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Comment by ucarion | Hacker News Reader

It's not just political correctness. The socially optimal future is one in which anyone, regardless of race and gender, can become a software engineer. Someday, we're going to put in effort to move from our current world to this better future. Software engineering is a highly-desirable, well-paying, forward-looking job and it's still early days. Why not give it a shot?

There are of course many PC-police types who can't give a clear reason why we should pay attention to diversity, but there are good reasons nonetheless.

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Sometimes I wonder if software engineers are half as smart as they think they are. I can't think of any precedent or similar situation: a corps of highly skilled workers pro-actively sabotaging themselves in order to share the fate of their country's dying middle class: longer hours, shrinking salaries and cut-throat competition for employment.

I am glad that I have some fuck-you money now. Because the prospects as software engineer seem, frankly, rather poor now.

The first step is to stop thinking that this industry - somehow - matters more than any other or that herein lies the future of humanity. Half of that is marketing garbage and the other results from free kool-aid parties that were held after a few of us either built successful companies or made good exit deals with bigger ones. There is an alarming amount of people who are not only drunk, but blind too.

I might be the bearer of bad news, but hear me out: this industry is just like any other. In other words, you are subject to the same dynamics that fuel workers - shareholders dualism everywhere. Basic game theory: you are going to get screwed and that's not funny.

There is a reason why the software industry and many others try hard to keep a young 'fresh' workforce even tho it contributes to more inexperienced and costly labor force.

After a few years the stars in the eyes ware off. You realise that all the idealism and hype is simply marketing a dream that will get you in the door. Your a cog in the wheel of a rather boring pedestrian industry and replaceable.

At that point you might start to realise that all that overtime is just wasting your life away not work that is going to change the world. All the free food and drink you get at work is just making you fat and you don't have a social life anymore, etc, etc.

We are all like that to one degree or another in the beginning. But the level of sugar coated frothy idealism laid on the SJW's at university now is going to cause serious mental problems for these kids when the sugar high starts to ware off after a few years in the real world.

I agree on the surface of your argument though it's not as bleak as we fear.

While I don't think it's intentionally malicious, the current "cult" dev culture disempowers developers. I think there's two competing movements; the attempt to make programming more like engineering, and the belief that programming is an art.

For the software engineer camp, programming is quantified and implicitly egalitarian. The mantra is "the work speaks for itself" for these folks.

For the creative camp, programming isn't so easily measured and turned on or off.

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. The first step to solving a problem is being able to talk about it. Many people of all genders and races are interested in being developers. They just don't want to give up their lives to do so.

Imagine being in an interview and being asked about golf balls and school busses. On the other side of the table is a suitcase with $100k. Is it really reasonable to ask them to shake things up when their livelihood is on the line?

The good news is that for all the warts software has, there are no barriers other than personal determination. Anyone can be a developer so long as they're interested.

>Why not give it a shot?

A) because the evidence of institutionalized discrimination in the field is scanty at best.

B) because the techniques suggested for "giving it a shot" frequently involve cruel social manipulation, elimination of meritocracy, and accusing innocent people of sexism or even sexual assault.

C) because "giving it a shot" also suspiciously often involves handing over money and power to sociopaths who spend their time agitating and attacking others, not writing software.

Look -- the bad guys have poisoned the well, here. If you genuinely and sincerely think the industry needs to change, the first people you're going to have to go through to make it happen are the ones who claim they're on your side.

With regard to getting responses to job applications, there's plenty of evidence that women and people of color face systemic discrimination:

- https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/st... - http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-...

He did say "in the field". Further, I remain skeptical toward sociology departments until they bump their reproducibility up a bit above 50% or bring their ideological homogeneity down below 90%. And I don't trust gender studies departments at all ("glaciers are sexist" and whatnot).

Anyone, regardless of race and gender, can become a software engineer right now.

And in before someone starts ranting about "institutional racism/sexism". No, it doesn't exist in our industry anymore than the rest of the western world, and that's very little; SPECIALLY in a widely left-leaning world such as academia.

The overwhelming majority of the engineering world is welcoming to women and non-whites (I can personally attest to the latter) just like it is of the much reviled "white man", even more at times. As a society we're quick to shame any hint of racism and sexism; anyone who could deny that with a straight face is living in another world.

However, equal opportunity does not directly lead to diversity. It's possible, even likely, that genders are biased towards certain careers even when there is no discrimination at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask, a social documentary by Norwegian comedian and sociologist Harald Eia, has a rather interesting segment on this exact issue.

To be clear, there is no moral imperative to maximize diversity, only equality. We have no business pressuring 'diverse' people into careers they don't want to be in.

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