Could a Grace Hopper Get Hired In Today's Silicon Valley? 608
theodp writes "There has been lots of heated discussion on the topic of where-the-girls-aren't, both in the tech and larger business world. Dave Winer broached the subject of 'Why are there so few women programmers?', prompting a mix of flame, venom and insight. Over at Valleywag, Nitasha Tiku pegs 'Culture Fit' as an insidious excuse used to marginalize women in tech. Completing the trilogy is an HBR article, 'Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?', in which Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic concludes the problem is that manifestations of hubris, which occur much more frequently in men than women, are commonly mistaken for leadership potential. So, with a gender and age strike against her, would a Grace Hopper in her prime even land an interview in today's Silicon Valley?"
It explains US foreign policy perfectly also. (Score:4, Insightful)
" manifestations of hubris ... are commonly mistaken for leadership potential "
Not limited to tech jobs in the valley.
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
No chance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because she didn't have a degree in computer science her resume would never be approved by HR. The hiring manager wouldn't even know she applied.
Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
This article, as well as the source articles are all nothing but professional trolls written for the express purpose of generating page views. What's next, links to articles on Jezebel asking if the average man beats his wife before or after raping her?
Re:Why so few women sanitation engineers? (Score:2, Insightful)
The US Senate has huge barriers to entry...for everyone. Including all of us reading this. Jobs with the local government have incentives to entry for women.
Why am I not surprised the racism card was immediately played in response to a legitimate question in an attempt to silence debate? Especially when race wasn't even involved until you brought it up?
Re:No chance! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because she didn't have a degree in computer science her resume would never be approved by HR. The hiring manager wouldn't even know she applied.
Ahh, but she would lie to HR, and ask forgiveness later ;-)
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
why are there so few women in a position to be hired in the first place? Why aren't many women choosing to study these subjects. Are they being discouraged from studying computer science? Are they graded more harshly? Is it social pressure?
Maybe they damn well don't want to.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why aren't more women in science fields? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody is suggesting a conspiracy. They are, however, suggesting certain biases may be responsible -- possibly unconscious, possibly promoted as much by other women as by men.
The idea that men are "naturally" more interested in programming is something that's possible but should be treated with appropriate skepticism. It's not like there were programming contests a million years ago that were evolved into us, and it's not like obvious different circumstances like pregnancy go particularly well with a lot of other currently-female-dominated jobs (e.g. nursing). So either there's some very indirect inherent cause, or there's some cultural motivation. The cultural thing might even be good on net compared to not having it. Or horrible beyond just a gender imbalance in a particular industry.
Both of these things are, of course, much easier to claim than to prove. But one thing that is pretty much proven is that people who think they aren't sexist often do have biases (eg. http://www.theage.com.au/national/how-the-sex-bias-prevails-20100514-v4mv.html [theage.com.au]). Same goes for race.
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say the same, and I don't understand what is being said about leaders. The women have their fair share of incompetent leaders as well. Well not completely fair, since the women to men ratio is still low, but I would guess the ratio of incompetence female leaders to competent ones is the same as for men.
I can only think of a handfull of male leaders in IT that are more incompetent than Carly Fioni.
Re:Why aren't more women in science fields? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
Up until I the last few years, I would have agreed that women programmers are rare (and they are at most companies). However, I now work for a company with a large number of Indian engineers, and about half of them are women. My conclusion is that the lack of women must be largely cultural (in the US) and nothing whatsoever to do with gender differences in ability.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Common sense! Good for you.
See people, all it takes is actually using your brain and not succumbing to "politically correct" bullshit.
I believe any futher comments in this thread to be redundant (though no doubt someone will nit-pick all the same).
Re:Female programmers (Score:1, Insightful)
LOl male oriented lingo. The only man keeping women out of tech might be daddy clearing out all challenges for you in advance your whole life.
Re:It explains US foreign policy perfectly also. (Score:5, Insightful)
" manifestations of hubris ... are commonly mistaken for leadership potential "
Not limited to tech jobs in the valley.
Is there any field where this doesn't come into play?
E.g. A big part of a hiring decision is based on how well a candidate presents himself -- I'm deliberately using the masculine pronoun here -- in a resume, interview, and general self-promotion. Someone better at promoting himself will therefore (usually) appear more desirable. Unfortunately, there are only a few jobs where the ability to be interviewed is the primary skill required in the position. So you hire people based on how good they are at doing something else -- not the job at hand. Reminds me of soccer games that end in a shootout: "let's just settle this stalemate by playing a different game to see who wins". Why don't they use jacks, or rock, paper scissors?
Re:No chance! (Score:5, Insightful)
I see we have never dealt with H.R. before.
Coincidentally, H.R. has the opposite problem - over-representation of females.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
This is so true, and if I had mod points, you'd be getting them.
What we should be doing, and what gender (or classification of your choice) blind really means is that women should be treated the same as men at the interview and at the annual review. It is true that in many fields there is still a wage disparity between women and men doing the same job with the same skills and qualifications. That is a genuine wrong that must be fixed. What <classification> blind doesn't mean is that job hiring or school admissions should be quota based, as quotas always seem to cause more trouble than they are worth. True equality is on a case by case basis, rather than a statistical measure across populations.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
The low numbers, is the fact why it is hard to find exceptional. The population isn't a normal distribution, but shifted a bit.
There is always a bit more worthless then exceptional. However if you increase the population up you find more, but if you reduce the population down then you wil find very few.
The worthless developers tend not to last long, if they do, they kinda just suck your sole as you need to make up for them.
The Okayish you tend to work with fine, and they don't bother you. The exceptional you may not even realize they are exceptional, they do their job and get done. Also women tend not to brag as much as guys do, so there is less self promotion.
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
That matches my experience. About half are below average.
Re:Female programmers (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm female, and I agree...to an extent. BUT there is still a ceiling on my paycheck and a boy's club, you cannot deny that. Once people get working together and get in their groove, if you throw a stick in the mix it can grind to a halt. The same would go if the tables were turned and somehow, by some mutation, females dominated programming. I would then be calling it a girl's club.
I was fortunate for awhile. I grew up the smartest computer kid in my little po-dunk town. Then I went to college and the class was actually mixed, men/women/race. Then I got that "job" right out of college, but after 5 years, I wanted to see what else was out there.
So I left the state and that job to find something else. What I found was (generally speaking) being a programmer meant being 1 of 2 stinky men that hover around one computer all day (with about 3 computers per office or cubicle). All the guys (and I say guys, because I saw no females during my interview - except one receptionist) at Google looked depressed and the were shoved into cubby-offices that were smaller than my studio apartment.
What female wants to hang around that (let alone privileged and spoiled from the previous job)? I left that state and am back into IT not programming and happy as a lark. Except now I have a non-profit ceiling because of the boy's club at the local tech shop. I couldn't even hand those bastards my resume because they wouldn't even look at me. Had I not been at a job fair, I would have shoved it in their face.
So maybe after-all this guy is right. Females don't want that thankless depressing programming job.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe for a moment that it's any kind of negative force, such as sexism or bigotry, that's keeping women out of the field. It's just not interesting to most of them. I know it's hard to talk about in today's politically correct world, but men and women ARE wired differently. Exceptions certainly exist, but they are still just exceptions.
We could go on and on about why there aren't more male nurses, and the conversation would be silly if we tried to ignore the fact that guys just tend not to be interested in nursing because they're guys.
As for females in this industry, I've seen all kinds. Some are good, some are inexperienced, some just plain suck, and others are incredibly talented. Just like their male counterparts.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, it sounds easy, you should try it for awhile.
Re:Female programmers (Score:3, Insightful)
You realise that there are all those quotas in the South because it is pretty amazingly racist, right? Whenever I travel there, I fell like I'm in a clichéd rendering of "Gone With The Wind" -- minus the class.
Quotas are a terrible idea, except that they are the only way to break the old-boy cliques... Of course, after 1-2 generation you have to remove them.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Female programmers (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Career Paths (Score:5, Insightful)
Women often worked outside the home, and not only in the stereotypical one-room schoolhouse of the movies. My grandmothers and great-grandmothers all worked in resorts and restaurants, a shoe factory, a comforter factory, canneries, basket factories and a fishing lure factory. They were not uncommon in that regard. The storied life of 'Little House on the Prairie' was just that, a story. In reality the mother would probably have spent a couple days a week at the local meat packing plant or the flour mill.
Re:Female programmers (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds to me like the woman in your scenario has a shit husband.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
just that men don't tend to go into teaching
You couldn't have picked a worse example:
They don't now. You do realise that in the within recorded history the last 20 years of female dominaed teaching is a massive anomaly. The thing is you get this thing called "feminisation" where female domiated careers are seen as worth less, and that puts off men. That coupled with the "being the odd one out" syndrome puts off even more.
Teaching was for the longest time a perfectly respetable career for men.
I think therefore we can conclude that the recent trend to women must be a recent sociatal pressure (and not a good one) rather than anything inherent.
However, even if we could wave a magic want and made all that bad stuff go away we're never going to see a 50/50 split in the technology field.
Quite possible, but we're talking here about a 999/1 split, not a 70/30 or 80/20 split. Once it's 999/1, then something is very, very badly fucked up. Men and women are just not that different.
Off all the women I know from childhood, only a small fraction have gone into technology.
And what of all the men? The majority of people--men and women--do not go into computing.
The thing is that computing is very male dominated now and you are in computing. Therefore you see only men who have gone into computing. That's massive, gigantic selection bias.
Another nice point: women were actually much more common in the early days of computing? Why? Dunno, but it shows that it's not an "inherently male" thing.
They didn't choose these fields because they were "pushed away" from programming.
Some of were deeply passionate about programming. Most people in programming aren't, just liek most people in most fields aren't passionate. For many people it's a thing to fall into for lack of any better ideas. This is where subtle pressures start to matter: who's going to go into a second choice field massively dominated by one gender and rampant sexism?
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
There are those that will say your statement is sexist...
I'm sure there are. More sensible people would simply say that the statement is ignorant and excessively simplistic.