As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People | Hacker News Reader

As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

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I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail.

At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me.

I actually think some portion of this is strongly culturally determined. Women focus on the private stuff, and I don't think it is just because our brains are full of estrogen. I think a large share of this is culturally/experientially derived.

The guy who built the neural network? That may have been his means to deal with a failed romance. He just didn't say that because his love life is not the business of his office mates. This is a distinction I think men are taught to make more than women: These people you work with? They aren't your friends, your BFF, or your soul mates. These are just people you WORK with and if you bond with them, you need to bond over the WORK.

At least, that's my current working hypothesis.

I agree with you in part - I find the biological explanations very unsatisfying given the many peculiar things we are socialized to do (proms, engagement proposals, baby showers, amongst many others, likely do not find their origins in our genes).

An analogy I thought of while reading this was that of a broken random number generator function. We're more likely to assess the software/environment in which the code is running than to blame the underlying computer.

This doesn't change my overall conclusions, but I think the role of work colleagues in personal friendships is field-dependent, and even then, workplace dependent. In my industry, some work groups spend inordinate amounts of time together, whereas I would rather go home at the end of a work day. These differences don't map cleanly to gender composition.

To be clearer about what I mean, this is something I wrote recently:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/07/public-priva...

I wrestle a lot with such questions.

This conclusion seemed particularly insightful: "Where men need to prove they are good and caring people who aren't merely using you, I need to prove this is a formal, public sphere relationship, not a private and personal one. "

It reminds me of something one of my professors, a black man, said about how he decides to dress. He felt like he had to start with the assumption that many people would be afraid of him if he were dressed casually, so he compensates by dressing a bit more smartly than even the average professor.

Or they were raised with the belief that if you have nothing nice to say then you say nothing. Maybe they hear about her personal issues all the time and are sick of patronizing her. As you said, they're coworkers not your BFFs. That has nothing to do with being a woman or a man.

As a man, I'd never presume to talk too deeply with a coworker about their personal life.

It's a gross violation of the boundaries in every sense of the term.

Long way of saying I agree with you, I suppose.

In my experience, male co-workers talking about their relationships tend to fall in three categories:

* they talk about how hot women are (which makes me a bit uncomfortable, because I don't talk about women that way),

* they just divorced and talk about how all women are bitches (which makes me even more uncomfortable)

* they talk about their kids (which is often awesome)

I'm happy to say I've never experienced the first two.

I've never experienced any of them, but I'm happy about being ignorant of the first two.

> I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free.

This is how you get good at it. If you don't like it as a hobby, maybe it's not a good job fit for you.

Or any woman, apparently, since the author never met one who has a pile of electronic components stored away for some day.

I disagree. There are many excellent programmers who don't do it as a hobby. I used to, especially before I was a professional programmer, but I can't find the time or energy for it anymore. Better keep it professional and do something else as a hobby.

Also, just because one male engineer built a network in his weekend doesn't mean we all do. I spend my weekends doing stuff with my kids.

Well, not last week, when I went to SHA-2017, but there was a surprising number of children there. 10% someone claimed, which is way more than I'd ever seen at previous hacker festivals. Clearly nerds and hackers are having love lives and kids these days. And although the majority was absolutely typical white male nerds like me, there were also a lot of women.

And that's the core issue, I think. It doesn't have to be a perfect 50/50 split, but women and minorities do have to be welcome. Explicitly so, if there's any history of sexism and prejudice. If women leave the industry because they don't like the content of the work itself, that's fine. But if they leave because they don't like their co-workers or the atmosphere, then you've got a culture problem.

Explicitly so, if there's any history of sexism and prejudice.

Actually, they need to be implicitly welcomed, not explicitly.

(For clarity's sake: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/less-exclusi...)

And I apologize for sounding argumentative. Thank you for your great comment, much of which I agree with.

I want to refute this notion that you have to work 24/hrs a day, 7 days a week. A lot of company cultures that are like that seem to be much more competitive and tends to favor young single kids ready to pour in late nights. I say this as a male, who is also somewhat young (late 20s), but I'm also married and I have a kid, and I'm a full-time software engineer who works remotely. In other words, I have a life before/after code, and responsibilities to take care that have nothing to do with building a fiber-channel network in my basement because at the moment I don't even have a basement. I think this is actually more indicative of the culture as a whole within a particular company and even its location, not necessarily any gender bias because a lot of people outside that bubble have similar experiences that have nothing to do with gender. That being said, it's just a weekend and sounds like watercooler talk. There are some nights that I feel like I want to hack on something after everyone goes to sleep, there are others where I just want to read a book. Humanity is a spectrum, it would be a shame to try and put people into relative boxes. It's worth noting that if you don't feel like you fit into a company's culture, it doesn't automatically mean you don't fit into the field at all.

STEM is a massively broad set of professions with culture dynamics and social influences that can vary widely from company to location. Let's not assume that one particular bubble like Google Mountain View is indicative of what all companies and professions in STEM look like.

+1. I lost most of the passion to hack on new things except doing the job and learn on the job (that's fun). I only hack/write code outside of work when I have a reason to or whenever I feel like to. I rather spend time outdoor or read a book or go to a show/museum whatever or spend time with my baby niece.

The notion software engineers spend weekend making new electronic gadgets or come up with a new awesome library is so stereotype, regardless of gender (there are many talented women enjoy hacking outside of their work hours). This culture manifests in startups, almost always. I come on HN and I find some peer pressure: why can't I be cool like these people make new app and get recognition and have a shiny resume?

Nah. Stop that thought.

I am still burnt out (for 6-7 years since college I didn't sleep much, used to code every night, tried to fix every problems threw at me), so pardon me. Will I ever recover? No, because I don't want that life anymore. For me, home is where I should relax, and my relaxation technique is not coding every night.

Indeed! Speaking of stereotypes it seems :) Most nights I am pretty burnt out from work that I rarely want to hack on anything. But when I've had enough sleep and an article/project or coursera class peaks my interest I'll take a look. But in general, I would say that's pretty par for the course for me as well. These days with the kid and everything I try and plan for those nights.

I thought I had read everything I wanted to read about this topic, but that was actually a really interesting take on it.

I have no problem putting a couple of stopgaps on my behavior to make sure I'm accommodating to the women in my office. I just don't like (hate in fact) the infusion of leftist politics.

I have never seen any career that is so deeply tied to a certain culture as CS/SWE and a certain culture that I'll call X, to avoid any discussions on naming and so on.

I see far more diversity in tastes and interests in most other majors and careers, while in CS/SWE, X seems to hold a monopoly.

CS/SWE goes far beyond a career, usually becoming close to a religion or way of life. I rarely see doctors, lawyers, or most professions engaging in their practice outside work as a hobby, but in CS/SWE, you're evaluated by your hobbie-contributions on GitHub, your postings to HackerNews, etc.

There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all this non-work community.

And that brings us to X, a set of interests and values that permeate CS/SWE workers, and frequently makes those interested in CS/SWE feel unwelcome if they don't take part in X.

It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman (or any of the other identities/genders/etc.), if you don't like X (which might include sci-fi, fantasy, video-games, board games, certain types of discussions, and a lot more), there's a good chance that you might not feel like you belong in CS/SWE (this isn't universal, and I've seen many teams that embrace cultural diversity pretty well).

Sadly, for whatever reasons (I have my own hypothesis that the rise of male-dominated gaming culture in the 80's and its further attachment to CS studies due to the overlap between coding and gaming is the cause) X is male-dominated. So even if men who don't take part in X feel unwelcome, the impact is bigger on women, as they have a much lower representation in X.

One of the key pieces of information that led me to think like this, was this: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

I don't claim any authority on this, or even that this is correct. These are just my own (low-n) observations, and I'm pretty sure a good part (if not all) of it probably doesn't stand up to reality.

So I'm probably all wrong here, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

My gut feeling is that I shouldn't post this, as the previous discussions here about this issue are borderline flamewars, from both sides, but I still have hope that some good discussions are possible here.

You've avoided any discussion at all with your confusing use of a variable instead of just making a clear statement

No, his argument is straightforward and lots of other people have made it before. A shorter way of saying it would be "if you don't like the same kinds of video games as most other developers, you are likely to be made to feel unwelcome".

> "if you don't like the same kinds of video games as most other developers, you are likely to be made to feel unwelcome"

Funny, I don't like the same kinds of video games as most other developers. I like Minecraft, and only one colleague I know who enjoys it is a (very smart) woman, although she is a tech writer, not a developer (she is perfectly capable of programming, in fact it is her hobby, she just likes writing better).

So please, don't stereotype. :-)

I'm deliberately oversimplifying. If you:

1. Like sports

2. Wear expensive or formal clothing

3. Dislike video games

4. Are uninterested in science fiction

5. Don't drink

6. Are over 50

... you'll find valley software development culturally inhospitable. Obviously, lots of well-dressed 50 year old baseball fans have programming jobs. But those people don't "read" as software developers, and if you take those people and strip away their resumes, they will underperform people that don't have those characteristics in software development interviews.

i'm a guy and i don't enjoy video games any more. I just feel i've grown out of that phase when I was 15. I'd rather go swimming, hiking, and try out different restaurants/bars.

I agree. I think X = nerd.

Could be, but I don't want to get into a pointless discussion of the name of a culture, call it whatever you want.

That's why I used X. The name is irrelevant.

That's fine, but without calling it anything it becomes a puzzle to even know what you're talking about.

> a certain culture that I'll call X

> X (which might include sci-fi, fantasy, video-games, board games, certain types of discussions, and a lot more)

Any suggestions on how to make it more clear? I don't want to give it a name, to avoid focusing in the name, which will then lead to an endless gaming culture vs. nerd culture vs. geek culture vs. the world.

Honest question, non-confrontational, really wanna know :)

I thought it was perfectly clear. I quite like the usage of "X" specifically because it doesn't give it a name loaded with irrelevant baggage.

You cannot please all of the people, all of the time. Trying will make you crazy.

Your post is long enough that I had enough context (at least as someone in that culture :) to figure it out. It was just annoying to puzzle through the first while without knowing what you were talking about.

>There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all this non-work community.

There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality: the jobs at non-software companies where programmers are a cost center. E.g. enterprisey - line-of-business - type of programming. Actually, the "back-office" type of software dev is the majority of programming jobs out there. Yes, there may be a few "enterprise" managers here or there that might be impressed with extra-curricular programming but it's often not a reasonable scenario. (E.g. virtually no programmer that knows a 4GL like SAP ABAP language (business process programming) will be maintaining a github profile full of ABAP code.)

It's the founders and managers at tech companies that value the developers that enjoy programming on their own. The founders themselves often started programming as kids and so it makes the most sense to them to try and attract programmers with the same enthusiasm.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be strictly a 9-to-5 Mon-Fri programmer. That life approach meshes better with companies outside of Silicon Valley.

> There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality

And how do you get into those jobs when even CS students still share the same culture? It goes back to the chart I mentioned:

http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

my father taught programming and CS-lite courses at a community college for decades. whatever culture the students have, it sure as hell isn't the valley one, or anything like i saw in university.

I'm not talking about valley culture, but, for example, liking star wars, XKCD, Tolkien, video games, etc.

Do the students in those community colleges share that as well?

i know what you're talking about, and no, his students didn't share that culture, or any other you're worried about. or probably any you've ever even seen unless you're from the rural south. in which case we wouldn't even be having this conversation in the first place.

At my old university, we were the kind of programmers that HN and the Valley in general loves to hate: bro-grammers.

Half the students were in a fraternity or sorority, and the engineering college as a whole had its own co-ed service fraternity.

Most common topics of discussion: beer, that last episode of Miami Vice, and trading tips on how to beg professors for server time so we can complete our final projects and graduate.

It meshes fine with virtually all companies. Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it: their employees burn large amounts of time doing nonproductive stuff while maintaining "face time", and quality suffers terribly as people do shoddy work to maintain the preferred cadence.

Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-day 6-day-a-week people are, in general, spending all that time productively.

>Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it:

Sorry for not being clear. I'm not talking about burning 60+ hours for the company.

I'm talking about the attraction to programming personalities that truly enjoy programming on their own time. E.g... The programmer spends exactly 40 hours for Google/Facebook/Microsoft and another 20 on his weekend programming side project because he enjoys it.

On the other hand... if you're a Peoplesoft/SAP programmer, no hiring manager cares that you don't write that code "for fun" on your own time as a hobby.

Plenty of seriously hardcore people do not spend 20 hours on their weekends writing more code. Obviously, there are lots of programmers who do, but I think what's happening here is pretty simple: the people who have "writing more computer code" as their personal hobby are excited to feel superior to those who don't.

>I think what's happening here is pretty simple: the people who have "writing more computer code" as their personal hobby are excited to feel superior to those who don't.

Maybe some of that sentiment is happening. That's orthogonal to the point that programmers who enjoy programming as a passion (that's a dangerous word) naturally will prefer hiring programmers who enjoy it beyond the boundaries of a 40-hour job.

It's just human affinity. Think of rock bands starting up in a garage. The singer + bass player + drummer are looking to add a guitarist. If they interview a guitarist and he says, "well, I'll just strum whatever and it don't matter if I play with you guys or on a cruise ship or a Las Vegas lounge bar -- guitar is just a job", he won't get an offer to join. For the band members, music is their life.

Since programming is often "fun" and software engineering is similar to "artistry", it's natural for programmers who enjoy coding for fun to want to hang around other programmers who enjoy it in a similar degree. This culture is especially true for startups. As the company matures, it becomes less important.

Sucks if you're a new parent who codes, doesn't it?

I'm a new parent who codes, and it is difficult, but not impossible. I would note that you keep attempting to analyse (or rather, guess) the emotions of people you disagree with, and it might be better to stay logical and systematic in order to communicate effectively.

I didn't notice that in any of tptacek comments. It might be better if you resist projecting?

> I think what's happening here is pretty simple: the people who have "writing more computer code" as their personal hobby are excited to feel superior to those who don't.

Wait, all of them? That's a pretty sweeping generalization. I think you should allow for the possibility that a substantial fraction of them do it because they enjoy it.

Also, often the sentiment goes the other way. Like:

- So, how was the weekend?

- Awesome! I've learned about this cool algorithm...

- Hey, what's wrong with you? Get a life, like, go see some movies or something...

Whoah. I'm not saying that people who write code for fun all do this. I write code for fun and so does my wife. I'm saying that people who claim that writing code for fun makes them superior developers do this.

Good. Because the way I interpreted your comment is that you are opposed to the whole notion.

> people who claim that writing code for fun makes them superior developers do this

What is "this" in this sentence? If "this" = "excited to feel superior" (from your previous comment), then the sentence reads almost like a tautology. If you simply mean that bragging and feeling smug about writing code for fun is kinda pathetic, then I agree. But that's true for bragging and feeling smug about, well, almost anything.

It's fine to brag and feel smug about disliking TFA and the misogynistic "memo" for which it apparently has some sympathy...

> Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-day 6-day-a-week people are, in general, spending all that time productively.

I've probably worked that much before during hypomanic episodes. I can't keep it up indefinitely though.

Those particular personal projects that hit the sweet spot and lead me on a 2-week, barely-coming-up-for-air frenzy of creation? Yeah, I'll put in that much work and more in one stretch.

The odds of hitting that level of flow on a paid work project? Sure I care, but it's never going to meet the criteria and get that far under my skin. I can believe in the merits of a goal/project to the highest degree, but if it's not scratching the particular itch that takes me into the zone, I get some kind of x-factor, then I'll never be able to hit the 100% flow state for any significant period of time.

Just personal experience, I think there are others who are far more capable of getting 100% into that kind of work.

Maintaining an interest in one's field outside of work != 60 hour work week. In fact they are antithetical - 60 hour week doesn't leave much room for anything else, engineering-related or not.

>The founders themselves often started programming as kids

i'm not sure where you get this conclusion that those who enjoy extracurricular programming often started as kids.

Usually those who started as a kid means they were fortunate enough to have parents who were programmers. Even if they're parents weren't that case, then usually its the case of just doing html/css on myspace

I've noticed something pretty similar. I do appreciate video games and board games and speculative fiction and sushi and campy/punny humor and all the rest, but I've worked at companies where anyone who leaned more toward Agatha Christie and cake decorating (for example) might have felt pretty left out. The more pure-software a company is, the more everybody seems to assume that others share at least 70% of the standard obsessions - which now includes weight training, home brewing, and beard maintenance as well. It's pretty sad when people in advertising or even finance seem to have and accommodate more diverse interests. Wouldn't be surprised if undertakers do too, though I don't happen to know any personally. We are an extraordinarily fashion-driven folk, and that's not a good thing.

> These are just my own (low-n) observations

Same disclaimer.

I used to be the guy who only did X (from age 8). Spending all my free time doing X impressively improved my ability to do that but only until the day that X became my job. From that day forward, any benefit derived in terms of mastery was vastly overshadowed by fatigue and burnout. The more I participated in X after-hours the worse I became at life in general (X by association).

I used to bring up topics like that at work. I would brag about my weekend/month project to coworkers; the praise made me feel better about my mundane weekend. I honestly loved hearing about weekends that had nothing to do with tech because I wanted that. I do now and I honestly never want to go back to doing weekends of X.

When everyone is done gushing over the stories of the fiber in the basement (you can too and learn something), share your story about your hike up a mountain. You can't claim that people aren't interested in something (even so far as learning themselves) if you haven't actually tested those waters.

Doctors and lawyers can't do their work as a hobby. There are laws against that. But I can say from personal experiences that doctors talk about their work in their off-hours, usually in great detail, and over meals. Nurses, too.

Obviously, computer programmers can program anywhere, anytime, and it's legal. It's also possible to get a very early (as in pre-pubescent) start in actual programming, whereas there are, again, legal hurdles to becoming a doctor or a lawyer much younger than the median.

As for the rest of the cultural markers, I wouldn't presume to say too much, because I don't know that many programmers.

> I rarely see doctors, lawyers, or most professions engaging in their practice outside work as a hobby

That's more because it's hard to engage in medicine or law outside of an institution, which makes it hard to hobby with on the weekends. Plenty of auto mechanics fix cars on the weekend, plenty of graphic designers do personal art projects on the weekends. There are also plenty who don't.

also doctors and lawyers already have 70+ hour weeks. They're too exhausted for any side projects. Easier to do that if you have a 40 hour week

Take a look at other artistic work, like say people involved in making movies? Do they too practice outside work as a hobby?

Take someone like Adam Savage. Talking about being in front of the camera, behind it, being producer, or just being a consumer of other peoples work. Talking about the script, the camera technology, the set, the props, the making of props. About side projects, personal project, about other from of artistic endeavors.

I don't know personally that industry, but from everything I hear, it seems common behavior that people in the TV and movie industry often have a personal connection to the work they do. Maybe it just that when people create things and are allowed to be artistic, then the work tend to melt into the personality of those that are passionate about it.

> I rarely see doctors, lawyers, or most professions engaging in their practice outside work as a hobby

Doctors read through medical literature all the time.

I know plumbers who have fully decked out their house with incredible custom setups (e.g. hydronically heated walls), mechanics who work on their own cars on the weekend, contractors who live in fabulous homes they built themselves, and artists who work on their own projects during the weekend.

At the same time, many of my coworkers have interests outside of technology. It varies. A lot.

> (which might include sci-fi, fantasy, video-games, board games, certain types of discussions, and a lot more)

Hiking, sailing, martial arts, world travel, cooking, beer, animal rehabilitation.

> (which might include sci-fi, fantasy, video-games, board games, certain types of discussions, and a lot more),

Sci-fi and Fantasy movies have been mainstream for some time, and my non-engineering friends get together for board games as often as my engineering friends. Video games are played by 49% of Americans (Pew), equally split between men and women.

I've known men and women who have had cultural problems fitting into their teams, engineering and non-engineering.

Also in regards to the article, music is even worse than politics for % chance of finding agreement, if I brought up the latest \m/ concert I went to, I'd find maybe a couple of people in total who'd want to talk about it at my office! It'd be "how was it? Nice, ok, cool."

>>I rarely see doctors, lawyers, or most professions engaging in their practice outside work as a hobby, but in CS/SWE, you're evaluated by your hobbie-contributions on GitHub, your postings to HackerNews, etc.

There is no dearth of doctors who volunteer to serve for International Red Cross, Doctors beyond borders, or like in my country(India)-- Go to far away villages and set up diabetes, thyroid and cataract camps to help treat people for free.

Many lawyers routinely do volunteer work for many causes that can't afford legal work.

The biggest reason I go the mechanic close to my home to get my motorcycle fixed, is because he seems to be insanely passionate about it and in his spare time(Usually late nights, in a job which is physically taxing) resurrects vintage motor cycles for sheer passion.

Its not exactly wrong to be hard working and passionate about something.

Are doctors and lawyers really a good comparison? Doctors sacrifice their late 20s to ridiculous hours as interns and residents. The lawyers who make partner in big-name firms work ridiculous hours to do so. In these professions the women are putting in the hours.

I kind of disagree with the gaming part.

I'm almost sure that most hardcore gamers actually never become part of the CS/SWE crowd because of video game addiction. Gaming and software development are two very different domains. Hardcore gamers usually are not motivated, accomplish very little, and lack in career development.

I think it depends on your definition of "hardcore", but there are alot of good software people who game well above average even if it is below the level many would consider "obsessive".

The best computer games have alot in common with software design as far as thinking about how a system works, planning for edge cases that could lead to problems/opportunities, and developing the patience to find which strategies pay off over a long period of time.

More than that, I often find that the most addicted hardcore gamers are people who are using that to replace the sense of purpose that work gives them, which means they're pretty hard working once they find a career they enjoy. Of course, then they might turn into a workaholic instead...

This a little bit of overlap, but I don't think there's significant overlap between gamers and software developers.

Writing code and playing a video are two very different experiences. Sure, you'll need to test the game, but testing games is not a fun time contrary to popular belief. And more important, the vast majority of software developers do not actually work in the video game industry. Most either work in systems development or make CRUD apps.

Great article and hits on what I think is the main difference between men and women: men seem to be far more likely to become obsessive and devote massive amounts of time to hobbies and study. I mean if you're not popular and girls aren't interested in you, what else are you going to do? And spending years being obsessed with computers is naturally going to lead you down a path towards a degree and job in computers, hence more men in computing (as an example).

I was very popular with girls for about 2 years between 14-16, but was still hugely geeky. The idea that there are lonely men out there that think 'I can't get girls, I'll become a geek instead!' Laughable.

And then you became unpopular with girls suddenly? Because you became more or less geeky, or what? And what does being "very popular" at 14 have to do with adults being lonely?

I have no clue what your intention was with that post.

I think I became uglier as I grew up. My point was that my popularity with girls was independent of my geekiness. They fancied me in spite of my geekiness because I was beautiful (for about 2 years, I lament their loss). Not getting girls didn't make me any more or less geeky, just less happy.

Wow.

Apparently my grandmother's lifetime of quilt making, she made 1 for each of her children and grandchildren, doesn't count as a hobby. Each quilt taking 1 to 2 years to complete. Only her husband's shop work and his steam engine restoration efforts were as a hobby.

Everything she did was merely... a what? What is the appropriate word for what she did?

i've always noticed that there are more loner guys than loner girls.

I don't think that really meshes with the early history of computing which had a much higher proportion of women but also required alot of dedication and an obsessive attention to detail to get it to do anything.

Her point about the culture around alot of tech and SW development making it less appealing for women (and probably some kinds of men) was pretty insightful though.

That's fine. Many of us don't spend weekends building tech setups in basements - in fact I strive not to. My coworkers don't as well.

You don't have to mainly identify as a profession in order to practice it, and I suspect as we improve work life balance, we wont in general.

What's more, it doesn't even signal that the individual in question is better at their job than someone that puts in "only" 40 hours. I've worked with a good number of people who can talk big-talk when it comes to programming, have a countless innovative side-projects and yet can't deliver anything meaningful at work by the deadline. Some of them had very impressive github accounts and worked 10+ hours a day, but were consistently behind everyone else in the quality of their output.

I think it's a shame if someone quits the profession because they think they need to keep up with people who might or might not be delivering actual business value.

Our field rapidly evolves. If I don't spend at least 10-20 hours a week improving my skills and experience new tech, I can find myself obsolete in 5 years time.

Why not do job-related training on company time?

Because few if any employers are willing to sacrifice 10-20 hours a week to continuing education if the work week is a mere 40 hours.

spend that 10-20 hours to move into something besides web/mobile.

I'd prefer to spend it learning AI or Ethereum...those are both rabbit holes in and of themselves. How many hours to become experts in either? 1000-2000?

I don't now, but I certainly did in the beginning of my career. I was even pressured to as a junior developer-- I apparently wasn't learning the new framework fast enough and they suggested I study at home.

For the most part I work rather normal hours now-- but occasionally I branch out and build stuff in my free time. I agree that it's not necessary and I could maintain my normal job in development without it. But I've also been able to parlay my hobby coding into new positions or profitable side work. It has given me more confidence and freedom.

Plenty of my co-workers don't build things on their own time. But as such I'm much more likely to be given the more interesting and challenging projects. I also likely have better job security. There are lots of benefits to being one of the crazy ones building fiber networks in your basement.

"And the sexual harassment, while annoying, was just that: annoying. I cannot recall that it ever affected my work, nor that I lost any sleep over it."

This says it all. Most women are not like this author. They will loose sleep over it and rightly so.

She said the harassment came from clients not co-workers.

Yes but the point is she was ok with it. Which is not what a large population of females feel like...

Honestly, how do you want her to feel about it?

You can't sue customers for sexual harassment. Anyone working in a customer-facing position must be willing to put up with poor behavior (of all sorts) on the part of customers; it's pretty much part of the job description. If it gets bad enough you fire the customer, but in the mean time you just get the work done, take their money, and be ok with it. The only thing worse than annoying customers is no customers.

Oh please, do tell me how you are so in tune with how a "large population of females"(weird wording btw?) feel.

I've been in that position and I felt the same as the author in this particular regard. Obviously sexist clients made me angry to deal with in the moment, but they're the same as any other type of asshole when you come right down to it. And sleep time is too precious to waste thinking about assholes.

I still loved my job and coworkers and would recommend it to other women. Sure sexism exists, but it exists everywhere. Why miss out on a good gig because bad customers exist?

I'm not the op.

I was waitstaff once. I quit on day 2. I am sure if you surveyed most waitresses, they'd say they don't lose any sleep over the kind of sexual harassment faced from customers but that's survivors bias in my opinion.

Anyone who did lose sleep, like I did, quit like I did unless of course they had no choice but to go on because they needed the income.

Here's what I don't understand. Traditionally male-dominated fields rife with harassment issues - like law and medicine - now have much less of a problem, because the gender ratio has been somewhat normalized. Tech companies are actually becoming MORE male dominated - yet medicine and law would be put to shame by the sheer amount of mental and financial resources that tech companies pour into diversity efforts nowadays.

What is different about the tech industry that girls graduating high school are happy to go into studying medicine or law, but don't want to study computer science? It seems the problem starts far before most people think that it does.

I can understand it by looking at my own daughters. Without a substantial effort from my part, they tend to gravitate towards nontechnical subjects. Peer pressure, influence from media all play a part in this. The issue is bigger than just a few techi bro's.

Absolutely. It's a society-wide cultural problem. And both the tech bros, the media image, and the idea that women don't belong there, are bad at it or shouldn't want to be there, are the products of that.

Software is one of the few areas where female participation has actually gone down since the 1980s. There used to be more female programmers.

Law and medicine are high status jobs, with a lot of people interactions. Yes, programmers have meetings. Not the same level of interaction as medicine, by a long stretch.

There are many TV shows glorifying medicine and law. How many TV shows glorify the job of a programmer? How would you make a TV show glorifying the job of a programmer?

So why do young men study CS in college if programmers aren't glorified? Not to mention that being a "nerd" and "computer whiz" has never been a culturally attractive label, no matter what people might say today.

I don't agree with this, but the implication seems to be that women/girls are shallower? Is there some other word to characterize "more likely to make major life decisions based on what the TV says"?

Because it's one of the only fields you're virtually guaranteed an an above average salary straight out of undergrad and it's an easier path relative to medicine and law

Anecdotally, it was often guys who had no shot at being high status anyway that chose CS, or earlier, who picked computers as a hobby.

Men in America, but not in the world in general, are more money conscious than status conscious. They're more likely to salve the idea of not having a respectable job with thinking about how much money they are making.

I doubt it. There are a lot of men who care a great deal about status. I've even heard of men who don't want to date women who make more money than them, because they feel it hurts their status. If they cared more about money, they'd gladly date a richer woman.

The problem is this patriarchal idea that men should be the main breadwinner. Our culture tells them they've failed at being men if they're not the main breadwinner. It also tells them they need to go all-out making money, which makes it easier for employers to convince them to make long hours. At the same time, women have this cultural role of mothers, where they should be concerned with having children, and put their children before their job, and therefore can't be expected to work as hard as men.

Alright, that doesn't explain why women are more prominent in other hard-working jobs like medicine and law. Still, it's a cultural prejudice that's still very much felt in much of society.

It's usually the other way round - women don't want to date men who earn less. You probably heard your version from the feminists.

Quite the contrary. This is the first time I hear of women who refuse to date a man who earns less than them (excepting gold diggers, of course), and I've heard about men who don't want to date women who earn more than them, from men who think women should not earn more than them.

Women marrying up is historically the biggest driver of equality in Western societies (poor people becoming richer). Economist have identified it as a problem because as women get richer and they don't want to marry down, that mechanism for "equality" is increasingly lost.

So there have been studies about this phenomenon (women not wanting to marry down), but I am too lazy to Google for them.

Also, financial troubles of the husband are the strongest indicator for impeding divorce. And breakups are usually initiated by women.

Every time this comes up I wonder if I should launch a dating site for rich women seeking a "houseman" for a partner. But somehow I am still not convinced yet that there is really such a huge market.

Yeah, but that's part of the old patriarchal system where men make money and women stay at home. In this age of double incomes, it should be irrelevant. Still, some people cling to the old patriarchy.

It's not just that, it is that women have the greater bargaining chip in the relationship. They have the womb for creating babies, so they can make more demands. Also, they make the greater investment into kids (at first, at least, over time it can change), which also warrants "compensation".

I'm not sure what they're supposed to be bargaining about in your view. Have you ever been in a long term relationship? Because what you're describing does not sound like a healthy relationship.

Do you have kids? Who got to stay home with the kids? Who got to work only part time when the kids grew older? Who pays the rent? That sort of thing.

And, as always: on average...

If you don't see it, I don't think I can convince you. There is much to learn about how the world turns.

I have kids, yes. We take care of them together. We both work 4 days a week. She pays the mortgage, I pay childcare.

In a healthy relationship, this is stuff you work out together, not through demands and womb-based bargaining chips.

Silicon Valley, Halt & Catch Fire, Scorpion, Mr. Robot. Lots of TV shows center around programmers. As with doctor shows however they don't focus on the medicine but the interactions of the people.

I suspect it's because of a prejudice that there's something anti-social about working with technology. And that prejudice effects both the people working with technology (some of whom embrace that anti-social attitude, when in a different environment they'd do something about it), and people who don't want to go into tech because of that prejudice.

Well, some people is stronger than others to social pressure. Anyway, the author is not saying that sexual harassment doesn't exist nor it does not matter, but that even putting those aside maybe engineering is just not an attractive field for women.

That said, I don't know if I buy that you have to be a dedicated geek to be in engineering.

As a trans woman in tech, who was also raised in a very gender normative environment (i.e. I was expected to conform to gender norms for boys as a child), I certainly see her point. I got into technology a child mostly because that what I could do within the environment's "boy" social role.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and relative to pretty much all cis women of the same age, I have many more years of experience of playing around with technology in my free time, and many fewer years spent doing the "empathising" activities which the author refers to in the article - exactly the kind of activities which girls are often nudged towards. As a consequence I am pretty good with technology.

And yet the more that I grow as a person, connect with who I am, and grow in my options, the more I find playing around with tech less fulfilling than e.g. spending time on relationships. I'd spend evenings tinkering with Linux when I was 13, but I'd be unsatisfied as hell doing that today. And I envy women and girls raised in environments that were more conducive towards them engaging in empathising and self-expressive activities - if that were me, it's unlikely I'd have gone down a tech track.

We need equality and freedom, but men and women are biologically different.

And it's not a coincidence that my first HN comment in years of reading is on an empathising topic, not a technology one... Women can be great engineers, we just rarely care to become them, unless circumstances unnaturally push us towards it - I suspect this is why it is developed countries which have the fewest women in tech, as wealthy people have the most options to choose from. Of course this is all generalisations and averages and there are true exceptions on both sides.

Holy stereotypes, batman.

> Women can be great engineers, we just rarely care to become them

How do you presume to know what the majority of women care to be? I'm a woman, and I want to be a great engineer. I was extremely fortunate to grow up in an environment with a female technical role model (my mom), so I easily saw myself going this way, despite the societal emphasis on empathetic skills the rest of the world expected from me. Others were not so lucky.

It's hard to care to be something that you were never properly exposed to. I got that chance, you got that chance, but many women did not.

Allow me to clarify some things in my post:

I intentionally worked on the basis of stereotypes or generalisations. If 60% of group A wants prefers X over Y while only 40% of group B prefers X over Y, it's accurate to speak in general terms, even if there are many individual exceptions. Any discussion of women in technology _in general_, as opposed to individual women in tech, inherently relies on the ability to make generalisations.

As to how I presume it, I was basing my thoughts on the the science of gender differences. Take a look for example here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

In particular, "Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension."

By "care to become them", I meant less the _desire_ to be a good engineer, and more _actually_ enjoying the hours spent in lone engineering. It's one thing to want to be a good engineer in the abstract, or to enjoy holding an engineering role at a company (and some engineering roles in some company cultures are much more people-oriented than other engineering roles), and it's another thing to be somebody who would happily spend a weekend understanding some algorithm, and evenings developing some new open source library as a side project. There are definitely some women who will enjoy these over the alternatives, but not many, and far fewer than there are men, as shown by the huge differences in the Things-People dimension and the huge differences in how many men versus women actually do those things.

And I'll speak just for myself: sitting away at a screen chopping away at some problem often just isn't emotionally fulfilling. And I don't think women who are not engineers really envy those who spend their time this way.

I definitely support initiatives to expose more girls and women to technology, and to raise the profiles of minority group role models in tech. And perhaps the lesson of the Things-People difference is not that engineering isn't for most women, but rather that engineering needs to be done in a more emotionally connected and social way, for example with pair programming.

> I don't think women who are not engineers really envy those who spend their time this way

Again, you are presuming to know what the majority of women feel. Your personal preference for "emotionally fulfilling" work is just that, personal preference. As for the study you linked, it's impossible to seperate the influence of gendered socialization and inequal exposure to potential interests from "biological" sources as causes for the differences.

Applying these types of weak generalizations to justify differences which are better explained by sexism is not helping women in any way. Maybe if you had experienced childhood as a a female you would understand how toxic female socialization really can be. Stop telling other women what we prefer to be or care about, and just help make a world where girls are not told they need to be "emotionally fulfilled" to enjoy a job. Because that's the one that still exists and prevents women from exploring technical work.

Many girls worldwide are still groomed for being caretakers responsible for doing emotional labor and household labor for family when they could be exploring their own interests. I know women, in America, who were raised in this manner and it was very hard for them to to break away from that expectation and work for themselves instead. They wrestled with guilt and their family accused them of selfishness, but they decided rightly that their destiny is theirs and it was wrong for their family to treat them like a servant (notably their brothers were not treated that way). It's easy to conflate the effects of that type of socialization with biological dispositions, but nobody is helped by doing so.

I really appreciate your perspective, and agree that I could grow in my empathy for the harmful aspects of female socialisation. It's admittedly hard for me to not view it as butterflies, rainbows and dance classes, but that's just the "grass is greener" effect from my own experience. (I also had no sisters and didn't observe it directly in my own family.) I support everyone liberating themselves in the way that they need to.

I can totally agree that all of the studies and data that we have are taken from within the culture itself, and so it's pretty much impossible to see the biology through the culture. I often notice myself that biological explanations are used by dominant groups in order to reduce their responsibility, even if they may not be the most scientifically accurate ways of looking at things.

I somewhat regret reading this article. She says she realized tech wasn't for her when she realized doing IT in her off-hours was unpalatable. Here's my question: Why? Why doesn't she like working on technical hobbies outside of work? That might prove more interesting.

As for myself, her sentiment seems in line with the kids in HS who called my type the nerds/geeks/other term for loser. I also think that's where society needs to change. If society treated me more inclusively I might feel more inclined to be social. I was savagely bullied all through k-12. If I had not experienced that I would be much more comfortable expressing myself and being around people in general. I think 'techies' being more inclusive to other walks of life would happen if we, 'techies', weren't ostracized early in life.

(Having said that, I'm personally very open and 'liberal' in the more non-political sense. But I'm also making almost no efforts to socialize currently. I want to move far away from where I currently live.)

I wish she had elaborated on her valuation of personal hobbies in the same field as work. Instead I feel like she dressed up a personal anecdote around several paragraphs but failed to get to the meat of the issue.

She says she realized tech wasn't for her when she realized doing IT in her off-hours was unpalatable. Here's my question: Why?

Because she is actually extremely competitive, something typically thought of as a male trait:

Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me.

She didn't want a job where she was going to be considered second rate. She wanted to be in a job where she would be "the best" and get accolades for it, etc. She realized she didn't love tech enough to have the biggest bragging rights, so she went someplace where she could outcompete others.

You know, like Bro culture gets accused of being.

> She didn't want a job where she was going to be considered second rate. She wanted to be in a job where she would be "the best" and get accolades for it, etc. She realized she didn't love tech enough to have the biggest bragging rights, so she went someplace where she could outcompete others.

That's the opposite of extremely competitive. Extremely competitive people don't go into the easy lane and the certainly aren't worried about putting in extra time to be the best. Extremely competitive people will seek out challenges and put in a lot more training effort.

With rare exceptions like Michael Jordon's baseball career - most competitive people don't seek out situations they can't win.

I think the previous comment was about lack of commitment to trying to compete. I don't know exactly what she was doing or where, but I think it's possible to have a work/life balance in IT.

The memo was making the point that because men have more affinity to things than women, Google should not try for a 50/50 balance between men and women.

The author here says that she enjoyed her work but left because the predominant male co-workers had affinity to things and couldn't relate with them.

If anything the author makes a case for Google's current strategy of striving for 50/50 men women balance, since that would result in the author being able to relate better with the co-workers.

The solution to author's problem is more targeted diversity.

Did I mis-interpret something?

The google memo argued that altering the job to be more people-focused instead of thing-focused - e.g. more pair programming - would achieve the same goal without what may be seen as affirmative action.

> The google memo argued that altering the job to be more people-focused instead of thing-focused - e.g. more pair programming - would achieve the same goal without what may be seen as affirmative action.

While it did mentioned that, it didn't really argue that. After all this is something that happens after you are in the company.

The main argument was that Google should stop conscious efforts to increase representation of women.

Quoting from "Suggestions":

"we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases"

"Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts."

And quite honestly I don't think anyone has done me any special favours because I have a penis - in fact in my experience possession of a vagina is a fast track to the top, simply because companies are so desperate to even things up.

I've had to work hard for what I've got. How is it fair that someone without the same passion and possibly also without the same ability to deliver should be given opportunities purely to meet this week's fashionable quota?

Suggestions I strongly disagree with.

> "we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases"

Isn't the whole point of biases that we should try to correct for them? Biases are ruining accuracy.

> "Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts."

I strongly disagree with this suggestion that software engineering is like homelessness, violent death, prison (well, sometimes) or school dropout. Those are things we want everybody out, not extra people in.

"At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me."

The Bloomberg writer says that she left not because she couldn't relate to her coworkers, but because she was "never going to be as good" as those around her, because the work itself was not as interesting to her as it was to them.

Yes, you completely misinterpreted the who argument and twisted it to suit your view point. I think it would have been more dignified if you said you disagreed with the article. Some heights of passive aggressiveness in your comment

Please feel free to correct me.

This is a wonderful personal story that gels very well with a large study on "Why Women Leave Engineering"

https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952078

Similar to the diagnosis by Jordan Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE-xFXuo

Personally I think it is oversimplification - the thing is that - yes there is a root cause in biology - but than that root cause is multiplied by social circumstances. If there are few women in tech - then it is costly for employers to adjust to them (stuff like adding women sizes t-shirts) - plus it is also cheaper intellectually for people to judge women stereotypically. Plus there is that thing that if women are more agreeable than man - than people tend to target them more (with stuff like interruptions etc).

> yes there is a root cause in biology

No.

Proof: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

If there was a root cause in biology, in 1980 there wouldn't be the same % of women in CS as in business, or almost the same as social sciences. Or almost the same as there are women in math/stats today.

Something happened in the early 80's. I have a hypothesis for that, tied to the rise of video-games, sci-fi, etc. that eventually came to dominate CS. But don't have any non-anedoctal evidence for that.

It is not a proof. Come on! This is a complex thing - there might be many factors involved.

I don't say that nothing happened in 1980s - and your theory about video-games only moves the problem to another area, why women don't like video-games like men?

Women do like video games. But in the 1980s, it did seem like more of a boys thing. I'm not sure why.

Actually, you're wrong. This doesn't disprove anything, unfortunately, because there also can be a feedback effect from people preferring fields with more people of their own gender (that is for example women will prefer jobs with more women over jobs with less women, ceteris paribus). In the presence of such feedback effects, even if the ratio of men and women who intent to work in some field is the same, you will get a dynamical system where the actual ratio can vary a great deal over time.

> because there also can be a feedback effect from people preferring fields with more people of their own gender

No, that would mean that women in business, architecture, physical sciences, etc. would not have increased.

The fact that women in CS followed closely several other fields (business, architecture, etc.) means that % of women already on the field is not relevant.

The fact that other fields that use skills similar to CS (math, stats, physical sciences) have much higher women ratios, show that there is no inherent biological factor impacting it.

No it doesn't, because they're different fields, some of which are pre-med related. And amidst programming itself there's different behaviors. Way more men design their own programming languages.

The same argument that would disprove my point would also disprove OP's point that it is biological.

Maybe worth looking at the proportions in other countries too, "pre-med" isn't the first step to becoming a doctor worldwide. I gather that Law differs a fair bit too.

I bet that would not be useful because the cultural effects seem to be much different in magnitude even between European countries.

Abstraction, that's what happened.

That's not proof. It's an observation that needs explaining. Scott Alexander's post[0], which was linked in TFA offers a plausible explanation.

> My impression is that there were lots of women in CS in 1980 for the same reason there were lots of Jews in banking in 1800: they were banned from doing anything else.

> Computer programming was originally considered sort of a natural outgrowth of being a secretary (remember, 77% of data entry specialists are still female today, probably because it’s also considered a natural outgrowth of being a secretary). Women had lots of opportunity in it, and a lot of women who couldn’t break into other professions naturally went into it.

> Then people let women become doctors and lawyers, so a bunch of the smart ones went off and did that instead.

> You can see the same thing going on with teachers. There’s been a huge decline in the percent of the most talented women who become teachers.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...

That explanation doesn't match the chart: There weren't a lot of women in CS. They were growing, just like other fields.

And then, suddenly, they stopped growing and started declining.

It did rise most sharply in CS because it was open to women early on when women joined the labor market (previously either holding non-degree jobs or being stay-at-home wives). Once other fields opened up too they left CS for those fields which aligned more with their interests.

Maybe there might be two effects at work here: Women joining a field early that was seen as a female job (computer secretaries) that did not align with their interests while conversely men started to join more when the job became more stereotyped as a "male activity" while at the same time being aligned with their interest.

Contrast the business curve which also saw an early increase but also is more of a people-interest thing, thus did not see a decline.

> It did rise most sharply in CS because it was open to women early on when women joined the labor market (previously either holding non-degree jobs or being stay-at-home wives). Once other fields opened up too they left CS for those fields which aligned more with their interests.

Again, that doesn't match the chart: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

Sometimes I wonder why it is "natural" that some fields are dominated by females by nearly a 90% but it is worrisome that others are 80% male. I mean, given a more or less equivalent intelligence distribution people needs to end doing something.

Also, the dotcom bubble sure killed CS.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but in Netherland, a lot of people are worried about the dropping number of men in education. It's becoming increasingly dominated by women, but it's important that kids also see men in front of the class.

I think my oldest son's school has only two male teachers, and my youngest son's childcare has only one male childcarer (what's the word for that?). It'd be healthy if it was a bit more equal.

Staring at the chart, 1980 doesn't seem that significant. It shows from 1970s to 1980s, almost every major has seen an increase in women graduates.

I don't know much about this subject, best I can do is pass around a link(video) I saw that was semi-convincing to me that - there might be some general biological tendencies(https://youtu.be/p5LRdW8xw70). Biological tendencies are not useful for individual cases, so as long as everyone is given moderately equal chance at getting a job they qualify for and can do the work in peace, everything is well and good.

I think it's about 1984 where Computer Science suddenly peaks and drops back to below 20%. It's the only field to do so; the others keep going up. Though Engineering stays below 20% the entire time.

If you look at the actual numbers of men and women in CS rather than just the percentage of women, you'll find that whatever happened in the early '80s affected both men and women. Before that, the numbers for both men and women were growing, with the women growing faster (hence the rising percentage of women). Then the numbers of both men and women started falling for several years, with women falling faster (hence the declining percentage of women).

As appealing as I find the idea of building a fibre-channel network at home, the fact that people in computing (like me) routinely do these kind of things is also an aspect of a culture within the field, not an essential characteristic of the field itself. Do surgeons have watercooler conversations along the lines of, "You'll never guess what I dissected at the weekend..." ?

Probably, because they have to work weekends!

The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius. All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job.

When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time, and especially when interviewers at tech companies unconsciously favor candidates that match what their 'stereotypical' candidate looks like, well, then you get a situation like the one described in the article. But this isn't natural or normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself.

No one said you have to be obsessive, but it helps.

No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself.

The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better off it'll be.

Are you absolutely sure you arent just convincing yourself?

As someone who does actually love all this stuff so much that work doesnt start and hobby doesnt really stop... We meet and work with people like you all the time. We like the diversity. There are many ways to contribute to the end result and any smart company hires both of us.

But your resentment is mean spirited. Get over yourself. We are not driving any one away. From operations to sales we are all needed to make the engine work. But if you come here arguing that those who love their job should be fired so there is place for you without you trying so hard, that just silly. Here is the thing: from all disciplines i know there are people who love and breathe their job. If thats not the case in engineering for you, then you likely want to find the field that does make you that happy.

That might just be a smarter plan than trying to convince yourself by convincing us that in a field dominated by people who love it, you can be competitive while considering it just a safe career path. You'll just end up miserable.

Absolutely nobody has argued that people who code in their spare time should be fired. That's something you introduced, pointlessly and disruptively, to the thread.

What a tire fire all these threads are. And people are surprised they get flagged!

I think that's very close to what gyardley argued.

First paragraph is a claim that people who code in their spare time are liabilities rather than assets. Second paragraph is a claim that the tech industry as a whole should recognize this, and take steps to make sure there aren't too many around.

That's not actually arguing for firing (I mean, it might be arguing for that, but not necessarily), but it's at a minimum arguing for actively choosing non-hobby-programmers over hobby-programmers for programming jobs.

ralfn is not the one who turned this thread into a tire fire. If it is one, which I dispute, the culprits would be some combination of you and now me.

'Coding in your spare time' isn't quite as extreme as having no life outside of tech. Hey, I code a bit in my spare time too, so let me clarify.

It's the people who don't do anything else but code that I've, in my experience, had real issues with - they might make great computer scientists, but as a group they're not very good in a team of software developers. Arrogance, problems cooperating with others, excessive nitpicking, 'engineer's disease', poor social skills...

I'm not saying you're guaranteed to have any or all of those problems if all you do 24/7 is code, but I've seen it one hell of a lot, and I'm perplexed why this type of person tends to be preferred over more well-rounded individuals. It's not like they're actually better at their jobs.

I'm not arguing for going through an organization and sacking everyone who codes on the weekend. But I strongly suspect that if interviewers didn't glorify the obsessive 24/7 coder, either deliberately or subconsciously as 'what a real developer looks like', we'd have both a much more diverse tech industry and a much more functional one.

I attempted to make my previous comment neutral about the correctness of your claims; it was intended to be a refutation of tptacek's comment. And I apologize for oversimplifying your assertion to be about "coding in your spare time", which was inaccurate (although your original phrasing, "obsessive wretch", was sufficiently shitty that I thought I was doing you a favour by rephrasing, but I now agree that I didn't do the correct rephrasing).

As for your claim itself, I think you have a good point, but you're a bit overextending its consequences, and ralfn's upthread response to you is right on.

I think you're totally right that diversity of opinion and interest is a super useful supplementary skill. And I strongly agree that a team needs to have that diversity on the product side to product useful products. And I agree that a team somewhat benefits from having not just a few product specialists who have that diversity; it's essential to have a few, but it's also helpful to have lots of people with diverse perspectives. And sure, being extremely tech focused (being an "obsessive wretch") is obviously inimical to that diversity. And yeah, there's some unreasonable glorification going on.

But I think there's also something reasonable about that glorification. Although deciding what to build is a huge part of the team's job, also building it is a huge part. Invariably the part that takes more person-hours, at least in a business large enough to have employees. And in my experience, the "obsessive wretches" actually do tend to be somewhat better at this part of the job. Not overwhelmingly better, but better. Not universally so, but as a tendency. That's just my observation from my medium-length career, and I accept your claim that you have different anecdata; if you have useful actual data I'm open to persuasion.

Moreover, very frequently in this industry we hire people who frankly are not currently knowledgeable enough to do the job we're hiring for, but we hire them anyway because it often works out, and we don't want to pay the asking price of the people who already know how to do the job we're hiring for. Call it good (it allows new entrants), call it bad (lots of wheel-reinvention, ageism, etc), but I allege that it's very common. So, who's going to learn faster? My bet is on the monomaniac; maybe this is unfounded. So, I think this is a rational reason to prefer the obsessives.

And I guess I should add that someone who has literally no other interests... okay, I'm with you. That person is likely to be a problem. But I will continue to favour people for whom outside study is one of their primary hobbies over people who do it a bit, and I'll continue to favour people who do it a bit over people who don't do it at all. And note that the example in TFA was not about someone with no other interests.... it was about one individual who did build a fibre-channel network over the weekend, and another individual who realized that they would never do so.

>>But I strongly suspect that if interviewers didn't glorify the obsessive 24/7 coder

Software industry isn't the first or the last place you will see this.

The world as a whole is giant stack ranking system. Every thing from college admissions to interviews is basically a comparative process, sort of a close-to-merit ecosystem where those who put above average effort, get above average returns.

And hubris isn't new to tech. Doctors, Politicians, in fact hubris is a dominant psychological trait among top people in any field.

> much more diverse tech industry and a much more functional one.

As a Darwinist of sorts, I'm afraid that if this actually were true, we would be seeing some serious disruption of those nerds by much more functional diverse teams. The cat's been of the bag for so many years that somebody ought to have exploited it by now. But so far, it seems that one poster child example of a company which made tons of money bringing computing to the masses is Apple, under the lead of no one else but You Know Who, and (allegedly) with quite obsessive, arrogant, nitpicking and abrasive people working under him.

The cat's been of the bag for so many years that somebody ought to have exploited it by now.

I'd like to send you over here: http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/

And to the real-world examples of the market needing quite a long time to correct for sufficiently strong biases in the culture.

> flagged

How is this not an abuse?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14873001

Because "this thread is a shitshow" is actually a legitimate use of the flag button, and "this post says something I disagree with" isn't?

The HN software has code that literally looks for threads like this and penalizes them.

They all are equal shitshows. This one even seems to have lower proportion of grey comments than the one I linked.

Actually the parent pretty much said that exactly

>No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself.

Translation - you are bad at your job

>The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better off it'll be. reply

Translation - we should get rid of these people who are not assets

You've been practicing some serious selective reading in these threads.

When it's the Enemy, you seem eager to read between the lines for dark intent, but when an Ally says something like "poor at building products", "this sort of person is not an asset" and "having too many of them around just drives others away" you demand a precise, literal reading that somehow doesn't conclude that this is a call to fire, or not hire, the type of person described.

And there's nothing to stop them starting their own companies or being hired by companies that don't subscribe to the prevailing PC orthodoxy. And with their deep obsessiveness they may well write better software. Or are you saying they should not be allowed to?

That's not how things work.

Of course I'm not saying 'they should not be allowed to'. I'm not quite sure how you'd get that.

I'm saying that their deep obsessiveness, and issues relating to being deeply obsessed, makes their organization as a whole write worse software. They sometimes write good code on their own, especially if they don't have to work with others, but usually they're a net negative.

Honestly, I don't know how this isn't obvious to anyone who's ever worked on a team.

>It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself.

So they're possibly better at writing backend code.

Let's make an effort to keep them employed by finding positions they can succeed in instead of purging people at the first sign of personality traits we don't like (that they may not have been able to control in the first place).

Amen. Linux and much of all the open source code in most language ecosystems that people rely on are usually written by such people. Purging them is akin to purging the giants whose shoulders many product engineers stand on.

This is the sort of convenient take on things that incites immediate curiosity. Forced to its conclusion, you're arguing that people who code for fun in their spare time don't see any substantial increase in their chances of success as an engineer at all. Do you think that's true?

I would agree with your original comment that you don't have to be obsessive, but without further substantial reasoning, xienze's position sounds like the more reasonable one here.

I hear this a lot about building products for others and that you need to have a divers team.

1. When you are building the back end of an online shop you don't care if that shop is for women's (makeup shop) or men (guns shop). When you build breaks for cars you don't care if the car is for women's or men.

2. You don't build a product base only on the experience of one person. You go and ask your target demographics what they want from your product. I am a man but I can't speak for all men.

> The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth.

HackerNews seems to largely agree with that idea:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763182

This reminds me back when I worked inside the vfx industry. There was always atleast one clique that criticized that others enjoyed film/video games despite us working on them. That it was somehow bad that we were passionate about our field of study and spent our time learning as much as possible. Hell sometimes we would play a game or watch a movie for inspiration god forbid.

I'm fresh in this industry and it amazes me to be seeing the same pattern repeat itself here.

So what do you tell someone who does genuinely enjoy doing that sort of thing in their free time? Someone who isn't a workaholic but who, in the article's conversation, would sooner wrestle a cobra than ask a co-worker about romantic issues (especially considering the potential consequences,) and who doesn't know the difference between a bass guitar and a bassoon?

Should they be recusing themselves from the organization's social structures entirely, if that's a significant problem for others? There's probably enough seclusion outside of work already, but at some point you just start to feel like you're contributing to the problem by existing.

While this is true, knowing someone set up a fibre channel network on the weekend is hardly a reason to call that person an obsessive wretch.

I know a very smart woman who's a professor of English literature at a university, and I know for a fact that she goes home on weekends and reads Sue Grafton murder mysteries ("M for Murder" etc.). This doesn't indicate that she's obsessive or wretched or has no life, and I don't think "are you reading anything at the moment?" would be an inappropriate question for someone in her field. Certainly we wouldn't want to force her to read all the time, and certainly we wouldn't want to force her to read Finnegan's Wake on Saturday morning, but for someone who wants to study literature for a living liking literature is important, and realising you don't might cause an epiphany.

>>The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth.

Right. But being good in this world is you vs your-peer-group. And if others in your peer group are too awesome, putting in insane hours and time getting ahead, sooner or later the top spots will be taken. And nobody likes to be stuck being ranked average despite the best they can do.

>>So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius.

Reminds me of this movie - "The Gambler"- A literature professor tells his students the difference between somebody who can write good stuff and being the next William Shakespeare. Everybody has to face this fact sooner or later. Special things happen only when you are ready to put in special effort. While reminding them, there is absolutely nothing wrong in being a electrician or a plumber.

>>All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job.

Being good and not good enough will only take you that far. Of course, you can still do your job and get paid. But remember other people will likely take the top spots.

>>When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time

Tech and especially fast changing ecosystem in Tech have seen large concentration of Nerds. Kind of people who've wanted to build video games, or win science fairs at school. When too many people of same type arrive at a place it becomes a culture.

>>But this isn't natural or normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself.

This is the most important part.

I had a friend who quit programming to do MBA and built a career there. He realized there is no way he would like to spend weekends exploring new tools that keep launching every few months and endless push to use bleeding edge stuff, work insane hours, weekends and with the overall fast paced, failure ridden culture of tech.

He is doing pretty well with managing business now.

Conversely calling people who enjoy coding as a hobby "obsessive wretches" also perpetuates bias.

Watching this "drama" it feels to me like some kid in kindergarten said something like: "boys have penises and girls have vaginas, boys prefer toy soldiers and girls like playing with dolls". What's the damn deal about that, I still don't get it? There are many other things to be angry at. Why in the world people stuck arguing about this shit?

>But it’s less male, and it suits me better.

That's not maleness, that's autism spectrumness. That's tech's real problem. Most of us are on the spectrum somewhere and are socially a complete and utter mess. More 'normal' people can do this job but they don't want to as its endless workaholism and obsession for the most part and keeping up with obsessives isn't fun nor are they pleasant to be around.

As someone who works hard to break out of the geek/aspergers mold and to be a more rounded person I very much relate with this woman. Weaponized autism, for lack of a better word, is something that is very unpleasant to be on the receiving end of. I don't recommend a tech career to anyone at this point. There are much better and healthier ways to make a living.

And absolutely no curiosity as to what causes the differences. Naturalistic fallacy got this author hard.

> James Damore should probably have used fewer words with high negative emotional indices, when more neutral ones were available. But he was basically making the same point that I am: that women seem to have less interest in working with inanimate objects, and that ignoring this is going to lead to a lot of useless or even counterproductive diversity initiatives.

Hard to take this piece seriously. I've worked in tech and in journalism. Women are decently-represented in investigative journalism [0], and being successful in that means being highly motivated to work, 7 days a week for long hours, with "inanimate objects" such as documents, legal codes, and Lexis-Nexis, e.g. Jane Mayer [1] and Lucy Morgan [2]. Perhaps the reason why the OP can't recall of many women at her workplace building fiber-channel networks in their basement over the weekend is that:

1) It's rare even for men to do that. I went through engineering school; there were students like that, some of whom would later go on to excel. But many students such as myself weren't as obsessive yet were able to be successful and confident too.

2) There weren't many women in her workplace period.

Maybe the implication is that women can get obsessed with something like journalism because it's not the "inanimate objects" they're obsessed with, but the real-life people who are impacted. OK. I don't work at Google but I imagine that is a quality they would want in their workforce if they hope to make their computing services integral and ubiquitous to human existence.

I can identify with the OP's selection-bias. As a Vietnamese-American, I've gotten a few surprised responses from other Vietnamese about being a journalist. Part of that may be because there aren't many Vietnamese relative to other ethnic groups in America. And to a relatively poor ethnic group, a poor-paying field like journalism isn't super attractive to Vietnamese immigrant parents. There aren't a ton of (well-known) Vietnamese journalist heroes to emulate either; none so far have won a Pulitzer (in editorial journalism, at least). But why I became interested in journalist is easy: my high school had a great program, and it was fun.

From my vantage point, the idea that women could succeed and enjoy tech is far less hypothetical. For starters, women are represented well in STEM (just not computer science), and tech is a highly lucrative field today. But more importantly, unlike aspiring Vietnamese-American journalists, women have actual heroes and paragons of the field to look-up to. Not just the long-dead, such as Ada Lovelace and Admiral Grace Hopper. The engineer who (among many other huge accomplishments) came up with the very concept of "software engineering" was a woman [3].

I know the memo author's and the OP's point is not that women can't at all exceed in engineering. But the situation isn't that women have sometimes done well with computers, like a few WNBA players might be able to give NBA players a tough challenge. The situation with computers is that women have been pioneers. The memo's author does not provide sufficient evidence for us to believe that biological factors are what make engineering unappealing to women. So efforts to make engineering appealing to women are not just done out of an obligatory guilt-trip, but could be essential to a company's continued success and innovation.

[0] http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/blog/1761/investigative_...

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operatio...

[2] http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/lucy_morgan_in...

[3] https://medium.com/@verne/margaret-hamilton-the-engineer-who...

I am unsure what working with "things" means, but when the OP got out of tech, she went into policy journalism.

"So I went to business school, and eventually I landed myself in the kind of career that I was happy to do on weekends, and nights, and most of my other time... My field, policy journalism...."

So for whatever reason, it seems that in her mind, journalism is less about working with "things" than tech work is.

I think that in the context of the article having less interest in working with inanimate object means wanting to work with the objects is not a reason one takes the job.

Yes, successful investigative journalists work with documents. But do they become investigative journalists because they want to work with documents? Or do they become investigative journalists because they want to uncover the truth behind stories, and documents are simply tools used as part of that?

Compare documents to cars. There are many people who like cars, and because of that seek out a career where they get to work with cars and don't really car what the cars are being used for.

> But do they become investigative journalists because they want to work with documents? Or do they become investigative journalists because they want to uncover the truth behind stories, and documents are simply tools used as part of that?

Does it matter? A major component of investigative journalism is following document trails and understanding records/laws. If you don't have the stomach for it, your chances for success are greatly diminished.

It's not different from tech. Programming could be reduced to a "tool" for success, too.

>like a few WNBA players might be able to give NBA players a tough challenge

this is not true at all. Maybe a WNBA could score a few points here and there. But even the worst NBA player is better than the best WNBA because of the biological difference between men and women. The women's national hockey team and soccer team scrimmage regularly against 16 boys and get beat by those boys. The difference is magnitude when a full grown man actually did scrimmage against them.

But to relate to the central topic, the biological difference between men and women in programming is insignificant.

I meant a challenge, relative to the general population, though that's a pretty meaningless assertion. But yes, my larger point was to say that presuming the gender gap in programming to be based on biological differences seems premature, given that computer science actually has female equivalents to Jerry West and Steph Curry.

Why are all posts regarding the google memo getting flagged? This kind of censorship is getting annoying.

yes how do we get admins to allow discussion on damores peterson interview.

He deserves a chance to speak without others twisting his words.

This isn't censorship, this is HN readers saying they're not so interested in the memo that they need to have another post about it every hour.

There is a difference between flagging and not upvoting.

If it is upvoted enough to reach first page then it means there are HN readers who are interested.

Users flag stories they think shouldn't be on Hacker News. It may be because there's a zillion stories and opinions already and a particular one doesn't contain significant new information, or because a particular discussion is mostly uncivil, divisive, and damaging to the community.

We've turned the flags off on this one and ask that users please take care to post civilly and substantively.

Thanks!

I've learned a lot from HN, even changed my views on at least one big issues (legalizatiin of certain drugs) thanks to what I read here.

That happened because 1. reasonable discussion where allowed and 2. I read both sides and decided the other side where right.

It wouldn't have happened if every discussion about it had been flagged off the site.

"I built a fiber-channel network in my basement". I want to know more about this. Can the OP write more about this?

Of the two stories, that's the one I'd want to know more about. Not because I'm specifically interested in building a fiber-channel network in the basement I don't have. But it's a bit fascinating that someone took the time to do it on their own just to learn and I think it would be interesting to learn about their motivations and experience. Plus, we've all heard kind of a lot of stories about doomed relationships and seeing concerts, and it takes something unique to make those interesting after a while.

Why is this flagged? I think it provides a great perspective, and it's not from a privileged white bro.

Because it humanizes James Damore.

The author is seen as some sort of "traitor". She's not allowed to have this sort of opinion.

One reason users flag stories is because the discussion is rife with things like "privileged white bro" being tossed around without consideration. If we're going to hope for a reasonable discussion, we have to comment thoughtfully and substantively.

Why is this flagged?

Because it's an interesting discussion where people have divergent opinions.

Only benign topics where "everyone" agree are allowed to stay here on a HN.

I am so sick of the phrase "women in tech".

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