8 ms·

Facebook’s First Female Engineer Speaks Out on Tech’s Gender Gap

76 points by gkuan 12y ago

simplekoala 12y ago
Refreshing to read. Her answers are not carefully rehearsed and perennially regurgitated sound bytes you hear all the time. From my observation, it seems this gap is prevalent mostly in engineering (not so much in HR, Marketing, Sales etc).
- deleted 12y ago
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- mcintyre1994 12y ago
  The gap in HR is much bigger, but in the other direction of course. http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chalabi-datalab-flightattendants-2.png http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chala... (compiled from US Census data) Computer scientists 72.2% male, HR 16.2% male. Of course there are many more employed in software than in HR.
  - jquery 12y ago
    HR knows the score. 83.8% women is only 16.2% away from being 100% diverse.
JohnE007 12y ago
I will never understand why "doing something + boobs" is so much more interesting than "doing something". Who gives a fuck, male or female. She's a human, like all of us. What is wrong with everyone, where's the problem? Oh no, we have 10% humans and 90% humans in tech, how horrible! A gender gap, a problem to be solved! I guess when you're living in a first world country and don't have any problems, you just invent some so you have something to worry about. I will never understand this society.
- FD3SA 12y ago
  The surface level analysis you've done seems correct at first glance, and if that were all there was to it, it would indeed be absurd. The reality is that these are manufactured issues (pay-gap, rape epidemic, etc.) in order to create voter blocks which can then be counted upon in an election. Women are 50% of the population. If you can somehow convince them to vote as a group, you've won the game of democracy forever. This has been an open strategy of the Obama campaign since '08. What's fascinating is how insane statements such as "1 in 4 women have been raped" get touted as fact. It is mass dementia, much worse than any religion or mass delusion. If 1 in 4 women were raped, the US would be equivalent to the Congo where rape was used as a weapon of war. Women wouldn't be doing "Slut Walks" and "Take Back The Nights". They'd be fearing for their lives and staying indoors. We've had democracies collapse in upon themselves quite often in the past due to corruption and vote rigging. It may be an inevitable consequence of this form of governance. For reference, I don't live in the US, but I find the militant electioneering fascinating. EDIT: It appears the parent was flagkilled. Although his delivery may have been slightly uncouth, his argument was valid. For those interested, the parent was expressing his opinion that sex is irrelevant as a determinant of engineering ability and economic success, and asserting that sex ratios in tech companies must be precisely 50/50 is nonsensical because it ignores individual preferences and biological reality.
- thret 12y ago
  As there's no logical reason for there to be such a huge disparity it seems obvious that women are a resource that is under utilised. It is likely that there are women out there not working in startups/engineering/tech/etc. who could be - who would be if they were male. That's the problem.
  - JohnE007 12y ago
    That's like saying there are a lot of men not working as florists who could be - who would be if they were female. Your comment is completely senseless. A butterfly would be catching salmon if it was a bear. But it's not, and so be it and let's accept it because it's doing what it can do and what it likes to do.
coding4all 12y ago
Some interesting things were said... > Sanghvi - "I don’t like being called aggressive. And that reputation has stuck with me. Any company that I go to, any VC firm that I talk to, everybody thinks of me as the aggressive person who can get shit done, at all costs." This is a bad thing? >Sanghvi -"Men are just more comfortable with men than they are with women." Aren't women more comfortable with women than they are with men? >Sanghvi - "The first thing I would say is you need to live life with no regrets. Always ask yourself—when you’re doubting something or you’re afraid of something—ask yourself the question: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid and do that?” I say this because every decision in my life, everybody told me that I was a fool." That's some of the best advice to ever come out of a Wired article.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > Aren't women more comfortable with women than they are with men? Sure, why not. She also gave the example of having a drink with her CTO - the point was more about people who are more alike are more comfortable with each other.
- malandrew 12y ago
  >>Sanghvi -"Men are just more comfortable with men than they are with women." > Aren't women more comfortable with women than they are with men? Exactly. Men are generally more friendly with men and women are more friendly with men, where the ratio is, 70-30 men to women, 50-50 men to women or 30-70 men to women. Go look at the fashion industry and you'll see that the women are more friendly with the women and the men are more friendly with the men. The fact that men or women are the majority and in power is orthogonal to the issue of same gender affinity insofar are fraternization is concerned.
ps4fanboy 12y ago
"If you have more women engineers on a team, they tend to bring more diverse opinions, but they also tend to build a collaborative culture. And a result, things get done faster. They’re more organized. There’s more empathy, which makes for a better work environment. It’s just better all around." Ruchi Sanghvi believes that we need more women in tech because. Women have more diverse opinions than men. Women are more collaborative than men. Women get things done faster than men. Women are more organized than men. Women have more empathy than men. Women are just all round better.
- hox 12y ago
  Replace "women" with "a diverse team", and really that's what she said. And in my experience she is correct.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > Women are just all round better. Or what was meant was that the outcome was overall better; the outcome of a more diverse set of people, with different set of strengths and weaknesses etc. Maybe something that was implicit is that men in general bring other strengths to the table, but that was for whatever reason not mentioned (maybe because the article was about women in tech). EDIT: flag killing that post is a bit harsh...
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  - ps4fanboy 12y ago
    Of course it was flagged killed, if you present a dissenting opinion on this site instead of engaging in meaningful discussion the cultural kafka fascists just hide you away. It is very interesting because I believe that the genders are equal which means I dont believe this sexist assertion that women somehow bring different strengths to engineering.
    - justinsteele 12y ago
      Equal in value does not imply equal in thought, experience, or skill. I think that is the major flaw in your argument and why you are misconstruing breaking down barriers for women as "sexist".
ps4fanboy 12y ago
"If you have more women engineers on a team, they tend to bring more diverse opinions, but they also tend to build a collaborative culture. And a result, things get done faster. They’re more organized. There’s more empathy, which makes for a better work environment. It’s just better all around." If the genders are equal any combination of them are also equal.
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  - ps4fanboy 12y ago
    Anyone can miss quote someone this was a comment about education, and how boys cannot be taught in the same way as girls, evident in the declining academic outcomes for small boys.
- woah 12y ago
  What a ridiculously reductive perspective. Let me guess, you're 16 and are working your way through "Atlas Shrugged" right now?
  - ps4fanboy 12y ago
    Attack me and not what I am saying, how mature of you.
    - tinco 12y ago
      He attacked what you were saying, calling it a ridiculous reductive perspective, and then attacked you. Would you reject the idea that you perspective was reductive, even ridiculously so?
      - ps4fanboy 12y ago
        Without a reason to say why it is ridiculously reductive yes I would reject that idea.
brandonmenc 12y ago
> They’re more organized. Here we go again. Based on what? Where does this idea come from? Can you imagine if we all just accepted this as fact about men? I know plenty of female programmers who absolutely hate this idea that women are "more organized." The result is almost always that they get pigeonholed into the "secretary" role on a team. This idea needs to die. It does no one any good, and it's probably just false.
- joshdotsmith 12y ago
  "There’s more empathy" also bothers me. I'm not sure we're doing anyone any favors by generalizing large swaths of people, by gender or anything else. This is pure prejudice, even if it's good-natured and well-intentioned.
  - dubfan 12y ago
    Prejudice isn't necessarily a bad thing. As a society, we're fighting over where the line is between "bad prejudice" and "good prejudice", and the tech gender gap is just one of many battlegrounds in that fight.
- comrh 12y ago
  > There’s more empathy, which makes for a better work environment. Which is also the same thing said when they were pigeonholing women as nurses and never doctors (not to bash nursing at all, but watch a couple episodes of Masters of Sex and you see the superiority complex). Gender roles are crap.
evincarofautumn 12y ago
I am a bisexual male programmer. I don’t give a damn what sex you have, and I would prefer not to think about it at all in a work environment, since it’s not relevant. But the skewed gender ratio affects interactions amongst my mostly heterosexual colleagues, and I find it disruptive. This is also true of race. Anything we can do to remove bias and create a non-hostile work environment for everyone is a win not just for our ability to function as a field, but also to serve as a benchmark of social equality for other fields.
jquery 12y ago
Take two groups of people. We'll call group A the "Bears", and group B the "Foxes". The Bears had a strong natural interest and affinity for computers. They were tinkering and playing with them despite society's mockery that they were pathetic nerds. When they found out you could make great money, well, that was just a bonus. The Foxes joined because they were told the industry was super rad and it paid really well. The Foxes were given advantages like additional Fox-only scholarships, special Fox-quotas in good engineering colleges, and lots of blogs praising Foxes and telling them how special they are, how they bring unique Fox-only insights to the table, and that The Bears have a conscious/unconscious agenda against them. Now ask yourself, which group would you expect to have more longevity in the industry, the Foxes or the Bears? What would a company have to do to keep more Foxes? Maybe special privileges, like conferences the companies could send the Foxes to that would tell the Foxes how great they are, promotion programs to ensure more Fox visibility, quotas for Foxes in senior management, etc. But the Foxes are still leaving in higher numbers so clearly the industry has a bias against Foxes, so funding for Fox-only programs must increase, until the number of Foxes is equal to Bears (and if eventually there are more Foxes then Bears, that's just great!) What about the Bears? Well, the Bears better sit down, shut up, and remember that they are just Bears and there is nothing unique about a Bear. Some Bears internalize this and start advocating for the Foxes themselves. And so it goes.
- rayiner 12y ago
  You lost me at "strong natural interest and affinity." That could've been said for law or medicine or accounting or any of a large number of professions that were male-only until they weren't.
  - brighteyes 12y ago
    While I disagree with GP, I think there is a difference here. As GP mentioned, nerds tinkered with computers growing up, despite a stigma. There isn't such a social phenomenon for accounting or medicine, those are things that almost everyone gets into in college or later. Yet, as I said, I disagree with GP. The word "natural" is misleading, it sounds like he or she is suggesting a natural inborn aptitude, and we don't have evidence to support that. Unless all that "natural" meant here was "commonly occurring, happening without prompting", in which case I would agree.
arihant 12y ago
So it is okay for a woman to say that women are better organized, that they have more empathy, but as a man I cannot claim that men are better hackers? I'm all for equality, but every single time I read one of these articles, I seem to read everything but equality. Being a programmer is a job, a male dominated job, at least in 2014. There are a lot of fields where men work which are female dominated, like a chef, or interior design, or fashion, or a nanny, or a nurse. You don't see men throwing tantrums like this. And neither do great female programmers, they are busy making us feel stupid.
- JamesArgo 12y ago
  Most chefs are male - people don't care because its a low status job. Programming is now high status, so now this gender gap is an issue. As many feminists have "misogynistic conspiracy" as their default explanation for any differnces in outcome among genders, they're not in a very good epistemic position to judge these things. Unjust discrimination is economically counterproductive, I don't expect ruthless corporations to support such a conspiracy when defection is more profitable. Aside from blinded applications and maybe interviews, not much needs to be done. We are building businesses here, not collecting data for a census.
  - pekk 12y ago
    Being rich, being a VC, being Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates is a lot of status, but despite popular assumptions, that doesn't really rub off on the programming equivalent of a line cook or plumber.
- vacri 12y ago
  No, I don't think it's okay to say that kind of generalisation and I think it's fine to object, but you should object in a straightfoward manner rather than a tit-for-tat whine. You don't see men throwing tantrums like this. I constantly see men throwing tantrums, whenever the vaguest whiff of even moderate feminism can be smelled. Also, where did you get the idea that chefs are predominantly women? Not to mention that chefs are famously reknowned for throwing tanties. Same with fashion/interior designers, male or female.
jim_greco 12y ago
Anonymous message boards truly are an ugly place. One very accomplished woman speaks out about her mostly positive but colored with some negative experiences in the tech world and the top comment is an anti-affirmative action rant (bears and foxes) that brings out a bunch of old tropes while completely ignoring the history of our industry.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  How dare people express differing opinions.
- malandrew 12y ago
  Here's a history lesson: The change in gender ratios in our industry are very closely related to the rise of the mini-computer. Back when only companies like IBM and their customers owned computers, there was a much more equal gender ratio. When the mini-computer came about, the bears took interest in mini-computers. There were male bears and female bears. Disruptive innovation also disrupted the gender ratio. For example, here's a Google Image Search for Homebrew Computer Club: https://www.google.com/search?q=Homebrew+Computer+Club&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=PemNVPfBHMbSoASQ74KQBw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1573&bih=952 https://www.google.com/search?q=Homebrew+Computer+Club&es_sm... As you can see from the group images, the ratio of men to women in the Homebrew Computer Club was much skewed in having more men than women than was observed in the computing industry at the time (mainframes and whatnot). Go back and watch Triumph of the Nerds, narrated by Cringely and you'll see a completely different industry today. That documentary was created right at the beginning of tech becoming mainstream and money becoming the focus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuBXbvl1Sg4#t=4m39s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuBXbvl1Sg4#t=4m39s (watch about 5 minutes. the interview with Woz at 11m47s is worth a watch too) Look at the people in that video. Not a fox in sight, male (brogrammers) or female. These are people who were pursing their interest in computing despite being at the bottom of the social ladder. Woz even describes the PDP-8 manual as a being like a bible. Show me anyone who would have been envious of this lifestyle back in the 80s and 90s and I'll show you someone that is a nerd through and through and probably oblivious to gender or possibly even the opposite sex. I don't know about others here, but when I got involved with programming (~12 y.o.) in 94 or so, I was as alone as you could get. There were no other boys or girls. I had no role models. Neither of my parents were in tech. Prior to learning to program, I spend hours in my basement taking junk electronics apart that I found in the high school dumpster. None of my friends did this. When I decided I wanted to learn to program, I had to find out on my own about HS courses and courses at the local computer shop. I took a short visual basic course at the local computer shop (IIRC only 3 other people took the class with me) before I took a summer programming course at the local high school, where I was 12 years old and IIRC everyone else in the class was a sophomore or older and I don't even know what the gender ratio was in the class. It was irrelevant to me at the time. Unfortunately my relationship with programming took a 10+ hiatus when my family moved and I was no longer at a school that had support for programming when I first arrived and when AP computer science was added, the teacher was so bad that it killed my decision to go to school for CS (I went into physics instead). Anyone who is a bear cub today, boy or girl, white or black, enjoys several orders of magnitude more privilege in becoming involved with computers and programming that I could ever have dreamed of growing up interested in computers in the mid-90s. If I could be the same precocious 12 y.o. as I was in the mid-90s but instead in 2014, I would jump at the opportunity. There are no no real barriers to getting involved in programming today relative to two decades ago. If someone is truly a bear, then their gender or race are a insignificant relative to the privilege of being able to involve yourself in programming in 2014, with the many resources out there to help you learn that didn't exist when I was a kid. Foxes, male or female, only care about being included in tech now because there is a lot of money and job growth in this industry. No one was making a big deal about being included when being a nerd was socially undesirable. Furthermore, it's worth nothing that some of the female bears now resent the female foxes because they have made their life worse [0]. [0] http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software [1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/appendixb.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/appendixb.html
karsus 12y ago
The expectation that things work on merit and that you should be able to just work hard and succeed, seems to hit many people. Unfortunately, real merit seems to go beyond one's official role. You are better if you can move stuff forward and facilitate projects succeeding overall. If you can make things happen. Schools never taught us to think about life that way.
malandrew 12y ago
"If you have more women engineers on a team, they tend to bring more diverse opinions, but they also tend to build a collaborative culture. And a result, things get done faster. They’re more organized. There’s more empathy, which makes for a better work environment. It’s just better all around." - Sanghvi I don't understand why it's okay for a woman to make generalizations like this about the things they think women are better at, but it's totally not okay for a man to openly voice their opinions on what they think men are better at. If it's not acceptable for men to voice similar opinions, why do we not call out women when they do the same?

76 points by gkuan 12y ago

Refreshing to read. Her answers are not carefully rehearsed and perennially regurgitated sound bytes you hear all the time. From my observation, it seems this gap is prevalent mostly in engineering (not so much in HR, Marketing, Sales etc).

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mcintyre1994 12y ago
The gap in HR is much bigger, but in the other direction of course. http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chalabi-datalab-flightattendants-2.png http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chala... (compiled from US Census data) Computer scientists 72.2% male, HR 16.2% male. Of course there are many more employed in software than in HR.
- jquery 12y ago
  HR knows the score. 83.8% women is only 16.2% away from being 100% diverse.

JohnE007 12y ago

I will never understand why "doing something + boobs" is so much more interesting than "doing something". Who gives a fuck, male or female. She's a human, like all of us. What is wrong with everyone, where's the problem? Oh no, we have 10% humans and 90% humans in tech, how horrible! A gender gap, a problem to be solved! I guess when you're living in a first world country and don't have any problems, you just invent some so you have something to worry about. I will never understand this society.

FD3SA 12y ago
The surface level analysis you've done seems correct at first glance, and if that were all there was to it, it would indeed be absurd. The reality is that these are manufactured issues (pay-gap, rape epidemic, etc.) in order to create voter blocks which can then be counted upon in an election. Women are 50% of the population. If you can somehow convince them to vote as a group, you've won the game of democracy forever. This has been an open strategy of the Obama campaign since '08. What's fascinating is how insane statements such as "1 in 4 women have been raped" get touted as fact. It is mass dementia, much worse than any religion or mass delusion. If 1 in 4 women were raped, the US would be equivalent to the Congo where rape was used as a weapon of war. Women wouldn't be doing "Slut Walks" and "Take Back The Nights". They'd be fearing for their lives and staying indoors. We've had democracies collapse in upon themselves quite often in the past due to corruption and vote rigging. It may be an inevitable consequence of this form of governance. For reference, I don't live in the US, but I find the militant electioneering fascinating. EDIT: It appears the parent was flagkilled. Although his delivery may have been slightly uncouth, his argument was valid. For those interested, the parent was expressing his opinion that sex is irrelevant as a determinant of engineering ability and economic success, and asserting that sex ratios in tech companies must be precisely 50/50 is nonsensical because it ignores individual preferences and biological reality.
thret 12y ago
As there's no logical reason for there to be such a huge disparity it seems obvious that women are a resource that is under utilised. It is likely that there are women out there not working in startups/engineering/tech/etc. who could be - who would be if they were male. That's the problem.
- JohnE007 12y ago
  That's like saying there are a lot of men not working as florists who could be - who would be if they were female. Your comment is completely senseless. A butterfly would be catching salmon if it was a bear. But it's not, and so be it and let's accept it because it's doing what it can do and what it likes to do.

coding4all 12y ago

Some interesting things were said... > Sanghvi - "I don’t like being called aggressive. And that reputation has stuck with me. Any company that I go to, any VC firm that I talk to, everybody thinks of me as the aggressive person who can get shit done, at all costs." This is a bad thing? >Sanghvi -"Men are just more comfortable with men than they are with women." Aren't women more comfortable with women than they are with men? >Sanghvi - "The first thing I would say is you need to live life with no regrets. Always ask yourself—when you’re doubting something or you’re afraid of something—ask yourself the question: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid and do that?” I say this because every decision in my life, everybody told me that I was a fool." That's some of the best advice to ever come out of a Wired article.

Dewie 12y ago
> Aren't women more comfortable with women than they are with men? Sure, why not. She also gave the example of having a drink with her CTO - the point was more about people who are more alike are more comfortable with each other.
malandrew 12y ago
>>Sanghvi -"Men are just more comfortable with men than they are with women." > Aren't women more comfortable with women than they are with men? Exactly. Men are generally more friendly with men and women are more friendly with men, where the ratio is, 70-30 men to women, 50-50 men to women or 30-70 men to women. Go look at the fashion industry and you'll see that the women are more friendly with the women and the men are more friendly with the men. The fact that men or women are the majority and in power is orthogonal to the issue of same gender affinity insofar are fraternization is concerned.

ps4fanboy 12y ago

"If you have more women engineers on a team, they tend to bring more diverse opinions, but they also tend to build a collaborative culture. And a result, things get done faster. They’re more organized. There’s more empathy, which makes for a better work environment. It’s just better all around." Ruchi Sanghvi believes that we need more women in tech because. Women have more diverse opinions than men. Women are more collaborative than men. Women get things done faster than men. Women are more organized than men. Women have more empathy than men. Women are just all round better.

hox 12y ago
Replace "women" with "a diverse team", and really that's what she said. And in my experience she is correct.
Dewie 12y ago
> Women are just all round better. Or what was meant was that the outcome was overall better; the outcome of a more diverse set of people, with different set of strengths and weaknesses etc. Maybe something that was implicit is that men in general bring other strengths to the table, but that was for whatever reason not mentioned (maybe because the article was about women in tech). EDIT: flag killing that post is a bit harsh...
- deleted 12y ago
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- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  Of course it was flagged killed, if you present a dissenting opinion on this site instead of engaging in meaningful discussion the cultural kafka fascists just hide you away. It is very interesting because I believe that the genders are equal which means I dont believe this sexist assertion that women somehow bring different strengths to engineering.
  - justinsteele 12y ago
    Equal in value does not imply equal in thought, experience, or skill. I think that is the major flaw in your argument and why you are misconstruing breaking down barriers for women as "sexist".

ps4fanboy 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
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- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  Anyone can miss quote someone this was a comment about education, and how boys cannot be taught in the same way as girls, evident in the declining academic outcomes for small boys.
woah 12y ago
What a ridiculously reductive perspective. Let me guess, you're 16 and are working your way through "Atlas Shrugged" right now?
- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  Attack me and not what I am saying, how mature of you.
  - tinco 12y ago
    He attacked what you were saying, calling it a ridiculous reductive perspective, and then attacked you. Would you reject the idea that you perspective was reductive, even ridiculously so?
    - ps4fanboy 12y ago
      Without a reason to say why it is ridiculously reductive yes I would reject that idea.

brandonmenc 12y ago

> They’re more organized. Here we go again. Based on what? Where does this idea come from? Can you imagine if we all just accepted this as fact about men? I know plenty of female programmers who absolutely hate this idea that women are "more organized." The result is almost always that they get pigeonholed into the "secretary" role on a team. This idea needs to die. It does no one any good, and it's probably just false.

joshdotsmith 12y ago
"There’s more empathy" also bothers me. I'm not sure we're doing anyone any favors by generalizing large swaths of people, by gender or anything else. This is pure prejudice, even if it's good-natured and well-intentioned.
- dubfan 12y ago
  Prejudice isn't necessarily a bad thing. As a society, we're fighting over where the line is between "bad prejudice" and "good prejudice", and the tech gender gap is just one of many battlegrounds in that fight.
comrh 12y ago
> There’s more empathy, which makes for a better work environment. Which is also the same thing said when they were pigeonholing women as nurses and never doctors (not to bash nursing at all, but watch a couple episodes of Masters of Sex and you see the superiority complex). Gender roles are crap.

evincarofautumn 12y ago

I am a bisexual male programmer. I don’t give a damn what sex you have, and I would prefer not to think about it at all in a work environment, since it’s not relevant. But the skewed gender ratio affects interactions amongst my mostly heterosexual colleagues, and I find it disruptive. This is also true of race. Anything we can do to remove bias and create a non-hostile work environment for everyone is a win not just for our ability to function as a field, but also to serve as a benchmark of social equality for other fields.

jquery 12y ago

Take two groups of people. We'll call group A the "Bears", and group B the "Foxes". The Bears had a strong natural interest and affinity for computers. They were tinkering and playing with them despite society's mockery that they were pathetic nerds. When they found out you could make great money, well, that was just a bonus. The Foxes joined because they were told the industry was super rad and it paid really well. The Foxes were given advantages like additional Fox-only scholarships, special Fox-quotas in good engineering colleges, and lots of blogs praising Foxes and telling them how special they are, how they bring unique Fox-only insights to the table, and that The Bears have a conscious/unconscious agenda against them. Now ask yourself, which group would you expect to have more longevity in the industry, the Foxes or the Bears? What would a company have to do to keep more Foxes? Maybe special privileges, like conferences the companies could send the Foxes to that would tell the Foxes how great they are, promotion programs to ensure more Fox visibility, quotas for Foxes in senior management, etc. But the Foxes are still leaving in higher numbers so clearly the industry has a bias against Foxes, so funding for Fox-only programs must increase, until the number of Foxes is equal to Bears (and if eventually there are more Foxes then Bears, that's just great!) What about the Bears? Well, the Bears better sit down, shut up, and remember that they are just Bears and there is nothing unique about a Bear. Some Bears internalize this and start advocating for the Foxes themselves. And so it goes.

rayiner 12y ago
You lost me at "strong natural interest and affinity." That could've been said for law or medicine or accounting or any of a large number of professions that were male-only until they weren't.
- brighteyes 12y ago
  While I disagree with GP, I think there is a difference here. As GP mentioned, nerds tinkered with computers growing up, despite a stigma. There isn't such a social phenomenon for accounting or medicine, those are things that almost everyone gets into in college or later. Yet, as I said, I disagree with GP. The word "natural" is misleading, it sounds like he or she is suggesting a natural inborn aptitude, and we don't have evidence to support that. Unless all that "natural" meant here was "commonly occurring, happening without prompting", in which case I would agree.

arihant 12y ago

So it is okay for a woman to say that women are better organized, that they have more empathy, but as a man I cannot claim that men are better hackers? I'm all for equality, but every single time I read one of these articles, I seem to read everything but equality. Being a programmer is a job, a male dominated job, at least in 2014. There are a lot of fields where men work which are female dominated, like a chef, or interior design, or fashion, or a nanny, or a nurse. You don't see men throwing tantrums like this. And neither do great female programmers, they are busy making us feel stupid.

JamesArgo 12y ago
Most chefs are male - people don't care because its a low status job. Programming is now high status, so now this gender gap is an issue. As many feminists have "misogynistic conspiracy" as their default explanation for any differnces in outcome among genders, they're not in a very good epistemic position to judge these things. Unjust discrimination is economically counterproductive, I don't expect ruthless corporations to support such a conspiracy when defection is more profitable. Aside from blinded applications and maybe interviews, not much needs to be done. We are building businesses here, not collecting data for a census.
- pekk 12y ago
  Being rich, being a VC, being Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates is a lot of status, but despite popular assumptions, that doesn't really rub off on the programming equivalent of a line cook or plumber.
vacri 12y ago
No, I don't think it's okay to say that kind of generalisation and I think it's fine to object, but you should object in a straightfoward manner rather than a tit-for-tat whine. You don't see men throwing tantrums like this. I constantly see men throwing tantrums, whenever the vaguest whiff of even moderate feminism can be smelled. Also, where did you get the idea that chefs are predominantly women? Not to mention that chefs are famously reknowned for throwing tanties. Same with fashion/interior designers, male or female.

jim_greco 12y ago

Anonymous message boards truly are an ugly place. One very accomplished woman speaks out about her mostly positive but colored with some negative experiences in the tech world and the top comment is an anti-affirmative action rant (bears and foxes) that brings out a bunch of old tropes while completely ignoring the history of our industry.

ANTSANTS 12y ago
How dare people express differing opinions.
malandrew 12y ago
Here's a history lesson: The change in gender ratios in our industry are very closely related to the rise of the mini-computer. Back when only companies like IBM and their customers owned computers, there was a much more equal gender ratio. When the mini-computer came about, the bears took interest in mini-computers. There were male bears and female bears. Disruptive innovation also disrupted the gender ratio. For example, here's a Google Image Search for Homebrew Computer Club: https://www.google.com/search?q=Homebrew+Computer+Club&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=PemNVPfBHMbSoASQ74KQBw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1573&bih=952 https://www.google.com/search?q=Homebrew+Computer+Club&es_sm... As you can see from the group images, the ratio of men to women in the Homebrew Computer Club was much skewed in having more men than women than was observed in the computing industry at the time (mainframes and whatnot). Go back and watch Triumph of the Nerds, narrated by Cringely and you'll see a completely different industry today. That documentary was created right at the beginning of tech becoming mainstream and money becoming the focus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuBXbvl1Sg4#t=4m39s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuBXbvl1Sg4#t=4m39s (watch about 5 minutes. the interview with Woz at 11m47s is worth a watch too) Look at the people in that video. Not a fox in sight, male (brogrammers) or female. These are people who were pursing their interest in computing despite being at the bottom of the social ladder. Woz even describes the PDP-8 manual as a being like a bible. Show me anyone who would have been envious of this lifestyle back in the 80s and 90s and I'll show you someone that is a nerd through and through and probably oblivious to gender or possibly even the opposite sex. I don't know about others here, but when I got involved with programming (~12 y.o.) in 94 or so, I was as alone as you could get. There were no other boys or girls. I had no role models. Neither of my parents were in tech. Prior to learning to program, I spend hours in my basement taking junk electronics apart that I found in the high school dumpster. None of my friends did this. When I decided I wanted to learn to program, I had to find out on my own about HS courses and courses at the local computer shop. I took a short visual basic course at the local computer shop (IIRC only 3 other people took the class with me) before I took a summer programming course at the local high school, where I was 12 years old and IIRC everyone else in the class was a sophomore or older and I don't even know what the gender ratio was in the class. It was irrelevant to me at the time. Unfortunately my relationship with programming took a 10+ hiatus when my family moved and I was no longer at a school that had support for programming when I first arrived and when AP computer science was added, the teacher was so bad that it killed my decision to go to school for CS (I went into physics instead). Anyone who is a bear cub today, boy or girl, white or black, enjoys several orders of magnitude more privilege in becoming involved with computers and programming that I could ever have dreamed of growing up interested in computers in the mid-90s. If I could be the same precocious 12 y.o. as I was in the mid-90s but instead in 2014, I would jump at the opportunity. There are no no real barriers to getting involved in programming today relative to two decades ago. If someone is truly a bear, then their gender or race are a insignificant relative to the privilege of being able to involve yourself in programming in 2014, with the many resources out there to help you learn that didn't exist when I was a kid. Foxes, male or female, only care about being included in tech now because there is a lot of money and job growth in this industry. No one was making a big deal about being included when being a nerd was socially undesirable. Furthermore, it's worth nothing that some of the female bears now resent the female foxes because they have made their life worse [0]. [0] http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software [1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/appendixb.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/appendixb.html

karsus 12y ago

The expectation that things work on merit and that you should be able to just work hard and succeed, seems to hit many people. Unfortunately, real merit seems to go beyond one's official role. You are better if you can move stuff forward and facilitate projects succeeding overall. If you can make things happen. Schools never taught us to think about life that way.

malandrew 12y ago

"If you have more women engineers on a team, they tend to bring more diverse opinions, but they also tend to build a collaborative culture. And a result, things get done faster. They’re more organized. There’s more empathy, which makes for a better work environment. It’s just better all around." - Sanghvi I don't understand why it's okay for a woman to make generalizations like this about the things they think women are better at, but it's totally not okay for a man to openly voice their opinions on what they think men are better at. If it's not acceptable for men to voice similar opinions, why do we not call out women when they do the same?