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1. comman+(OP)[view] [source] 2018-01-19 16:35:51
I can't help but think that a lot of people say "tech culture" when they mean "San Fransisco/Silicon Valley tech companies", because these observations are a different world than the one I live in. I didn't graduate from MIT or Standford, so I wasn't recruited to go work on space shuttles after I graduated, I was stuck doing the "enterprise CRUD" type jobs that I didn't even realize I was supposed to hate (I was grateful to have the sort of job that let me sit in an air conditioned office and drink coffee all day). I spent four years in central Illinois in the mid 90's and, although it's true that the places I worked were predominantly white, they were also completely gender-balanced - I didn't do a headcount, but it sure looked like there were as many women there, doing technical-type jobs, as there were men. In the late 90's I moved down to north Texas and there was a shocking demographic shift in the sorts of tech companies I worked at. I've been here now for 20 years across five different employers and without exception they've all been pretty much gender balanced, but _dominated_ by Indians. So maybe 60/40 men vs. women but 95/5 Indians vs. anybody else. So it seems a little strange for me to hear somebody say that women are, say, 10% less represented in the "tech industry" than they ought to be and say that this is evidence of a vast conspiracy while ignoring what seems to me to be the elephant in the room.
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