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Comment by globular-toast | Hacker News Reader

> Personally, I would love to see a lot more female developers.

See there you betray a rather sinister idea. If you had said that you want to see any unfair barriers to entry removed, or that you want to ensure equal exposure and opportunity across all people and all fields then I could support it. But instead you made your desires quite clear: you just want female developers. That means the gender, physical appearance, and perhaps even sexual preferences, of developers actually matters to you. Do you have any idea why this is?

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Oh brother. People aren't work-producing robots, developers included. Different types of people bring different types of experiences, opinions, and viewpoints. So you'll make better products if you have a more diverse group of people making them. On a personal level, wouldn't you like to work with a more diverse group of people as well?

>Wouldn't you like to work with a more diverse group of people as well?

I don't think anyone would really like to work with a truly diverse group of people. A truly diverse group would -all speak different languages -all be different genders (their origin culture, from which they immigrated last week, has some alternate view of gender) -all have different views on what's normal and what's tabboo -all have vastly different religious/quasi-religious views

The hip, trendy open-plan office would be an open war zone between the eunuch sun-god worshipper and the revivalist post-truth anti-christianite on the first day.

Aren't workplaces with a more or less even mix just more pleasant places to work? People seem to act more normal than when it's (almost) only men or (almost) only women.

I think your comment says more about you than about the OP.

there are many good reasons for wanting more women developers, IMO. are there any bad reasons for wanting such? this is not a flip comment. if it causes a laugh i dont see a problem with that but it is honestly not intended to denigrate anyone, but bring people into, well, software, which is probably the greatest thing in existence.

diversity is generally considered a good thing in evolution. i dont know if that applies to concepts like the tech industry, but maybe it does.

i am not against anyone and think the universe of software is a big one with a ton of room.

software is not created in a vacuum, nor is any other art or form. i want us all doing it, not just a bunch of people like me in every way.

>are there any bad reasons for wanting such?

-to signal virtue for PR purposes -to expand hiring pools and thus drive down wages -to get more sexual partners -to create leverage points for internal politics (e.g. opportunities to accuse political opponents of sexism)

Perhaps you were actually asking about bad outcomes, not reasons:

-women are rationally perceived as less competent after they were given preference during hiring -women who would have been happier in another field are encouraged into tech where they are less happy than they would have been in medicine, or law, or marketing, or at home -women who aren't up to the task are admitted; the mismatch sets them up for failure where they could have succeeded and had better personal outcomes in another job

Both my above lists are offhand samples.

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