Hacker News Reader

Comment by factorial | Hacker News Reader

Please tell this to the crowd that is so desperate getting more women interested in computers....

The problem isn't that women aren't interested, it's that our shitty remarks drive them away. The ones that stay wind up experiencing a death by a thousand pricks. I'm "desperate" to see our field grow up, not conduct some sort of gender-specific marketing campaign.

We don't need more women programmers for the sake of demographics. We need to stop driving away awesome programmers that happen to be women.

What's your rationale behind your reasoning? I'd say we need people in this field who can actually take some heat, no matter shether they are male or female. There are certainly also plenty of guys who get driven away. Just have a look at how quickly some people get shot down on SO for submitting not-that-great answers.

Further, there are surely quite a few women around who are only around because they are women. In other words: their work is sub-par but they keep their job due to their gender. Just like we lower requirements for women in the military, we lower them for women in tech. Yet, there aren't many women signing up for the military. Maybe it's because they just aren't interested in the first place?

I agree that showing maturity as a field will drive fewer people away of both genders. But you've seen the recent scandals: sexism is obviously a problem in our field and that is a problem that should be solved along with the other.

Your second point is outrageous nonsense.

Please elaborate on why my second point is "outrageous nonsense". You just aren't convincing me with shaming language.

If you want to establish that women are being treated with kid gloves in our industry, the burden of proof is on you. If you want me to dig up the four or five high-profile examples of sexism in technology from the last couple months I can certainly supply that, but your ugly claims are the ones which require proof, not mine.

Are you a man or a woman? Further, do you work in tech or don't you? There is certainly something fishy about you and your style of argumentation. Your rhetoric also reminds me of women. Sure, cold hard facts are "ugly". What's next, calling me "mean"?

BTW, isn't it funny how fashions change? Two years ago you read comments like, "(...) another researcher concludes that only "boys" are stupid enough to go into a field that's globally-fungible, where entry-level salaries are declining, and it's common to think that staying up all night for a company-paid pizza is a good deal.'"": http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/12/17/2043254/Not-Enough-W...

Since IT is hot again, and the economy otherwise depressed, suddenly the feminists fire up their PR machine and want to get some of their sisters into cushy (so they think) office jobs. But why aren't there any initiatives to get more women into, say, plumbing, firefighting, or the military?

I smell hypocrisy.

> Your rhetoric also reminds me of women.

Wow.

> Sure, cold hard facts are "ugly".

They can be. But you don't have any. Using the word "fact" doesn't by itself make your argument factual.

> What's next, calling me "mean"?

Sure, but it's just the capstone on "sexist" and "ill-informed."

Do you know about any evidence that other professions with a larger female/male ratio e.g., lawyers, doctors treat women somehow better than IT?

That's kind of a distraction from the real problem, isn't it? We know we are doing this badly. It doesn't matter if other professions are worse; if they are, that just means they have their own problems to improve on.

To paraphrase the rifleman's creed, there are many industries with this problem, but this one is mine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com