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Comment by ArtB | Hacker News Reader

> Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink?

If you don't get this, then you are missing a lot. Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. There is a restaurant in town that serves Swiss Chalet grade food in town but all the chicks wear miniskirts and look like models. Even on a week night it is packed with businessmen tipping extravagantly. Sex sells, and sex appeal is a real perk.

The problem is that what is a perk targetting 90% of the target demographic and appeals to probably 85% of those, happens to be off-putting to minorities some want to attract into the industry.

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> Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around.

And I wouldn't argue with that. In the short time I was in Japan I blew I don't even want to think about it levels of money on hostess bars and just about all the other sort of fun you can imagine.

But really, there's a time and a place for that sort of thing and a hackday/tech-conference just isn't it.

> The problem is that what is a perk targetting 90% of the target demographic and appeals to probably 85% of those, happens to be off-putting to minorities some want to attract into the industry.

I'm in an ethnic minority for the industry and I simply do not care about attracting minorities. What I do care about is the mountains of gold in them there hills that are ready for the plundering when we learn how to start selling software to women. Having female engineers will probably help with that.

"What I do care about is the mountains of gold in them there hills that are ready for the plundering when we learn how to start selling software to women."

I am saddened by the implication here that selling good software that solves problems for everyone should somehow be less lucrative then exploiting cultural norms and stereotypes.

This mindset is something that we, being in a new field, have a unique opportunity to overcome.

> I am saddened by the implication here that selling good software that solves problems for everyone should somehow be less lucrative then exploiting cultural norms and stereotypes.

I'm not sure I did imply that. I don't think we're particularly good at selling software that solves problems for everyone to women.

Sorry, I'll try to rephrase my question slightly.

If the software truly solves problems for everyone, why should we have to pick a marketing strategy that segments the population of potential users (previously stated to be everyone) by sex or gender?

I read their comment as saying that we sell software that solves problems for everyone, but we only sell it well to men. We need to find a way to sell to women as well.

...when we learn how to start selling software to women. Having female engineers will probably help with that.

No, no, a thousand times no. The gaming industry used to think like that. Ernest Adams explained the fallacy of that thinking most eloquently in his article "Games for Girls? Eeeeewww!" [1]

You don't want to "sell software to women". You want to sell software to your target userbase. You want to sell software to people whose problem that software solves. Unless your software is solving a specific problem that only women have, then you're not "selling software to women".

[1] http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/004_Games_for_Girls...

It's off-putting to me too, and I fall into a category of overrepresented people in the industry (straight, white, male).

The pointlessness of this "perk" is what bugs me the most. It's an API hackathon - how is it relevant to include a statement that basically says: "nothing better than hawt women bringing you beer, amirite?"

That sort of copy has the target demographic of potential Hooters customers, not programmers.

> Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around.

Sexism aside, if I'm some place where I intend to get some coding done, pretty girls in short skirts are only going to distract me.

Statistics seem to indicate that, for now, you're safe.

(this is not a good thing.)

Are these really for coding? I am thousands of miles away from any tech centre, but to me they always seemed like parties and social gatherings. Kinda like a LAN, except the people there enjoy coding more than gaming. That's why it seemed "appropriate" to me, it's a party they are attractive models bringing booze.

It looked like some of both, actually. Which is good! A 12-hour coding marathon can be fun and productive, but at the end I want to etch-a-sketch my brain with vodka to start fresh in the morning.

Do you have sources to back that up? (That it appeals to 85% of the target demographics).

Either way, you are treating women as objects, as perks, as things that men want to look at. And you are treating men as cavemen who want to see women all the time. These ideas have affected (and are affecting) society in a bad way. By using women in that sense, they are promoting the idea that women can be used in that way if you like.

"Do you have sources to back that up?"

Interesting article here covering sex (not gender) gap: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-development...

...and then there's the actual BLS stats here (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat11.txt) which suggest something like 20% females in the workforce.

In the game industry, at least as of the IGDA survey in '05, we see something like 92% identify as straight (http://archives.igda.org/diversity/IGDA_DeveloperDemographic...).

So, we could back-of-the-envelope that perhaps a figure of 75% is reasonable, and 85% is not absurd as a guesstimate if you don't fact check.

That makes the assumption that pretty much every straight male loves looking at women all the time, even when coding.

I'm so glad my co-workers occasionally manage to focus on the work at hand instead ;)

> Do you have sources to back that up? (That it appeals to 85% of the target demographics).

Not at all, all I meant to convey was that it appeals to a large section of the largest demographic and that overall it probably still appeals to over 50% of the target group. Percentages were used for rhetorical flourish not to imply actual statistical data beyond personal experience.

Women are used throughout advertising, since it men do prefer to look at an image with a woman in it, or more correctly (but simply) put: man want to be with that woman and women want to be that woman.

However, you can go about this in a refined way, e.g. Dell's "fashion campaign", http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=1885) a few years ago) or in a crude way (well, GoDaddy comes to mind).

If "sex sells" for a coding meet-up, I think you'd rather not try to get horny men to "buy" instead of people interested in coding, hacking, or building something.

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