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Over the last several months, I’ve witnessed many controversial discussions among my friends, in my San Francisco community, and on online forums about James Demore’s memorandum. People of both genders are wrestling with the fact that fewer women go into computer science and trying to find explanations that balance their experience, empathy, and ethical aspirations. I’ve heard lots of good-intentioned people consider discouraging theories of biological superiority because they can’t find any other compelling explanation (like this post on HackerNews, for example). As a woman who studied computer science, worked at some of the top tech firms, and has founded a software startup, I’d like to share my take on why fewer women go into CS and my opinion on how to address the issue.
[...] I graduated from Stanford with a BS in Mathematical & Computational Sciences in 2015, interned at Apple as a software engineer, and worked as an Associate Product Manager at Google 2015-2017. In October, I founded a video editing website called Kapwing and am working on the startup full-time. Although I’m only 25, I’ve already seen many of my female friends choose majors/careers outside of STEM and have been inside of many predominately-male classes, organizations, and teams.
This article is one person’s humble perspective, and I do not speak for every woman in tech. But hopefully having the view of someone who has “been there” can help people trying to understand why there are fewer women in tech.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday May 11 2018, @11:20PM (5 children)
I must confess that I've never asked any women for their take on my theory:
Intelligent, hard-working women have the luxury of a choice of lucrative careers.
They don't choose coding because professions other than coding are more accepting of women. At Caltech - which had a ratio of six men to one women when I was there in the early '80s - had very few female Physics majors but many female Biology majors.
I've worked with female coders throughout my career. I never saw or heard anything that seemed discriminatory against women, but even so there were very few female coders.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:21AM
Is it socially acceptable to herself and her social support structure to be involved with computers?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:31AM
Isn't it funny how, when a woman writes something like this, it's the topic of serious discussion and analysis, but when a guy wrote it it was the trigger for mass vilification and him losing his job?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
How about construction industries? I've known literally thousands of carpenters, pipefitter, welders, roofers, concrete workers, sheetrock men, cabinet makers, masons - on and on it goes. In all my years in construction, I've seen one team of two women who were electricians. One genuine carpenter, and two carpenter's helpers. One welder. Three different cabinet makers and finish carpenters, all of whom worked alongside their husbands. If you see a woman on a construction site, it's fairly safe to bet that she's either a secretary, or an expediter driving around in the company pickup. Not one crane operator, no cement truck drivers, no pump truck operators, not even a boom truck operator. I see a lot of women on forklifts in manufacturing, but you can't get a woman on a trackhoe, or backhoe.
I don't really think that social pressure accounts for all of that. I see many women in industry, doing most of the same jobs that men do. What I don't see, are women in maintenance. The chicks don't want to get dirty, or sweat, or get grease on them, or carry tools around, or do much of anything that requires muscle.
I have to laugh a little here. Most jobs I've held for most of my life, they ask, "Can you lift and move at least 75 pounds?" Many required that you lift 100 pounds. My job today only requires that I can lift and move 40 pounds. I'm no longer sure what my lifting capacity is, but I'm pretty sure it's still over 100 pounds. The heaviest thing I've lifted recently, that I know the actual weight, are fifty pound sacks of feed.
(Score: 2, Informative) by mmarujo on Monday May 14 2018, @11:00AM (1 child)
This right here, is why I think, at least part of the "problem" is created by greed.
"I want to be a boss" - So will complaint about the lack of women / black / whatever in corporate Administrations.
My ^personal^ experience show something very different. At my workplace there are 5 women CxO and only 2 men. And we still had the "Women cannot have a break" speech last month.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 16 2018, @04:53PM
Because in general we can't. Your post is the equivalent of saying "I just had a cheeseburger half an hour ago, world hunger is a non-problem."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @11:33PM (16 children)
Not exactly, females are more people orientated from an early age and research suggests this is evolutionary. Males are interested in things, again the science suggests evolutionary advantage.
Females (statistically) are not interested in things and do not play in the same way as young males.
Also fewer female sanitation workers, is this not another problem that needs addressing? How about the difference between males and females in childcare or nursing, should this not be equal too?
The problem here twofold; firstly that computing is by nature a solo intellectual pursuit. There is simply no other way to build competence and no amount of "social" bullshit changes the discipline. Secondly why is it a problem at all? Women who are interested have historically done well in the field and will continue to earn the respect of their male peers. Why is it a problem in STEM but not sanitation and to what end are we suggesting females go against their nature and desires? To me it appears that the equality and diversity drive is the problem here. I would suggest that people should be free to choose their field of endeavour and should not be judged on gender, race or sexuality but on merit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Friday May 11 2018, @11:44PM
Parent is spot on.
I just add that females in tech oriented classes were basically put on pedestals here in Europe, so, if now males are wary about approaching them and asking them out, the reasons have NOTHING to do with the STEM field itself, or they would have been valid back then. It's politics. Is it bad, is it good? I have no first hand knowledge and I definitely don't trust mainstream media nor alternative media narratives, so I don't judge.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:03AM (9 children)
Merit? No, no, no, no... that has resulted in non-diverse outcomes. Diversity must come before all things! If there are not equal amounts of men in nursing, then men will be
forcedassigned to be nurses. Likewise, women will beforcedassigned to work on the garbage trucks. Anyone who complains about theirslaveryassignment will be shown to be a racist bigot homophobe, and punished quite thoroughly.It will be a glorious new Diverse future
ComradeCitizenwork drone unit!(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:45AM (8 children)
You jest but dig deep enough behind the vacuous "diversity is our strength" rhetoric and these are the arguments you'll see emerging. I have no problem with employers using (typically misapplied) MBTI personality testing when hiring employees. That is the kind of "positive discrimination" I can live with. Extroverts, gossips and those who are simply not technically minded have no place on a software team. These are the primary consideration and no Stalinist quota system will ever produce a better outcome.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by KiloByte on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:36AM (4 children)
This. I see that every top coder is asocial — if they don't have full-blown Asperger's, it's something close. Linus codes in a bathrobe and keeps badmouthing people. Hans Reiser, well you know. Those who do enjoy contact with people are CEOs and marketeers rather than engineers — ie, they deal with peddling bullshit rather than actually creating stuff.
Thus, following the advice of this article is precisely the wrong way, if we want to have better software, that works more efficiently, gets implemented faster, is more reliable and bug-free. So what if even less women get employed coding it? I see no downsides other than hurting some ideologist's rhetoric. Proper asocial female hackers with Asperger-like behaviour exist, they're merely rare. Don't discriminate against those, and all should be fine.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:16AM (2 children)
Most top engineers I've known (around 6) has gone off on their own forming businesses to become rich. It doesn't pay well to be anti social.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:21AM
Depends how you define "top".
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Sunday May 13 2018, @10:08AM
So they're not engineers anymore.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 13 2018, @05:33PM
Is this what you call a killer argument? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:39AM (2 children)
Your fear is showing, your asburger's, misogynist, Red Pillar, gamergater fear is showing. You have never spoken to a girl, have you? Are you afraid of child-support payments like they were some sort of cooties? Did it ever occur to you that women could be people, too? And even colleagues, friends, fellow citizens? No? Well, I guess we are just gonna have to bugger you, after the mandatory video-game Teabaggery, and voting for Trump. MAGAites!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:14PM
Aristarchus, you've threatened to bugger just about everyone on this forum. I notice you've never threatened any of the ladies though. I think it's you who is afraid of women, you misogynistic pig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:34PM
Of course women are people, but men are not. They are not allowed to make mistakes, or to be awkward, or to be works-in-progress. They must only speak when spoken to, and shall answer only in the correct format, with the appropriate tone, and using acceptable body language. They shall observe the unwritten standards of proxemics when speaking. Micro-expressions must be suppressed, or there will be consequences.
Men are not allowed to speak to women uninvited, but are also not allowed to not speak to women uninvited. If spontaneous gatherings of two or more men occur, a vote must be taken to elect emissaries to travel to the nearest woman and, after making sufficient placating gestures and executing proper salutations, invite her to join the spontaneous gathering to monitor the proceedings and make sure nothing untoward happens or that professional information goes un-shared.
No man shall be deemed better at his job than a woman is at hers. No man shall be recognized for accomplishments unless an equal or greater number of women also be similarly recognized. Women cannot be faulted for any failure to meet standards. Men will be summarily fired for failing to anticipate how to exceed standards.
This is the dystopia that this woman's male peers live in. But poor her. Poor, poor her.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:20AM
That's what we were taught when we were young, but this is the differentiation generation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:54AM (3 children)
That really is the telling observation that blows this whole farce up. There are literally hundreds of job codes where women outnumber men, often by margins similar to the disparity in tech being discussed. Yet there, to date, have been precisely zero efforts to adsress any of those "problems", zero major conferences devoted to attempting to get to the bottom of those problems, no major politicians making hay of the issue. Yet it follows logically that if the imbalance in the male dominated fields is to be corrected, by definition, it will require removing women against their will from female dominated fields and replacing them with the men displaced from their preferred occupations. Or is the plan to simply toss the unemployed men into the ovens?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:42AM (1 child)
False, jmorris. Not true. You are, in fact, once again, incorrect. Please post again when you have any, yes, just any, evidence to support your bigoted claims. Until then, SN is in the market for a female right-wing nut-job, a "jmorrisette", to provide some balance and diversity to the far-right corpse here at SoylentNews.
(Score: 2) by Tara Li on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:59PM
Let's go through this and find the falsehood:
Statement of opinion.
https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/54e376936bb3f70d36c66d19-750-525.png [businessinsider.com]
Quite a few categories here, several of which include dozens of occupational codes. I think "hundreds of job codes" is not an exaggeration, nor the similarity in disparity.
This is an easily falsifiable statement - simply identify any of those conferences.
Again, find a major politician using this as a platform plank - I'll accept anyone running for a State Legislature, State Executive, Federal Legislature, or Federal Executive position that polls above 40% at the state level, or 20% at the federal level.
This does seem reasonable. If there are X jobs in a field, and we require that half of them be assigned to each major gender (let's avoid the entire non-binary gender argument raging - what's the representative level for a person who identifies as 'a yellow-scaled wingless dragonkin' and also 'an expansive ornate building.') then this is going to require that some who currently hold those jobs being forced out of them and assigned new jobs in fields with the opposite imbalance. One could perhaps argue that appropriate education and hiring outreach will naturally lead to those balances, but what are you going to do if they don't?
If the educational and hiring outreach doesn't work, then perhaps you start simply applying quotas - you only hire the appropriate gender until the balance is reached, and then once a male quits, you hire another male and one a female quits, you hire another female - and if you don't have qualified candidates of the appropriate gender, you simply leave the position unfilled.
But those lead to the situation being solved in some hypothetical future time. If you want it to happen now, well, forced firing and hiring becomes the only solution...
Other than forced removal from existence of the appropriate number of males - metaphorically "tossing them into the ovens".
I have failed to spot the falsehood - please identify it and illustrate why it is false. This is, after all, the essence of the scientific method - falsifying theories until you're left with the truth.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:36PM
The original plan was to make women work for the same - as typically calculated - "family" income. Since the beginning of the movement every dollar paid to females was taken from their husbands income. The family total stayed pretty much the same. (St. Louis Feds have the best data available and if one does not trust conspiracy theorists one can easily process raw with a simple Python or Perl script)
Women work for free. Yes, as in free beer. They got to realize this and change their strategy accordingly.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @11:41PM (43 children)
And why the fuck should I care about the opinion of some rich bitch tech cunt.
Ghetto dweller here. I was born into poverty, I read all the coding books at the neighborhood library, I went to all the worst schools, I got top grades, I graduated college with honors, and I am denied employment in any and all tech jobs. Tech jobs are only for rich people to get richer. You don't pull yourself out of poverty by your bootstraps with tech skills. No, you die poor in the gutter.
The fuck I care about women in tech. Why don't you ever see any poor people in tech.
May the subject of this article die painfully of a cancerous yeast infection. Bitch.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @11:50PM (14 children)
Agreed. When I start seeing articles decrying the lack of men in nursing, and about how public school education systems should change to encourage more men to become teachers, then I might start giving a damn about women saying yet again that they don't like working in tech.
The real reason so many women can't handle tech work -- the computers Don't Care about how you flippin' FEEL. The code works, or it doesn't work. The robot works, or it doesn't work. To branch out beyond just tech: the bridge stays up, or it falls down. No feels. No friends to hug you and pat your back as you cry about the mean old world not acting like you want it to.
To those women who do like to work in tech, that's great. Now get back to work like all the rest of us.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:02AM (2 children)
Do you read nursing and education news sources as often as you do tech ones?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sulla on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:21AM
Does the average woman do the reverse? I recently saw an interview with a first wave feminist and she talked about how the goal was equality of opportunity and not the equity that we are seeing today. That masculinity and competitiveness must be held high as virtues because men are needed to do the garbage duty, high voltage line work, etc. Rather than force equity in the fields women want because of the money they can earn they need to have the barriers that keep them from competing on equal terms removed. It seems to me the best system is no additional barriers to entry but allowing the chips to fall as they may in regards to makeup. Nature seems to dictate women are more likely to be nurses than engineers and men more likely to be engineers than nurses. There are exceptions to the rule and that is fine let them compete based on merit, merit being ability and not group identity.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:27AM
I follow layman news sources and they whine about how them mysogynerds are driving wamen away from tech all the FSM-damn time. It's not just on tech news, it's everywhere.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:52AM (10 children)
Believe it or not, some of us are asking that. I've seen a disturbing number of people calling themselves feminists who seem to be less about bringing women up than knocking men down, and have asked several, "why?" That is, what good does it do *just* to knock people down? It's not enough to point out where men went wrong. I think we also need to show them where they could do right.
The men I've known mostly aren't monsters. What many of them are, though, is frustrated as hell and too beaten down (almost entirely by other men and male-dominated systems, mind...) to have energy or emotional capital to spare trying to analyze why. They reject feminist thinking, or what they perceive as such, to varying degrees and at varying levels of knee-jerk, because it feels like just another attack on them. And some of them are hiding nurturing, protective, giving qualities--or have smashed them almost entirely--because society tells them as men they're not allowed to be like that. Even if they don't think of it in these terms, that is lying to themselves and amputating themselves, and it must cause terrible mental suffering. It's as if they're told the very tools and methods necessary to be themselves are unmanly to use.
It's a vicious cycle. It really sucks. Men do this to other men, the elite to the poor, and then tell them to turn around and blame women for their ills. I think if the average man were willing and able and felt safe enough to sit down and really *think* about this stuff, they'd wake up. They'd see it. And maybe we'd have more of them deciding to grow into the humans they could be, and shine their light, and to hell with what other people think is or is not manly.
But, I don't know what to do or how to help, aside from not playing identity politics with feminism and not losing sight of what the end goal is supposed to be :( Maybe it's going to take a couple generations more.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:51AM
You've got to distinguish between first-wave and third-wave feminists (not sure where second-wave comes in, the boundaries are a bit vague). First-wave was about giving women equal rights and opportunities. By the time we got to third-wave, the situation had cleared up quite a lot - not perfect but quite a lot - and most of the original problems had been solved, or were being solved. So it was necessary to create new things to attack, and the goal became feminist class war, not creating equal rights for women, in the same way that later waves of (UK) labour unions went from gaining rights for workers to waging class war against anyone outside the working classes, and occasionally against other groups in the working classes, e.g. inter-union disputes.
All movements are like that, initially you're trying to reform or overthrow the establishment, then you've become the establishment, and you either live with that or find new enemies to deal with. Some feminists have taken the latter path, thus third-wave feminism.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Saturday May 12 2018, @10:03AM
Yeah, I think the vast majority of people don't really introspect or cross examine their own world view much as their life goes on, so new generations probably is what it will take. I think there have been noticable jumps in what are considered social norms between each generation, so things will certainly change. The only question is whether the changes will be in the right direction or not.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:21PM (7 children)
Wow. Hazuki doesn't hate all men. She only hates assertive men who aren't also progressive.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:10PM (6 children)
I can count on one hand the number of men I personally know *and* hate. Believe it or not, I hate nearly as many women, and the person I hate most is a woman, my nutso ex.
What is it like to be so weak that even the implication that I might dislike you is this traumatizing to you? Doesn't it suck to live like that? Are you feel oppressed? (In case you need clarification, no, I don't hate you, but I'm definitely laughing at you right now).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @09:12PM (5 children)
Good! Use your aggressive feelings, girl. Let the hate flow through you.
Amusing misquotes aside, I'd let it go if you can manage. It does nobody any good and poisons your own soul.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 13 2018, @03:10AM (4 children)
Tone trolling is the last, and sometimes the first, refuge of the scoundrel. Projection is right up there too somewhere (hint, hint).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 13 2018, @10:16AM (3 children)
I'm not trolling in any manner and, aside from the Star Wars quote which I couldn't pass up, I wasn't joking either. You hold on to hatred and it will help nobody but it most certainly will destroy your life. Hatred feels like easy fuel for doing what needs done in regards to the person you're hating but using it gives the victory to them. No matter how harshly you deal with them, the venom you've decided to make part of who you are means they've caused you to do worse to yourself.
It's the difference between beating a child because you're mad about what they did and giving them a few swats as punctuation to help the lecture you just gave them sink in. It's the difference between wanting to destroy someone who's hurt you and just doing what's necessary to keep it from happening again.
We don't get along much. We give each other a hell of a lot of grief. I don't hate you though. Hell, I don't even dislike you. You amuse the shit out of me at times and I sincerely enjoy trading barbs with you. Even if I did dislike you though, I'd tell you the same thing. Since I don't hate anyone else, I've no cause to want them to suffer unnecessarily. Thus the advice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 13 2018, @07:54PM (2 children)
You don't read so good, do ya boy...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 13 2018, @08:00PM (1 child)
Sigh. You can lead a horse to water...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 14 2018, @04:33AM
I know, it's futile, but somehow I seem to keep trying anyway :/ Not sure why, since you've already revealed yourself to be completely unrepentant. Oh well, if water in the here and now won't do it, maybe fire in the hereafter and an unfortunate reincarnation will...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday May 11 2018, @11:52PM
I suggest to make yourself employable. That is, improve some free software until you hurt commercial interests and see if they hire you to stop you doing that. Or find some promising project, contribute a bit and become consultant for it. Waiting in line to get hired in some meat grinder big firm together with those socializing nouvelle cuisine programmers and getting laid off when management needs to improve the share price is, otherwise, the default.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:15AM (1 child)
I dropped out of college when I managed to find a reasonable full-time job. Most but not all of a Physics degree wasn't going to get me very far.
Much of my therapy with Dr. K focussed on building my career. When I was at Apple my job title was "Senior Engineer". At AMCC it was "Principal Software Engineer".
Pretty good for a guy who beat three felony charges by volunteering to admit myself in the state funny farm.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:26AM
'Nuff said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:30AM (1 child)
If you aren't rich or have gone to the best schools in CS, you may be excluded from getting your first job at Facebook, Google and their ilk.
Any other place will almost take anybody who can remember to put a semicolon at the end of a line.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:07AM
Which is a good reason to avoid being rich or having been to the best schools. Or you might have standards that make you aim higher than facebook, google and their ilk.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:52AM (15 children)
It's a quality rant but it's absolutely incorrect on every single point. The job I had right before going into computer repair (with zero formal training, only fixing my own shat) was as a cash register jockey at an EZ-Mart. Six months later I was the sysadmin of the ISP owned by the same company as the repair shop. A year after that I was a private consultant charging more than ten times an hour what I made as a sysadmin. No degree. Nobody taught me anything. I put the work in and learned everything on my own time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:21AM (8 children)
That's actually not an unusual path for both software and hardware specialists. (And probably more common for those that deal with both software and hardware - such as embedded systems, etc).
The idea that you have to be a CS or math major is true for a small cadre of corner cases in the computing industry.
Encryption and some types of AI research are the hot areas these days, it use to be databases and such.
Almost all the elite programmers I've worked with did not have CS degrees, and the ones that did were hard to keep on task. Bored perhaps (or so they acted), but more likely completely out of their depth when it came to getting real production grade systems operational without even once finding a place for this-weeks-buzz-algorithm.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:32AM (7 children)
Yup. It's the old Engineer vs. Scientist thing all over again. The scientist may very well have a greater depth of knowledge on theory but the engineer will pretty much always get the project done faster, better, and cheaper than the scientist because his job is not computers, it's getting shit done.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:55PM (6 children)
It still surprises me the extent of the lying and political considerations that go into hiring decisions. It's like employers hire people without degrees more to embarrass proponents of higher education, stick it to colleges and professors, and they rate that sort of thing even higher than competence and honesty, which is what should be the first considerations. Point to someone like Bill Gates and say, "See? He didn't need a degree!" They also put a lot of weight on a particular mindset that is perhaps best described as being a willing fascist slave, or at least putting on a convincing pretense of that. Be a "company man". With the EEOC breathing down their necks, they all say they want to best skill match, and often a "self-starter", but many really don't want either.
Then there's the too heavy weight they place on experience. They seem not to grasp that star programmers don't need experience in a particular technology, can't believe anyone can pick up such a complicated thing as a new to them programming language in a matter of days or just hours. So what star code monkeys have had to do is play the game, claim years of experience in whatever tech is supposedly wanted, knowing that they'll be able to cram for the tech interview and probably pass it.
Ideally, a degree in CS ought to be good enough to show that a candidate is a competent programmer. Then too, job requirements are often hugely inflated, to winnow out would be candidates. They may well ask for a degree for a job that doesn't need one.
As to your contention that scientists tend to be impractical, while engineers "get shit done", you ought to be a little more cautious and less arrogant about that presumption. Ever heard the expression "a couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library"? An engineer getting shit done is going to be looking real ignorant if the glorious engineering work of months solves a problem that a scientist already knew had been solved and could simply copy any of several better solutions and apply it in one day. One of the worst cases of reinventing the wheel I heard of was an engineer who upon promotion to a management position, insisted on hiring a team to design and build a device the company already had. He was advised that they already had it, but wouldn't even look at it and pushed ahead. Maybe he thought the existing device was such poor quality it wasn't worth a look, but how would he know if he didn't at least look? As I recall, they produced a working device but it was inferior to the existing one. About half a year later, they demoted him to junior engineer.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @09:21PM (5 children)
Need, no. A mildly desirable trait that will save you a day or five worth of man hours over the length of their employment. Not a need though.
You think engineers can't or don't look into the best way to solve a problem? You have an exceedingly odd idea of what an engineer is then. That aside, unless you're performing rocket surgery, nobody cares about having the best solution. They want a good one that doesn't cost them a lot of money or time in upkeep. That is where the scientists fail. Shiny and new is never a good answer unless old and reliable will not get the job done.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday May 12 2018, @10:18PM (1 child)
> You think engineers can't or don't look into the best way to solve a problem?
No, I'm saying engineers can get arrogant and misunderstand the nature and difficulty of a problem. It doesn't help much to look into the best way to solve a problem if you are solving the wrong problem. I've encountered many EEs who think CS is trivially easy, and they will be able to figure out any CS problem, quickly, if they need to.
As an example of less bright engineers making a mountain out of a molehill, the company's product had 5 interchangeable parts. For each part, there could be 100 choices. Well, many of them had a penchant for monolithic diagrams. They wanted one diagram for each combination. But that meant they'd have to draw 100^5 = 10 billion different diagrams. They got a bit panicky about it, and started scrambling around. Proposed hiring some programmers to create programs to generate all 10 billion possible diagrams. Of course, they never sold all 10 billion combos, for the simple reason that they didn't have that quantity of sales. And further, some combinations were used for many customers. So they were thinking they could generate the diagrams on an as needed basis. What do you suppose they did?
>That is where the scientists fail. Shiny and new is never a good answer
Wow, whatever my opinion of engineers, your opinion of scientists looks pretty poor. Fail? Scientists don't fall for "shiny and new". They evaluate the merits. Maybe a shiny and new way is best, or maybe an old classic way is best.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:16PM
Oh, sure. That's everyone though.
Works in theory, not in practice. Much like engineering vs. science in general. An engineer worth the name isn't going to want to put anything into service that doesn't have a solid track record doing what it's being asked to do. A scientist will just think that if it's been proven copacetic in lab conditions that it'll work fine in the real world as well. The scientist could possibly be correct but it's a very foolish choice to use their opinion over that of the person who is going to have to make it work and keep it working, even though outside lab conditions it falls to shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Demena on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:49AM (2 children)
One thing you are both missing. Of those scientists and engineers, just how many of them can write a UI that makes a product usable? It can take a number of different mindsets to produce something usable.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:57AM (1 child)
From what I've seen? Nobody at any significant tech company. They all make the same mistake. See, a UI doesn't have to be fantastic. It only needs to be pretty good and to never, ever change. Change from a mediocre UI to an amazing new UI with important shit moved all around where it's frustrating as hell to find is a net loss in usability.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 13 2018, @03:42AM
Yes. For example, in some recent revision of Libre/open/whatever Office, the spreadsheet function to fill down/left/right/up got moved from the "edit" menu item to the "sheet" menu item. How do I know? Every fucking time I want to do that action I start by opening the "edit" menu -- think "you fucking bastards" then hit several other menu headings to find it.
I've been using this software since it was a commercial product Sun published (Star Office) -- definitely was using it prior to 2003 at home, and after 2003 when I opened my own business, I have used it heavily and constantly since. I'd like to find the asshole who did that and make sure every menu he or she ever sees for the rest of his/her life, has all the alpha characters changed to "*".
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:26AM (5 children)
Right. Then you woke up.
(Score: 2, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @10:22AM (4 children)
If that's what you gotta believe to get you through the day, go right on ahead. I quite understand that reality is just too much for some folks to handle.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:35PM (3 children)
Says the guy who lives his life based on absolutes and ignores the things that contradict his worldview.
You are a troll whose opinions get discarded due to being a hot bag of air.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @09:22PM (2 children)
Weak. Troll harder. Maybe read a few hundred aristarchus posts and see if any proficiency sinks in.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:11PM (1 child)
Wow, thank you, Buzz! I am starting to tear up . . .
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:01AM
I give credit where it's due. You troll with more skill and style than most anyone here.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:50AM (4 children)
Not that you asked for my opinion, but I have to say that if I was hiring, I probably wouldn't hire you, either. Julia Enthoven (the blogger) shared her thoughts in a positive manner and has some decent recommendations. You attacked her with extremely vulgar names and a misdirected anger that I can only describe as toxic and disproportionate. That is not the type of worker that I would want to hire.
"But I would never act that way in a job interview," I assume you'd say. Maybe so, but I suspect that hints of your true behavior probably leak through, or maybe you give off an uncomfortable vibe, fake-smiling while trying to hide your true self.
You described yourself as a "Ghetto dweller". I suspect that if you stopped acting like you were from the ghetto with your self-centered (not caring about other people's problems), entitlement-minded ("I am denied employment"), profane attack-dog conduct, you might land a tech job.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Sulla on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:40AM (3 children)
Maybe he was a positive person until the "cant find a job at graduation" turned into "why do you have an employment gap" turned into "well fine fuck everyone". Took me four years to find a career in accounting because the hiring environment is so brutal, or was? Boomers who tell you to just walk up and shake the guys hand yet wont give you an interview without five years experience for a 25/hr entry level accounts payable job.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @10:25AM (2 children)
Naw, man, nobody gets to make excuses for who they are. That's something only they get to decide, so only they get to take credit or blame for it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:53PM (1 child)
I partially agree... I use to fully agree until an idiosyncratic virus eat one of my tears duct. I use to be able to spend ridiculous amount of time in front of the computer screen, now I suffer if I go past 32h/w... You dont get to choose to get sick. If I had caught that shit before the start off my career I would not had a lucrative career in CS...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @09:26PM
Yup. And you would have done something else that required intelligence, did not require staring at a screen, and been as well paid I expect. Setbacks aren't there to give you something to blame, they're there so people think you're a badass for having overcome them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:05AM
Speaking as what is generally considered the resident "jerk" I gotta say you are coming off like a total jerk. Nobody wants to hire a sob story, they have things that need doing and need people who can do them, hopefully without causing so much drama that somebody else's work ends up consisting mostly of cleaning up behind you. Graduating with honors from "the worst" school ain't going to get anyone's attention, and if you can't figure out why you might not quite be smart enough for this ride. Show your work. What have you DONE. Where can your name be found in the CREDITS file of a project an employer might have heard of and thus have some respect for? Do you have a local reference for a major project you accomplished that demonstrates skills in an area you are seeking a job in? You ain't got a pretty degree from a top ten school (and the debt that comes with it) so what DO you have? Figure that out and work that angle.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:11AM
Not to derail your articulately stated point, but are there such things? I know the human papilloma virus can, but yeast infections? Or maybe you meant the yeast organism itself was inflicted with cancer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Friday May 11 2018, @11:41PM (10 children)
Oh look, another article/blogpost about how men should change to accommodate women.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:16AM (9 children)
Get used to it. Next up: articles about how men should change to accommodate transsexuals. And you wonder why China's economy is overtaking ours.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:55AM (4 children)
Next up how women must accommodate incels.
Whining snowflakes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Sulla on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:25AM (3 children)
Where you are wrong is that incels just want to be left alone to hate women for what they are, rather than expect women to fit their needs. /r9k/ doesnt have a thread an hour about sexbots because they want to deal with real women.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:36AM (1 child)
Left alone. Like the one who mowed down peeps over it in Canada?
He merely changed them into corpses.
And the hate they have isn't solitary. They project it every chance they get. But creating negative emotions in women isn't changing them.
Spoken like any other manipulator.
(Score: 3, Informative) by unauthorized on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:14AM
Riight, and feminists want equality like Valerie Solanas. Because it makes PERFECT SENSE to judge a group of people based on the worst examples you can scrounge from the depths of the Internet.
Yes you have. Not a very good one.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:22PM
Sulla, have you ever spent any time *reading* what the incels write?! No, they do NOT want to be "left alone," they want to make us suffer for daring not to provide them with on-demand access to our bodies and doing constant emotional labor for them. Some of them outright advocate for rape as a measure of control, or as some sort of general revenge against the entire female half of the human race. Then there's the ones who seriously suggest "redistribution of sex," as if sex were money, and with the closest thing to a straight face they own advocate for government intervention to force women to have sex with them.
And not just any women. The ones they deem attractive, regardless of how fat or slovenly or stupid or evil or brutal they themselves might be. It all comes down to "sexual market value" (and they have some truly disgusting ideas about this, too). If someone suggested that all the women who can't get laid due to weight, hygiene, antisociality etc meet up with them and they all try and work something out, they'd rebel, because what this is really about is they think they're fucking entitled to some supermodel-whore-domestic-mother-wife amalgam simply for existing and being male.
This is "aggrieved entitlement." Fuck that shit, fuck incels, fuck their sociopathic horseshit, and fuck anyone who doesn't call them out on it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:12AM (3 children)
I've thought for a while that it was other countries who were trying to push this. It has become trivially easy with the internet. It would benefit people to read The Art of War, it is the volksgeist of some cultures.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:40AM (2 children)
Can we find a Russian text so we can blame this on the Russians too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @10:33AM (1 child)
Unlikely. "Men are better" is the default here.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @09:30PM
Only because it's true, on average, though. Mind you, my standard of judgment is being able to legibly write your name in the snow with your urine. Yours may differ.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:08AM (8 children)
And in neither case did either woman think "hey, why don't *I* make the first move?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:24AM (7 children)
While probably all the smart males were thinking: "I don't want to get involved in a potential harassment allegation now or 40 years from now when she misinterprets or reinterprets some consensual activity as a #metoo moment."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:24AM (5 children)
This.
She says herself:
Perfect definition of guys avoiding a hornet's nest for one casual remark, or poor choice of words.
That she fails to realize this is telling.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:41PM (1 child)
Let me regal you of the tail I was accused of sexual harassment.
The lady in question was critiquing my code. She obviously had not read the code or the design documents or asked how it worked.
I then butted in and told them exactly how it worked and what she needed to change in her documents.
"fuck you you are always butting in when it does not concern you"
"It IS my code I wrote it and designed it and fuck you too"
2 hours later I am getting sexual harassment training.
Every other engineer (including the women came by and thanked me for telling her off).
Lesson learned. Stay out of the mess of other people making mistakes. Let them fail all by themselves even if it makes everyone elses job harder. She also made her own job harder in that case. NO one and I mean NO one would help her after that. They did not want to accidentally trigger her. It was tough for her to do her job at that point because she needed everyone else to correct all of her mistakes.
So fuck yeah I stay away from them. That same interaction with a guy would have not involved HR.
I see guys making the 'mistake' over and over where I now work. Woman comes by asking for help. They trip over themselves trying to help her. A couple of days ago I 'rescued' one from a help gaggle. "here is exactly what you need and why (blah blah blah tech details here)". "Oh that makes sense now, thank you". Everyone then could go back to work from the distraction that was created. She did not mean to and neither did they. But it happens, because they are rare. I helped because until that gaggle was fixed I was not going to be able to do anything with 5 dudes yelling over each other one cube over. I broke my rule because I wanted to get some work done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:02PM
They need her for the diversity points, so damn sure the company wanted to cover their ass.
Oh, and fuck you, you worthless white male expert. There's tons of you, but only a few women available.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:35PM (2 children)
I would say, "perfect definition of sissies and wimps". As a young man, I had some apprehensions about approaching women. As I matured, I came to understand that women are people. I can say something to one woman, and she's offended - the next woman laughs long and loud at the same thing. A man who can act natural, pretend that he knows what he's doing, and talk to women can't go terribly wrong. Take your cues from the women's reactions.
Incels are candy asses, along with bronies, metrosexuals, and a long list of other wimps. Guys who are afraid of women don't deserve to pass their genes on to the next generation, so nothing is lost with them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @01:46AM
I like your optimism and positive attitude, but I have to warn you it's a minefield. There are women who will take deep offense at what seems like an innocent statement on your part and seek to have you fired as a result. And it's not that rare. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye4fAZTkvNg [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday May 15 2018, @04:56AM
If being a sissy and wimp means not spending $10k on legal fees and getting fired and blacklisted, then so be it. Penis points (e-peen) are not worth that much to me.
You're quite fortunate to have grown up when you did, because in modern society that woman who you offended would have gotten the police to help you earn your username.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:55PM
And a smart move that is, too. On this subject men are guilty until proven innocent. Don't interact at all. If you can't avoid an interaction, always practice MCT (Minimum Correct Thing). Give the absolute minimum correct information to respond. If you can get away with saying you don't know, say you don't know.
Keep your work life and social life entirely separate. Never socialize with female colleagues, even at work functions. Never drink at work functions, or dance, or do anything else that might compromise your self-control or lead to situations that can be misinterpreted, because they will be. But don't be hostile, either. It's a fine line to walk, but keep things polite, and terse.
This might sound overly cautious. You might work with women that seem OK, that seem like you can let your guard down with. But that is fraught. If your relationship with them should ever sour for any reason, be it personal or professional rivalry, they will weaponize everything against you. And they will win with HR and courts of law every single time. Your life and career will be destroyed, and there will be nothing you can do to ever get out from under that cloud in this age of social media.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:15AM (2 children)
Yeh. A lot of male software students will be single heterosexuals that don't get many opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex, let alone ones that share similar interests (i.e. software). Therefore I'd estimate a good half of those there might actually consider a female on their course as a potential mate. They'll also know that it's quite possible that she would not feel a similar way about them. So they keep quiet. Basically, they're all waiting for her to do the picking, and she certainly can and should pluck up courage to pick her own partner, because I would have thought in many or most cases the male student she chooses would be glad to be chosen.
Uhh, yeh. That's fair enough, but it's also a reason why the guys might not feel comfortable approaching her. If they might be interested in something more than a strictly professional arrangement and they think she might not, then they'll stay out of her way. And some guys are just paranoid or socially awkward enough that they're scared to approach her even if they do want a strictly platonic business relationship or friendship.
Most of the above issues would just go away if there were a lot more women interested in tech to begin with, because the male nerds wouldn't be so damn desperate and so out of practice with dealing with female colleagues.
Oh come on, this is pathetic. She's implying that a larger proportion of women (than men) considering computer science will put their social life before their work. It's sexism against her own gender. If you want to really excel at work, you put the work first. Also, she admitted she couldn't get a partner on her course. If socializing is so important to her, why not make more of an effort to socialize with the other computer scientists? Or are they seen as a lost cause, due to the stereotype? The thought process seems a little odd to me.
OK, so she's interested in a particular application of computer science (solving human problems), but to excel at that you still need to take a keen interest in the theory and science that underlies it.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by romlok on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:59AM (1 child)
Being "pro-social" doesn't mean emphasising one's social life over work. It means finding more value in doing things which improve people's lives, than merely because they're intellectually interesting.
From my observations at least, you tend to find a lot more (neuro-typical) female interest in projects and businesses which emphasise the ultimate social benefit, over ones which emphasise technological achievement or novelty: eg. "helping artists get funding" over "a website for collecting donations"; or "letting people walk again" over "building robot legs".
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:18PM
So, applied rather than pure science? It's fine to use a possible future (or current) application of the skills and knowledge as a motivator. Hell, I bet almost everyone who learns programming or electronics has some things in particular that they like to do with the skills. But the applications come after the learning and study. She's talking about struggles during the studying. She's also implying that a lot of women don't even realize what the potential applications of software development are, at least when they're school age. I suppose that might be true for some, up to a point. Surely though software and tech is getting so ubiquitous now that kids must see the applications in every day life? Is it a wood for trees thing?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dltaylor on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:27AM (4 children)
Perhaps because I was a bit older (vet, worked my way through school, married), I had no problem partnering with the young women in school projects, and had good experiences with most of them. At my first engineering job (jr. hardware engineer), I had a boss who was also a mentor. He once gave me an entire semester's class on grounding and shielding in a very intense afternoon. That rubbed off on me, as well. One of my classmates told me of her frustrations at work: even though she was the original author and primary maintainer of a software package where she worked, when a customer problem escalated to her, she was inevitably met with "I want to talk to someone who knows something, not a secretary.".
I have worked with people of both genders who were excellent, and many who weren't worth the desk space.
One suggestion for the pair/team projects: the instructor should use a published (based on Knuth, maybe) pseudo-random assignment generator, so that no one is left hanging, and everyone can see that it is "fair". In the real world, you often do not get to pick your project partners,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:57AM
Sounds kinky, no harassment charges though?
Agree but my experience has been that people employed based on gender and race are more often than not those not worth the desk space. Diversity isn't our strength, competence is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:02AM
I ran into this recently at work. We have a student worker who wrote a customer facing web application for us. Her first app, all self-taught (and it's a damn sight better than the first app I ever wrote) and some fucking mouth-breather comes in with some feedback. He lays it on her in a super condescending way which was really uncalled for. I did have to mention to her that this guy is kind of a dick to everyone, so try not to take it too personally, but damn.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:13AM
Veteranarian or veteran? Sorry, probably a dumb question.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:15AM
Once again, science to the rescue [plos.org].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:33AM (9 children)
She starts out by denigrating ideas related to whether the work suits most women, and then explains how the job is not suitable for many women because it isn't as social as other occupations, which basically means she agrees with that which she disagreed with.
Along the way she criticizes men: "My experience confirms that teenage and college-age girls care more than boys do about solving real human problem (as opposed to competitive, self-oriented gain)". That "self-oriented" dig comes from quite a broad brush, perhaps the same brush that says ALL women hate tech says that all men are "self-oriented" assholes.
Lastly, as one solution, she suggests company mixers -- seemingly enforced mixers because such events are to some people, not just boring, not just uncomfortable, but downright anxiety provoking. What a way for her to show she isn't "self-oriented" when her solution could be really painful to some people who just want to do something interesting, difficult, and alone.
For those who want to go the mixers, well, they are also a great way to make some unintentional gaff and find yourself at the pointy end of a twitter crusade -- nobody has burned at the stake for working on an interesting problem where the work and the solution are self-fulfilling, while the same cannot be said about going out for drinks with a female colleague.
(Score: 5, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:24AM (4 children)
I think the problem is that women are blind to men of lower strata. It is probably biological. Since women are always looking higher up, none of their problem description and none of their suggested solutions actually have any actual fairness. I can generalize this further and say how patriarchy theory is bogus, but to focus on topic at hand:
So an average man is less social than average woman.
A telling statement on who controls of the power of narrative between women or men. But notice the back-handed way of saying "CS has more man than women". By this transformation of a fact to a statement, the average "less-social" man is simply left out of the equation from here onwards.
All 3 things are only possible if the man is a superior. In a climate where women are constantly being reminded of tech-industry as a place where "Of course, women deal with these subtle cues in addition to outright discrimination and sexual harassment", they are always wondering if the complement was genuine or the man was hitting on her. And since we have ensured that a man's opinion will systematically not even be taken into account, converting this confusion in her head to ungraceful termination of the accused is only a game of chance. Only an idiot or horny man will take the chance of joking with and complementing women. And the odds of a woman misconstruing a man's intention have only been increased by reading this article. Nice job, Julia Enthoven, you did you part! Seriously, the whole article is surprisingly devoid of any sentence that says that any perception of CS is actually wrong.
FINALLY! This article is about creating a paper trail for Google to show in the trial by James Damore. All the fluff is the wrapping, here the gift is delivered. Truly an entrepreneurial spirit, Ms. Enthoven.
So THAT'S the problem with gender imbalance in petroleum industry - arguably the most world changing technology since wheel.
Thanks again. Also notice "non-profit" - because that's how you gobble up truck loads of money and still look like a do-gooder.
TL;DR Give managerial positions to women, let men develop their anti-social algorithms. Remind me, how many decades it took to finally have technical managers? I hope men at large start recognizing this pattern in all the demands that come from women - "share the cream with me you top-dog".
Hire/fire based on gender.
Oh yes, work against the unconscious bias by conscious bias. Don't worry, if 10 men approach 1 woman with the friendship request, the other 9 are creepy!
I have done my part of defending Google in their lawsuit and promoting my sisterhood. I am expecting some business deals with them soon.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:38AM (3 children)
I noticed it in the article and have tried to avoid mentioning it because it is irrelevant, but the grammar nazi in me is screaming: "compliment" != "complement". But whatever. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complement [merriam-webster.com]
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:46AM
Ah. Thanks.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:21AM (1 child)
That ain't the only grammar issue in the article. While it IS "just a blog post" she is obviously targeting it to reach a wide audience within her industry. The art of proofreading is clearly dead. I don't tend to give a crap when I bang out a post here because it is just a web forum, like the man said, "Why so serious?". But if I were writing an email that the Sr. Staff mail echo at work would see I would be embarrassed by several of the "Doh!" mistakes in that post she made.
And she is so oppressed by the Patriarchy that she is being showered with VC money. At age 25. Do the math there folks. She doesn't actually have much experience in the industry she is pontificating about remaking from the ground up. Ah well, odds are pretty good that she won't breed, so there is that. Darwin always gets the last laugh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:06AM
Hate to break it to you -- a little PS after the blog post:
Must be nice being 25 and so showered with money for writing some scripts that just run some standard linux command line apps to merge photos into a video or make a video run in reverse, that you can simply stop working and not starve. What a hard and oppressed life she leads.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:47PM (3 children)
I didn't see that as criticism, but a mere statement of fact. As a teen, I didn't give a flying FUCK about a cure for some random disease. Or prosthetics. Or feeding children in Africa. All that shit seemed like effeminate bullshit. Girls can do all of that better than I can. so let them do it. They seem to be happy playing Mommy to all the sick, elderly, infant/children in the world, let them get with it.
I had MUCH more pressing needs, like buying my first car so that I could drive to places with a lot of pretty girls.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:28PM (2 children)
No surprise there. Men and women mature at different rates. I've heard it said "A girl at 18 is a woman; a boy at 18 is a mass of hormones and bad decisions." How much of that is truly nature and how much is nurture remains to be seen of course :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @09:34PM
That's accurate enough on average for a stereotype. It's not precisely true but the general point it's trying to make holds enough water. The opposite could also be said of each in their thirties though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:33AM
I believe it to be at least as much nature as it is nurture, and probably a lot more.
The thing is, we know what boys are, we know what men are. We know what girls are, and we know what women are. Why, all of a sudden, do some of them have to apologize for being who and what they are?
This is the ages old game, where a girl/woman chooses some loser for a mate, telling herself that he can change, will change, that he can become a great man, or at least a great lover. She wastes her life trying to change him, but he dies a lower all the same.
Why do women play that game?
I am somewhat introspective, and I realize that I'm not exactly the same man that I was 40 years ago. But, I haven't changed a great deal, either. A person never stops learning (or at least he shouldn't) but pretty much every decision in life is made with the same core mindset. We simply don't change.
Sure, the very rare individual has some life changing experience, and epiphany if you care to put it that way. Someone "Finds God" and their life changes drastically. I'm always the skeptic when I hear that shit. "Yeah, sure, he's changed. Let's wait ten years, and see."
We don't change much. You can't take an asocial asshole, and turn him into an outgoing social butterfly.