7 ms·

What can men do?

90 points by arnauddri 12y ago

klipt 12y ago
> Figures vary, but somewhere from 20% to 29% of currently working programmers are female. > Less than 12% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting institutions in 2010 So men who study computer science are actually less likely than their female classmates to end up working as programmers?
- leoedin 12y ago
  Or, women who don't study computer science are more likely to end up programming. I have no idea where those statistics came from, but it's worth remembering that a lot of people who write software in their day job didn't study computer science. People with science and engineering backgrounds often end up software developers through necessity.
- lmm 12y ago
  Historically there were more women doing computer science, so the employment figures aren't so far out compared to the population with CS degrees.
- dspillett 12y ago
  I think it is partly a case of being more determined. Many people drift into what they end up studying (even today with it costing so much: the amount of people getting into a mountain of debt working towards a degree they ended up in "just because" always surprises me), and with the social pressures of the past women have been far less likely to coast into sciency courses then men. That means more of the one who are in those courses are there because the specifically want to follow that path, and have the brass ones to help fight the subconscious (and sometimes more open) sexism that exists in many people on the matter, rather than just because they need to do something and it seemed a reasonable choice at the time. The people who have planned out their path this way (men and women) are more likely to end up following it into a successful career, the others (of which most are men) are more likely then the former set to eventually decide on (or otherwise end up in) something else. This should fade over time - I don't know about other sciency/engineering areas but the "not a place for women" thing seems to be rapidly falling away in the techie circles I inhabit (though as I'm not a women and not the most observant person on the planet, there might still be stuff there that I'm not at all concious of).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ronaldx 12y ago
  The skew in CS Bachelor's degrees has been getting worse recently.
petepete 12y ago
From my experience (in North West England) having worked many contracts in both the private and public sector, I'd say there are far fewer than one in five computer programmers is female; I'd guess it was closer to 1/15. Of course, and this is all completely anecdotal, but at my first job after university (at a medical data company), there was only one woman in the 'software' section, and about 70 men. It's a pity.
- etfb 12y ago
  The Rule of Steves says that, in any workplace, the number of female programmers will never exceed the number of programmers named Steve. I worked one place where that wasn't true, but only because it was overrun with Johns rather than Steves.
zimbatm 12y ago
I don't understand this post. The first part seems to be justifying why there are more men in the computer field with some pseudo-science. But then he goes on to amend himself and proposes solutions to the problem. All this is very ambiguous to me.
- rjknight 12y ago
  It's almost like situations involving humans might be complicated, or something.
- unwind 12y ago
  An accurate description of a problem is not an unreasonable first step to take in trying to solve it. You make it sound as if the article "proves" why it has to be the way it is, to motivate doing nothing. That's not what I think it's trying to do.
  - zimbatm 12y ago
    I don't see the connection between the first and the second part. What's the point of establishing a baseline if it's not going to be used to find a solution ?
return0 12y ago
Basically, with rule (1, hacker school rules) they are asking to lower the standards. That's not how things work. Would it be OK if this was about Medicine, not programming? Would it be OK that your colleague does not know where the bladder is? Have a surgery without anesthesia? Sometimes you can't change the culture without substantially changing the standards, and it is NOT OK to hold women to lower standards of rigorousness.
- MDCore 12y ago
  So there are a lot of (1)'s in the artlcle. Are you talking about "Diversity leads to better results" or "Abide by the Hacker School Rules" or "No feigning surprise" ? I'd like to address your Medicine analogy, but it'd be more appropriate if I knew what you were referring to :)
- amtab 12y ago
  I don't think that the Hacker School rules have a goal of lowering standards, but rather of preventing the one-upmanship which is so common among (usually male) programmers. To someone who may be feeling overwhelmed by the learning curve inherent with transitioning from small academic or recreational coding projects to real-world environments such dynamics could be very demoralizing. Anecdotally, men who stay in tech tend to have a high tolerance for it, but it's secondary to the actual practice of coding and people who are feeling less confident don't need to worry about competing in these games. Of course if someone is working on a real-world codebase they have to know what they're doing, but learning from peers does not need to alienate anyone, at least in principle.
- rjknight 12y ago
  No, no, no. This is where the debate goes wrong. Being a decent person to women isn't some kind of personal sacrifice you need to make, it's a strict subset of being a decent person in general. If someone knows less than you about something, you should not mock that person or make them feel inferior, you should help them. That is the right thing to do, irrespective of the gender of the person you're dealing with. We should think of programming as a large fellowship (the word 'community' is overused, but it would also work here). You meet another person who is interested enough in programming to get started, then that person is your brother or sister. You want to help them, partly because it's the right thing to do and partly because it is in our collective interest to do so. We don't need bad programmers out there, screwing up because nobody helped them, and we don't need to scare off the beginners before they've even had a chance to learn much. Sure, people should have their mistakes corrected just as a journalist might expect to have their typos corrected by a sub-editor, but there's no reason to do it in a harsh or critical way. Just be a nice person about it, it's really not so complicated.
MarkTee 12y ago
He specifically mentions "no subtle sexism via public debate" but then he goes on to do just that near the end of the article. > women usually get the rough end of this deal [office breakups], too, because men aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection. Not sure I agree that males are likely to act negatively; anecdotally I'd say it's about equal. > Men, plus women, plus alcohol is a great recipe for college. [...] But as a safe work environment for women? Not so much. Both sexes are taken advantage of and subject to unsafe environments while drinking. I think that the actual recommendations he's made (no dating/drinking at work) have merit, but they could have been supported better.
- rjknight 12y ago
  You're right. Part of the problem here is that the only people really talking about fairness, office conduct or working conditions in the industry are people coming from a feminist perspective, which leads people to think that these are "women's issues" rather than more general ones. Plenty of men in the industry are taken advantage of, but we haven't worked out how to talk about this properly yet. Likewise, most of the recommendations about treating people decently and standing up against abuse of power would benefit men too. How many men want to work in toxic environments? I'd imagine it's very few. For my part I'd rather see a bit more discussion about what good workplaces look like, and what might be best practices, and a bit less cod psychology and gender mysticism.
- reitzensteinm 12y ago
  I think in general, if reversing the comparison makes you feel uneasy, it's probably inappropriate both ways and best left unsaid. "Men usually get the rough end of this deal [office breakups], too, because women aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection." You couldn't pay me enough to tweet that.
  - tomp 12y ago
    The problem is that (in anecdotal experience) men and women simply handle it differently - men might get angry, offensive, even aggressive, while women might cry, gossip and manipulate. Different people might evaluate the negative effect of different behaviours differently, but that doesn't mean that any sex is handling rejection any better.
probably_wrong 12y ago
> Don't attempt romantic relationships at work. (...)The women usually get the rough end of this deal, too, because men aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection. Just don't do it. Have all the romantic relationships you want outside work, but do not bring it to work. I find this incredibly childish - the idea that men (not some men, just men) are childish and cannot behave like grown ups, up to the point in which the company has to step in and tell them how to behave. I'm not sold up either on the idea that I'm not allowed to date anyone in the one place where I spend most of my day, where I'm surrounded by people who share my interests and where I met most of my friends. I'm all in for bringing in more women, but this points sounds too much like "let's protect this delicate, defenseless flower" to me.
- jakobe 12y ago
  I assume it's about setting expectations. If you meet your true love at work, company policy isn't going to stop you. But company policy might give you an easy way out when someone is hitting on you (and you aren't interested), without hurt feelings. Also, this isn't just about men hitting on women; it also goes the other way.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    So hitting on someone at work is ok as long as they're interested, otherwise you get fired?
    - Kequc 12y ago
      If the woman is attracted to you then she expects you to make a romantic gesture. If you don't she's hurt. If she's not attracted then such a gesture could hurt her. Policies like no dating is a lot to do with protecting women in the workplace from having to go out of their way expressing themselves. A much better policy could be everyone has to make their intentions clear.
      - lutusp 12y ago
        > A much better policy could be everyone has to make their intentions clear. Easily said, but impossible to put into practice. Have you ever tried to get a woman to make her intentions clear? Apart from being seen as insulting, it's an impossible condition to place on social interactions between men and women, where a woman's inalienable right to be vague and ambiguous is an essential component of the dating game.
lmm 12y ago
We all agree that building a better internet is important, but do the suggested policies actually lead to better products? Will the diversity gained from a "no well-actually" policy outweigh the quality lost from people being unwilling to suggest improvements? Are the gains from a team drinking together bigger or smaller than those from having people who wouldn't join such a team?
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "Are the gains from a team drinking together bigger or smaller than those from having people who wouldn't join such a team?" Why does the team have to drink together? Why not go out for dinner, play pool, have an office BBQ? I like to drink but I've never wanted to do it with my superiors. The risks involved if it goes wrong (i.e. you get too drunk and say something stupid) are too high.
  - lmm 12y ago
    Drinking together builds trust in a way that sober events don't, precisely because of those "risks". Doing it regularly creates an environment where it's much harder for parts of the team to lie (maybe not even intentionally) or keep secrets from each other, and it adds a channel of communication where criticism is more welcome or at least excusable/deniable. When I've seen companies fail it's largely been because communication broke down and the people on one end knew what the people on the other end were doing wrong but had no way to tell them.
- MDCore 12y ago
  So I think the no "well-actually" policy is because people saying "well actually" prevents people suggesting improvements because they don't want to say something that might sound stupid. The hacker school manual goes into greater detail. Having teambuilding events around drinking increases homogeneity, because that kind of event is most attractive to your average 20-something white male, and least attractive to a lot of other groups (e.g. people who don't drink from preference or religion, people who don't want to hang around with drunk people for various reasons etc). So the gains from diversifying team building should far outweigh the loss of this one narrow kind of event.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sspiff 12y ago
1. "So, on average, only about 1 out of every 5 working programmers you'll encounter will be female." 2. "And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio?" 3. "Interesting. I might even go so far as to say some of those traits are what makes one good at programming." 1 & 2 => 3 smells an awful lot like equating correlation and causation. Additionally: 4. "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers." Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  1 & 2 => 3 smells an awful lot like equating correlation and causation. Additionally: 4. "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers." Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence. I don't think Jeff is claiming it to be anything but. There are some obvious correlations there that should make observers go "Hmm, that's interesting!"
- lutusp 12y ago
  > Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence. Yes, along with perpetuating the myth of Asperger's, which has been abandoned as a diagnosis by people who had every reason to defend its continued existence (clinical psychologists), but who realized they could only do so by sacrificing more public credibility.
  - talideon 12y ago
    Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. That only means that the term "Asperger's" was deprecated in the context of the DSM.
    - lutusp 12y ago
      > Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. Yes, that's the psychological version of politics. Did you really think psychologists would come out and say, "We made a mistake and there's no such thing as Asperger's"? That would be like the Catholic church saying Galileo was right. What they did say was, "It's not an evidence-based term." Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pag... That's good enough for me or any other scientist -- it's not real. The proof that there's no such thing as Asperger's (as a mental illness) has two parts. One, anyone could get the diagnosis through the simple expedient of visiting a psychologist and saying, "I think I have Asperger's". Two, the number of wildly successful people who were said to have Asperger's, including Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates, which means if Asperger's is real, then wealth and fame are reliable diagnostic indicators for the condition. That would give "mental illness" a whole new meaning.
h1karu 12y ago
women bought into stereotypes 10 or so years ago which prevented them from learning the key skills. Quite recently geek has become sheek so those stereotypes are no longer a barrier to entry, but never the less the belief in those old stereotypes already skewed the numbers heavily in the favor of men. Programming just has not been "cool" long enough for enough women to have learned the skills... it takes years, perhaps decades to become a strong developer
QuadDamaged 12y ago
No drinking at work? London-based companies are doomed.
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
  That's a US-centric article. I think those rules will have to be relaxed slightly here in London. Still, leave the heavy drinking for those who want to go on the the pub, which is not strictly a "work event". If your London workplace has much diversity, you may have several co-workers who don't drink at all.
  - QuadDamaged 12y ago
    Indeed, although there are extremes here I feel are quite detrimental. I am not a fan of the "Liquid Lunch" culture I've seen from contractors working for some crown-owned banks who can't pay 200% bonuses this year, nor am I 100% sold on the mandatory company pub-quizz for new media agencies, feels too much like mandatory fun. Beer trolley OTOH, I'm in :) IIRC the German SAP dev team breakroom is garnished with beer taps. Might explain a lot about ABAP.
- peteri 12y ago
  I thought the same thing. When I first started work a couple of drinks at lunchtime was considered normal. At my first employers (Borland UK) back in the late 80s we would go out as a team every 2-3 weeks and get drunk at the companies expense (slightly unusual but boozy "work" lunches and not going back to the office was still a possibility then). These days I can't cope with that (my code turns to crap and I want to have a quick nap) but I do like offices were there is a culture of the company paying for a few drinks (Friday afternoons?)
fberg 12y ago
Social constructivism again. Including, as usual: 1) cherry-picked statistics, 2) made-up anecdotal explanations without any scientific base, 3) a couple of dogmas about how it can and should be, and 4) a made-up solution wihout any scientific base.
- mlnhd 12y ago
  I take it this is the first Jeff Atwood blog post you've read.
chill1 12y ago
"No drinking at work events." ".. If you want to drink, be my guest. Drink. You're a grown up. I'm not the boss of you. But don't drink in a situation or event that is officially connected with work in any way." I think this idea is due to the over consumption of alcohol that seems to be the norm in the U.S. now. Europeans, on the other hand, seem to have much more mature attitudes around alcohol.
- sspiff 12y ago
  I have to agree that the sentiment seems strange to me. All my employers have had multiple receptions, celebratory drinks or lunches where alcohol was served and consumed. No one ever got drunk or misbehaved because of it. People are smart enough to be moderate in their alcohol consumption. Note that in my country (Belgium), alcohol consumption at work is illegal, so these events were always after work hours or during lunch breaks. Technically, people had to badge out before consuming alcohol.
- etfb 12y ago
  I'm not aware of drinking being a huge problem in Australia either, but that may be the particular places I happen to have worked. Certainly "goin' out 'n gettin' pissed" is an important part of weekly (even daily) social interactions for a lot of Aussies, though we don't have the wowser/puritan history to muddy the waters like the US does.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  I'd say it's a "Drink responsibly" thing. Possibly refers to college culture and by extension hip cool startup culture, where (if I am to believe popular media etc) things can get rather excessive, with drinking games and trying to out-drink each other and just get pissed. We have the occasional drinkup, where we just enjoy a few drinks without things going in full party mode. It's just behaving like an adult, imo.
  - tomp 12y ago
    I believe that's because Americans are not allowed to drink until they're 21. When they finally get permission, they go berserk.
lutusp 12y ago
> In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers. Aspergers is a spectrum disorder ... No it isn't. After an epidemic of overdiagnoses about ten years ago that forced psychologists to accept that they had no way to reliably identify it, it was voted out of existence by the editors of DSM-5, the current diagnostic manual. Before you object that Asperger's exists whether or not psychologists believe in it any more, think about what you're saying about psychology's scientific standing. Psychologists rarely abandon established diagnoses, in fact it's happened only once before. Can you name the behavior, now regarded as a civil right and defended by a number of federal laws, that was branded a treatable mental illness until the 1970s?
- etfb 12y ago
  I'm sure there's an Autism spectrum upon which Asperger's syndrome lies, and I'm sure that psychology (as distinct from psychiatry) is a scientific discipline, so logic dictates that the weak link is your statement that "it was voted out of existence".
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > I'm sure there's an Autism spectrum upon which Asperger's syndrome lies ... If voting can create or destroy a mental illness, then everything lies on the autism spectrum -- it's just a matter of talking psychologists into it. Asperger's was voted into existence, and voted out of existence. There was and is no objective scientific evidence for its existence. > I'm sure that psychology (as distinct from psychiatry) is a scientific discipline ... If psychology were a scientific discipline, then psychologists would be able to use their research results to dictate what psychiatrists and clinical psychologists can and cannot do in a clinical setting, in the same way that medical research dictates what can and cannot be done in a medical clinic. But that is not so, and the reason is that psychology isn't a science -- it has no central defining theories, no tests of those theories, and no basis for falsification of those nonexistent theories, all required properties of science. > so logic dictates that the weak link is your statement that "it was voted out of existence". That's an uncontroversial fact -- Asperger's was voted into existence, then it was voted out of existence, and science played no part. It is for these and other reasons that the NIMH recently ruled that the DSM, psychology's "Bible", can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... Quote: "The goal of this new manual, as with all previous editions, is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology. While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." The tl;dr: not science.
Exenith 12y ago
It doesn't matter how many women there are in the field. If men and women are of equal worth, then why are you looking to get more women in? The men there aren't good enough for you? Now, I understand that some women avoid working developer jobs because they get mistreated by some men. That is an issue. But it's not an issue limited to developers, and it's not an issue limited to women. If anyone is treating anyone else like shit, then they should be fired. Sex doesn't come into question -- being a decent human being does. If you're afraid to work a job because someone might mistreat you, then you're afraid of working every job. Even if we eliminate cases like those of Github/Hovarth, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be a 50/50 split. And it doesn't matter. It's not important how many people of a certain gender there are -- what's important is that people are judged on their skills and character alone. If that means there is a gender divide, then so be it.
- phaemon 12y ago
  How do you know if your policy of equal opportunity is working, if you refuse to look at the end result?
  - Exenith 12y ago
    Because the proportion of men and women is not a measure of how sexist the field is.
    - phaemon 12y ago
      If you compare it with the expected values if you assume the field is non-sexist, then yes, actually, it is.
      - Exenith 12y ago
        Equal opportunity does not necessarily mean equal interest. A complete lack of sexism does not necessarily mean equal interest. You are following the assumption that there would be 50/50 proportions of interest (and therefore skill, and therefore employment) just because a field meets all your criteria of "not sexist". This is an unfounded assumption. No matter what the situation, there is never a guarantee that equal amounts of men and women will be interested in a particular field -- and this is not necessarily a product of a flaw in the field, but could be indicative of societal inertia (things go in and out of fashion with different groups), biological differences, or just random variation. The first question we must ask is -- if there is a gender divide, why is there a gender divide? The second question we must ask is, is the reason for it actually problematic? do we have evidence that it is sexism? If it is a problem, we must ask can we solve it without causing bigger problems? It seems we have missed most of these questions, assuming the reasons for the gender divide, assuming that it is sexism, and not considering if our solutions will just cause more problems. This is simply irresponsible. It makes us prone to unnecessary disruption, and our inclination to jump to sides -- either side -- doesn't help.
mattmanser 12y ago
I honestly think no drinking, no dating should not be on that list. This sounds like a married 40+ year old who's forgotten what it's like to be 20-30 (and I must admit I'm starting to forget!). It's so easy to forget that's simply not how the world works at that age and this debate is not the place to start proselytizing middle-aged parent morality that you definitely didn't have when you were 25. You even mention university. Is college sexist then? Do we need to protect women at university from all those drunk, lecherous men? Enforce a no dating rule at university? Women can't be equals if you refuse to treat them as equals.
- ronaldx 12y ago
  > Do we need to protect women at university from all those drunk, lecherous men? Perhaps this is not your point, but the answer to this question is emphatically: Yes, women (and men) everywhere have a right to personal safety. I agree that a no-dating rule does not achieve this, but drinking culture at a workplace is just not a good idea. You can drink on your own time, with the money you get paid to make your own decisions with, without dressing that up as a work social event which employees feel obliged to attend.
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    Again you're moralizing it, all you're doing advocating prohibition. Drinking is a common social activity. Stop being so judgemental and deal with reality.
matthewmacleod 12y ago
Generally this is nice and balanced, but there are a couple of things that I don't agree with: Do you run a company? Institute a no-dating rule as policy. I don't really thing that's wise. On a personal level, it's great advice — I'd imagine that's something most people would take into consideration on a personal. We've got a "try not to get into a relationship at work, but if you do, don't be a dick, and make sure we know about it so we can deal with the fallout if required" policy, and that's more than enough. We're adults, not children, after all. Also, this: No drinking at work events. Okay, work events shouldn't be focused around alcohol, and heavy-drinking macho culture is bad. But it's exceptionally difficult to construct an enjoyable and realistic working culture when you're making an effort to exclude an activity that lots of people (a majority, maybe?) partake in and enjoy. So have some wine and cocktails at company events; don't feel ashamed to go for a couple of drinks with colleagues after work on a Friday. Just make sure that your culture is sensitive enough that you have a diversity of events so that individuals who don't want to drink aren't excluded, and don't focus your events around alcohol (c.f. github's infamous drink-ups). But I guess what terrifies me most is stuff like this: I like to refer to the anecdotal story of the Apple Store glass stairs. While visually appealing, there was one unforeseen consequence to their design: the large groups of strange men that spend hours each day standing under them looking up. As a woman, the first time I saw them I thought “thank god I’m not wearing a skirt today.” I find it really understandable that stuff like this rubs men up the wrong way. It shouldn't, but my immediate reaction to that is "wtf, we shouldn't be compromising things that we want to do because there are people around who would do that kind of thing!" - I guess is naïveté in some ways, because I can't imagine doing that, or being aware of somebody who was doing it without tackling them on the issue. It's easy to feel like it's a personal or biased attack on "all men," and I think that's probably the biggest barrier to overcome. When someone complains about sexist activity, it's rarely a personal attack, but it can be hard to remember that sometimes.
- tfinniga 12y ago
  So, here's how I imagine these rules were created. 1. Collect a large number of stories of harassment or toxic work environments that drive away women. 2. Look for common elements. 3. Make a list of rules to avoid those common elements. It's hard to balance competing needs.. it's inevitable that rules constructed in this way are going to protect against more behavior than is actually necessary. The question is whether it's more like a seatbelt (I've never gotten in a car accident, but I still always wear mine) or more like the snowsuit from A Christmas Story. I, like you, am not a misogynistic jerk. However, I can imagine such a jerk, and that jerk is much worse when they've had a bit to drink. They can also be really mean when rejected in a relationship. I can also imagine it being really hard to tell if that is the case ahead of time. These rules would lead to some changes.. if it didn't, then you wouldn't expect a different result. That includes some changes which would not have been necessary. It's a matter of balance, but if you really want change, then it can make sense to overcompensate.
chroma 12y ago
This topic is radioactive. No matter how kind and understanding you are, many people on many sides will misinterpret your statements and demonize you. The only way to win is not to play. And yet, because I want to further the discussion, I will play... I think the most effective way to reduce discrimination in tech is to go underground. Do not think of yourself as a crusader for (insert topic here). Keep your identity small[1] and simply attack bad ideas no matter where they come from[2]. Blind yourself when evaluating candidates. Make sure that you do not know the name of the person applying for a position, since that information highly correlates with their race and gender. Musicians figured this out long ago: all that matters the sound. Likewise, with programmers all that matters is the code. If your code is good, you are good. If it's not good, be glad: you get to learn something new. Appreciate it, because until recently, learning new things was a rare event. I think this mentality can help us not only with this specific problem, but with similar problems that we will encounter in the future. We owe it to each other and ourselves. We need to advance our field and pursue excellence no matter where it comes from, no matter where it leads to. 1. http://paulgraham.com/identity.html http://paulgraham.com/identity.html 2. Likewise, endorse good ideas no matter where they come from. If it helps your ego, think of it as taking advantage of your enemies.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  Broadly speaking, that's all true, but I have to take a little exception with this: Likewise, with programmers all that matters is the code. If it's good, you are good. There's a bit more to it in my experience; I've met some developers who were good at producing code, but less effective at understanding requirements, or working within teams, or accepting that they might have to spend time on tasks they don't want to. In that sense, it's difficult to hire without getting to know someone at least a little, which implicitly means knowing their gender and race. I think the better approach is to just "not be biased" in the first place. Harder than it sounds, no doubt.
  - chroma 12y ago
    I can certainly get behind what you say. I don't have the time/willpower to spell out my position in detail, but I do agree that there are practicalities that need to be ameliorated. Thank you for elucidating them.
mseebach 12y ago
> "No well-actuallys. "Well, actually, you can do that without a regular expression."" I don't think that's quite what is meant by "well-actually". In Miguel's blog, he gives the example of someone injecting a non-sequitur well-actually to shift attention to themselves and their superior intellect. The reg-ex example given isn't (necessarily) an example of that. I can easily imagine a situation where I'm discussing some code with someone and if they're using a regex for something that's easily achieved without one, it's almost universally a good idea to do the other thing and I should point that out. That's not "showcasing my superior intellect", it's teaching.
- wildpeaks 12y ago
  +1 I don't see something wrong with a well-actually for correcting someone's incorrect statement.
draugadrotten 12y ago
So it's a horrible inequality that more programmers are men, and code would be so much better with more women. In Sweden, 57 percent of judges are women[1]. Where do I hear the feminists shouting that judgements would be so much better with more men? Again in Sweden, 52% of women gets accepted to University, but only 36% of men[2]. Where do I hear the feminists shouting that University would be so much better with more men? The feminist agenda is "more women, more women" and is one way - much more sexist than any other ideology out there. [1] http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Nyhetsarkiv/2014/februari/Flest-kvinnliga-domare/ http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Nyhetsarkiv/2014/februari/Fle... [2] https://www.hsv.se/publikationerarkiv/pressmeddelanden/2012/fortfarandeflerkvinnoranmansomvaljerhogskolestudier.5.485f1ec213870b672a680003105.html https://www.hsv.se/publikationerarkiv/pressmeddelanden/2012/...
- tomp 12y ago
  57% - 43% does not seem like a statistically significant difference...
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    I suspect Sweden has enough judges for 50.1 - 49.9% to be statistically significant.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  This article explicitly discusses that very point. Don't be a troll. In any case, there are often attempts to bring more men into heavily female-dominated professions. Teachers and midwives, for example.
slavoingilizov 12y ago
Equality is not the answer. There is no equality in nature. We have a discrimination problem, but the opposite of that is not equality, it's respect. Somewhere along the way, people started assuming that if women are equal to men, they would be respected. No. You don't want to be respected because you are equal to other respected people. You should be respected for who you are. If you are a woman, great. Make sure people appreciate that. But don't try to be equal. Gender equality is a dirty term. Let's end this and stop using it. Gender collaboration and respect is what we need.
- deleted 12y ago
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belorn 12y ago
Why is it that every time one want to compare programming to other professions, we look at professions with low social status like car mechanic, nurses, metal worker, secretary and so on. Instead, I suggest that we compare high education professions with other high education professions. Psychotherapy for example is a highly preferred female profession with about 80% female to male ratio. Veterinaries are 90% female to male. Both is similar to programming in that they are heavily sought of, has high competitive path to employment, and both require years of higher education. So turning to this article, I wonder, is the advice the article has actually sexist? Would they work in equal manner to get more male therapist or veterinaries, or is the comic strip in the middle of the article much more relevant in actually getting a change in the ratio of profession male and female programmers.
ohwp 12y ago
I think a lot of rules shouldn't be created. It's just enough to speak up. Someone behaving bad while drinking? Talk to the person the next day. Two people starting a relationship at work? Talk to them about having a bad time at work when they break up. There should be only one policy: everyone is equal and deserves respect.
Theodores 12y ago
A while ago the law changed in the UK to allow women to do the official book signing bit at weddings. Nowadays, if you go to a wedding, it is almost certain that the person in the role of registrar/vicar is female. For whatever reason a once exclusive male shop is now dominated by women. If we look back at the time before the internet, in the days when Wordperfect was king, you could find that the typical office had more computers in the hands of women than men. In those days plenty of women went from secretarial jobs to more technical roles in computing. IT was far from what you might call a closed shop, women barred from entering. Far from it. The internet, or rather the www, has created plenty of new opportunities in programming, design and content creation. Everyone had a fair crack of the whip, no universities barred women from doing Comp. Sci. degrees and many, many employers would prefer to take on a female candidate for a programming role to a male candidate given key criteria of skills are met. Yet here we are in our gender stereo-typed roles. The die has been cast.
netcan 12y ago
I don't think there are two real strong reasons for wanting to see representative distribution in a profession: distributing power & vestiges. Power is the important one. 1. Power - Near equal representation in some professions is more important that in others is because these are positions of power. Law, medicine, journalism, film etc. Are expressions and sources of power and status/ The central component of discrimination against woman or minorities was always disempowerment. Most things stem from that. Under representation in positions of power is a way that disempowerment is expressed. There's a self re-enforcing dynamic to these things. Under/over representation in certain professions also create and enforce the power dynamic. Women becoming lawyers, journalists & politicians was both a cause and an effect of a more equal distribution of power. This leaks into other areas. A housewife in a world of female ministers and lawyers is more powerful within her family. So, is programming a position of power? Does the profession have that kind of importance. In my opinion, it is. Technology is the agent of change in our times. Programming & engineering are the root and stem of technology. It's not a traditionally important profession, but I think it is one now. 2. Killing off vestiges of the old discriminatory world. A male dominant profession can be hard for women to penetrate just because of momentum. Take a simple example from the list of female dominated professions: maternity nursing or child care. Maternity leave, career breaks & part time are probably more common and therefore tolerated in these fields than in construction or truck driving. OTOH, many variants of political correctness are awful and dehumanizing. Sometimes they're a price we need to pay for just social change, but IMO it is a price. (3)If you see bad behavior from other men, speak up. (4)Don't attempt romantic relationships. (5) No drinking This is one of the things which leads to (and has led to) a neutered, reserved and false work culture. It encourages trolls who find ways to misinterpret intentions and "take offense." It creates this dualism where people must discipline their work avatar. I don't want to single out female inclusions. This is a complicated issue and I don't have all my thoughts on it straight. There are a lot of casualties in honesty. Part of this forced reservedness is just the need to be diplomatic and reserved in general. For me, this falseness of the "corporate me" people play is what makes work unpleasant. So, when I here someone cheerfully suggest some simple rules like Jeff has, I see a cost.
harrystone 12y ago
>Less than 12% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting institutions in 2010. There's your problem right there. I have a hard time believing that there is a systematic effort to keep women out of CS programs.
neilellis 12y ago
Next an article on religion, maybe race or maybe politics. I feel compassion for anyone who tries to share their thoughts on topics like these. Because whatever your opinions are you will be shouted down. As @chroma says it's 'radioactive'; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it. It would be nice not to see so much vitriol but hey, a lot of us are good with computers because we are/were rubbish with people. So it's probably to be expected, but something we can all try to work on.
mcgwiz 12y ago
A lot of commenters disagree with the "no dating" and "no alcohol" recommendations. But how many of these commenters are men and how many are women? For men to reject a recommendation put forth in the interest of women might be self-serving and establishmentarian. A tally of both the ayes and nays to those recommendations from women would be most interesting to me. For the record, I'm male and I'd be fine with those rules even if they didn't make the workplace more supportive of women. I don't pick my job based on whether I can date at work or drink at work (as long as there's no policy against pursuing those things with colleagues outside of work). But perhaps I'm an oddball because I prefer my relationship with coworkers to be strictly professional by default, and only override that on an individual basis; however, the norm in tech companies seems to be shifting away from this (even outside SV).

90 points by arnauddri 12y ago

klipt 12y ago

> Figures vary, but somewhere from 20% to 29% of currently working programmers are female. > Less than 12% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting institutions in 2010 So men who study computer science are actually less likely than their female classmates to end up working as programmers?

leoedin 12y ago
Or, women who don't study computer science are more likely to end up programming. I have no idea where those statistics came from, but it's worth remembering that a lot of people who write software in their day job didn't study computer science. People with science and engineering backgrounds often end up software developers through necessity.
lmm 12y ago
Historically there were more women doing computer science, so the employment figures aren't so far out compared to the population with CS degrees.
dspillett 12y ago
I think it is partly a case of being more determined. Many people drift into what they end up studying (even today with it costing so much: the amount of people getting into a mountain of debt working towards a degree they ended up in "just because" always surprises me), and with the social pressures of the past women have been far less likely to coast into sciency courses then men. That means more of the one who are in those courses are there because the specifically want to follow that path, and have the brass ones to help fight the subconscious (and sometimes more open) sexism that exists in many people on the matter, rather than just because they need to do something and it seemed a reasonable choice at the time. The people who have planned out their path this way (men and women) are more likely to end up following it into a successful career, the others (of which most are men) are more likely then the former set to eventually decide on (or otherwise end up in) something else. This should fade over time - I don't know about other sciency/engineering areas but the "not a place for women" thing seems to be rapidly falling away in the techie circles I inhabit (though as I'm not a women and not the most observant person on the planet, there might still be stuff there that I'm not at all concious of).
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ronaldx 12y ago
The skew in CS Bachelor's degrees has been getting worse recently.

petepete 12y ago

From my experience (in North West England) having worked many contracts in both the private and public sector, I'd say there are far fewer than one in five computer programmers is female; I'd guess it was closer to 1/15. Of course, and this is all completely anecdotal, but at my first job after university (at a medical data company), there was only one woman in the 'software' section, and about 70 men. It's a pity.

etfb 12y ago
The Rule of Steves says that, in any workplace, the number of female programmers will never exceed the number of programmers named Steve. I worked one place where that wasn't true, but only because it was overrun with Johns rather than Steves.

zimbatm 12y ago

I don't understand this post. The first part seems to be justifying why there are more men in the computer field with some pseudo-science. But then he goes on to amend himself and proposes solutions to the problem. All this is very ambiguous to me.

rjknight 12y ago
It's almost like situations involving humans might be complicated, or something.
unwind 12y ago
An accurate description of a problem is not an unreasonable first step to take in trying to solve it. You make it sound as if the article "proves" why it has to be the way it is, to motivate doing nothing. That's not what I think it's trying to do.
- zimbatm 12y ago
  I don't see the connection between the first and the second part. What's the point of establishing a baseline if it's not going to be used to find a solution ?

return0 12y ago

Basically, with rule (1, hacker school rules) they are asking to lower the standards. That's not how things work. Would it be OK if this was about Medicine, not programming? Would it be OK that your colleague does not know where the bladder is? Have a surgery without anesthesia? Sometimes you can't change the culture without substantially changing the standards, and it is NOT OK to hold women to lower standards of rigorousness.

MDCore 12y ago
So there are a lot of (1)'s in the artlcle. Are you talking about "Diversity leads to better results" or "Abide by the Hacker School Rules" or "No feigning surprise" ? I'd like to address your Medicine analogy, but it'd be more appropriate if I knew what you were referring to :)
amtab 12y ago
I don't think that the Hacker School rules have a goal of lowering standards, but rather of preventing the one-upmanship which is so common among (usually male) programmers. To someone who may be feeling overwhelmed by the learning curve inherent with transitioning from small academic or recreational coding projects to real-world environments such dynamics could be very demoralizing. Anecdotally, men who stay in tech tend to have a high tolerance for it, but it's secondary to the actual practice of coding and people who are feeling less confident don't need to worry about competing in these games. Of course if someone is working on a real-world codebase they have to know what they're doing, but learning from peers does not need to alienate anyone, at least in principle.
rjknight 12y ago
No, no, no. This is where the debate goes wrong. Being a decent person to women isn't some kind of personal sacrifice you need to make, it's a strict subset of being a decent person in general. If someone knows less than you about something, you should not mock that person or make them feel inferior, you should help them. That is the right thing to do, irrespective of the gender of the person you're dealing with. We should think of programming as a large fellowship (the word 'community' is overused, but it would also work here). You meet another person who is interested enough in programming to get started, then that person is your brother or sister. You want to help them, partly because it's the right thing to do and partly because it is in our collective interest to do so. We don't need bad programmers out there, screwing up because nobody helped them, and we don't need to scare off the beginners before they've even had a chance to learn much. Sure, people should have their mistakes corrected just as a journalist might expect to have their typos corrected by a sub-editor, but there's no reason to do it in a harsh or critical way. Just be a nice person about it, it's really not so complicated.

MarkTee 12y ago

He specifically mentions "no subtle sexism via public debate" but then he goes on to do just that near the end of the article. > women usually get the rough end of this deal [office breakups], too, because men aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection. Not sure I agree that males are likely to act negatively; anecdotally I'd say it's about equal. > Men, plus women, plus alcohol is a great recipe for college. [...] But as a safe work environment for women? Not so much. Both sexes are taken advantage of and subject to unsafe environments while drinking. I think that the actual recommendations he's made (no dating/drinking at work) have merit, but they could have been supported better.

rjknight 12y ago
You're right. Part of the problem here is that the only people really talking about fairness, office conduct or working conditions in the industry are people coming from a feminist perspective, which leads people to think that these are "women's issues" rather than more general ones. Plenty of men in the industry are taken advantage of, but we haven't worked out how to talk about this properly yet. Likewise, most of the recommendations about treating people decently and standing up against abuse of power would benefit men too. How many men want to work in toxic environments? I'd imagine it's very few. For my part I'd rather see a bit more discussion about what good workplaces look like, and what might be best practices, and a bit less cod psychology and gender mysticism.
reitzensteinm 12y ago
I think in general, if reversing the comparison makes you feel uneasy, it's probably inappropriate both ways and best left unsaid. "Men usually get the rough end of this deal [office breakups], too, because women aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection." You couldn't pay me enough to tweet that.
- tomp 12y ago
  The problem is that (in anecdotal experience) men and women simply handle it differently - men might get angry, offensive, even aggressive, while women might cry, gossip and manipulate. Different people might evaluate the negative effect of different behaviours differently, but that doesn't mean that any sex is handling rejection any better.

probably_wrong 12y ago

> Don't attempt romantic relationships at work. (...)The women usually get the rough end of this deal, too, because men aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection. Just don't do it. Have all the romantic relationships you want outside work, but do not bring it to work. I find this incredibly childish - the idea that men (not some men, just men) are childish and cannot behave like grown ups, up to the point in which the company has to step in and tell them how to behave. I'm not sold up either on the idea that I'm not allowed to date anyone in the one place where I spend most of my day, where I'm surrounded by people who share my interests and where I met most of my friends. I'm all in for bringing in more women, but this points sounds too much like "let's protect this delicate, defenseless flower" to me.

jakobe 12y ago
I assume it's about setting expectations. If you meet your true love at work, company policy isn't going to stop you. But company policy might give you an easy way out when someone is hitting on you (and you aren't interested), without hurt feelings. Also, this isn't just about men hitting on women; it also goes the other way.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  So hitting on someone at work is ok as long as they're interested, otherwise you get fired?
  - Kequc 12y ago
    If the woman is attracted to you then she expects you to make a romantic gesture. If you don't she's hurt. If she's not attracted then such a gesture could hurt her. Policies like no dating is a lot to do with protecting women in the workplace from having to go out of their way expressing themselves. A much better policy could be everyone has to make their intentions clear.
    - lutusp 12y ago
      > A much better policy could be everyone has to make their intentions clear. Easily said, but impossible to put into practice. Have you ever tried to get a woman to make her intentions clear? Apart from being seen as insulting, it's an impossible condition to place on social interactions between men and women, where a woman's inalienable right to be vague and ambiguous is an essential component of the dating game.

lmm 12y ago

We all agree that building a better internet is important, but do the suggested policies actually lead to better products? Will the diversity gained from a "no well-actually" policy outweigh the quality lost from people being unwilling to suggest improvements? Are the gains from a team drinking together bigger or smaller than those from having people who wouldn't join such a team?

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "Are the gains from a team drinking together bigger or smaller than those from having people who wouldn't join such a team?" Why does the team have to drink together? Why not go out for dinner, play pool, have an office BBQ? I like to drink but I've never wanted to do it with my superiors. The risks involved if it goes wrong (i.e. you get too drunk and say something stupid) are too high.
- lmm 12y ago
  Drinking together builds trust in a way that sober events don't, precisely because of those "risks". Doing it regularly creates an environment where it's much harder for parts of the team to lie (maybe not even intentionally) or keep secrets from each other, and it adds a channel of communication where criticism is more welcome or at least excusable/deniable. When I've seen companies fail it's largely been because communication broke down and the people on one end knew what the people on the other end were doing wrong but had no way to tell them.
MDCore 12y ago
So I think the no "well-actually" policy is because people saying "well actually" prevents people suggesting improvements because they don't want to say something that might sound stupid. The hacker school manual goes into greater detail. Having teambuilding events around drinking increases homogeneity, because that kind of event is most attractive to your average 20-something white male, and least attractive to a lot of other groups (e.g. people who don't drink from preference or religion, people who don't want to hang around with drunk people for various reasons etc). So the gains from diversifying team building should far outweigh the loss of this one narrow kind of event.

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sspiff 12y ago

1. "So, on average, only about 1 out of every 5 working programmers you'll encounter will be female." 2. "And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio?" 3. "Interesting. I might even go so far as to say some of those traits are what makes one good at programming." 1 & 2 => 3 smells an awful lot like equating correlation and causation. Additionally: 4. "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers." Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence.

matthewmacleod 12y ago
1 & 2 => 3 smells an awful lot like equating correlation and causation. Additionally: 4. "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers." Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence. I don't think Jeff is claiming it to be anything but. There are some obvious correlations there that should make observers go "Hmm, that's interesting!"
lutusp 12y ago
> Looks like unquantified extrapolation and using anecdotes as evidence. Yes, along with perpetuating the myth of Asperger's, which has been abandoned as a diagnosis by people who had every reason to defend its continued existence (clinical psychologists), but who realized they could only do so by sacrificing more public credibility.
- talideon 12y ago
  Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. That only means that the term "Asperger's" was deprecated in the context of the DSM.
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > Actually, what happened is that it ended up bundled into high functioning autism in the DSM. Yes, that's the psychological version of politics. Did you really think psychologists would come out and say, "We made a mistake and there's no such thing as Asperger's"? That would be like the Catholic church saying Galileo was right. What they did say was, "It's not an evidence-based term." Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pag... That's good enough for me or any other scientist -- it's not real. The proof that there's no such thing as Asperger's (as a mental illness) has two parts. One, anyone could get the diagnosis through the simple expedient of visiting a psychologist and saying, "I think I have Asperger's". Two, the number of wildly successful people who were said to have Asperger's, including Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates, which means if Asperger's is real, then wealth and fame are reliable diagnostic indicators for the condition. That would give "mental illness" a whole new meaning.

h1karu 12y ago

women bought into stereotypes 10 or so years ago which prevented them from learning the key skills. Quite recently geek has become sheek so those stereotypes are no longer a barrier to entry, but never the less the belief in those old stereotypes already skewed the numbers heavily in the favor of men. Programming just has not been "cool" long enough for enough women to have learned the skills... it takes years, perhaps decades to become a strong developer

QuadDamaged 12y ago

No drinking at work? London-based companies are doomed.

SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
That's a US-centric article. I think those rules will have to be relaxed slightly here in London. Still, leave the heavy drinking for those who want to go on the the pub, which is not strictly a "work event". If your London workplace has much diversity, you may have several co-workers who don't drink at all.
- QuadDamaged 12y ago
  Indeed, although there are extremes here I feel are quite detrimental. I am not a fan of the "Liquid Lunch" culture I've seen from contractors working for some crown-owned banks who can't pay 200% bonuses this year, nor am I 100% sold on the mandatory company pub-quizz for new media agencies, feels too much like mandatory fun. Beer trolley OTOH, I'm in :) IIRC the German SAP dev team breakroom is garnished with beer taps. Might explain a lot about ABAP.
peteri 12y ago
I thought the same thing. When I first started work a couple of drinks at lunchtime was considered normal. At my first employers (Borland UK) back in the late 80s we would go out as a team every 2-3 weeks and get drunk at the companies expense (slightly unusual but boozy "work" lunches and not going back to the office was still a possibility then). These days I can't cope with that (my code turns to crap and I want to have a quick nap) but I do like offices were there is a culture of the company paying for a few drinks (Friday afternoons?)

fberg 12y ago

Social constructivism again. Including, as usual: 1) cherry-picked statistics, 2) made-up anecdotal explanations without any scientific base, 3) a couple of dogmas about how it can and should be, and 4) a made-up solution wihout any scientific base.

mlnhd 12y ago
I take it this is the first Jeff Atwood blog post you've read.

chill1 12y ago

"No drinking at work events." ".. If you want to drink, be my guest. Drink. You're a grown up. I'm not the boss of you. But don't drink in a situation or event that is officially connected with work in any way." I think this idea is due to the over consumption of alcohol that seems to be the norm in the U.S. now. Europeans, on the other hand, seem to have much more mature attitudes around alcohol.

sspiff 12y ago
I have to agree that the sentiment seems strange to me. All my employers have had multiple receptions, celebratory drinks or lunches where alcohol was served and consumed. No one ever got drunk or misbehaved because of it. People are smart enough to be moderate in their alcohol consumption. Note that in my country (Belgium), alcohol consumption at work is illegal, so these events were always after work hours or during lunch breaks. Technically, people had to badge out before consuming alcohol.
etfb 12y ago
I'm not aware of drinking being a huge problem in Australia either, but that may be the particular places I happen to have worked. Certainly "goin' out 'n gettin' pissed" is an important part of weekly (even daily) social interactions for a lot of Aussies, though we don't have the wowser/puritan history to muddy the waters like the US does.
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
I'd say it's a "Drink responsibly" thing. Possibly refers to college culture and by extension hip cool startup culture, where (if I am to believe popular media etc) things can get rather excessive, with drinking games and trying to out-drink each other and just get pissed. We have the occasional drinkup, where we just enjoy a few drinks without things going in full party mode. It's just behaving like an adult, imo.
- tomp 12y ago
  I believe that's because Americans are not allowed to drink until they're 21. When they finally get permission, they go berserk.

lutusp 12y ago

> In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers. Aspergers is a spectrum disorder ... No it isn't. After an epidemic of overdiagnoses about ten years ago that forced psychologists to accept that they had no way to reliably identify it, it was voted out of existence by the editors of DSM-5, the current diagnostic manual. Before you object that Asperger's exists whether or not psychologists believe in it any more, think about what you're saying about psychology's scientific standing. Psychologists rarely abandon established diagnoses, in fact it's happened only once before. Can you name the behavior, now regarded as a civil right and defended by a number of federal laws, that was branded a treatable mental illness until the 1970s?

etfb 12y ago
I'm sure there's an Autism spectrum upon which Asperger's syndrome lies, and I'm sure that psychology (as distinct from psychiatry) is a scientific discipline, so logic dictates that the weak link is your statement that "it was voted out of existence".
- lutusp 12y ago
  > I'm sure there's an Autism spectrum upon which Asperger's syndrome lies ... If voting can create or destroy a mental illness, then everything lies on the autism spectrum -- it's just a matter of talking psychologists into it. Asperger's was voted into existence, and voted out of existence. There was and is no objective scientific evidence for its existence. > I'm sure that psychology (as distinct from psychiatry) is a scientific discipline ... If psychology were a scientific discipline, then psychologists would be able to use their research results to dictate what psychiatrists and clinical psychologists can and cannot do in a clinical setting, in the same way that medical research dictates what can and cannot be done in a medical clinic. But that is not so, and the reason is that psychology isn't a science -- it has no central defining theories, no tests of those theories, and no basis for falsification of those nonexistent theories, all required properties of science. > so logic dictates that the weak link is your statement that "it was voted out of existence". That's an uncontroversial fact -- Asperger's was voted into existence, then it was voted out of existence, and science played no part. It is for these and other reasons that the NIMH recently ruled that the DSM, psychology's "Bible", can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... Quote: "The goal of this new manual, as with all previous editions, is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology. While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." The tl;dr: not science.

Exenith 12y ago

It doesn't matter how many women there are in the field. If men and women are of equal worth, then why are you looking to get more women in? The men there aren't good enough for you? Now, I understand that some women avoid working developer jobs because they get mistreated by some men. That is an issue. But it's not an issue limited to developers, and it's not an issue limited to women. If anyone is treating anyone else like shit, then they should be fired. Sex doesn't come into question -- being a decent human being does. If you're afraid to work a job because someone might mistreat you, then you're afraid of working every job. Even if we eliminate cases like those of Github/Hovarth, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be a 50/50 split. And it doesn't matter. It's not important how many people of a certain gender there are -- what's important is that people are judged on their skills and character alone. If that means there is a gender divide, then so be it.

phaemon 12y ago
How do you know if your policy of equal opportunity is working, if you refuse to look at the end result?
- Exenith 12y ago
  Because the proportion of men and women is not a measure of how sexist the field is.
  - phaemon 12y ago
    If you compare it with the expected values if you assume the field is non-sexist, then yes, actually, it is.
    - Exenith 12y ago
      Equal opportunity does not necessarily mean equal interest. A complete lack of sexism does not necessarily mean equal interest. You are following the assumption that there would be 50/50 proportions of interest (and therefore skill, and therefore employment) just because a field meets all your criteria of "not sexist". This is an unfounded assumption. No matter what the situation, there is never a guarantee that equal amounts of men and women will be interested in a particular field -- and this is not necessarily a product of a flaw in the field, but could be indicative of societal inertia (things go in and out of fashion with different groups), biological differences, or just random variation. The first question we must ask is -- if there is a gender divide, why is there a gender divide? The second question we must ask is, is the reason for it actually problematic? do we have evidence that it is sexism? If it is a problem, we must ask can we solve it without causing bigger problems? It seems we have missed most of these questions, assuming the reasons for the gender divide, assuming that it is sexism, and not considering if our solutions will just cause more problems. This is simply irresponsible. It makes us prone to unnecessary disruption, and our inclination to jump to sides -- either side -- doesn't help.

mattmanser 12y ago

I honestly think no drinking, no dating should not be on that list. This sounds like a married 40+ year old who's forgotten what it's like to be 20-30 (and I must admit I'm starting to forget!). It's so easy to forget that's simply not how the world works at that age and this debate is not the place to start proselytizing middle-aged parent morality that you definitely didn't have when you were 25. You even mention university. Is college sexist then? Do we need to protect women at university from all those drunk, lecherous men? Enforce a no dating rule at university? Women can't be equals if you refuse to treat them as equals.

ronaldx 12y ago
> Do we need to protect women at university from all those drunk, lecherous men? Perhaps this is not your point, but the answer to this question is emphatically: Yes, women (and men) everywhere have a right to personal safety. I agree that a no-dating rule does not achieve this, but drinking culture at a workplace is just not a good idea. You can drink on your own time, with the money you get paid to make your own decisions with, without dressing that up as a work social event which employees feel obliged to attend.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Again you're moralizing it, all you're doing advocating prohibition. Drinking is a common social activity. Stop being so judgemental and deal with reality.

matthewmacleod 12y ago

Generally this is nice and balanced, but there are a couple of things that I don't agree with: Do you run a company? Institute a no-dating rule as policy. I don't really thing that's wise. On a personal level, it's great advice — I'd imagine that's something most people would take into consideration on a personal. We've got a "try not to get into a relationship at work, but if you do, don't be a dick, and make sure we know about it so we can deal with the fallout if required" policy, and that's more than enough. We're adults, not children, after all. Also, this: No drinking at work events. Okay, work events shouldn't be focused around alcohol, and heavy-drinking macho culture is bad. But it's exceptionally difficult to construct an enjoyable and realistic working culture when you're making an effort to exclude an activity that lots of people (a majority, maybe?) partake in and enjoy. So have some wine and cocktails at company events; don't feel ashamed to go for a couple of drinks with colleagues after work on a Friday. Just make sure that your culture is sensitive enough that you have a diversity of events so that individuals who don't want to drink aren't excluded, and don't focus your events around alcohol (c.f. github's infamous drink-ups). But I guess what terrifies me most is stuff like this: I like to refer to the anecdotal story of the Apple Store glass stairs. While visually appealing, there was one unforeseen consequence to their design: the large groups of strange men that spend hours each day standing under them looking up. As a woman, the first time I saw them I thought “thank god I’m not wearing a skirt today.” I find it really understandable that stuff like this rubs men up the wrong way. It shouldn't, but my immediate reaction to that is "wtf, we shouldn't be compromising things that we want to do because there are people around who would do that kind of thing!" - I guess is naïveté in some ways, because I can't imagine doing that, or being aware of somebody who was doing it without tackling them on the issue. It's easy to feel like it's a personal or biased attack on "all men," and I think that's probably the biggest barrier to overcome. When someone complains about sexist activity, it's rarely a personal attack, but it can be hard to remember that sometimes.

tfinniga 12y ago
So, here's how I imagine these rules were created. 1. Collect a large number of stories of harassment or toxic work environments that drive away women. 2. Look for common elements. 3. Make a list of rules to avoid those common elements. It's hard to balance competing needs.. it's inevitable that rules constructed in this way are going to protect against more behavior than is actually necessary. The question is whether it's more like a seatbelt (I've never gotten in a car accident, but I still always wear mine) or more like the snowsuit from A Christmas Story. I, like you, am not a misogynistic jerk. However, I can imagine such a jerk, and that jerk is much worse when they've had a bit to drink. They can also be really mean when rejected in a relationship. I can also imagine it being really hard to tell if that is the case ahead of time. These rules would lead to some changes.. if it didn't, then you wouldn't expect a different result. That includes some changes which would not have been necessary. It's a matter of balance, but if you really want change, then it can make sense to overcompensate.

chroma 12y ago

This topic is radioactive. No matter how kind and understanding you are, many people on many sides will misinterpret your statements and demonize you. The only way to win is not to play. And yet, because I want to further the discussion, I will play... I think the most effective way to reduce discrimination in tech is to go underground. Do not think of yourself as a crusader for (insert topic here). Keep your identity small[1] and simply attack bad ideas no matter where they come from[2]. Blind yourself when evaluating candidates. Make sure that you do not know the name of the person applying for a position, since that information highly correlates with their race and gender. Musicians figured this out long ago: all that matters the sound. Likewise, with programmers all that matters is the code. If your code is good, you are good. If it's not good, be glad: you get to learn something new. Appreciate it, because until recently, learning new things was a rare event. I think this mentality can help us not only with this specific problem, but with similar problems that we will encounter in the future. We owe it to each other and ourselves. We need to advance our field and pursue excellence no matter where it comes from, no matter where it leads to. 1. http://paulgraham.com/identity.html http://paulgraham.com/identity.html 2. Likewise, endorse good ideas no matter where they come from. If it helps your ego, think of it as taking advantage of your enemies.

matthewmacleod 12y ago
Broadly speaking, that's all true, but I have to take a little exception with this: Likewise, with programmers all that matters is the code. If it's good, you are good. There's a bit more to it in my experience; I've met some developers who were good at producing code, but less effective at understanding requirements, or working within teams, or accepting that they might have to spend time on tasks they don't want to. In that sense, it's difficult to hire without getting to know someone at least a little, which implicitly means knowing their gender and race. I think the better approach is to just "not be biased" in the first place. Harder than it sounds, no doubt.
- chroma 12y ago
  I can certainly get behind what you say. I don't have the time/willpower to spell out my position in detail, but I do agree that there are practicalities that need to be ameliorated. Thank you for elucidating them.

mseebach 12y ago

> "No well-actuallys. "Well, actually, you can do that without a regular expression."" I don't think that's quite what is meant by "well-actually". In Miguel's blog, he gives the example of someone injecting a non-sequitur well-actually to shift attention to themselves and their superior intellect. The reg-ex example given isn't (necessarily) an example of that. I can easily imagine a situation where I'm discussing some code with someone and if they're using a regex for something that's easily achieved without one, it's almost universally a good idea to do the other thing and I should point that out. That's not "showcasing my superior intellect", it's teaching.

wildpeaks 12y ago
+1 I don't see something wrong with a well-actually for correcting someone's incorrect statement.

draugadrotten 12y ago

So it's a horrible inequality that more programmers are men, and code would be so much better with more women. In Sweden, 57 percent of judges are women[1]. Where do I hear the feminists shouting that judgements would be so much better with more men? Again in Sweden, 52% of women gets accepted to University, but only 36% of men[2]. Where do I hear the feminists shouting that University would be so much better with more men? The feminist agenda is "more women, more women" and is one way - much more sexist than any other ideology out there. [1] http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Nyhetsarkiv/2014/februari/Flest-kvinnliga-domare/ http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Nyhetsarkiv/2014/februari/Fle... [2] https://www.hsv.se/publikationerarkiv/pressmeddelanden/2012/fortfarandeflerkvinnoranmansomvaljerhogskolestudier.5.485f1ec213870b672a680003105.html https://www.hsv.se/publikationerarkiv/pressmeddelanden/2012/...

tomp 12y ago
57% - 43% does not seem like a statistically significant difference...
- deleted 12y ago
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- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  I suspect Sweden has enough judges for 50.1 - 49.9% to be statistically significant.
matthewmacleod 12y ago
This article explicitly discusses that very point. Don't be a troll. In any case, there are often attempts to bring more men into heavily female-dominated professions. Teachers and midwives, for example.

slavoingilizov 12y ago

Equality is not the answer. There is no equality in nature. We have a discrimination problem, but the opposite of that is not equality, it's respect. Somewhere along the way, people started assuming that if women are equal to men, they would be respected. No. You don't want to be respected because you are equal to other respected people. You should be respected for who you are. If you are a woman, great. Make sure people appreciate that. But don't try to be equal. Gender equality is a dirty term. Let's end this and stop using it. Gender collaboration and respect is what we need.

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belorn 12y ago

Why is it that every time one want to compare programming to other professions, we look at professions with low social status like car mechanic, nurses, metal worker, secretary and so on. Instead, I suggest that we compare high education professions with other high education professions. Psychotherapy for example is a highly preferred female profession with about 80% female to male ratio. Veterinaries are 90% female to male. Both is similar to programming in that they are heavily sought of, has high competitive path to employment, and both require years of higher education. So turning to this article, I wonder, is the advice the article has actually sexist? Would they work in equal manner to get more male therapist or veterinaries, or is the comic strip in the middle of the article much more relevant in actually getting a change in the ratio of profession male and female programmers.

ohwp 12y ago

I think a lot of rules shouldn't be created. It's just enough to speak up. Someone behaving bad while drinking? Talk to the person the next day. Two people starting a relationship at work? Talk to them about having a bad time at work when they break up. There should be only one policy: everyone is equal and deserves respect.

Theodores 12y ago

A while ago the law changed in the UK to allow women to do the official book signing bit at weddings. Nowadays, if you go to a wedding, it is almost certain that the person in the role of registrar/vicar is female. For whatever reason a once exclusive male shop is now dominated by women. If we look back at the time before the internet, in the days when Wordperfect was king, you could find that the typical office had more computers in the hands of women than men. In those days plenty of women went from secretarial jobs to more technical roles in computing. IT was far from what you might call a closed shop, women barred from entering. Far from it. The internet, or rather the www, has created plenty of new opportunities in programming, design and content creation. Everyone had a fair crack of the whip, no universities barred women from doing Comp. Sci. degrees and many, many employers would prefer to take on a female candidate for a programming role to a male candidate given key criteria of skills are met. Yet here we are in our gender stereo-typed roles. The die has been cast.

netcan 12y ago

I don't think there are two real strong reasons for wanting to see representative distribution in a profession: distributing power & vestiges. Power is the important one. 1. Power - Near equal representation in some professions is more important that in others is because these are positions of power. Law, medicine, journalism, film etc. Are expressions and sources of power and status/ The central component of discrimination against woman or minorities was always disempowerment. Most things stem from that. Under representation in positions of power is a way that disempowerment is expressed. There's a self re-enforcing dynamic to these things. Under/over representation in certain professions also create and enforce the power dynamic. Women becoming lawyers, journalists & politicians was both a cause and an effect of a more equal distribution of power. This leaks into other areas. A housewife in a world of female ministers and lawyers is more powerful within her family. So, is programming a position of power? Does the profession have that kind of importance. In my opinion, it is. Technology is the agent of change in our times. Programming & engineering are the root and stem of technology. It's not a traditionally important profession, but I think it is one now. 2. Killing off vestiges of the old discriminatory world. A male dominant profession can be hard for women to penetrate just because of momentum. Take a simple example from the list of female dominated professions: maternity nursing or child care. Maternity leave, career breaks & part time are probably more common and therefore tolerated in these fields than in construction or truck driving. OTOH, many variants of political correctness are awful and dehumanizing. Sometimes they're a price we need to pay for just social change, but IMO it is a price. (3)If you see bad behavior from other men, speak up. (4)Don't attempt romantic relationships. (5) No drinking This is one of the things which leads to (and has led to) a neutered, reserved and false work culture. It encourages trolls who find ways to misinterpret intentions and "take offense." It creates this dualism where people must discipline their work avatar. I don't want to single out female inclusions. This is a complicated issue and I don't have all my thoughts on it straight. There are a lot of casualties in honesty. Part of this forced reservedness is just the need to be diplomatic and reserved in general. For me, this falseness of the "corporate me" people play is what makes work unpleasant. So, when I here someone cheerfully suggest some simple rules like Jeff has, I see a cost.

harrystone 12y ago

>Less than 12% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting institutions in 2010. There's your problem right there. I have a hard time believing that there is a systematic effort to keep women out of CS programs.

neilellis 12y ago

Next an article on religion, maybe race or maybe politics. I feel compassion for anyone who tries to share their thoughts on topics like these. Because whatever your opinions are you will be shouted down. As @chroma says it's 'radioactive'; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it. It would be nice not to see so much vitriol but hey, a lot of us are good with computers because we are/were rubbish with people. So it's probably to be expected, but something we can all try to work on.

mcgwiz 12y ago

A lot of commenters disagree with the "no dating" and "no alcohol" recommendations. But how many of these commenters are men and how many are women? For men to reject a recommendation put forth in the interest of women might be self-serving and establishmentarian. A tally of both the ayes and nays to those recommendations from women would be most interesting to me. For the record, I'm male and I'd be fine with those rules even if they didn't make the workplace more supportive of women. I don't pick my job based on whether I can date at work or drink at work (as long as there's no policy against pursuing those things with colleagues outside of work). But perhaps I'm an oddball because I prefer my relationship with coworkers to be strictly professional by default, and only override that on an individual basis; however, the norm in tech companies seems to be shifting away from this (even outside SV).