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I’m a Man and I Write Code

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48 pointslevirosol58 comments

This post is mostly an exposition of the author's strongly-held opinion that A) technology communities are all currently meritocracies, which is good; B) self-imposed quotas will result in something that isn't a meritocracy, which is bad; and C) organizations which strive to help minorities (women who code etc) are bad because they try to help minorities.

I'm only going to respond to C because it's the most ludicrous. Recently, I (an asian male) was a teacher assistant at the very first ClojureBridge, and during the training I learned more about why these workshops are useful and important. They create an environment where attendees feel more comfortable learning, making it much more likely that attendees will be successful in learning to program. You can argue whether or not it's "right" that women would feel more comfortable attending a workshop geared specifically toward women, but frankly I think that's irrelevant.

The author says that these organizations give the message that "These people are different from the majority so we need to treat them differently." Well, yes. What's wrong with that? The author doesn't explain. In any case, I think this is a good thing because the majority already has special treatment, thanks to human nature. There is ample evidence that women and black people are seen as less capable, even by people who have no desire to be prejudiced. How easy will it be for you to learn if the people surrounding you all assume that you're not as smart as them just because you're a woman or you're black? It's important that these conscious efforts to combat the results of our unconscious biases exist.

I think it's pretty obvious - he thinks that those groups are reinforcing the idea that they're trying to dispel. From his POV, if you don't want people treated as different, it makes no sense for you to do the same.

"The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." -- Chief Justice John Roberts, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

... which isn't to say that this measure (or, in the field of technology, an analogous one) is sufficient on its own, but that it is necessary.

But they ARE different, and trying to pretend they're not doesn't make sense? Off the top of my head, one clear difference I can think of between the minority groups who don't have a strong presence in the tech industry and white males who do is that the minority groups don't have a strong difference in the tech industry. So if that's a difference you want to resolve, I'm not sure how creating groups to help encourage the minority groups to enter the tech industry is bad.

In that case I think he's wrong. Being "different" and being "less than" are two different things, but it sounds like he's equating them, as if by going out of your way to help under-represented groups you're implying that they're under-represented because they're inferior.

To clarify what I meant in my earlier post: Yes, they are different, by definition - one group is the majority, the others are minorities. That doesn't mean that they're different in terms of intelligence, ability, or worth. Treating minorities "differently", otherwise known as "helping", is logical. It recognizes that the majority already gets "special treatment", because those in the majority are already looking after each others' interests.

There are several definitions of sexism, one is essentially "taking someone's sex or gender into account when making a decision". This appears to be the definition the author is using by calling quotas "sexist". It's a very simple, easy to understand, easy to identify definition. It also means that in many cases (e.g. choosing who shoul speak at a tech conference), men can be the victims of sexism.

There's another definition, which is "actions that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among the sexes is sexist". Right now, if modern UK life was a video game, "male" would be an easier difficulty level than "female". It doesn't mean it's easy, just that it's easier. Many people, including this author did work hard. But there are statistically less problems for the "male" group. Sexist actions are actions that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/female/male/g and make it just as sexist.

(There are some cases where there's an inbalance in favour of women, any men here ever took up knitting or crochet? Try getting involved in that, you'll see things from the other side)

> This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/female/male/g and make it just as sexist.

I think it's more Darwinian than that. No one comes to the realization one day that they benefit from institutional power dynamics and then sets out to change the system to their own detriment. The reason men want more women in technology is not that they're worried about women -- not as a first class objective. It's rather that they believe they (and the society they live in) will benefit from more gender diversity in the industry. The fact that this will also produce benefits for women is a happy harmony because it means we don't have to fight about it.

Which is why the "reinforces institutionalized power structure" definition is such a loser. It frames the issue as battle of the sexes rather than everyone cooperating to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome. So then instead of everyone finding a way to help women without hurting men, you create two sides where one is trying to help women by hurting men and the other starts throwing rocks from the top of the mountain because they don't want to be hurt. Which doesn't benefit anybody.

Removing an unfair advantage might make it harder/less easier for men. But that's OK.

In general I agree with what you're saying and I think that your second definition of sexism is very insightful and something everybody should consider and think about (even if they ultimately find they cannot support this definition).

However, I would like to point out that whether being "male" makes you play life on easier difficulty than "female" depends to a large extent to how you weight different outcomes of the game. While it's probably still true that being male makes it easier to earn more money (especially now, when all the geeky, previously unpopular, mostly male programmers cashed in), but it also makes it easier to be homeless and to die sooner (homicide/suicide).

That's a very important distinction that the "easy-mode" metaphors don't really take into account. A good word for it is "intersectionality" (though please note that many people will define intersectionality as only applying to marginalized groups): it's the various ways all of one's "labels" (gender, class, ethnicity, race, etc) interact, and it's something to keep in mind while having these discussions.

The reason is that there isn't one axis along which we can measure "more" or "less" oppressed or disenfranchised. Men tend to lose custody battles more frequently, for instance.

That said, you can still look at a group of people and say something along the lines of "in such-and-such context, members of the first group tend to be more successful at this goal than members of a second group". Phrasing it this way, I think, tends to deflect the "us-vs-them" or "men-vs-women" mentality that crops up fairly often in these discussions (especially when they take place online, where anonymity and lack of non-textual clues make it more difficult to have a civil conversation).

The point of all this is this: if you are a man, you are more likely to kill yourself or be homeless, and that is a HUGE PROBLEM. If you are a black man, by some accounting, you are more likely to be raped than a white woman (because black men are disproportionately sent to prison), and that is a HUGE PROBLEM. But neither of these problems make the discrimination faced by women in the STEM fields less of a problem, it just means that we have many huge problems on our hands.

When you are a member of group A, and group A tends to be more successful than group B (so, male programmers as group A and female programmers as group B), I think it is your obligation to ask _why_ there is this statistical skew, and if the answer is "systematic discrimination due to power imbalance", work to correct it, irrespective of how your group fares in other such comparisons. That doesn't mean that your group faring poorly in these comparisons is not unfair, because it totally is. It just means that there is a complex web of privileges* and disadvantages that we _all_ need to help untangle.

(*You didn't think I was going to get through five paragraphs about identity politics without whipping out the P-word, did you?)

> "While it's probably still true that being male makes it easier to earn more money (especially now, when all the geeky, previously unpopular, mostly male programmers cashed in), but it also makes it easier to be homeless and to die sooner"

Oh sure. My whole point is "It's complicated".

w.r.t. to suicide I think part of that is societal gender roles. We tell 5 year old boys to stop crying because "big boys don't cry", then we wonder why 20 year old men kill themselves rather than seek mental health.

"Institutional power imbalances" is one bad sexist thing. "Gender roles" (boys don't cry, women shouldn't do maths) are another bad sexist thing. It's all complicated and connected.

While I agree that it's important to encourage and educate the young about technology, this article vastly over simplifies, dismisses, and actively works against those working for a positive change. What good will encouraging young girls if they grow up to try and work in an industry that actively dismisses them? That actively seeks to ignore them? No know has all the right answers but focusing only on education seems to miss about half the equation to me. It's a requirement and as father to a young daughter it's something I'm passionately interested in but I also want my industry to be somewhere that my daughter feels safe and comfortable working in. Educating the young won't fix that. Beyond that young people NEED role models to look up to, the only way to accomplish that is to fix the industry to be more fair and safe now.

This is already happening to boys and girls. See my comment below. No one is encouraged to code. It's not a popular activity. Up until recently it was basically asking to be socially shunned. Some boys either didn't care or didn't have any other options. But the discouragement starts very early.

I just want to throw my two cents in as a (very) young woman in college that aspires to become a Software Engineer.

I'm very glad that groups like PyLadies and Women Who Code exist. Unfortunately I'm pretty terrified of meeting men that are significantly more experienced than myself in the industry when it comes to software. I'm terrified of coming off as clueless or air headed. On top of that, the men I have met in the industry are extremely intimidating. I've already had multiple experiences at University where a male peer has looked down at me due to my gender.

This is probably just a simple self confidence issue since I'm young however my point is groups that are women centric are a lot easier to relate to for someone like myself. I love the prospects of meeting other women that can give emotional and professional advice while sharing their work experiences with me. It's much easier to relate to and I'm sure networking with other women makes it easier to transition into the industry from school. Just my two cents.

> Unfortunately I'm pretty terrified of meeting men that are significantly more experienced than myself in the industry when it comes to software. I'm terrified of coming off as clueless or air headed.

Don't worry about that. Making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn. Making a mistake in front of someone or even an entire lecture hall is nothing. They probably won't even remember it. But you will, because it was your mistake and you won't ever make it again.

Leaving wrong ideas in your head instead of saying them and letting someone correct you is how people become clueless. Opening your mouth more will cause you to be wrong less.

> On top of that, the men I have met in the industry are extremely intimidating.

This industry is full of jerks. Defy them by succeeding.

Thanks for putting this out there. I'm not really sure what the solution is but one thing is for sure: I would never want any of my girl coder friends to feel isolated or threatened.

Every single male coder I know would look down on that male peer you mentioned. I don't know if it makes you feel any better but the vast majority of the men I know want women in this field to succeed and feel happy doing what they love.

This article is dismissing a lot of good projects without any arguments. Rails Girls for example has a very good track record of bringing people into the industry and they care a lot about that. I'd like to see proper numbers, no gut feelings. Also, Rails Girls accepts men, they just outreach to a different group.

I may be biased, but I run a conference[1] including a Rails Girls workshop in Berlin and the whole thing just got so much better since we bring new people on board. They are newbies, alright, but hasn't the argument for the IT industry always been on how easy it is to get started, even with a different education?

[1]: http://2014.eurucamp.org

> By creating anti-diverse groups like [Women Who Code, PyLadies, Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code], people are literally saying “This group of people are different than the majority, so we need to do special things for them. Treat them differently. They’re special.”

Though this was a small part of the post, I believe this is one of the most flawed concepts he has. Having founded a group for black programmers in NYC, I can tell you, we're not asking for special things, nor have any of the women I've encountered from the other groups.

My group, the Black Techies, was founded so that we could have a place free of crap like cultural biases, or people asking "why are the black people sitting together at lunch", or sexist and racist posts that devalue our worth.

The author's version of "true diversity" is one where anyone who is not a white male assimilates into a white male culture of software development.

His vision is one where white males don't have to change; where acceptable groups are blessed; where we can't do anything about the adults in the field, we need to focus on the children and in 20 years, __maybe__ we will look up and see that it worked.

This vision is one that perpetuates the status quo.

For myself, and I would posit the other founders of similar groups, the status quo is unacceptable. And we actively fight, on our own terms, for our own interests about the best way forward. Who knows best about how to hire more "diverse" programmers than those same "diverse" programmers?

Is a "1:1" speaker ratio the right thing? Is it going to produce results? Is it sustainable?

Who knows.

But, it is an active and bold idea. It's taking a stand. It's does a hell of a lot more for the conversation than silently removing a "no girls allowed" sign from the boys club.

Just an idea. If you want to write a serious article on the subject of women in tech, no matter what your views are, you're probably better off not putting a "no girls allowed" graphic on top, no matter how "funny" or "ironic" you may think it is.

So, it's alright to actually run "no boys allowed" schools, dinners and programs in tech, but it's not OK to ironically put a "no girls allowed" image in a blog post?

Do you realize that this double standard is harmful for everyone?

Yes it's alright. Because it's not sexist. (cf a common definition of sexism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7660512 )

But is it? I mean, empirically?

Boo! Way to miss the point of the article.

> "Some would say I’ve won the genetic lottery. Others would say I’ve had an easy life. After 15 years in the industry, I would say I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am today."

And you completely missed the point of the concept of privilege.

The author embraces the fallacy that there are clear and objective "best" people to hire for a job or to invite to speak at a conference. Very rarely that may be the case, but in general that is a false idea, and a poisonous one. It's an excuse for being lazy, and it continues the cycle of discrimination that keeps gender ratios so wildly skewed.

There's value in the perspective from the outside, there's value in being challenged by new ideas, there's value in developing the next generation of top speakers and workers, there's value in taking a risk on someone new, there's value in working on new problems with people who've lived a different life than you have.

In terms of conference speakers in particular, you send a message to your audience with your choice of speakers and panelists. You are saying "this is who we are". And if no one on the stage looks like me, I might start to think I'm not welcome as an audience member either.

Coding has become, relativity recently, high status - so people now care about gender ratios, more so than they do in the fields like carpentry or car mechanics. People are so quick to create vast, economically counterproductive misogynistic conspiracies when there's likely a simpler explanation. Perhaps women are just less likely to enjoy coding. Is this necessarily a bad thing so long as those who do aren't treated differently from men of similar skill level? There are already huge economic incentives for companies to not discriminate against highly skilled coders on any criteria other than ability. Even if you grant that there is a vast misogynistic conspiracy, it must be highly unstable, because any company that defects from the conspiracy will have access to cheap high-level talent.

I agree that this is an issue that is best tackled by early education.

In the UK Computer Science is begin taught to all students from Year 1, as of September.

We've currently been delivering CS at my school for only a year, but I'm pleased that a third of the students that have _chosen_ to study GCSE CS next year are female students. This ratio will no doubt continue to increase, as students have a greater exposure to CS in earlier years.

I have little doubt that the gender imbalance amongst developers and academics in the field will decrease as time goes on, and hopefully this will cease to be an issue in the future.

Incidentally, as I write this comment I have three 11 yo students working in my room, all coding in JavaScript, voluntarily, after school. They are all female.

Quotas don't necessarily fix things _now_ -- they create a new normal for the next generation.

The ends don't justify the means: having a sexist practice to combat sexism is using the wrong means.

I understand where you're coming from, but I just don't think PyLadies and Women Who Code are sexist. It's certainly not the same as the institutional sexism in the tech industry.

I should have been more precise. I agree with you that PyLadies and Women Who Code should not be labeled as sexist organizations. There's a distinct difference between targeting a group of people based upon their sex and baring a group of people from an activity on the basis of sex. The two organizations you mention target software engineers who are women and chip away at the institutionalized sexism in the industry. On the other hand, having a qutota is a discriminatory policy. By definition, a quota is saying, "we're not accepting you because you are X." In this case, X is "a man." It's a subtle difference, but at the end of the day, sexism is discrimination on the basis of sex. Thus any practice that discriminates on the basis of sex is sexist.

Quotas like this aren't sexist https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7660512

No.

Quotas are numbers that are set and measured. They are not a means for changing hearts and minds, or actually making motion towards a goal.

The quota doesn't even need to reflect the goal, it's just a number, and in the case of this gender equality we're not even scrutinizing if it is meaningful. This is the same metric frat bros use to make sure they don't have sausage parties, why is it good here too? Does a 1:1 ration equate to unblocked opportunity? If so, what does the high ratio of male contributors to wikipedia mean?

Technically everything that changes something creates a "new normal". Quotas not only force outcomes, but they breed tokenism.

I agree that quotas are not the right way to fix any of these issues. The best person should always get the job - race, gender, orientation aside. There are systemic issues that are better treated at the root, rather than covering up symptoms.

That being said, good luck to the OP with getting reasonable responses to this post. If this ends up anything like Twitter, anything other than mindless agreement with certain people appears to cause folks to be hung out to dry.

It will also take decades to improve gender diversity in the technology field.

Well in three decades it actually became worse... Gender diversity was actually greater before (think 70s), we may be one of the few fields were it actually got worse...

Wow, this article is really misinformed.

> What does having a program like ... Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, etc… accomplish? The short answer; very little if anything. In fact, I believe groups like this have the potential actually do more harm than good.

> IMO, one place to make the biggest impact on diversity in our field is the next generation of technologists. Kids.

What the heck does he think organizations like Black Girls Code are trying to do? Hint: They're helping make sure tomorrow's generation of technologists includes more women, by teaching girls today.

Using quotas is valid if there is quota bias to start with. So if men are more domininant in the tech industry because they are men, then using quotas will actually increase the merocrity. The problem is how do you calculate the true talent of people? My favorite "proof" of this comes from the book Soccernomics where they could show that black fotball (soccer for you americans) players where discriminated, because with all other equal the higher ratio of black players in a team would increase the succes of the team.

Why do we (well, you :) keep arguing about this issue as if the gender imbalance in software was a new and strange thing?

Gender imbalances in many industries, along with every kind of policies written to address this, have been around for a long time. Certainly well-thought-out positions and empirical studies have been published. Why is the discussion still completely based on random opinions?

EDIT: removed the "prejudiced", I didn't mean it as a personal attack against OP.

I'm on the board of the group he is talking about. I'd like to share my thoughts that I sent to the group after the 1:1 proposal. I did some light editing for clarity and to redact names.

----------------------------

Dear <original 1:1 author>,

No, because then we'll be judging speakers on a trait that has nothing to do with their coding or presentation skills. I'm not going discriminate against a male simply because he is a male for the same reason I wont discriminate against a female because she is female. Equality of opportunity is what I care about, not equality of results, and right now we have an open call for speakers.

<original 1:1 author>, where do we draw the line? Should i not pick an Asian guy because they're over represented in the tech community (and our speaker selection)? "sorry <asian presenter 1> and <asian presenter 2>, we know you've spoken at all 14 of our events but can only pick one of you since you hail from Asia". Do we need a quota for blacks and hispanics? Do we use their representation nationwide or just in <our state> when we set the quota? Do you want to look <hispanic presenter friend> the face when you announce the quota, so he gets to wonder if he was picked because he gives good presentations or if he was picked because he's brown? Should we put sexual preference on the speaker submission form? I mean, LGBT makes up 6% of the country, right? We should really have at least one. I'm friends with a transgendered female, she is super bright and I've been encouraging her to present. Now she'll get to wonder if she was just picked to fill a quota instead of thinking that I wanted to hear her speak. You tell me if she counts as a female for your quota, I mean she has more testosterone than your average woman and she was born a male. There's a lot of talk about age discrimination, should we reserve 20% for speakers over 60? If an Hispanic 63 year old woman asks to speak, does she fill three quotas at once, or is it only one?

In short, no, I think this is a horrible, sexist idea. If on the other hand you want to have a panel discussion on gender in tech, I'm cool with that. I'd also be willing to reserve X% (20?) of slots for first time speakers. And if someone wanted to give a presentation on how programmers gender actually effects their ability to write an algorithm, I guarantee you I will pick them (regardless if it is a male or female presenter). If you'd like to go on a campaign to encourage certain genders, races, ages to submit a session, feel free, but as long as I'm in charge of speaker selections I'll continue to pick solely on the session abstract and the experience of the speaker.

I'd also like to add that I like diversity of thought and experience. I think we've done an excellent job getting lots of different technologies in front of our attendees and would like to continue doing so.

Also, FTR, I would estimate that we typically have 2-3 female speakers at each event without making an effort at singling out women to present.

I think he's correct that the problem lies way upstream from the current gender imbalance of qualified candidates. AKA the US (can't speak for elsewhere) school system is fucked.

Imagine a world where computer literacy was taught to girls and boys from grade 1. Where instead of funneling the vast majority of children into football, volleyball and cheerleading we actually spent those resources and time helping them learn a skill that would help them become useful members of society.

I think what's been lost in this argument as of late is that yes, girls aren't encouraged to code, but neither are boys! It was never cool to code. Popular boys and girls (sports related usually) would physically and verbally abuse you for being too into computers from about middle school on up.

For some reason, boys seem more resistant to this abuse and will struggle through it for the love of computers. It shouldn't be that big of a challenge to pick up useful skills but we need to restructure what our society values.

There are huge social and health benefits to enrolling children in sports. Replacing sports with computers is not a solution.

The amount of time and resources poured into sports FAR out weighs any possible benefit.

Make coding a more social/group activity... social problem solved.

Have kids run during PE. Health problems solved!

Here we go again...

We'll keep going round and round until it gets fixed...

okay https://twitter.com/shanley/status/460566412226883584

Oh, I thought I recognized the site, you were one of the guests on Hanselminutes. Kudos on the project, and you can write me down as another who would like to see an RSS/Atom feed :)

One way HN's ideological filters work is that the overwhelmingly male userbase can be counted on to vote for articles like this (more so than more knowledgeable ones), which try to preserve tech's status quo against progressive thought. (It also flags articles which deviate.)

When this filter doesn't work, moderator intervention kicks in.

(Incidentally, his rejection of "Women Who Code, PyLadies, Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, etc" of course doesn't mention the benefit of countering the influence of society's goofy system of patriarchy, which teaches people quite dysfunctional behavior.)

    With a long history of having 30+ speakers at our events, the idea was proposed that we enforce a 1:1 ratio of men and women for our speakers.

Yes, finding 15 qualified women is basically impossible, so why even try? /s

you missed the point. the problem is more like this:

1. Find the 30 best speakers that are available and can speak to a relevant/interesting topic to your event.

2. How many of them are men? How many are women?

3. If there are less than 15 women then it means that whatever metric you used to pick "best" didn't select a 1:1 ratio. Now you have to decide which do you consider more important, your "best" metric or 1:1 gender ratio?

4. If 1:1 gender ratio is more important than best than you have deliberately excluded male candidates for reasons that are fundamentally unfair to them.

3a. If there are less than 15 women then it means that whatever metric you used to pick "best" may have an unconscious or unexamined bias. Now you have to decide which do you consider more important, sticking with your "best" metric or trying to find and eliminate that bias?

4a. If sticking with your "best" metric is more important, then you are now deliberately excluding female candidates for reasons that are fundamentally unfair to them.

3a doesn't make sense because the male to female ratio in the industry is not 1:1.

Because 3a doesn't make sense, 4a doesn't make sense.

Part of the reason there weren't more women speakers in the first place is because of fundamentally unfair practices prior to their applying to speak. The system is already unfair. The question is, what do you as a forum organizer do about it?

>My wife is a nurse. A female dominated field. I also own a construction company. A male dominated field. In neither field would you see a company or an organization suggest hiring one gender over the other to satisfy a ratio.

The only difference between men and women is their physical power. Yes, construction company is a male dominated field, because men are more suitable for doing that kind of job because of their body strength.

On the other hand.. in computer science, there is no difference between men and women, everything runs on brain power. So I find it very weird that there is very few women in computer science.

> The only difference between men and women is their physical power.

Surely you can't be serious.

Surely, I am serious. I can't see any other difference that can affect the choice of career path between men and women.

On the other hand.. in computer science, there is no difference between men and women, everything runs on brain power. So I find it very weird that there is very few women in computer science.

It's sexism. People are being judged and losing opertunities based on their gender, which as you point out, is irrelevant.

Here's a mind blowing factoid: The lack of women in tech is strong evidence that tech is not a meritocracy.

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