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Having spoken with some truly incredible women engineers who battled through the tiers and tiers and tiers of strife and struggles and bullshit women in the eng

Having spoken with some truly incredible women engineers who battled through the tiers and tiers and tiers of strife and struggles and bullshit women in the engineering world have to deal with to make any sort of progression for themselves, that 5:1 in favor of women is a VERY good thing. How many 1:5 man teams have you seen? How many 0:5 man teams? Getting more women and getting more women-majority teams is a net good not only to the hilarious gender disparity in tech but also for the individual engineers, especially women, who don’t have strong, similar-to-themselves mentors and people to look up to.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
[flagged]
busterarm 2y ago
When my brother was starting his career in university IT in the very early 90s, CS was still part of the math department and most places were anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 women. Many people at the time considered operating a computer to be equivalent to secretarial work. Such a gender disparity in tech is relatively recent and pretty much since the iPhone and the flood of zero-interest money into the industry. And yet all of the big FAANGs hire lots of women. And as someone who has done lots of hiring across the industry, generally women don't even apply to jobs that aren't big recognized brands anymore.
- kalleboo 2y ago
  > pretty much since the iPhone I would say it's since the dot-com crash, I went to university in 2003 and it was like 100:1 men in the CS courses back then.
  - busterarm 2y ago
    And nobody was complaining about that then either because there were no job prospects and the high salaries from pre-crash were long gone.
scarab92 2y ago
So basically, “discrimination is okay when I do it”. It’s concerning how many people don’t see other people as individuals and instead see them as classes. This intellectual laziness results in discriminatory outcomes because it presumes that balance can be achieved by punishing different individuals within the same class. It’s terrible that a 50 year old woman experienced discrimination, but privileging a 20 year old women doesn’t fix that. You’re ignoring the individuals that were harmed, privileging someone else that doesn’t need it, discriminating against 20 year old men to “balance” the privilege that 50 year old men received. None of this makes sense.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  The fact that this is downvoted, shows HN commentators have no idea why the current president won. Those 20 year olds aren’t ignorant of the fact that they are being discriminated against, and they will one day be our future voters and politicians. Can we be surprised when they want to burn it all down? Can we be surprised when they flock to anyone offering a sympathetic ear? Reverse discrimination is a fundamentally short term and self-defeating strategy.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    I’m not sure if it’s automated behaviour, but I often notice my posts go to -3 within a minute of being posted then climb back to positive over time.
    - dijit 2y ago
      There are definitely bots crawling this site for things to engage with, the speed in which votes happen compared to how long it would take to read a comment I make is inhuman. I doubt its HN itself, and it seems positive for some things (anything that could be seen as pro-startup, pro-company, anti-regulation), while negative for other things (anything pro-europe, or political in a way that could be misconstrued as an endorsement of the right- even if the comment itself is actively admonishing the right). I have contemplated experimenting with short lived comments (essentially: spam) to see how they are manipulated and to confirm this behaviour, but I doubt dang would approve, so I have refrained. Case-in-point: this comment was downvoted within 1s of being posted.
tdb7893 2y ago
Yeah, experience is that women tend to stick together on teams because of the shit they experience all the time on other teams. Mentoring women engineers was eye opening at the number get asked out at work or get asked if they are engineers or other a million other problems. If people have a problem with women engineers sticking together they first have to fix the culture problem.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

[flagged]

busterarm 2y ago

When my brother was starting his career in university IT in the very early 90s, CS was still part of the math department and most places were anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 women. Many people at the time considered operating a computer to be equivalent to secretarial work. Such a gender disparity in tech is relatively recent and pretty much since the iPhone and the flood of zero-interest money into the industry. And yet all of the big FAANGs hire lots of women. And as someone who has done lots of hiring across the industry, generally women don't even apply to jobs that aren't big recognized brands anymore.

kalleboo 2y ago
> pretty much since the iPhone I would say it's since the dot-com crash, I went to university in 2003 and it was like 100:1 men in the CS courses back then.
- busterarm 2y ago
  And nobody was complaining about that then either because there were no job prospects and the high salaries from pre-crash were long gone.

scarab92 2y ago

So basically, “discrimination is okay when I do it”. It’s concerning how many people don’t see other people as individuals and instead see them as classes. This intellectual laziness results in discriminatory outcomes because it presumes that balance can be achieved by punishing different individuals within the same class. It’s terrible that a 50 year old woman experienced discrimination, but privileging a 20 year old women doesn’t fix that. You’re ignoring the individuals that were harmed, privileging someone else that doesn’t need it, discriminating against 20 year old men to “balance” the privilege that 50 year old men received. None of this makes sense.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
The fact that this is downvoted, shows HN commentators have no idea why the current president won. Those 20 year olds aren’t ignorant of the fact that they are being discriminated against, and they will one day be our future voters and politicians. Can we be surprised when they want to burn it all down? Can we be surprised when they flock to anyone offering a sympathetic ear? Reverse discrimination is a fundamentally short term and self-defeating strategy.
- scarab92 2y ago
  I’m not sure if it’s automated behaviour, but I often notice my posts go to -3 within a minute of being posted then climb back to positive over time.
  - dijit 2y ago
    There are definitely bots crawling this site for things to engage with, the speed in which votes happen compared to how long it would take to read a comment I make is inhuman. I doubt its HN itself, and it seems positive for some things (anything that could be seen as pro-startup, pro-company, anti-regulation), while negative for other things (anything pro-europe, or political in a way that could be misconstrued as an endorsement of the right- even if the comment itself is actively admonishing the right). I have contemplated experimenting with short lived comments (essentially: spam) to see how they are manipulated and to confirm this behaviour, but I doubt dang would approve, so I have refrained. Case-in-point: this comment was downvoted within 1s of being posted.

tdb7893 2y ago

Yeah, experience is that women tend to stick together on teams because of the shit they experience all the time on other teams. Mentoring women engineers was eye opening at the number get asked out at work or get asked if they are engineers or other a million other problems. If people have a problem with women engineers sticking together they first have to fix the culture problem.