In her article, she explains her hypothesis that women leave top-flight STEM/academic careers because the demands (and, crucially, when they must be met: 20s & 30s) conflict with the demands of bearing children during a woman's most-likely-to-be-successful childbearing years. She goes on to suggest that creating more supports for mothers such as affordable childcare and possibly collaborative academic working environments might mitigate the issue.

What leads you to think primarily about "passion" & socialization? It seems almost as though we read different articles, I didn't see anything about that.

This is not a sufficient explanation. There’s more women in law and medicine, which are equally, if not more demanding. There must be something else - the nature of work (more people, less machines), the atmosphere (less bro, more professional), the pay (STEM careers plateau quickly)...

> There’s more women in law and medicine, which are equally, if not more demanding.

There exists plenty of gender disparity within these fields. Many more women in pediatrics, obgyn and family law, many more men in surgery, for instance. I'd like to see a study of these disparities to see if the subfields women choose have the benefits this author suggest is a major cause of women leaving STEM.

Law and medicine don't Logan's run you out with a constantly and pointlessly changing tech stack every five years.

It would happen in medicine if the public generally knew the truth.

The risk of a medical error rises by about 1% for every year a doctor is out of school.

Either AMA's continuing education requirements are lacking, or something else is at work.

I've heard that number before, where is it from? Does it control for the idea that more experienced practitioners tend to be called on for more complex operations?

This article suggests that while errors increase with the age of the practitioner, mortality does not. The difference is more likely to result from differences in training. There is also a lot of variation between individuals, with some older doctors far outperforming their younger counterparts.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/should-doctors-age-ma...

Law and medicine allow for maternity leave.

In academia, you have a set amount of time to get tenure. It is not extended for pregnancy. If you don't get tenure, your career is basically over.

While the article talks about leaving STEM it focuses on PhDs and academia. This is an academia problem, it's not specific to STEM.

I’ve heard pregnancy gave you an extra year

Yes, and this is discussed in the article too.

I don’t have any compelling evidence at hand, but professionals on STEM fields usually seem compelled to engage on career-related activities off their work hours, which is pretty much impossible during childbearing years.

You’ve never met a doctor in his/her prime? Doctors are extremely overworked in their late 20s.

It's right there in the article. You can't take a break from academia. Well, you can, but your career prospects suffer horribly. A quote: "Taking a year off during that critical 5 or 6 year period often means that the research “goes bad” ... You wind up needing to rebuild much more than just a year’s worth of effort."

Compare it with e.g. big tech - a hypothetical female PM who has just completed a big project can go off on a maternity leave and return to the memories of her success slightly faded, her contacts gone slightly cold, but otherwise she can start more or less where she left.

There is a sufficient explanation in TFA.

Also women in business.

Law and medicine are traditionally seen as high status and may retain women longer, but certainly, suffer the same issue; women over 30 drop off dramatically in law as they leave to become parents.

Great synopsis of the article. Nothing about GP's comment relates to the article's points. In case anyone's reading these comments who hasn't read the article, it's super worth reading.

The GP comment is worth a thought though

Having kids changes a lot of priorities about passion and socialization, although this generally affects all genders.

Sort of, but generally speaking, in the work world, men are rewarded for having families and women's careers are penalized on multiple levels.

Dad's are paid more, more sympathetic and even cheered on when they leave early for the talent show. Women on the other hand are considered less committed, less capable and less flexible.

Is there a Paul Graham like post out there about children from a woman’s perspective?

http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html

Yes from her description it does seem like childcare would help a lot. But one of the other things she mentions is the moving (city/state) as well as travel. But sure looks like childcare would go a long way in helping.

I don’t think we would build “science towns” like Los Alamos in this day and age, but that would probably help as well.

I'm a little confused why work-life balance is the 'alternative' argument when it feels very much contiguous to the ones we already know and discuss, which is why I wrote what I wrote. Clearly, several people agree with you that what I said is a non-sequitur. My initial instinct was to agree, but trying to formulate a worthy reply and referring back to the article, I've decided to disagree.

She's talking post-engagement, I wrote about pre-engagement, but was thinking about both. People get it coming and going.

We have this not-at-all accurate mindset about professionalism and self-sacrifice, that 'everybody is doing it' but 'everyone' is mostly young, unattached men with something to prove. It's the Prisoner's Dilemma and young men defect. Immediately.

One of the things I value most about trying to get men to look at toxic masculinity is pointing out the self-harming aspects, showing how it's not that great a bargain. To demand better for themselves, and of themselves. I think the unattached bachelor who can work 60 hours a week 'with no consequences' is toxic, at least a little bit. We should all say 'yes' to anything that is not that. Travel, partners, relatives, children, volunteer work. Hell, throw pinball games and scifi conventions in too, not because I equate those with the first things on that list, but because I have taken the long way around to find that "there's work to do" should be a lower priority than self-care. Adjust your own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs. Advice I need to follow better myself.

I just spent a bunch of time writing down some specific examples, but it was starting to feel like a cherry-picked narrative about myself, which my partner teases me about, so block-delete. Suffice it to say that at the bottom of it I came away with this thought: I think 'treating people the same' but still volunteering yourself for things you shouldn't expect from others is not actually 'treating people the same'. If you never say, do, or look away from a single directly disrespectful thing in your whole life there are still a dozen ways you can contribute to a hostile environment.

In child development I think they call this 'bidding'. The child observes differential behavior from their guardians and tailors their interactions to maximize their returns, and things can get pretty out of control unless the parents communicate with each other, respect each other's concerns, and agree on boundaries.

Solidarity counts a lot. Maybe more than anything. And solidarity will, I believe, give you family leave, gap years, partial leave, childcare near work, hobbies... but those things without solidarity are just salves on a wound that never heals.

> And one of the consequences of this is that I'm not confident that if I show up to interview at a startup that I'm going to exhibit the degree of 'passion' they're looking for.

This is good, though. If you faked the passion, you might wind up surrounded by lunatics who actually believe their iOS app is going to save the world.

Also, this "passion", most of the time, is just a word that has been co-opted by the owner class to mean "working nights and weekends".

Yeah, I had that pattern in mind as I was choosing my phrasing.

Coworkers know that they can come to me and say, "hey dude, your code is busted and 4 people can't get work done," I'll drop everything and fix it if I can't give you a workaround (and it'll bug me until I do fix it). I like that passion in others. I get into a little trouble when that passion is about completely fixable things that are dragging down productivity and morale. I'm not particularly repentant about that either.

But when it's some tie telling me we have to work weekends because they didn't listen when we told them "shipping this functionality by April 3rd is a dangerous fiction and you need to come up with a new plan?" you're on your own pal. If you can't hear 'no' then you can't make useful contingencies. Also it probably means you don't respect the people I respect and that's gonna be a problem.

It sounds like your priorities are in order.

My passion rears its ugly head when my team is asked to take shortcuts and ship garbage to meet deadlines. It also comes out when we're asked to implement half-baked ideas without having the chance to meet and question the ideators and refine those ideas into something workable.

I did not mean to imply that there isn't a ton of other unwarranted bullshit they have to deal with. Reading it back to myself, that wasn't clear at all.

Is this poster for real? I am not sure how this got top upvotes since it doesn't seem to be about the article at all. The article was about women in STEM academia which doesn't seem to be at all about women whiffing a poster's reality.

The article is about women in STEM academia which is a tiny subset of women in the STEM workforce. Some STEM professions do a better job of retaining women than others.

> got top upvotes

Is it really? That’s disappointing.

Remember "The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21774299

This one, I saw also today ..

Institutions in the country introduced gender quotas for internal committees and boards in an effort to reduce bias during hiring and other inequalities, but such measures themselves are now being labelled potential hindrances to female progression because the roles cost women career-crucial research time.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/germany-mulls-extr...

> you have some unresolved issues that you need to work through if you so desperately need to believe how transformative your work is going to be.

I think those issues are called narcissism.

You're not wrong, but it has a different timbre when low self esteem is at the root of it, and that's what I was thinking of in particular.

You're basically attaching your identity (being okay with who you are, really) to a future event. One that you can influence but not really control. And I suspect it makes you easier to manipulate, and burnout all that much more powerful when it doesn't happen.

I think there are plenty of people who believe "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." I'm lucky enough that my job is both interesting and impactful. The people that surround me are either incredible scientists or like working for a company that strives to, and does, make an impact in the world.

I think it's perfectly fine to not care about your job to a higher degree than necessary, and I also think it's fine to seek out work based on social impact rather than salary. Most people can't have it both ways, and end up having to make a choice at some point.

I've been guilty of that myself. Question is, which problem? There are so many problems (some of them personal, some of them management won't say out loud) and everyone has their own priority queue.

Maybe the real problem isn't even technical. Maybe Jim and Tom just hate each other because something happened when they first met. We can keep arguing about haproxy vs nginx 'til the cows come home, or I could say to myself, "Hey, they both listen to Kevin, I'm gonna go ask him for a favor..." but that's kinda passing the buck.

My biggest success not falling back to other people for this was Ben, who yelled at me - in an open office plan - the first time I asked him for help. It took most of a year of me making smalltalk at the coffee machine before he was happy to see me coming, instead of avoiding eye contact. I think at some point he figured out we think alike on certain BS technical limitations, and then I started getting smiles.

If you can't tell from this that I'm fond of cats, especially shy or cantankerous ones, well...

> Question is, which problem?

My problems, of course.

Right? Except I have to politely disagree with you, because wait until you hear about my problems.

Men are hardwired to ascend to the top of the hierachy so they can access all the women. That's why male billonaires will risk their fortune to make another billion.

Women are not rewarded biologically for being the top 2% in their industry. It's almost as if the higher women climb career wise the fewer dating options they have because women tend to want men that are even higher on the totem pole.

Outside of a score keeping system, each additional dollar is less rewarding very quickly once you pass $150k in income.

Oh, here comes the evolutionary psychology nonsense.

The world doesn't revolve around dating.

And what about lesbians? Do they benefit from being in the top 2%, according to your logic? They would still "access all the women"

It is also a bit disturbing that yoh believe being a billionaire gives you access to all the women.

> The world doesn't revolve around dating.

Why not? All of evolution is derived from it.

How does your theory account for the 98% of men who are not top 2%?

Well, it probably assumes that the 98% are eager to throw themselves in the rat race in trying to become that top 2% or at least closer to them; the fact that they won't get there doesn't mean that there isn't a drive to optimize your career to try.

Great question, and there are multiple explanations that can work, although I disagree with the previous poster:

There is more than one hierarchy of competence. For each occupation, hobby and skill there's it's own hierarchy. So if there's ~30 hierarchies, approximately half of competitors are going to be in top 2% of at least one.

Edit: and if we're talking about purely monetary measures, have a read: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704409004576146...

Life is not a game, stop trying to win it.

But I think you know that already.

It just so happens I have a hidden camera video of you at one of these interviews. :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtwXlIwozog

It's okay to be jaded, but to present that as coming from wisdom that others are missing is both self-congratulatory and lacking in self-awareness.

I think you misrepresent startup founders. Most I've met are generally very smart people and they've read The Remains of the Day too so it's not like they're this nerd-in-the-basement fantasy you get from the movies. The Hollywood fantasy is dead.

I'm only saying this so that young fellows browsing HN from their computers at university aren't immediately discouraged. To them: The world is very exciting here. You can find a team and work happily and passionately on something you care about. You will be fine. It is probable that you will be better for it. Good luck!

It's hard to find the right tone between "things need to change" and "everything is horrible".

Good teamwork is just about my favorite thing (I even prefer co-op games to solo). You might find it, for sure you can build it, and even when you have to work your butt off for it, I think it's still less work than killing yourself 60+ hours a week.