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Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

> If you’re a woman and you want to be a coder but all you hear about is hell stories, why would you sign up for that major

I think this is a bit more complex; think of something like Revenge of the Nerds where computer peeps are all socially inept (sometimes borderline creepy) otherworldly nerds whose only interest in life is computers.

Would you want to work in an environment like that? I wouldn't. And luckily I don't because that's not really what most programmers are like. I can count the number of people I've met that fit this stereotype on a single hand, and I've met quite a number of programmers at conferences and such over the years.

I feel these problems run much deeper than just "hell stories from women". Luckily in the last ~10/20 years attitudes seem to be changing somewhat for the better, but for a long time during the 80s, 90s, and 00s the perception of the average programmer was not especially positive.

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There are a lot of socially enept developers out there. Maybe it’s changed a bit recently. But if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do?

Something you see often is developers who were bullied at school, finding refuge in their computer, finding something they enjoy, and then the feminists canceling them because they don’t have the social skills to understand all the new rules of what is not politically correct. E.g. James Damore - the fired Google guy - was just quoting scientific evidence regarding women in tech but without realizing the sensitivities of 2010+ and that some things are better left unsaid. This is simply a lack of social awareness, and now the nerds and re-bullied day in day out because they started making lots of money.

> if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do

Probably not too well, although I've known more than a few programmers that have also done sales. I have actually, and I'm very bad at it not because of my lack of social skills, but just because I don't like being pushy. Anyway, "not being good at sales" doesn't mean you're "socially inept" just as not being able to program a computer very well makes you "technically inept".

And maybe programmers, on average, are a little bit below average on social skills – I'm not sure if that's the case but it could be – but "a little below average" is still "normal" and not "inept", and it's a far cry from the stereotypes that were being propagated.

I don't really know enough about James Damore to say anything about this, especially not him as a person.

Fully agreed, there's a whole lot going on beyond stories of bad experiences. It's a complicated issue, I just think we're focusing on the wrong problem if we're just looking at this from a pipeline point of view and not asking what factors contribute to the pipeline being sub-optimal. Too often I hear, "women just like people more than men," and other similar BS, which lets us as an industry off the hook for creating sub-par environments.

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