38 ms·

Let me repeat: women were a minority in medicine and law at one point. Why did getting asked out not prevent them from achieving parity in those fields?

tptacek 12y ago
Because entry into medicine is neither entrepreneurial nor social. You apply and you get in. The medical professions evaluate gender trends by the number of women who go to medical school. Once you graduate medical school, you're on a track that leads straightforwardly to gainful employment. That allowed schools to be a focal point for policy changes to improve representation of women in the field. The same thing goes for law. My sister graduated UChicago law and got a lucrative, high-status biglaw job immediately based, as I understand it, pretty much on her track record in school. No similar track exists for software, and, obviously, even less of a path exists in entrepreneurial technology, which is largely controlled by wealthy male gatekeepers. Tangentially: a law or medical professor could be fired for aggressively propositioning a student. A successful investor can't be "fired". But also: you dodged my question instead of addressing it. Do you actually believe that the experience of being targeted by sexual advances is the same if you're one women surrounded by men as it is if you're one of many women surrounded by an almost equal number of men?
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Neither is entry into tech. Only entry into the extremely narrow "Sand Hill Road" style VC funded tech is entrepreneurial and social. There is a rigid heirarchical track for software much like law: stanford -> google, or MIT -> apple, or rutgers -> morgan stanley. Most of technology fits a track like this, in fact. I didn't dodge your question, I pointed out why the answer was irrelevant. There are two ways to debunk a theory: directly (by showing a premise is false) and by contradiction (showing it implies a false conclusion). I'm doing the latter. As for how women feel about being asked out, in my experience the primary determinant is how attractive she finds the asker. To relate a real life experience, if a woman is surrounded by firefighters and one of them asks her out, she probably won't mind. Not that the anecdotes really matter (see the point above about argument by contradiction).
  - tptacek 12y ago
    This is demonstrably incorrect. All you have to do is read a few years of Patrick McKenzie's advice to underemployed tech workers to see how different the character of tech jobs is from medical jobs. Scoring by "status" or by compensation, the variance among tech jobs in the first 5 years of a tech career dwarfs those of a medical doctor. Some people with CS degrees end up working helpdesk or patch management. Some of them wind up writing J2EE LOB applications wiring up form fields to SQL columns over and over again. And some of them work in challenging roles that offer opportunities to build a career. The difference between the high-status roles and the low-status ones isn't school, excepting possibly that an absurdly small subset of the industry (Stanford and MIT grads) have easier time avoiding helpdesk jobs. The "rigid hierarchical track" you suggest exists for tech also doesn't exist. I have a single semester of university. If you want to make the pot rich enough, we can bet on whether I can get a full time job at Google or Apple. I'd warn you that I've got an information advantage on this bet. Hiring in technology is warped and driven by bogus apocrypha. A tiny component of the overall demand is fed by truly credentialing universities. But the majority of the demand is fed by a pool of candidates not distinguished by the particulars of their degree. Instead, they're distinguished by ability to navigate hazing rituals. Your last paragraph isn't an argument. It's what you'd like to believe is true. It doesn't even fit the anecdotal evidence we have here. Have you met a lot of VCs? I have. As a group, they tend to be attractive: fit, the product of school, career, and social tracks that build social (and athletic) skills. They're well dressed, which comes of having large amounts of disposable income. And yet, strangely: women founders appear not to be comfortable being propositioned by them. The only way your last graf works is if we assume that those women are simply lying.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      Scoring by "status" or by compensation, the variance among tech jobs in the first 5 years of a tech career dwarfs those of a medical doctor. The variance among law jobs in the first 5 years dwarfs those of a medical doctor. You cite your sister who got a biglaw job, which is more or less the legal equivalent of stanford -> google. Most lawyers don't get to biglaw just as most engineers don't work at google. You've done a great job explaining why medicine has women, while law and computing don't. But the majority of the demand is fed by a pool of candidates not distinguished by the particulars of their degree. Instead, they're distinguished by ability to navigate hazing rituals. How does this differ from most other fields? Do you think HR, lawyers, accountants or management consultants don't have hazing rituals? As for my last paragraph, it's simply an anecdotal observation. I'm not pushing it . I'm not accusing anyone of lying or disagreeing with their experience. I'm just pointing out that your theory predicts incorrect facts.

tptacek 12y ago

Because entry into medicine is neither entrepreneurial nor social. You apply and you get in. The medical professions evaluate gender trends by the number of women who go to medical school. Once you graduate medical school, you're on a track that leads straightforwardly to gainful employment. That allowed schools to be a focal point for policy changes to improve representation of women in the field. The same thing goes for law. My sister graduated UChicago law and got a lucrative, high-status biglaw job immediately based, as I understand it, pretty much on her track record in school. No similar track exists for software, and, obviously, even less of a path exists in entrepreneurial technology, which is largely controlled by wealthy male gatekeepers. Tangentially: a law or medical professor could be fired for aggressively propositioning a student. A successful investor can't be "fired". But also: you dodged my question instead of addressing it. Do you actually believe that the experience of being targeted by sexual advances is the same if you're one women surrounded by men as it is if you're one of many women surrounded by an almost equal number of men?

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Neither is entry into tech. Only entry into the extremely narrow "Sand Hill Road" style VC funded tech is entrepreneurial and social. There is a rigid heirarchical track for software much like law: stanford -> google, or MIT -> apple, or rutgers -> morgan stanley. Most of technology fits a track like this, in fact. I didn't dodge your question, I pointed out why the answer was irrelevant. There are two ways to debunk a theory: directly (by showing a premise is false) and by contradiction (showing it implies a false conclusion). I'm doing the latter. As for how women feel about being asked out, in my experience the primary determinant is how attractive she finds the asker. To relate a real life experience, if a woman is surrounded by firefighters and one of them asks her out, she probably won't mind. Not that the anecdotes really matter (see the point above about argument by contradiction).
- tptacek 12y ago
  This is demonstrably incorrect. All you have to do is read a few years of Patrick McKenzie's advice to underemployed tech workers to see how different the character of tech jobs is from medical jobs. Scoring by "status" or by compensation, the variance among tech jobs in the first 5 years of a tech career dwarfs those of a medical doctor. Some people with CS degrees end up working helpdesk or patch management. Some of them wind up writing J2EE LOB applications wiring up form fields to SQL columns over and over again. And some of them work in challenging roles that offer opportunities to build a career. The difference between the high-status roles and the low-status ones isn't school, excepting possibly that an absurdly small subset of the industry (Stanford and MIT grads) have easier time avoiding helpdesk jobs. The "rigid hierarchical track" you suggest exists for tech also doesn't exist. I have a single semester of university. If you want to make the pot rich enough, we can bet on whether I can get a full time job at Google or Apple. I'd warn you that I've got an information advantage on this bet. Hiring in technology is warped and driven by bogus apocrypha. A tiny component of the overall demand is fed by truly credentialing universities. But the majority of the demand is fed by a pool of candidates not distinguished by the particulars of their degree. Instead, they're distinguished by ability to navigate hazing rituals. Your last paragraph isn't an argument. It's what you'd like to believe is true. It doesn't even fit the anecdotal evidence we have here. Have you met a lot of VCs? I have. As a group, they tend to be attractive: fit, the product of school, career, and social tracks that build social (and athletic) skills. They're well dressed, which comes of having large amounts of disposable income. And yet, strangely: women founders appear not to be comfortable being propositioned by them. The only way your last graf works is if we assume that those women are simply lying.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Scoring by "status" or by compensation, the variance among tech jobs in the first 5 years of a tech career dwarfs those of a medical doctor. The variance among law jobs in the first 5 years dwarfs those of a medical doctor. You cite your sister who got a biglaw job, which is more or less the legal equivalent of stanford -> google. Most lawyers don't get to biglaw just as most engineers don't work at google. You've done a great job explaining why medicine has women, while law and computing don't. But the majority of the demand is fed by a pool of candidates not distinguished by the particulars of their degree. Instead, they're distinguished by ability to navigate hazing rituals. How does this differ from most other fields? Do you think HR, lawyers, accountants or management consultants don't have hazing rituals? As for my last paragraph, it's simply an anecdotal observation. I'm not pushing it . I'm not accusing anyone of lying or disagreeing with their experience. I'm just pointing out that your theory predicts incorrect facts.