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Comment by tanglisha | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I'm one of the people on this project.

The point of this project is not to convince women to go into tech, that is completely out of scope. The point is to help women that are qualified but don't interview well or know how to deal with some of the issues unique to women that either raise eyebrows or can cause confusion in an interview.

The women we're targeting include recent graduates, those who left the field for a few months or years to have babies or take care of sick family members, and women who may have been driven out of other positions by sexual harassment (nobody wants a troublemaker, and they do always ask why you left your previous position).

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The trouble is, none of this (with the exception of childbirth, and there are plenty of stay-at-home Dads) is gender-specific.

Unfortunately, all continuing to enforce how special women are (either positively or negatively, in this case) is to keep women thinking they need specialised tools to succeed.

As a man, no one taught me how to interview well, or come back to the workforce after taking an extended break to care for someone else, or to be driven out of a position due to bullying (much more common than sexual harassment because it is much subtler). Why do you feel the need to single-out women for such general issues?

1) First, I am speaking from an assumption I hold that hiring people to work for you of all stripes, which means moving beyond the cis-white-males that are more common, leads to better teams, better products and better execution.

2) I usually think about non-standard channels for hiring, or assistance/boosting programs such as this focused on women (as one example of minorities in the tech field) because almost all of industry is subtly or not so subtly biased towards the majority. The ways you relax with coworkers, the non-programming personal attributes that are assessed in interviews, the similarity bias interviewers have to pick people like themselves. These are not intentional acts of sexism, but are nonetheless prevalent.

Women and men are raised differently. Things that come natural to you, having been raised male, do not come naturally to a large number of women. Examples include how to make eye contact in an interview and how to shake hands properly. It is very common for women to be raised with an attitude of quietly waiting to be noticed, rather than pointing out their good traits and skills. This can leave them a bit lost when it comes to an interview, which is essentially the time to brag.

Aside from childbirth itself, women are far more likely to be single parents than men are, and are normally the ones to stay home with sick children, especially when there is a long-term disease involved.

Many women end up dealing with multiple name changes, across degrees and sometimes projects.

Of course not all women lack these skills, we would never pretend that to be the case. But the ones that do are at a distinct disadvantage, and there are more of them out there than you realize.

Who would you turn to if you didn't even know that your handshake felt like a dead fish and you never once made eye contact with the hiring manager? That kind of feedback doesn't exist after interviews.

For each of these issues I can come up with a counter-point but it won't really solve anything.

I agree that having this information available is a positive thing.

Limiting it to either women, or even women in IT seems to be part of the problem (not the solution), in my opinion. By all means, market a generic series at women who may be having these problems, but I fail to see how limiting the audience to ONLY women stands up for equality.

Again, let me see if I have you right.

A project launched by women, aimed at women, because women are an observable rarity in our industry ... is against equality.

This isn't affirmative action. It's not a hiring policy. It's a private sector effort by interested individuals who want to help others like them.

In my experience, it always pays to substitute the subject to the broader version when determining if something is discriminatory.

How does this project sound?

"A project [to empower men], launched by men, aimed at men, because men are an observable majority in our industry."

> In my experience, it always pays to substitute the subject to the broader version when determining if something is discriminatory.

How does that follow? I'd genuinely like to know your reasoning.

I come from a minority myself (gay from the ironically named Queensland) and find people say the stupidest things that, if modified as suggested, they would be embarrassed to say about themselves.

Gay in Queensland is a tough ask, depending on how far north you are.

But I'm still not following.

How does substituting in "majority" for "minority" undermine the case for the minority?

The information is targeted at women, because that's what we are. We will not turn anyone away, man, woman, trans, or otherwise: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/166494057/ladycoders-get...

In my opinion, targeting a message makes more sense than trying to make it overly broad to cover everyone, that only dilutes the information. You, of course, are welcome to disagree :)

They have to target a sympathetic group or they probably wouldn't get donations. Hardly anyone gives a crap what happens to men, especially other men. I'm actually unsure whether or not I would want my rivals to be better at negotiating and interviewing (driving market rates higher but closer to unsustainable levels, and schmoozing into positions that few of any gender are qualified for).

>Unfortunately, all continuing to enforce how special women are (either positively or negatively, in this case) is to keep women thinking they need specialised tools to succeed.

It emphasizes it to you. As a woman, it painstakingly obvious I am "special." At the last tech event I was at I was one of three women; one was the girlfriend of the organizer, one was a non technical person looking for technical help for a start-up, and the other was me. I felt awkward and stood out like a sore thumb. There's nothing that a bunch of women trying to raise money to encourage women to be in tech could do to make me feel MORE awkward at events where it's obvious I stand out.

Look, I think the project itself is kind of silly. But it could bring more women into tech. And more women in tech won't make me stand out more; it will make me stand out LESS. That's the only way it's going to shake out.

> The point of this project is not to convince women to go into tech, that is completely out of scope.

That seems like a shame. A lot is said about the awfulness of tech culture for women. I think it would be good to see more made of the upsides (the money's good, the hours can be convenient, and most of aren't actually as awful as we're made out to be).

That's what we'll be talking about at GeekGirlCon. We can't fit everything cool into every project :)

As kondro said, you should definitely consider aiming such a project at all genders. Of course you need a selling point and if that's "getting more women into tech" then so be it, but your project could provide huge value to both women and men. From your description it sounds great.

We will not turn men away, and they are of course welcome to the information that we're going to put out.

We chose women because that's what we are and because we wanted to target some of the issues specific to women. A LOT of the information we will be putting out will apply to both genders.

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