5 ms·

"Examples of getting it wrong are abundant: A common 'for-the-ladies' strategy is to take last year's product, re-release it at a slightly lower-price point, sl

by Tichy 14y ago

"Examples of getting it wrong are abundant: A common 'for-the-ladies' strategy is to take last year's product, re-release it at a slightly lower-price point, slightly smaller and clad in pink plastic." The fact seems to be, pink gadgets sell. So I am not sure that the companies are "getting it wrong". Not saying that there couldn't be a better way. Also wondering about the oft cited former communist East European states with their high percentage of female engineers. I have heard that not many of them actually work as engineers. Don't have numbers, though. I wish more women would go into engineering, but to be honest, my attitude has become a bit cynical: I think women have more attractive choices (not in the least becoming stay at home mums, or working for unattractive salaries in fun jobs because husbands bring in the big money - fun jobs including kindergardener, nurse, fashion shop owners,...). Engineering, or let's talk about programming, is not actually that much fun in the real world. You sit in front of a screen all day long and wreck your brain. Talking with people is better for the soul, and women are smart enough to realize that. Yes, bring on the downvotes. I am not saying this is a law of nature, just that it is the current state of things for a variety of reasons.

barry-cotter 14y ago
Speaking as a current kindergarten teacher it's as.intellectually stimulating as watching paint dry. Nice and rewarding helping and educating kids but all I can say is thank fuck for the internet and naptime. And being a nurse is not a “fun” job. Working in fashion or the arts is one of those things where most of the compensation doesn't come in monetary form but neither healthcare nor education are fun like that.
- Tichy 14y ago
  Why did you become a kindergardener? Did you expect it to be more fun? And since you don't consider it to be fun anymore, have you considered to take up programming? If not, why not? As for nursing, no it is not "fun" in the strict sense, but I think it comes with a lot of expectations of emotional reward, helping other people and so on. I was using "fun" loosely. Btw, as a father with a kindergarden going kid, I hope the kindergardeners have some enthusiasm for the job... If you need help entering programming, get in touch. I live in Germany, though. Edit: actually, programming gets boring after a while, too, and people ponder steps to make it interesting again. Maybe the same could be done for kindergardening? Can't you think of ways of making it more fun again? A change from the routine perhaps? I worry a lot about my kid just doing standard stuff at kindergarden. On the other hand maybe it is unrealistic to expect more, and kids first have to go through the basic motions. (There are no lego mindstorm sets at my kid's kindergarden - but then kindergarden kids can't be expected to program, I suppose. But perhaps they could build robots, and the kindergardener could do the programming).
  - barry-cotter 14y ago
    I became a kindergarten teacher because I like kids and I much prefer teaching younger ages to teenagers. Maybe adults are better again but here in China there is infinite demand for (native) English speakers to teach at all levels. I am not professionally qualified to do what I'm doing but my Chinese coteachers are and the difference in what we do is not that large. My current lack of enthusiasm is not just for my job but for everything. It's been a very long week. After a day or two off more real enthusiasm returns but the job is not intellectually stimulating except for trying to help spme special kids and while reading psychology is fun applying the concepts involved is remarkably similar to common sense. Or what seems commonsensical to me; I've been reading psychology textbooks well before I came to China and started teaching. I like kids, I enjoy playing with them and it's satisfying helpinh them learn English and learn to read, helping socialise them. But the longer I do it theore I think John Taylor Gatto is right. For sure age matched education is wrong. When I have kids I'm going to try home/unschooling them if s Summethill type school is unavailable. I believe Steiner is similar hippy shit. As far as your own kids go the Kindergarten Ausbildung is thorough anf professional, as I'm sure you're well aware. For what it costs and the pull and effort it takes to get a place it should be. But what I'd concentrate on is are your kids having fun and developing social skills in kindergarten. Intellectal development is something you are much better suited to deal with. And I am learning to programme. It's going very slowly.
    - Tichy 14y ago
      Thanks for mentioning Gatto. I think I already bought one of his books, but haven't read it yet. I am very scared of the time when my kid will have to go to school, because I personally hated it. It sounds as if I agree with a lot of Gatto's points. Not sure how to avoid it, though :-( My best hope atm is to find some techniques to enable my kid to master school with minimum effort, trying to maximize non-school-dominated time. I don't think Homeschooling is possible in my country (Germany). I imagine to turn it into a kind of game. For example there are memory competitions, and people don't seem to mind memorizing useless things to win those competitions. So perhaps if it can become a game to master the school nonsense in as little time as possible, there doesn't have to be so much suffering from the wastefulness of it all. Some useful skills could still be harvested from going through school that way (memory techniques, presentation skills and what not). I can relate to a general lack of enthusiasm :-( As for intellectually stimulating, I don't know. I must admit I am sometimes scared about playing with my kid (2 years old), because I fear not having any good ideas. Luckily he usually comes up with stuff himself, and somehow after a while things tend to happen, random ideas take on a life on their own. Maybe a bit like improvising music - after a while suddenly things start to "jell". I suppose as a kindergardener you have a repertoire of so many standard games that you hardly have to improvise. But maybe that is a potential to escape the drudgery? In theory, couldn't you play out arbitrary scenarios, whatever you fancy? Like writing a new book? You could invent new games every day... Or at least role playing games. Not that I know much about kindergardening... And I don't even play enough with my kid, hope to improve on that... Atm I sometimes read HN when I could be playing with him, which is ridiculous.
rayiner 14y ago
> I think women have more attractive choices Possibly, but what makes engineering different from say law? My engineering class was 28% female, and the engineering team I worked on after graduating was 5% female. My law school class was 45% female, and my law firm starting class is about 45% female as well. I can't think of a principled way to distinguish law from engineering in terms of gender attractiveness, other than the culture of the respective fields. I don't think it's aptitude. The male-female gap on the SAT Math is about the same as the male-female gap on the LSAT. I don't think it's attractiveness. Law isn't any more fun than engineering. In your words: "you sit in front of a screen al day and wreck your brain." It's analytical, detail work, not unlike debugging code. Yet, women seem to self select into at a relatively similar rate to men. I'll also note: women make up the majority of accountants and auditors and 45% of accountants at accounting firms. Talk about boring detail oriented jobs!
- Tichy 14y ago
  I don't know much about law unfortunately. Maybe there being a lot more movies about lawyers than about programmers helps? Also lawyers earn a lot more than programmers, or so I would think. And at face value it involves talking with people - the movies don't show much poring over documents, whereas programmers in movies always sit in front of the computer.
- barry-cotter 14y ago
  Possibly, but what makes engineering different from say law? Higher social status. For any given amount of money the job with more autonomy wins. Also, just by virtue of being a more verbally focused field lawyers will tend to have higher social skills than the average engineer. Said differently engineering has a higher proportion of the socially maladroit than law. Women have much less tolerance for that kind of stuff. All of the fields you mention, law, engineering, accounting demand intelligent, conscientious, hard working people but engineering is unusually willing to tolerate weirdness if the person can get the job done compated to the others and is less autonomous. That doesn't explain everything but it goes a long way.
  - rayiner 14y ago
helen842000 14y ago
>Talking with people is better for the soul, and women are smart enough to realize that. Yes. This is very true, after I finished my degree I couldn't stand the thought of staring at code & hunting for bugs for the rest of my life. I took a while to assess the tech industry, consider all of the jobs available before taking the plunge into security & support. I miss creating things & I'm probably on half the salary I could be, but on a day to day basis I love it. I learn from a great team, get to solve problems & get awesome feedback from helping people & fixing issues. I think most women are still waiting for the reasons why they should join the tech industry. What's in it for me, why will my life be better because of it? No one is providing answers, so only those that go looking will find them. All these articles that say 'more women should be in tech because that's better' - well, why is that? They normally cite 'balanced departments are more profitable' but still, for the individual - why? It never goes any further. I think there needs to be compelling reasons. What do we bring, where can we excel? We aren't going to work in an industry because people say we should. We're going to look for happiness in a profession first and foremost.

by Tichy 14y ago

barry-cotter 14y ago

Speaking as a current kindergarten teacher it's as.intellectually stimulating as watching paint dry. Nice and rewarding helping and educating kids but all I can say is thank fuck for the internet and naptime. And being a nurse is not a “fun” job. Working in fashion or the arts is one of those things where most of the compensation doesn't come in monetary form but neither healthcare nor education are fun like that.

Tichy 14y ago
Why did you become a kindergardener? Did you expect it to be more fun? And since you don't consider it to be fun anymore, have you considered to take up programming? If not, why not? As for nursing, no it is not "fun" in the strict sense, but I think it comes with a lot of expectations of emotional reward, helping other people and so on. I was using "fun" loosely. Btw, as a father with a kindergarden going kid, I hope the kindergardeners have some enthusiasm for the job... If you need help entering programming, get in touch. I live in Germany, though. Edit: actually, programming gets boring after a while, too, and people ponder steps to make it interesting again. Maybe the same could be done for kindergardening? Can't you think of ways of making it more fun again? A change from the routine perhaps? I worry a lot about my kid just doing standard stuff at kindergarden. On the other hand maybe it is unrealistic to expect more, and kids first have to go through the basic motions. (There are no lego mindstorm sets at my kid's kindergarden - but then kindergarden kids can't be expected to program, I suppose. But perhaps they could build robots, and the kindergardener could do the programming).
- barry-cotter 14y ago
  I became a kindergarten teacher because I like kids and I much prefer teaching younger ages to teenagers. Maybe adults are better again but here in China there is infinite demand for (native) English speakers to teach at all levels. I am not professionally qualified to do what I'm doing but my Chinese coteachers are and the difference in what we do is not that large. My current lack of enthusiasm is not just for my job but for everything. It's been a very long week. After a day or two off more real enthusiasm returns but the job is not intellectually stimulating except for trying to help spme special kids and while reading psychology is fun applying the concepts involved is remarkably similar to common sense. Or what seems commonsensical to me; I've been reading psychology textbooks well before I came to China and started teaching. I like kids, I enjoy playing with them and it's satisfying helpinh them learn English and learn to read, helping socialise them. But the longer I do it theore I think John Taylor Gatto is right. For sure age matched education is wrong. When I have kids I'm going to try home/unschooling them if s Summethill type school is unavailable. I believe Steiner is similar hippy shit. As far as your own kids go the Kindergarten Ausbildung is thorough anf professional, as I'm sure you're well aware. For what it costs and the pull and effort it takes to get a place it should be. But what I'd concentrate on is are your kids having fun and developing social skills in kindergarten. Intellectal development is something you are much better suited to deal with. And I am learning to programme. It's going very slowly.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    Thanks for mentioning Gatto. I think I already bought one of his books, but haven't read it yet. I am very scared of the time when my kid will have to go to school, because I personally hated it. It sounds as if I agree with a lot of Gatto's points. Not sure how to avoid it, though :-( My best hope atm is to find some techniques to enable my kid to master school with minimum effort, trying to maximize non-school-dominated time. I don't think Homeschooling is possible in my country (Germany). I imagine to turn it into a kind of game. For example there are memory competitions, and people don't seem to mind memorizing useless things to win those competitions. So perhaps if it can become a game to master the school nonsense in as little time as possible, there doesn't have to be so much suffering from the wastefulness of it all. Some useful skills could still be harvested from going through school that way (memory techniques, presentation skills and what not). I can relate to a general lack of enthusiasm :-( As for intellectually stimulating, I don't know. I must admit I am sometimes scared about playing with my kid (2 years old), because I fear not having any good ideas. Luckily he usually comes up with stuff himself, and somehow after a while things tend to happen, random ideas take on a life on their own. Maybe a bit like improvising music - after a while suddenly things start to "jell". I suppose as a kindergardener you have a repertoire of so many standard games that you hardly have to improvise. But maybe that is a potential to escape the drudgery? In theory, couldn't you play out arbitrary scenarios, whatever you fancy? Like writing a new book? You could invent new games every day... Or at least role playing games. Not that I know much about kindergardening... And I don't even play enough with my kid, hope to improve on that... Atm I sometimes read HN when I could be playing with him, which is ridiculous.

rayiner 14y ago

> I think women have more attractive choices Possibly, but what makes engineering different from say law? My engineering class was 28% female, and the engineering team I worked on after graduating was 5% female. My law school class was 45% female, and my law firm starting class is about 45% female as well. I can't think of a principled way to distinguish law from engineering in terms of gender attractiveness, other than the culture of the respective fields. I don't think it's aptitude. The male-female gap on the SAT Math is about the same as the male-female gap on the LSAT. I don't think it's attractiveness. Law isn't any more fun than engineering. In your words: "you sit in front of a screen al day and wreck your brain." It's analytical, detail work, not unlike debugging code. Yet, women seem to self select into at a relatively similar rate to men. I'll also note: women make up the majority of accountants and auditors and 45% of accountants at accounting firms. Talk about boring detail oriented jobs!

Tichy 14y ago
I don't know much about law unfortunately. Maybe there being a lot more movies about lawyers than about programmers helps? Also lawyers earn a lot more than programmers, or so I would think. And at face value it involves talking with people - the movies don't show much poring over documents, whereas programmers in movies always sit in front of the computer.
barry-cotter 14y ago
Possibly, but what makes engineering different from say law? Higher social status. For any given amount of money the job with more autonomy wins. Also, just by virtue of being a more verbally focused field lawyers will tend to have higher social skills than the average engineer. Said differently engineering has a higher proportion of the socially maladroit than law. Women have much less tolerance for that kind of stuff. All of the fields you mention, law, engineering, accounting demand intelligent, conscientious, hard working people but engineering is unusually willing to tolerate weirdness if the person can get the job done compated to the others and is less autonomous. That doesn't explain everything but it goes a long way.
- rayiner 14y ago

helen842000 14y ago

>Talking with people is better for the soul, and women are smart enough to realize that. Yes. This is very true, after I finished my degree I couldn't stand the thought of staring at code & hunting for bugs for the rest of my life. I took a while to assess the tech industry, consider all of the jobs available before taking the plunge into security & support. I miss creating things & I'm probably on half the salary I could be, but on a day to day basis I love it. I learn from a great team, get to solve problems & get awesome feedback from helping people & fixing issues. I think most women are still waiting for the reasons why they should join the tech industry. What's in it for me, why will my life be better because of it? No one is providing answers, so only those that go looking will find them. All these articles that say 'more women should be in tech because that's better' - well, why is that? They normally cite 'balanced departments are more profitable' but still, for the individual - why? It never goes any further. I think there needs to be compelling reasons. What do we bring, where can we excel? We aren't going to work in an industry because people say we should. We're going to look for happiness in a profession first and foremost.