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Paul Graham Proves Sexism in Tech Is Still a Problem

36 points by 67726e 13y ago

kumarski 13y ago
I thought the very direct point he was making is that there's an small number of women who are exposed to CS at a young age and that's something that has to change.
- poolpool 13y ago
  What other jobs is it expected that you've been doing it since early teens?
  - rewind 13y ago
    Whether or not this applies to other jobs has nothing to do with whether or not it applies to CS-related jobs.
  - Yver 13y ago
    Professional basketball, football, concertist, etc... Professions where only the very best can succeed. Maybe you can learn piano at 21 and go on to become a renowned performer, but there's usually a correlation with learning things early. Might have something to do with the 10,000 hours thing.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Its ridiculous to compare programming to professional sports. There are less than 500 NBA players, in a sport probably millions of people in the US can play adequately. They're the 0.01 if not 0.001%. Talented programmers aren't anywhere near that rare.
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    Pretty much all athletic, dance & music jobs. Most of my fellow students at Caltech had a history of doing projects in their field of interest as teens.
  - presty 13y ago
    But tech jobs in general don't expect you to have been doing it since early teens. You can perfectly get a job in some Big Co. even if you only started programming in college. But startups in general (and in this case, YC) all want to hire the top 1%, so isn't it natural they are biased at the people with the most experience, because they believe that they are better (which is not necessarily true)?
rayiner 13y ago
I think this "hacking since teenage" crap is overrated. I started programming C++ in middle school, but I don't think it makes me a better programmer than someone that took it up in college. I don't think it matters what girls did in high school. Every other mature industry favors formalized training over looking at what people do in their free time. If you said that the best bankers are the ones that did trading simulations as teenagers, instead of ones that received formal training at Morgan Stanley, or that the best engineers are people that built model rockets instead of those that received formal training at Lockheed, people would laugh at you. But the same sort of sentiment flies in the tech world. The industry fails to separate the profession from the cultural tendencies of people in the industry. I think its just a sign of the immaturity of the profession and will disappear in time.
- rosser 13y ago
  I think this "hacking since teenage" crap is overrated. Wholehearted agreement. I didn't touch a computer, other than the ones in the typing lab in high school, until I got my own PC for college. Here I am, the better part of two decades later, doing rather well for myself, and with colleagues and management at my last three jobs all having said I'm the best at what I do of anyone they've ever worked with. Yeah, yeah, anecdata, but one thing anecdata can legitimately do is provide an existence proof against a universal claim like pg's.
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    It's not a universal claim. It's an observation of tendencies. Given the choice between two fresh college graduates where one had been hacking since middle school and the other only started in college, who are you likely to choose all else being equal? This isn't rocket science. People who start hacking at a young age and continue very likely have a passion toward the discipline. People who have a passion for programming likely care more about it. People who care more about it are probably better. Does this mean that the guy who didn't start until later can't be better? Not at all.
- loumf 13y ago
  I think it's "AND" not "INSTEAD OF" that he's targetting. There are many things where putting more time in productively will help you get better. Similarly, wide ranges of experience need time. At 22, the fact that I programmed since 13 probably made me better than those that just had the BS I also had. Now, at 43, I don't those years from 13-18 are a differentiator.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
I believe that sex segregation behaves a lot like other segregation issues. It can happen by policy and with ill intent, but also completely without. Often the blame is put on the "recruiting" side of things. Are girls drawn into CS classes? Are they encouraged to participate? But the bigger question is when and how are they discouraged? When and why do they leave the "track" towards "hackerdom" or the software engineering workforce. Maybe we should become more mindful of the situations in which we are assuming a girl/woman can't be interested in programming. Maybe we should become more mindful of when we make it uncomfortable for them.
- dsego 13y ago
  Who is we? What are other women doing about it, I mean except bitching?
  - bayesianhorse 13y ago
    If they are in the minority they probably are not doing most of the rejection in computer science... And if you really looked hard, you would see numerous initiatives from women.
keeran 13y ago
"What I actually said was "make these women look..." I was simply explaining why CS major != hacker. All that got cut." [0] "Will write about female founders, but traveling all day so it will have to wait. Reserve judgment? Prob too much to hope for, alas." [1] [0] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416934337435537410 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416934337435537410 [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064
- poolpool 13y ago
  You can give PG the benefit of the doubt or compare to this some of his other questionably racist/sexist statements along the years.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
_sentient 13y ago
Seems like nothing more than a misconception on the parts of Valleywag et al. I suspect an essay will be forthcoming to help lend clarity to the issue.
sanswork 13y ago
I'd say this whole article is dishonest and trying to stir controversy in that the tweet at the very top clarifies the comment. The writer then spends the entire article talking as if that correction had never happened then at the end offhandedly mentions the correction but dismisses it entirely. The whole site screams of linkbait anyhow. If a lot of start ups won't hire someone that hasn't been hacking for a long time thats not an oppressive statement so much as an observation of trends.
- wcbeard10 13y ago
  I originally misread the source as 'wired.com'
WalterBright 13y ago
> and he has no clue how to get girls to care about tech I have no control over other peoples' thoughts. The reverse is true, too, I decide what I care about.
smtddr 13y ago
Wow, this got knocked off the front page(and 2nd page) in a hurry. Discussion over!
- justin66 13y ago
  Can someone familiar with how the site actually works explain what has happened here? The story isn't marked with "[DEAD]" or whatever but it doesn't appear to be indexed on the main site at all anymore - I looked on the first half dozen pages. Has it just somehow been censored into oblivion?
  - presty 13y ago
    it could be any/both of 2 reasons: - HN has an automatic flamewar detector algorithm - it monitors the tone of discussion on a post and if it's too negative, it gets knocked out from the front page - it could've also been flagged too many times I don't think it's been censored. it must be buried deep
vezzy-fnord 13y ago
I'm not sure if the fact that I'm completely neutral towards Graham's comments shows that I'm some bigoted backwards abortion of this generation who isn't up with the times, that I'm hopelessly jaded, or that people will overreact about anything. Given that they link the Adria Richards case as an example of sexism in tech, I'm having a hunch towards the latter.
peterwwillis 13y ago
pg completely misses the whole social programming/gender stereotype aspect of why boys might be more attracted to computers at 13 than girls, but at the same time, "the wire" is clearly taking his comments and trying to slant them toward a specific, sarcastic end. It's pretty tabloid to take some ignorant comments and try to demonize someone for them. The article also accuses him of creating justifications when his actual words were trying to explain a possible fix (and admitting that he didn't know what would actually work). But his general point is spot on: you have to grow hackers, you can't just create them out of thin air. More work should be done to get young girls into hacking (not just more CS grads).
krisroadruck 13y ago
I don't understand how the writer of this piece can't wrap his head around the logic here. That someone doing something for 10+ years is probably going to have a better understanding of it than someone doing it for significantly less time. This goes back to that whole 10K hours to mastery concept. The other bit boils down to passion/motivation. Someone who's been geeking out on computers every day since they were a kid likely did so because they really enjoy it. Whereas someone who started doing it in college because someone said "this is where the money is at" is likely to be less passionate about it. To me this all makes perfect sense.
- omonra 13y ago
  Logic is not what's important. Equality of results is paramount.
gojomo 13y ago
Outrage-farming Proves Reading Comprehension in Tech Journalism Is Still a Problem
semerda 13y ago
As I see it PG was saying: 1. Hacker != CS degree nor a Learn to Code in 24hrs book, 2. Focus on teaching software engineering in schools vs colleague to instill a hacking culture early on, not during the gold rush years. What is wrong with that? Nothing. It is perfectly sound and clear. Media has a crappy way of blowing things out of proportion especially around this sexism in tech. Someone should cut the media fuel lines so we can just resume and hack in peace.
yesiamyourdad 13y ago
Seems like PG's problem is that he's dumb enough to comment on the subject.

36 points by 67726e 13y ago

I thought the very direct point he was making is that there's an small number of women who are exposed to CS at a young age and that's something that has to change.

poolpool 13y ago
What other jobs is it expected that you've been doing it since early teens?
- rewind 13y ago
  Whether or not this applies to other jobs has nothing to do with whether or not it applies to CS-related jobs.
- Yver 13y ago
  Professional basketball, football, concertist, etc... Professions where only the very best can succeed. Maybe you can learn piano at 21 and go on to become a renowned performer, but there's usually a correlation with learning things early. Might have something to do with the 10,000 hours thing.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Its ridiculous to compare programming to professional sports. There are less than 500 NBA players, in a sport probably millions of people in the US can play adequately. They're the 0.01 if not 0.001%. Talented programmers aren't anywhere near that rare.
- WalterBright 13y ago
  Pretty much all athletic, dance & music jobs. Most of my fellow students at Caltech had a history of doing projects in their field of interest as teens.
- presty 13y ago
  But tech jobs in general don't expect you to have been doing it since early teens. You can perfectly get a job in some Big Co. even if you only started programming in college. But startups in general (and in this case, YC) all want to hire the top 1%, so isn't it natural they are biased at the people with the most experience, because they believe that they are better (which is not necessarily true)?

rayiner 13y ago

I think this "hacking since teenage" crap is overrated. I started programming C++ in middle school, but I don't think it makes me a better programmer than someone that took it up in college. I don't think it matters what girls did in high school. Every other mature industry favors formalized training over looking at what people do in their free time. If you said that the best bankers are the ones that did trading simulations as teenagers, instead of ones that received formal training at Morgan Stanley, or that the best engineers are people that built model rockets instead of those that received formal training at Lockheed, people would laugh at you. But the same sort of sentiment flies in the tech world. The industry fails to separate the profession from the cultural tendencies of people in the industry. I think its just a sign of the immaturity of the profession and will disappear in time.

rosser 13y ago
I think this "hacking since teenage" crap is overrated. Wholehearted agreement. I didn't touch a computer, other than the ones in the typing lab in high school, until I got my own PC for college. Here I am, the better part of two decades later, doing rather well for myself, and with colleagues and management at my last three jobs all having said I'm the best at what I do of anyone they've ever worked with. Yeah, yeah, anecdata, but one thing anecdata can legitimately do is provide an existence proof against a universal claim like pg's.
- burntsushi 13y ago
  It's not a universal claim. It's an observation of tendencies. Given the choice between two fresh college graduates where one had been hacking since middle school and the other only started in college, who are you likely to choose all else being equal? This isn't rocket science. People who start hacking at a young age and continue very likely have a passion toward the discipline. People who have a passion for programming likely care more about it. People who care more about it are probably better. Does this mean that the guy who didn't start until later can't be better? Not at all.
loumf 13y ago
I think it's "AND" not "INSTEAD OF" that he's targetting. There are many things where putting more time in productively will help you get better. Similarly, wide ranges of experience need time. At 22, the fact that I programmed since 13 probably made me better than those that just had the BS I also had. Now, at 43, I don't those years from 13-18 are a differentiator.

bayesianhorse 13y ago

I believe that sex segregation behaves a lot like other segregation issues. It can happen by policy and with ill intent, but also completely without. Often the blame is put on the "recruiting" side of things. Are girls drawn into CS classes? Are they encouraged to participate? But the bigger question is when and how are they discouraged? When and why do they leave the "track" towards "hackerdom" or the software engineering workforce. Maybe we should become more mindful of the situations in which we are assuming a girl/woman can't be interested in programming. Maybe we should become more mindful of when we make it uncomfortable for them.

dsego 13y ago
Who is we? What are other women doing about it, I mean except bitching?
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  If they are in the minority they probably are not doing most of the rejection in computer science... And if you really looked hard, you would see numerous initiatives from women.

keeran 13y ago

"What I actually said was "make these women look..." I was simply explaining why CS major != hacker. All that got cut." [0] "Will write about female founders, but traveling all day so it will have to wait. Reserve judgment? Prob too much to hope for, alas." [1] [0] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416934337435537410 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416934337435537410 [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/416994260995416064

poolpool 13y ago
You can give PG the benefit of the doubt or compare to this some of his other questionably racist/sexist statements along the years.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

_sentient 13y ago

Seems like nothing more than a misconception on the parts of Valleywag et al. I suspect an essay will be forthcoming to help lend clarity to the issue.

sanswork 13y ago

I'd say this whole article is dishonest and trying to stir controversy in that the tweet at the very top clarifies the comment. The writer then spends the entire article talking as if that correction had never happened then at the end offhandedly mentions the correction but dismisses it entirely. The whole site screams of linkbait anyhow. If a lot of start ups won't hire someone that hasn't been hacking for a long time thats not an oppressive statement so much as an observation of trends.

wcbeard10 13y ago
I originally misread the source as 'wired.com'

WalterBright 13y ago

> and he has no clue how to get girls to care about tech I have no control over other peoples' thoughts. The reverse is true, too, I decide what I care about.

smtddr 13y ago

Wow, this got knocked off the front page(and 2nd page) in a hurry. Discussion over!

justin66 13y ago
Can someone familiar with how the site actually works explain what has happened here? The story isn't marked with "[DEAD]" or whatever but it doesn't appear to be indexed on the main site at all anymore - I looked on the first half dozen pages. Has it just somehow been censored into oblivion?
- presty 13y ago
  it could be any/both of 2 reasons: - HN has an automatic flamewar detector algorithm - it monitors the tone of discussion on a post and if it's too negative, it gets knocked out from the front page - it could've also been flagged too many times I don't think it's been censored. it must be buried deep

vezzy-fnord 13y ago

I'm not sure if the fact that I'm completely neutral towards Graham's comments shows that I'm some bigoted backwards abortion of this generation who isn't up with the times, that I'm hopelessly jaded, or that people will overreact about anything. Given that they link the Adria Richards case as an example of sexism in tech, I'm having a hunch towards the latter.

peterwwillis 13y ago

pg completely misses the whole social programming/gender stereotype aspect of why boys might be more attracted to computers at 13 than girls, but at the same time, "the wire" is clearly taking his comments and trying to slant them toward a specific, sarcastic end. It's pretty tabloid to take some ignorant comments and try to demonize someone for them. The article also accuses him of creating justifications when his actual words were trying to explain a possible fix (and admitting that he didn't know what would actually work). But his general point is spot on: you have to grow hackers, you can't just create them out of thin air. More work should be done to get young girls into hacking (not just more CS grads).

krisroadruck 13y ago

I don't understand how the writer of this piece can't wrap his head around the logic here. That someone doing something for 10+ years is probably going to have a better understanding of it than someone doing it for significantly less time. This goes back to that whole 10K hours to mastery concept. The other bit boils down to passion/motivation. Someone who's been geeking out on computers every day since they were a kid likely did so because they really enjoy it. Whereas someone who started doing it in college because someone said "this is where the money is at" is likely to be less passionate about it. To me this all makes perfect sense.

omonra 13y ago
Logic is not what's important. Equality of results is paramount.

gojomo 13y ago

Outrage-farming Proves Reading Comprehension in Tech Journalism Is Still a Problem

semerda 13y ago

As I see it PG was saying: 1. Hacker != CS degree nor a Learn to Code in 24hrs book, 2. Focus on teaching software engineering in schools vs colleague to instill a hacking culture early on, not during the gold rush years. What is wrong with that? Nothing. It is perfectly sound and clear. Media has a crappy way of blowing things out of proportion especially around this sexism in tech. Someone should cut the media fuel lines so we can just resume and hack in peace.

yesiamyourdad 13y ago

Seems like PG's problem is that he's dumb enough to comment on the subject.