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

Seriously? Why does it even matter if women don't want to work in CS? Why do we software "engineers" have the ego to think that we work in some great occupation and it's a "travesty" that women largely don't have any interest in working sitting in front of a computer all day.

We are glorified mechanics. Glorified by ourselves. We mostly build intellectually draining CRUD apps mostly and earn shit wages in super expensive cities like SF. Half of us are indentured servants via the H1b system. I think women are smart that they want absolutely nothing to do with this field.

We really need to get off of our high horses and stop believing we are "changing the world" via JavaScript.

>>rvo+cC
Because software engineers consistently become involved in designing, clarifying, and solving the problems themselves, and companies consistently make mistakes that should be avoidable if that had more than zero women or minority staff working on the problem scope and definition.

See, for example, "HP doesn't care about black people," the ongoing trend of tech devices that are sized for men's bodies and hands and not women, social networks that fail to consider how a stalker could exploit their access policies, etc.

>>fixerm+GE
Ok, framing diversity hires as a way to sell product to other populations at least seems honest. It also explains why diversity hires are also underpaid. But a lot of the discussion around this seems to be about morality and "inclusion" based on people's chromosomes and melanin levels.

Similarly, I know that as an h1b hire, more often than not, I am just cheaper. No, the company is not hiring me because "I am the best in the world". I fear negotiating salary, fear leaving and am a little underpaid compared to the numbers I see on HN.

I hope women don't degrade themselves like we do to feed the massive profits of the big tech companies. I have faith that women are generally way more sensible then us guys and won't put up with this crap. Being a developer can be isolating, depressing and lonely.