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Not to mention the fact that most programmers used to be women! The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make th
by door99 6y ago
Not to mention the fact that most programmers used to be women!
The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make that cultural change?
- pinkfoot 6y ago> The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? If its obvious, its trivial to list them, if its subtle then its worth doing the exercise. We have to accept they may just not want the gig. Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.
- fzeroracer 6y agoJust because something is obvious doesn't make it trivial to fix. A lot like fixing a bug you know exists, but can't fix it because it's never brought in scope. One of the more obvious problems is that software especially seems to have issues with sexual harassment. An example of that can be readily found with Susan Fowler's blogpost about Uber's rotten workplace culture.
- zozbot234 6y ago> Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? Techbros. Techbros everywhere. It's not what people want to hear, most people would love it if the field and the educational pipeline leading to it had more professional norms all-around. But it's a real thing. (FWIW, I don't think of Damore as part of the problem, indeed his proposals would help a lot if widely adopted.)
- thu2111 6y ago"Techbros" isn't "a real thing", it's not even a term that means anything. It's just an insult and not even an effective one; what exactly is it meant to imply? A "bro" (young man?) works in tech? So what? This is why so many men are coming to realise that feminism is propaganda. Someone asks a reasonable question - how exactly is this industry unfriendly to women? It's a simple question, it should be easy to answer. The response is some meaningless schoolyard name calling? There's no discrimination against women in our industry, only discrimination against men and the men who point it out.
- alexilliamson 6y agoThink frat bro, but proud of his pseudo-intellectualism.
- DonHopkins 6y agoSince you don't seem to be aware of it, one thing "bro" strongly and literally implies is Frat Culture. They literally call each other "brothers". In case English isn't your native language, or you're lucky enough to not be familiar with this dark side of American culture, the commonly used terms are "Fraternity Brothers", "Frat Brothers", and "Frat Bros", who become "Tech Bros" when they graduate. And YES, it is a culture, and a notoriously toxic pervasive culture at that, which Snapchat and Uber exemplify. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/snapchat-the-app-frat-bros-love-was-started-by-the-frattiest-bro-of-them-all/371749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/snapc... >Snapchat, the App Frat Bros Love, Was Started By the Frattiest Bro of Them All >Evan Spiegel, the CEO and cofounder of Snapchat, has created a massive, popular application. It's basically a frat boys dream, and as it turns out, Spiegel was the ultimate frat guy during his time at Standford. https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/28/confirmed-snapchats-evan-spiegel-is-kind-of-an-ass/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/28/confirmed-snapchats-evan-s... >Confirmed: Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel Is Kind Of An Ass >I’ve known Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO and co-founder, for a while now. We have had more than half a dozen in-person conversations, far more phone calls, and even shared twenty minutes together on stage at Disrupt SF. And try as I might, I’ve had a hard time liking him. Now, after reading emails sent by Evan Spiegel during his undergrad time at Stanford, I clearly understand what my instincts were telling me. >Dude’s kind of a dick. >You can see the whole swath of leaked emails at ValleyWag, but I can summarize them all pretty easily for you with the above paragraph. Here’s a typical example: >“LUAU FUCKING RAGED. Thanks to all of you. Hope at least six girl [sic] sucked your dicks last night. Cuz that didn’t happen for me.” Signed affectionately, “fuckbitchesgetleid. Spiegel.” https://vator.tv/news/2014-05-28-snapchat-ceo-emails-talk-about-bitches-and-sluts https://vator.tv/news/2014-05-28-snapchat-ceo-emails-talk-ab... >Snapchat CEO emails talk about "bitches" and "sluts" >Emails from Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel reveal gross fratboy misogyny in the wake of UCSB shootings >Breaking news: rich, white man says awful things. Other white men rally to his defense. https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/american-fraternities-andrew-moisey-photography/ https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/americ... >Inside the dark, depraved world of US frat culture. American ultra. >Photographer Andrew Moisey explores the rituals, texts and initiations of American fraternities: breeding grounds for aggressive, toxic masculinity. >The world of American fraternities is a strange and ghoulish one. Depraved and simmering with violence, it’s a hotbed of ultra-masculine entitlement: a grim embodiment of chest-pumping male tribalism. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/10/andrew-moisey-american-fraternity-photographer-college-behaviour https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/10/andrew-... >Humiliation, homoeroticism and animal cruelty: inside the frathouse >Photographer Andrew Moisey uncovered ritual hazing, extreme drunkenness and toxic masculinity on one college campus – from men destined to be America’s future leaders >[...] A world in which homosexuality is taboo but cross-dressing and semi-naked wrestling are acceptable and parading your penis and testicles is almost de rigueur. >[...] “These all-male campus spaces have been around since the 1820s,” elaborates Moisey, “but they changed perceptibly during the so-called culture wars of the 1970s, becoming a safe space for guys who didn’t want to have to worry about having their kind of fun.” Many fraternities, he believes, now view themselves as embattled institutions, maintaining their conservative core values of brotherhood, privilege and machismo against a perceived liberal onslaught. Disturbingly, the code of loyalty to the brotherhood endures even after the other principles of fraternity life have long since fallen away. >“The central issue is that there is an allegiance to everyone inside the fraternity rather than to the higher ideal,” says Moisey. “So even though most of these guys consider themselves highly respectable, their loyalty is such that they will protect the bad guys who hide in their midst. If you are a bad seed and you join a fraternity, you have found your safe haven. And what we are seeing right now is that the support and protection that fraternities provide for the bad seeds extends into the highest echelons of American power and decision-making.” >[...] “This is what our leaders looked like when they were young.” https://www.andrewmoisey.com/the-american-fraternity.html https://www.andrewmoisey.com/the-american-fraternity.html >ANDREW MOISEY: THE AMERICAN FRATERNITY >An Illustrated Ritual Manual
- DonHopkins 6y agoThat's an instance of a much bigger problem: Fratbros. Fratbros everywhere. https://www.businessinsider.nl/coronavirus-kushner-impact-team-mocked-slim-suit-crowd-frat-party-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.nl/coronavirus-kushner-impact-te... >Jared Kushner’s coronavirus ‘impact team’ mocked as the ‘Slim Suit Crowd’ and a ‘frat party’ descended from a UFO
- searchableguy 6y agoI honestly want to meet techbros. I live in some sort of echo chamber where gender is so irrelevant to most participants. I have never seen anyone ask someone's gender on a github issue, I may have missed it but I have seen few issues opened because no inclusivity. No one in any of the programming communities I am in gives two shit about the gender of the participants. Most people have pseudonyms with anime avatars anyway. Incidentally the techbros you describe are majorly young cs graduates from my observation. Why are unis teaching them to be tech bros? Are unis at fault for making tech non inclusive and toxic?
- DonHopkins 6y agoCount your blessings, and read the articles I posted about Evan Spiegel, then you'll feel like you met one of them, then you'll want to take a shower, and then you'll appreciate all your decent open minded friends you're lucky to have. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23124729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23124729 And it's not just Tech Bros, it's Frat Bros in general. See: Jared Kushner. https://www.businessinsider.nl/coronavirus-kushner-impact-team-mocked-slim-suit-crowd-frat-party-2020-4/ https://www.businessinsider.nl/coronavirus-kushner-impact-te... >Jared Kushner’s coronavirus ‘impact team’ mocked as the ‘Slim Suit Crowd’ and a ‘frat party’ descended from a UFO
- tomnipotent 6y agoJournalist using the words "frat" in an article doesn't make something true. The only place I see this term slung is in the media and HN, or people making up abstract bad guys to vent their anger on.
- pydry 6y ago* Intellectual posturing and oneupsmanship in software teams. Participating in intellectual dick waving. * A strong focus on being "right" over working collaboratively (especially in domains with no right answers). * Hyper competitiveness - to the detriment of effectiveness. * A lack of empathy (e.g. PRs with "your code sucks, suck it up and stop being such a baby"). These things are hardly good from the perspective of any software developer (except particular kinds of men who thrive under these conditions) but they're particularly off putting to women. I tend to find that this aggressive behavior is most frequently exhibited by "senior" developers who aren't actually very good or clever but have built up a reputation that they wish to protect. Some developers are very territorial.
- pinkfoot 6y agoAll which can be fixed in five minutes.
- spangry 6y ago> but they're particularly off putting to women. This is the crux of the issue. For this to be true, it must also be true that men and women are, at least in some ways, intrinsically different (otherwise why would these things pose a greater challenge for women relative to men)?
- foldr 6y agoContrary to a popular straw man, few people deny that men and women are different in some respects. The point is that there is no reason to think that these differences should, in a healthy culture, put women off becoming programmers, or make them less capable of doing a good job.
- milankovic 6y agoBut maybe they are? I mean, if you agree on differences ("in some respects"), how can you then seriously expect to not see any differences in outcome at the end?
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- SamWhited 6y ago> We have to accept they may just not want the gig. If this is true it's probably because the community isn't very friendly or welcoming to women like the poster said… That being said, I don't think this is true. My only evidence is anecdotal, but at a previous company when we tried to recruit at events that weren't primarily male dominated, we got roughly equal percentages of responses from people who identified as female or male. > Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching. Let's assume for a moment these statements are correct: you're not starting from the right place. Why don't most women want the software job? Why don't most men want to teach pre-school? It could be because they've been raised in a society that says that the burden of child rearing should be placed on the women and that pre-school isn't a "manly" profession. Just because people don't want the job doesn't make it less discriminatory against women somehow, it just means the reasons are likely ingrained and harder to fix.
- camelite 6y ago> Why don't most women want the software job? Amusingly, the damore memo was an attempt to address just this very question. Are we not beyond pretending responses outside the proscribed woke ideology will be engaged with in good faith, at this late stage?
- SamWhited 6y agoThere are actual things in the world that we know are true or false and aren't just part of some "ideology" as you put it it. One of them is that the kind of pseudoscientific bullshit damore was spouting is false. We know this. It is in no way engaging in good faith to post an internal memo to your coworkers full of stupid stuff that's been used for years to justify your dominance. His memo was not engaging in good faith, it was a deliberate attempt to lie and mislead, and we as a society need to move beyond this sort of thing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DonHopkins 6y agoIt's more precise to say that it used to be most programmers were women.