Re:Autism and gender imbalance in tech
by oddlyaromatic on Sunday August 06, 2017 @08:32PM
(#14944519)
Wait could there really be two nerdy dudes interested in complicated stuff who never saw themselves as possibly working with computers? Like how could they have avoided the countless examples of famous male computer-related millionaires? Do you think, if there are such dudes, there are as many of them as there are women who never thought of themselves as "technical" or whatever? That seems really daft.
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Re:Autism and gender imbalance in tech
by disgruntledphd2 on Monday August 07, 2017 @05:49AM
(#14946342)
I was. I didn't learn to program until I was 28, despite being interested in maths, engineering and technical topics my entire life.
I started because I needed a statistical model that SPSS didn't provide, and quickly realised that coding is one of the most fun things in the world.
Re:Autism and gender imbalance in tech
by oddlyaromatic on Monday August 07, 2017 @06:41AM
(#14946519)
Indeed! And I'm not trying to argue that you should have learned programming earlier. Just that you weren't "nudged" away from technical topics as many times as a woman might have been. You would not, for example, have run into serious people who somehow believe (or seem to) that your whole sex is less capable of working in that area. On the scale of large populations, ideas like that would have an impact on enough career choices to move the needle. I don't think everything has to be 50/50 in order to be "right". But each person should feel like their choices in where and how to work are limited by their preferences, and actual success at carrying out the work, not by some BS assignment of "suitable jobs" made at birth.