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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: 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.