SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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].