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"Role model" doesn't simply mean "someone you look up to". It also means "cognitively available success cases". This message board is practically a personification of that phenomenon. Among those of us running startups, most wouldn't have done so had many others not done so before us.

That's very interesting. I had always thought of role model as referring to a specific individual, I haven't encountered the idea of collective role models forming "cognitively available success cases" before.

Well for example, why would a boy ever believe he is even capable of certain career paths if he's only ever seen females in those roles? When there is little representation, the idea becomes that only that demographic is capable of the career. An example can be seen in esports like Starcraft. When the Koreans began to dominate the competitive Starcraft field, other nationalities began to cease even believing they were capable of equal success. A similar view has been common with, say, black people and track+field sports like sprinting in the Olympics.

Carol Dweck's research on how mindset can affect educational performance [1] is probably relevant in this context. Importantly, the belief that ability can be improved with practice rather than being inherently limited by innate characteristics (including, but not limited to gender) by itself appears to be a pretty powerful factor in either supporting or limiting growth.

I suspect that having not just role models like yourself, but them also being commonplace can more easily dispel beliefs that your room for growth is limited by gender, ethnicity, etc. Obviously, if your field is already dominated by people like you, this is not a problem that you have to deal with in the first place.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing...

I live in fairly conservative country, but little kids here really tend to have very strict ideas about what is supposed to be for boys and what is for girls. Meaning they wont even look that way if they think the device/occupation is mean for other gender. I think that is why girls played with legos much less until the company started to frame certain series in girly colors (series becoming instant success).

Anecdotally, it had impact on me when I was young. Female detectives in detective stories made the idea of me becoming a cop seem socially acceptable and not a feminist statement. Did not became a cop, but I remember thinking "cool that means me doing that would not be weird" at the time.

One of the things that enticed me about programming was that I didn't know anyone who really understood it. When I took an introduction to programming in first year university, it was like Harry visiting Hogwarts for the first time and learning magic.

With that being said, my mother and father were both engineers. I hedged my bets by studying EE before going pure software. Role models contributed to me signing up for engineering, even if they had different specialities.

Yes. When I was younger, before I was capable of any programming (but still somewhat technically competent), I used to visit the freerainbowtables.com forums. There was a poster there (sc00bz) who posted highly technical/mathematical posts which were completely incomprehensible to me at the time [0], but made me highly motivated to always want to learn more so someday I could communicate on that level.

As it happens, I 'rediscovered' him on twitter via another hackernews post [1] a while ago, so dropped him a message to say thanks for being an unwitting inspiration :)

[0] This is a relatively simple example, it's hard to find better ones now the site is down - http://web.archive.org/web/20111111050908/https://www.freera...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691798

Probably more importantly, you didn't have negative models, so pure interest was enough to start. Models are very important when you're thinking of doing something that is unusual, risky, rare, seems dangerous or unfeasible. Sure, if you're about doing something common and socially acceptable, there is no urgent need to have a model. But when you want to do something quite extreme, you need to estimate chances to succeed, resources required, time, possibility and other params. This is where role models come in. You have to somehow validate that what you want to achieve is possible (but prior to this, you have to learn that it even exists).

I'm professionally employed as a programmer, but all my role models have been physicists and musicians (lots of female musicians, too).

I've never had a role model in computing.

growing up in a poor country my two options were 1. become a software engineer 2. continue to live rest of your life in dire poverty.

This is precisely the reason you would find so many female programmers in south asian and other poor countries.

Its funny to see all the armchair philosophers like Pike come up with some 'Well actually, it's because X' explanations without presenting a single bit of evidence to back it up.

"growing up in a poor country my two options were 1. become a software engineer 2. continue to live rest of your life in dire poverty"

Where exactly? Because frankly, that seems to be highly unlikely.

india . Still true today.

If you grow up poor and don't learn an in demand skill, life will wreck you. Life for unskilled labor is bleak worldwide. And software is one of the only skills where a smart person doesn't need money or connections to be competitive.

There seem to be far more female programmers in India and former Soviet bloc countries. Poverty is the obvious link. When you want a well paid job, niceties like role models or what your friends think are less important, and gender ratios become more balanced.

I am from former Soviet block country and there is no surge of female programmers. Also, poor people don't become programmers - only middle class kids do. Poor don't have computers at home and schools don't teach programming. You have to learn from elsewhere.

Curious what you mean by middle class? in the 90's there was no such thing as middle class in India, everyone was poor. From what I read soviet countries like Russia were the same in 90's, sure some people were slightly better off than other but not enough to form a social class. Perhaps things are different now ?

Yeah, but I've worked in software in Europe for years and my experience has been that if a developer is female, it's a solid bet that she's from eastern Europe or Russia. This is an incredibly strong and noticeable correlation. I don't think there's been a recent surge or anything - it feels like it's always been this way.

Poor is obviously relative in this context. Poor relative to western women.

Does anyone here really have any role models that were influential to their interest in the field?

That's probably the wrong question to be asking.

There is a limited supply of people who are interested in technology for its own sake, and prefer computers over people.

In order for software to keep eating everything, the industry needs to attract more and more people who don't care quite that much or even people who DGAF and just want a paycheck.

That means having things that normal people care about (role models, respectability, etc), and not having things they can't stand ("RTFM" culture, socially-incompetent single coworkers, the "nerd" label, etc). Even if those things aren't all that important to us, and only serve to increase the amount of economic competition we face.

> There is a limited supply of people who are interested in technology for its own sake, and prefer computers over people.

What does that even mean, to "prefer computers over people"? I think there are very few people (in tech or any other field) who would prefer to be a hermit and spend all of their time on their interest of choice. You can be interested in technology for its own sake without seeking social isolation. The idea that programmers should be modern day monks that have no families and spend their days programming and in quiet contemplation is completely ridiculous. Sure, there are some lone wolves out there who are successful on their own, but most programmers will have to work/communicate with other programmers, managers, stakeholders, customers, lawyers, and/or domain experts at some point in their lives, and having the social skills to navigate such situations can enable you to create interesting technology.

> That means having things that normal people care about (role models, respectability, etc), and not having things they can't stand ("RTFM" culture, socially-incompetent single coworkers, the "nerd" label, etc). Even if those things aren't all that important to us, and only serve to increase the amount of economic competition we face.

Who is this "us" and "we" you speak of? I have to work with my coworkers, so all other things equal I prefer it when they are socially competent.

I think you are reinforcing a very harmful stereotype, where you have to be a computer-obsessed social pariah to have a successful career in tech. Perhaps you should reflect on those beliefs, and whether they are based on objective facts or perhaps something you tell yourself to avoid feeling inadequate about your interpersonal skills.

The idea that programmers should be modern day monks that have no families and spend their days programming and in quiet contemplation is completely ridiculous.

I'm not saying they should.

But, I'm sure you've heard the terms "geek syndrome" or "pizza-box coder"? Or the whole nerds vs jocks thing, including the "Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for one." that is usually mis-attributed to a commencement speech that Bill Gates apparently (per Snopes) didn't actually give?

Or the "Unix greybeard" persona, and the big push a few years back to recognize that computer people really don't all look like that?

These things did not come out of nowhere.

Who is this "us" and "we" you speak of? I have to work with my coworkers, so all other things equal I prefer it when they are socially competent.

Yep, same here.

I think you are reinforcing a very harmful stereotype, where you have to be a computer-obsessed social pariah to have a successful career in tech.

No. That used to be a common side-effect or correlate of interest in tech.

I am saying that the people we're trying to attract into the field now (and for the most recent decade or two), are not like the people who voluntarily chose to enter the field in the more distant past.

I am saying that these people are not likely to care about the same incentives.

I am saying that the quantitative change in the field has necessitated a qualitative change in new entrants, which makes "back in my day" a very poor argument for what's appropriate or effective.

Perhaps you should reflect on those beliefs, and whether they are based on objective facts or perhaps something you tell yourself to avoid feeling inadequate about your interpersonal skills.

You mean the beliefs you wrongly claimed I hold, based on your presumption that my claims of what is (or in this case, was) were really just disguised claims of what should be?

And my interpersonal skills are just fine now, thank you. Because I made a point of learning them in my early 20s, after seeing how useful they were to my new coworkers.

Some role models I had (although in some ways some could be considered bad role models): geohot, Samy Kamkar, Aaron Swartz, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates.

When I was younger (before I was into computers) my role models were Albert Einstein, Harry Houdini, and the Wright brothers. This list was very easy to remember, because I did reports on all of them as assignments in elementary school. That basically forced me to pick role models. They're all STEM related except maybe Houdini, but he invented a lot of mechanisms for his tricks.

I think when a human does something it's usually not because they reasoned that it was the best thing to do, but because they asked themselves the question (subconsciously, more often than not) "is this the sort of thing I would do?"

The answer their brain comes up with to that question is going to play the most important role, even if reason would dictate a different response. This is at the root of the countless biases and heuristics that psychologists go on about (confirmation bias, anchoring heuristic, etc.) How this relates to young women trying decide on a career is obvious.

To share my personal anecdote (I'm male): I graduated college having taken some programming classes but no real drive to be a programmer, nor anything else in particular. A Twitch streamer I watched sometimes called Guardsman Bob occasionally did programming on his stream between video games, and through watching that I grew more and more to realize that that was something that people like me did. Few years later and I am a full-time web developer.

I wouldn't call him a role model (I'm agreeing with you, in other words). But he was integral because watching him affected how I conceived of what a person like me (male, young, video gamer, shut-in) would be doing. Male is only one part of it, but it's undeniably a big part of it. Thus, I agree with those who say we should ensure there are more visible examples of female or minority X programmers-- it will change the lives of people who are like that and make them more likely to follow the path. But I wouldn't say we need more role models, just need to affect the way they think about programming and whether they think it's "the sort of thing I would do."

> And for those who have experienced it, would you mind sharing a story about a significant role model in programming from your life?

How does this require a story? For me it's as simple as reading about the exploits of people like Gary Starkweather, John Carmack, Steve Wozniak, or whoever and thinking "I want to do stuff like that." And yeah, if none of those role models were guys, I'm sure I would have been affected by that.

I would be interested in hearing what exploits in particular that the person did inspired you to take them on as a role model. To me a role model would not just be someone who does good work, but someone who you would aspire to emulate. There would have to be something special about what they did and perhaps more importantly how and why they did it that inspired you to want to be like them.

So to take your list of people for example, someone like John Carmack. What I was looking for was what specific exploits were you talking about and why they were so inspirational to you. Maybe it was his work creating the Doom and Quake games, or his bootstrap work building id software from scratch, or his contributions to free software by releasing his engines under gpl, or his quakeworld talks, or his work with rocketry, or his new work with VR, or his general overall attitude about life, programming and everything.

I mean there had to be something special about him for you to want to be like him, and that seems like something that would be worth telling a little story about.

Those are, personality-wise, three radically different people I listed and I don't think anyone who knows about them could consistently want to "be like" all three of them. I thought they did interesting and important work and had an exciting role to play, indicative of an important field.

We might have a disagreement about the meaning of "role model," which is fine. I don't really think that's the point at all...

Edit: Thomas's "cognitively available success cases" seems like a good one to me

Does anyone here really have any role models that were influential to their interest in the field?

Yes.

> Does anyone here really have any role models that were influential to their interest in the field?

Rob's entire piece is about how a group of women in a highly technical field were influenced by role models. And we're still denying these women's responses?

I tried very hard to make sure my comment did not come across as dismissive, evidently I failed. Just to reemphasize, I am not in any way trying to deny these women's responses.

I have just seen this concept of a role model bandied about before, and that is something that I have never experienced in my own life in computing. In the article, Rob mentions how in the field of astronomy, the women he has talked to consider role models to be important. But he never mentions any people he would consider role models to himself in computing.

So I was just curious if anyone else here had any role models in computing (man or woman), and if so would they mind sharing a little anecdote about that experience. I've often heard talk of the importance of role models, and I felt like I was kind of "missing out" for not having one. So I thought, how about I start a little side discussion on the role that role models in computing had had on others lives and careers on here.

I am NOT trying to imply any of these things: "Women shouldn't need role models because I didn't have one" "Role models are unimportant" "Women should accept men as role models" "Women are liars"

or any other such derogatory statements.

I can name a handful of role models in the computing field that were important for my development: Joel Spolsky, Jeff Atwood, Patrick McKenzie, Dan Luu, Steve Yegge. However not until about 2 years ago was there a single women I could think of.

More current role models would include Jess Frazelle, Julia Evans, Sara Chipps, who are all incredibly brilliant, influential, successful people who have achieved really amazing things and I hope will continue in the field and be role models of a future generation.

This must be a generational thing. I hadn't heard of any of them until years after I started and I think most of them are younger than I.

I would say that everyone had and has role models, even without realizing it. First, people to the large extent are products of their childhood impressions, family, society. It's easy to see, how rarely they take paths completely different from what they have seen and were surrounded with. If you analyze you life paths, decisions and choices, you'll find some particular reasons why they took place: because something influenced you.

To me, role model is not just some particular person to follow. If you see that some group of people are common to show some particular behavior and is successful as a result, it gives you a clear signal that 1) you can do the same since you belong to that group 2) this pattern is a proven path to success. Done! No particular person, but a very strong and potentially life changing role model, that many people don't even realize influenced their life path and desisions.

0% of, say, women in some field is a negative role model, because if you are a woman and never seen successful women in this profession, why on earth should you start thinking that it is a great or feasible path? People stick to what is normal around, all their context is a role model of what is likely possible and what is not.

It seemed quite obvious that the guy wasn't dismissing any of the women's own experiences and only providing his own personal perspective.

Why the rush to assume malice?

It's not malicious, it's a form of apathy and I totally get the gp's reaction: all these women are saying their experience is X but my (presumably male) experience is Y so why not Y is dismissive. It's not intentionally malicious but it is casually apathetic to the issue being raised.

Most discrimination is not malicious. It's a whole bunch of small acts of apathy.