Dear Mom and Dad: Thanks for Teaching Me Unix
mediaite.com
mediaite.com
> A good idea is a good idea and at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter a damn where it came from.
A nice, concise expression of the hacker principal of abandoning ego and identity when considering merits. I'm all filled with hope and what-have-you; I've got to go find something depressing to read to push my expectations back down. Apparently, Unix wasn't the only good thing her parents taught her.
" I’ve only ever been praised and appreciated for being so geeky “and a girl, too!” In some ways, this all continues to make me feel superior"
A "puppy on crack"? Pretty harsh and cynical. It was harldly unbridled enthusiasm, but she's got an optimistic outlook, which is refreshing on this topic. If she's not bemoaning the issue, not generally dissatisfied with life, is that too much?
I hear this a lot, but isn't it possible that the payoff is simply just not as worthwhile for a woman? It seems to me that at least part of the problem is that there are skilled employment options for women that they find more rewarding or inspiring than programming.
I'm reminded of Philip Greenspun's _Women in Science_, in which he says that smart women don't go into science because "Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States." I think his analysis of problems in the structure of science as a profession is accurate but that his sex-based commentary is wrong: for one thing, women now outnumber men in liberal arts PhDs, where the job market isn't just worse for most science PhDs -- it's _way_ worse.
The next best alternative to a PhD in physics is job as a quant at a hedge fund, a programmer, an engineer, or something of that nature.
The next best alternative to a PhD in english lit is proofreader, copy editor or barista.
Although this is a popular idea on Hacker News, it isn't really true: there are loads of people with English degrees in law, consulting, teaching, and business.
Still, even the third choice -- teaching -- will probably pay more over a lifetime than someone who takes eight or more years to get through grad school but fails to find a tenure track job.
Disclosure: I work in tech now but have an English Lit. education.
Similarly, my ranking of jobs is Rock Star > Trader > Professor. ("Rock star" = http://www.nin.com/ , not http://imarockstarninja.com/ .) My preference for a job as a rock star is irrelevant due to my lack of skills, so I'm forced to choose between trader and professor.
A: women are excluded from science.
B: no, women choose not to enter science because they are smart enough to realise there are better paid jobs in law and medicine
C: but women enter fields (like your example of "Womens Herstory") which clearly aren't moneyspinners, so you could ask why do they enter those unprofitable fields rather than unprofitable science?
You: Because women make stupid educational and career choices that limits their money making potential.
Me: The original argument advanced by B, is that the lack of women in science is explained by their smart educational and career choices. If you posit that many of them make stupid educational and career choices, you still haven't explained why they don't end up in underpaid science/technology roles.
Divide people into two groups, X and Y.
Group X: people with no quantitative skills. Career choices are [herstory prof, barista, teacher, HR drone].
Group Y: people with quantitative skills. Career choices are [math prof, hedge fund quant, big bank analyst, actuary, RoR Ninja].
People in category X don't make a choice between herstory prof and math prof. Math prof and quant are already excluded since person X failed Calc 2. Women in category X may choose herstory prof relatively frequently since it's not much worse than HR drone.
People in category Y do make a choice between math prof and quant. Women in category Y choose actuary relatively often, since actuary is actually a plausible career choice.
To evaluate Greenspun's argument (the argument you think I am undermining), you need to restrict consideration to category Y.
Having been both a student and teacher at MIT, my personal explanation for men going into science is the following:
1. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group
2. men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is this peer group worth impressing?"
Years later my mum financed my first 16- and 32-bit computers, which I paid her back from a part-time job at a local bicycle shop. I've had a career as a programmer for around a decade now...
Despite all this, I still resented the fact that I wasn't allowed to spend more time on the computer! I had two sisters who were also given time on the computer (they played a Frogger clone and taught themselves to type, mostly). The newspapers were (and to some extent still are) full of bullshit articles about the evils of "computer addiction" which my parents took seriously enough to limit the time I spent with them to only an hour or two a day.
Now in retrospect, I realise that - compared to some others at least - I'm incredibly lucky. It doesn't stop my burning hatred for newspapers like the Daily Mail though...