11 ms·

A hilariously sad tale of gender bias

• Mikeb85 12y ago
  We need fewer assholes in every industry. It's not like tech is unique...
  • bluetshirt 12y ago
    No, but we have an opportunity to be a leader and not a follower. To be on the right side of history, so to speak.
    • ddebernardy 12y ago
      For that, the first step should probably be to have more women in STEM classes so they can get recruited in these industries to begin with. I've no idea how it currently is, but back when I was studying the ratio was something like 90% male in some curriculums. (There were exceptions, e.g. chemistry or biology, but they were rather rare.) Has this changed since?
      • navait 12y ago
        I think it peaked at some point during the 80's and then declined. Ancedotally, I've certainly met more women who wrote cobol and the like back in the day than women working in my current career. And there are a lot more women in my CS graduate program than I've met working at web startups.
      • potatolicious 12y ago
        A large part of the reason we have so few women in STEM is because of the toxic work culture that surrounds it. We also lose graduates once people decide they have better things to do than deal with sexist assholes all day. I'm all for encouraging more women getting into STEM, but this needs to be a two-pronged approach. Without dramatic improvements to tech culture encouraging more women to study tech is mostly pointless. FWIW, my engineering class was ~85% male. My working environments have been consistently 95%+ male. The industry is doing considerably worse than academia.
• SloopJon 12y ago
  Title should probably be changed from "We Don't Just Need More Women in Tech, We Need Fewer Assholes" to "A hilariously sad tale of gender bias." (Not sure if I should put a spoiler alert or something.) The author of a popular series of books on preparing for technical interviews was upset that, after talking about code for an hour, people assume that she's a recruiter, rather than a programmer. I'll try not to make the mistake that the target of this post made by assuming too much about the content of that talk, but is it at all possible that the perspective of someone who writes books like that comes off as recruiterish?
  • jordigh 12y ago
    > Title should probably be changed from "We Don't Just Need More Women in Tech, We Need Fewer Ass holes" to "A hilariously sad tale of gender bias." Yes, please. While I agree with the sentiment of the editorialised title, I think the original title should be reflected here.
    • sp332 12y ago
      It's true, women can be a source of gender bias as well. Many girls are turned away from computing by women who think of it as a guys' field. And beyond that, just looking at a woman at a tech conference and thinking "oh I wonder who she's here with" can happen to anyone. I can't find the anecdote now but it happened to a woman who had just given a speech on women in tech! It's a really hard, pervasive bias.
  • crazypyro 12y ago
    >Is it at all possible that the perspective of someone who writes books like that comes off as recruiterish? This was my first thought as well. As soon as she identified herself, I immediately understood how someone could write her off as a recruiter, based entirely on her body of public works. There are many people in the world that will judge someone by the books they wrote and immediately have an image in their mind about the author. It would be hard to overcome this inclination that certain people have within the space of an hour and it doesn't help when someone is especially suspicious because of your gender (Obviously this is the not-ok part). I'm more apt to believe that Gayle Laakmann McDowell has a slightly skewed viewpoint of being taken as a recruiter more often than the average female engineer. This is not to say that female engineers do not have legitimate concerns. I think its helpful to look at the specific facts of this situation to understand the frustration Gayle Laakmann McDowell experiences.
• oldmanjay 12y ago
  if you think you can solve the problems of people being assholes, you haven't yet accepted that someone considers you an asshole too.
  • colmvp 12y ago
    I think more importantly, anytime you are on an online discussion board with anonymous members, you're always going to encounter assholes.
    • turingfail 12y ago
      You find the same people everywhere, but they are only honest when they are allowed to be.
      • pit 12y ago
        "I think anonymity is authenticity, it allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, unfiltered, raw way and I think that's something that's extremely valuable." -- moot
  • RankingMember 12y ago
    Agreed. This comes back to the need for a common understanding of what being an agreeable human being involves. "Common sense" etiquette doesn't work because, in my opinion, there is no such thing as common sense. On the other hand, I'd probably think you were a bit of a dick if you tried to tell me what being an agreeable human being is. Edit: This comment was...less than coherent. What I'm getting at is that I agree with you, and that I think the core of being "not an asshole" is understanding that other people are just like you in regard to their being far from perfect. The guy that just cut you off in traffic may have terrible hemorrhoids, be angry about something at work, or perhaps just heard that his daughter died. You never know what other people are going through.
  • possibilistic 12y ago
    Are you sure that reverse mapping is universal? I was going to go for a few anecdotal examples of people I would decidedly consider as counter-evidence to your claim: the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, ... Then I realized that you're probably right. :(
• techdebt5112 12y ago
  I'm guessing his assertion that the person of interest is no programmer has more to do with Gayle's book being full of platitudes and errors than her sex.
  • pkinsky 12y ago
    He didn't seem to know who he was talking to when he made those criticisms.
• cowls 12y ago
  So her talk was on tech interviews and someone thought she was a recruiter? Doesn't seem that big a stretch...
  • DanBC 12y ago
    People thought she was not a programmer even though she wrote a book about programming interviews.
    • tedunangst 12y ago
      William Poundstone, author of how would you move mt Fuji, is not a programmer, so that's not entirely surprising.
      • gaylemcd 12y ago
        And his book isn't on programming interviews.
        • trynumber9 12y ago
          It is more or less a collection of puzzles used in programming interviews (in that particular book, at Microsoft). He has another titled "Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?" Similar concept, both focused on programming interview puzzles.
          • gaylemcd 12y ago
            No, they're actually not focused on programming interviews. Those sorts of puzzles aren't asked in programming interviews.
        • tedunangst 12y ago
          OK, fine. The next two Amazon books I get for "programming interview", "Elements of Programming Interviews" and "Programming Interviews Exposed", both have three authors each. In both cases, only one of the authors is actually employed as a programmer. The others include an EE professor, a radiologist and two executives. The field is rife with non programming authors. "I wrote a book about programming interviews" does not signal to me that you are, in fact, a programmer. I am happy to believe Gayle is a programmer, but I wouldn't use her book as a credential to support that claim. (And I just realized that I'm replying to Gayle. I didn't read your username before posting. oops. The "you" above wasn't meant to be directed at you personally.)
• shittyanalogy 12y ago
  Serious question, what is this representative of? Random internet comments? Unscientific internet polls? I honestly can't figure out a reason why any of this is any more relevant or scientific than a youtube comments argument about why some band does or does not suck monkey chode.
  • verroq 12y ago
    Clearly, people are not allowed to question the coding ability of a female because it's sexism.
    • DanBC 12y ago
      Obviously it is sexism if you doubt the coding ability of a female because she's female. HN fucking sucks for these topics.
      • verroq 12y ago
        No one is doubting her ability because she's female. But you should be allowed to doubt their ability no matter their gender is.
        • mcv 12y ago
          How can you say nobody is doubting her ability because she is female? RTFA! Yes, of course you can doubt people's ability regardless of their gender, but it doesn't happen regardless of gender, it happens because of gender. People start out thinking: "Woman. Probably not a good coder. Ah, see? She knows about job interviews! She's a recruiter! Not a programmer at all." Had it been a man, they'd be: "Hey, this programmer knows a lot about job interviews!"
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• gogobyte 12y ago
  Do you really need more women in tech or you are a politically correct asshole?
• possibilistic 12y ago
  Reading anecdotes like this makes me so disappointed in my gender. Why do some people marginalize other groups so eagerly? I see so much "bro culture" in our field, and it feels inescapable. Every time I experience it, I literally cringe. I'm not even a party to being singled out; I can't imagine what it must be like to have this garbage directed at you. The sad thing is, I used to be picked on and ostracized by these types of people. This was one of those things I assumed I was going to be getting away from back in high school by choosing computing. I thought "nerds" didn't do shit like this. Apparently not. I just want to wake up in the decade this is no longer an issue. That must be nice.
  • ivraatiems 12y ago
    I hate to break it to you, but it'll never not be an issue. Humans stereotype. It's a natural function for us. It may not be as much of an issue on a specific topic (race, gender, sexuality, etc.), but it will never not be an issue. Also, you probably do it too. That's okay - we all do. The trick that people haven't learned is not letting their automatic beliefs have overt influence on their actions.
    • oddevan 12y ago
      I'll second this. Bias and prejudice are an unavoidable part of human nature. I wish that wasn't the case, but it's the reality we live in. The most ANY of us can do is 1) Recognize our biases and work to look past them, and 2) Apologize when we get it wrong and try to improve #2 is the difference between acting like an asshole and being an asshole.
      • possibilistic 12y ago
        Thanks for raising this point. It's absolutely correct, and I agree with both of you. It still irks me when biases are so general and aimed at an entire set of people. I know I do the same internally for some populations or interest groups, but it still makes me mad when I see it done by others on the basis of race, gender, sexual preference, etc. I'm probably guilty at some level too sometimes... :/
• deleted 12y ago
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• exelius 12y ago
  To be fair, I looked at her website and she does kind of look like a recruiter. This is likely because being an attractive blonde female opens a lot of doors, and recruiting is a job where you need a lot of doors to open for you. It doesn't mean she's not a rockstar programmer (because once you look at her resume, she obviously is) but she does have a certain "look" that doesn't jive with the stereotype of a software developer. Fortunately, most of us learn early in our careers not to judge a book by its cover. That said, the "asshole" in the article is a troll.
• ekr 12y ago
  >"woman who wrote the #2 Computer Science book on Amazon, about coding and technical interview skills" Computer Science has absolutely nothing to do with either coding or interviews, it's a subfield of mathematics.
  • scott_s 12y ago
    I've addressed the whole "CS is math" thing so much, I wrote an essay on it: http://www.scott-a-s.com/cs-is-not-math/ http://www.scott-a-s.com/cs-is-not-math/
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  • vonmoltke 12y ago
    Amazon doesn't agree: > #1 in Books > Textbooks > Computer Science > Software Design & Engineering
  • crazypyro 12y ago
    Coding is the main way that computer science is implemented. This is like complaining that doing titrimetry isn't part of Chemistry or drafting isn't a part of civil engineering. It's true that C.S. is a subset of math in a strict, theoretical definition, but the practical application of the science is highly important.
  • 27182818284 12y ago
    This might be true outside the US, but certainly not from what I've seen in the US. In the US, a lot of curriculum in CS majors include coding, interview practices and more—and that's a good thing because there doesn't seem to be a lot of dedicated "software development" majors in existence. I can think of a computer engineering curriculum that actually requires a half-semester course in interview practicing and cover letter writing. Similarly I can think of a major state university whose CS includes a semester project for a company / organization outside the university in teams of four. That same university has a required CS course where you have to maintain the code of previous students in the course, to give you a taste of that real world aspect. And those courses are taken in between or while you take your standard courses on algorithms, discrete math, etc. Though true I know a professor of CS who ONLY works on a chalkboard, the vast majority don't and the vast majority of CS grads don't either.
• programminggeek 12y ago
  This probably should be a blog post with deeper research, but I swear it must be a human rite of passage to have the established groups treat some minority or "new" group poorly. For example, it wasn't but 100 years ago in the USA that groups like Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese, etc. were looked down on as poor immigrants who were taking "real" American jobs. They eventually were accepted only to turn around and put down people who were Black, Latino, Women, etc. Acceptance of African Americans and Women has improved a lot, and in some places Mexicans are more easily accepted than other places. However, there are still plenty of people that treat those groups poorly. Eventually, all the current minorities, including women, will be accepted only to turn around and treat some other group like crap. Why? I assume it's because it's human nature and it's the cycle that seems to happen for things that are different. At some point we all get bullied and we all take turns bullying someone else. It'd be nice to just skip over the ugliness, but that's not really how it works with people. Also, let us not forget that getting treated poorly is not always a minority issue. Some people are just plain jerks and they treat everybody like crap. That's not an excuse, but no amount of positive change will get rid of jerks. They are in every industry and almost every company.
  • icebraining 12y ago
    Eventually, all the current minorities, including women Women are not a minority; not in the US nor in the vast majority of countries.
    • mark-r 12y ago
      They are not a minority of the population, but definitely a minority in the tech workplace.
    • programminggeek 12y ago
      Obviously by number not a minority, but in the way they sometimes get treated or by perception or whatever, they seem to be considered a "protected class" or whatever the legal term is that you shouldn't discriminate against. I think the point remains however that any group that faces a generation of discrimination/hazing/whatever you want to call it seems to find a way to revisit that same act on a later generation once they are in power.
• paulhauggis 12y ago
  We need good engineers in tech. It shouldn't matter if they are male or female. This article is as gender biased as the people it is against.
  • paulhauggis 12y ago
    It's ironic that a post about not being gender biased is down voted on an article about how we need to change gender bias. It's the main reason why I can't really take it seriously.
• spacemanmatt 12y ago
  My subjective data point, as a male in tech: We don't just need more women in tech, we need fewer assholes.
  • Shish2k 12y ago
    The company I'm currently working at doesn't have any assholes in the dev team; and yet even after hiring every single woman who has ever even applied for a software development role, we have zero women in the team :/
    • danielweber 12y ago
      What outreach have you tried to get more women to apply? I'm going through the job hunt now, and so many places seem determined to be as difficult as possible to deal with. One (I may have found it on HN) had a picture of the office bullpen, and every single person in the picture was a twenty-something male, mostly all white with one or two Asians, more than half wearing hipster goatees. I wondered "why in the world would you show this in your job posting section? What image do you think it projects?" I'm not a SJW but the in-groupishness projected by that image was a huge turn off for me. And I'm someone who mostly fit the stereotype in that picture (even down to the hipster goatee).
      • Shish2k 12y ago
        > What outreach have you tried to get more women to apply? We haven't done outreach to any specific group (I'd guess because we aren't "looking for women" per se, we "looking for good developers and gender doesn't factor into it"); looking at the currently active developer ad, it makes no explicit assumptions about gender of applicant and makes no reference to the gender of the current team... (Though there was that thing saying that "we are a strong team" is subconsciously excluding of women, and we should say "we are a caring team" if we want more women to apply, so there may be things like that that I am too much of a white male to notice? :S)
        • danielweber 12y ago
• droithomme 12y ago
  Referenced article mentions a case where some random critic on the net criticizes a CEO who writes books touching on recruitment issues from the candidate perspective, claiming they are a recruiter. Random critic essentially argues that CEO is not a programmer since they don't have code. I think it's a legitimate practice in the field to look at whether someone develops actual code and if their code works in order to evaluate whether or not they are actually a programmer. This is because there are a lot of posers and incompetents in the field. Seeing actual code and/or projects the person has built cuts through a lot of Big Talk and claims. In this particular case, the CEO has listed on her site several projects she developed herself to solve real world problems. This is solid evidence that she is in fact a programmer. Therefore, the random critic's claims are without merit.
• troupe 12y ago
  There are many stereotypes that go along with being a programmer that are negative. There are stereotypes that go along with being a recruiter that are positive. While gender may have something to do with people thinking she is a recruiter it may not be the main factor. If you meet someone who is well spoken, well dressed, writes books on how to interview, knows how to talk about code, etc. might there be a greater chance that their job is something other than writing code every day?
  • gaylemcd 12y ago
    Sure. And then if someone's talking about binary trees, dynamic programming, depth first search, object oriented programming, don't you think you'd conclude "was or used to be a programmer"? Again THIS was the example. Stop constructing straw mans.
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    • troupe 12y ago
      The quote in the article simply said that you can talk about code for an hour and people still think you are a recruiter. Most people take that to mean that people don't think you currently work as a programmer or more specifically, don't think you currently write code as your primary job function. Yes I agree, if someone talks for an hour about those technical topics, I'd assume they have experience as a programmer. However, I may still assume you are not currently working as a programmer and things I would use to make that assumption have nothing to do with gender. You appear to be upset when people point out that there may be some non-gender reasons for assuming you are working in a role other than writing code. Please keep in mind that from the article there is very little information about the particulars of the talk in question. However, anyone who tries to fill in the gaps by looking at your lists of topics for recent talks, your website, etc., is going to assume you don't current write much code and that most of your work is done in the technical aspects of the interview process. If I talk to someone who used to be a programmer but not is obviously working in an HR recruiting role, I will probably consider them to be a recruiter. This isn't an insult...it is just the way we categorize people by what they do currently.
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  • FfejL 12y ago
    You call women coders "girls" while calling men coders "male." Yes, I see sexism.
    • verroq 12y ago
      Can't tell if you are serious.
      • FfejL 12y ago
        100% serious. The definition of girl is "A female child". To refer to females who code as children while at the exact same time NOT doing that for males who code is sexist.
        • deleted 12y ago
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• S_A_P 12y ago
  Its only silicon valley that you will see "C Level" people ranting and dropping Fbombs on a blog. Time and place. Neither seems appropriate to me...
  • angersock 12y ago
    You've never been to NY or Chicago, I take it? EDIT: Or energy in Houston or the South?
• yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Ok, something about this story seems a bit amiss. Gayle Laakmann is complaining about people thinking she is a recruiter, supposedly because she's a woman. Hmm, I'm curious - who is this person? How does she portray herself? Are there any other possible reasons people might view her as someone working in the general HR space? http://www.gayle.com/consulting/ http://www.gayle.com/consulting/ I can't imagine why a consultant who helps with "Technical Interview/Recruiting Consulting" (as well as "Acquisition/Acqui-hire interview prep") would be perceived as a recruiter. Definitely due to gender.
  • shittyanalogy 12y ago
    Also, who cares what field she says she's in? She's clearly making a lot of money on her books, why doesn't isn't she considered primarily an author? I don't think it's a problem that there aren't enough women who say that they are programmers. I think the issue is gender bias in the workplace seemingly causing a lack of women in technology rolls.
    • gaylemcd 12y ago
      The example referenced is actually about someone asking "So when you were a recruiter at Google, ..." This is after a talk I gave on coding that covered data structures, algorithms, etc. If someone refers to be as an author now, that's totally fine.
  • mcv 12y ago
    If it was a man who claimed to be a programmer and who wrote the book on passing technical interviews for programmers, would you doubt he was a programmer? But because she's a woman who knows both programming and job interviews, you latch onto her recruiting aspect, and not her programming side. And note that people assumed she was a recruiter and not a programmer after she'd been talking code for an hour, not after she'd been talking job interviews for an hour. It's not just about what she is, it's about how people choose to look at her, based on her gender.
    • vonmoltke 12y ago
• 6nne 12y ago
  Is this sexism or is it just generalization? The vast majority of (white) women I've spoken to from tech companies are recruiters. And generalizations are very useful, in general. I doubt everyone thinks about how much coding knowledge a recruiter would have. At what point is it "sexist" (and, presumably, bad) to assume something given past experiences?
• brucefancher 12y ago
  When are we going to talk about the shocking gender imbalance among schoolteachers?
• therogerwilco 12y ago
  The only bias anymore is crap like this. Get a job or a hobby, but you're not special as a woman. I'm not special as a man.
• therogerwilco 12y ago
  The only bias is crap articles like this. You're not special as a woman. I'm not special as a man. You're just a sour meat-bag like everyone else.