zlacker

>>andren+(OP)
Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation.

One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed in than the computer software industry.

Clearly, they have something else in common. We just need to figure out what it is.

This essay, which invokes the "Google Memo", is subtly attacking a straw man. Even those almost the entire rest of STEM is better than CS, it's true that it's not balanced; it remains deeply imperfect. Physics and mechanical engineering, clustered with CS, remain the province of men. There's a expanse of STEM fields with female participation between 25-40% that you'd want to explain or correct. Is it stereotype threat? Implicit bias? Who knows? Probably not?

But that has nothing to do with why Google has so few women engineers. The work that a commercial software engineer does --- even at the lofty heights in which the profession is practiced in such a cathedral of software design as the Alphabet Corporation --- is simply not that hard; most of it is just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways.

Whatever is holding women's participation in our field at or below twenty percent is artificial, and a travesty.

>>tptace+Ti
Maybe women just see CS for what it is - 'simly not that hard, wiring form fields to databases', and think, let others tap away at the keyboards, I'll be a surgeon or whatever.

So, if that were the case, would you say that it's fair to now force these would be neuro surgeons, doctors, lawyers, microbiologists, etc.. to 'wire fields to databases', because in 2018 some people believe that has a somewhat high status in (mostly american) society?

>>qwr23q+tl
A female relative was considering a career change, but even though the salary and perks sounded nice, the work itself seemed meaningless to her.

Another friend did make the jump, mostly for the money and career opportunities and she's struggling and feeling a bit demotivated. The CS theory is quite hard, and it's not something she's especially interested in.

These anecdotes don't prove anything, but I've been thinking for a while if the mental toll of this profession is really worth it.

We say that the others didn't make it into the industry, but what if the others are clever enough to avoid having to spend all day in front of a computer working on very abstract things that aren't really understood by most of the people in their lives, including their managers and a significant number of their colleagues.

Having to spend their free time studying just to keep up with the latest fashion, doing overtime, going through the interview gauntlet every damn time, getting shafted by incompetent business leaders and managers.

Programmers are kind of the punching bag of the software industry.