Comment by rvo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rvo | Hacker News Reader

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> Whatever is holding women's participation in our field at or below twenty percent is artificial, and a travesty.

Seriously? Why does it even matter if women don't want to work in CS? Why do we software "engineers" have the ego to think that we work in some great occupation and it's a "travesty" that women largely don't have any interest in working sitting in front of a computer all day.

We are glorified mechanics. Glorified by ourselves. We mostly build intellectually draining CRUD apps mostly and earn shit wages in super expensive cities like SF. Half of us are indentured servants via the H1b system. I think women are smart that they want absolutely nothing to do with this field.

We really need to get off of our high horses and stop believing we are "changing the world" via JavaScript.

Because software engineers consistently become involved in designing, clarifying, and solving the problems themselves, and companies consistently make mistakes that should be avoidable if that had more than zero women or minority staff working on the problem scope and definition.

See, for example, "HP doesn't care about black people," the ongoing trend of tech devices that are sized for men's bodies and hands and not women, social networks that fail to consider how a stalker could exploit their access policies, etc.

Ok, framing diversity hires as a way to sell product to other populations at least seems honest. It also explains why diversity hires are also underpaid. But a lot of the discussion around this seems to be about morality and "inclusion" based on people's chromosomes and melanin levels.

Similarly, I know that as an h1b hire, more often than not, I am just cheaper. No, the company is not hiring me because "I am the best in the world". I fear negotiating salary, fear leaving and am a little underpaid compared to the numbers I see on HN.

I hope women don't degrade themselves like we do to feed the massive profits of the big tech companies. I have faith that women are generally way more sensible then us guys and won't put up with this crap. Being a developer can be isolating, depressing and lonely.

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