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[The] main problem here is that software development is not an individual sport. Assessing technical traits means that we are looking at candidates as individuals. At the same time, we will put them in a team context and the project's success will depend on their teamwork. A person's resume or LinkedIn profile says close to nothing about their team skills.
What's more, we know quite a lot about what makes teams effective. Anita Woolley's research on collective intelligence [DOI: 10.1126/science.1193147] [DX] provides extremely valuable insight on the topic. First of all, how do we define collective intelligence? It's basically the skill of a group to solve complex problems. Well, it sounds like the definition of everyday work for software development teams if you ask me.
Why is collective intelligence so important? Exploiting collective intelligence, as opposed to going with the opinion of the smartest person in a room, is a winning strategy. To put in Anita Woolley's words: "Collective intelligence was much more predictive in terms of succeeding in complex tasks than average individual intelligence or maximal individual intelligence."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:57PM (26 children)
"the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group."
And this is how America got to the moon.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:08PM (7 children)
I didn't find the words female, woman, or women in TFA. However, I feel your sentiment. Counting wombs (on the assumption that all those assigned to the female gender at birth have the basic capability to grow a child in their bodies, which is not the case) as a metric of how good the team is may very likely be where TFA wants to nudge us.
I think what TFA misses is that the people on the team also need to know what the hell they're doing, or, at the very least, need to respect the experience of the people on the team who do know what the hell they're doing.
The Misogynerd Narrative is deleterious to the functioning of a healthy team. It creates the suspicion that people on the team with experience, if they were assigned the male gender at birth, do not actually have experience that contributes to skill. Instead, the Misogynerd Narrative tells us that the only experience assigned males in programming careers have is in keeping the secret voodoo away from cisfemales because they cannot get a laid and are all-around poopy-heads with no talent.
The Misogynerd Narrative destroys the value of experience that those who have it could contribute to the team. Instead, it tells the rest of the team that when they do not immediately understand the full details of what somebody with experience is proposing, that instead of asking questions and attempting to improve their own understanding and skills, they may easily conclude that the person with experience is intentionally making things “too technical” (a favorite explanation of the feminists at work for why they are unable to program at all when I make it look “so easy”) for the sole purpose of keeping women in their “place.”
I don't know what “place” I'm supposed to believe women “should” have, because the whole gender caste system thing makes no goddess-damned sense to me, but the effect is to prevent women from coming to the realization that not only is there a lot to learn if they truly want to be programmers, but that they can be programmers with dedication and persistent effort.
(This next rambling part about Wonder Woman will come around to a point!)
Where are the healthy Amazon values when it comes to cisfemale programmers?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:35PM
It's in the "Anita Woolley's research" link.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:58PM (5 children)
"the whole gender caste system"
I don't know what you mean by that, but it puts me in mind of what happens when you walk into a wall while aroused. Shudder.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:35PM (4 children)
If you're assigned the male gender at birth, regardless of your body parts, you're expected to do certain things, such as making oneself available for the military defense of one's country, making oneself economically profitable, and directly contributing with your personal wallet to the marriage/child support/alimony system that basically amounts of cisfemale-only basic income, as opposed to universal basic income.
If you're assigned the female gender at birth, regardless of your body parts, you're expected to do certain things, such as providing babysitting services and giving birth to at least two children (and I cannot emphasize enough that this is a requirement that old women themselves have for young women). Financial compensation is provided by society for each child one delivers to that point that it is possible to receive enough welfare that obtaining employment is a proposition that makes no financial sense (one will be worse off with than job than without, because of how our brain-dead welfare system works).
(Beware the mythical welfare queen. I'm not talking about those. I do not envy women who, for reasons I cannot comprehend, have decided to make themselves into full-time baby machines. I prefer the more traditional route of marrying a man [already have one picked out if only magic would start existing] before having children.)
That's the idea that I'm attempting to capture. I feel that feminism has already been down this road, and they called it the “gender dichotomy,” but then feminism went senile and was taken over gender essentialists who worship the gender dichotomy as The Way The Sky Fairy Meant Things To Be.
A caste system is by its nature artificial. Feminism forgot that there is a component of gender that is socially constructed. The social construction is the caste system. Unfortunately, feminism decided that it was more interested in enforcing the caste system rather than trying to work towards equality without a caste system where people may be individuals who are accountable for and only accountable for their own actions.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:00PM (1 child)
Stop with this bullshit. Nobody is "assigned to the male gender." They are observed to be male or female because of their body parts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:12PM
They are perceived to be male or female, sometimes mistakenly, on the basis of their body parts. When those parts don't meet a doctor's expectations, surgery is sometimes done:
(Wikipedia [wikipedia.org])
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 25 2017, @12:47PM
Maybe that's what makes them feel fulfilled. Who are you to say they're not? If most women want to have kids, it's probably because it's a biological imperative, the same way it is for men.
So, you're not that way. You don't have oxytocin coursing through your veins. That's fine. Having children is not a biological imperative for you. But using that as a lens to cast the biological reality for most humans as a "caste system" is gratuitous.
If you're living in a 1950's social reality that makes you feel oppressed, then change your venue to a place where nobody cares. You know the usual places: New York, San Francisco, Portland, OR, Seattle, etc. Avoid the Midwest and the South. Find others like you and form community with them. If the larger culture makes you feel oppressed, stop watching TV and reading magazines and generally participating in it. With the online universe you can hide in the long tail and switch off everything else.
I don't like spectator sports, so I don't watch them. I hate commercial culture so I cut the cord on cable years ago. I stopped giving all those things and all those people my life energy by hating them. Now life is calmer and better.
You can do the same. You put so much energy into hating a reality that you're not gonna change, ever. No matter what you do, no matter how many pejorative terms you lace your speech with, the vast, vast majority of men and women are going to continue to refer to themselves as men and women and have babies with each other. So instead of tearing yourself to pieces over it, find a way to live happily by surrounding yourself with neighbors, friends, and loved ones who accept you for who you are. You've got a lot more to offer the world than a seething cup of resentment.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 25 2017, @12:50PM
Feminism was very enthused to achieve equality, without losing the existing benefits. As soon as the existing benefits started to become threatened, feminism seemed to lose interest in equality.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:09PM (16 children)
Why yes, it is part of how America got to the moon.
1. Social sensitivity of group members is critical to group cohesiveness. In order for NASA's crews both in space and on the ground to be successful, they needed to be able to completely trust each other. For an example of how critical that is, when Neil Armstrong was landing the Eagle, he did something absolutely nuts, which was turning off the computer - had Buzz Aldrin not had the kind of relationship with Neil to trust him with his life, he might have tried to stop Neil from doing that.
2. NASA had and still has formal protocols about who speaks when, especially during time-sensitive decision-making moments. They have those protocols precisely so that they ensure that those making decisions aren't missing critically important information because the person with that information was being talked over.
3. As for women, they did a bunch of the critical work for NASA back in the day, in particular doing most of the mathematical computations. They were more trusted to do the math than the finicky electronic computers they had at their disposal. For instance, John Glenn famously demanded that Katherine Johnson [nasa.gov] recheck the computers' math before his orbital flight. By the late 1960's, you had women working as rocket scientists (e.g. Yvonne Brill), and in 1978 Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan were allowed to start their astronaut training and went into space a few years later.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:30PM (9 children)
In general agree. NASA is a good example. When doing things that are truly dangerous, the gender caste system finds the limit of its usefulness (assuming it has any).
This is my daily experience with womyn-born-womyn. I'm constantly being interrupted and talked over. It's gotten to the point where I've learned to just shut up when I'm not able to complete a single thought in a discussion dominated by womyn-born-womyn and just abandon the point entirely. Of course, had they not interrupted me and talked over me, so many times it would have saved them problems down the line, problems that these selfsame womyn-born-womyn have the audacity to try to hold me accountable for despite the way they systematically silenced and excluded me.
But hey. My experience obviously doesn't count because I was assigned the male gender at birth.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:49PM (1 child)
Great. Stop taking it out on the rest of us.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:18PM
No.
When feminism wants to get serious about gender equality, especially the part where you give up privileges you're used to being unaware you have, such as the privilege of being unaccountable for one's personal failures, then I will consider it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:56PM (5 children)
So, what you're saying is, you've become a man.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:13PM (4 children)
I would if I could. However, I have learned quite a bit from men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @08:11AM (3 children)
Kurenai... even though a lot of Helen Reddy types sing otherwise, we still have a helluva lot of expectations placed on us according to our gender. I am of the belief that I play the cards I am dealt. There are some good things about being female, along with some bad. Same with being male.
I see females being put up on pedestals, where apparently they can do no wrong. A man and a woman get in a fight, unless the guy has a lot of witnesses, its the guy who is probably going to cool off in the jail. Even if the woman is pushing his hot buttons. I have watched several of my friends who fell into marriage fall back out, with disastrous setbacks to his finances. While the woman ended up with the house.
The welfare systems around here will take care of a homeless woman, but a man is on his own. People come burn his tent down when he leaves to get something to eat. He stops to take a crap and other men steal his bike. Men have always been expected to settle their differences physically. Look at the old westerns - see many women having bar fights and gunplay in the streets? Nah, its nearly always the men brawling and its hard to put them up in a decent place... many act like hoodlums and tear the place up.
Now, the women seem by and large to think things out a bit more. Men seem way too gullible to be manipulated. Especially by women. It seems its in our nature to have to compete with each other to be accepted by a woman. We will often go into dire financial disarray just to present a transient illusion of our ability to provide to a woman. I do not know why we do it, but most of us do.
Admittedly, I am still single, as I did not play this game. I have had women play me before, and get me into fights, and bad financial moves to "prove" my love. Well, she was of the belief that I was supposed to buy her trinkets and fun times. I was of the belief that I needed to go through life with a help-mate, not a parasite. We did not see eye to eye, so I just left it at that.
Someone else can have the little princess, along with the upkeep to keep her satisfied. I figured having her was like having a fancy sports car that I could not afford neither the special gasoline nor the parts for. While not as satisfying, I can get porn-assisted biological relief. And its a lot less expensive to hire out the things she could have helped me with with others that specialize in those kind of things.
For me, its not at all like the relationship Dad had with Mom. It worked for over 50 years with Dad and Mom, but neither of them had today's expectations of what a relationship should be. They both had role models. Like "Leave It to Beaver". Dad did guy things. Mom did lady things. And we kids did chores. The family was a lot like watching a machine run.... everything had its purpose, and when it failed to work, it made it hard on everyone. I could not take the post "Helen Reddy" woman - not as a wife anyway. Between Women's Liberation and Walt Disney, I figured my generation was all Princesses. Not fit for anything but endless adoration by doting men all competing for a touch of her magic wand. I have enough problems of my own, trying to keep my bills paid. I simply did not need this.
I will have duck out as an anonymous coward, as I dared say things directly as I saw them, and most are not politically correct.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 25 2017, @12:57PM (2 children)
You're looking in the wrong places, at the wrong women. If you desire cheerleaders, you're gonna find they have cheerleader expectations. You're generally not going to find a cheerleader who, unexpectedly, loves abstract art.
First, figure out who you are and what values are important to you. Then, go to places where those things are practiced and celebrated. For example, if you're a Christian and that's important to you, then you should be looking for dates through church. If you love nature and outdoors activities, look for dates on Sierra Club hikes or trail runner clubs and the like. If you like art, take a sculpture/painting/whatever class. Women who share your specific interests are apt to share other interests with you, and having that in common is a natural ice-breaker.
But you gotta go looking. The perfect mate for you is not going to wander into your living room while you're playing Halo and demand you sweep her off her feet.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday September 25 2017, @09:53PM (1 child)
For example, if you're a Christian and that's important to you, then you should be looking for dates through church.
I'm not religious, but to add to this, what I've heard from several Christians is that the single female to single male ratio in Christian churches is absurdly high. So if you're a conservative Christian, you really should be having an easy time finding dates at church; if you've exhausted your options at your current church, try a different one. Conversely, though, life is pretty hard for single Christian females, or so I'm told, and also it's a disadvantage for non-religious men because women are, on average, much more religious than men, so if you want to date, you either have to give in and date a religious woman (who'll likely be much more conservative than you, which means your sex life will probably suck), or hold out for one of the non-religious women which are in short supply, then try to weed out the overly materialistic ("high maintenance") ones that are very common, or others who have various unstated expectations about your role as man in the relationship.
Honestly, I can see why more and more people are simply opting out of marriage and long-term cohabiting relationships. It's hard to find someone really compatible, and they don't really live up to their promises. Some minority of people get really lucky and find someone that really works as a partner to them, but they're the lucky few.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 26 2017, @10:12AM
Again, the hunting grounds you choose matter. If you're in the South, what you're saying holds absolutely true. The Midwest a little less so. In the West and Northeast, you'll do fine. As a bonus, in the West and Northeast there are far more hippie/granola girls who are quite keen on sex.
If that's true, it's sad. Having someone to share your life with is a blessing. Having someone to have a family with adds a whole other dimension of joy and meaning. Also, and most people don't talk about this, the sex is much better because of the unparalleled level of intimacy, emotional connection, and trust.
Nothing magically happens, though. You have to seek that kind of relationship. If you find a person, you then have to work at it because everyone has their foibles, including you. It takes time (and yes, sometimes fights) to reach detente. It's worth the effort, though. Dying alone sucks.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 25 2017, @06:07AM
That "womyn" shit does get annoying. Why don't you learn English, like most of the rest of us? Or, learn Greek, like Aristarchus. Then, you could use an archaic language and alphabet that all the rest of us would just ignore.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by unauthorized on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:44PM (2 children)
No, it's not. Many animal species can work like clockwork together, despite having a lot less "social sensitivity" than primates. Likewise, some of the most efficient social groups in the world are military organizations where social sensitivity is intentionally beaten out of the grunts.
Yes, but those women were actually good at what they were doing. Pointing out people of great expertise as a proof that you should prefer "social cohesion" over expertise is, to use the technical term, fucking stupid.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)
We're humans, not ants. We don't behave like ants. If we're going to do something, we need to figure out how humans can do it, and how the ants manage to pull off the same thing is immaterial. And that means paying attention to experts who might know a thing or two about how people respond to each other when stuck in a confined space with 5 other people for months on end.
I'm guessing you've never been in a military, because according to everyone I know who has they are decidedly not efficient at just about every activity except killing the enemy. This is in part because any mistake is magnified by a bunch of grunts who've been taught not to question orders. That said, militaries work extremely hard at trying to instill what they call "unit cohesion". And any detailed understanding of military history will actually show the touchy-feely stuff can make a real difference - e.g. the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade was ordered in part because the guy ordering the Light Brigade to charge hated the commander of the Light Brigade and was probably hoping he'd get killed.
And I never said "hire women who don't know what they're doing". Which I believe they should continue to do. I was responding to the claim that NASA succeeded because they were a sausage-fest, when in fact they have relied on talented women throughout their entire history.
Obviously, the ideal to strive for is people who are extremely capable and work well with others. I can tell you that whenever I've been involved in hiring people, once I knew the person across the table was capable of doing the job, I prized "not a jerk" over "extremely capable". A moderately capable non-jerk might not get as much done as an extremely capable jerk individually, but the extremely capable jerk will screw up the work of everybody else on the team and cause the overall results to get worse.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @05:01PM
Uhh... no. It may be that "touchy-feely" stuff makes a difference (and intuitively it must). However, you have failed to demonstrate it, let alone prove it, with your example.
The Charge of the Light Brigade [wikipedia.org] disaster happened due to a "miscommunication in the chain of command, [and as a result] the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery..."
Can more "touchy-feely" stuff stop all miscommunications? I doubt it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:45PM
is vomit-inducing. The mere mention of that term is frankly an abomination. I care more about what someone can actually do. If they've proven themselves to be able to do something, then I can at least trust them with that, 'social sensitivity' or not.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:51PM (1 child)
I thought we used Nazis.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @03:56PM
That's another part. That's what "part" means: There's more than one of them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 25 2017, @12:22PM
Oh come on, they're making movies about it now: Hidden Figures. Then they let Sally Ride...
🌻🌻 [google.com]