Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech

So, why did you feel the need to respond as you did? If that's your response, it seems to me like you should really grapple with the challenges they present before jumping in here to comment. As someone who grew up very poor, it makes me chuckle that you can't see the connection. They're deeply, profoundly related. Some of my other comments on this thread might make it more clear how — I don't want to retype them here.

If you find this comment grating, well, let me translate it into geek-speak: before jumping in to comment, please Read The Fine Manual. :)

To repeat, look at engineering circa 1990s -- nearly entirely male-populated field, moderate prestige. Now look at engineering circa 2010s -- slightly more diverse field, significantly higher prestige. If you start with a 90+%-male base and you achieve moderate, growing success via entirely word-of-mouth advertising and by absorbing people from that base, you are setting yourself up for a situation where your organization reflects the base it grew out of (i.e. male engineers). And yet the media is not going to pay attention to you until your field is large and successful enough for spoils to be had from throwing rocks at you, at which point obviously they are going to criticize you for being "exclusionary". So what you have is a nearly entirely media-manufactured controversy. Why didn't the media focus on getting more women into engineering in the 1990s? Because it wasn't a prestigious enough field at the time for organized entryist action to exist.

Why is there a problem with this controversy? Because entryism exists. Entryists are interested in entering any high-prestige field and taking it over for themselves. They are not below taking up social justice banners to accomplish their goals. In fact, the most successful entryists utilize those banners to the highest effect. The whole controversy is pure manufactured evil. This is not about women's rights or social justice. It's about entryism.

The problem is being blind to it and not understanding how it operates in your life and the lives of others. The solution to that problem is being committed to developing a deep sense of empathy.

Yield the floor to those with less structural support when speaking. Encourage people who are ordinarily excluded. NOTICE AND CALL OUT. Use your privileged position to help where you can, and step out of the way when you can't.

It's pretty powerful when a room full of dudebros is silenced by the one guy who says "Uh ... that 'Aunt Tillie' you're designing for is actually damn smart, just hasn't used a computer yet" or "Uh, guys, you're forgetting HALF THE POPULATION". Or "That was sexist, jackass. Don't ever do that again." Or "Maybe we should acknowledge that having people who have families and would like to see them might like to participate here."

Some of these are actual statements of differing values. They are sharp instruments on wall of the bubble of the echo chamber. They're powerful.

And then, when you've women on your team, listen to them. Remember that status isn't conferred as readily on us. "She's just a junior dev" ... well, yeah, and might have been passed for a couple promotions. When you go out for an expensive meal with folks from a funding firm or industry cohorts, remember who might have had to check their bank balance before coming and may have passed. Try to include those voices. Call 'em up. Offer to pay for a meal -- or if you're in a position of company power, fix it structurally by making it not an individual problem.

And look for sources of bias and privilege. Don't just focus on women. Look for all the myriad ways that you can explain how someone ended up in the social heirarchy how they did, and think long and hard about what's fair. It won't feel nice if you came out on top by accident and you'll try to explain it away. Don't.

Even more telling is when you fail: What are the repercussions of failure for you? What might the repercussions for a woman on your team be? Are they different? That's an especially telling place to look, and it explains a lot of why women are paid less: their risks are bigger for the same gains.

Do spend your life checking it. Don't spend your entire life keeping your experiences to yourself: just be aware that your experiences aren't universal nor even prototypical. Don't be the default voice. Just a voice.

But let's teleport all the people pg or anyone else here would consider "hackers" into your situation at age 13. How many would've kept at it?

I'm also wondering why you left out the most important dimension, IMO, which is social support. Did your friends antagonize you for pursuing this as a child? Were there any other people in your life who understood even the faintest bit of what you were doing?

Anyhow, this isn't battle of the anecdotes, as if one has to win. It's easy to see the way out from the outside; it's another question when you're on the inside. It sounds like you were a precocious and intimidatingly determined child. I'm sure that's served you well in many things! :)

(1) http://www.goldenseeds.com

That said, technology is FAIR. My first interactions with programming were through a throw-away book on IBM BASIC at around age 10. Despite not having the computer access to program for real (much less of a problem today), I wrote many programs before getting my hands a book on a "real" programming language (my apologies and thanks to the author as it was pirated onto a school computer). A few years and an engineering degree later (courtesy of government loans), I have been able to break out moreso than I believe I could have in any other profession.

You see, for those who can understand technology, the barrier of entry is lower than it has ever been. Quite literally, all you need to know to start toward a job is to study any one of the hundreds of free resources available.

I do not believe that the poor must be at the mercy of Lady Serendipity. Despite all the problems, the person willing to expend the energy and (most importantly) learn continually may rise above their earlier standard of living as have I and many others. The issue is the will to take action -- the intent to rise above the status quo no matter what obstacles exist.

Jfarmer, were you ever that poor person? Are you that minority? If not, then the privilege argument indicates that no matter the article, it is impossible for you to understand (and for the record, I believe that anybody can understand if they desire). If so, then you stand with me as proof that there exists a way out. You should also recognize that the victimhood endorsed by the that privilege argument discourages and de-incentivizes people from taking action.

What is the solution to "privilege"? Does being aware of privilege change the way business is conducted? Will an employer suddenly hire an inferior candidate because that candidate is unprivileged? In the reverse, will the employer hire an inferior privileged candidate because that employer wishes to "keep the better candidate from becoming privileged"?

Those persons with money don't continue to make money because they fail to recognize and utilize talent wherever they find it. I've worked with people who complained about working 70+ hours during crunch time because they don't have my perspective (the one with two full-time jobs that aren't behind a keyboard), but that doesn't mean they don't recognize and utilize talent when they see it.

Finally, women (the group of discussion) are decidedly privileged compared to men. A poor woman still works indoors and often has people willing to assist (plus significant government aid). If she becomes the victim of violence, she has places to go. If she has no home, she will be able to find shelter.

In contrast, a poor man works dangerous jobs (I remember stitching up injuries because I couldn't afford going to a doctor) in bad working conditions (93% of workplace deaths are men in the US). He cannot rely on anybody as noone wants to help a man. If he is the victim of violence (76% of homicide victims in the US are men, his only source of "help" is incarceration (According to a major CDC study in 2010, the number of men raped (including those overlooked as "forced to penetrate" where they were raped by a woman, but the system labels it different) was almost equal to the number of women. When you account for all the men who go to prison for non-violent crime and are raped repeatedly for years, the number of male rape victims FAR outweigh female victims).

If he is homeless (80% of homeless are men in the US), he has nobody to go to. Men are discriminated against in school where female teachers grade them lower, penalize them for not acting like the girls in their class. Men drop make most of the failing grades and account for the vast majority of the dropouts. Men are then the minority in going to college and obtaining a degree (at all levels from an associates to a doctorate). It's little wonder that 80% of suicides in the US are men.

While these numbers are skewed away from white males toward minority males, the white males (by percentage and by total count) still vastly outnumber white females (and outnumber females of other races by a smaller margin). I wonder if we shouldn't be asking women (especially the upper-middle class white women who make the majority of such complainers) to "check their privilege".

Perhaps technology doesn't discriminate against women. Perhaps there's a reason why the countries considered the most egalitarian have FEWER women in STEM fields than other countries. Perhaps men having 6.8x more gray matter (while women have 10x more white matter) or mens brains being better at communicating from anterior to posterior (while womens brains are better at communicating laterally across hemispheres) isn't just for show. Perhaps studies showing that male and female children as young as one HOUR old already act different (male children preferring objects and female children preferring faces) shows that the brains of men and women are different. Perhaps there is a biological reason that when given the choice, the jobs that men and women appear to prefer are different.

If indeed there are biological preferences, then men (specifically Paul Graham) are not discriminating against women so much as privileged women are enjoying their freedom to do whatever job they want. Another factor that applies to startups is risk. Women tend to be much more risk-averse than men (it makes sense biologically as risk would not only kill them, but their children as well). If we consider that very few tech people create startups and relatively few women are in the technology fields related to those same startups (there are fewer women in these areas than there are overall women in tech) and we know that these women are far less likely to take such huge risks, then it stands to reason that extremely few women would even ask (with even fewer having marketable ideas). Once again, this is far closer to self-selection than bias.

You're far more likely to be assaulted, although your assault is less likely to be sexual in nature.

Why is it wrong to consider a girl programming to be noteworthy or surprising? If it's true that females are underrepresented in programming or technology careers, which is the whole point of most of this thread, then this reaction seems completely appropriate.

There's a lot more similarity at the level of experienced hiring obviously. And this model of hiring is expensive. But it also has benefits. Firms create new professionals from raw materials. They don't have to wait for trained professionals to walk in the door.

Suppose you accuse me of being a witch. I deny it. In response, you claim that my repeated, insidious denial of being a witch just reinforces my witchiness and allows it to feed on itself. do you see how you've just (a) changed the nature of the accusation in a way that makes it weird and meta, (b) unfairly rendered the attack unanswerable?

Or consider: "Only a witch denies being a witch - denying it just makes it worse! You have to first ADMIT you are a witch and come to terms with it. I admit I'm one and I struggle with it daily - so should you!"