zlacker

I’m a CS graduate and female founder. I disagree with many parts of this essay, but I actually agree with this part: “The sex difference in interest in people extends to a more general interest in living things, which would explain why women who are interested in science are much more likely to pursue a career in biology or veterinary medicine than computer science“

I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives and care more than boys do about relationships with people. But I think the perception that CS is less beneficial towards people or that technologist don’t work with people as often as other professionals is false. My job as a PM at Google was incredibly social, and I felt had a huge impact on “living things”, much more so than my female friend’s role as a psychology researcher or operations associate at an insurance company. There’s a belief in society that all CS grads do is sit in caves alone and make video games, whereas the truth is that they have beautiful offices, close-knit teams, a lifestyle with time for friends, a lot of influence, and a huge impact on real people’s lives through the software they create.

Now, a related problem is that CS actually is less social for woman than in it is for men. I had very few friends in my advanced classes, whereas the dudes took those classes together in packs. I benefited a huge amount from women in CS community at my university because I felt like I knew more people in my classes, could sit, chat, and work with them. IMO, all of the dollars going towards women in STEM that this author criticized are and should continue to target these two problems: that CS is perceived as less to do with “living things” and that it actually is less social for girls because there isn’t a strong community.

>>jentho+(OP)
> I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives

I think you are on to something. This is really the critical age when the decision happens. Everything else is the just the result of this.

My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status. Women are socially smarter, so they are aware of that. Men are clueless, so they are more likely to choose programming and later they move into other CS fields.

>>jentho+(OP)
>> ...the truth is that they have beautiful offices, close-knit teams, a lifestyle with time for friends, a lot of influence, and a huge impact on real people’s lives through the software they create.

That's not "the truth", that's your experience in the amusement park that has been created for the pampered developers of the current dotcom bubble at companies like Google. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Regardless of gender, I'd rather have the doubters weeded out by an unrealistic negative perception than have them lured in by an unrealistic positive one.

>>corpMa+2e
>Women are socially smarter

What does this mean? Do women talk more? Yes. Is it substantive? Women are more willing to talk about their feelings but they also can be quite indirect compared to a man.

Women also have a reputation of being more adversarial and catty: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/why-women-...

>>jentho+(OP)
Datapoint in agreement: My sister left a very successful career as an electrical engineer in her late 20s after a very successful school career, because ultimately it became clear to her how antisocial the career was for her, and how personally unsatisfying it was. She made the transition to become a counsellor and was much happier as a result.

And I can understand why -- I did the opposite -- dropped out of my philosophy BA to go join the .com rush, and now 20 years later am a SWE @ Google -- but having come from a humanities background originally, I continue to find this culture off-putting.

And I very much would prefer to be working with 'living things' (plants) at this point in my life. If I could only make a decent living that way.

>>zxxon+yf
Fair, I apologize for generalizing. You're right that Google is an outlier in this way. But I still think that there's a perception that CS is more anti-social than it actually is, and a perception that other professions are more social than they actually are.

>>jentho+(OP)
During my career, I’ve noticed many female programmers and even PhD-level researchers switching to PM roles. PM and UX have better representations than developer roles, though I don’t think that this should be counted as success towards the overall problem.

>>jentho+Ji
In my experience, programmers are generally less socially inept than people would think, while people in most other professions are less socially adept than they think they are.

The thing is, some programmers really are socially inept and CS work is one of their last refuges. That includes a bunch of socially inept women, too! Let's not disturb their natural habitat by bringing all these overly social people in, those will thrive in many other places as well.

>>seanmc+zj
This actually goes to my point - PMing is more social than coding, and there are more female PMs and UX designers so those fields also feel more social for the women in them (easier to make friends, more feminine community).

Re:success - In my eyes, success is when women have better representation as engineers, makers, and technologists. A PM and UX designer could be a great engineer and technologist, although it's hard to keep your technical chops when you're not coding regularly. So I agree...

>>zxxon+cl
Software development is an increasingly social job NOT because the people doing it are more social, but out of necessity. Anti-social cowboy programmers just can't produce the results the industry needs at this point it in time. Stories of success like Notch are increasingly rare.

>>bluthr+Pf
Socially smarter doesn't mean better social skills.

It simply means that they are more socially aware. If you allow the metaphor, I would say that they are more likely to "play the game" and "play it well" at that.

Social skills have very little relationship to "emotional intelligence", so I have no clue why you would bring up the point that women are more willing to talk about their feelings.

You are comparing extraversion and agreeableness. While both are statistically higher in women, you are comparing apples and oranges.

Here, have some science: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

>>Raphme+cx
Thanks for the link.

>Replicating previous findings, women reported higher Big Five Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism scores than men.

Isn't this basically what got James Damore fired? Heh.

>>bluthr+mD
He worded it in a socially unaware way.

If he ranked higher in Agreeableness, he would likely have found a way to communicate the information without getting fired.

>>corpMa+2e
> My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status.

A colleague told me when out at a bar he refrains from telling women that he is a programmer because they suddenly become way more interested because they know how much $$$ programming jobs bring in. That does not sound like low social status signalling to me, but the opposite at least for males.

>>Raphme+jE
>He worded it in a socially unaware way.

I don't think so:

"Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."

Maybe if women were more agreeable they wouldn't have been so offended.

>>bluthr+dN
Agreeableness trumps Neuroticism IMHO. Neuroticism is a knee-jerk reaction that you cannot control without a lot of self-control. To expect an individual ranking high in Neuroticism to control themselves is to be blind to other's points of view. In short, it means that you do not have enough sensibility to understand and predict the reaction of others before they happen.

Agreeableness allows you to predict those reaction and plan accordingly.

>>icefox+sG
Having a high income gives a high status to men, but not to women. Women are not at all judged by their income like men are. Therefore, the fact that programmers make money attracts men to being programmers, but does not attract women.

>>seanmc+Kr
From my experience as a programmer, while some level of communication is certainly important, most of my time and effort is spent concentrating alone at the task at hand. That's the central part of the job, communication only supports it. Communication is necessary to divide work across the team and exchange experience; it also provides some psychological relief and motivation. While all of these are important, I consider the concentrated mental effort a far more important and difficult part.

>>kirill+Fj1
I personally find the social part hard and the concentrated part easy, but I’m not an a type :).

>>kirill+Fj1
Right, but isn’t this true about many other fields that women do go into, like art, design, medicine, journalism, earth sciences, finance, research, etc? In these fields, the “meat” of the job is also analytical and done alone, but they’re still seen as more social than CS.

>>seanmc+KQ1
I used to be like that when I was younger and in earlier stages of my career. As time passed, the pride of achieving the status worn off, as did the novelty of problems I was solving. Many problems turned out to be reoccurring, so I moved on to harder and less mundane problems. I keep doing that to this day - moving away from mundane work to something new and/or more difficult.

At the same time, as I grew older, my social life improved, and I learned to understand humans, so that part became easier.