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Comment by throw111424 | Hacker News Reader

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This has not been my experience. The women I've worked with in software engineering teams have all been, well, engineers. One of them worked on some kind of real-time printer operating system before becoming a Java dev, another one is currently team lead on the cluster team on a distributed software product, another one has the most in-depth knowledge of CSS of anyone in a 50+ people frontend department.

I see a lot of people online complaining about the job market and blaming all kinds of things for their inability to find a job, but I think what has changed is that there are no more defensive hires, where companies like Google hire as many people as possible just to deny their competitors those people. Lots of relatively unqualified people found very high-paying jobs that way and are now surprised that they can't land those jobs anymore.

If you're competent and personable and know your own strengths, you can still find a job relatively easily.

Coincidentally, I was fired during the tech downturn two years ago, and within a few weeks, had three job offers out of three applications. I have a good CV, I applied at local companies that matched my specific expertise, I asked how the interview would go and what was expected, and prepared specifically for each company.

Complaining about women because you can't find a job isn't just misguided, it's harmful to yourself, because it prevents you from understanding what the actual issue is, and working on it.

That has not been my experience consulting at many big videogame companies.

Lately my bread and butter is fixing legacy game engines. I have yet to meet a ciswoman tech lead who can do this work.

When I studied comp sci around 2000, women were actively discouraged from continuing their classes by professors. During an oral exam, a prof told a female friend of mine that women had no place in comp sci. As a result, not many women graduated, so two decades ago, there were just fewer women in the field in general.

I'm not sure what exactly qualifies as a "legacy game engine", but given the small number of women who worked in comp sci when games were made ten or twenty years ago, and particularly in male-dominated videogame studios, I would naturally not expect to see a lot of cis women with experience working on these engines (or on related tech stacks) today.

This seems like a bit of a special case, rather than a general representation of women in software engineering.

That was 20 years ago, things changed. Most modern game engines are less than 10 yrs old. Your assumptions are wrong and out of date.

> From my experience there are relatively few women who really get in the trenches.

have you ever heard of the word "bias"?

> Staring at logs in a terminal and sifting through endless YAML not so much.

i did not know that one gender could be better at this work. that seems like huge news if true.

and yes, you sound like a reactionary. coward ass throwaway account.

> i did not know that one gender could be better at this work. that seems like huge news if true.

There is research that has shown that men are, on average, better at single-focus tasks. And, indeed, it was huge news at the time the research was published – at least as huge as being reported in major news publications is.

It wouldn't be huge news now. We quickly grow bored and tired of widely reported things from the past. Humans, of all genders it seems, tend to seek novelty.

please share this, i'm dying to read this.

RIP

dang, i guess i'll die never knowing the truth

I assumed you were already dead by the time I got to reading your response. One does not normally tell you that they are dying if they expect to still be around for a long time. Shame on me for assuming. What is the expected lifespan for someone diagnosed with your condition?

i'm posting from the grave!!

Name a prominent open source project created be and led by a woman.

Who created and contributes to linux kernel, python, c, c++, go, python, ruby, ruby on rails, php, wordpress, ghost, SumatraPDF, zig, oding, nim, nodejs, deno, bun.

I could just keep listing major open source projects because I literally cannot think of a single one created and led by a woman.

And if you find one, it still doesn't negate the 100 to 1 ratio.

Open source, unlike jobs, are pure meritocracy. A woman can create a GitHub account and start coding just as easily as a man. There are no gatekeepers and open source contributors / maintainers are abused by random people as a matter of course.

To me it's reality. To you, somehow, saying that out loud is bias.

And to be clear: I don't think there's anything preventing women from learning to code and contributing at a high level and I've known a few that do. But for some reason they overwhelmingly don't. The stats are brutal.

go ask claude to give you feedback about this comment, because it shows a misunderstanding of how a male-dominated society works if this is what you think about women in tech.

edit: nvm i did about this entire comment thread: https://claude.site/artifacts/b1f6e916-a21b-420b-9081-dec62b... and specifically responding to all of your claims: https://claude.site/artifacts/401d407d-ef53-4cdf-84fd-cd79b5...

The words you're looking for aren't conservative or reactionary they are bigoted and asshole. Best software engineer I've ever worked with is a woman, the rest had exactly the same range of ability as the men. Overall though a much lower level of entitled ignorance than "guys like us".

I don't doubt this. But it's the exception to the rule, isn't it?

It's so peculiar that the man who thinks few women are willing to "get in the trenches" never sees women really getting into the trenches. It must definitely be because that's just how all women are. And definitely not because most women choose not to work with you or a company that perpetuates that idea.

> It's so peculiar that the man who thinks few women are willing to "get in the trenches" never sees women really getting into the trenches.

I have seen women in the trenches but I don't see how that contradicts my claim that they are relatively few and there's probably a reason despite all the efforts to bring more women into tech.

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