Are you going to apply that theory to software development also?

The unfortunate fact about this sort of freedom is that all reduces to personal enterprise. Don't have enough of it. The bad news is you are likely to do nothing no matter how easy things are made for you. Have good enough amount of it you see people doing all sort of good stuff in war zones and refugee camps too.

The thing about freedom especially in the modern context is its all on you.

In the software field these days you can learn and do anything you want with may be few hundred dollars worth investment. You have plenty of free/cheap books, chrome books, free linux and a lot of online mentoring should you want to learn and do something.

If the complain is that its hard. Then guess what, anything worth doing is hard. You are unlikely to do anything significant in any profession by just coasting around. And that's true for people of all identities not just a specific gender.

I have to wonder if folks like yourself ever give it a rest and just actually read what someone has written without spending every second of it looking for a reason to get self-righteous.

To be fair, the dev market has the luxury to be a forefront in addressing sexism issues properly. Essentially, we're all suppose to be level headed, contemplative, long term thinking, logical people. The fact a majority of companies have allowed ambulance-chasing, popularity contest politics to run the show instead of going, "You know what, let's figure out how to properly address and solve the issue", pisses me off. I get where you're coming from, but there is some truth to it. I just think the conversation has become to politically polarized and both sides are just regurgitating the same nonsense without wanting to accomplish anything. This is why I hate politics, so so much.

But on the other hand, there are dirty jobs and jobs of passion. Trucking is a dirty job, not a passion job. No one does it for fun or as a hobby. Lots of people are not pro devs, don't intend to be, but still do it for fun. That distinction must be made first. A job isn't "a job". Some are done just for the paycheck and that's it. Some are done because you truly enjoy or believe in what you do. Shit jobs for shit pay are typically for guys, let's be honest. I wouldn't want my nieces ever doing it. My nephew, that lazy bum needs hard work in his life. Once you realize "This is a shit job, with shit pay and a shit lifestyle", I think that gender ratio argument is kind of meaningless.

I'm laughing, especially with your description of Cali just above. (but I agree with what you've said, in this comment and elsewhere in the thread)

Maybe things have improved a little, but in the old days, programming meant sitting in the basement without natural light, staring at a screen most of the time. Yes, there are meetings, but meetings also suck.

These days, maybe it is not the basement anymore, instead you have open plan offices with hundreds or workers.

It's probably much more healthy to take a job with frequent human interactions. Surprise: these are the kind of jobs women tend to take.

Look at a standard office building. Check where the developers are sitting. Then check where the women from marketing and human resources are sitting. I wouldn't be surprised if even today, you'll find marketing in the well lit corner offices.

I know what career field you SHOULDN'T enter!

Here's a better example. No BS recruiter. Some salty old recruiter, on their last day before they retire. So they're just going to say it like it is. Here's the conversation to anyone:

"Alright, you have a high school diploma, no college, in decent shape as you like to work out, a misdemeanor and debt. I can give you a job where you shower every other day if you're lucky, eat nothing but fast food, get treated like crap by management, sit all day so you can develop back problems, visit home about 3 to 4 days out of every month, spend your time in middle of no where parts of America, get terrible sleep every single night and get paid around 500 dollars a week if you get the miles."

So again, women are generally not dumb enough to go "Sure". Most women are smart enough to go "I can make that same money elsewhere and still have a life without feeling like shit about myself." And this type of job is not available to single working moms since taking a kid with you is a general no-no. You can get passes for like a week stint from what I know. But that's it. Only authorized personnel are allowed in company vehicles. Most, no kids, period. Even if you're a guy.

It's not like there's prestige to being a truck driver either. No one goes "Mommy, daddy, I want to be a truck driver when I grow up!". The response would probably be, "Oh God... I've failed as a parent."

Look, as a software dev, yea, there are too few women in the field. Engineering in general. But this isn't about how to get women into engineering. It's about people thinking trucking driving is a fantastic job with lots of money just falling from the sky.

It isn't. There's a reason no one wants to do it.

If you want to have the discussion about the absolute need of dev teams needing to have women in them that goes beyond political rhetoric, I'm game. Because I'm fully for it. No immature obvious reasons either. Women bring vastly different mindsets and thought patterns that can take a mediocre team into ace level. I've seen it happen twice with about a 20/80 ratio. It more proves to my theory of the fact that good engineering teams are also more than their technical skill sets combined. Which, this also falls to there are different types and subsets of intelligence. I'm going to ramble on this because I'm writing a paper on this theory to try getting my company to test this out.

The family part, it is what it is. You can't force families to force what they want their kids to do. If that was true, I'd be a lawyer or doctor instead. Which I would have hated. Greatly. People have to be open and honest with themselves so they can do right to their kids. My nieces have me to introduce them to math, science, and engineering. I make sure not to be obnoxious about it, so they don't hate it. But I plant enough info about it in them so when they get into high school/college, they have a foundation to make the decision as to what to pursue and never be left behind. My nephew... yea, whatever. I think he'll end up living on his sisters' couch if he's lucky. But at the same time, the girls like to draw too. One's really damn good at it too. So I'm the one that buys them a fuckton of art supplies too. People like what they like. I know the whole issue with a lack of women in STEM+C, but I won't force it on them. I'll just make sure that they are comfortable with it if they choose to do it. But at the same time, the problem is, what if medical if their thing but they don't know it yet. Well, in reality, they have their mom for that. But let's say they didn't. I mean, that sucks when you think about it. At the same time, you can't solve all problems in all situations. My biggest issue is, most of the people who complain about it, aren't even doing what I'm doing. I think if less effort was out there complaining that women aren't in STEM+C and more effort was placed on encouraging young girls to do it, in the next 10-20 years, there might be little to complain about. Granted, my nieces are lucky. I never had someone like me to introduce them to STEM+C. One thing I did, I taught them how to figure and utilize angles, do proper measurements, and alter scale by building cardboard planes and figuring out the best designs for distance. That, I think, does more than just repeating "You need to do STEM, you need to do STEM, you need to do STEM". You got to give reasons to care about the maths and the science. But stop them from blowing the house up... that's a legit problem sometimes.

Sexism is obviously an issue too. One that I notice women who exodus the Cali market and went elsewhere (I'm in FL), seem to say "It's better here". Which, I'm not saying it's non-existent here, I didn't think it was any better or worse for a long time, but I've learned the Cali market is toxic as fuck. I mean, to hear once or twice that women feel more comfortable in FL in general, I wonder what isolated shithole they came from. When it's quite a few, I realize it's just Cali in general. Obviously it's not restricted to Cali, but I'm noticing a pattern that it's real bad in Cali as a whole. Plus, I notice more engineers from the Cali market under the age of 30 are really... not socially equipped. At all. I'm bad in comparison to my circle. These kids from Cali, make me look like some great charismatic leader. I wonder sometimes if some of these guys have people locked in their house that they've drugged. Misery style. I get creeped out when I have to visit. I legitimately think a lot of those guys really don't know how to talk to people in general. Huge departure from the old school guys I know, who were considered socially bad in their time. This new generation is worse. Then get them in front of a woman, the dude is absolutely just dumb. Next, give him an iota of managerial power. Guy who can't take rejection of any sort in a mature manner, then gets managerial power over a woman. Yea, it's a bad situation for her. So, if I was a woman in Silicon Valley, no, I wouldn't do it. Seriously. To hell with that shit. Let's reverse it out. Let's say dudes are the minority and I had to put up with that shit. Fuck it. Nah. Reminds me of Horrible Bosses, the dentist part. I'd prefer working lawncare in the summer instead. At least I'd keep a nice tan again. Actually, as a guy in a guy dominated market over in Cali... fuck it. Lawncare. I'm not dealing with it. The people are just backwards when it comes to dealing with other humans. It's a problem, I can't answer. It's an honest bad problem. And to be honest, I also feel it's an issue of witness guys not standing up and being men when they see it happen. Take the Weinstein shit going on. All these guys going "I knew about it but did nothing." Being a man is about stopping bad/dumb shit from happening, especially to women. That's the way I was raised. Don't let bad shit happen to other people, period. Society has made it difficult to stand up for someone else, for anything, without getting flagged for some other dumb shit. It's a bad cycle that needs to be broken at some point. I'm not equipped to answer it on a wide scope scale. I can only deal with it on my own local scale. And since I'm ragging on Cali, Florida has better beaches :P

It's all an interesting conversation I don't mind having. HN just doesn't seem like the place. This font makes it impossible for me to read, keep track and properly edit what I write.

I knew a software developer who purposefully became a truck driver because he enjoyed it. That was long time ago when conditions might have been better though.