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Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

369 points by nerdess 14y ago

This article is about why it's great to work in tech, _especially_ as a girl. Be prepared for some "omg why didn't someone tell me earlier....!!!" facts.

unimpressive 14y ago
Why doesn't your blog have an RSS feed? EDIT: That was supposed to be a subtle compliment; I want more.
- chanux 14y ago
  Yes! you are appreciating her :D
nazgulnarsil 14y ago
I suspect a big driving factor is that being forced to be around tons of low status guys all the time is literally worse than hitler for women.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Maybe for a single woman who wants to profit in a personal non-business way.
- a_bonobo 14y ago
  This is not /r9k/, please take your misogyny there.
- xmonad 14y ago
  "low status" Men who value other's opinions of them over voicing their real feelings. How many comments in this thread asked the OP "what projects have you worked on", "what have you contributed as a woman?". Why? Because the larger issue isn't woman. It's "Nice guy" syndrome. Deferring to woman, being "pc", repressing opinions. The book No More Mr. Nice Guy (http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339 http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339) is a great read on this. As for the OP. I don't care about your gender or race. I want to know what you code. I want you to be great. But will not enable my fellow men nor you to be weak prima donnas. We have a destiny. We owe it to our children not to show such weakness.
atomical 14y ago
"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it. Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”. If you’ve ever drilled a hole, skinned a rabbit, or changed a tyre you know what I mean. As I mentioned earlier, guys will definitely put you to the test and as a girl it will be hard to get their respect. On the other hand, you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful. However, with great power comes great responsibility so don’t take (too much, hehe) advantage of the nerds treating you like a princess just because they finally get to work with a girl." Never experienced this. Sounds like an alternate reality. All the so called nerds I worked with had girlfriends or wives and didn't wear pocket protectors and stutter around females when talking to them.
- Udo 14y ago
  This sounds alien to me as well. I've been a member of a lot of diverse teams, and led some of them, over the years. While it's true that female tech people are always outnumbered by male ones, what that actually means probably depends a lot on culture. My experiences are almost exclusively in Northern Europe and Asia and generally I didn't perceive that female devs got any special treatment at all (negative or positive). If Nerdess extracts some sort of empowerment out of this that's great for her, but I imagine crossing the line into a territory where your team mates perceive you as a shallow and malicious manipulator is a real danger here. Any person who bases their work persona exclusively on being a precious snowflake (of any kind) is not someone I'd like to have on my team.
- electrozoic 14y ago
  Maybe we have worked in different environments than nerdess. I've had quite a few jobs (at software companies in the US) where most of my colleagues are calm, mature, and act like professionals without regard to gender. I've also encountered the occasional colleague (a bit more often in startup/freelance culture) who acts like females are a new and unfamiliar technology, and doesn't know how to relate in appropriate ways. But I've never felt particularly "powerful" in my workplace, until I started doing most of my work from my home office.
nickporter 14y ago
Why is it that people group IT and software development together? To me, they are two completely different fields. For example, I see an IT person as a mail server administrator in a large company, and a developer as the person who would write the mail server software. I'm not saying that an IT professional never writes code, or a developer won't ever touch a Nginx config file. I just mean they are two different types of work. It's something I have noticed for a while now, not only with your article.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  Because people as a general rule abstract anything related to computers or computing into one lump object. This vague, ossified amber of the interwingled nature of computer media causes problems with understanding computers. That and the sort of person who does development ends up doing some IT and Vice versa.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > Because people as a general rule abstract anything related to computers or computing into one lump object. This vague, ossified amber of the interwingled nature of computer media causes problems with understanding computers. The same thing happens with every field. If you're at all medical, you're lumped into the 'doctor' category regardless of whether you're a neurosurgeon or a scrub tech, and all doctor-type humanoids know everything about everything from the cingulate gyrus to my granny's chilblains. Which is still closer to the truth than imagining that everyone who is 'good with computers' can instantly diagnose and fix every single problem that has ever come up for everything that can run software.
- zh 14y ago
  It's not like this any more. That's why recently there are so many "software engineers" - you write your Ruby code, install and configure NginX, Passenger etc., even support a cluster of machines (LB, DB, Apps), maybe with a little help for Chef.
  - sounders 14y ago
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victorhn 14y ago
"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." That looks like sexism to me.
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- arrrg 14y ago
  If the qualification is equal I would very much hope that the person that increases diversity is hired. Why would you do anything else?
  - abduhl 14y ago
    I would probably pick the person that meshes with the team best rather than the one that panders to my internal sense of injustice.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      I would pick the person who would broaden my team's perspective and not reinforce our biases.
      - enraged_camel 14y ago
        I don't understand why the decision has to be based on only one criteria.
    - arrrg 14y ago
      If you think someone doesn’t fir your team because of their gender there is something seriously wrong with you.
      - moistgorilla 14y ago
        He didn't say he would...
robwgibbons 14y ago
Someone should write an article about being a black person in tech. Or maybe an Irish person in Tech, we need more of those. It's tough for the Irish in Tech, they get no respect. So many Irish never even consider a career in Tech because it's not a traditional industry for Irish to be employed in. I want to help break down barriers by being an Irish person in Tech.
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- jessedhillon 14y ago
  Breaking News A man doesn't understand why women do/think something that he doesn't, but still has some thoughts about why those women are wrong! Here's a tip: if someone says "this is hard for me" don't respond with "no it's not." In fact, even if they get a little presumptive and forget to add the "for me," give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are describing the world as it exists for them and not necessarily making an empirical claim.
Jun8 14y ago
OK, nobody commented this up to now but I think is important: Among the many posts about this subject I've read on HN recently this was absolutely the best: Not only it approached the matter in a no-nonsense, practical matter without preaching from "the height of an unwritten book" or an axe to grind but it also gives excellent advice to young girls who want to venture into the field. With posts like this I wish there was a mega-upvote option on HN, e.g. for 500 points of karma you upvote 10 points.
- tankbot 14y ago
  Definitely agree! I like that her opinions are her opinions and not some pendulum-swinging doctrine. Bookmarked for future perusal for sure!
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- saraid216 14y ago
  The clearest reason for this, AFAICT, is because she's speaking primarily to women and trying to convince them to come on board. It's not at all about sexism; it merely acknowledges it in passing and hurries on quickly because it's a touchy subject.
- belorn 14y ago
  While and rather excellent article on why the IT field is a suitable career, good grief, the sexism politics has really entrenched itself into people mindset. It almost boggles my mind. Here some supposedly sexist snippets from "scenarios you may occasionally find yourself in when working as a girl in tech". Colleague: “So...you are the new designer?" (As if "so...you are the new Foobar" would not be said to any new hire. if I got a new boss, my first word might be "so...you the new boss? hi my name is so and so!". How and in what way would that be sexist remark, and does it matter if the new boss would be female or male? would it matter if the position is boss, developer, designer, sysadmin, or sales?) Useless male developer has written some crappy code that he doesn’t even understand himself anymore. Now he needs to extend it with new features and asks you to do it. (As if female developers get exclusively dumped with fixing bad code. Especially if its a new hire/consultant/out sourced, how does this surprise anyone? its even a saying that "the new guy gets all the work no one else want". Does it matter if its a female or male? so for mega-upvote, the article has some issues. Its better than the normal articles we see, but its not 10 times better.
sandollars 14y ago
Progress is being made, but there is still a long way to go. This happened in a talk at a programming/web/tech event two weeks ago: http://i.imgur.com/4hL6X.jpg http://i.imgur.com/4hL6X.jpg
- mattdw 14y ago
  WTF. How is this ever acceptable in a professional context? Talk about hostility.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Professionals are at work. Goofs are at "events".
    - pyre 14y ago
      There are still plenty of professionals at events, and even presenting at events. This sort of stuff seems more a part of "brogrammer" culture. The idea that you need to make a name for yourself by being edgy/offensive.
- d0mine 14y ago
  It is funny that it is ok to exploit nerd stereotypes as demonstrated in the article (nobody cares about yet another nerd in a basement picture). Do you think that the author of the article sees all programmers through the lenses of the stereotype? The picture that you've linked is in bad taste but it won't change the popularity of the stereotype behind it in any way. Do you think that the author of the presentation sees all models through the lenses of the stereotype?
  - sirmarksalot 14y ago
    Do we really need to coin the phrase "hacker privilege?" Look, I know it sucked in school, being ostracized for having technical interests, but now you're grown-up and loaded. As part of a larger social agenda, I can see some harm in perpetuating these geek stereotypes, but on a personal level, you are not being exploited, so quit whining.
vacri 14y ago
I (100% female) work as a web developer and are not sure if the lack of female colleagues bothers me or not. Political correctness dictates that it should Political correctness isn't really about groupthink or how you should feel. It's about not making other people feel shitty because you're too lazy to use inclusive language. It's simply an extension of 'manners', and gets demonised when it shouldn't be.
- nickpinkston 14y ago
  There's a fine line between someone feeling "shitty" and groupthink / often naive & distant. A friend of mine says that anytime a person refers to him as "African-American" he sees them as totally distant and that "they usually don't talk to black people" - so I can see this working both ways. Political correctness (what the 'polis' sees as correct) isn't always what those who may 'feel shitty' think is correct - so I share her feelings.
- crusso 14y ago
  Political Correctness is about hypersensitivity to possible insult to the point that using direct and clear communication is frowned upon in the public discourse. Political Correctness is an extraordinarily sad advance of style over substance that has attempted to address the language used to describe problems in our society over actually addressing the problems themselves. Ultimately, Political Correctness is yet another societal/political power grab in an attempt to control the very words that come out of everyones' mouths. Free speech is just too much individual power for many Utopians in society, but they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment[or other country's free speech protection]. Political Correctness is the next best thing for them, I guess.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    Your assumption that "direct and clear communication" requires that you use offensive and exclusive phrasings is false, and your complaints about your inability to exert "power" over others are unmoving. "they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment" If you believe proper behavior has anything to do with the First Amendment it would do you better to read the US Constitution.
RandallBrown 14y ago
Articles like this are what are going to get girls into computing. They need to know that there are other normal girls, just like them, that do this for a living. I got my ex-girlfriend into software development. She comes off as a very stereotypical girly girl. She likes clothes, shopping, and top 40 pop music. I convinced her to take an intro programming class her sophomore year of college. Now she's a software engineer at Amazon. All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it, and that normal people (I suppose I seemed normal to her) do it too.
- lloeki 14y ago
  > All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it I don't know if it's society or what, but it seems a lot of girls suffer from this (conscious or not) line of thinking. I'm versed in science (esp. math and physics) and like to talk about such subjects so I've been regularly asked for help, and every single time I helped a girl the cause of their demise was lack of confidence. Contrary to guys (which seem to have confidence in excess but need some form of support), telling them upfront is useless because it's so ingrained that I have to take a more subtle route. I explain her something complex, and keep going deeper until (usually takes about ten minutes) there's a a-ha, not about the subject at hand but about herself, a moment where she realizes that at every step she got everything I said, and now she gets a glimpse something so complex that ten minutes ago she thought it would forever be unfathomable to her, when I did not actually explain so much as pragmatically but subtly demonstrate that yes, she can do it. Subsequent results at school, even in unrelated disciplines and without more training, are off the charts. It seems the "mens do the real stuff" society thing is so pervasive that it permeates through and makes them lose the confidence required, and they just need to be bootstrapped out of it so that they can finally say "This is within my reach".
- nerdess 14y ago
  thanks, that is exactly what i want to achieve with my article: pointing out that the tech world is not just for über-nerds :)
- annableker 14y ago
  For real. This girl is obviously being honest and sounds really level-headed/normal. Everything in this article is exactly what I would tell my little sister.
cbsmith 14y ago
I'm starting to think it is impossible for someone to write about gender issues in the tech industry without at least one reference to porn.
- saucetenuto 14y ago
  Yeah, that jarred me too. The author's dad is a farmer, and her go-to example of a job that requires stamina is...porn star? The fuck?
- nerdess 14y ago
  my article isn't about gender issues....the intention is merely to show the perks of working in IT to a normal average girl that might not be sure about what career path to choose. however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D
  - cbsmith 14y ago
    > my article isn't about gender issues....the intention is merely to show the perks of working in IT to a normal average girl that might not be sure about what career path to choose. I'm trying to comprehend how that isn't about gender issues in the IT business, but let's just say that whatever the appropriate semantic expression was for what it is I was referring to, it includes your work. >however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D Sorry, I wasn't intending to imply you should filter your writing. My comment wasn't really meant to be a criticism of your writing in particular... actually, it wasn't even really a criticism of writing at all. It's more just... I doubt there are other industries where EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE like this would have a reference to porn (well, except for the porn industry ;-). I don't think it necessarily speaks poorly of the people engaging in the discussion; it reflects where the industry is.
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physcab 14y ago
I'd love to use this opportunity to do a little promotion. My sister and I just launched a site to connect women in industry with girls taking math and science called Girls Love Math (http://www.glmclub.org http://www.glmclub.org). It would make my day if women like nerdess became mentors. I have a feeling that lots of girls are looking up to them.
- LiveFanChat 14y ago
  your website fonts dont work in IE9....for a nerdy website you think that usability testing across different browsers would be on your checklist.
masry 14y ago
"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it." "you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful." "Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale." "If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." How is all this not sexist? Or is sexism against males not sexism anymore? This is sexist, and shouldn't be upvoted.
dschiptsov 14y ago
My personal favorite example: http://sachachua.com/blog/ http://sachachua.com/blog/ She wrote org-mode for Emacs. Now she is at IBM Research.
- sjm 14y ago
  Carsten Dominik wrote org-mode. Looks like she maintained Remember-mode and Planner-mode at one point though.
  - dschiptsov 14y ago
    My fault - I remember that she wrote a popular Emacs package, but forgot the name.
    - lurker14 14y ago
      Maintained, not wrote. John Wiegley wrote both. http://www.emacswiki.org/PlannerMode http://www.emacswiki.org/PlannerMode It is cool that Sacha maintained it, volunteering is awesome. I am pointing this correction out because Sacha's primary career is as a self-promotion specialist (http://sachachua.com/blog/ http://sachachua.com/blog/), so I have to be skeptical of how her name gets attached to technical work, more so than someone who doesn't pursue celebrity for profit. People shouldn't think that it's so easy to be famous and a technical contributor. The larger contributors (like John Wiegley in this case) tend to be less famous. Example: Sure, Linus Torvalds is a celebrity and massive contrbutor, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of other massive Linux kernel contributors who are less famous than, say, Jeff Atwood.
- lurker14 14y ago
  Wow, she is such an happy-happy-joy-joy blogger^evangelist^blogger that I never though she had time to write any code.
gprasanth 14y ago
"Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”" I always opined that, "women have a lot of emotional strength". You can just imagine how difficult it is to take care of, and raise a toddler. It is so hard. But, somehow women are naturally good at this, and I am just as fascinated by this fact.
- Adirael 14y ago
  I don't think women are naturally better (than men) at raising kids. That's what a lot of people thinks and single dads are automatically diminished. Not good.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "It is so hard. But, somehow women are naturally good at this, and I am just as fascinated by this fact." Have you never interacted with a single father?
minamea 14y ago
"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it." "you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful." "Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale." "If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." These are all very sexist remarks. If the equivalent has been written from a male's perspective it would have been an outrage.
- astrofinch 14y ago
  I think from a harm minimization perspective, it makes sense to treat complaints of sexism from the minority faction more seriously than complaints of sexism from the majority faction. Also, I disagree that people would complain if the same stuff was written by a guy working in nursing.
  - kalkin 14y ago
    You don't mean minority/majority, but yes.
    - sejje 14y ago
      If he means women in tech, he probably means minority/majority.
gaving 14y ago
When I started as a developer in the UK I earned a bit less than £30k a year and wondered: How can whole families live of this? How can anyone save money for a mortgage? [...] It might sound arrogant but since I am an IT contractor I don’t have to think twice about that Halston Heritage dress I fell in love with the other day, I just buy it. Yeah, you're right, that does sound arrogant.
sebcat 14y ago
"Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”" Actually, I'm fascinated and scared by all IT people who roll up their sleeves and do manual labour.
- archangel_one 14y ago
  An in return, I'm always slightly shocked by this kind of attitude. Just because I write code for a living doesn't mean that I had to forget how to do everything remotely practical first. If I'm confronted by a job that requires manual labour, I don't just stand there saying "oh I'm an IT person, I can't possibly do this".
  - lurker14 14y ago
    It's the reverse. I can't carry a bottle of chemicals without spilling it on myself, or take apart an machine without dropping a few pieces in the sewer, so I stick to the virtual world where my poor hand-eye coordination won't get me killed.
laumars 14y ago
"Computer languages and “real” languages are actually very similar." I really couldn't disagree with that more. Sure, some languages' syntax borrow English words (Python, Pascal, VB, etc), but that's such a minor similarity. Those words are completely arbitrary and the syntax could have been in Klingon for all the difference it would make to the compiler. Computer languages are a maths language; albeit a very very dumbed down dialect of maths, but maths all the same. I think the trap many web developers fall in is that PHP teaches some terrible programming practices (no variable declarations nor types, etc) and ANSI SQL isn't Turing complete, so feel that all other languages by extension are equally easy to grasp. However if you look at a number of other languages -particularly the ones with C-derived syntax- then it becomes painfully obvious that any similarities to human languages are just skin deep (which is lucky for me as I majorly suck at writing yet can code proficiently in around a dozen different computer languages).
- asnyder 14y ago
  Don't know why you felt it was necessary to take a dig at PHP, as if PHP is the cause of all bad web programming practices. Nowadays, PHP is very much evolved, and the abundance of mature frameworks have completely removed the most of the inconsistency issues.There are in fact variable declarations and types in PHP, there's even type-hinting to enforce types. The fact of the matter is that many web developers fall into bad practices via laziness, copy & paste syndrome, regardless of whether the language they're using has strict types or not.
  - laumars 14y ago
    While I agree that a bad programmer will write bad code in any language -and visa versa- my point was that PHP doesn't enforce good practices thus allowing many less experienced developers to accidentally fall into easily avoided pitfalls (lets be honest, having to === to force type matching is just plain dumb). So by the time you've properly hardened your code, it's anything but pseudo-English - which was my point (ie programming languages are not similar to human languages).
- lurker14 14y ago
  Natural-language likeness, with all its weirdness and power, was an explicit design goal of Larry Wall's perl, a language which was instrumental in creating the WWW as we know it.
talmir 14y ago
It is a nice article. Interesting read for me as a male programmer. But this line kinda caught my eye under the "Gender-advantage" headline: "If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." This is a problem.
- talmir 14y ago
  After reading all of this again, it strikes me that she works with a LOT of sexually frustrated nerds. She says she has to be careful not using her appearant super power of girlyness too much to manipulate the nerds and such stuff. Is this seriously the reality somewhere, that coders are 99% sexually frustrated super nerds? I always considered that to be a old stereotype :P
  - thisone 14y ago
    I've seen it happen (female myself), though not to my advantage, that I know of. I've had bugs sent to me for another woman's code, time and again, without formal bug reports for them. Double edged sword: they know I can fix it, and generally quickly, but it looks like performance is being swept under the rug. And I do put in bug reports for them once they get to me. Damned if I'm going to have the work unaccounted for. edit: should probably mention that when she was hired, I was told she would look good at conferences.
- nerdess 14y ago
  yeah well of course it's wrong to get a job just because of the gender. though if HR departments and CTO's want to hire us girls so badly then wohoooo.........i would be stupid to not use this to my advantage :D
yock 14y ago
Sorry for being off-topic, but why in the world would the net filter here at work have blocked this as "adult content?"
- rmc 14y ago
  Just a guest, but there is a music video with some men in underwear dancing around embedded in the page ( This is the video itself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pivLTWIJ7xo&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pivLTWIJ7xo&feature=playe... )
michaelochurch 14y ago
I'll make a controversial observation, but it's worthy of discussion. If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status. I'm not talking about overt flirtation (don't do it) or office relationships (avoid, avoid, avoid). I'm talking about more subtle stuff, like who a woman smiles at, who she initiates conversations with, and what her body language is toward various people. This will have huge ripple effects on the male status hierarchy. Much of the reason why men tend to seem "afraid of" women in the office is that they're afraid she'll judge him lowly and send out "loser signals" about him, bringing him down a notch or two. Since everything that happens at most workplaces (especially cliquish startups, so don't give me this "meritocratic" bullshit) is really about social status-- "performance" is a myth made up to justify firings and scare the mediocre-- this is huge. Overtly flirting with the men in the office will destroy a woman's reputation, for sure. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the subtle fact that, among groups of people, women have the capability to exert a disproportionate influence on the status ordering. In fact, the best way to use this is to do exactly what a young man would do: be nice to everyone, reach out and try to make allies, seek mentors... but also take a small comfort in the fact that men have an added incentive to be nice to you-- you have a disproportionate effect on their image, and they want to be seen with you. For example, a 23-year-old with 6 months on the job comes into the office of a powerful person (MD in banking, Partner in a law firm) and says that (s/)he is bored with the work that (s/)he is getting. If male, he's just another entitled fuck looking for an advantage. The response usually is: go away, pay your dues, and come back in 7 years after you've proven yourself (if I haven't fired you before that). That's because humans have a visceral hatred of low-status males, and in the workplace, men in the youngest 15% are almost always of low status (hence, they get the shittiest work). If the 23-year-old is female, this 45-year-old executive might realize that having a 23-year-old woman come into his office once a week might give him a younger, "cooler" image and prevent him from getting "managed out" (read: fired) for being "resistant to change" (read: old). So he might give her the kind of work that most people have to wait a few years to have a crack at. Again, she's not flirting with him, or compromising herself in any way. She's doing exactly what a man would do if he had the courage: going into a powerful person's office and asking for better work. It doesn't always happen this way, but it can. Career advancement is about stringing together a large number of high-impact, low-probability prospects (with enough parallelism that the likelihood of some success becomes high) and waiting for one to hit. The "superpower" that an attractive woman has doesn't turn the low probability into a high one; it makes it slightly less low. I'm not saying life is fair and, on the whole, women almost certainly have to deal with more bullshit than men. It's wrong that women's looks are taken to matter so much. It's wrong that people are huge dicks to women about aging. Some of the "old lady" comments I heard when Clinton was running for President in 2008 made me want to vomit. Men have a huge and unfair advantage after 32, which is that they can have children with their careers interrupted, and that their social status (being abysmal, in the workplace, at 22-24) peaks around 40-50. Men can (and are expected to) work through child-rearing, while for it to make sense for a woman to keep working after having children, she has to make about 2.5 times the average income (to hire help, day care, etc.) On the other hand, women have a huge advantage from 22 to 32, which is that they have the subtle but potent ability to determine who's "cool", and if they're aware of how to use it, they can speed up their careers. And given the heaping plate of bullshit that society gives women once they get older (and it starts in the 30s) they pretty much have to use this advantage while it's there.
dmansen 14y ago
Men of HN: please tell more people what you think is and isn't sexist. It's good, your input on the matter is valuable and important.
xmonad 14y ago
Tell me how you help. My project already has a purpose and mission. I acknowledge you are different. Now you have to bring substance to the table and save the rest for home. Bottom line. Stay off my lawn.
tete 14y ago
This is maybe the best article I've ever found on HN.
- kalkin 14y ago
  It is a good article, but it's sad that even in a good article like this, which talks explicitly about the realities of sexism, the author feels the need to distance herself from "the feminists."
crusso 14y ago
I really liked this article. Most blogs about women in Tech these days are centered around the mindset of victimhood. Having gone to an engineering school, I know full well the power that women can exert in an environment full of socially-hapless geeky guys.
TheCapn 14y ago
This is a weird subject. I think, as a social group, we're on a hinging point where women will be making equal footing in the tech industry, but haven't yet. Its coming. Women are going to get disproportionate treatment during this transition in one or two different ways, and it depends on who they're interacting with. Should they land themselves alongside the stereotypical basement dweller they'll be cast aside and thought less of. They'll first need to prove themselves in an uphill battle. This will take great self confidence because there is a lot of misogyny still in the tech workplace. Too many tech gurus grew up being shunned socially and still have those emotional barriers preventing them from being rational and fair. On the other swing of things though we have the opposite treatment: "A girl? Oooo!" I feel jealous sometimes of my female friends in the industry because of just how easy getting face to face for new jobs comes for them. I fight to keep myself in check because they're damn good professionals who deserve it but the thought remains: what sets them apart from me? Directly out of university I was competing locally with a lot of them for jobs and the treatment of women in the profession was quite apparent. I still see it a bit in my jobs now and its slightly disheartening. Ultimately I think this problem will solve itself in time. Tech jobs aren't about the basement dweller anymore, they haven't been for years. The natural transition where everyone in the workforce has been part of it for the years where equal woman representation has been around and the awkward or preferential treatment is happening. We need vocal women to encourage more to join. Those classes in university will definitely be unsettling when 20 slobbering unkempt males are trying to wrestle their way to the only female group partner but to push through is going to be tough.
nantes 14y ago
Appears to be down, CoralCache link at http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-girl-tech/ http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-g...
nantes 14y ago
Appears to be down, CoralCache link at http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-girl-tech/ http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-g...
zandomatter 14y ago
Am I the only one that thought that while most of the points made in the article were generally true, the follow-up and examples were lackluster. Comments like these: "you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky ... so don’t take (too much, hehe) advantage of the nerds treating you like a princess just because they finally get to work with a girl." are insulting to both genders, as well as being grossly overstated.
wavesounds 14y ago
Can anyone recommend some of the "tech superstars" to follow on twitter that she mentions?
- nerdess 14y ago
  what kind of nerdism are you into? web development? then you can look at the people i follow on twitter :)
jayc 14y ago
Can we please stop making generalizations about women in tech and go back to discussing and upvoting articles about technology again? Signed, a female developer
whiterabbit2 14y ago
Except women have a good chance to be turned down before even being seen in person... (unless, their resume clearly indicates they are juniors and they have nice pictures on FB). And, yeah, the "approval" thing is actually something like "admiration" and implies that this woman is an inferior professional. If she happens to be a strong professional, it's not desirable for a man to be next to this woman, as it will bring down his own value. It would be more desirable to be next to an older superior man.

369 points by nerdess 14y ago

This article is about why it's great to work in tech, _especially_ as a girl. Be prepared for some "omg why didn't someone tell me earlier....!!!" facts.

unimpressive 14y ago

Why doesn't your blog have an RSS feed? EDIT: That was supposed to be a subtle compliment; I want more.

chanux 14y ago
Yes! you are appreciating her :D

nazgulnarsil 14y ago

I suspect a big driving factor is that being forced to be around tons of low status guys all the time is literally worse than hitler for women.

Evbn 14y ago
Maybe for a single woman who wants to profit in a personal non-business way.
a_bonobo 14y ago
This is not /r9k/, please take your misogyny there.
xmonad 14y ago
"low status" Men who value other's opinions of them over voicing their real feelings. How many comments in this thread asked the OP "what projects have you worked on", "what have you contributed as a woman?". Why? Because the larger issue isn't woman. It's "Nice guy" syndrome. Deferring to woman, being "pc", repressing opinions. The book No More Mr. Nice Guy (http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339 http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339) is a great read on this. As for the OP. I don't care about your gender or race. I want to know what you code. I want you to be great. But will not enable my fellow men nor you to be weak prima donnas. We have a destiny. We owe it to our children not to show such weakness.

atomical 14y ago

"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it. Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”. If you’ve ever drilled a hole, skinned a rabbit, or changed a tyre you know what I mean. As I mentioned earlier, guys will definitely put you to the test and as a girl it will be hard to get their respect. On the other hand, you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful. However, with great power comes great responsibility so don’t take (too much, hehe) advantage of the nerds treating you like a princess just because they finally get to work with a girl." Never experienced this. Sounds like an alternate reality. All the so called nerds I worked with had girlfriends or wives and didn't wear pocket protectors and stutter around females when talking to them.

Udo 14y ago
This sounds alien to me as well. I've been a member of a lot of diverse teams, and led some of them, over the years. While it's true that female tech people are always outnumbered by male ones, what that actually means probably depends a lot on culture. My experiences are almost exclusively in Northern Europe and Asia and generally I didn't perceive that female devs got any special treatment at all (negative or positive). If Nerdess extracts some sort of empowerment out of this that's great for her, but I imagine crossing the line into a territory where your team mates perceive you as a shallow and malicious manipulator is a real danger here. Any person who bases their work persona exclusively on being a precious snowflake (of any kind) is not someone I'd like to have on my team.
electrozoic 14y ago
Maybe we have worked in different environments than nerdess. I've had quite a few jobs (at software companies in the US) where most of my colleagues are calm, mature, and act like professionals without regard to gender. I've also encountered the occasional colleague (a bit more often in startup/freelance culture) who acts like females are a new and unfamiliar technology, and doesn't know how to relate in appropriate ways. But I've never felt particularly "powerful" in my workplace, until I started doing most of my work from my home office.

nickporter 14y ago

Why is it that people group IT and software development together? To me, they are two completely different fields. For example, I see an IT person as a mail server administrator in a large company, and a developer as the person who would write the mail server software. I'm not saying that an IT professional never writes code, or a developer won't ever touch a Nginx config file. I just mean they are two different types of work. It's something I have noticed for a while now, not only with your article.

unimpressive 14y ago
Because people as a general rule abstract anything related to computers or computing into one lump object. This vague, ossified amber of the interwingled nature of computer media causes problems with understanding computers. That and the sort of person who does development ends up doing some IT and Vice versa.
- derleth 14y ago
  > Because people as a general rule abstract anything related to computers or computing into one lump object. This vague, ossified amber of the interwingled nature of computer media causes problems with understanding computers. The same thing happens with every field. If you're at all medical, you're lumped into the 'doctor' category regardless of whether you're a neurosurgeon or a scrub tech, and all doctor-type humanoids know everything about everything from the cingulate gyrus to my granny's chilblains. Which is still closer to the truth than imagining that everyone who is 'good with computers' can instantly diagnose and fix every single problem that has ever come up for everything that can run software.
zh 14y ago
It's not like this any more. That's why recently there are so many "software engineers" - you write your Ruby code, install and configure NginX, Passenger etc., even support a cluster of machines (LB, DB, Apps), maybe with a little help for Chef.
- sounders 14y ago

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victorhn 14y ago

"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." That looks like sexism to me.

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arrrg 14y ago
If the qualification is equal I would very much hope that the person that increases diversity is hired. Why would you do anything else?
- abduhl 14y ago
  I would probably pick the person that meshes with the team best rather than the one that panders to my internal sense of injustice.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    I would pick the person who would broaden my team's perspective and not reinforce our biases.
    - enraged_camel 14y ago
      I don't understand why the decision has to be based on only one criteria.
  - arrrg 14y ago
    If you think someone doesn’t fir your team because of their gender there is something seriously wrong with you.
    - moistgorilla 14y ago
      He didn't say he would...

robwgibbons 14y ago

Someone should write an article about being a black person in tech. Or maybe an Irish person in Tech, we need more of those. It's tough for the Irish in Tech, they get no respect. So many Irish never even consider a career in Tech because it's not a traditional industry for Irish to be employed in. I want to help break down barriers by being an Irish person in Tech.

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jessedhillon 14y ago
Breaking News A man doesn't understand why women do/think something that he doesn't, but still has some thoughts about why those women are wrong! Here's a tip: if someone says "this is hard for me" don't respond with "no it's not." In fact, even if they get a little presumptive and forget to add the "for me," give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are describing the world as it exists for them and not necessarily making an empirical claim.

Jun8 14y ago

OK, nobody commented this up to now but I think is important: Among the many posts about this subject I've read on HN recently this was absolutely the best: Not only it approached the matter in a no-nonsense, practical matter without preaching from "the height of an unwritten book" or an axe to grind but it also gives excellent advice to young girls who want to venture into the field. With posts like this I wish there was a mega-upvote option on HN, e.g. for 500 points of karma you upvote 10 points.

tankbot 14y ago
Definitely agree! I like that her opinions are her opinions and not some pendulum-swinging doctrine. Bookmarked for future perusal for sure!
- deleted 14y ago
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saraid216 14y ago
The clearest reason for this, AFAICT, is because she's speaking primarily to women and trying to convince them to come on board. It's not at all about sexism; it merely acknowledges it in passing and hurries on quickly because it's a touchy subject.
belorn 14y ago
While and rather excellent article on why the IT field is a suitable career, good grief, the sexism politics has really entrenched itself into people mindset. It almost boggles my mind. Here some supposedly sexist snippets from "scenarios you may occasionally find yourself in when working as a girl in tech". Colleague: “So...you are the new designer?" (As if "so...you are the new Foobar" would not be said to any new hire. if I got a new boss, my first word might be "so...you the new boss? hi my name is so and so!". How and in what way would that be sexist remark, and does it matter if the new boss would be female or male? would it matter if the position is boss, developer, designer, sysadmin, or sales?) Useless male developer has written some crappy code that he doesn’t even understand himself anymore. Now he needs to extend it with new features and asks you to do it. (As if female developers get exclusively dumped with fixing bad code. Especially if its a new hire/consultant/out sourced, how does this surprise anyone? its even a saying that "the new guy gets all the work no one else want". Does it matter if its a female or male? so for mega-upvote, the article has some issues. Its better than the normal articles we see, but its not 10 times better.

sandollars 14y ago

Progress is being made, but there is still a long way to go. This happened in a talk at a programming/web/tech event two weeks ago: http://i.imgur.com/4hL6X.jpg http://i.imgur.com/4hL6X.jpg

mattdw 14y ago
WTF. How is this ever acceptable in a professional context? Talk about hostility.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Professionals are at work. Goofs are at "events".
  - pyre 14y ago
    There are still plenty of professionals at events, and even presenting at events. This sort of stuff seems more a part of "brogrammer" culture. The idea that you need to make a name for yourself by being edgy/offensive.
d0mine 14y ago
It is funny that it is ok to exploit nerd stereotypes as demonstrated in the article (nobody cares about yet another nerd in a basement picture). Do you think that the author of the article sees all programmers through the lenses of the stereotype? The picture that you've linked is in bad taste but it won't change the popularity of the stereotype behind it in any way. Do you think that the author of the presentation sees all models through the lenses of the stereotype?
- sirmarksalot 14y ago
  Do we really need to coin the phrase "hacker privilege?" Look, I know it sucked in school, being ostracized for having technical interests, but now you're grown-up and loaded. As part of a larger social agenda, I can see some harm in perpetuating these geek stereotypes, but on a personal level, you are not being exploited, so quit whining.

vacri 14y ago

I (100% female) work as a web developer and are not sure if the lack of female colleagues bothers me or not. Political correctness dictates that it should Political correctness isn't really about groupthink or how you should feel. It's about not making other people feel shitty because you're too lazy to use inclusive language. It's simply an extension of 'manners', and gets demonised when it shouldn't be.

nickpinkston 14y ago
There's a fine line between someone feeling "shitty" and groupthink / often naive & distant. A friend of mine says that anytime a person refers to him as "African-American" he sees them as totally distant and that "they usually don't talk to black people" - so I can see this working both ways. Political correctness (what the 'polis' sees as correct) isn't always what those who may 'feel shitty' think is correct - so I share her feelings.
crusso 14y ago
Political Correctness is about hypersensitivity to possible insult to the point that using direct and clear communication is frowned upon in the public discourse. Political Correctness is an extraordinarily sad advance of style over substance that has attempted to address the language used to describe problems in our society over actually addressing the problems themselves. Ultimately, Political Correctness is yet another societal/political power grab in an attempt to control the very words that come out of everyones' mouths. Free speech is just too much individual power for many Utopians in society, but they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment[or other country's free speech protection]. Political Correctness is the next best thing for them, I guess.
- illuminate 14y ago
  Your assumption that "direct and clear communication" requires that you use offensive and exclusive phrasings is false, and your complaints about your inability to exert "power" over others are unmoving. "they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment" If you believe proper behavior has anything to do with the First Amendment it would do you better to read the US Constitution.

RandallBrown 14y ago

Articles like this are what are going to get girls into computing. They need to know that there are other normal girls, just like them, that do this for a living. I got my ex-girlfriend into software development. She comes off as a very stereotypical girly girl. She likes clothes, shopping, and top 40 pop music. I convinced her to take an intro programming class her sophomore year of college. Now she's a software engineer at Amazon. All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it, and that normal people (I suppose I seemed normal to her) do it too.

lloeki 14y ago
> All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it I don't know if it's society or what, but it seems a lot of girls suffer from this (conscious or not) line of thinking. I'm versed in science (esp. math and physics) and like to talk about such subjects so I've been regularly asked for help, and every single time I helped a girl the cause of their demise was lack of confidence. Contrary to guys (which seem to have confidence in excess but need some form of support), telling them upfront is useless because it's so ingrained that I have to take a more subtle route. I explain her something complex, and keep going deeper until (usually takes about ten minutes) there's a a-ha, not about the subject at hand but about herself, a moment where she realizes that at every step she got everything I said, and now she gets a glimpse something so complex that ten minutes ago she thought it would forever be unfathomable to her, when I did not actually explain so much as pragmatically but subtly demonstrate that yes, she can do it. Subsequent results at school, even in unrelated disciplines and without more training, are off the charts. It seems the "mens do the real stuff" society thing is so pervasive that it permeates through and makes them lose the confidence required, and they just need to be bootstrapped out of it so that they can finally say "This is within my reach".
nerdess 14y ago
thanks, that is exactly what i want to achieve with my article: pointing out that the tech world is not just for über-nerds :)
annableker 14y ago
For real. This girl is obviously being honest and sounds really level-headed/normal. Everything in this article is exactly what I would tell my little sister.

cbsmith 14y ago

I'm starting to think it is impossible for someone to write about gender issues in the tech industry without at least one reference to porn.

saucetenuto 14y ago
Yeah, that jarred me too. The author's dad is a farmer, and her go-to example of a job that requires stamina is...porn star? The fuck?
nerdess 14y ago
my article isn't about gender issues....the intention is merely to show the perks of working in IT to a normal average girl that might not be sure about what career path to choose. however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D
- cbsmith 14y ago
  > my article isn't about gender issues....the intention is merely to show the perks of working in IT to a normal average girl that might not be sure about what career path to choose. I'm trying to comprehend how that isn't about gender issues in the IT business, but let's just say that whatever the appropriate semantic expression was for what it is I was referring to, it includes your work. >however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D Sorry, I wasn't intending to imply you should filter your writing. My comment wasn't really meant to be a criticism of your writing in particular... actually, it wasn't even really a criticism of writing at all. It's more just... I doubt there are other industries where EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE like this would have a reference to porn (well, except for the porn industry ;-). I don't think it necessarily speaks poorly of the people engaging in the discussion; it reflects where the industry is.

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physcab 14y ago

I'd love to use this opportunity to do a little promotion. My sister and I just launched a site to connect women in industry with girls taking math and science called Girls Love Math (http://www.glmclub.org http://www.glmclub.org). It would make my day if women like nerdess became mentors. I have a feeling that lots of girls are looking up to them.

LiveFanChat 14y ago
your website fonts dont work in IE9....for a nerdy website you think that usability testing across different browsers would be on your checklist.

masry 14y ago

"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it." "you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful." "Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale." "If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." How is all this not sexist? Or is sexism against males not sexism anymore? This is sexist, and shouldn't be upvoted.

dschiptsov 14y ago

My personal favorite example: http://sachachua.com/blog/ http://sachachua.com/blog/ She wrote org-mode for Emacs. Now she is at IBM Research.

sjm 14y ago
Carsten Dominik wrote org-mode. Looks like she maintained Remember-mode and Planner-mode at one point though.
- dschiptsov 14y ago
  My fault - I remember that she wrote a popular Emacs package, but forgot the name.
  - lurker14 14y ago
    Maintained, not wrote. John Wiegley wrote both. http://www.emacswiki.org/PlannerMode http://www.emacswiki.org/PlannerMode It is cool that Sacha maintained it, volunteering is awesome. I am pointing this correction out because Sacha's primary career is as a self-promotion specialist (http://sachachua.com/blog/ http://sachachua.com/blog/), so I have to be skeptical of how her name gets attached to technical work, more so than someone who doesn't pursue celebrity for profit. People shouldn't think that it's so easy to be famous and a technical contributor. The larger contributors (like John Wiegley in this case) tend to be less famous. Example: Sure, Linus Torvalds is a celebrity and massive contrbutor, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of other massive Linux kernel contributors who are less famous than, say, Jeff Atwood.
lurker14 14y ago
Wow, she is such an happy-happy-joy-joy blogger^evangelist^blogger that I never though she had time to write any code.

gprasanth 14y ago

"Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”" I always opined that, "women have a lot of emotional strength". You can just imagine how difficult it is to take care of, and raise a toddler. It is so hard. But, somehow women are naturally good at this, and I am just as fascinated by this fact.

Adirael 14y ago
I don't think women are naturally better (than men) at raising kids. That's what a lot of people thinks and single dads are automatically diminished. Not good.
illuminate 14y ago
"It is so hard. But, somehow women are naturally good at this, and I am just as fascinated by this fact." Have you never interacted with a single father?

minamea 14y ago

"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it." "you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful." "Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale." "If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." These are all very sexist remarks. If the equivalent has been written from a male's perspective it would have been an outrage.

astrofinch 14y ago
I think from a harm minimization perspective, it makes sense to treat complaints of sexism from the minority faction more seriously than complaints of sexism from the majority faction. Also, I disagree that people would complain if the same stuff was written by a guy working in nursing.
- kalkin 14y ago
  You don't mean minority/majority, but yes.
  - sejje 14y ago
    If he means women in tech, he probably means minority/majority.

gaving 14y ago

When I started as a developer in the UK I earned a bit less than £30k a year and wondered: How can whole families live of this? How can anyone save money for a mortgage? [...] It might sound arrogant but since I am an IT contractor I don’t have to think twice about that Halston Heritage dress I fell in love with the other day, I just buy it. Yeah, you're right, that does sound arrogant.

sebcat 14y ago

"Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”" Actually, I'm fascinated and scared by all IT people who roll up their sleeves and do manual labour.

archangel_one 14y ago
An in return, I'm always slightly shocked by this kind of attitude. Just because I write code for a living doesn't mean that I had to forget how to do everything remotely practical first. If I'm confronted by a job that requires manual labour, I don't just stand there saying "oh I'm an IT person, I can't possibly do this".
- lurker14 14y ago
  It's the reverse. I can't carry a bottle of chemicals without spilling it on myself, or take apart an machine without dropping a few pieces in the sewer, so I stick to the virtual world where my poor hand-eye coordination won't get me killed.

laumars 14y ago

"Computer languages and “real” languages are actually very similar." I really couldn't disagree with that more. Sure, some languages' syntax borrow English words (Python, Pascal, VB, etc), but that's such a minor similarity. Those words are completely arbitrary and the syntax could have been in Klingon for all the difference it would make to the compiler. Computer languages are a maths language; albeit a very very dumbed down dialect of maths, but maths all the same. I think the trap many web developers fall in is that PHP teaches some terrible programming practices (no variable declarations nor types, etc) and ANSI SQL isn't Turing complete, so feel that all other languages by extension are equally easy to grasp. However if you look at a number of other languages -particularly the ones with C-derived syntax- then it becomes painfully obvious that any similarities to human languages are just skin deep (which is lucky for me as I majorly suck at writing yet can code proficiently in around a dozen different computer languages).

asnyder 14y ago
Don't know why you felt it was necessary to take a dig at PHP, as if PHP is the cause of all bad web programming practices. Nowadays, PHP is very much evolved, and the abundance of mature frameworks have completely removed the most of the inconsistency issues.There are in fact variable declarations and types in PHP, there's even type-hinting to enforce types. The fact of the matter is that many web developers fall into bad practices via laziness, copy & paste syndrome, regardless of whether the language they're using has strict types or not.
- laumars 14y ago
  While I agree that a bad programmer will write bad code in any language -and visa versa- my point was that PHP doesn't enforce good practices thus allowing many less experienced developers to accidentally fall into easily avoided pitfalls (lets be honest, having to === to force type matching is just plain dumb). So by the time you've properly hardened your code, it's anything but pseudo-English - which was my point (ie programming languages are not similar to human languages).
lurker14 14y ago
Natural-language likeness, with all its weirdness and power, was an explicit design goal of Larry Wall's perl, a language which was instrumental in creating the WWW as we know it.

talmir 14y ago

It is a nice article. Interesting read for me as a male programmer. But this line kinda caught my eye under the "Gender-advantage" headline: "If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." This is a problem.

talmir 14y ago
After reading all of this again, it strikes me that she works with a LOT of sexually frustrated nerds. She says she has to be careful not using her appearant super power of girlyness too much to manipulate the nerds and such stuff. Is this seriously the reality somewhere, that coders are 99% sexually frustrated super nerds? I always considered that to be a old stereotype :P
- thisone 14y ago
  I've seen it happen (female myself), though not to my advantage, that I know of. I've had bugs sent to me for another woman's code, time and again, without formal bug reports for them. Double edged sword: they know I can fix it, and generally quickly, but it looks like performance is being swept under the rug. And I do put in bug reports for them once they get to me. Damned if I'm going to have the work unaccounted for. edit: should probably mention that when she was hired, I was told she would look good at conferences.
nerdess 14y ago
yeah well of course it's wrong to get a job just because of the gender. though if HR departments and CTO's want to hire us girls so badly then wohoooo.........i would be stupid to not use this to my advantage :D

yock 14y ago

Sorry for being off-topic, but why in the world would the net filter here at work have blocked this as "adult content?"

rmc 14y ago
Just a guest, but there is a music video with some men in underwear dancing around embedded in the page ( This is the video itself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pivLTWIJ7xo&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pivLTWIJ7xo&feature=playe... )

michaelochurch 14y ago

I'll make a controversial observation, but it's worthy of discussion. If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status. I'm not talking about overt flirtation (don't do it) or office relationships (avoid, avoid, avoid). I'm talking about more subtle stuff, like who a woman smiles at, who she initiates conversations with, and what her body language is toward various people. This will have huge ripple effects on the male status hierarchy. Much of the reason why men tend to seem "afraid of" women in the office is that they're afraid she'll judge him lowly and send out "loser signals" about him, bringing him down a notch or two. Since everything that happens at most workplaces (especially cliquish startups, so don't give me this "meritocratic" bullshit) is really about social status-- "performance" is a myth made up to justify firings and scare the mediocre-- this is huge. Overtly flirting with the men in the office will destroy a woman's reputation, for sure. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the subtle fact that, among groups of people, women have the capability to exert a disproportionate influence on the status ordering. In fact, the best way to use this is to do exactly what a young man would do: be nice to everyone, reach out and try to make allies, seek mentors... but also take a small comfort in the fact that men have an added incentive to be nice to you-- you have a disproportionate effect on their image, and they want to be seen with you. For example, a 23-year-old with 6 months on the job comes into the office of a powerful person (MD in banking, Partner in a law firm) and says that (s/)he is bored with the work that (s/)he is getting. If male, he's just another entitled fuck looking for an advantage. The response usually is: go away, pay your dues, and come back in 7 years after you've proven yourself (if I haven't fired you before that). That's because humans have a visceral hatred of low-status males, and in the workplace, men in the youngest 15% are almost always of low status (hence, they get the shittiest work). If the 23-year-old is female, this 45-year-old executive might realize that having a 23-year-old woman come into his office once a week might give him a younger, "cooler" image and prevent him from getting "managed out" (read: fired) for being "resistant to change" (read: old). So he might give her the kind of work that most people have to wait a few years to have a crack at. Again, she's not flirting with him, or compromising herself in any way. She's doing exactly what a man would do if he had the courage: going into a powerful person's office and asking for better work. It doesn't always happen this way, but it can. Career advancement is about stringing together a large number of high-impact, low-probability prospects (with enough parallelism that the likelihood of some success becomes high) and waiting for one to hit. The "superpower" that an attractive woman has doesn't turn the low probability into a high one; it makes it slightly less low. I'm not saying life is fair and, on the whole, women almost certainly have to deal with more bullshit than men. It's wrong that women's looks are taken to matter so much. It's wrong that people are huge dicks to women about aging. Some of the "old lady" comments I heard when Clinton was running for President in 2008 made me want to vomit. Men have a huge and unfair advantage after 32, which is that they can have children with their careers interrupted, and that their social status (being abysmal, in the workplace, at 22-24) peaks around 40-50. Men can (and are expected to) work through child-rearing, while for it to make sense for a woman to keep working after having children, she has to make about 2.5 times the average income (to hire help, day care, etc.) On the other hand, women have a huge advantage from 22 to 32, which is that they have the subtle but potent ability to determine who's "cool", and if they're aware of how to use it, they can speed up their careers. And given the heaping plate of bullshit that society gives women once they get older (and it starts in the 30s) they pretty much have to use this advantage while it's there.

dmansen 14y ago

Men of HN: please tell more people what you think is and isn't sexist. It's good, your input on the matter is valuable and important.

xmonad 14y ago

Tell me how you help. My project already has a purpose and mission. I acknowledge you are different. Now you have to bring substance to the table and save the rest for home. Bottom line. Stay off my lawn.

tete 14y ago

This is maybe the best article I've ever found on HN.

kalkin 14y ago
It is a good article, but it's sad that even in a good article like this, which talks explicitly about the realities of sexism, the author feels the need to distance herself from "the feminists."

crusso 14y ago

I really liked this article. Most blogs about women in Tech these days are centered around the mindset of victimhood. Having gone to an engineering school, I know full well the power that women can exert in an environment full of socially-hapless geeky guys.

TheCapn 14y ago

This is a weird subject. I think, as a social group, we're on a hinging point where women will be making equal footing in the tech industry, but haven't yet. Its coming. Women are going to get disproportionate treatment during this transition in one or two different ways, and it depends on who they're interacting with. Should they land themselves alongside the stereotypical basement dweller they'll be cast aside and thought less of. They'll first need to prove themselves in an uphill battle. This will take great self confidence because there is a lot of misogyny still in the tech workplace. Too many tech gurus grew up being shunned socially and still have those emotional barriers preventing them from being rational and fair. On the other swing of things though we have the opposite treatment: "A girl? Oooo!" I feel jealous sometimes of my female friends in the industry because of just how easy getting face to face for new jobs comes for them. I fight to keep myself in check because they're damn good professionals who deserve it but the thought remains: what sets them apart from me? Directly out of university I was competing locally with a lot of them for jobs and the treatment of women in the profession was quite apparent. I still see it a bit in my jobs now and its slightly disheartening. Ultimately I think this problem will solve itself in time. Tech jobs aren't about the basement dweller anymore, they haven't been for years. The natural transition where everyone in the workforce has been part of it for the years where equal woman representation has been around and the awkward or preferential treatment is happening. We need vocal women to encourage more to join. Those classes in university will definitely be unsettling when 20 slobbering unkempt males are trying to wrestle their way to the only female group partner but to push through is going to be tough.

nantes 14y ago

Appears to be down, CoralCache link at http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-girl-tech/ http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-g...

nantes 14y ago

Appears to be down, CoralCache link at http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-girl-tech/ http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-g...

zandomatter 14y ago

Am I the only one that thought that while most of the points made in the article were generally true, the follow-up and examples were lackluster. Comments like these: "you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky ... so don’t take (too much, hehe) advantage of the nerds treating you like a princess just because they finally get to work with a girl." are insulting to both genders, as well as being grossly overstated.

wavesounds 14y ago

Can anyone recommend some of the "tech superstars" to follow on twitter that she mentions?

nerdess 14y ago
what kind of nerdism are you into? web development? then you can look at the people i follow on twitter :)

jayc 14y ago

Can we please stop making generalizations about women in tech and go back to discussing and upvoting articles about technology again? Signed, a female developer

whiterabbit2 14y ago

Except women have a good chance to be turned down before even being seen in person... (unless, their resume clearly indicates they are juniors and they have nice pictures on FB). And, yeah, the "approval" thing is actually something like "admiration" and implies that this woman is an inferior professional. If she happens to be a strong professional, it's not desirable for a man to be next to this woman, as it will bring down his own value. It would be more desirable to be next to an older superior man.