4 ms·

I've grown keenly aware of the gender disparities in tech and it's an issue I care about fixing. Which is why I want the "tech undervalues non-coders" meme to

by ef4 13y ago

I've grown keenly aware of the gender disparities in tech and it's an issue I care about fixing. Which is why I want the "tech undervalues non-coders" meme to stop getting dragged into these gender discrimination discussions. It muddies the waters and only serves to discredit the person bringing it up in the eyes of technology people who still need to be convinced that we have a gender discrimination problem. A similar example I saw recently at (http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sex-and-the-startup-men-women-and-work http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sex-and-the-startup-men-w...) put it clearly: "The roots of the vast gap in power and value between men and women in Silicon Valley begin very early in the life-cycle of a startup, often before the startup officially has employees or executives. For example, in a company like Facebook... women from the beginning of the company did work that had not yet been conceived or compensated as work. Women who casually dated the founders before the company had employees found themselves doing everything from recruiting engineers from their social networks, mediating founder relationships and disputes, providing product feedback, designing social events, and performing emotional and affective labor." "When startups begin hiring employees, the fact that nontechnical work may have been originally done for free by friends often leads founders to continue to devalue that labor, considering it optional or “fun,” perhaps a matter of social obligation, rather than serious and valuable. Engineers become highly prized commodities to hunt and value highly, while labor that isn’t technical is often expected to be freely performed by people who may have other jobs at the company (such as administrators) or who may not have any job at the company at all (such as girlfriends and dates). And because this labor often goes underpaid or not paid at all, it also doesn’t signify when equity is divided up." The author of that needs to ask: why can you find people to do the non-coding work for free or cheap, but you can't find people to do the coding for free or cheap? It has everything to do with the supply and demand of skills. Developers are still more scarce than all those other roles. Full stop. We absolutely need more powerful women in tech -- by letting more women become great coders. Not by pretending coding ability doesn't matter.

phillmv 13y ago
You're missing out entirely on the point of the article. The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find themselves being underpaid or not paid at all for above and beyond "supply and demand". It's ultimately shitty that everyone in the company but the designer got to fail upwards and land in cushy jobs while she got $10k and a pat on the head. Did she not put in long hours? Did she not sacrifice her personal life, etc, in a way commensurate with the developers? You need one designer for every 3 or 4 programmers, but that doesn't mean you still don't need good designers or that their individual contribution is automatically less valuable.
- natrius 13y ago
  "The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find themselves being underpaid or not paid at all for above and beyond "supply and demand"." It's an interesting hypothesis, but I haven't seen any data to back it up. The common sense explanation seems like it fits. Work that can be done by lots of people gets lower (or zero) wages. If the problem were women getting underpaid, we'd see the same problem among female developers. Do we? Designers are worth less in an acquihire. As a result, designers should demand wages that are closer to the market rate than developers do when they work for startups.
  - phillmv 13y ago
    Data is tricky in these situations. I doubt anyone collects statistics on acquihires let alone "girlfriends or wives who help out in startups but don't get paid for it", or "HR people who got shafted with useless stock options". (Female developers being somewhat underpaid is a common enough trope, though) So, we're left with anecdotes. "Unpaid female work" is an common theme. You've got the MVC article linked above or say this one here http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/ceo-archetypes-7-joan-of-arc http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/ceo-archetypes-7-joan-of-... and I'm reminded of Scott Weiss' post on the disruption his personal life suffered due to this startup ( http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-home/ http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-... ) and tucked away in there is a bit where his Harvard MBA wife had to stay at home to look after the kids.
    - chaostheory 13y ago
      There are plenty of designers who can't code, who are both male and female. Really way too many. Consequently, unless you're beyond extraordinary, demand is low as are the salaries. However, if you're a designer who can code i.e. a front end engineer, you can get a king's ransom regardless of gender. I've known plenty of designers who aspire to code "one day" but they never do for whatever reason. I don't doubt that there is gender discrimination and ageism in the industry. However I don't feel that this is a case of one.
- 13y ago
theorique 13y ago
Developers are still more scarce than all those other roles. Full stop. Nail on the head. These weakly compensated "office coordinator" or "customer service" roles aren't weakly compensated because they skew toward females. They are weakly compensated because they can be. Try to pay a female engineer $30K when she has offers from other places for 3x more than that. She'll laugh in your face.
thanatropism 13y ago
What you just said, plus this: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html "....not all women are the target demo of Randi's lip synching, the CEO of General Dynamics is a woman, I think she has a higher security clearance than the entire Senate, and I know for a fact she builds alien spaceships, why not interview her about how she uses social media to promote her brand and make connections and break ceilings? Because there's no Like button for hard work or triple integrals, which is doubly interesting because calculus was invented to make hard work easier. "I just don't get math." Can't do math if you weren't taught to think logically, and logic is tough on kids' self esteems and makes them way less submissive, easier just to put on a video. "They're obsessed with the Wiggles." And apple juice, whose fault is that? So instead of "if you do the same amount of hard work as everyone else, you should end up in the exact same boat as everyone else, and it will sink because none of you know anything about boats," we get Randi Zuckerberg, a lot, who tells us about the occupational hazards of posting baby pictures"
- theorique 13y ago
  Any relation to the famous Zuckerberg?
  - vellum 13y ago
    His older sister.
- vxNsr 13y ago
  That post is literally impossible to read. Not only does he fail to stay on topic for huge swaths of the entry, but he goes egregiously off topic multiple times within the same sentence. I'm also not sure I understand the larger point after reading the rest of the quoted section. Is it women aren't doing the right jobs? Women aren't respected? Women don't respect themselves? He touched on all these ideas at some point in the section. Or is it something totally different?
  - thanatropism 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ffbellfhtlflf 13y ago
Your whole premise is founded on there somehow being intrinsic value in a more even split in gender in software engineering, are there not neurological/biological differences between men and women that could explain at least some of the disparity? Never even talked about on here by the gender activists

by ef4 13y ago

phillmv 13y ago

You're missing out entirely on the point of the article. The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find themselves being underpaid or not paid at all for above and beyond "supply and demand". It's ultimately shitty that everyone in the company but the designer got to fail upwards and land in cushy jobs while she got $10k and a pat on the head. Did she not put in long hours? Did she not sacrifice her personal life, etc, in a way commensurate with the developers? You need one designer for every 3 or 4 programmers, but that doesn't mean you still don't need good designers or that their individual contribution is automatically less valuable.

natrius 13y ago
"The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find themselves being underpaid or not paid at all for above and beyond "supply and demand"." It's an interesting hypothesis, but I haven't seen any data to back it up. The common sense explanation seems like it fits. Work that can be done by lots of people gets lower (or zero) wages. If the problem were women getting underpaid, we'd see the same problem among female developers. Do we? Designers are worth less in an acquihire. As a result, designers should demand wages that are closer to the market rate than developers do when they work for startups.
- phillmv 13y ago
  Data is tricky in these situations. I doubt anyone collects statistics on acquihires let alone "girlfriends or wives who help out in startups but don't get paid for it", or "HR people who got shafted with useless stock options". (Female developers being somewhat underpaid is a common enough trope, though) So, we're left with anecdotes. "Unpaid female work" is an common theme. You've got the MVC article linked above or say this one here http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/ceo-archetypes-7-joan-of-arc http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/ceo-archetypes-7-joan-of-... and I'm reminded of Scott Weiss' post on the disruption his personal life suffered due to this startup ( http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-home/ http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-... ) and tucked away in there is a bit where his Harvard MBA wife had to stay at home to look after the kids.
  - chaostheory 13y ago
    There are plenty of designers who can't code, who are both male and female. Really way too many. Consequently, unless you're beyond extraordinary, demand is low as are the salaries. However, if you're a designer who can code i.e. a front end engineer, you can get a king's ransom regardless of gender. I've known plenty of designers who aspire to code "one day" but they never do for whatever reason. I don't doubt that there is gender discrimination and ageism in the industry. However I don't feel that this is a case of one.
13y ago

theorique 13y ago

Developers are still more scarce than all those other roles. Full stop. Nail on the head. These weakly compensated "office coordinator" or "customer service" roles aren't weakly compensated because they skew toward females. They are weakly compensated because they can be. Try to pay a female engineer $30K when she has offers from other places for 3x more than that. She'll laugh in your face.

thanatropism 13y ago

What you just said, plus this: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html "....not all women are the target demo of Randi's lip synching, the CEO of General Dynamics is a woman, I think she has a higher security clearance than the entire Senate, and I know for a fact she builds alien spaceships, why not interview her about how she uses social media to promote her brand and make connections and break ceilings? Because there's no Like button for hard work or triple integrals, which is doubly interesting because calculus was invented to make hard work easier. "I just don't get math." Can't do math if you weren't taught to think logically, and logic is tough on kids' self esteems and makes them way less submissive, easier just to put on a video. "They're obsessed with the Wiggles." And apple juice, whose fault is that? So instead of "if you do the same amount of hard work as everyone else, you should end up in the exact same boat as everyone else, and it will sink because none of you know anything about boats," we get Randi Zuckerberg, a lot, who tells us about the occupational hazards of posting baby pictures"

theorique 13y ago
Any relation to the famous Zuckerberg?
- vellum 13y ago
  His older sister.
vxNsr 13y ago
That post is literally impossible to read. Not only does he fail to stay on topic for huge swaths of the entry, but he goes egregiously off topic multiple times within the same sentence. I'm also not sure I understand the larger point after reading the rest of the quoted section. Is it women aren't doing the right jobs? Women aren't respected? Women don't respect themselves? He touched on all these ideas at some point in the section. Or is it something totally different?
- thanatropism 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ffbellfhtlflf 13y ago

Your whole premise is founded on there somehow being intrinsic value in a more even split in gender in software engineering, are there not neurological/biological differences between men and women that could explain at least some of the disparity? Never even talked about on here by the gender activists