Only if you write really, really bad code. Once you're able to write code that works, the interesting question is what code to write. Professional software engineering does in fact mostly consist of talking to people. I say this based on the "intense political bias" of having been a working software engineer for many years.
I don't think there are many jobs that consist primarily of working with things. I suppose jobs that are lonely by nature, like trucker or lighthouse operator, or jobs where your work product is usually developed by one person, like sculptor or fiction writer?
First of “neurotic” is a psychological term. He was using it in the scientific way, not the colloquial way.
Second, the point is not that all women cannot be programmers. It’s the fact that if the goal is to increase the number of female programmers, you need to change the nature of programming to make it more appealing to the average female. There will always be brilliant female programmers, I’ve worked with many that are better than I ever will be and I admire and learn from them every day. And there will always be women that can thrive in make-dominated areas because of their internal make-up.
But you will never get complete 50/50 gender equity until you change the nature of the job so that the average female will be more interested. That’s the point Damore was making. By making the nature of programming more appealing to more females by making the job in grain with what scientific research says are the differences between men and women, that’s how you fairly increase the number of women without biasing against men.
>First of “neurotic” is a psychological term. He was using it in the scientific way, not the colloquial way.
Whether or not it was used scientifically doesn't mean much. If I say all HN users named amw have been shown to be sociopaths, does that remove the social burden of the negative association with sociopathy even though I'm specifically referring to the diagnosis from DSM IV?
To the rest: Yes, Damore was making the point that not all women can be programmers. And he was making it with pseudoscience and "intuitive" beliefs that haven't really been shown to have any backing in the essentialist way that he and other apologists have shown them. It's kind of like saying that Charles Murray is "just" demonstrating that professional work just isn't for black people thanks to the "scientific" differences in their IQ: He's not "just" demonstrating anything, he's cherry-picking science for a conclusion he likes, a conclusion that happens to be inherently (and needlessly) discriminatory.
I disagree with a straight programmer as being a particularly social role, yes you interact with others. Most of your brain work is optimized towards a machine and that is worlds away from nursing or sales where the primary focus is on social work.
* Nursing and social work have a majority women workforce, and are much, much more stressful than any Google job by any reasonable definition of 'stressful'. At least at Google you're not worrying about being exposed to literal biohazardous material or handling actual, extensive child/elder/domestic abuse.
* Being a politician, a director, or a CEO are all extremely social positions- in fact they rely almost entirely on one's capacity to be socially persuasive. They are all almost entirely majority men.
* Computer science is very social in the workplace, by sheer need of doing code reviews. Hell, the popular workflow-du-jour is Agile, which requires regular standups, meetings, review, etc.
Computer science is quite social and pretty low-stress. By women who are apparently biologically directed to social, low-stress positions, a desk job like software development should be perfect!