Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot From Skater Culture, Just Not Meritocracy | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot From Skater Culture, Just Not Meritocracy

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165 pointswallflower111 comments

Gasp! I knew girls with hair like that ... and I hung out with girls that skated (and did BMX and gymnastics). Judged by the timing, I must be about the same age as Ms. Siera and it's kind of an amazing parallel universe in some ways (I had an injury I never recovered from enough to return to the so-called "extreme sports").

In any case, I'm old (yeah ... I said it) now and definitely agree that we need more diversity in our tech work-places. We have an additional problem as our applicant pool is extremely homogeneous. How do we fix that?

"When I'm hiring, I have an HR intern (or the external recruiter) strip anything that could indicate gender or race from the résumés before they get their initial evaluation. For the ones that make the first cut, I have the recruiter print out code from Github, with the username redacted. This has resulted in a tremendous increase in the number of women who make it through to an actual interview."

https://devmynd.com/blog/2015-2-mind-the-gap

Show us the data. Unless you believe an average woman is better at the job than the average man, stripping all gender / race information should at best bring it up to the baseline; with the huge skew at the college level (maybe 10% of my year at graduation were women) this doesn't really result in a 'tremendous increase in the number of women'.

Of course it could. If only say 4% of their workforce was women before, and this increased to 8% after stripping out gender identity, then that is a huge increase (double) the amount of women. This is because women are being hired at the rate of 10% (using your figure), which would increase the number of women dramatically over time.

I agree that if the initial starting proportion was 10% (again assuming your number is correct) then gender stripping should make no difference - just pointing out that unless you know the starting proportion then the OP's statement is perfectly valid.

Wish I could upvote twice. Very important insight, and one that is constantly missed in gender discussions. One shouldn't expect any change downstream to suddenly cancel out the effects of something high upstream. BTW. the huge skew at college level seems to be a result of a skew in as early as high-school, or maybe even earlier. [0] has an interesting discussion on the topic.

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/24/perceptions-of-required...

You can get a reversal effect by self-selection.

Let's assume a simplified model of reality that has exactly two biased filters - an "upstream" bias that causes the pool of qualified candidates to contain only (as an assumed example) 10% women, and a "downstream" bias that causes qualified women candidates to disproportionally not get chosen or get worse offers, that results in a majority of companies hiring only (again, assumed example) 5% women.

If your company gets publicly known for hiring fairly, avoiding the second filter, then it may actually result in an effect that would "cancel out the effects of something high upstream" - simply because qualified women candidates may preferentially choose to apply at your organization, and your pool of candidates may contain significantly more qualified women developers than the national average, and thus also the people you hire would contain more qualified women developers than the national average.

A company with a reputation "if you're of group X, you'll hate it here" can have a perfectly fair hiring process, but still won't get much of group X simply because they will avoid that organization. An organization like Ku klux klan doesn't really need to do racial discrimination when hiring as most black people simply won't apply.

A fair hiring process would result in a proportion of women employees that generally matches the proportion of qualified women applicants, but the proportion of women among qualified applicants may vary significantly between different companies.

It doesn't even need that feedback-to-candidates loop to work.

Imagine that the female population of developers is 10%, that they exhibit in every way a performance distribution equal to males in job and interviewing performance, but that every company except yours is half as likely to hire a female candidate as the straight odds would suggest.

The candidate pool as experienced by all companies would consist of more than 10% females (as they would need to apply to twice as many places on average) and the average quality of the female candidate may well be higher than the average male candidate because of the adverse selection at play. (Qualified female candidates are being preferentially passed up in favor of inferior male candidates, leaving the residual female candidate pool more talent-rich than the male pool.)

Ok, I haven't considered that. That could indeed explain the results. Thanks.

It is not missed at all. But the reality of discrimination at a young age is no excuse for not fighting it in software companies, where women constantly report hostile working conditions.

The article you linked to is quite good, but it ignores the very real decline over the past few decades[1] in women participation in software relative to other professions.

[1]: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...

So these two things don't seem to fit together. The linked article seems to provide pretty solid evidence that women are just as successful as men when you control by numerical SAT score. But some[1] women do indeed report hostile working conditions.

How can this be? Is it:

* Working conditions are hostile to women, but this doesn't actually affect anything in terms of income, number of women in the industry and so on?

* More cynical variation: any woman who makes it to graduation in a STEM field has already taken a lot of hostility; those who hostility can affect are driven out earlier?

* Women and men actually experience equal amounts of hostility, and simply interpret it differently?

* Women are better at their jobs (or somehow have it easier) in a way that doesn't show up in numerical SAT scores, and this effect is exactly equal and opposite to that of a hostile work environment?

* Something else I haven't thought of?

[1] though by no means all, I remember lorettahe's post here a year or so ago

It seems that any work environment with a homogeneous group over 90% has reports of hostile working conditions for minorities. Reading reports about women entering a workplace dominated by men, men entering a a work place dominated by women, or blacks entering a predominated white work place, I constantly hear the same kind of abuse.

"By being the only Y in the work place, people expect me to represent the whole Y group just because I am Y."

"Because I am Y, everyone assume {common fear about group Y} about me".

"People think something is wrong with me because I applied to a X dominated work place and not one of the Y dominated ones."

It seems to me that the hostile working environment is the result of human nature when confronted with a minority. When the number of women in the industry increases, then the hostile working conditions will likely go away as quickly it initial started.

Probably, but I'd like to point out that this subject has been studied for the past forty years or so, so we can do better than conjecture. While it is true that minorities often feel left out in homogenous groups, there is a big difference between cases where that minority is simply a numeric difference and those where that minority has less power[1] in society. We now know that the discussion of sexism and racism is not about numbers and differences but about certain groups having more power than others, and that causes some very specific behaviors.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)

I don't think you can combine different statistics of such high dimensionality like that. Unless women math GRE scores are in decline since the eighties -- and they don't correlate with success in science or medicine -- they don't explain the decline in participation in this industry alone. Also, the correlation of women participation and GRE math scores can remain just as strong regardless of the actual participation rates: the high correlation does not explain sex differences (as in this illustration http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Heritabil...)

There is also a danger in looking at statistics about human behavior that only take a snapshot in time, because the data itself changes all the time. For example, it is very possible that ever since women participation started to decline, there have been few role models for women, less desire to participate, and therefore less desire to excel in math.

It is as impossible to study social dynamics from a statistical snapshot as it is to study planetary motion from a still photograph of the sky.

> the correlation of women participation and GRE math scores can remain just as strong regardless of the actual participation rates: the high correlation does not explain sex differences (as in this illustration http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Heritabil...)

I don't understand what you're claiming. The differences in numeric GRE scores absolutely do explain the post-graduation sex differences. Are you claiming that low numeric GRE scores and low workplace success might have some common cause? Sure, but that cause would necessarily be pre-graduation, meaning that's the place to tackle it, and efforts to e.g. make workplaces less hostile aren't going to make any difference.

I am saying two things. One, that the differences highlighted in the article do not predict the observed women participation rates in SV startups (i.e. the correlation of GRE scores could stay the same, but the participation baseline still increase 10%). In fact, the numeric difference he mentions (19% men, 6% women passing the cutoff) is a 3x difference, while the participation difference is more than 6x. So at best, it can explain less than half the effect.

Two, and this is the more important point, I absolutely claim that low numeric GRE scores and low workplace success might have some common cause, as I explained in my description of the feedback. That cause is not pre-graduation -- its effect is. Low participation in the industry causes fewer women to be drawn to the field, to be less interested in math etc.

I just want to point out what it is that I don't claim: I don't say that there is no significant innate difference in math abilities between men and women. Maybe there is and maybe there isn't. But its existence -- if it exists -- cannot nearly account for the huge gender gap we see in SV, doubly so because participation rates have been dropping since the eighties.

> That cause is not pre-graduation -- its effect is. Low participation in the industry causes fewer women to be drawn to the field, to be less interested in math etc.

If it's just that kind of feedback loop, how would the fall have started? Mathematics was once almost exclusively a men's game and early computer science fell in with that; the kids of the '80s would have had more female role models in the computer industry (and certainly as you say more in biology or physics) than those of the '70s or '60s, so why would they have been less interested in numerate fields?

I'm not saying that the feedback loop you describe can't amplify things, but I think the underlying cause has to lie outside it.

I've been thinking more about your decline-since-the-80s point. The narrative I've heard most often is that '90s compsci classes contained women with lower GRE-type scores than men (either through explicit positive discrimination/affirmative action, or because there were plenty of applicants who passed the admission criteria and a roughly-even split were accepted), who went on to do less well in industry (in line with their GRE-type scores), and the crash of the early '00s prompted an adjustment to more natural levels. But that leaves a lot of unexplained questions.

Maybe Yvain's page is right about academia, but those results don't extend to SV where there is more outright discrimination? Maybe it's about men being more able or willing than women to move to SV? Maybe SV's standards are stricter than the GRE cutoff and the difference at the end of the bell curve is even starker?

I still feel like we must be missing something. The simplistic explanation of "it's all innate ability" doesn't fit, but neither does "it's all discrimination/hostility", nor even "it's a 50/50 split between the two". Something remains to be explained here.

> If it's just that kind of feedback loop, how would the fall have started?

That's a good question. So these guys[1] have one theory. Another is that changes in SV ethos have made companies less hospitable to women. It's probably a combination of many different effects.

> I still feel like we must be missing something.

Probably lots of things. What troubles me is the pervasive lack of curiosity and lack of empathy. You see people here on HN drool over sci-fi notions of cryonics or believe all sorts of scientific "findings" of dubious nature about nutrition, but dismiss all attempts to really understand this issue. You also see people here express such decisive opinions about pretty much anything, but when a woman tells of a negative experience at a SV company, the responses turn into, "wait, we have to wait and hear the other side first".

If we realize this is important -- and I have more to say about this point -- and investigate this in depth, then I think we will have benefitted already. In the meantime, we should take it to heart that employees in our industry feel distressed by the working environment we create.

Now, why is it so important? Many people confuse sexism and racism with mere discrimination between sexes/races, or unequal representation in various professions. But that women are underrepresented in the waste-disposal industry does not make anyone lose sleep. The reason is that sexism and racism are all about power[2] (the academic shorthand for racism/sexism is "discrimination + power". It is a very serious problem when groups of the population are absent or underrepresented in seats of power, and when that happens, it requires investigation (the assumption being that no group would freely yield power -- over itself -- to others). Because the tech industry, and Silicon Valley in particular, pack so much power these days, and since we share this power and can influence its future, we should be very concerned to learn that we're distributing this power unfairly.

[1]: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)

I am curious about good solutions. But I feel like "first, do no harm" is vital here - the reason we're happy to speculate about cryonics is that the worst case is you're still dead, whereas SV is astonishingly productive to the point where we don't want to look at it funny in case it stops working.

And there are specific worries. I've worked at a place that appeared to make a point of hiring equal numbers of men and women - and implemented this by hiring a number of women who simply weren't capable of performing their jobs (whether this was a question of talent or training I don't know). It was bad for me, as in programming incompetent colleagues are not just dead weight but actively harmful. It was bad for those women, who had a frustrating time at a job where they knew they weren't contributing. And it was even worse for the highly-skilled women on the team, as others who hadn't worked closely with them would - understandably, and probably unconsciously - make the calculation that they were probably in the incompetent group, and act accordingly. So naturally, avoiding that particular failure mode is a matter that's close to my heart, and I get defensive when I hear people saying things that I think might lead to that.

Well, obviously no one has come up with full solutions, and whatever solutions there are, they will be slow, because changing culture is slow. But just as democratic societies have come to accept the preposterous notion that women should be allowed to vote, so too will it start seeing engineering as a non-manly profession, and one that's perfectly natural for women, too. Right now, I think there are two things we can do: 1) place more women role models in popular culture who are engineers (I think Hollywood has started doing this), and 2) place more actual women role models in engineering positions.

The latter will only be achieved if the level of hostility women feel in the workplace is reduced, and to do that, employers (and engineers in general) will need to undergo some training. Part of that training (though certainly not all of it) would be learning to recognize sexism. Recognizing sexism is very hard if you're not trained for it; there are two reasons for that: one, people confuse sexism with misogyny and assume that since they're not misogynist, they can't be sexist (while actually most forms of sexism are inadvertent/structural/cultural), and two, because sexism is cultural, we just don't think of things that seem so natural to us, and can't perceive the harm they cause. Because sexism and racism are discrimination + power, the best way to recognize them is not to look for discrimination (which is hard to see, and we don't want to find it because it feels we're being judged or doing something wrong) but for power. Once you know what power is, it is relatively easy to see. Once you learn to see power, you see who has more of it and who has less of it. Once you see that, it's much easier to see whether through action or inaction your organization keeps the current unfair power distribution.

One of the other results I've seen posted on SSC (will try to find the link later) is that sensitivity training, at least as it's been actually implemented in the real world, makes people more discriminatory, not less.

Of course it's not an excuse. But you should not expect to get results that defy statistics.

Defy what statistics? What statistics explain the constant decline in the last few decades? Are women getting dumber?

The ones that say, e.g. that if you have 10 men educated in software engineering per one woman and you change your hiring practices to be less discriminating, you shouldn't suddenly expect to have 50/50 gender balance among tech workers in your company. You should see that 10/1 proportion reflected in your staff, if you hire based on merit alone.

I don't think so, because the rates are not immutable, and you're discounting causation going the other way. If the women who are hired are treated well (which would require their employers to undergo some training), the rate of women attaining software education is likely to rise. "Downstream" likely has a strong effect on "upstream".

I agree, but the issue is with a post where someone apparently claims to be getting such results right now.

First, I don't think they claim a 50/50 split. I guess there's still room for improvement even before hitting the applicant pool limitation (I have seen it, too, BTW, when we hired; the number of women applying is higher than their representation in startups).

Second, it's also very possible that there is a local, fast, feedback loop. I think women would be more attracted to companies that already employ a higher number of women, and are known for a hospitable working environment, so it's likely those companies will receive a higher share of women applicants.

I don't think so. If they are treated well they won't complain and you will never hear about them.

What? There is a strong bias against hiring women. Read about it and steps to reduce it here:

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Reducing_male_bias_in_hir...

Everyone (including women) is biased against hiring women in tech. Even if it is tiny, why wouldn't you take steps to reduce your own bias? Even if "the pipeline is the problem", why wouldn't you take all possible steps to reduce the bias at your stage of the pipeline?

If the industry hires 2% women, out of 10% talent then there is 8% _of the entire industry_ that this company could snag. This could easily mean more than the entire company being women.

Your intuition is right when/if this gets implemented everywhere.

Wonderful. It's the "symphony orchestra" method of finding the best, which also works to fight discrimination:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/b...

Kudos to you, that's a great way of doing it.

I've worked with a few women in technical roles that decided to take more masculine versions of their names (Jackie -> Jack, Ashley -> Ash, Jessica to Jesse). For two of them it started out as a way of getting hassled less online, and the other did it as an experiment to see which resume got more interviews (surprise, the masculine name got more than double the callbacks.)

Not me, I'm just linking this here. It was submitted the other day but didn't get much attention.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9092545

Now, if only German companies would do away with requiring, photos, place of birth and marital status in their Lebenslaufs... I mean, this is a good thing to do, but wish it would happen overseas as well. Could you imagine requiring photos and marital status in the US (aside from modeling and the like)

I haven't added marital status, place of birth or birth name in my Lebenslauf, ever.

But then I never listened to teachers or any public employment agencies and their leaflets since I had HR people in family who knew more contemporary habits (eg. that handwritten long-form CVs mean pretty much immediate rejection, while they were sold in class as the best thing ever)

The photo requirement is still rather annoying though.

Yeah, most elaborate "somersaults" guidance in CVs (or Lebenslaufen) are usually BS

Go with the basics and it should be ok. Especially in more modern companies (IT, etc)

Interesting. Most american companies I interviewed with, were asking me very personal questions, such as race and sexual orientation.

That's very poor recruiting practice. Why bothe asking questions if you can't use the answers as part of your recruitment process?

What kind of work place uses the sexual orientation of employees for the benefit of the company?

It was for equal oportunity or something.

I always find this very ironic.

I have interview with numerous companies in America and have NEVER been asked personal questions.

What industry? What city? How many companies = "Most"?

All were major corporations. I had to apply for job interview using their website. After I would fill out CV and relevant information, I was redirected to survey or something like that. This was in Ireland, since 2006.

I think you're referring to an optional survey. Companies ask that so that they have metrics on what kind of people they get applications from. You can choose not to answer.

"most" = which ones?

List them

Which ones?

The sanitization process should also be repeated in the interview process. Only objective information is taken down by the interviewer, and this is passed on to someone else, who can make a value judgement about the candidate without that judgement being coloured by the candidates gender, race, looks, height, perfume or whatever else is considered to be extraneous information.

Are you being sarcastic? This would be expensive, and is that how you are going to work with them?

I know that HN and the world in general is on a kick about equality of everything, but when your interviewee wears 100 gallons of perfume to the interview that is a problem I have to address even before they start working.

I absolutely think that the work can have objective measures, but back in reality much of work is not based around how good the candidate fits the job description exactly as described in the requirements.

Include personal hygiene as a criteria that you are interested in then.

That is a somewhat fair response, that I be honest in what I ask for.

However, it seems like at some point these basics are societal norms, and I am going to ridiculous lengths to specify what I want for a position.

Personal hygiene is pretty much the criteria for ANY job.

That's not really fair to the candidate when you remember the potential employee is also interviewing the employer. I don't think I'd want to work somewhere that thought myself and my boss' should not meet.

This is brilliant.

How do we make the applicant pool more diverse? That's easy.

Step one: improve economic forces on lower-income families, the working poor, migrant and other ethnic immigrant communities, and the most at risk of poverty, incarceration, preventable disease and unplanned pregnancy.

Step two: provide education for all those groups.

Step three: balance a new middle class through job creation combined with a return to increased domestic jobs which don't require a college degree (since nobody can afford it now), primarily industrial and manufacturing.

Step four: as a new middle class emerges, the roadblocks to a good education, freedom from incarceration, increased communication skills, and improved local ethnic-minority economies produces tech workers who have the same intellectual and cultural advantages of caucasian-american males and females. suddenly more people who are 'like us' start applying, and their skin color, family history, cultural/religious differences and accents don't seem like such a barrier anymore.

Alternate plan:

Step one: get involved in community outreach for young disadvantaged people.

Step two: invest in tech classes at community centers.

Step three: convert blighted neighborhoods into training centers, call centers, minimalist office spaces, etc.

Step four: work with local governments to increase availability of cheap public transportation.

Step five: hire local young people who are now trained in tech work to do the jobs you'd normally farm out to similarly-skilled foreign workers.

simple != easy

What you have described are simple solutions, not easy ones.

here's some tips on expanding your applicant pool: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/25-tips-for-diverse-hiri...

I'm not always a fan of modelviewculture, but I think what they say implcitly is very important: start with culture.

Have a culture where men and women alike consider themselves functional and important parts of your business.

Let this culture speak through your actions (specifically: offer benefits that are attractive to the kind of person you want to attract), and let both the culture and you actions shine through in your public appearance (general website, HR-specific website, job ads).

Also: pre-recruiting activities (community involvement, generally getting in touch with people) can help your visibility especially with people who are not well-connected members of the majority group. Get involved, and, as mentioned, let your culture shine through.

As they further mention, some of the recruiting practices that are popular tend to be systematically biased towards a single, relatively homogeneous group of people. See this as an opportunity to perform arbitrage on that market by talking to suitable candidates that some of the other players are ignoring.

Kathy was born in 1957.

(I was born in 62.)

We were there, dude.

And yes, the applicant pool is homogeneous in the extreme.

radical!

A good start would be to not actively push women away with a hostile work environment: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-st...

I think this article was just debunked here yesterday as generalizing from few selected anecdotes.

Oh, good, because my belief in meritocracy was getting shaky, but if HN has debunked the well-documented decline in women participation in software (one of the only professions where this happens) over the past one or two decades, then I guess we're all good.

I said the article was debunked, not the whole phenomenon. There are better sources documenting it.

That's true. These for example:

* http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...

* http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender...

* http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field...

* http://qz.com/143967/the-tech-industrys-woman-problem-statis...

* http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/technology/technologys-man...

Having read the post, I feel the title here doesn't do it justice. It is also missing half of the title.

Title on HN at time of comment: "Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot from Skater Culture"

As far as the article, I wasn't aware of the schism in the 80s around skateboarding culture. I was too young, but even looking back through documentaries and other media about the history, it seems to have been revised to ignore it.

I think the article is overall positive, in that there are things to learn so long as we don't ignore the context and the bad side of what has happened in the past.

We expanded the submitted title a bit. We're open to suggestions for a better one.

Not to get too far off topic, but the linked opinion piece got me wondering if any games attempt to model a shift from an open/inclusive culture to a closed/exclusive one, and I found this:

  > Mao... is a card game... in which the aim is to get rid 
  > of all of the cards in hand without breaking certain 
  > unspoken rules. The game forbids its players from 
  > explaining the rules, and new players are often told 
  > only "the only rule you may be told is this one"... 
  > Specifics are discovered through trial and error. A 
  > player who breaks a rule is penalized by being given 
  > an additional card from the deck. The person giving 
  > the penalty must state what the incorrect action was,
  > without explaining the rule that was broken.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)

(edit: Yeah, this is way too off topic. ;-) More generally, I was thinking about how the system of marketing skateboarding somehow optimized around young males. From a financial perspective it might make sense for a young, hungry company go after what appeared to be their most profitable market. On the other hand, by focusing so hard on serving one group, they may have failed to nurture a larger, more diverse marketplace.)

The experience of playing Mao is just the opposite: you start off as a foreigner, with no understanding of what's going on, and you accumulate large numbers of cards. Gradually you start to understand, become part of the group. In the end you're able to turn the system to your own ends (or, equivalently, you are captured by the system), becoming one of the ruling class yourself.

(I understand it's partly an allegory for the authoritarian Chinese regime: the rules are pointless, everyone knows they're pointless, but as you engage with the system you start to have an interest in the rules being followed, and in the end you use the rules to enhance your own status at the expense of naïve newcomers).

Hey, I was craving for Kathy Sierra writing since Creating Passionate Users: http://headrush.typepad.com/

Sierra is a genius. I have been developing for 12+ years when I read her design patterns book for "newbies", and I learned something from every page.

In case you were not aware, Kathy Sierra has a new book!

http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/...

Not available on the Kindle?

How is that making your users awesome?

She eventually returned to blogging over at http://seriouspony.com/blog/, unfortunately she also stopped again - and serious pony has since been run of Twitter by trolls.

I shall cry very dry tears once Weev dies.

The best part of the article was "skateistan". I'd love to learn more about how skating became so popular with women in Afghanistan.

Then pick up a copy of the Skateistan book: http://skateistan.org/book # 100% of the profits go back to Skateistan.

Of course, but this is probably true on some level about nearly every sport or physical activity. Sports probably provide interesting models for individual and tribal innovation, and something resembling a fairly clean meritocracy... before a culture gets layered on top of that which puts up nasty guard rails and biases.

I don't think we have to worry about SV emulating that, it already resembles that model quite thoroughly. Fortunately I do think the conversation about how to resolve what distracts from merit in our industry is at least in the beginnings of happening.

I don't think it's reasonable to say that nothing to learn from or even emulate about an (admittedly deeply) flawed culture.

Note that sports didn't really aspire to be a meritocracy before professionalism. The most meritocratic sports combine inclusiveness with professionalism i.e. a lot of people can enter the sport and the best are recognized as such. Programming often favors amateurism[0] like open source, side projects and being "the right kind of nerdy", while at the same being elitist in regard to things like education.

I also think a lot of the problems in regard to equality are latent effects of many who got started in the early days of the personal computer did so because of their dad [1] (and that gender roles where much stricter at the time).

[0] Which isn't necessarily about skill, while it do tend to change the meaning of skill.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677309

True skate culture is about sharing, when one of you gets sponsored and can afford to build pipes and new equip you invite everybody down and sometimes give skate partners struggling money so they can afford to skate F/T and get into comps with you. Never been about meritocracy that I remember only when guys like Shaun White showed up and built private only pipes, ditched friends to hang out in VIP lounges ect.

Skating empty pools listening to TSOL none of us were anything but friends who supported each other and were friends first and business after, I guess this would be the last thing you would want in business/startup culture. There were always women around skating and snowboarding with us too I don't get any of this article it certainly wasn't like this, W Coast circa early90s til now.

One of our best friends was a sponsored female snowboarder who would pay for all of us to come heliskiing and boarding with her all season long, even the friends who couldn't ride for shit came too because true skateboarding culture.I don't see this working at all in the business unless you run a lab similar to MIT back in the Stallman days and are willing to put the community and friends above profits which seems like a good way to kill any business.

Wasn't that the exact same thing that happened with games marketing?

Its amazing to me how many cultural effects are coming out now from the types of ads that people watched growing up - ads that shaped people's behaviors (skating is for GUYS ONLY, gaming is for ONLY COOL DUDES). As advertising has gotten more and more adept at getting into people's heads and being much more subtly (or not, if you know what to look for) psychological, I wonder what cultural effects we'll be feeling in the next 5, 10 years.

Anyone know of any egregious examples of advertisers trying to establish a cultural norm around their industry?

It's really not sexism that freestyle went out of fashion. All the guys that did freestyle were left behind, too. They were also laughed at and ridiculed. The only reason Rodney Mullen kept his career going is he learned to skate street and he did it really well. If one of the female freestylers had done the same I'm sure the sport would look different.

It really frustrates me that the author complains skateboarding isn't/wasn't a meritocracy. Number one, when it was one and the sport became more dangerous and athletic, the girls couldn't keep up. Number two, it isn't a meritocracy anymore because there are 'girls only' competitions where girls are sheltered from having to compete with the boys but they still get prize money and gold medals. If you compare a girl and a guy skater at the same skill level the girl will have more money and opportunities coming in.

I don't think she really wants skateboarding to be a meritocracy, she doesn't want the pro female skateboarders to lose their sponsorships because there are hundreds of guys who are better than them who are looking for sponsorships. Unless she wants to redefine the merit of a skateboarder as the ability to convince people to buy things. That's problematic as well. If we're being honest, doing stupid and dangerous things is largely the domain of young dudes and that's why they're a better target audience to sell skateboards to.

But this is our current culture, calling things sexism sells.

(edit: it's really disappointing to see this catching downvotes.)

This seems unlikely (given only what's in the article). She doesn't say that the decline of freestyle was sexist. The point is that the target demographic of commercial skateboard culture shrank drastically. Males—check; males under 18—check. And as it hit each check point it was reducing the population it was going to appeal to.

And your comment doesn't address the specific claims of sexist behavior, like those Enjoi ads or Hubba's "The Girls".

Just because "the target demographic of commercial skateboard culture shrank drastically" doesn't mean it was a conscious or subconscious decision of anybody involved in the industry. I'm sure there were plenty of skateboarding companies that tried to stick with the old style and simply went out of business. Things change, you can't always blame somebody when they do.

On Enjoi: you have to take things in context and even a casual glance at their ads makes it clear they trend towards the offensive and absurd for the sake of being offensive and absurd. They also joke about pooping their pants but I don't think they're trying to advocate for it.

On Hubba: a wheel company I've never heard of that doesn't have a wheel on Amazon's 100 best selling skateboarding wheels list and only has one set of bearings on Amazon's 100 best selling bearings. I'm not sure how they're the representatives of skateboarding culture.

I just don't like the article, I think the people and companies were chosen specifically to support the narrative of sexism. Elissa Steamer and Leticia Bufoni matter more to skateboarding than Hubba Wheels ever will, but their names aren't even mentioned, only the fact that they're told they "skate like guys" but you don't have their names so it's hard to go find the context of what that means in skateboarding. If you watch five minutes of girls and five minutes of guys skateboarding at the XGames you'll realize the girls skate differently, they have a different posture and a totally different style but not really in a good way. They often look uncertain. But as is so common these days the compliments of "skating like a guy" are divorced from context in order to make them look sexist.

"I'm sure there were plenty of skateboarding companies that tried to stick with the old style and simply went out of business."

All of skateboarding came to the brink of collapse in the late 80s and early 90s. No company was making any kind of money off the sport, only a few made just enough to keep some small sliver still alive. Major brands went under, skate parks went under, shops went under, contests ended, ramps went into disrepair, "vert" was declared dead and anyone who still enjoyed skating was harassed and ostracised as outcasts.

It wasn't until about a decade later that modern skateboarding, as we see it today, saw some hope of resurgence and was able to rekindle itself from the ashes of its former glory. All thanks in part to the those that trudged on during the rough times just for the love of the sport.

>All thanks in part to the those that trudged on during the rough times just for the love of the sport.

I.e. men.

Like IT: There was no money in it, just a load of guys doing it for the love of it. 20 years later there's huge money in it, those guys who were there at the start are at the top of the pile and the women who never previously showed an interest in it are on the sidelines screaming "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WOMYN??!?!".

This whole equality war in IT is becoming incredibly tiring. Endless attacks from a transparent supremacy movement whose members were calling people in IT "nerds" 10 years ago.

I guess those people exist, but they're an awfully small part of it. I mean women have a much higher attrition rate than men once they get into the industry, so it's not just a case of starting at the top.

> Just because "the target demographic of commercial skateboard culture shrank drastically" doesn't mean it was a conscious or subconscious decision of anybody involved in the industry.

I don't see how this is relevant? A problem is a problem, no matter if it's caused by a someones decision, or by systematic bias.

It's relevant because problems like this default to being the result of "the patriarchy" or sexism.

OTOH you could argue that women were kept out of skateboarding because the entire thing moved below the glass floor (the opposite of the glass ceiling that keeps women out of dangerous jobs) as it became too low-class and dangerous for even poor women. In line with what mtbcoder noted, throughout the eighties and nineties being a skateboarder meant you were an outcast and a criminal. As a society we don't like attaching those terms to women. It was only after several years of the X-Games being on TV and new skateparks being built that the sport gained the sense of legitimacy it enjoys today.

>The point is that the target demographic of commercial skateboard culture shrank drastically.

If the previous demographic was 50/50 and each were contributing a similar amount of cash to the sport, therefore supporting its commercial viability, why would such a move take place?

Are you saying young males caused the change in culture by being more easily separated from their money? I guess that's possible. But if skaters really threw away their "meritocratic" culture in order to chase money, I wouldn't hold the community up as a model to follow.

Exactly.

It is frustrating to see girls taught that the reason women are under-represented in certain fields is always sexism. In athletics the reasons are patently obvious, but often left unsaid nevertheless.

Sure it is true sometimes. There are definitely more hurdles in front of girls to become programmers, for instance. At the same time, women as a group, in general, simply are not as interested in working quietly with numbers as men are. They tend to be more adept verbally, OTOH, and usually prefer careers that are more social. By far the majority of school teachers and social workers in the US are women.

Perceiving oneself as a victim is extraordinarily limiting. It is the last thing I wish for girls to be taught.

"simply are not as interested in working quietly with numbers as men are"

That's frankly a ridiculous statement in this context. Women are en masse working quietly in writing, music, painting, knitting etc. There's also plenty of women medical research, chemistry and economics. I also know of more women with a "profile in the community" in electronics than I do in software, which is probably less social than coding.

"Women are en masse working quietly in writing, music, painting, knitting." None of these involve numbers.

Sincere question: why do you think women are less involved in engineering and more involved in teaching and social work?

Is that what you think a sincere question sounds like?

Whether or not it sounded sincere, it was. I honestly find it an interesting question. I wonder why you are so sure in whatever answer you believe.

Instead, perceive yourself as incapable on average. That's not limiting at all.

I find this comment and the circumstances surrounding it to be problematic on multiple levels.

-You never actually refute "TheLarch"'s point. Instead you bring down the conversation with unwarranted sarcasm and seem to completely misconstrue the argument. Despite this your comment is positive while the comment that actually contributed to the conversation is downvoted. You could have easily argued their assumptions but chose not to for reasons I might guess at in my next point.

-You essentially take the position that two possibilities exist, A) Institutionalized sexism is the main cause of most gender disparities when it comes to career demographics and definitely not personal choice (even if influenced by social conditioning), or B) Women are incapable on average. Judging by the harshness of your comment I can only assume that you don't that the person you are responding to might consider more possibilities.

This type of thinking is dangerous because it leaves no room for the other side to be simply incorrect. It ceases to be a matter of facts or logic and becomes a matter of morality with anyone who disagrees with you on the wrong side of the moral spectrum. Now anyone who challenges your viewpoint can conveniently be regarded as an immoral person and have their ideas ignored, hidden, or personally mocked.

I don't think I've ever had someone create a throwaway just for me. Thank you.

But women are capable in ways that men are not. They communicate better. I think they are better judges of character, and have superior discernment. They are far less likely to win Darwin awards. Find 100 painfully stupid stunts on Youtube, and at least 85 of them will be men.

Why do we allow males to occupy any position in society, then? That seems stupid.

Your list, if true, suggests that we should keep males around only for breeding purposes, and even that only until we figure out how to get by without them.

Many good programmers have a certain arrogance. If you must absorb a stereotype, maybe "lots of other women suck" is less likely to discourage you from pursuing a programming career than "the world won't let women be programmers regardless of their skill"?

"Many good programmers have a certain arrogance"

No, I don't think so. Or at least it's not needed to be a good programmer. It's just that if you also have other qualities people don't have to excuse your behavior by how good a programmer you are.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris

That's just another example of this cultures weird relationship with personal qualities. The good version of laziness, impatience and hubris is efficiency, passion and confidence. But if you call it efficiency those who are lazy, or at least hide their decision behind the acceptance of laziness, gets upset. So you instead have to say that you are lazy, but in a good way.

Of course there is also people who hide their decision behind the idea of efficiency.

Call it confidence if you prefer; my original point goes through all the same.

I don't think that thinking other people suck is good way to develop confidence. At least not without experience. If women for the sake of confidence should learn that people suck, it's that most programmers do, not that most women do. I'd rather they develop confidence through experience with programming rather than arrogance toward other programmers. Since the problem with arrogance is that it almost always clashes with reality.

Way to ignore basically the entire point the article makes...

Wasn't the central point of the article that skateboarding is a sexist non-meritocracy and that it parallels the tech industry? I could have done more but I tried to address the first two claims in the amount of time I have to spend on the HN tonight. Whether or not it parallels the tech industry is largely a moot point since the first two claims can't withstand scrutiny.

yes indeed... this system of down-voting by HN is certainly not being used as content-control but more as a form of censor-ship and political-correctness(especially when it comes to 'women')....

Funny thing is it jumped up to +3 karma really quickly before going negative. It was -4 before I went to bed and now it's at -2. It looks like the downvoters aren't trying to kill it, they just want it gray.

It's not like I expected to disagree with a template feminist story (X is sexist, if only X was a meritocracy women would be there) without facing the idea that disagreeing with them can only be the product of sexism.

only way to deal with such stupidity is to ignore it and at the right moments crush it.... intelligence cannot win against stupidity.... it is like a clump of clay dashed against an adamantine wall...

edit: the comment your reading was downvoted. I decided to erase it in protest instead of letting you (the reader) read it.

How can that be a protest? Someone who downvotes a comment simply because they disagree with it wants you to never see the comment. This is an object lesson in the repercussions. What was lost? You may never know.

To be fair, the article cited is in the opinion section, so don't deconstruct it too much. I think she makes some good points, but awkwardly uses skating culture and its change to drive her points across.

Mainly, marketing, and marketing targeting has had a huge negative effect on society. There has been good, and there has been bad, but more bad than good. With targeted marketing, you get this kind of thing where advertisers go for the jugular on their core market, abusively ignoring the side-effects. So you have them marketing violence and counterculture to boys and pink-love-mother-earth to girls. On the other hand, they get to market narrow markets like fish sauce to SE Asians, and Vegemite to Commonwealthers, for example. So, while it's nice that this makes an Aussie feel at home, or a Thai feel like they are part of the social fabric, on the whole, targeted marketing can have a stratifying effect, it amplifies the differences and you can end up with unrecognizable monsters like the ones where sexism is used to sell products, or shape the youth (to drink sugary drinks). The alternative would be bland marketing which necessarily would have to appeal to the mainstream, which also has its drawbacks. but on the whole?

But back to sexism in the workplace. It would be nice, in thought, for there to be a more or less even distribution, of people in the different industries, and we can try, but, in the end, I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. There are too many social aspects which go into this, from social behavior, to individual behavior. Maybe a start would be for people not to feel that some jobs have more cachet than others. That there be no such thing as cliqueishness and clubbism, tribalism. That people didn't recruit from their pool of friends --and this happens anywhere from Facebook, to Carwashes, to Airport personnel, to professorships, to ethnic restaurants. And while we're at it, why not try and make things equal at the lower and top ends of the scale, not just the middle.

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