I'm not saying I agree with the OP on all his points but this really isn't as controversial as you seem to think. Just browse google scholar for articles on the big traits.

https://scholar.google.is/scholar?q=...n&as_sdt=0%2C5

And again, remember these are averages and only say something about groups in aggregate, and nothing on individuals.

Yup, and that sucks. The best way to fix that problem is to educate society on the fact that men aren't pervs and pedophiles in general. I.e. remove the barrier. Not by passing over qualified women to hire more men.

Programming is far from anything resembling a stressful job.

This is a good point and something I hadn't thought of.


Well I don't really have a defensible argument. I think part of lowering the barriers is freeing up wealth and opportunities in the current system by discriminating in favor of people that otherwise might have gotten discriminated against.


That is an excellent question and probably the best argument against such programs. Every measurement is arbitrary and as you mentioned earlier the metric that matters is not measurable.

Depends on how you define stress really. It's not life or death stress or anything.

Programming can often be working long hours solo, just you and the computer and your thinking/coding. I would say people who thrive on their job being a more social experience with lots of interaction with others would find that aspect of programming to be offputting if not stressful.

In fact, most of the professions that I can think of that lend themselves towards isolation are heavily male.

Socialization and social group bonds are typically more important to women than men, but that's another one of those dastardly sexist science things though.

I generally agree with your thoughts. As I pointed out above, only 1/3 of jobs are evenly split, and this is rather unusual when you consider that women are graduating college in higher numbers than men. One would think that more professions would be 50 / 50 at this point, but it isn't. Humans, for whatever reason, naturally sort themselves into one profession or another.

Eh, you may be right about the isolationism, but I wouldn't know the details of every job. At the end of the day, you have to get work done, and that takes considerable isolation. Should also point out that this is a fairly westernized perspective of the world...

"Men do better on spatial relations tests therefore something something clearly men are better programmers" is not hard science. It's not even soft-science. It's pop science at best, completely lacking rigor and causative flow.

Please show me how the fact women score differently on some abstract tests than men directly creates a quantifiable significant difference in programming ability. You can't. It's pure speculation. That the writer chose this particular hill to die on says more about him, and where his emotions lie, than anything else.

Anyone who claims they can tease out psychological gender differences from cultural situational issues - as they relate to the ability to do your job as an engineer - is a) full of **** and b) espousing pseudo-science under the guise of *cold emotionless rational discourse*.

How does pointing to a gender difference in an abstract study remotely apply to anything programming-related? Show your work. Avoid unquantifiable assumptions.

A lot of people have attacked the statement that women have higher neuroticism than men. That's all I was pointing out. I don't think that gives us hard conclusions and therefore disagree with the OP on that, but it allows for speculation.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

i find that when a person puts so much effort into framing everything as "left vs. right", their arguments are not usually worth taking seriously

This whole incident made me decide that when I start my new job I'm just not going to say anything. Even though I pretty much agree with most of the stuff he said in the memo. At the end of the day, I'm being paid to write code. I'm not there to question the company's culture. I'm also going to cleanse my fb of all political posts, its just not worth getting fired or missing out on a potential promotion if your boss doesn't agree with your politics.

Yup.

I miss the days when the religious right was the only censorious anti-science side.

Anyway, my two cents,

admittedly, I haven't worked in the industry(fresh CS grad, will start working as a software engineer in september).

computer science is pretty much one of the most meritocratic disciplines out there. Your code ether works or it doesn't. you can either solve the problem given to you with the allocated time and resources or you can't. your algorithm is either efficient or its not.

I also don't think a 50/50 representation is necessarily better or worse than an 80/20 representation. so long as we are hiring people based on merit I don't see what the problem is. If you were an employer and there is a more capable female candidate, but you chose to discriminate against her its your loss and your company's loss. By the same token if you hire a less capable female in order to fill a diversity quota, its your company that will suffer.

CyberShark, your point of view fine is legitimate in theory, but it may be a bit idealistic, if I'm inferring things correctly. I agree 50/50 isn't necessarily the optimal thing to strive for, since interest (likely) + ability (unlikely) in the tech field are not likely to be uniform prior distributions.

However, the reason why we have affirmative action-like programs is to actually be MORE meritocratic and fair. The idea is that two people may have equivalent capabilities, but the more privileged one has achieved more (for obvious reasons). So there needs to be some compensation towards the less privileged person here to make sure they're being hired at equal rates given their equivalent capabilities.

So the relevant questions, IMO, are
1) Are women underprivileged in the tech world? (I think obv yes, mostly social, but doesn't matter)
2) What is the best way to address it? (very open ended and no best answer) - maybe striving to boost women %'s a bit, but not necessarily shooting for 50/50, is one valid tool?

hi, thx for the reply

Personally I think these things should be addressed on a case by case basis, as opposed to say taking a figure such as the current representation is 80/20 and say that drastic change is required. Things like affirmative action quotas are often too simplistic and top down. every employer that gave me a job offer spent at least 7 hours interviewing me, so behind every hire there are a lot of thought going on behind the scenes.(its hard for me to imagine there is systemic discrimination based on something as irrelevant as gender, because why waste 7 hours of your staffs time on technical interviews if they aren't your main deciding factor). So I think its very unfair for us to look at a percentage like 80/20 and point at companies and say that they need to change.

regarding privilege, while men may have had historic privileges in society, I don't think its true today. the tech industry in particular from my experiences at university are full of women only events, women only scholarships, or even women only internship. I don't think historic injustice is a good enough reason to discriminate against the current generation of young men who have done nothing wrong.

I don't think the tech industry should be specifically marketed to men or women(I want cool new gadgets, I don't care who makes them). As long as people are free to make their own career decisions whatever the percentage of representation it comes out to be, then so be it.

Well said saw. If I may inject my 2c.

1) I think women are somewhat underprivileged in tech because of societal factors but to nowhere near the extend of what the progressive agenda claims. I say this because of my observation that as societies get more inclusive, open and progressive, the gap in the tech industry widens.

That tells me that something else besides prejudice must be a large factor. Unless you think that prejudice is uniquely increasing in tech while decreasing in literally every other facet of society.

Also, even if there is currently a problem(which I am not convinced there is). companies that make better hiring decisions should outperform companies that discriminates wrongly and eventually the market will sort it self out.

I think that's making the assumption the market is controlled by rational actors but that is not necessarily the case.

Sent from my SM-G900R4 using Tapatalk

well, no, I'm saying those who make more rational decisions(such as hiring based on merit) will out perform those who make irrational decisions(such as gender based discrimination).

They are addressed on a case by case basis already of course. Rigorous interviewing is of course the most important thing and always will be. No one is saying otherwise. I think the logic is rather: just instead of considering your original 100 factors of whether or not to hire this candidate, consider 101 (original 100 + gender).

Male privilege is absolutely a thing, although I would agree it's not as out in the open as it used to be. It's just subconscious now. You seem to be misunderstanding this issue on a more fundamental level. Reread my original response. Thinking "discrimination vs males" is absolutely 100% not anyone's goal except for the extreme feminists. The idea is to give the less well-off group of people what they need to earn their fair %.

Wow that's super interesting. 35% in '91... seems crazy. Where's that coming from?

That could be true as long as the talent in the labor pools are significantly different or the discriminatory practices force more talented people in the labor pool to seek employment elsewhere. I don't know if that is the case.

Sent from my SM-G900R4 using Tapatalk

CyberShark, your arguments are very much the problem I have with a lot of conservative arguments. It's fantastic in theory. The market will fix it. Supply and demand. (I personally think academics in economics, with its extremely theoretical and simple approach to solving ridiculously complex and multifaceted problems, suffers from this and also tends to have a lot of conservatives, but this is a digression)

That's just not how real life works though. You need to use evidence, evaluate what is currently going on in the world, and try to fix it.

I edited my post and put a graph with sources, but I don't think anyone knows why the downturn happened. There are theories that the introduction of the PC in the early 80's and how it was mainly marketed towards boys affected this.

Another theory is that when you allow people the freedom to make their choices regardless of economic and societal pressure, their choices start to reflect gendered roles more closely.

For instance, India and China have a much more even split in tech study and work than western societies do. And you'd hardly claim that India is a bastion of female equality. While Norway, arguably the most gender-equal society in the world has a 20/80 split.

That might be the case, since I am fresh from finishing university, maybe I will change my views once I've worked for a few years.

but as of right now, I find the argument 'gender has no effect on performance, therefore we need to discriminate based on gender' unconvincing.

If the argument is: a man and a woman has achieved the same level of achievement. we should favour women because she is more likely to have faced greater difficulties due to societal reasons and therefore indicates greater potential. I have several problems with this line of argument:

1). how often are two candidates truly indistinguishable in terms of performance? in this case, wouldn't it be better to give these two additional interviews in order to distinguish ability? as opposed to making a decision based on gender.

2). Do we have evidence that women face greater difficulties in tech today? (I don't think citing a figure such as the current representation is evidence, since we don't know what the percentage will come out to be in a hypothetical truly free society.) If anything I think women are offered more opportunities such as female only events, scholarships or even internships.

3). Even if this is the case. should companies hire based on current ability or potential? I think this decision should be left to individual companies. Since its reasonable to assume some companies will favour current ability a lot more than potential(e.g. if you are a small company, you don't want to invest a lot of time and resources on training an employee to achieve his/her potential only to have him leave to a more prestigious company). I don't think there is a problem with hiring a male who has better current ability(due to possibly societal advantages) over a female who may have more potential.

4). how do we know when society is fair/unfair? If you can provide evidence that an institution(government or a specific firm) is being unfair to a specific group(in the form of law or discriminatory policies etc) then sure, I'm happy to condemn such an institution. but I don't take claims such as there is systematic discrimination against women in tech seriously.

Oh yea I have heard this actually... many use it as evidence that we should not be artificially trying to manufacture diversity. And I think there's some truth to it, although I stand by the fact that you can't have a completely hands-off free market approach.