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Comment by Kenji | Hacker News Reader

There had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it. It was the funniest thing I’d heard in months — I literally doubled over laughing at how nonplussed he must have been to see it not only implemented, but implemented to rousing success.

Now that's a woman I respect. Instead of whining around, she just implements it. Suckerpunched the misogynist.

You will see how much easier your life becomes if you stop complaining and start doing. That's also how you earn respect.

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So... more perceptive women, who see from the outset that they will have to work twice as hard to be only equally respected in the industry, should shut up and get to work instead of pointing out the unfairness? They should toil for a decade or two in order to have the requisite cred before complaining about injustice?

You don't even know your "stop complaining and start doing" solution will work. Since the anti-female bias isn't rationally based on women's ideas/work to begin with, what makes you think it will be any more rational when she produces better ideas/work? Some men may accept her, but grudgingly. Others may find their ego threatened and react even worse.

I personally know over a hundred male programmers who all started programming as children, at their own accord. They all did it because it was FUN for them. They wrote computer games and tinkered with BASIC. Some of them wrote actual video games for their graphing calculators. They were fascinated by the world of computers, and they didn't CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THOUGHT. That's why many of them were giant nerds and social rejects. They did it because they enjoyed it, period.

I know a couple of women who did the same thing. They were totally awkward nerds during their childhood and teen years, but as adults, they are highly respected software engineers.

If you don't enjoy programming and you start with the premise of thinking of it as "work", and you are so worried about what other people think of you, and you are worried about how much more work you are going to have to do compared to your peers or blah blah blah, you won't go far in the field.

Software engineering isn't a field where you can "complain your way to the top". Your work will speak for itself, and your peers will judge you by that work. Sure, there might be a couple of bad apples spoiling the bunch, but that hasn't been my personal experience. Every competent female programmer I've met has been idolized and welcomed into the community like a rare and extremely valuable unicorn.

see from the outset that they will have to work twice as hard to be only equally respected in the industry

'citation needed'

When I work with females who do the work, and don't turn into weird drama queens, they get equivalent respect and reward as the guys.

People sometimes get afraid that a female will not be normal at work, and instead reveal herself as some kind of angry, complaining, entitled SJW who believes she is entitled to unearned respect or accolades. (To be fair, guys can show this too, but usually they are shut down faster and harder, because they don't have the "but I'm a girl" card.)

Any company that arbitrarily discriminates against talented women cuts into their own flesh: The competition will be able to hire this talent. If I were an employer, I wouldn't give two cents about gender as long as the work is done well. As a consequence, female-friendly workplaces have a larger pool of talent to hire from, therefore, they would thrive against the misogynistic competition.

You sound like an economist who believes in rational behavior and frictionless spread of information. Sadly, we're not there yet.

In the real world, the subconscious belief that women aren't as good at tech is widespread, and access to studies demonstrating a lack of gender-based differences in ability is not. In such a world, managers with unexamined biases believe they are justified in paying women less and down-weighting their ideas and work. Plus, until the spread of the bias decreases, no company is at a relative disadvantage for having it.

This was a standard argument in economics: any business or culture that systematically discriminates against women (or other races, or other "types") is going to be at a huge disadvantage in identifying talent. And if you believe talent is everywhere, it's hard to argue with.

And yet, prior to World War II, that economic disadvantage had absolutely no effect. Even decades later, systematic discrimination was an open policy, in direct violation of economic logic.

Weird.

No, really. It took WWII for the United States to collectively realize that systematically excluding nigh-half of the population from the economy was a bad idea, economically speaking. And much longer for the damage caused by doing so in specific instances to have much lasting effect---indeed, without government intervention I suspect we would still be waiting.

> So... more perceptive women, who see from the outset [...]

Way to diss the authors' intelligence.

I'm criticizing her emotional perception, not her intelligence.

She self-identifies as ASD, and the problems of ASD people with emotional perception/empathy/mindblindness/etc are very well-documented.

Would you rather take coding advice from the person who wrote a ball of mud in PHP, or John Carmack?

> Would you rather take coding advice from the person who wrote a ball of mud in PHP, or John Carmack?

Depends on what I'm doing. Maybe I'm indeed going to write some ball of mud (unmaintainable, one-off, but perhaps faster to write) PHP code? I reject your hero worship.

And if she complains about being treated this way for being a woman, she wouldn't have your respect?

The point is that complaining did nothing. Just doing it, taking control, and more importantly proving the misogynists wrong, had a much better impact.

No, people who complain don't have my respect (at least not more than the baseline respect I have for every human). Unless she does really awesome stuff despite complaining.

Everyone can see the purpose of this comment. Telling women to quit whining and shut up is not novel.

It applies to men too, but I don't see an overly emotional post about how difficult men's life is every other day on top of hackernews. Self-pity is among the most destructive emotions you can feel.

And is strongly discourage in boys/men.

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