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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

That is actually the only plausible explanation at this point in history. The average woman looks at the long hours and job insecurity in high tech and thinks "this is just not worth it". Men, historically, have always done these kinds of jobs and still do. We don't see feminists agitating for more woman refuse collectors do we?

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Sure you do. See attached link - I'm guessing women becoming trash collectors in the first place wasn't achieved without a struggle. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2008/mar/29/city-hono...

2.8%, yep, looks like equality to me!

That's sort of different.

As they fought for the right to simply become refuse collectors. Now that they have equal rights, no one is stomping about saying "but wait... why isn't it a 50/50 split?".

Similarly, no one wishes for their child to grow up and join the wild world of hands-on sanitation engineering. They may not look down on those with such jobs, but it can hardly be argued that it is a prestigious job.

So women somehow magically ship from the factory with a natural instinct to avoid IT jobs?

In my city, they gave a civil service exam for a garbage collector -- 2,000 people took the test.

So women somehow magically ship from the factory with a natural instinct to avoid IT jobs?

The fact that a large number of the original "computers" were actually women would seem to indicate not.

I might be completely misinterpreting sarcasm on the first points. Job insecurity in high tech? Absolutely not - the high tech industry is desperately trying to hire good people. Also, long hours are not a requirement. Lots of developers in startups or the game industry work long hours, but there are plenty of other positions (e.g. DoD sort of work) that is low stress 9-5. Medical work is decidedly not 9-5.

Well, yes and no. I've been laid off twice from high tech firms. Both times I found a (better!) job within a couple of weeks, but if you want a stable career, this is not the industry for you.

if you want a stable career, this is not the industry for you.

Well, yes and no :). Depends on where you work. If you work at a tech company then yeah, that's probably not the most secure workplace, but I work at a bank, and the only way you're ever going to get fired from there is if you're a really, really crappy worker, or if you screw up big time.

Plus you have the added security that if the brass really fucks things up the government is there to pick up the slack (at least in the U.S.).

I met a bank programmer a couple of years ago. He was driving a taxi. Apparently when his bank got bought by another bank, they laid off the whole IT department.

If you work at a bank there's a good chance you'll next laid off en masse as soon when there's a really bad year.

Well, as far as my bank is concerned, nobody got laid off during the recent recession (I don't work in the US, mind you). There was just a hiring freeze and smaller bonuses at the end of the year. We really weren't hit that hard.

I urge you not to plan on such a hot market for software developers forever. Anyone who was around when the first wave of dot-coms laid everyone off around 2001 knows how quickly and severely the well can run dry.

As opposed to the low-stress 9-5 world of medicine?

Doesn't an M.D. imply more job security and a higher starting wage than any C.S. credential?

Quite. Can't outsource a surgeon, can you? Not to mention the social prestige.

At the risk of getting quite off-topic, in my opinion most physicians will eventually be replaced by a combination of Bayesian diagnostic software and surgical robotics. There will be an intermediate period where physicians will control and oversee the software and robots, but this too will pass.

Those tasks which cannot be easily roboticized (for example, all the soft skills) will be shifted over to nurses.

It's sor tof happening (not the tech part). I dated a nurse practitioner for a while, and the medical industry is putting more and more responsibility into their hands to save money.

It's a lot more complicated than that. Bayesian analysis alone is insufficient to produce accurate diagnoses, and even with more advanced clinical decision support tools you still need a human to carry out the observations. Physicians won't be generally replaced until we have strong AI (at which point everyone gets replaced).

Good luck in getting the vague descriptions of symptoms that patients give into your diagnostic software. When you say this, do you think it will happen in our lifetimes?

Two words: medical tourism.

Which is due to too much domestic demand, raising prices too high. Medical tourism isn't costing surgical positions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_surgery

It also implies a significantly higher starting debt than C.S. graduates. Medical students take out huge student loans for undergrad and med school, and probably during residency as well because those salaries are really low (around $40K/yr).

Medicine is not really like the TV show ER, unless you work in the ER. Much of it is 9-5 and the stress comes from dealing with administrators and paperwork, the same as any office job.

My dad has been a doctor for over thirty years and the most stress he's had to deal with on a weekly basis is filling out paperwork.

My girlfriend is a doctor. She mainly works in the ER, but sometimes fills in at doctor's offices and the out of hours clinic. She finds them horribly dull, and basically hates them. Except they pay $100-$125 per hour. She likes that part.

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