On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by arnioxux on Monday August 07, 2017 @05:02PM (#14951237)

Rather than looking at the math ability distribution as a proxy, why not look at coding competition ability? They are pretty objective since an autograder doesn't know your gender and they are predictive of whether you can pass a tech interview since it's the same format.

In that case, even at the IOI level (high school, so 14-18 year old kids) women are already severely underrepresented: https://www.quora.com/How-has-female-students-participation-...

You see the same thing at the college level too (for example topcoder where they isn't even any possibility for a sexist team selection bias since anyone can just register and compete).

In some sense, it makes it not tech industry's fault. It's a failure of our education/training pipeline where we are not training competitive women even from an early age.

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Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by lawnchair_larry on Monday August 07, 2017 @05:52PM (#14951573)

I see that you said "compete". Testosterone has effects on competition, so there could still be bias there.

Competitions are overrepresented by people who think they can win. We are taught that confidence and overconfidence skews male.

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Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by Udik on Monday August 07, 2017 @07:11PM (#14952060)

> Testosterone has effects on competition, so there could still be bias there

Oh. And that would be a biological, innate difference in behaviour between men and women, wouldn't it?

And even if women are as good as men at maths or computer programming- which wouldn't surprise me much- can't they be just less interested in it, just in the same way they're less interested (as you seem to imply) in competition?

And could I be as good as the average woman in teaching or as a nurse? Possible. Am I interested in it? No.

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Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by lawnchair_larry on Monday August 07, 2017 @09:23PM (#14952735)

I don't know why those are directed at me. I didn't say otherwise!

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Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by s73ver on Monday August 07, 2017 @07:55PM (#14952301)

But are they less interested just because? Or less interested because of things like Uber?

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Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by Udik on Monday August 07, 2017 @08:22PM (#14952407)

Because, do you think sitting eight hours a day behind a desk trying to find a way to instruct a machine to do something you already know how to do, is a particularly appealing job? Can you imagine the amount of fulfilling human interactions a nurse has every day in the hours you spend looking at that damn screen? I mean, maybe they don't do it just because they can actually do something better.

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Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by s73ver on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @12:24PM (#14959443)

I mean, I clearly do as that is my profession. And I really don't think the decision is between "nurse" and "software engineer".

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Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by gdix on Monday August 07, 2017 @06:29PM (#14951799)

So if confidence is a major factor, is it possible that affirmative action affects confidence negatively in the people that it is meant to support?

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Re:On managing outrage in Silicon Valley by lawnchair_larry on Monday August 07, 2017 @06:35PM (#14951847)

I have no idea. Maybe?

I wasn't taking a position on the debate either, just pointing out that specific argument could be problematic.

Regardless, I'm opposed to affirmative action for many other reasons anyway.

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