5 ms·

> About 83 percent of its software engineers are men, according to a recent New York Times report. On a side note, I'm tired of high percentage arguments, I've

> About 83 percent of its software engineers are men, according to a recent New York Times report. On a side note, I'm tired of high percentage arguments, I've seen it in countless articles. There's NOTHING inherently wrong in the ratio itself.

tajen 12y ago
This. We need equal opportunity and chances for everyone. It doesn't matter that a group doesn't have enough women yet, as long as all women and males today have equal chances of getting a nice career.
- egwor 12y ago
  and the equal chance (opportunity) of progression
  - collyw 12y ago
    As long as they put in equal effort into their career and don't go taking a few years out to look after their offspring or whatever else takes their fancy. (Men are capable of doing that as well as women these days aren't they?)
threeseed 12y ago
This opinion has been shown time and time again to be wrong by countless studies and real life examples. Having an imbalance of gender, age, race etc causes problems as it skews the corporate culture. So long as everyone is professional I personally don't see it being a catastrophic problem. But it is a major problem that the IT industry needs to continue to work on. More females in SME is something we should all strive for.
- bprieto 12y ago
  How exactly would you achieve that balance? Rejecting good male candidates in favor or worse female ones? Creating make-believe positions for women? If the percentage of females working in IT reflects the percentage of females with IT studies or interested in IT, I don't see a problem. Or at least I don't see a problem in the workspace. Maybe it's a problem of education, but I'm not sure even if this is the case or just a simple matter of different preferences between men and woman.
  - threeseed 12y ago
    It definitely starts with education and universities all around the world do work hard to encourage women into SME. So I can't imagine there is much low hanging fruit from that aspect. With regards to a quota system I do believe at the senior levels in particular directorships and board appointees they are essential. Other companies have been done for this a long time and it works well. The hard part is at the engineering level. I don't believe rejecting good candidates based on gender helps anybody. It just makes things worse. There are problems in the workplace though. But it has to do with the culture of IT rather than something specific. We tend to argue the idea rather that the person more often than not far too strongly. This is something that needs far more subtlety.
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      > With regards to a quota system I do believe at the senior levels in particular directorships and board appointees they are essential. Why only there? The fact that there are more people in board appointees is a result of men being more prominent at both ends of distribution of psychological properties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology : - more males than females in the top and bottom of the IQ distribution - males are generally more likely to display aggression than females and when any endeavour is successful, aggression is likely to enhance success, and when it is unsuccessful, it is likely to aggravate failure - men may have evolved to be more risk taking and socially dominant and sometimes taking risks pays off, sometimes not - etc - the general idea is that there are more men at both ends of the distribution in various things. This results men in being entrepreneurs, executives and board members more often than women, but it also results in men being homeless, sick and dying prematurely more often than women. It also has the result that men pay more taxes, and contribute more pension payments, but use less public services and are paid much less in pensions. Therefore, if we set quotas for senior levels in particular directorships and board appointees, shouldn't we also set quotas for the homeless, jobless and poor? I.e. if we apply quotas in some areas to disadvantage men, shouldn't we apply quotas in other areas to disadvantage women? For instance, reduce pensions to women after the age where men on average don't get any (i.e. are dead), and make a suitable percentage of old women homeless? (You must realise I'm intentionally quite provocative and not entirely serious, but I think these are valid points to discuss before setting gender quotas.)
- Red_Tarsius 12y ago
  Equal chances != perfect employee ratio. You can clearly see this in other fields, as shown by @imaginenore. I'm all for equal opportunity, but imho framing the real problem as "the gender percentage" brings wrong solutions.
  - threeseed 12y ago
    Again. This has been shown to be wrong. Fixing the percentage tends to fix the issue. Look at racial profiling of poor blacks by police. Adding more officers from similar backgrounds has been shown to reduce problematic incidents. Likewise adding females to boards through quota systems has been shown to improve governance and quality of decision making.
imaginenore 12y ago
Exactly. Look, boilermakers are 99.8% male. You never ever hear feminists complaining about that. https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chalabi-datalab-flightattendants-2.png https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chal...
- maxerickson 12y ago
  http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/07/myths-women-non-traditional-employment/ http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/07/myths-women-non-traditio...
  - nailer 12y ago
    Saying 'strength in a social construct' as that article does shows a massive ignorance of strength and is an insult to female strength athletes who work much harder than men for gains.
    - theorique 12y ago
      Anyone claiming that strength is a social construct is either disingenuous or using a different definition of the word. In terms of physical strength, there are obvious and clear differences between men and women: http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records
- marincounty 12y ago
  I sometimes think men and women need to be careful for what they wish for. Right now Programming is portrayed glamorous. People saw the Social network and said wow that's cool. They hear about how fun and stimulating it is to get the opportunity to work at Google. They hear about college dropouts making billions. That all might be somewhat true now, but will change. I don't see unions making any headway into the industry, and when the bubble bursts--why do I have a feeling the industry will go back to people staring into monitors, complaining about pay--long hours, vitamin D deficiency, and Coding will go back to Programming? (I hope this doesn't happen. I have met too many homeless former programmers that were hot in the 80's-90's)
prezjordan 12y ago
There is. Women want to be software engineers, and get scared when stuff like this happens. It's a problem, and we work in this industry, and can fix it. That's why I care about this and not so much about "women in roofing." I can't do anything to fix women becoming roofers at a higher rate. Technology I can fix.

tajen 12y ago

This. We need equal opportunity and chances for everyone. It doesn't matter that a group doesn't have enough women yet, as long as all women and males today have equal chances of getting a nice career.

egwor 12y ago
and the equal chance (opportunity) of progression
- collyw 12y ago
  As long as they put in equal effort into their career and don't go taking a few years out to look after their offspring or whatever else takes their fancy. (Men are capable of doing that as well as women these days aren't they?)

threeseed 12y ago

This opinion has been shown time and time again to be wrong by countless studies and real life examples. Having an imbalance of gender, age, race etc causes problems as it skews the corporate culture. So long as everyone is professional I personally don't see it being a catastrophic problem. But it is a major problem that the IT industry needs to continue to work on. More females in SME is something we should all strive for.

bprieto 12y ago
How exactly would you achieve that balance? Rejecting good male candidates in favor or worse female ones? Creating make-believe positions for women? If the percentage of females working in IT reflects the percentage of females with IT studies or interested in IT, I don't see a problem. Or at least I don't see a problem in the workspace. Maybe it's a problem of education, but I'm not sure even if this is the case or just a simple matter of different preferences between men and woman.
- threeseed 12y ago
  It definitely starts with education and universities all around the world do work hard to encourage women into SME. So I can't imagine there is much low hanging fruit from that aspect. With regards to a quota system I do believe at the senior levels in particular directorships and board appointees they are essential. Other companies have been done for this a long time and it works well. The hard part is at the engineering level. I don't believe rejecting good candidates based on gender helps anybody. It just makes things worse. There are problems in the workplace though. But it has to do with the culture of IT rather than something specific. We tend to argue the idea rather that the person more often than not far too strongly. This is something that needs far more subtlety.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    > With regards to a quota system I do believe at the senior levels in particular directorships and board appointees they are essential. Why only there? The fact that there are more people in board appointees is a result of men being more prominent at both ends of distribution of psychological properties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology : - more males than females in the top and bottom of the IQ distribution - males are generally more likely to display aggression than females and when any endeavour is successful, aggression is likely to enhance success, and when it is unsuccessful, it is likely to aggravate failure - men may have evolved to be more risk taking and socially dominant and sometimes taking risks pays off, sometimes not - etc - the general idea is that there are more men at both ends of the distribution in various things. This results men in being entrepreneurs, executives and board members more often than women, but it also results in men being homeless, sick and dying prematurely more often than women. It also has the result that men pay more taxes, and contribute more pension payments, but use less public services and are paid much less in pensions. Therefore, if we set quotas for senior levels in particular directorships and board appointees, shouldn't we also set quotas for the homeless, jobless and poor? I.e. if we apply quotas in some areas to disadvantage men, shouldn't we apply quotas in other areas to disadvantage women? For instance, reduce pensions to women after the age where men on average don't get any (i.e. are dead), and make a suitable percentage of old women homeless? (You must realise I'm intentionally quite provocative and not entirely serious, but I think these are valid points to discuss before setting gender quotas.)
Red_Tarsius 12y ago
Equal chances != perfect employee ratio. You can clearly see this in other fields, as shown by @imaginenore. I'm all for equal opportunity, but imho framing the real problem as "the gender percentage" brings wrong solutions.
- threeseed 12y ago
  Again. This has been shown to be wrong. Fixing the percentage tends to fix the issue. Look at racial profiling of poor blacks by police. Adding more officers from similar backgrounds has been shown to reduce problematic incidents. Likewise adding females to boards through quota systems has been shown to improve governance and quality of decision making.

imaginenore 12y ago

Exactly. Look, boilermakers are 99.8% male. You never ever hear feminists complaining about that. https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chalabi-datalab-flightattendants-2.png https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chal...

maxerickson 12y ago
http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/07/myths-women-non-traditional-employment/ http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/07/myths-women-non-traditio...
- nailer 12y ago
  Saying 'strength in a social construct' as that article does shows a massive ignorance of strength and is an insult to female strength athletes who work much harder than men for gains.
  - theorique 12y ago
    Anyone claiming that strength is a social construct is either disingenuous or using a different definition of the word. In terms of physical strength, there are obvious and clear differences between men and women: http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records
marincounty 12y ago
I sometimes think men and women need to be careful for what they wish for. Right now Programming is portrayed glamorous. People saw the Social network and said wow that's cool. They hear about how fun and stimulating it is to get the opportunity to work at Google. They hear about college dropouts making billions. That all might be somewhat true now, but will change. I don't see unions making any headway into the industry, and when the bubble bursts--why do I have a feeling the industry will go back to people staring into monitors, complaining about pay--long hours, vitamin D deficiency, and Coding will go back to Programming? (I hope this doesn't happen. I have met too many homeless former programmers that were hot in the 80's-90's)

prezjordan 12y ago

There is. Women want to be software engineers, and get scared when stuff like this happens. It's a problem, and we work in this industry, and can fix it. That's why I care about this and not so much about "women in roofing." I can't do anything to fix women becoming roofers at a higher rate. Technology I can fix.