Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

http://www.nerdess.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-girl-tech/

by nerdess • 14 years ago

369 247 14 years ago

This article is about why it's great to work in tech, _especially_ as a girl. Be prepared for some "omg why didn't someone tell me earlier....!!!" facts.

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

Why doesn't your blog have an RSS feed?

EDIT: That was supposed to be a subtle compliment; I want more.

chanux• 14 years ago

Yes! you are appreciating her :D

nazgulnarsil• 14 years ago

I suspect a big driving factor is that being forced to be around tons of low status guys all the time is literally worse than hitler for women.

Evbn4• 14 years ago

Maybe for a single woman who wants to profit in a personal non-business way.

a_bonobo• 14 years ago

This is not /r9k/, please take your misogyny there.

xmonad• 14 years ago

"low status" Men who value other's opinions of them over voicing their real feelings.

How many comments in this thread asked the OP "what projects have you worked on", "what have you contributed as a woman?".

Why? Because the larger issue isn't woman. It's "Nice guy" syndrome. Deferring to woman, being "pc", repressing opinions. The book No More Mr. Nice Guy (http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339) is a great read on this.

As for the OP. I don't care about your gender or race. I want to know what you code. I want you to be great. But will not enable my fellow men nor you to be weak prima donnas.

We have a destiny. We owe it to our children not to show such weakness.

atomical• 14 years ago

"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it. Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”. If you’ve ever drilled a hole, skinned a rabbit, or changed a tyre you know what I mean.

As I mentioned earlier, guys will definitely put you to the test and as a girl it will be hard to get their respect. On the other hand, you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful. However, with great power comes great responsibility so don’t take (too much, hehe) advantage of the nerds treating you like a princess just because they finally get to work with a girl."

Never experienced this. Sounds like an alternate reality. All the so called nerds I worked with had girlfriends or wives and didn't wear pocket protectors and stutter around females when talking to them.

Udo• 14 years ago

This sounds alien to me as well. I've been a member of a lot of diverse teams, and led some of them, over the years. While it's true that female tech people are always outnumbered by male ones, what that actually means probably depends a lot on culture. My experiences are almost exclusively in Northern Europe and Asia and generally I didn't perceive that female devs got any special treatment at all (negative or positive).

If Nerdess extracts some sort of empowerment out of this that's great for her, but I imagine crossing the line into a territory where your team mates perceive you as a shallow and malicious manipulator is a real danger here. Any person who bases their work persona exclusively on being a precious snowflake (of any kind) is not someone I'd like to have on my team.

electrozoic2• 14 years ago

Maybe we have worked in different environments than nerdess. I've had quite a few jobs (at software companies in the US) where most of my colleagues are calm, mature, and act like professionals without regard to gender. I've also encountered the occasional colleague (a bit more often in startup/freelance culture) who acts like females are a new and unfamiliar technology, and doesn't know how to relate in appropriate ways. But I've never felt particularly "powerful" in my workplace, until I started doing most of my work from my home office.

borplk• 14 years ago

Honestly the whole nerd thing is a completely western (mostly American) thing. I have a very different background and we don't even have a word for "nerd". The absolute closest synonym you can find is "really smart" which is positive, and a negative one would be "bookworm".

And these western stereotypes are absolutely non-existent. If you ask people in the streets to tell you general traits about 'the nerds' they wont be able to tell you a thing. But try that in America, they'll write a book about it.

But even in the western culture we are seeing these stereotypes fading away more and more every day because hey everybody is a nerd these days with their iPhones and iPads and Kindles etc...

All it takes is for computer programming to be brought into the standard school curriculum. Give that a couple of years and every teenager will also be a computer programmer, some better than the other but nonetheless.

By then, being able to program a computer will be too normal for these stereotypes to live.

enraged_camel2• 14 years ago

I don't buy that it's completely western. I was born and raised in Turkey, and the term for nerd there is "inek" which translates to "cow". The idea is that the person spends most of their time with their head buried in books, much like cows spend a lot of time with their heads buried in grass. Definitely not a positive term.

saraid2162• 14 years ago

Who is "we", btw?

bitops2• 14 years ago

> Sounds like an alternate reality.

I have a hunch that part of this is related to the fact that nerdess is German. Or at least, she's based in Germany per the site.

I'm from Denmark (and a guy), and I can say from firsthand experience that attitudes towards women in Europe are still very old-school. Not everywhere, certainly, and Europeans are open-minded liberal socialists etc, but behind the scenes the old attitude of "women and technology don't mix" is very much alive.

For example, many guys in Europe I've spoken to will make jokes about girls not really being fit to work on cars, working with computers, or doing anything "technically hard".

Even some years ago, there was an advertising campaign for a lotto (or something similar) with the tagline "so simple even a woman could understand it". The advertisement featured a pretty blond woman standing in her kitchen, listening to the boys hoot and holler about their winnings next door with a vacant expression on her face. This was plastered all over the main train station in Copenhagen.

So, while I agree it probably seems like an alternate reality in the US (assuming that's where you're from), it's not so far-fetched in other parts of the world. Just my $0.02.

jackpirate• 14 years ago

That same attitude exists in the states too.

abrahamsen3• 14 years ago

Maybe you think of this campaign?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxsMWnK1X7k

The tag line is "there is a lot of stuff women don't understand", and the format is a womans literal visualization of a sport metaphor. In this case, "giving away a goal". The campaign is still running, and considered one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Denmark.

The company behind it is 80% state owned. and 20% owned by the non-profit sport organizations. It used to have a monopoly on gambling. The profit goes to charity.

I would not generalize the Danish peculiar brand of humor to all of Europe. One of the advices to Danes going abroad is "stay away from humor, foreigners don't understand our brand of humor". Same for visitors, they are told "the Danish jokes are not meant as insulting as they sound".

In our own self image, we are so liberal and open minded that we can safely joke about all kind of stereotypes. E.g. Danish state owned children tv has a running gag about how lazy and incompetent Polish workers (our "Mexicans") are. It is probably also no accident that the Mohammed cartoons were made in Denmark. Although that particular incident taught Danes something about how different humor can be viewed in the rest of the world.

Edit: Two more details. 1) Most high profile ad campaigns in Denmark are based on humor. 2) This is the only one I can think of where women are shown as stupid. The common pattern is that the man is being goofy while the sensible woman is buying the advertisers product.

kellishaver• 14 years ago

I've never experienced it either, but maybe it's regional influence.

I've worked on a lot of teams over the years, often as the only female on a project. Only once have I felt in any way "different" from anyone else on the team, be it in a positive or negative way, and I don't think that was intentional. It was a startup ran by young, single guys, and I was a mid 30's mom. We just had different priorities and interests and the culture wasn't a good fit. But there wasn't anything negative or sexist about it, just differences.

JonnieCache2• 14 years ago

Just wanted to echo this. 99% of the hackers/programmers/whatever I've met, whether in industry or at university have been pretty normal. In fact, the cleverest and most productive ones have tended to be more socially successful, not less. Tech people I've met actually tend to have more enlightened views on women/gender than the population at large.

Where it does start to get weird, in my experience, is when it starts to cross over into the gaming/anime/fandom area, particularly gaming. Some of those people are really maladjusted, but I suppose that's to be expected from a subculture based around endlessly celebrating childrens toys.

There must be some generational/geographical divide here somewhere. For reference I'm in the UK.

Goronmon• 14 years ago

Some of those people are really maladjusted, but I suppose that's to be expected from a subculture based around endlessly celebrating childrens toys.

I guess there always has to be a group of people for others to look down upon.

orangecat3• 14 years ago

In fact, the cleverest and most productive ones have tended to be more socially successful, not less.

Sure. Lacking social skills certainly doesn't help you in tech; it just hurts you less than in most other fields.

irisshoor• 14 years ago

More than once I was the only female in a team (including a 20 people team). I think that the initial reaction of most of the team members is not about 'hey, look, it's a girl! what are we suppose to do with it?' like it sounds on the article. When there's a tight knit team and someone a bit different joins there's always worry that it's going to affect the existing culture, it doesn't matter if it's a girl, someone older, someone very young or someone from a different country. Once you play the 'girl' card, you remain different. I'm not saying that you have to start drinking beer all day long and tell StarWars jokes, just be yourself and align with the team (same advice for men as well). You might be liked more when you play the 'girl' card but that's not the right way for a promotion (been there, done that). Other than that, great article, useful and I like the images.

papsosouid8• 14 years ago

>Never experienced this

Privilege blindness doesn't just apply to straight white men. The relationship status of the people has nothing to do with it. Men are instinctively predisposed to helping women. Women can and do take advantage of this, and generally don't recognize or acknowledge that they are doing so. You don't see it, because you've lived it your entire life and it is normal.

How many times has a woman put a new water bottle in the water cooler here? I know the exact number, because it is zero. All of the women here are fully capable of doing it, yet they ask men to do it. And how often do men say no? This is very obvious when looking at tasks that are considered stereotypically "men's work" like lifting something, but it applies just as much to anything else.

I've watched my wife get men to do her work for her several times. She simply asks them to do it, and they say yes. When I point it out to her, she insists that they would have done the same for a man, and that had she asked a woman they would have done it for her too. Yet, she never asks another woman to do it, and I know I sure wouldn't do it if a man were asking me. She is taking advantage of being female, and it is so deeply ingrained that it comes naturally and she doesn't recognize that she's doing it.

demosthenes• 14 years ago

This is why women often wonder why the world has become less 'nice' as they grow older.

In fact, the world hasn't changed. It's just that the extra consideration they got because of their looks goes away as they grow old.

In contrast men often spend their early years not being taken very seriously. They often have to fight to get noticed.

nickporter• 14 years ago

Why is it that people group IT and software development together? To me, they are two completely different fields.

For example, I see an IT person as a mail server administrator in a large company, and a developer as the person who would write the mail server software.

I'm not saying that an IT professional never writes code, or a developer won't ever touch a Nginx config file. I just mean they are two different types of work.

It's something I have noticed for a while now, not only with your article.

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

Because people as a general rule abstract anything related to computers or computing into one lump object. This vague, ossified amber of the interwingled nature of computer media causes problems with understanding computers.

That and the sort of person who does development ends up doing some IT and Vice versa.

derleth• 14 years ago

> Because people as a general rule abstract anything related to computers or computing into one lump object. This vague, ossified amber of the interwingled nature of computer media causes problems with understanding computers.

The same thing happens with every field. If you're at all medical, you're lumped into the 'doctor' category regardless of whether you're a neurosurgeon or a scrub tech, and all doctor-type humanoids know everything about everything from the cingulate gyrus to my granny's chilblains.

Which is still closer to the truth than imagining that everyone who is 'good with computers' can instantly diagnose and fix every single problem that has ever come up for everything that can run software.

zh2• 14 years ago

It's not like this any more. That's why recently there are so many "software engineers" - you write your Ruby code, install and configure NginX, Passenger etc., even support a cluster of machines (LB, DB, Apps), maybe with a little help for Chef.

sounders• 14 years ago

I think it's interesting that people with a computer science and technical background are often referred to as "engineers" in tech.

It seems like such a general label that can apply to anyone from a chemical engineer to a CS major, it all depends on the context.

bonzoesc• 14 years ago

DevOps changed that. At my first few software engineering jobs, if I didn't write any config files, they wouldn't have got written.

dgabriel2• 14 years ago

Agreed! I've worked at mostly start-ups, and I have yet to work at a start-up that didn't require us all to be DevOps.

orangethirty2• 14 years ago

    class Computer:
        pass

    class IT(Computer):
        pass

    class SoftwareDeveloment(Computer):
        pass

    #that's how people see it.

rat87• 14 years ago

old style object or python 3?

rmc20• 14 years ago

Yes they are different, but they are so close aswell. After all how much job movement is there between IT & development? Lots. Compare that to the job movemement between IT & being lawyer (not that much) etc.

alexchamberlain2• 14 years ago

I wish there was more movement between IT and lawyers; then we'd have some developers who understand data protection and copyright principles and some lawyers who understand IT.

victorhn• 14 years ago

"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."

That looks like sexism to me.

arrrg3• 14 years ago

If the qualification is equal I would very much hope that the person that increases diversity is hired. Why would you do anything else?

abduhl• 14 years ago

I would probably pick the person that meshes with the team best rather than the one that panders to my internal sense of injustice.

sahat• 14 years ago

"That looks like sexism to me."

That's reality.

jlarocco• 14 years ago

So are "brogrammers".

Being reality doesn't make it right, and doesn't mean it should be tolerated.

arbuge• 14 years ago

Too hypothetical anyway. Skill level, or more precisely the interviewers' opinion of it, is never precisely equal between candidates. It includes soft skills besides programming.

electrozoic2• 14 years ago

I sincerely hope that I've never been a pity/diversity hire. I want to be evaluated on my qualifications as a well-rounded developer and compensated appropriately for my work.

hdragomir• 14 years ago

I'm sure you weren't. Why would you even think that, since you're doing great work, most probably.

legitsource• 14 years ago

What's even more troublesome than being a diversity/affirmative action hire is when you aren't one and other people assume you were one. When a group is artificially bumped up in the rankings (or is perceived to have been), everyone assumes they are not as skilled as they really are.

vacri2• 14 years ago

In order to test it, we'll need at least two thousand developers (in matched skill pairs) going for one thousand jobs.

It might take a little while to perform that experiment...

reso• 14 years ago

Realistically, this choice would never happen, because any decent software shop would hire both if they were identically qualified.

booop• 14 years ago

Not if they have the resources to hire only one.

CrankyPants2• 14 years ago

It's only sexism if it uses sex as a criteria to disadvantage someone who isn't male, in the same way that it's only racism if it uses race as a criteria to disadvantage someone who isn't caucasian.

rmc20• 14 years ago

There used to be many caucasian-on-caucasian racism. Many places would still count it as breaking anti-discrimination law.

After all, "No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs". That's racist for 2 reasons.

EliRivers2• 14 years ago

"That looks like sexism to me."

You say that as if letting someone's gender affect your decisions is somehow, magically, inherently always ALWAYS wrong. It isn't. Some situations it is. Some situations it is not.

jrogers659• 14 years ago

I'd just like to express my astonishment and disgust at the fact that there are people who defend sexism and prejudice in this day and age. People like you make me ashamed to be human.

rmc20• 14 years ago

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 you're using. It's a very simple, easy to understand, easy to identify definiton. It also means that in many cases (e.g. hiring in an IT company), 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 sexist. Right now, if modern UK life was a video game, "male" would be an easier difficulty level than "female". 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 & crochet? Try getting involved in that, you'll see things from the other side)

yummyfajitas6• 14 years ago

if modern UK life was a video game, "male" would be an easier difficulty level than "female".

Can you explain this in concrete terms? This meme is repeated often, but few people actually explain what it means.

Taking it literally, it would suggest that monsters receive +20% elemental resistance when women attack them with an ice-infused mace. But that's probably not what you mean.

There are statistically less problems for the "male" group.

If we are discussing statistical incidence of problems, why choose "male" and "female" as your reference classes? Why not simply choose incidence of problems as the variable to slice on?

This definition is harder for some people to accept...

It's not the definition that is hard to accept. If this was a definitional problem, we'd quickly find ourselves here:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/

Your "definition" contains implicit claims about the world which you haven't justified (i.e., it's a definition + assertions).

Jun8• 14 years ago

OK, nobody commented this up to now but I think is important: Among the many posts about this subject I've read on HN recently this was absolutely the best: Not only it approached the matter in a no-nonsense, practical matter without preaching from "the height of an unwritten book" or an axe to grind but it also gives excellent advice to young girls who want to venture into the field.

With posts like this I wish there was a mega-upvote option on HN, e.g. for 500 points of karma you upvote 10 points.

tankbot• 14 years ago

Definitely agree! I like that her opinions are her opinions and not some pendulum-swinging doctrine. Bookmarked for future perusal for sure!

saraid2162• 14 years ago

The clearest reason for this, AFAICT, is because she's speaking primarily to women and trying to convince them to come on board. It's not at all about sexism; it merely acknowledges it in passing and hurries on quickly because it's a touchy subject.

belorn4• 14 years ago

While and rather excellent article on why the IT field is a suitable career, good grief, the sexism politics has really entrenched itself into people mindset.

It almost boggles my mind. Here some supposedly sexist snippets from "scenarios you may occasionally find yourself in when working as a girl in tech".

Colleague: “So...you are the new designer?" (As if "so...you are the new Foobar" would not be said to any new hire. if I got a new boss, my first word might be "so...you the new boss? hi my name is so and so!". How and in what way would that be sexist remark, and does it matter if the new boss would be female or male? would it matter if the position is boss, developer, designer, sysadmin, or sales?)

Useless male developer has written some crappy code that he doesn’t even understand himself anymore. Now he needs to extend it with new features and asks you to do it. (As if female developers get exclusively dumped with fixing bad code. Especially if its a new hire/consultant/out sourced, how does this surprise anyone? its even a saying that "the new guy gets all the work no one else want". Does it matter if its a female or male?

so for mega-upvote, the article has some issues. Its better than the normal articles we see, but its not 10 times better.

rmc20• 14 years ago

How and in what way would that be sexist remark

The assumpution behind that question is that women could not be a developer.

To give racist equivalents, it's as if in the USA, imagine you came into the room and there was a latino man there "Are you the new cleaner?"; or in UK, imagine one was introduced to a new eastern european member of staff, "Are you the new cleaner?". These questions are motivated by racist assumptions, and this OP's examples are motivated by sexist assumption.

groby_b• 14 years ago

So, basically, as long as women are willing to conform to stereotypes, you're all for women in tech. Gotcha.

sandollars• 14 years ago

Progress is being made, but there is still a long way to go.

This happened in a talk at a programming/web/tech event two weeks ago: http://i.imgur.com/4hL6X.jpg

mattdw• 14 years ago

WTF. How is this ever acceptable in a professional context? Talk about hostility.

Evbn4• 14 years ago

Professionals are at work. Goofs are at "events".

d0mine2• 14 years ago

It is funny that it is ok to exploit nerd stereotypes as demonstrated in the article (nobody cares about yet another nerd in a basement picture).

Do you think that the author of the article sees all programmers through the lenses of the stereotype?

The picture that you've linked is in bad taste but it won't change the popularity of the stereotype behind it in any way.

Do you think that the author of the presentation sees all models through the lenses of the stereotype?

sirmarksalot• 14 years ago

Do we really need to coin the phrase "hacker privilege?"

Look, I know it sucked in school, being ostracized for having technical interests, but now you're grown-up and loaded. As part of a larger social agenda, I can see some harm in perpetuating these geek stereotypes, but on a personal level, you are not being exploited, so quit whining.

Sanddancer• 14 years ago

Out of curiosity, what event was this?

scotty792• 14 years ago

Do tech women identify somehow with this girl in the picture and feel offended?

When guy sees some looser made fun of on some picture he thinks: "Hehe. What a looser!" as he sees almost no resemblance between him and the looser.

Does women feel more strongly connected to other women because of shared gender than men?

Trezoid• 14 years ago

What have you got against WD-40?

grey-area• 14 years ago

I'd feel offended if presented with this sort of nonsense at a tech talk. The implication of the picture, given the structure and history of our society, is that women are there to be pretty and submissive and men are there to control women with money. That and it makes absolutely no sense as an analogy for MVC, it's just a cheap shot in an attempt to titillate an assumed audience of sexist men. So yes, women in an audience presented with that sort of image are probably going to feel alienated and offended, and no that is not some special sensitivity or empathy for other women, it's because of all the assumptions which come with using a picture like that (women are not my audience, pretty women are controlled by men with money, women are there to be looked at by men, etc).

PS When referring to losers, use the correct spelling

girlvinyl• 14 years ago

This image is implying that women are objects to be bought and sold and "controlled". Thus the currency. That's why it's offensive. Women are not "objects" to be controlled or bought. It has nothing to do with solidarity.

Also, your example talks about "making fun of" someone. The image in the OOP example is reducing a woman's personhood to nothing but that of an object. It is intended to mock her existence and imply that she has no personal agency beyond what a man would choose to control her with.

mnicole• 14 years ago

It's offensive because it's lazy. There are better analogies and ways of conveying these concepts that don't objectify 50% of the population.

If I'm one of the only girls in the room, and that is how a point is being made in a presentation by someone that supposedly has enough clout in the industry to go up in front of hundreds of people and talk, it doesn't make me feel good about my future or the people I will report to down the line, nor does it make me feel comfortable knowing that this type of humor is acceptable and welcomed by the amount of laughs it gets.

There's also going to be a few people in the audience that look at this image and then look at me to see what my reaction is, and I'm there to learn, not stand out.

mamoswined2• 14 years ago

If women were really so motivated by money, there would be more of us in tech.

On a more serious note, sometimes I just don't get other women. Yeah, working in fashion, food, or publishing sounds fun, but they aren't getting paid hardly anything and most of them are working as low-level grunts just to be in the industry that sounds fun to them with a small glimmer of hope they might move to the very tiny upper tier in those jobs. To contrast, I have a well-paying job that pays well and after 5, I can actually enjoy food, fashion, and writing for fun. And on the food/fashion front I can afford much higher quality things.

vacri2• 14 years ago

I (100% female) work as a web developer and are not sure if the lack of female colleagues bothers me or not. Political correctness dictates that it should

Political correctness isn't really about groupthink or how you should feel. It's about not making other people feel shitty because you're too lazy to use inclusive language. It's simply an extension of 'manners', and gets demonised when it shouldn't be.

nickpinkston• 14 years ago

There's a fine line between someone feeling "shitty" and groupthink / often naive & distant.

A friend of mine says that anytime a person refers to him as "African-American" he sees them as totally distant and that "they usually don't talk to black people" - so I can see this working both ways.

Political correctness (what the 'polis' sees as correct) isn't always what those who may 'feel shitty' think is correct - so I share her feelings.

crusso3• 14 years ago

Political Correctness is about hypersensitivity to possible insult to the point that using direct and clear communication is frowned upon in the public discourse.

Political Correctness is an extraordinarily sad advance of style over substance that has attempted to address the language used to describe problems in our society over actually addressing the problems themselves.

Ultimately, Political Correctness is yet another societal/political power grab in an attempt to control the very words that come out of everyones' mouths. Free speech is just too much individual power for many Utopians in society, but they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment[or other country's free speech protection]. Political Correctness is the next best thing for them, I guess.

illuminate5• 14 years ago

Your assumption that "direct and clear communication" requires that you use offensive and exclusive phrasings is false, and your complaints about your inability to exert "power" over others are unmoving.

"they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment"

If you believe proper behavior has anything to do with the First Amendment it would do you better to read the US Constitution.

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

Articles like this are what are going to get girls into computing. They need to know that there are other normal girls, just like them, that do this for a living.

I got my ex-girlfriend into software development. She comes off as a very stereotypical girly girl. She likes clothes, shopping, and top 40 pop music. I convinced her to take an intro programming class her sophomore year of college. Now she's a software engineer at Amazon.

All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it, and that normal people (I suppose I seemed normal to her) do it too.

lloeki• 14 years ago

> All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it

I don't know if it's society or what, but it seems a lot of girls suffer from this (conscious or not) line of thinking.

I'm versed in science (esp. math and physics) and like to talk about such subjects so I've been regularly asked for help, and every single time I helped a girl the cause of their demise was lack of confidence. Contrary to guys (which seem to have confidence in excess but need some form of support), telling them upfront is useless because it's so ingrained that I have to take a more subtle route. I explain her something complex, and keep going deeper until (usually takes about ten minutes) there's a a-ha, not about the subject at hand but about herself, a moment where she realizes that at every step she got everything I said, and now she gets a glimpse something so complex that ten minutes ago she thought it would forever be unfathomable to her, when I did not actually explain so much as pragmatically but subtly demonstrate that yes, she can do it. Subsequent results at school, even in unrelated disciplines and without more training, are off the charts.

It seems the "mens do the real stuff" society thing is so pervasive that it permeates through and makes them lose the confidence required, and they just need to be bootstrapped out of it so that they can finally say "This is within my reach".

nerdess4• 14 years ago

thanks, that is exactly what i want to achieve with my article: pointing out that the tech world is not just for über-nerds :)

annableker• 14 years ago

For real. This girl is obviously being honest and sounds really level-headed/normal. Everything in this article is exactly what I would tell my little sister.

cbsmith4• 14 years ago

I'm starting to think it is impossible for someone to write about gender issues in the tech industry without at least one reference to porn.

saucetenuto• 14 years ago

Yeah, that jarred me too. The author's dad is a farmer, and her go-to example of a job that requires stamina is...porn star? The fuck?

nerdess4• 14 years ago

my article isn't about gender issues....the intention is merely to show the perks of working in IT to a normal average girl that might not be sure about what career path to choose.

however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D

cbsmith4• 14 years ago

> my article isn't about gender issues....the intention is merely to show the perks of working in IT to a normal average girl that might not be sure about what career path to choose.

I'm trying to comprehend how that isn't about gender issues in the IT business, but let's just say that whatever the appropriate semantic expression was for what it is I was referring to, it includes your work.

>however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D

Sorry, I wasn't intending to imply you should filter your writing. My comment wasn't really meant to be a criticism of your writing in particular... actually, it wasn't even really a criticism of writing at all. It's more just... I doubt there are other industries where EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE like this would have a reference to porn (well, except for the porn industry ;-).

I don't think it necessarily speaks poorly of the people engaging in the discussion; it reflects where the industry is.

physcab• 14 years ago

I'd love to use this opportunity to do a little promotion. My sister and I just launched a site to connect women in industry with girls taking math and science called Girls Love Math (http://www.glmclub.org).

It would make my day if women like nerdess became mentors. I have a feeling that lots of girls are looking up to them.

dschiptsov2• 14 years ago

My personal favorite example:

http://sachachua.com/blog/

She wrote org-mode for Emacs. Now she is at IBM Research.

sjm• 14 years ago

Carsten Dominik wrote org-mode. Looks like she maintained Remember-mode and Planner-mode at one point though.

dschiptsov2• 14 years ago

My fault - I remember that she wrote a popular Emacs package, but forgot the name.

lurker144• 14 years ago

Wow, she is such an happy-happy-joy-joy blogger^evangelist^blogger that I never though she had time to write any code.

gprasanth• 14 years ago

"Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”"

I always opined that, "women have a lot of emotional strength". You can just imagine how difficult it is to take care of, and raise a toddler. It is so hard. But, somehow women are naturally good at this, and I am just as fascinated by this fact.

Adirael• 14 years ago

I don't think women are naturally better (than men) at raising kids. That's what a lot of people thinks and single dads are automatically diminished. Not good.

illuminate5• 14 years ago

"It is so hard. But, somehow women are naturally good at this, and I am just as fascinated by this fact."

Have you never interacted with a single father?

minamea• 14 years ago

"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it."

"you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful."

"Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale."

"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."

These are all very sexist remarks. If the equivalent has been written from a male's perspective it would have been an outrage.

astrofinch• 14 years ago

I think from a harm minimization perspective, it makes sense to treat complaints of sexism from the minority faction more seriously than complaints of sexism from the majority faction.

Also, I disagree that people would complain if the same stuff was written by a guy working in nursing.

kalkin11• 14 years ago

You don't mean minority/majority, but yes.

gaving• 14 years ago

    When I started as a developer in the UK I earned a bit less than £30k a year
    and wondered: How can whole families live of this? How can anyone save money
    for a mortgage? 

    [...]

    It might sound arrogant but since I am an IT contractor I don’t have to think
    twice about that Halston Heritage dress I fell in love with the other day, I
    just buy it.

Yeah, you're right, that does sound arrogant.

sebcat• 14 years ago

"Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”"

Actually, I'm fascinated and scared by all IT people who roll up their sleeves and do manual labour.

archangel_one• 14 years ago

An in return, I'm always slightly shocked by this kind of attitude. Just because I write code for a living doesn't mean that I had to forget how to do everything remotely practical first. If I'm confronted by a job that requires manual labour, I don't just stand there saying "oh I'm an IT person, I can't possibly do this".

lurker144• 14 years ago

It's the reverse. I can't carry a bottle of chemicals without spilling it on myself, or take apart an machine without dropping a few pieces in the sewer, so I stick to the virtual world where my poor hand-eye coordination won't get me killed.

laumars3• 14 years ago

"Computer languages and “real” languages are actually very similar."

I really couldn't disagree with that more. Sure, some languages' syntax borrow English words (Python, Pascal, VB, etc), but that's such a minor similarity. Those words are completely arbitrary and the syntax could have been in Klingon for all the difference it would make to the compiler.

Computer languages are a maths language; albeit a very very dumbed down dialect of maths, but maths all the same.

I think the trap many web developers fall in is that PHP teaches some terrible programming practices (no variable declarations nor types, etc) and ANSI SQL isn't Turing complete, so feel that all other languages by extension are equally easy to grasp. However if you look at a number of other languages -particularly the ones with C-derived syntax- then it becomes painfully obvious that any similarities to human languages are just skin deep (which is lucky for me as I majorly suck at writing yet can code proficiently in around a dozen different computer languages).

asnyder• 14 years ago

Don't know why you felt it was necessary to take a dig at PHP, as if PHP is the cause of all bad web programming practices. Nowadays, PHP is very much evolved, and the abundance of mature frameworks have completely removed the most of the inconsistency issues.There are in fact variable declarations and types in PHP, there's even type-hinting to enforce types.

The fact of the matter is that many web developers fall into bad practices via laziness, copy & paste syndrome, regardless of whether the language they're using has strict types or not.

laumars3• 14 years ago

While I agree that a bad programmer will write bad code in any language -and visa versa- my point was that PHP doesn't enforce good practices thus allowing many less experienced developers to accidentally fall into easily avoided pitfalls (lets be honest, having to === to force type matching is just plain dumb). So by the time you've properly hardened your code, it's anything but pseudo-English - which was my point (ie programming languages are not similar to human languages).

lurker144• 14 years ago

Natural-language likeness, with all its weirdness and power, was an explicit design goal of Larry Wall's perl, a language which was instrumental in creating the WWW as we know it.

laumars3• 14 years ago

That may have been true for it's original goals, but as a UNIX developer who's primary language is Perl, I can assure you that the modern day implementation (read Perl 5.8+) is anything but pseudo-English.

talmir2• 14 years ago

It is a nice article. Interesting read for me as a male programmer. But this line kinda caught my eye under the "Gender-advantage" headline:

"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."

This is a problem.

talmir2• 14 years ago

After reading all of this again, it strikes me that she works with a LOT of sexually frustrated nerds. She says she has to be careful not using her appearant super power of girlyness too much to manipulate the nerds and such stuff.

Is this seriously the reality somewhere, that coders are 99% sexually frustrated super nerds? I always considered that to be a old stereotype :P

thisone• 14 years ago

I've seen it happen (female myself), though not to my advantage, that I know of.

I've had bugs sent to me for another woman's code, time and again, without formal bug reports for them.

Double edged sword: they know I can fix it, and generally quickly, but it looks like performance is being swept under the rug.

And I do put in bug reports for them once they get to me. Damned if I'm going to have the work unaccounted for.

edit: should probably mention that when she was hired, I was told she would look good at conferences.

nerdess4• 14 years ago

yeah well of course it's wrong to get a job just because of the gender. though if HR departments and CTO's want to hire us girls so badly then wohoooo.........i would be stupid to not use this to my advantage :D

yock• 14 years ago

Sorry for being off-topic, but why in the world would the net filter here at work have blocked this as "adult content?"

rmc20• 14 years ago

Just a guest, but there is a music video with some men in underwear dancing around embedded in the page ( This is the video itself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pivLTWIJ7xo&feature=playe... )

michaelochurch3• 14 years ago

I'll make a controversial observation, but it's worthy of discussion.

If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status. I'm not talking about overt flirtation (don't do it) or office relationships (avoid, avoid, avoid). I'm talking about more subtle stuff, like who a woman smiles at, who she initiates conversations with, and what her body language is toward various people. This will have huge ripple effects on the male status hierarchy. Much of the reason why men tend to seem "afraid of" women in the office is that they're afraid she'll judge him lowly and send out "loser signals" about him, bringing him down a notch or two. Since everything that happens at most workplaces (especially cliquish startups, so don't give me this "meritocratic" bullshit) is really about social status-- "performance" is a myth made up to justify firings and scare the mediocre-- this is huge.

Overtly flirting with the men in the office will destroy a woman's reputation, for sure. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the subtle fact that, among groups of people, women have the capability to exert a disproportionate influence on the status ordering. In fact, the best way to use this is to do exactly what a young man would do: be nice to everyone, reach out and try to make allies, seek mentors... but also take a small comfort in the fact that men have an added incentive to be nice to you-- you have a disproportionate effect on their image, and they want to be seen with you.

For example, a 23-year-old with 6 months on the job comes into the office of a powerful person (MD in banking, Partner in a law firm) and says that (s/)he is bored with the work that (s/)he is getting. If male, he's just another entitled fuck looking for an advantage. The response usually is: go away, pay your dues, and come back in 7 years after you've proven yourself (if I haven't fired you before that). That's because humans have a visceral hatred of low-status males, and in the workplace, men in the youngest 15% are almost always of low status (hence, they get the shittiest work).

If the 23-year-old is female, this 45-year-old executive might realize that having a 23-year-old woman come into his office once a week might give him a younger, "cooler" image and prevent him from getting "managed out" (read: fired) for being "resistant to change" (read: old). So he might give her the kind of work that most people have to wait a few years to have a crack at.

Again, she's not flirting with him, or compromising herself in any way. She's doing exactly what a man would do if he had the courage: going into a powerful person's office and asking for better work.

It doesn't always happen this way, but it can. Career advancement is about stringing together a large number of high-impact, low-probability prospects (with enough parallelism that the likelihood of some success becomes high) and waiting for one to hit. The "superpower" that an attractive woman has doesn't turn the low probability into a high one; it makes it slightly less low.

I'm not saying life is fair and, on the whole, women almost certainly have to deal with more bullshit than men. It's wrong that women's looks are taken to matter so much. It's wrong that people are huge dicks to women about aging. Some of the "old lady" comments I heard when Clinton was running for President in 2008 made me want to vomit.

Men have a huge and unfair advantage after 32, which is that they can have children with their careers interrupted, and that their social status (being abysmal, in the workplace, at 22-24) peaks around 40-50. Men can (and are expected to) work through child-rearing, while for it to make sense for a woman to keep working after having children, she has to make about 2.5 times the average income (to hire help, day care, etc.) On the other hand, women have a huge advantage from 22 to 32, which is that they have the subtle but potent ability to determine who's "cool", and if they're aware of how to use it, they can speed up their careers. And given the heaping plate of bullshit that society gives women once they get older (and it starts in the 30s) they pretty much have to use this advantage while it's there.

rmc20• 14 years ago

(a) In your hypothetical example, everyone seems to be heterosexual. I assure you reality doesn't fully match your theory.

(b) It's just an "attractive female" advantage, "attractive men" have been found to have similar advantages.

zxcdw2• 14 years ago

a: Taking sexual orientation into question plays no good for anybody especially since it's completely individual aspect.

b: There's no "attractive male" advantage to be found in tech, at least not compared to "attractive female" advantage as your parent explained.

michaelochurch3• 14 years ago

(a) In your hypothetical example, everyone seems to be heterosexual. I assure you reality doesn't fully match your theory.

I'm talking about social status and "coolness" which are not identical to sexual "market value". In fact, I think it's a bad idea for women to exploit any sexual "assets", because a woman who is visibly trying to do so won't be taken seriously. I'm talking about a more general-purpose social asset which is that an attractive woman is judged to be "cool" (even by gay men).

The initial conditions of social status are set by people wanting things, in the aggregate, so the heterosexual 93% have disproportionate influence. The final conditions are set algorithmically by something that looks like PageRank: people care about popular peoples' opinions because other people care about popular peoples' opinions.

This isn't about what's right or how things should be. It's about what is.

(b) It's just an "attractive female" advantage, "attractive men" have been found to have similar advantages.

True, but the ages in which people are most attractive are 18-29. Men in that age range have low social status (theirs starts out very low, but increases into the 40s and 50s) while women at that age have high social status (and it declines with age). Again, I'm not saying this is how things should be, but it's what is.

The result is that women reach their maximum attractiveness at a time of high social status, while men reach maximum attractiveness at an age when society still considers most of them to be unproven losers who jack off and play videogames all day. People tend to become more average in looks as they get older, and by the age of peak social status for men, almost all of them are in the "average" range where attractiveness doesn't have a major push.

A woman doesn't have to be highly attractive to take advantage of this, by the way. She has to be seen as preternaturally cool. There are women of average or below-average looks who can pull this off.

IsaacL2• 14 years ago

Out of interest, are you familiar with Venkatesh Rao's "Be Slightly Evil" mailing list? He has a similar worldview to you (cynical realpolitick as an amoral tool, usable for good or evil).

michaelochurch3• 14 years ago

No. I'll look into it.

nacker2• 14 years ago

If you want cynical gender realpolitik you must visit Heartiste, the enemy of pretty lies, who has a superb post today:

    In simple terms, we proposed that in sex, women are the suppliers and men constitute the demand (Baumeister and Vohs 2004). Hence the anti-democratic, seemingly paradoxical sex ratio findings that Regnerus describes. When women are in the minority, the sexual marketplace conforms to their preferences: committed relationships, widespread virginity, faithful partners, and early marriage. For example, American colleges in the 1950s conformed to that pattern. In our analysis, women benefit in such circumstances because the demand for their sexuality exceeds the supply. In contrast, when women are the majority, such as on today’s campuses as well as in some ethnic minority communities, things shift toward what men prefer: Plenty of sex without commitment, delayed marriage, extradyadic copulations, and the like. [ed: yep, life has been good for those of us who know the score.] [...]

    Sexual marketplaces take the shape they do because nature has biologically built a disadvantage into men: a huge desire for sex that makes men dependent on women. Men’s greater desire puts them at a disadvantage, just as when two parties are negotiating a possible sale or deal, the one who is more eager to make the deal is in a weaker position than the one who is willing to walk away without the deal. [ed: this is why practiced male aloofness is attractive to women -- it signals that the man is holding a stronger market position, and that his goods are therefore valuable.] Women certainly desire sex too — but as long as most women desire it less than most men, women have a collective advantage, and social roles and interactions will follow scripts that give women greater power than men (Baumeister et al. 2001). [ed: culture emerges from sexually differentiated genetic roots.] We have even concluded that the cultural suppression of female sexuality throughout much of history and across many different cultures has largely had its roots in the quest for marketplace advantage (see Baumeister and Twenge 2002). Women have often sustained their advantage over men by putting pressure on each other to restrict the supply of sex available to men. As with any monopoly or cartel, restricting the supply leads to a higher price. [...]

    Recent work has found that across a large sample of countries today, the economic and political liberation of women is positively correlated with greater availability of sex (Baumeister and Mendoza 2011). Thus, men’s access to sex has turned out to be maximized not by keeping women in an economically disadvantaged and dependent condition, but instead by letting them have abundant access and opportunity. [ed: was the sexual and feminist revolution fomented by undersexed beta males? a case can be made.] In an important sense, the sexual revolution of the 1970s was itself a market correction. Once women had been granted wide opportunities for education and wealth, they no longer had to hold sex hostage (Baumeister and Twenge 2002). [ed: that is, they no longer had to suffer the indignity of beta provider courtship. now that they had the resources, it was open season on alpha male cock hopping. the sexual revolution appears to have backfired on beta males expecting a bigger slice of the snatch pie.]

    What does all this mean for men? The social trends suggest the continuing influence of a stable fact, namely the strong desire of young men for sexual activity. As the environment has shifted, men have simply adjusted their behavior to find the best means to achieve this same goal. Back in 1960, it was difficult to get sex without getting married or at least engaged, and so men married early. To be sure, this required more than being willing to bend the knee, declare love, and offer a ring. To qualify as marriage material, a man had to have a job or at least a strong prospect of one (such as based on an imminent college degree). The man’s overarching goal of getting sex thus motivated him to become a respectable stakeholder contributing to society.

    The fact that men became useful members of society as a result of their efforts to obtain sex is not trivial, and it may contain important clues as to the basic relationship between men and culture (see Baumeister 2010). Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization, and it cannot at present be considered a proven fact, we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. [ed: that last clause is critical. men will always take the path of least resistance to sex. it is up to women to make that path more difficult if they want to extract more concessions from men.] (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, “If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.”) If in order to obtain sex men must become pillars of the community, or lie, or amass riches by fair means or foul, or be romantic or funny, then many men will do precisely that. This puts the current sexual free-for-all on today’s college campuses in a somewhat less appealing light than it may at first seem. [ed: what's interesting and unspoken here is that the sexual free-for-all is chugging along nicely well beyond and outside of the college years, with the difference being that, in their 20s and 30s, a select number of fewer men (let's call them... alpha males) are enjoying the ample premarital rewards of sexually available women.] Giving young men easy access to abundant sexual satisfaction deprives society of one of its ways to motivate them to contribute valuable achievements to the culture. [ed: damn, i'm torn. do i want a thriving society or easier access to sex? yeeeeah... i'll take the latter and leave the self-sacrifice required of the former for the anti-poolside chumps.]

    The changes in gender politics since 1960 can be seen as involving a giant trade, in which both genders yielded something of lesser importance to them in order to get something they wanted more (Baumeister and Vohs 2004). As Regnerus states, partly based on our own extensive survey of research findings, men want sex, indeed more than women want it (Baumeister et al. 2001). Women, meanwhile, want not only marriage but also access to careers and preferential treatment in the workplace. [ed: women are the reproductively more valuable sex, and so it makes sense that evolution would have "gifted" women with an oversized entitlement complex and the inability to engage in self-criticism.]

    The giant trade thus essentially involved men giving women not only easy access but even preferential treatment in the huge institutions that make up society, which men created. [ed: but the grand bargain did not work out as intended for the masses of beta males who acquiesced to the new girl order. while alpha males certainly saw more action from "liberated" women, the average joe did not. instead, all the average joe got in return for sacrificing his workplace status in hopes of easier sex was... a heaping helping of humiliation and wage stagnation and anti-joe animus, which continues at an accelerated pace to this day. this is a critical distinction i would like to see Baumeister address.] Today most schools, universities, corporations, scientific organizations, governments, and many other institutions have explicit policies to protect and promote women. It is standard practice to hire or promote a woman ahead of an equally qualified man. Most large organizations have policies and watchdogs that safeguard women’s interests and ensure that women gain preferential treatment over men. Parallel policies or structures to protect men’s interests are largely nonexistent and in many cases are explicitly prohibited. Legal scholars, for example, point out that any major new law is carefully scrutinized by feminist legal scholars who quickly criticize any aspect that could be problematic or disadvantageous to women, and so all new laws are women-friendly. Nobody looks out for men, and so the structural changes favoring women and disadvantaging men have accelerated (Baumeister and Vohs 2004). [...]

https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/latest-baumeister...

bobbydavid• 14 years ago

Yipe! I hope this is hypothetical, and we're not getting a glimpse into how you (would?) act as a manager.

But even in my most pragmatic, cynical mindset, remove the gender from this entirely. Beautiful people get ahead, regardless of gender. For instance:

Here is another hypothetical anecdote to counter yours: a handsome, sharp 23-yo man walks in to his manager's office asking for more, and the manager sees a potential go-getter. A beautiful 23-yo woman walks into her manager's office asking for more, and the manager is influenced by his subconscious belief that all attractive women are stupid.

Or how about a 23-yo person (say, Chris), at a start-up that gets a raise because that person creates a positive work atmosphere by being friendly and fostering coworker interaction -- even if that person is not the strongest coder, they may be bringing more value to the team. Maybe everyone else agrees with this raise!, because at one time or another, Chris made them feel "included" in some way. The only person who disagrees is Chris' cubicle mate: a cynical lone-wolf type who spurns others' efforts to be inclusive, and watches from a distance as the rest of the office builds inter-office relationships. Months later, if given a pulpit, that lone dissenter may make some statement like "Chris was given a raise due to petty office politics despite being a mediocre coder," and maybe people hearing this who weren't there won't know how truly valuable Chris was.

But enough hypotheticals. I'm worried that they aren't productive and may be needlessly inflammatory.

salemh2• 14 years ago

For what its worth, as a former tech recruiter, a female candidate had a 90% chance of hire at 70% or greater hire rate then a male candidate.

What that means is, if the company felt the female candidate was less qualified, but had potential then another male candidate, they would be hired. And, all things being equal (subjectively), had a greater opportunity of hire rate (our fee's, thus tracked). "Get a female in tech, get a placement," theoretically spoken.

I am just agreeing with MChurch mostly. It may however, not be so granular as he cites, rather, the fact that the % of females in the area of tech is so low, that selection bias towards females becomes an "issue" to look for more female candidates.

In other words (because I tend to ramble and befuddle what I am trying to say), little females exist in tech. If you get a qualified candidate in tech that is female, that is a more rare event, and thus worth more attention and notice (subconscious or otherwise).

eliza1wright3• 14 years ago

I think your theory hinges on the idea that most, if not all, of the players in this scenario are single. I work in a start-up environment with a bunch of men, but most of them are married or in a committed relationship. For what it's worth, I'm engaged. The whole "mysterious feminine influence" thing that you're talking about tends to disappear when people don't see you as a potential romantic/flirting partner. I think I'm seen as off-limits, especially because I try not to flirt with the guys in the office. At that point, it doesn't matter how attractive or competent I am. I'm seen as just another member of the team, and probably subconsciously devalued because of my gender.

papsosouid8• 14 years ago

>I think your theory hinges on the idea that most, if not all, of the players in this scenario are single

Not at all. In fact, he was quite clear that this has nothing to do with flirting or relationships in any way. It is simply that female approval is a huge factor in social status. Men instinctively view other men as more powerful, more competent, and respect them more if a women asks him a question instead of asking one of the other dozen men. There is nothing sexual about it, relationship status doesn't matter at all.

mamoswined2• 14 years ago

I think this discussion is missing the fact that women are more likely to enforce social norms http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/women-enforce-norms.ht... Since the workforce at my company has included more women, there is less tolerance for behaviors that were common in the all-male workplace. Men with poor social skills were increasingly pushed out of leadership roles and/or replaced with more congenial employees. I don't think this is a bad thing at all- our clients are much happier, but it highlights the need in tech education to teach social skills. But it does threaten a "bro" culture that many people enjoyed as employees.

therandomguy• 14 years ago

Does getting married flip a biological switch that changes the male-female attraction? No. You might choose not to act on it, but body language, signalling etc. still remains.

dgabriel2• 14 years ago

It's more likely that a 45 year old exec would be less interested in a 23 year old woman visiting him regularly in his office, in case it appears to be inappropriate. One of the difficulties for young women in IT/Dev is finding a mentor, and having important close relationships with more experienced folks.

cbsmith4• 14 years ago

> If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status.

Hmm... I would say in general this is true of attractiveness of average or better than average regardless, particularly if you allow for broader definitions of "attractive", and once you factor in sexual orientation.... and even when sex isn't an issue, there's all kinds of stuff that people do that works the same way. Watch a middle-aged balding male salesman work their magic sometime... even when dealing with a heterosexual, middle-aged male customer.

dmansen• 14 years ago

Men of HN: please tell more people what you think is and isn't sexist. It's good, your input on the matter is valuable and important.

tete• 14 years ago

This is maybe the best article I've ever found on HN.

kalkin11• 14 years ago

It is a good article, but it's sad that even in a good article like this, which talks explicitly about the realities of sexism, the author feels the need to distance herself from "the feminists."

crusso3• 14 years ago

I really liked this article. Most blogs about women in Tech these days are centered around the mindset of victimhood.

Having gone to an engineering school, I know full well the power that women can exert in an environment full of socially-hapless geeky guys.

TheCapn• 14 years ago

This is a weird subject. I think, as a social group, we're on a hinging point where women will be making equal footing in the tech industry, but haven't yet. Its coming.

Women are going to get disproportionate treatment during this transition in one or two different ways, and it depends on who they're interacting with. Should they land themselves alongside the stereotypical basement dweller they'll be cast aside and thought less of. They'll first need to prove themselves in an uphill battle. This will take great self confidence because there is a lot of misogyny still in the tech workplace. Too many tech gurus grew up being shunned socially and still have those emotional barriers preventing them from being rational and fair.

On the other swing of things though we have the opposite treatment: "A girl? Oooo!" I feel jealous sometimes of my female friends in the industry because of just how easy getting face to face for new jobs comes for them. I fight to keep myself in check because they're damn good professionals who deserve it but the thought remains: what sets them apart from me? Directly out of university I was competing locally with a lot of them for jobs and the treatment of women in the profession was quite apparent. I still see it a bit in my jobs now and its slightly disheartening.

Ultimately I think this problem will solve itself in time. Tech jobs aren't about the basement dweller anymore, they haven't been for years. The natural transition where everyone in the workforce has been part of it for the years where equal woman representation has been around and the awkward or preferential treatment is happening. We need vocal women to encourage more to join. Those classes in university will definitely be unsettling when 20 slobbering unkempt males are trying to wrestle their way to the only female group partner but to push through is going to be tough.

nantes• 14 years ago

Appears to be down, CoralCache link at http://www.nerdess.net.nyud.net/waffling/why-it-awesome-be-g...

zandomatter• 14 years ago

Am I the only one that thought that while most of the points made in the article were generally true, the follow-up and examples were lackluster.

Comments like these:

"you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky ... so don’t take (too much, hehe) advantage of the nerds treating you like a princess just because they finally get to work with a girl."

are insulting to both genders, as well as being grossly overstated.

wavesounds• 14 years ago

Can anyone recommend some of the "tech superstars" to follow on twitter that she mentions?

nerdess4• 14 years ago

what kind of nerdism are you into? web development? then you can look at the people i follow on twitter :)

jayc• 14 years ago

Can we please stop making generalizations about women in tech and go back to discussing and upvoting articles about technology again?

Signed, a female developer

whiterabbit2• 14 years ago

Except women have a good chance to be turned down before even being seen in person... (unless, their resume clearly indicates they are juniors and they have nice pictures on FB).

And, yeah, the "approval" thing is actually something like "admiration" and implies that this woman is an inferior professional. If she happens to be a strong professional, it's not desirable for a man to be next to this woman, as it will bring down his own value. It would be more desirable to be next to an older superior man.

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