise not a cruel injustice. It is for someone who really wants to work in a coal mine. (Or, for a more germane example, someone who wants to be an infantry soldier.) Not everyone shares your priorities or ideas on what constitutes rewarding work. Some people might find a well-compensated 9-to-5 job slinging code under fluorescent lights to be just the ticket, and they should get to pursue that to the best of their ability on their own merits. Restricting certain people from (or pushing certain people into) certain jobs based on their gender, skin color, or other irrelevant factors beyond their control is a fairness issue that transcends the particulars of the jobs that they are being restricted from.
- asciilifeform 14y ago
  But where, then, is the agitation for an end to the discrimination which must surely explain (as per Official Truth) the scarcity of female coal miners and infantry soldiers? Implicit in almost all discussions of unfair discrimination in the programming labour market is the assumption that being a programmer is overall a glorious and pleasant thing, and that a great many people would be happier doing it than they are in their present lives. Notice that no one is angry that >99% of all persons who have sizzled in the electric chair were male.
mahyarm 14y ago
What you describe is a complaint about jobs, corporate culture and how market demands change over time, nothing unique to programming. If you had to choose again, what would you've done that wasn't 'salt-mine labor' then?
- asciilifeform 14y ago
  > What you describe is a complaint about jobs, corporate culture and how market demands change over time, nothing unique to programming "Market demands"? What part of "non-monetizable calling" do you not understand? I'm not sure it even makes sense for me to talk to you at all. It is like trying to describe 15-dimensional geometry to a Flatlander. > If you had to choose again, what would you've done that wasn't 'salt-mine labor' then? I can say only: "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." (Charles Babbage) But if you must know: I'd be an inventor. In the 1880s. Hey, you asked.