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Comment by ixacto | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't matter what the gender ratio is in tech. Are we encouraging more young men to become nurses and primary-school teachers?

CS is one of the most open if not, THE most open field right now. There isn't a FE/PE/PHD/JD requirement to work at google/ms -- BUT there is the impression that you will look like a socially-retarded nerd, this http://www.google.com/about/jobs/teams/engineering/ is Google's engineering jobs page. And people wonder why there image-conscious teenage girls are not interested in programming...

Keep up the good work google.

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Can you explain what is wrong with that Google page? Serious question. Do these guys come across as unfriendly in any way? Or is the problem that they don't look like George Clooney? That they are wearing glasses perhaps?

What kind of things would the hypothetical female engineers have arranged on their desks? Perhaps fully automated doll houses where you can switch on a LED in the oven?

Their office looks disorganized, they look exactly like the negative stereotype of a programmer. I'll leave that you to figure out ;).

This is what IBM and Microsoft think their employees look like:

http://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/us/home.aspx http://www-03.ibm.com/employment/us/

I just can't wrap my mind around it: a discussion complaining about excluding people from entering the tech world with a comment ridiculing people in the tech world. Who should I sympathize with?

Personally I can not see anything negative about those Google programmers. Their office looks disorganized? Really? Because women are always tidy? And even so - are you saying that people who don't organize their offices well should not allowed to become engineers, because it harms the engineering occupation? Or that people who look like programmers should not allowed to be programmers? Or that programmers who look like programmers (whatever that means) should be made to not look like programmers? None of that makes any sense to me.

What makes sense to me is that people should mind their own businesses. If you want to become a techie and like an organized office, organize your office. I don't see the problem.

This post isn't really meant to be about getting more women into tech. It's about getting more of EVERYONE into tech.

And that jobs page is almost hilariously stereotypical.

So people who look like the ones on that jobs page should not enter tech? I really don't understand your point.

I also don't understand the entitlement aspect. What I experienced is that skilled people get respect. Nobody gets respect for having started programming at age 6. But most of them probably became good programmers, so they get respect.

I can't imagine really good people looking down on others. If you enjoy programming (as an example), why wouldn't you want to spread the joy.

Why don't you just avoid the nasty people. And, to be honest, perhaps see a shrink about your self-consciousness (sorry, but there seems to be an issue and you are shifting the blame instead of confronting yourself).

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