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Comment by kwipkwip | Hacker News Reader

I am a female software engineer who is an introvert too. It's wrong to assume that men want to work alone and women want to work with people... it ignores a lot individuals like me. I currently work in an open office environment and find it very hard to concentrate with people around me. I don't want people to assume that bc I'm female I want to work with people. I really really don't. People should stop trying to force women as a category into computer science, and just focus on the individual.

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I agree - female coder as well. I enjoy coding itself. Doesn't need to be collaborative unless there is a purpose to it for me.

Isn't her point that because how tech education and work is currently a large portion of women leave the tech field. So by default that means you and many of the other female posters here are the exceptions that enjoy working alone.

>People should stop trying to force women as a category into computer science, and just focus on the individual.

That would be ideal. I think the reason they have to "force" anything is because of the gender gaps that get reported. But yes, any manager shouldn't make assumptions about how someone wants to work, or will excel at work, based on gender.

Separately, I hope the gender gaps in computer science or math etc. can be corrected by exposing boys and girls to education and career choices in a gender neutral manner, which I don't think happens enough.

Edit to clarify.

But then you should also expose people to education and career choices in a personality type neutral manner. School was a pretty tough ride for me because I am shy and introvert although I am a white male. Gender and race are not the only dimensions along which people can get discriminated. There are also looks, being outgoing or not, athletic skills, fashion tastes and many others.

Our taxonomies for personality traits and human grouping is quite primitive. Our ability to categorise people in useful ways is really atrocious. So often we force that category on people, because that's easier then improving our categorization.

Hopefully, this improves in the future, starting with medicine amd nutrition, there's more discourse happening about the individual characteristics. But I'm afraid its a hard problem, accurate genes and gut microbiome measurements could maybe improve things. But then correlating these with behaviourial traits and emotional well being is incredibly hard.

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