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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: -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.