Nevertheless, She Coded

The grandstanding is corny at best. Take the first example:<p>&gt; Despite continued assaults on the credibility of her contributions to modern computer science as the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace coded.<p>Yet in reality she was very much respected in her day, and despite her challenges received widespread support. The first &quot;assaults&quot; on her scope of her contributions came over 100 after her death, and not some sexism she had to fight and overcome.

I&#x27;m frankly quite surprised by the initial wave of comments disparaging this message.<p>The facts are that women are poorly represented in the tech community[1], and do make less than men[2]. Any attempt to let women feel more accepted and bring about much needed change should be championed, not picked apart and belittled because you feel like you are personally being attacked when people are just asking for help.<p>1. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tech&#x2F;2014&#x2F;05&#x2F;28&#x2F;google-releases-employee-diversity-figures&#x2F;9697049&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tech&#x2F;2014&#x2F;05&#x2F;28&#x2F;google-release...</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;biggest-pay-gap-in-america-computer-programmers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;biggest-pay-gap-in-america-compute...</a>

If ever I had a notion that an expression of solidarity for women in tech was unnecessary or quixotic, the response to this article on this very forum would be sufficient to dispel it.

I wish comments were scored in a way that was weighted by the degree of bravery it took to write them.<p>What a shame that most of the top comments here are boring, stand-up-for-the-vulnerable types agreed with by the majority— &quot;women face difficulties in tech, and we should help them whenever we can&quot;—while the downvoted posts are the ones trying (not necessarily successfully) to arrive at politically incorrect truths.

I just had a conversation with a friend of mine today about the issues she is facing as a &quot;woman in tech&quot;. It was some stuff that really surprised me. On today of all days.<p>Treatment of women as full-fledged peers is definitely something that needs better attention in our industry.

Loved this anecdote:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dev.to&#x2F;thepracticaldev&#x2F;nevertheless-she-coded&#x2F;comments&#x2F;459" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dev.to&#x2F;thepracticaldev&#x2F;nevertheless-she-coded&#x2F;commen...</a><p>&gt; <i>The first thing I coded was an Everquest 7-page website in plain-old HTML. I was 15 and I had figured out HTML from right-clicking and wondering if &#x27;View Source&#x27; was how it was made.</i><p>I went into computer engineering because I loved video games and wanted to write games. I believe my one of my first webpages was a Final Fantasy fanpage with Microsoft FrontPage, uploaded to my dad&#x27;s Prodigy web space. I don&#x27;t know what the actual stats are in terms of girls playing video games, but I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised to see a correlation between that childhood activity and a later interest in programming.

I really wish they would quit promulgating this because it&#x27;s actually counterproductive:<p>&quot;women face continued pay disparity&quot;<p>Seeing this statement tells me <i>immediately</i> that the author is grinding an ax.<p>In some fields of engineering (EE, for example), women actually get paid more (104% last I checked). And, when you control for experience, time off for family, etc., pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappear.<p>Complaining about discrimination or harassment? Sure, go for it. Lack of child care and having undue burden with family health issues? The stats back you up.<p>However, attempting to promulgate something which is not true hurts the overall movement when there is so much that is true and needs to be fixed.

Warren violated the rules- it has _nothing_ to do with her gender.<p>Whether her points are validate or not, the rules were followed as they would have been with any man.<p>If she wants to get her opinion out, she can hold a press conference outside the Senate or simply call Maddow, like she did- a friendly audience that would allow her to speak as long as they had time for.

The whole premise of this article as espoused in the first sentence, seems rather divorced from reality, to me.

I&#x27;ve handled the hiring of almost all Web developers within my company for the last half decade, and in that time I have hired absolutely zero women. Yet, this has nothing to do with discrimination and much more to do with the applicants themselves and the numbers by which they apply.<p>During this time, I&#x27;ve seen Web design positions attract females applicants by about a two-thirds majority, whereas Web development positions attract only one in twenty (if that). And yet, those who have applied seem to fit into two distinct categories of undesirables:<p>First, the designer, with a design degree, who learned to code from some two-week academy that now feels the need to apply for a position well beyond their skill level. Or second, the mathematics major (or similar) who feels their knowledge of topics only related to programming in general is satisfactory enough to hit the ground running as a Web developer of all things...<p>So I&#x27;ll be happy to discuss the potential of a wage gap if I ever seem to hire a true female Web developer.

I couldn&#x27;t name a single programmer, man or woman who worked on any Apollo mission. The problem is not that women are under-recognized as coders, it&#x27;s just that engineers as a class of workers are often under-recognized.<p>Humans just don&#x27;t care enough about intelligence unfortunately. Everyone knows about Neil Armstrong though.

These types of articles seem to always get the same mixture of responses. The biggest problem that I see is that everyone starts with completely different sets of assumptions and they are almost never up front about them.<p>The lack of cited sources in articles like these leads people to bolster or criticize particular studies that they have read or heard about, usually without referencing those. Many of these studies are either flawed or contain assumptions that some people don&#x27;t agree with, so this ends up going nowhere also.<p>Are there any really good studies on this topic that we may discuss as a common point of reference? Once that take into account all the facts, and don&#x27;t start with assumptions like the following:<p>1. There should be equal numbers of men and women in tech (or there is some other ratio that is preferred or correct). 2. Women and men in tech should - on average - be paid the same.<p>Some people have these assumptions as part of their personal belief systems, but they entail a whole bunch of other assumptions that are not prima facie true.<p>One other huge weakness in these kinds of studies is that they measure the things that are easy to measure; things like education and experience. If companies are hiring compensating employees rationally, they would use these only as heuristics, and have some measure of how much an individual employee would contribute to the company as the determining factor.<p>Measuring job skill, as well as all the other skills that go into being a good employee is really hard, but until a study tries to actually do this, they are coming up with conclusions that aren&#x27;t at all useful in the real world.

&gt; Gender inequality has permeated the technology and computer science fields since their earliest beginnings.<p>It&#x27;s true. The earliest &quot;computers&quot; were overwhelmingly women.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Human_computer#Wartime_computing_and_the_invention_of_electronic_computing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Human_computer#Wartime_computi...</a>

There are disparities in pay and representation between men and women in the tech industry, favouring men. Are we then to work to create parity in pay and representation between men and women in the fastest possible way? Some people say yes. Some people say companies need to immediately go out of their way to hire more women, hire a more racially diverse staff and carefully calibrate their pay so that, ideally, your company diversity is a reflection of the diversity of the country you&#x27;re in. But to me this seems really really wrong. Is it because I&#x27;m bigoted? Maybe. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s just that though, I honestly think its a really unfair approach, my own regrettable biases aside. To do that to tech would be unfair to many people, and also, would only be because tech is lucrative.

&quot;continued pay disparity&quot;<p>here we go...

I personally don&#x27;t find anything flag worthy in this. Can the mods please unflag this?

&gt; Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had arrived on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2017 to debate the confirmation of attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions.<p>Feb 8, 2017 was a Wednesday, not a Tuesday.

Why was this flagged?

Don&#x27;t recruiters keep stats on the offers and demographics that people get?<p>I had heard wage gap wasn&#x27;t an accurate disparity in software engineering jobs. Like there isnt a cabal of people at every company conspiring against equally qualified candidates based on gender.<p>In HIRED&#x27;s report it seemed more common that people underbid themselves, and more often than not the company still gave people higher offers if they had underbid but these were still lower offers than for people that bid higher or overbid.<p>Lets work on it but we have to get the discussion right first. I think villifying a sexist boogeyman isn&#x27;t going to get us anywhere if a persistent reality is more nuanced.

I&#x27;m desperate to push the &quot;women aren&#x27;t victims&quot; narrative.<p>If we tell them they&#x27;re victims enough then they&#x27;ll believe it. There is evidence of this in other things for instance refugees who are told that they&#x27;re victims are less likely to integrate.<p>I&#x27;m more focused on pointing out that we&#x27;re all equal. If you&#x27;re a woman on my team, I&#x27;m incredibly sorry but I&#x27;m not going to celebrate your feminity any more than I&#x27;d celebrate my other colleagues manliness. You do your job and I&#x27;ll reward everyone with good pay, a bonus and a cake or two.

The only reason this garbage gets published is because it&#x27;s trendy to discriminate against white males.

This is the first thread of hn that I would label as cancer.<p>&quot;Pay gap is fake&quot; &quot;Prove it&quot; <i>Cites stuff</i> &quot;Unrelated&#x2F;invalid&quot; *Conversation derails<p>Scrollinf half way, i saw this easily 5 times.<p>It&#x27;s as if people stick to their beliefs despite any arguments that are made.