9 ms·

In which I answer all of the questions (2012)

74 points by taylorbuley 13y ago

huu 13y ago
To anyone wondering, this is relevant to Jeff Atwood's recent blog post (http://blog.codinghorror.com/what-can-men-do/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/what-can-men-do/) where he quotes Sara's article.
- zorpner 13y ago
  It's perhaps worth noting that there's a minor internet explosion happening right now about that article -- Shanley Kane wrote an article with the same title back in November (https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0 https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0) which was tweeted by Anil Dash on Tuesday (https://twitter.com/anildash/status/458829201039429632 https://twitter.com/anildash/status/458829201039429632). Jeff Atwood made a series of negative replies (since deleted, but screenshotted here: https://twitter.com/shanley/statuses/459725773822103552 https://twitter.com/shanley/statuses/459725773822103552), then wrote his own article with the same title without any credit or link to Shanley.
  - SheepSlapper 13y ago
    Which I find humorous, because I just finished reading both, and the only thing the two articles share are their titles. Shanley's article is written with an actively aggressive tone towards men, while Jeff's seems much more reasoned and thought out. And both articles answer the question "what can men do" differently. So why the hullabaloo?
    - rhizome 13y ago
      So why the hullabaloo? Do you consider yourself an intelligent person such that upon reflection you might be able to come up with at least a couple of possible answers to your own question? Just curious.
    - zorpner 13y ago
      If the two articles existed in isolation, I would be inclined to agree (though I think Jeff's is actually pretty poorly thought out -- as the man himself said: https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/273551344533639169 https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/273551344533639169). But there's a clear, obvious chain of events here that starts with Jeff reading Shanley's post, criticizing it, then writing his own version with the same title without acknowledging why.
      - SheepSlapper 13y ago
        For the record, I don't like either piece (cards on the table, I don't really care for Sara's either). Jeff thinks we shouldn't drink at work functions, because men + women + booze = sexism or something, and Shanley wants us to reverse the (perceived) discrimination with some sort of affirmative action for ladies. I was just pointing out that the two pieces have the same topic and the same 4 word title (because Jeff was being snarky. If that's a crime, lock me up now). Otherwise, they couldn't be more different. Shouting "plagiarism" in this case seems pretty disingenuous, and feels like people are manufacturing outrage just for outrage's sake. Being that this is the internet, I can't fathom why I expected anything different...
        zorpner 13y ago
        After talking with a couple of the commenters in question, it sounds like some people are using "plagiarism" not to mean that he specifically stole words from her post verbatim, but to mean that he "rewrote" what she wrote without giving her credit. It's not how I'd use the term, but I think that's what people are getting at with it. It's gotten a little weirder now, since Atwood is communicating with people about it but appears to be justifying not crediting Shanley by saying she was too negative, which is a little appalling: https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/459796782164103168 https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/459796782164103168 EDIT: Also, I just read this, which addresses a lot of the things I didn't like in Jeff Atwood's post better than I can: http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/ http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/
        13y ago
    - bloopbloopbloop 13y ago
      If these women (I would make the same claim for men) want to even begin being taken seriously, then people like Shanley and Julie Ann need to stop tweeting and writing aggressive emotional sentiment non-stop all day long.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
rememberlenny 13y ago
I respect Sara a lot. Her points here are about woman, but Sara's actions reflect a consist effort to educate people on the fringes.
jasallen 13y ago
For what it's worth, my opinion is that Jeff was replying to Shanley with what he considered to be a better approach to the topic. I think the lack of attribution was an oversight, and I don't think anything in Jeff's post "plagiarizes" or comes close to it. I also find Shanley's demeanor extremely rude, off-putting and counterproductive to a discussion on any topic.
- jfarmer 13y ago
  Except: https://twitter.com/SaraJChipps/status/459775964831293440 https://twitter.com/SaraJChipps/status/459775964831293440
- rhizome 13y ago
  rude, off-putting and counterproductive to a discussion on any topic. Manners were an invention of the aristocracy. my opinion is that Jeff was replying to Shanley with what he considered to be a better approach to the topic. Except that Jeff can't even bring himself to acknowledge Shanley in his post while stealing her title and structure after making an ass out of himself on Twitter such that he deleted the (MLK-splaining, among other) tweets before writing that post. He's participating in bad faith and being I-know-better, but what does he care? He has no skin in this game; he's got his.
  - chc 13y ago
    Manners are a solution to the problem "Disagreements escalate out of control and only come to harmful resolutions." There were expectations of civility long before there was a concept of an aristocracy.
    - manys 13y ago
      No, it's the reinforcement of social order that predates manners.
- dbloom 13y ago
  > I also find Shanley's demeanor extremely rude, off-putting and counterproductive to a discussion on any topic. Linus Torvalds is even worse according to your definition of bad demeanor. Would you say that this helps or hurts his advocacy?
buckbova 13y ago
> Women in 10 years need to be able to provide for themselves, and their families I had women professors in college. I have a woman software manager. I work with many women. And these women generally wanted to work in software development. Of course we aren't "building the internet" over here or making "internet history". Just some Joe and Jane Schmos plugging away. I see no need to push an agenda for more women in tech. More women will continue to join the field, but I wouldn't expect it to be representative of the population.
- offbrand 13y ago
  The agenda is to make the tech community a more hospitable place for women who WANT to be in tech. It's not an agenda to force women into the industry just for the sake of numbers.
  - buckbova 13y ago
    Depends on who you ask. Some people are advocating just that. https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0 https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0 >Get women hired. Make your workplace give a fuck about hiring diverse teams. You are in a wonderful position to advocate and agitate for more diversity in your workplace. Draw attention to your company’s demographics internally, bring in speakers on building team diversity, start a committee dedicated to auditing and improving the hiring process. Oh and make sure this doesn’t just end up in a position where you just hire a few white women and call it a day. Not good enough. I don't agree with diversity for the sake of diversity. So no, I'll hire the most qualified candidate regardless of race/gender.
    - offbrand 13y ago
      No one is saying hire a woman who is less qualified just for the sake of diversity. In that comment, Shanley is asking you to CARE about diversity and look at your hiring processes and company culture to see if what you're doing can be improved. Maybe your company is all white males because you're recruiting at events where only white males go? Maybe you can host a Women Who Code event or go to women's conferences and attract top talent there.
csense 13y ago
I think educating our young about technology, computer science, the hacker mindset, etc. is a good thing. As a kid, I'd really wished there'd been more mentoring, education, and general support available for young hackers. I would have been seriously pissed about discrimination -- and I daresay rightly so -- if exactly the sorts of things I wanted to participate in had existed, but had been closed to me because I was the wrong race (white) and gender (male). That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the "get girls to code" idea. "Get young people to code" is a better idea, since it's more inclusive. It's always seemed strange to me how many people seem to think that the right way to solve discrimination is with more discrimination, just in the opposite direction.
- chc 13y ago
  > It's always seemed strange to me how many people seem to think that the right way to solve discrimination is with more discrimination, just in the opposite direction. Is that as strange as believing that ignoring a problem will make it go away? Because the only alternatives I can see to "Actively try to attract more of the underrepresented group" are "Do nothing about the gender inequality" — which obviously won't fix it — and "Try to push away more of the overrepresented group," which is not what anyone wants. Also, your use of the word "discrimination" here is a bit odd. It seems to imply that men are being excluded from tech by these programs, which is demonstrably not the case.
  - AnimalMuppet 13y ago
    I think that's a false dichotomy. Don't attract discrimination by the opposite discrimination. Attract discrimination primarily by exposing and removing the discrimination. Also (in this example) try to nurture more talented females, growing their skills to the point that they can be hired even in head-to-head competition with males.
    - chc 13y ago
      I think you need to define what you mean by "discrimination" here, because the obvious definition of "excluding someone based on certain traits" doesn't work here. Men are very much not being excluded from tech fields, nor is anyone attempting to do so, so what do you mean when you say "discrimination"? And how to you "expose and remove the discrimination" in this case?
zeno334 13y ago
The Cornell study she links to doesn't really address whether gender diversity leads to better results. It talks about informational diversity, value diversity, and a bunch of other stuff all rather gender neutral. It also finds that it's informational diversity that seems to have the biggest positive impact. I'm not sure if gender diversity is necessarily that important to info diversity. The first page or so of that study is also fairly interesting in that it references a bunch of other studies which when taken together paint a rather ambiguous picture regarding the positive impact of any kind of diversity. I don't feel her second point says much about the need for gender diversity either. It seems to me that it's the people who use the internet that actually write this history rather than the people who merely build the architecture. I think it would be far more useful to see gender diversity in online arts, writing, social activism and so on, rather than in the teams who build that blog engine that allows all genders to express their ideas. I don't see how the last point has anything to do with gender either. If it's technology that will produce most jobs in the future then we should encourage all people to take more training in technology. I read the article precisely because I was interested in an answer to that why question and also because I was happy to read that she does not think asking this question is offensive (it's often the opposite). I'm not very satisfied with her answer though. I'd appreciate it if someone else could contribute to this discussion.
- brandonhsiao 13y ago
  I'd argue, for the last point (in the article), that given the currently higher number of men working in technology than women, encouraging all people to get more involved is equivalent to advocating gender diversity.
- benihana 13y ago
  A female coworker whom I respect greatly sent this link to me. It really resonated with me, more than almost anything about diversity. http://www.catehuston.com/blog/2013/10/30/a-bs-metric-for-diversity/ http://www.catehuston.com/blog/2013/10/30/a-bs-metric-for-di...
- waterhouse 13y ago
  That study is really quite interesting. Here's my summary. They looked at the effects of a few kinds of diversity on assigned work groups. They looked at "informational diversity", which they measured using educational background, job background, and position in the company; "social category diversity", which they took to be age and gender; and "value diversity", which they measured with a questionnaire. Looking at their regression analyses, we see: Informational diversity significantly increases actual performance (a number of .30), mildly decreases group efficiency (-.05), and mildly increases perceived performance (0.05), satisfaction (0.09), intent to remain (0.06), and commitment (.10). Social category diversity moderately increases perceived performance (.16), satisfaction (.14), intent to remain (.12), and commitment (.16), while mildly decreasing actual performance (-.07) and group efficiency (-.03). Value diversity moderately decreases group efficiency (-.17), actual performance (-.12), perceived performance (-.10), satisfaction (-.11), intent to remain (-.19), and commitment (-.19).
geekam 13y ago
Apart from the gender, plagiaristic issue, I think Jef Atwood really needs to learn about analogies. He was trying to conflate Autism with Sexism in his post.(And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio?) In the post about Aaron Swartz, he compared that to rage-quitting, even though he stated that he "understands depression is a serious disease".
- ia 13y ago
  He wasn't doing that at all. His point was that autism skews male and then suggests that the traits of Aspergers make good programmers. It was a comment on why there are more men than women in tech fields. Relevant excerpt below: "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers. Aspergers is a spectrum disorder; the more severe the symptoms, the closer it is to autism. And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio? Interesting. I might even go so far as to say some of those traits are what makes one good at programming."
  - rhizome 13y ago
    He's confusing his correlation, tantamount to saying being a White Protestant are traits that makes one a good President of the United States. That the historical traditions of programming may have selected for those traits does not mean that the traits make one better at programming than others. It may just be that hiring managers came up through that history and select for culture fit based upon their identity.
badman_ting 13y ago
It seems obvious to me that there are good reasons we should want more women in tech. I just don't think we should expect things to be so different once that is the case, we'll still have (most of) the same shitty problems. It's a worthy goal, because we should have all kinds of people in our field, and they should not feel excluded or unwelcome. But I doubt things will be any better, we will continue to have the same sorts of recurrent problems… just with more women.
heterogenic 13y ago
How about just "because disregarding/discouraging half of our potential talent means half the geniuses, half the coding buddies and work friends, half the workhorses and half the inspirations. It is a virtual certainty that in those millions of missing engineers is a software revolution we never rode. We are all missing shoulders to stand on, and see less far as a result.". Even if you disregard the engineering shortage, doubling the pool and taking the to half dramatically shifts the curve of ability and passion of our workmates. We're all missing out.
- Dewie 13y ago
  It's way more than 50%, though. What about the whole culture surrounding things like programming? Is it your average Joe (man) that is a programmer? No, it seems to be predominantly nerds. So what about people who, due to circumstances and upbringing, were never introduced to programming? Maybe they would have liked it better, or found it more approachable, if they didn't have to be and act like nerds to fit in? Maybe they had other hobbies that the typical nerd who might be a programmer doesn't, so these two people never really get to meet and have a oh, I might be interested in that applied logic thing moment. This goes of course for any profession that has a specific culture attached to it. Is the industry missing out on 50% of the talent pool? In this day and age, where basically everyone has the opportunity to at least try something like programming, but wherein it is incredibly easy to isolate yourself from lots of types of people and viewpoints and live in your own bubble, and based on how free we really are as individuals, even though we legally have most freedoms... that figure could be anywhere from 30% to 95%, depending on your viewpoint.
JacksonGariety 13y ago
There are plenty of people who don't want women in tech, but no blog post will be able to change all of them. They have traditional values and that is their right. Thankfully, their time is passing. All we can do now is get more young women into technology out of high-school/college. I'd love to see someone, anyone's thoughts on encouraging young women to become interested. I think it's possible, but I think programming needs a makeover of culture before that happens.
- sukuriant 13y ago
  If memory serves me, it's more of this generation that doesn't like women in tech. The one before us, or perhaps two before us, was very female-friendly. In fact, some famous photographs of computers and people working on them, display women in them, actively working. The modern perspective is that the lady is the equivalent of a Booth Woman, just there for eye candy; but a historical account from the woman herself was that she as an active participant and it wasn't strange for her at all to be on the team. I don't remember exactly what article it was, so if anyone could bring it up. A quick glance at Wikipedia suggests it was in the 40's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Timeline_of_women_in_computing_worldwide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Timeline_of... )
verdi327 13y ago
I don't understand. I get the idea for us to self organize and bring about more diversity to the tech industry. What is lost on me with all these posts/comments/arguments is that they act as if white males are trying to stop women and other minorities from entering the field. More than most fields, getting a job as a developer is based on objective facts. Can you solve x problem. Especially in a market where good talent is hard to come by, I can't imagine an employer saying, "well, you have the technical chops, but i'm not going to hire you bc you're a woman". This just doesn't happen. Yes, let's be open minded and work on making programming as accessible to as many ppl as we can. But, let's not start affirmative action here.
- Fishkins 13y ago
  Of course they won't say "well, you have the technical chops, but I'm not going to hire you bc you're a woman." What they might say is "she isn't technically qualified" when an identical technical demonstration by a man would have been perceived as proficient. Unless your technical assessments are purely-objective exercises graded by a machine, you or your coworkers are probably subject to these biases without realizing it. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/201... (there a other similar studies; that's just one example) edit: "Bad culture fit" can also be a reason for not hiring whose underlying cause has to do with gender or other diversity.
lobotryas 13y ago
I'm glad that Sarah is being so open on this topic because, after reading the entire article, I remain unconvinced. Please allow me to share my experience. I'm part of a small multicultural team of 8 engineers, 4 of which are women. The team is a professional outfit, makes consistent effort to remain inclusive, and ensures that everyone has a comfortable way of voicing their opinions, thoughts and other intellectual contributions. Despite this, all 4 of our female engineers prefer to avoid product discussion (be it 1:1 face-to-face, group, email, etc) and as such, their contributions amount primarily to SVN commits of what they're asked to build. In my 4+ years of working closely with them I never observed them having an impact on our deliverables that could be attributed to their gender. Our operations team of 30+ people has only 2 female system administrators. This is a pair of fantastic individuals who are kind, positive and wicked-smart. Their experience and skills command respect and people like them because they're enjoyable to work with. In my observation, they have these qualities because they are: a) Excellent engineers b) Excellent human beings Both of the above traits can be displayed equally well by both men and women, making gender a completely moot point in the comparison. I completely agree that we need more excellent engineers and more excellent human beings in our line of work regardless of their gender, however nothing I've seen so far indicates to me that we need more women specifically.
- lobotryas 13y ago
  As an addendum, I'd like to see more discussion regarding cultural diversity in Engineering Teams. Our R&D team of 150+ people has only * 1 African-American male * 2 Latino-American males That seems really worrying, especially given the demographics of California.
  - offbrand 13y ago
    You really contradict yourself here. Why is it worrying that your cultural diversity isn't representative of the demographics of California and yet it doesn't worry you that women are under represented?
    - lobotryas 13y ago
droob 13y ago
If your response is "I hire based on merit alone so this is invalid," a) good for you, but that's demonstrably untrue in aggregate and b) you're basically saying "LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU THERE'S NO PROBLEM HERE."
owenversteeg 13y ago
I agree with this, but I have to say that my favorite piece of writing on the subject still has to be Lea Verou's blog post: http://pensieve.verou.me/post/54853162595/on-women-in-tech http://pensieve.verou.me/post/54853162595/on-women-in-tech It's also a bit more substantial than this (fairly short) piece. If you're not interested in the subject matter, you should at least look at the article to see all the typographic features in the font.

74 points by taylorbuley 13y ago

huu 13y ago

To anyone wondering, this is relevant to Jeff Atwood's recent blog post (http://blog.codinghorror.com/what-can-men-do/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/what-can-men-do/) where he quotes Sara's article.

zorpner 13y ago
It's perhaps worth noting that there's a minor internet explosion happening right now about that article -- Shanley Kane wrote an article with the same title back in November (https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0 https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0) which was tweeted by Anil Dash on Tuesday (https://twitter.com/anildash/status/458829201039429632 https://twitter.com/anildash/status/458829201039429632). Jeff Atwood made a series of negative replies (since deleted, but screenshotted here: https://twitter.com/shanley/statuses/459725773822103552 https://twitter.com/shanley/statuses/459725773822103552), then wrote his own article with the same title without any credit or link to Shanley.
- SheepSlapper 13y ago
  Which I find humorous, because I just finished reading both, and the only thing the two articles share are their titles. Shanley's article is written with an actively aggressive tone towards men, while Jeff's seems much more reasoned and thought out. And both articles answer the question "what can men do" differently. So why the hullabaloo?
  - rhizome 13y ago
    So why the hullabaloo? Do you consider yourself an intelligent person such that upon reflection you might be able to come up with at least a couple of possible answers to your own question? Just curious.
  - zorpner 13y ago
    If the two articles existed in isolation, I would be inclined to agree (though I think Jeff's is actually pretty poorly thought out -- as the man himself said: https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/273551344533639169 https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/273551344533639169). But there's a clear, obvious chain of events here that starts with Jeff reading Shanley's post, criticizing it, then writing his own version with the same title without acknowledging why.
    - SheepSlapper 13y ago
      For the record, I don't like either piece (cards on the table, I don't really care for Sara's either). Jeff thinks we shouldn't drink at work functions, because men + women + booze = sexism or something, and Shanley wants us to reverse the (perceived) discrimination with some sort of affirmative action for ladies. I was just pointing out that the two pieces have the same topic and the same 4 word title (because Jeff was being snarky. If that's a crime, lock me up now). Otherwise, they couldn't be more different. Shouting "plagiarism" in this case seems pretty disingenuous, and feels like people are manufacturing outrage just for outrage's sake. Being that this is the internet, I can't fathom why I expected anything different...
      - zorpner 13y ago
        After talking with a couple of the commenters in question, it sounds like some people are using "plagiarism" not to mean that he specifically stole words from her post verbatim, but to mean that he "rewrote" what she wrote without giving her credit. It's not how I'd use the term, but I think that's what people are getting at with it. It's gotten a little weirder now, since Atwood is communicating with people about it but appears to be justifying not crediting Shanley by saying she was too negative, which is a little appalling: https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/459796782164103168 https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/459796782164103168 EDIT: Also, I just read this, which addresses a lot of the things I didn't like in Jeff Atwood's post better than I can: http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/ http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/
        13y ago
  - bloopbloopbloop 13y ago
    If these women (I would make the same claim for men) want to even begin being taken seriously, then people like Shanley and Julie Ann need to stop tweeting and writing aggressive emotional sentiment non-stop all day long.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

rememberlenny 13y ago

I respect Sara a lot. Her points here are about woman, but Sara's actions reflect a consist effort to educate people on the fringes.

jasallen 13y ago

For what it's worth, my opinion is that Jeff was replying to Shanley with what he considered to be a better approach to the topic. I think the lack of attribution was an oversight, and I don't think anything in Jeff's post "plagiarizes" or comes close to it. I also find Shanley's demeanor extremely rude, off-putting and counterproductive to a discussion on any topic.

jfarmer 13y ago
Except: https://twitter.com/SaraJChipps/status/459775964831293440 https://twitter.com/SaraJChipps/status/459775964831293440
rhizome 13y ago
rude, off-putting and counterproductive to a discussion on any topic. Manners were an invention of the aristocracy. my opinion is that Jeff was replying to Shanley with what he considered to be a better approach to the topic. Except that Jeff can't even bring himself to acknowledge Shanley in his post while stealing her title and structure after making an ass out of himself on Twitter such that he deleted the (MLK-splaining, among other) tweets before writing that post. He's participating in bad faith and being I-know-better, but what does he care? He has no skin in this game; he's got his.
- chc 13y ago
  Manners are a solution to the problem "Disagreements escalate out of control and only come to harmful resolutions." There were expectations of civility long before there was a concept of an aristocracy.
  - manys 13y ago
    No, it's the reinforcement of social order that predates manners.
dbloom 13y ago
> I also find Shanley's demeanor extremely rude, off-putting and counterproductive to a discussion on any topic. Linus Torvalds is even worse according to your definition of bad demeanor. Would you say that this helps or hurts his advocacy?

buckbova 13y ago

> Women in 10 years need to be able to provide for themselves, and their families I had women professors in college. I have a woman software manager. I work with many women. And these women generally wanted to work in software development. Of course we aren't "building the internet" over here or making "internet history". Just some Joe and Jane Schmos plugging away. I see no need to push an agenda for more women in tech. More women will continue to join the field, but I wouldn't expect it to be representative of the population.

offbrand 13y ago
The agenda is to make the tech community a more hospitable place for women who WANT to be in tech. It's not an agenda to force women into the industry just for the sake of numbers.
- buckbova 13y ago
  Depends on who you ask. Some people are advocating just that. https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0 https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0 >Get women hired. Make your workplace give a fuck about hiring diverse teams. You are in a wonderful position to advocate and agitate for more diversity in your workplace. Draw attention to your company’s demographics internally, bring in speakers on building team diversity, start a committee dedicated to auditing and improving the hiring process. Oh and make sure this doesn’t just end up in a position where you just hire a few white women and call it a day. Not good enough. I don't agree with diversity for the sake of diversity. So no, I'll hire the most qualified candidate regardless of race/gender.
  - offbrand 13y ago
    No one is saying hire a woman who is less qualified just for the sake of diversity. In that comment, Shanley is asking you to CARE about diversity and look at your hiring processes and company culture to see if what you're doing can be improved. Maybe your company is all white males because you're recruiting at events where only white males go? Maybe you can host a Women Who Code event or go to women's conferences and attract top talent there.

csense 13y ago

I think educating our young about technology, computer science, the hacker mindset, etc. is a good thing. As a kid, I'd really wished there'd been more mentoring, education, and general support available for young hackers. I would have been seriously pissed about discrimination -- and I daresay rightly so -- if exactly the sorts of things I wanted to participate in had existed, but had been closed to me because I was the wrong race (white) and gender (male). That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the "get girls to code" idea. "Get young people to code" is a better idea, since it's more inclusive. It's always seemed strange to me how many people seem to think that the right way to solve discrimination is with more discrimination, just in the opposite direction.

chc 13y ago
> It's always seemed strange to me how many people seem to think that the right way to solve discrimination is with more discrimination, just in the opposite direction. Is that as strange as believing that ignoring a problem will make it go away? Because the only alternatives I can see to "Actively try to attract more of the underrepresented group" are "Do nothing about the gender inequality" — which obviously won't fix it — and "Try to push away more of the overrepresented group," which is not what anyone wants. Also, your use of the word "discrimination" here is a bit odd. It seems to imply that men are being excluded from tech by these programs, which is demonstrably not the case.
- AnimalMuppet 13y ago
  I think that's a false dichotomy. Don't attract discrimination by the opposite discrimination. Attract discrimination primarily by exposing and removing the discrimination. Also (in this example) try to nurture more talented females, growing their skills to the point that they can be hired even in head-to-head competition with males.
  - chc 13y ago
    I think you need to define what you mean by "discrimination" here, because the obvious definition of "excluding someone based on certain traits" doesn't work here. Men are very much not being excluded from tech fields, nor is anyone attempting to do so, so what do you mean when you say "discrimination"? And how to you "expose and remove the discrimination" in this case?

zeno334 13y ago

The Cornell study she links to doesn't really address whether gender diversity leads to better results. It talks about informational diversity, value diversity, and a bunch of other stuff all rather gender neutral. It also finds that it's informational diversity that seems to have the biggest positive impact. I'm not sure if gender diversity is necessarily that important to info diversity. The first page or so of that study is also fairly interesting in that it references a bunch of other studies which when taken together paint a rather ambiguous picture regarding the positive impact of any kind of diversity. I don't feel her second point says much about the need for gender diversity either. It seems to me that it's the people who use the internet that actually write this history rather than the people who merely build the architecture. I think it would be far more useful to see gender diversity in online arts, writing, social activism and so on, rather than in the teams who build that blog engine that allows all genders to express their ideas. I don't see how the last point has anything to do with gender either. If it's technology that will produce most jobs in the future then we should encourage all people to take more training in technology. I read the article precisely because I was interested in an answer to that why question and also because I was happy to read that she does not think asking this question is offensive (it's often the opposite). I'm not very satisfied with her answer though. I'd appreciate it if someone else could contribute to this discussion.

brandonhsiao 13y ago
I'd argue, for the last point (in the article), that given the currently higher number of men working in technology than women, encouraging all people to get more involved is equivalent to advocating gender diversity.
benihana 13y ago
A female coworker whom I respect greatly sent this link to me. It really resonated with me, more than almost anything about diversity. http://www.catehuston.com/blog/2013/10/30/a-bs-metric-for-diversity/ http://www.catehuston.com/blog/2013/10/30/a-bs-metric-for-di...
waterhouse 13y ago
That study is really quite interesting. Here's my summary. They looked at the effects of a few kinds of diversity on assigned work groups. They looked at "informational diversity", which they measured using educational background, job background, and position in the company; "social category diversity", which they took to be age and gender; and "value diversity", which they measured with a questionnaire. Looking at their regression analyses, we see: Informational diversity significantly increases actual performance (a number of .30), mildly decreases group efficiency (-.05), and mildly increases perceived performance (0.05), satisfaction (0.09), intent to remain (0.06), and commitment (.10). Social category diversity moderately increases perceived performance (.16), satisfaction (.14), intent to remain (.12), and commitment (.16), while mildly decreasing actual performance (-.07) and group efficiency (-.03). Value diversity moderately decreases group efficiency (-.17), actual performance (-.12), perceived performance (-.10), satisfaction (-.11), intent to remain (-.19), and commitment (-.19).

geekam 13y ago

Apart from the gender, plagiaristic issue, I think Jef Atwood really needs to learn about analogies. He was trying to conflate Autism with Sexism in his post.(And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio?) In the post about Aaron Swartz, he compared that to rage-quitting, even though he stated that he "understands depression is a serious disease".

ia 13y ago
He wasn't doing that at all. His point was that autism skews male and then suggests that the traits of Aspergers make good programmers. It was a comment on why there are more men than women in tech fields. Relevant excerpt below: "In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers. Aspergers is a spectrum disorder; the more severe the symptoms, the closer it is to autism. And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio? Interesting. I might even go so far as to say some of those traits are what makes one good at programming."
- rhizome 13y ago
  He's confusing his correlation, tantamount to saying being a White Protestant are traits that makes one a good President of the United States. That the historical traditions of programming may have selected for those traits does not mean that the traits make one better at programming than others. It may just be that hiring managers came up through that history and select for culture fit based upon their identity.

badman_ting 13y ago

It seems obvious to me that there are good reasons we should want more women in tech. I just don't think we should expect things to be so different once that is the case, we'll still have (most of) the same shitty problems. It's a worthy goal, because we should have all kinds of people in our field, and they should not feel excluded or unwelcome. But I doubt things will be any better, we will continue to have the same sorts of recurrent problems… just with more women.

heterogenic 13y ago

How about just "because disregarding/discouraging half of our potential talent means half the geniuses, half the coding buddies and work friends, half the workhorses and half the inspirations. It is a virtual certainty that in those millions of missing engineers is a software revolution we never rode. We are all missing shoulders to stand on, and see less far as a result.". Even if you disregard the engineering shortage, doubling the pool and taking the to half dramatically shifts the curve of ability and passion of our workmates. We're all missing out.

Dewie 13y ago
It's way more than 50%, though. What about the whole culture surrounding things like programming? Is it your average Joe (man) that is a programmer? No, it seems to be predominantly nerds. So what about people who, due to circumstances and upbringing, were never introduced to programming? Maybe they would have liked it better, or found it more approachable, if they didn't have to be and act like nerds to fit in? Maybe they had other hobbies that the typical nerd who might be a programmer doesn't, so these two people never really get to meet and have a oh, I might be interested in that applied logic thing moment. This goes of course for any profession that has a specific culture attached to it. Is the industry missing out on 50% of the talent pool? In this day and age, where basically everyone has the opportunity to at least try something like programming, but wherein it is incredibly easy to isolate yourself from lots of types of people and viewpoints and live in your own bubble, and based on how free we really are as individuals, even though we legally have most freedoms... that figure could be anywhere from 30% to 95%, depending on your viewpoint.

JacksonGariety 13y ago

There are plenty of people who don't want women in tech, but no blog post will be able to change all of them. They have traditional values and that is their right. Thankfully, their time is passing. All we can do now is get more young women into technology out of high-school/college. I'd love to see someone, anyone's thoughts on encouraging young women to become interested. I think it's possible, but I think programming needs a makeover of culture before that happens.

sukuriant 13y ago
If memory serves me, it's more of this generation that doesn't like women in tech. The one before us, or perhaps two before us, was very female-friendly. In fact, some famous photographs of computers and people working on them, display women in them, actively working. The modern perspective is that the lady is the equivalent of a Booth Woman, just there for eye candy; but a historical account from the woman herself was that she as an active participant and it wasn't strange for her at all to be on the team. I don't remember exactly what article it was, so if anyone could bring it up. A quick glance at Wikipedia suggests it was in the 40's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Timeline_of_women_in_computing_worldwide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Timeline_of... )

verdi327 13y ago

I don't understand. I get the idea for us to self organize and bring about more diversity to the tech industry. What is lost on me with all these posts/comments/arguments is that they act as if white males are trying to stop women and other minorities from entering the field. More than most fields, getting a job as a developer is based on objective facts. Can you solve x problem. Especially in a market where good talent is hard to come by, I can't imagine an employer saying, "well, you have the technical chops, but i'm not going to hire you bc you're a woman". This just doesn't happen. Yes, let's be open minded and work on making programming as accessible to as many ppl as we can. But, let's not start affirmative action here.

Fishkins 13y ago
Of course they won't say "well, you have the technical chops, but I'm not going to hire you bc you're a woman." What they might say is "she isn't technically qualified" when an identical technical demonstration by a man would have been perceived as proficient. Unless your technical assessments are purely-objective exercises graded by a machine, you or your coworkers are probably subject to these biases without realizing it. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/201... (there a other similar studies; that's just one example) edit: "Bad culture fit" can also be a reason for not hiring whose underlying cause has to do with gender or other diversity.

lobotryas 13y ago

I'm glad that Sarah is being so open on this topic because, after reading the entire article, I remain unconvinced. Please allow me to share my experience. I'm part of a small multicultural team of 8 engineers, 4 of which are women. The team is a professional outfit, makes consistent effort to remain inclusive, and ensures that everyone has a comfortable way of voicing their opinions, thoughts and other intellectual contributions. Despite this, all 4 of our female engineers prefer to avoid product discussion (be it 1:1 face-to-face, group, email, etc) and as such, their contributions amount primarily to SVN commits of what they're asked to build. In my 4+ years of working closely with them I never observed them having an impact on our deliverables that could be attributed to their gender. Our operations team of 30+ people has only 2 female system administrators. This is a pair of fantastic individuals who are kind, positive and wicked-smart. Their experience and skills command respect and people like them because they're enjoyable to work with. In my observation, they have these qualities because they are: a) Excellent engineers b) Excellent human beings Both of the above traits can be displayed equally well by both men and women, making gender a completely moot point in the comparison. I completely agree that we need more excellent engineers and more excellent human beings in our line of work regardless of their gender, however nothing I've seen so far indicates to me that we need more women specifically.

lobotryas 13y ago
As an addendum, I'd like to see more discussion regarding cultural diversity in Engineering Teams. Our R&D team of 150+ people has only * 1 African-American male * 2 Latino-American males That seems really worrying, especially given the demographics of California.
- offbrand 13y ago
  You really contradict yourself here. Why is it worrying that your cultural diversity isn't representative of the demographics of California and yet it doesn't worry you that women are under represented?
  - lobotryas 13y ago

droob 13y ago

If your response is "I hire based on merit alone so this is invalid," a) good for you, but that's demonstrably untrue in aggregate and b) you're basically saying "LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU THERE'S NO PROBLEM HERE."

owenversteeg 13y ago

I agree with this, but I have to say that my favorite piece of writing on the subject still has to be Lea Verou's blog post: http://pensieve.verou.me/post/54853162595/on-women-in-tech http://pensieve.verou.me/post/54853162595/on-women-in-tech It's also a bit more substantial than this (fairly short) piece. If you're not interested in the subject matter, you should at least look at the article to see all the typographic features in the font.