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Comment by ryanmercer | Hacker News Reader

At some point it boils down to who applies.

Example: Women are GENERALLY more petite, they struggle carrying firefighter gear (45-75lbs depending on your load out) and aren't interested or can't pass the necessary requirements to ensure their safety, they get fewer female applicants and thus more men are firefighters type of thing.

I imagine there are still fewer qualified female applicants than male. I imagine there are far fewer female applicants for entry-level construction jobs than male applicants too, doesn't mean a construction company is dropping the ball or being discriminatory by default.

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What does this have to do with software development? Are you actually suggesting women have some physical attribute that makes them less applicable for programming, mathematics, or computer science jobs?

This reasoning is part of the problem. It's not rigorously inspected or accepted, because it's circular logic that can be self proving given one dominant party enforcing such a reasoning structure as 'the rules'.

I think it's an analogy. The point is that there are deep social and cultural factors at play that bias women against software, so the applicant pool is small, and it can't be fixed by some localized corporate initiative.

The 'analogy' can be taken either way allowing people who benefit from the issue to continue avoiding confronting the problem head on, directly, clearly, logically, in a straight forward manner - where both sides of the argument can be cleanly inspected and analyzed.

If a company is hiring at or above the rate of women coming out of college and applying to jobs, what exactly are they avoiding to confront?

If a comment on the internet uses physical strength and stature as an analogy for why there are less women applying to programming jobs, what exactly are they trying to say?

Please don't treat me like an idiot because ambiguity is convenient.

I agree it was a poor analogy, but I am giving the commenter the benefit of the doubt and assuming that some idea of inferiority (that you seem to be implying) is not the intent of their comment. Women and men have traditionally had very different roles and expectations in society, and significant physical differences as well, and to think that these differences don't have an effect on preferences and motivations, and that the situation is easily changeable, is naive.

We are here conversing on hacker news. We are not in some fashion show or construction working environment. There are women on hacker news, and there are women all over the tech sphere. And often times, comments like this make the difference between choosing to pretend to be male to blend in so we can simply continue conversing like the technical people we are. Likewise, comments like this piss some women off, because we work very hard to be factual, logical, precise, and technically adept - and to have all of that dumbed down a point that basically amounts to 'men have more muscle, brains must work the same' is quite frankly at the very least, an extremely weak, limited argument. At worst, it's patronizing, offensive, it enforces a particular perspective, it silences other perspectives, it enforces a particular set of expectations, and it's simply, unscientific, rude, and exceptionally passive in it's implications.

There's the expectation that people will just fill in the gaps because that's how we think when we code large projects. But here, I must say no. I will not fill in these gaps for you. I work hard to be good at what I do and if it continues to be insisted that sex differences serve as a concrete foundation for technical, mathematical skill, that simply isn't true. My life is proof enough to me. It may not be proof to you, but that's what I get to live with, because of lazy thought patterns like this. The near constant need to prove myself to people who are privileged enough to not have to go to such extremes.

Expectations and roles, yes, I've heard all these arguments before. How does stuff like that change? Surely, you must be aware that repeating the same points will only serve to reinforce such a perspective?

You are reading things that I never said. I just said that I agreed that the analogy of "men have more muscle, brains must work the same" is bad.

Let me fill in the gaps for you. I never once said or implied that women are inferior in any way and unable to do what men do in software. Read my comment again. I'm saying that women THEMSELVES do not prefer to do the work, regardless of ability, due to societal conditioning. I'm not talking about all women either, just on average. And I'm talking about gender here, not sex. You seem to have some old ideas about gender. I would suspect that a trans individual might have some of the same biases and cis-women, as many trans-women pick up a lot of the social and cultural behaviors and preferences of cis-women, so hopefully that makes it clear to you that I'm not talking about fundamental physical differences.

Also, let me make clear that I agree with the goal of a blended, equal workplace. I'm only discussing the effectiveness about how and where we go about doing it, not whether we should do it at all. Don't misplace your anger toward me.

I'm not angry. It's really easy to make a comment and run alongside one perspective of many thought paths. I'm entertaining my own here, just as you are doing. It's varied and diverse. Just because you don't understand my perspective doesn't mean it lacks value.

Indeed. I should have just said this

---

In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent.

As of July 2016, White Americans are the racial majority with the White population being 76.9% of the country.

Statistically, an applicant with a computer science degree is likely to be a white male so logically a company that employees mostly CS types would be heavy on white males and white on women and other races.

---

*light on women and other races.

Don't put words in their mouth..

They can argue back with me if they feel so strongly about it.

I am tired of playing nice and assuming everyone has good intentions when this sexist passive BS crops up. This is not a good argument. 'Who applies' is a perspective offered very clearly from only one side of the application pool - and it's severely limited because the only people that get listened to about the problem are the ones that retain authority over the business dynamic.

It is incomplete information. I don't know how to make this more clear or obvious, but if people who value reason and logic and hard facts so intimately want to shoot themselves in the foot, well, cest la vie

>What does this have to do with software development?

Everything. If people aren't applying to the jobs, they can't be hired.

Then of course even if the minority/gender a company is lacking on applies for a job, if they aren't the most qualified candidate a company shouldn't be expected to hire them.

>Are you actually suggesting women have some physical attribute that makes them less applicable for programming, mathematics, or computer science jobs?

No, clean your display off, I said "Example: Women are GENERALLY more petite, they struggle carrying firefighter gear".

It's an example, an analogy. Firefighters often have the exact same diversity issues, fact is more Caucasian men apply than other races and genders. In the case of a firefighter a man selected at random is more likely to be more physically cable to do the job than a woman, with firefighting strength comes first then firefighting theory.

With computer sciences, you have a far larger pool of men to draw on than women. n 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent (https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-10-20/st...).

That means out of a pool of applicants, roughly 1 out of every 5 (with a degree in the field) will be female. Add to that the fact that white Americans make up the racial majority of the country and what happens? Your pool of applicants is far more likely to be male and white than female and any other race.

Someone with a computer science degree in the U.S. is statistically likely to be a white male. That's not racism, that's not sexism, that's reality.

Okay, I understand the 'reality' that you don't want to listen to the experience of a woman who has been programming since she was 9, with a background in computer engineering and an MSc in computer science from a top engineering college that was all male until the 1970s, and 12% female at the time of graduation, a TA and graduate researcher, as well as being singularly awarded 'most outstanding student in computer science' with a cumulative gpa of 3.98 and a years experience working on a PhD in information flow control, before choosing multiple different directions. As well as pretty much doing nothing with my life besides studying, programming and mathematically philosphizing with the best of them since then. That's fine!

The world changes, I'm assuming you know that. That's reality too.

>Okay, I understand the 'reality' that you don't want to listen to the experience of a woman who has been programming since she was 9,

I am not in CS, I do not know what companies look for in CS. I however do not have a college degree and this week alone have been rejected for 3 jobs I applied to, despite having 12 years of experience doing 1, because "there is a minimum requirement of a Bachelor's".

In my experience, outside of early-stage startups, companies want a degree not hobbyist experience. In the case of the job in my field where I have more years of experience than the company has in existence, they wanted a degree over experience.

"Ryan! I wanted to extend a virtual wave and thank you for your interest in joining our team. You obviously have many of the skills we're looking for. However, for the Customs Brokerage role we require a BA/BS degree as well as previous experience". I literally have over 12 years of experience doing the exact job, at a company that is 105 years old vs the company that is 5 years old, and I was rejected before even getting an interview because I lacked a 4-year degree (in any field).

We all have our struggles. There's no need to put out information that oversimplifies the problem women have in technology and reduces it down to an analogy that retains biased sentiment.

I personally don't think I'd do well walking into an interview for a startup, even though that's something I might have wanted to do when I was younger. We all have regrets and struggles we live with and have to work with, no matter how many pieces of paper are attached to us.

>There's no need to put out information that oversimplifies the problem women have in technology and reduces it down to an analogy

There's literally less qualified women than there are men. Fact. Period. End of story.

That means fewer applicants.

That means fewer hires.

Should Facebook go hire unqualified people then spend considerable amounts of times training them like some military occupational training where you're i class all day every day getting paid for 3-18 months while you learn what is necessary to do the job?

They could do that, you'd have to sign a contract though guaranteeing so many years of service or repay the money if you self-terminate.

When 20% of the people pursing the degrees are women, you can't expect 50% of the new-hires to be female.

You are throwing out figures you don't have access to.

The article's figures come in the form of a metric of change, a delta value indicating the passage of time. That is the foundation to reason and measure with. That is where there is complaint and room for improvement because that measurement is a useful measurement to the whole system as a dynamic system.

>You are throwing out figures you don't have access to.

Erm. I linked where the figures came from. There are considerably more white people in the U.S. than any other race, fact. Numbers of women majoring in CS degrees has fallen considerably, fact.

Less than 20% of CS degrees are being pursued by women per the source I cited. Women would be a minority at anything less than 50%.

You can't expect 20% of the degree holders to fill 50% of the jobs.

Yay, so neither of us want to read what the other wants to say! That's surely going to fix the problem!

From the linked article:

'Unless companies fire everyone and start over, we’re not going to see drastic improvements anytime soon.'

People who are saying 'there is a problem' are well aware this isn't something you can just measure today and fix with just the information that exists as it exists presently.

Why do I care? Because, I was once a little girl reading hacker stuff on the internet. It is part of the problem. If you can't admit to the subtext implied by your original post, or even get a sense that maybe it's not the right kind of analogy to use, I don't have anything left to say.

I'd be lying if I have to say I'm happy to infer that your point here is to discredit and silence the perspective of the article, but that's how all of this is coming across. Also a point from the article:

'That’s because homogenous cultures lead to limited perspectives and potential lack of awareness of things that may be more obvious to diverse groups of people.'

But perhaps all of this is pointless.

I don't think your example applies in the context of a tech company, so I'm going to comment ignoring it.

If it boils down to who applies, then we need to make sure that we're reaching out to communities that are not well represented in our field. It's not about waiting for them to come to us.

Why respond at all if you aren't addressing the comment?

I’m addressing the part of the comment that holds merit to me, specifically the part about diversity problems and a lack of applicants from underrepresented groups.

I don’t believe that people in tech aren’t represented because of some biological difference. That might not be what the commenter was implying, but that’s how I read it.

I think his point may have been that "who applies" is the END of the funnel.

If there are issues earlier in the pipeline then we can't just focus on the end of it at the "who's applying" stage.

If we want more representation, are women more represented in comp sci programs? Are they going into related engineering fields? Do they go to meet up groups or construct new ones if they don't want to go to existing ones?

>I don't think your example applies in the context of a tech company, so I'm going to comment ignoring it.

18% of CS majors are women. 76.9% of the U.S. is white. Statistically someone in the work force with a CS degree is a white male.

That absolutely applies in the context of a tech company, unless you want them to hire unqualified applicants and spend months or years training them before they return profit.

The problem isn't with who a company is hiring, the problem is women aren't seeking out the training and non-Whites are a literal minority of the population.

Until more women pursue degrees/training in the field, and everyone starts partnering off with someone of a different race to make melting-pot babies, then it's just going to be this way purely due to statistics.

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