> Nobody suggests that women are somehow naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it.

It was not about "inclination", but rather that the current engineering culture tended to be lean a certain way when it comes to focus:

> Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait).[15] Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.[1][14]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...

He argued that if Google wanted to change the gender balance in their engineering divisions, they had to change the types of things that can be worked on:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory

Google wants more women in engineering (which isn't a bad thing), but do they have a similar program for getting more men into HR?

As to gender balance in professions: are there initiatives to get more men into nursing or kindergarten / primary education, and women into plumbing or carpentry?

There are economic factors associated with being a primary educator. The pay, for lack of a better way to put it, sucks. This impacts men and women.

My wife and I went through Physics grad school together. To say that the experience was hostile for her, and many other women, would be an understatement.

My daughter is contemplating grad school for next year (senior in college, its been an interesting year). We've been open/honest about the challenges she'll face in Physics, but the state of things is much better now than it was when we went through 30 years ago (ouch). Given that she runs circles around most of her fellow students, I'm not the least bit worried on the academic side.

My concern, as all fathers of exceptional daughters should be (I guess that's all of us?) is the cultural aspects of programs, and potential jobs. I use the word "place" below to discuss grad school and/or jobs.

If the place is overtly hostile, its a hard pass. No need to waste time with that. Think Uber, and other tech-bro places.

If the place is passive aggressive hostile, there are strategies to cope, but again, biased towards pass. Passive aggressive hostility wears on you.

If the place is open, and sane. Worth a look.

Think about the economic aspect of this. You the enlightened consumer/producer of product (grad school, job) have more information than ever about the quality of life at these places. If a place is just bad, they will lose at attracting sufficient consumers/producers of producers. Which means they will have lower ability to operate in market.

Bigger picture. Women are not intrinsically less able to do quantitative or analytical work. Environments that are not conducive to them doing this work will tend to depress the population of them doing this work. Environments which are freer from these stresses will tend to accumulate population doing this work.

I think it might be simple as that. Its not about ability. Its about environment.

> I think it might be simple as that. Its not about ability. Its about environment.

Which is how I interpreted what Damore was trying to do with his memo: saying that women are capable, but that the environment was not appealing to them. Either/both of (a) what they got to work on, and/or (b) how they were treated.

IMHO, men and women perceive and react to the world differently, and treating them the same is foolish and counter-productive. Damore was simply pointing out those differences.

I found The Female Brain a good book on this topic:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Brain_(book)

I generally disagree with broad brush strokes of articles and books that make such cases. I find this to be a watered down variant on Phrenology[1], but rather than using physical skull measurements, people invoke the existence of two X chromosomes to offer explanations of differences.

I've worked with/for brilliant female scientists and engineers before. I personally believe that what makes a good scientist or engineer is a profound insatiable curiosity, and a drive to understand. I've seen this in both females and males.

My point was, when you encourage this, and you help the person understand and adapt to challenges they may face, society is often better off, as we have added to our scientific and engineering pool of talent. If you discourage this by saying "your brain is different", or "you are more interested in feelings than quantitative science", we wind up with a discouraging environment for 1/2 of our prospective scientists and engineers.

I don't see how the latter is a good thing. Damore had a right to author his text. I'd argue that sending it out to others in his company was a bad idea ... generally one should separate personal politics from corporate life. But I disagree with numerous things in the text (I read it when it came out).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

> I generally disagree with broad brush strokes of articles and books that make such cases. I find this to be a watered down variant on Phrenology[1], but rather than using physical skull measurements, people invoke the existence of two X chromosomes to offer explanations of differences.

The difference in chromosomes trigger all sorts changes in the development cycle of humans. Unless you want to argue that males having 10x the testosterone levels has no effect on behaviour. Not to mention all sorts of differences in brain structures.

This is a hunch, but I doubt many of the other commentors in this thread have an adult daughter navigating these issues. Thanks for your perspective!

The context of the memo was slightly different. Google would love to reach some kind of 50/50 gender balance internally. The point of the memo was that 1) it is possible that the current google will never be able to reach that balance due to individual choices and 2) suggestions on how to make that goal easier to achieve (for example using performances in teams rather than performances as independent contributor as internal metrics).

From my point of view the current situation is that many organizations are both hostile to women and desperate not to be. what I think was really useful of the Damore memo is that it tried to point a way on how to change institutions to be more inclusive by default.

For sure it would not solve 100% of the problem, maybe just 5%, but I actually think it would have made the remaining 95% easier to solve also.

> I think it might be simple as that. Its not about ability. Its about environment.

Agree, but it's also about preferences. When a woman has to choose between medicine, arts, economics, law, education, IT and other fields, they tend to prefer IT less than men. It's just that there are so many other good options.

If you control by the amount of time invested and passion you would probably see little discrimination.

My daughter started in Art school at the university, then switched to Physics/Math. She is passionate about art, but found the environment hostile. She was welcomed with open arms in the physics, math, and engineering schools, and is passionate about research. She finds herself encouraged and working in a supportive research group now.

> We've been open/honest about the challenges she'll face in Physics

Why would you disadvantage her by poisoning her mind like that? Also, were you open/honest about the advantages she'd have for being a woman in physics? Extra programs, scholarships, internships, guidance, resources, etc set aside for her?

> My concern, as all fathers of exceptional daughters should be (I guess that's all of us?) is the cultural aspects of programs, and potential jobs.

If it was all of us, then it wouldn't be exceptional would it? It would be commonplace/universal, the opposite of exceptional.

> Its not about ability. Its about environment.

It's about personal choice. In wealthier liberal countries where women have choice, they don't go STEM careers. In poor traditional countries where women have little choice, they go to STEM careers. It's not about "passive agressive hostility" otherwise no women would work in nursing. It's about having the ability to do what you want.

"What’s more, the countries that minted the most female college graduates in fields like science, engineering, or math were also some of the least gender-equal countries. They posit that this is because the countries that empower women also empower them, indirectly, to pick whatever career they’d enjoy most and be best at."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

"The trend was most pronounced in places like Norway, Finland, and Sweden. Although this region is known for policies and a cultural outlook that supports greater gender equality, relatively few girls pursue STEM degrees there, when compared to places like Algeria or Turkey."

https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/the-downside-to-greater-ge...

> As to gender balance in professions: are there initiatives to get more ... women into plumbing or carpentry?

Yes, there are. A lot of public construction projects have goals for minorities and women as a percentage of the labor on the job site. Firms owned by women, minorities, and service-disabled veterans are given priority in the bidding process through different mechanisms. Most of the trade unions have programs to recruit women into the trades.

Not just architecture, also medicine and law. The whole question is what's different about math, CS, engineering and the physical sciences that makes it so much harder to reach gender balance there? If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.

> If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory

Another example: what is the gender balance in pilots versus flight attendants?

Microbiology is “things, not people” and is far more balanced.

One counterexample doesn't "disprove" the correlation. (Mostly because the example is in the correlation already, and the correlation holds, plus it's just a correlation.)

The comment I responded to very clearly implies that this "things, not people" is the reason for gender imbalance in CS. They are doing far more than identifying a correlation.

That can be one of many factors. The alleged claim is that "CS fits nicely in this model", whether microbiology also fits is a different question. Also microbiology is closer to medical field than engineering.

> The alleged claim is that "CS fits nicely in this model"

And there is no evidence provided for this at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129035 sorry for crude link to links

How is architecture any less about 'things' than software engineering?

The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit. Is Facebook not about people? Airbnb? Uber?

It may be that these companies, perhaps inadvertently, choose to hire people who don't focus on the people-related aspects of their roles. But it's obvious that empathy and an interest in people would in fact be very useful at many tech companies.

Architects design buildings for people, take people's needs into consideration, etc.

Software naturally has that side too. And Google is ironically pretty bad at this, because somehow it always ends up too borg-ish. They do need more people-focused people, but so far they ended up just selecting for people who are willing to work for them, but haven't really changed. (Ironically, Damore was right in this.)

Lots of architects are also pretty bad at taking people's needs into account. There's still more women in the profession.

>"The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit."

Is it? Or have you simply not taken a moment to do a little bit of research?

Here is a study with 500,000 participants, for example:

"Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension.

"Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests.

"Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests. "

[1] Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests. Psychological Bulletin 135(6):859-84 · November 2009

Here's another:

"Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People.

"We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure.

"Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."

[2] Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People. Horm Behav. 2011 Sep; 60(4): 313–317. Published online 2011 Jun 12. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.06.002

You've missed what his comment was about, it's not that the things vs people dichotomy doesn't exist. It's that it has no relation to engineering. Architecture is just as much things over people as engineering, Architecture is balaanced, engineering isn't. The problem is that in reality, you can do engineering from a people first approach or from a things first approach, and in reality, only one of those approaches will get you through university and into Google.

I take the engineering-from-a-things-first-approach bridge. You feel free to enjoy the other one. I'm sure you'll feel very validated as you spiral into the abyss

Most software engineering jobs aren't predominantly about things rather than people, so I doubt any of that research is relevant, regardless of its quality. You can't just uncritically lump software engineering in with "science", "engineering" and "mathematics" (themselves enormously diverse fields).

It's dangerous to do a "little bit" of research. What you'd actually need to do to get any information (if any really exists in this domain, which I doubt) is to become an expert and read through thousands of papers and books, including all the critiques of the ones you cite.

That doesn't follow suit with the history of computer science however. Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development.

Nowadays software dev is highly collaborative and social. It faced declining amounts of graduates that were women from the late-80s and onwards compared to engineering and the physical sciences which if I'm recalling correctly have steadily rose.

1. It does follow if you add in the money & prestige aspect. For a long time software development was neither lucrative nor prestigious so a lot of men simply weren't interested. As economic expectations for computer science careers grew, so did the number of men.

2. I personally don't find software dev collaborative or social in any meaningful way compared to other careers or industries.

Women are the majority of CS grads in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find that they are many women studying CS in third-world countries that typically are less "gender egalitarian" than Western countries.

In wealthy, western countries giving men and women the choice of what to study without having to think too much about where they'll end up in society, that's where you see the most gender imbalance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to explain the drop in CS grads.

So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly holds for the entirety of STEM and yet we've seen woman graduates in STEM steadily rise across the board except for CS. Therefore that would make CS an outlier and not the norm.

That's assuming the gender equality paradox holds true which is likely not the case considering the issues with the assertion brought up in the Wikipedia article you linked (which I hope you read).

from the 80s there were huge advances in mainstream feminism. For many people it was around 1998-2008 that a lot of people in their circle became feminist

The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS) in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc.

The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why "women care more about people" and "men care more about things".

That wasn't the argument I was making. Please don't change the topic. I don't dispute that there are more women studying engineering in said countries, what I asked you was a very specific question.

Why did Computer Science of all STEM degrees face a drop in female graduates versus the others?

And if you're making the argument that 'women care more about people' and 'men care more about things' then I'm going to disagree heavily considering it doesn't relate to modern day software development. Current development is highly collaborative, constantly dealing with other people whether it's customers or members of your team. In fact, back when CS was at its peak of women obtaining CS degrees, that was when CS was more focused on things and less on people as a result of software still being a niche and local thing. That argument doesn't work considering the history of CS as a whole.

I think the answer to your question is precisely that, with all the campaigns in the west telling women to follow their own path, do whatever they want, etc. they ended up predominantly choosing careers they actually like (nursing, teaching, anything that has to do with people)

There are always exceptions, obviously.

> Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development.

I believe this to be missing the point. There are many women that are 100% aligned with the personality trait of an idealized engineer, no one (or at least not Damore) contest that.

Damore never claimed women were intrinsically less inclined to engineering.

He cited the big five personality trait model as evidence for why engineering culture is not welcoming to women.

Personality traits that are intrinsic, thus suggesting women are intrinsically less inclined to engineering. (Note: I don't agree with the thesis, but that's the implication).

No, he explicitly states that women roughly have same average iq as men and are equally competent and capable to do engineering work.

OTOH personality traits aren’t distributed equally between men and women. Personality traits don’t impact your ability to do engineering work, but they influence What type of workplace culture / communication protocols in which you can thrive. Damore advocated for making engineering cultures more accommodating to people who have personality traits resembling the distribution that women exhibit.

I think the good-faith view of this is that Damore claimed that were engineering changed a bit it'd be more appealing to women. So women - according to the thesis - intrinsically less inclined to do SW engineering as currently practiced.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-...

What country is this? In my country (Australia), the percentage of licensed female architects is around 20%, and this percentage seems to be about the same in the USA and UK. Europe seems a little better with around 30% female representation.

UK. The architecture schools are certainly evenly mixed for students, though I agree this may not yet have fed through to the higher reaches of the profession.

This post does the best job that I've seen of laying out the 'less inclined' argument: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...

> I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this.

We have to have this discussion is virtue signalers and far leftists keep spewing lies.

> It would be great if engineering could get to this point.

If it were, then it would mean that a significant number of women are forced into the field out of poverty or familial pressure.

"Some would say that the gender STEM gap occurs not because girls can’t do science, but because they have other alternatives, based on their strengths in verbal skills,” she said. “In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less."

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

We have decades of research on this already. The wealthier a nation is and more equal a nation is, the greater the disparity in STEM.

"What’s more, the countries that minted the most female college graduates in fields like science, engineering, or math were also some of the least gender-equal countries. They posit that this is because the countries that empower women also empower them, indirectly, to pick whatever career they’d enjoy most and be best at."

Not to mention the fact that most programmers used to be women!

The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make that cultural change?

It's more precise to say that it used to be most programmers were women.

> The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women

Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? If its obvious, its trivial to list them, if its subtle then its worth doing the exercise.

We have to accept they may just not want the gig. Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.

* Intellectual posturing and oneupsmanship in software teams. Participating in intellectual dick waving.

* A strong focus on being "right" over working collaboratively (especially in domains with no right answers).

* Hyper competitiveness - to the detriment of effectiveness.

* A lack of empathy (e.g. PRs with "your code sucks, suck it up and stop being such a baby").

These things are hardly good from the perspective of any software developer (except particular kinds of men who thrive under these conditions) but they're particularly off putting to women.

I tend to find that this aggressive behavior is most frequently exhibited by "senior" developers who aren't actually very good or clever but have built up a reputation that they wish to protect. Some developers are very territorial.

> but they're particularly off putting to women.

This is the crux of the issue. For this to be true, it must also be true that men and women are, at least in some ways, intrinsically different (otherwise why would these things pose a greater challenge for women relative to men)?

>This is the crux of the issue. For this to be true, it must also be true that men and women are, at least in some ways, intrinsically different

I don't see why it's the crux. It's really only necessary that men and women be socialized differently for this to be true - to grow up surrounded by people telling you that you need to be more "agreeable" and "not too pushy".

I think whether it is true or not is rather beside the point. Toxic working environments are anti-meritocratic and anti productive. Even if we didn't give a fuck how many women entered the profession we should fix them. Intellectual dick waving leads to worse code, not better.

Humans are social creatures and very little of what we do is innate, and we have extremely flexible brains which change based on use. Social cues and training are enormously influential, and arguments based on biological determinism have a steep bar to reach controlling for those factors. For example, there are significant variations around the world on math and science academic performance so it’s unlikely to be innate. Even when you do find differences in a study (e.g. spatial reasoning) it takes years to test whether those are due to practice (i.e. are children equally encouraged to develop those skills?) and also establish whether those low-level differences are key to a high-level task.

There are some low-level differences (e.g. ratios of different cell types in the brain) but there’s no conclusive evidence linking that to academic skills or job performance (just how does 3-d reasoning affect your ability to write Python, anyway?), but there has been a history of earlier results attributed to gender not holding up under scrutiny.

Contrary to a popular straw man, few people deny that men and women are different in some respects. The point is that there is no reason to think that these differences should, in a healthy culture, put women off becoming programmers, or make them less capable of doing a good job.

Sure, and that's not an argument I'd make. But, as Damore suggested in his memo, mightn't these innate differences mean that women are less likely, on average, to prefer careers in software engineering? And mightn't these innate differences also explain why women are strongly over-represented in certain other professions like nursing (91%), elementary and middle school teaching (81%) and social work (80%)?

>Damore suggested in his memo, mightn't these innate differences mean that women are less likely, on average, to prefer careers in software engineering?

As far as I understood it, this wasn't the bit of the memo that people were attacking.

Any difference between two things might turn out to be responsible for some other difference between the two things. Perhaps men are better at software engineering because they're taller. Perhaps women don't enjoy programming because they have breasts. It is pointless -- and in this context, often harmful -- to speculate.

So, because the cause is uncertain, we should not discuss female under-representation in software development at all?

I don't think that the cause is uncertain. Broadly speaking, the cause is sexism. What I'm saying is that there is no evidence whatever for a biological cause, and it is harmful to speculate wildly on biological causes in the absence of evidence.

This seems like a strange argument, given the start to this entire subthread ("women used to be the majority").

Let me get this straight:

1. Most women were programmers.

2. Women aren't sexist, so they let men in.

3. Men overwhelmed the women.

4. Men are sexist, so they stopped letting women in.

5. Now we need to deliberately reverse the results of stage (4).

Is that the sequence of events as you see it?

You have 1 the wrong way round.

Women would not have been in charge of hiring, so no to 2. (The programming jobs men were hired for would likely not have been considered the same kind of job.)

Not sure what you mean by 3.

Roughly yes to 4, although the issue is systematic sexism, not the personal prejudices of men and women. Society in general, including many women, disapproved of women becoming programmers once it began to be seen as a high-status high-skill profession.

Yes to 5, with the preceding caveats.

If it's society in general that is sexist, why have many industries that are "high-status high-skill" seen a serious increase in the number of women in the profession, while engineering has not?

These arguments seem to go in circles a lot.

First it matters that "the majority of programmers were women". But then it doesn't actually matter, because the people in charge of hiring weren't women. Ok. Then it's society in general that is sexist, but actually it's only certain professions where this "general sexism" manifests itself, for no apparent reason. Ok. Then you have the most egalitarian countries in the world seeing more disparate outcomes than other western countries. But this is apparently because sexism and cultural norms are so nebulous and hard to pin down that there must still be some sexism going on there too, we just can't see it. Ok.

There are a lot of claims being made with no evidence whatsoever. While I personally don't put much stock in psychology, at least Damore's points had actual studies behind them. And though it has been thrown around in this thread that "some of the authors disagreed with Damore's interpretation!", I have actually read the studies and found nothing factually inaccurate with the interpretation. That's what is so difficult about a lot of psychology – the hard facts are few and far between, so effectively every result is subject to interpretation. An author of a paper can disagree, but that doesn't make Damore wrong.

>If it's society in general that is sexist, why have many industries that are "high-status high-skill" seen a serious increase in the number of women in the profession, while engineering has not?

Because those industries accepted that they had a problem and took steps to fix it. Altering the perceptions of the broader society can be a big part of that. People no longer see anything unusual about a woman being a lawyer or a doctor. Fifty years ago, that wasn't the case. So there's no paradox here. "General sexism" includes stereotypes about appropriate occupations for men and women. These can change over time, as we've seen in the case of lawyers and doctors.

>First it matters that "the majority of programmers were women". But then it doesn't actually matter, because the people in charge of hiring weren't women.

It matters because it shows that women were, at one time, both interested in and capable of programming. No-one has said that it doesn't matter, so your 'but' makes no sense.

You're quite right that there's nothing to be learned by throwing around citations to half-read and half-understood studies (which is why I haven't done any of that). All you have to do is listen to what women in tech say. If James Danmore had done that for five minutes instead of wasting his time on his half-assed "research", none of this would have happened.

Women did a lot of the manufacturing during the last World War. Does that mean women are interested in being factory workers? As to capacity, nobody, including Damore, claimed that women do not have the same capacity as men to be programmers.

Anecdotal evidence is worse than psychology studies.

I'm not sure why you think there's any analogy between women working as programmers in the 60s and women working in factories during the second World War. But in fact, WWII did effect a huge change in perceptions of women as part of the workforce.

You literally claimed that women working in an industry means women are interested in working in that industry.

That's not necessarily true. Hence the analogy.

It does mean that in the absence of any other obvious explanation. I don't actually know the extent to which women working in factories were conscripted in WWII. But I do know that women weren't forced to work as programmers in the 1960s.

The issue here is that doing something without being forced to do that thing does not then mean you are interested in that thing.

If you have many good / attractive options and you choose one, you probably have an interest in that thing.

If you have precious few, not great options, and you choose one, it does not necessarily indicate the same.

I shouldn't need to provide copious examples for this to be obviously true. Money is only one of many motivators, but it is often strong enough on its own to overcome your interest (or lack thereof) in something if it means you get paid for it.

Take another example: many women throughout history have chosen sex work. That does not mean that sex work interests them. It just means they decided sex work was better than alternatives, for whatever reasons.

Doing something of your own free will does not mean you have a genuine interest in that thing. It can (and often does) just mean that thing is better than alternatives, for a multitude of reasons that are not "I find it the most interesting".

Most people are not genuinely interested in their jobs, so I doubt that variation in genuine interest a major factor in gender balance. But sure, it is impossible to disprove your speculation conclusively. The trouble is that a lot of people seem to think that the mere abstract possibility of such speculations ought to shut down any serious attempt to eliminate sexism in tech.

First off, I don't understand how my stance is "speculation", but yours is not.

Even assuming that your assertion about sexism in tech is not in fact speculation, how exactly is introducing more sexist policies into tech going to help eliminate sexism in tech?

>First off, I don't understand how my stance is "speculation", but yours is not.

Because my stance (that sexism is a significant factor in putting women off from tech) can be trivially verified by, say, asking 10 women in tech about their experiences of sexism. Not to mention that it would be a minor miracle if tech were somehow completely isolated from the sexism that's clearly present in society as a whole.

Out of interest, have you ever tried talking to women about this issue? Or have you (ironically) formed your opinion that there is no sexism in tech without listening to their perspective?

10 women believing that there is sexism rampant in tech doesn't mean that there is, and it certainly doesn't prove out that it is a strain of sexism that is relevant in this particular case.

I generally don't try to collect facts about life by asking randos for their opinions, no.

But yes, I have talked with women in tech about sexism. I have also encouraged other women to get into tech in the first place.

> Not to mention that it would be a minor miracle if tech were somehow completely isolated from the sexism that's clearly present in society as a whole.

Is this the same sexism that is causing the current generation of young women to go to and graduate university at a higher rate than their male counterparts, earn more money than their male counterparts, or commit less suicide than their male counterparts?

>10 women believing that there is sexism rampant in tech doesn't mean that there is

And this attitude is why it's going to be hard work to change things to the better. You have no interest in listening to what women tell you. You'd rather cherry pick studies of dubious quality and relevance, and tell your female colleagues (if any) that they must just be imagining it all.

>[young women] earn more money than their male counterparts

This seems bogus, at least in reference to the USA. At most, it may the case that women earn slightly more than men straight out of college. The gender pay gap still clearly favors men overall.

As for suicide, I think men have pretty much always been more prone to suicide than women. If that's an argument for the non-existence of sexism, then you'd have to draw the absurd conclusion that, e.g., there was no sexism in Victorian Britain. See figure 1 here: https://watermark.silverchair.com/dyq094.pdf?token=AQECAHi20...

All that being said, it is a common misconception that sexism is by definition something that harms women and not men. Sexism certainly harms men too. The root cause of sexism is the power asymmetry between men and women. Generally speaking, men exercise that power in their own broad interests. But of course there are plenty of individual men who lose out.

> The root cause of sexism is the power asymmetry between men and women

The root cause of much disagreement on the subject of sexism is on the claim that there is a power asymmetry between men and women, and the methodology of measuring personal income as the sole means of measuring power in society.

There is far more evidence for biological causes than there is for sexism.

If you look closely, there is very little evidence for biological causes. There are many alleged biological differences which are alleged to be relevant, but rarely, if ever, evidence for a causal link.

Your post seems to make a set of assumptions about women's abilities and preferences (for example their ability to thrive in a hyper-competitive environment).

It's not clear why these should be any more acceptable than the claims Damore made.

There are some quite well documented differences in women's personality traits - particularly surrounding sociability, agreeableness and neuroticism. It's not particularly contentious to state that men and women have differing personalities. What may be contentious is the conclusions you derive from that.

Incidentally:

1) An environment filled with intellectual posturing is not "hyper competitive". The fact that you could confuse the two is concerning.

2) My post may have seemed to you to make a set of assumptions about women's abilities but it didn't (just their preferences).

It's very strange to say that's male only and "off-putting" to women. Have you ever tried exploring female-dominated industries? Because women can and do display all those behaviors as well.

I think these behaviors are toxic and off putting to other men too, but men seem to be more willing to put up with them.

I don't see an equivalence to nursing or primary school teaching since by and large it's not the toxic aspects of these careers that puts off men, it's the lack of pay and status.

So basically men and women are different and have different interests and attitudes. What's the problem with them choosing different professions then?

If the reasons for them choosing different professions is simple preference regarding the nature of tasks, no problem. If the reason is that our profession is toxic in a way that puts them off that's a problem.

So why assume it's the latter and reject the former as an option? If you state that men and women have different personalities and attitudes then you must accept that carries over to interests as well. The fact that STEM fields collectively are balanced while different sectors have different ratios shows that there's really no major underlying issue and that personal preference is the overriding factor.

Your average insurance company's software team behaves like this? Whilst tweaking the payroll software?

Because, if you really, really want gender parity, most programmers don't work at Uber or Snapchat. They work in mundane jobs at faceless companies.

Even more so when you leave the USA. (Since this is about principle).

Fuck yeah it does. Actually I think it's the slightly below average places that are some of the worst. I've tended to find that technical quality correlates to better behavior, probably because insecurity is what drives so much of it.

In my experience, those below average places where people tweak payroll software (where I started out in my career) are the worst. I would expect the below average people in Uber and Google to be among the worst of the worst too, though (they are the most insecure, I think). A lack of psychological safety is what drives a lot of this.

As always there are exceptions, but as a rule, mediocrity breeds insecurity and insecurity breeds toxic behavior and no, none of this can be fixed in five minutes.

All which can be fixed in five minutes.

> Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes?

Techbros. Techbros everywhere. It's not what people want to hear, most people would love it if the field and the educational pipeline leading to it had more professional norms all-around. But it's a real thing. (FWIW, I don't think of Damore as part of the problem, indeed his proposals would help a lot if widely adopted.)

I honestly want to meet techbros. I live in some sort of echo chamber where gender is so irrelevant to most participants. I have never seen anyone ask someone's gender on a github issue, I may have missed it but I have seen few issues opened because no inclusivity. No one in any of the programming communities I am in gives two shit about the gender of the participants. Most people have pseudonyms with anime avatars anyway.

Incidentally the techbros you describe are majorly young cs graduates from my observation. Why are unis teaching them to be tech bros? Are unis at fault for making tech non inclusive and toxic?

Honestly, they aren't in github issues. They are on Twitter, they are sending people DMs, they are at physical meetups.

Me and my wife are both AI academics in the UK who do a bunch of programming. I have no "interesring stories" to tell, my wife has a dozen including men punching walls because they were beaten by a woman in a board game, being sent death threats and dick pics (not from the same person), and being assumed to be my non-tech wife when we go to events where she was invited and I was going as her partner.

Now, these events aren't daily, or even weekly, but they stick with people and make then feel unwelcome and unsafe.

> Twitter

> Toxicity

Probably you don't need to go further than that.

Sounds like those issues she is having is not due to her industry, but just due to some sort of other dynamics not necessarily related to the industry itself.

Journalist using the words "frat" in an article doesn't make something true. The only place I see this term slung is in the media and HN, or people making up abstract bad guys to vent their anger on.

Fraternities exist, and they have a culture associated with them. Visit any college campus (well, not right now) and you’ll find out exactly what it is.

By "culture associated with them" you mean you have a stereotype of their culture you associate with them.

No, I was recently a college student who lived near frat houses. (Yes, I know there are academic fraternities: that’s not what this discussion was about.)

I was recently living next to black people, so let me tell you about how black people really are.

Exactly. Most people use silly stereotypes from TV to paint "frat bois" in some biased lighting, never ceases to amuse me.

All you've demonstrated is general male misogyny. This is nothing new, and has as much overlap with fraternities as charities, churches, and sports.

Painting it was "frat bro" just makes for a better more exciting headline.

The media is not "everywhere", it's the media, which currently has a massive problem with subjective narratives rather than facts.

Are you actually suggesting that it follows from the media being not being "everywhere" that Frat Bros culture is a myth?

Exactly what about the Snapchat or Jared Kushner stories I cited do you believe is a hoax?

> "culture is a myth" "believe is a hoax"

Please stop claiming things that were never said. You do this constantly in your comments and it's not fair or productive.

My point is only that the media is not the objective truth or overruling expert in any single subject, and often filled with highly-opinionated, ideological, and sometimes misleading takes.

As far as this specific issue, I disagree that it is so widespread across the industry outside of a few companies with clear problems. Also the Kushner story seems to be mocking their appearance than behaviors.

It's a media narrative constructed to sell headlines.

The exact same behavior is present in people that have zero background in frats. How do you explain that?

This is not a "frat bros" problem, it's a misogyny problem. Painting it with the words frat just helps paint whatever biased narrative is being spun to make the story more compelling.

Since you don't seem to be aware of it, one thing "bro" strongly and literally implies is Frat Culture. They literally call each other "brothers".

In case English isn't your native language, or you're lucky enough to not be familiar with this dark side of American culture, the commonly used terms are "Fraternity Brothers", "Frat Brothers", and "Frat Bros", who become "Tech Bros" when they graduate.

And YES, it is a culture, and a notoriously toxic pervasive culture at that, which Snapchat and Uber exemplify.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/snapc...

>Snapchat, the App Frat Bros Love, Was Started By the Frattiest Bro of Them All

>Evan Spiegel, the CEO and cofounder of Snapchat, has created a massive, popular application. It's basically a frat boys dream, and as it turns out, Spiegel was the ultimate frat guy during his time at Standford.

https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/28/confirmed-snapchats-evan-s...

>Confirmed: Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel Is Kind Of An Ass

>I’ve known Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO and co-founder, for a while now. We have had more than half a dozen in-person conversations, far more phone calls, and even shared twenty minutes together on stage at Disrupt SF. And try as I might, I’ve had a hard time liking him. Now, after reading emails sent by Evan Spiegel during his undergrad time at Stanford, I clearly understand what my instincts were telling me.

>Dude’s kind of a dick.

>You can see the whole swath of leaked emails at ValleyWag, but I can summarize them all pretty easily for you with the above paragraph. Here’s a typical example:

>“LUAU FUCKING RAGED. Thanks to all of you. Hope at least six girl [sic] sucked your dicks last night. Cuz that didn’t happen for me.” Signed affectionately, “fuckbitchesgetleid. Spiegel.”

https://vator.tv/news/2014-05-28-snapchat-ceo-emails-talk-ab...

>Snapchat CEO emails talk about "bitches" and "sluts"

>Emails from Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel reveal gross fratboy misogyny in the wake of UCSB shootings

>Breaking news: rich, white man says awful things. Other white men rally to his defense.

https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/americ...

>Inside the dark, depraved world of US frat culture. American ultra.

>Photographer Andrew Moisey explores the rituals, texts and initiations of American fraternities: breeding grounds for aggressive, toxic masculinity.

>The world of American fraternities is a strange and ghoulish one. Depraved and simmering with violence, it’s a hotbed of ultra-masculine entitlement: a grim embodiment of chest-pumping male tribalism.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/10/andrew-...

>Humiliation, homoeroticism and animal cruelty: inside the frathouse

>Photographer Andrew Moisey uncovered ritual hazing, extreme drunkenness and toxic masculinity on one college campus – from men destined to be America’s future leaders

>[...] A world in which homosexuality is taboo but cross-dressing and semi-naked wrestling are acceptable and parading your penis and testicles is almost de rigueur.

>[...] “These all-male campus spaces have been around since the 1820s,” elaborates Moisey, “but they changed perceptibly during the so-called culture wars of the 1970s, becoming a safe space for guys who didn’t want to have to worry about having their kind of fun.” Many fraternities, he believes, now view themselves as embattled institutions, maintaining their conservative core values of brotherhood, privilege and machismo against a perceived liberal onslaught. Disturbingly, the code of loyalty to the brotherhood endures even after the other principles of fraternity life have long since fallen away.

>“The central issue is that there is an allegiance to everyone inside the fraternity rather than to the higher ideal,” says Moisey. “So even though most of these guys consider themselves highly respectable, their loyalty is such that they will protect the bad guys who hide in their midst. If you are a bad seed and you join a fraternity, you have found your safe haven. And what we are seeing right now is that the support and protection that fraternities provide for the bad seeds extends into the highest echelons of American power and decision-making.”

>[...] “This is what our leaders looked like when they were young.”

https://www.andrewmoisey.com/the-american-fraternity.html

>ANDREW MOISEY: THE AMERICAN FRATERNITY

>An Illustrated Ritual Manual

The real frat people are in management (men and women). They are socially adept enough to hide their actual opinions and oppress "lower class" women and men equally.

The struggle between men and women benefits their divide et impera strategy, because playing people off against each other while maintaining an irrational authority is their main talent.

A lot of them get into management by starting out as Tech Bros, then rising to their level of incompetence.

But in the case of SnapChat and Uber (and many other tech companies), the founders were literally (and archetypically) both Frat Bros and Tech Bros, who set the tone and culture for the entire company, and rampantly hired other Frat Bros from their own Frats, at all levels of incompetency.

Incompetent nepotistic job placement is basically what frats are all about. (Once you get past all that other stuff that Andrew Moisey documented.)

“This is what our leaders looked like when they were young.” -Andrew Moisey

Having read your links, this is an absurd cartoon-like character you're painting here. I've worked in the tech industry for my whole life and don't believe I've ever met a "tech bro". Despite that, don't American universities have a fraternity equivalent for women called the sorority? Why are "bros in tech" a problem but "sorority girls in management" aren't?

This is still just meaningless name calling, not made any better by the fact that it's so entirely US specific. It certainly isn't even remotely close to an explanation for the global preferences both genders express for different jobs. As I assume you're aware that in fact most jobs aren't gender balanced, most are dominated by one gender or another?

Tech bro is, by and large, an oxymoron.

I don't have time to go through all of that. Evan emails seem like nothing burger. Sorry, have you ever met college students or even school students? Both girls and boys. Because they all call each other names, fat/bitch/slut shaming is done more by other girls to girls than boys.

Again, only saw emails.

Even then, all of that seems more outlier than any programming community. Not everyone is a billionaire programmer responsible for putting social media cringe in front of our eyes.

Please show me convicted for [reason] reports. I am convinced everytime I read these articles, the author is trying to see things that aren't there or it's hard to verify the validity.

Note that I don't condone the behaviour but should you really be painting majority of population as some sort of saint to highlight the evil? Because they aren't.

Alcoholism and drug rate among youngsters says otherwise.

Why would I "please show you" anything after you just proudly announced that you didn't bother reading what I just finished showing you?

If you wanted to make a stronger argument, you should at least pretend to have read what you're glibly dismissing out of hand, instead of preemptively admitting that you don't bother reading what anyone else says, and that there's no point in replying to you.

HN is not a forum for announcing you have not read things, then criticizing and dismissing them anyway. Don't you have better things to do than rationalizing and defending Frat Bro toxicity?

If you don't have time to go through all that, then you shouldn't waste your time replying to dismiss it all, either.

I did read through it hence the criticism but I didn't go past the Evan Spielberg and Mark Zuckerberg articles. If someone writes an article based on the emails, you would look at the emails because they are the source.

Why should I bother reading opinion of a writer when I can look at the source?

If your first few links don't show the problem, people wouldn't be willing to put in effort. I thought that was obvious.

Oh so you're a nihilistic skeptic that those were authentic misogynistic emails from Evan Spielberg, and that it's only the opinion of the The Atlantic and Tech Crunch and all the other sources who wrote about it, including the Provost of Stanford University himself?

https://vator.tv/news/2014-05-31-stanford-denounces-spiegel-...

>In a letter sent to that was sent out to the entire Stanford undergraduate community, and obtained by the Huffington Post, Stanford University Provost John Etchemendy called the e-mails "crude, offensive, and demeaning to women."

>"Like most of you, male and female, I found those messages abhorrent. I am writing now to convey clearly that the sentiments expressed in these emails do not reflect what we, as members of the Stanford community, expect of one another," the letter said.

Have you got anything to stand on better than your "boys will be boys ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" argument?

Can you provide some evidence for your conspiracy theory, such as a quote of Evan denying that he wrote those emails, or Stanford University Provost John Etchemendy retracting his statement that Evan's e-mails were "crude, offensive, and demeaning to women"?

Is there a source for your conspiracy theory, or did you make it up yourself just now? I thought you had better things to do with your time that defending the honor of Frat Bros. So give me a link to your proof Evan Spielberg didn't send those emails.

Again, I only looked at the source - http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy...

Which is what you should have linked and let people make their mind.

I agree it's pretty assy. What are you looking for me to say?

You are calling tech community toxic and frat boy asses because some billionaire ceo is a douche bag? I don't know how to reply to that. I already cleared that up. I am not defending him. I don't condone that behaviour but it's not far fetched for college students to be like that. It's not a disease specific to tech community. Tech bros are not special unicorns. Every field has those.

Get over your fragility. I was specifically calling Snapchat and Uber toxic because of their Frat Bro leaders and culture, an undisputed fact which is very widely known and reported on.

There is absolutely zero credible evidence that Evan Spiegel didn't write those misogynistic emails, and overwhelming credible evidence that he did, so you should stop believing and intimating that it's a hoax, if you can't prove it.

But yes, a lot of tech companies are terribly toxic, and a lot of Frat Boys are terrible asses, who graduate (but don't grow up) to be Tech Bros, and work in the tech industry. But they don't need you to deny it and rationalize it and protect their fragile feelings from criticism for them, they need to STOP.

If your only point is that "every field has those", and you think I disagree, then read my other postings about Jared Kushner's coronavirus "Frat Party".

Every field having those doesn't justify or counter tech having those, and if you don't have the time to read the source evidence that I linked to before you took the time to announce you didn't read it and then glibly asked for source evidence that will take you even more time to read, then you won't bother reading anything else, and you're not arguing in good faith.

The more frequently you reply, the more skeptical I become of your claim that you don't have the time to read the original evidence I posted. If you don't know how to reply to that, and didn't have the time to read the evidence, then you should not have replied in the first place, or again, and again. And especially not a fourth time.

> There is absolutely zero credible evidence that Evan Spiegel didn't write those misogynistic emails

It's weird that the dude you're talking to never expressed skepticism as to the provenance of the emails, yet you keep repeating this as if he is.

You seem to have a stock character of your own creation that you're responding to, some sort of cliched misogynist alt right conspiracies troll, instead of simply a skeptic who'd rather trust his own faculties to judge the source material over the opinions of ideological journo-activists.

Seriously, reread the thread.

> intimating that it's a hoax

In no way does he do this. Reread the thread.

Think frat bro, but proud of his pseudo-intellectualism.

That's an instance of a much bigger problem: Fratbros. Fratbros everywhere.

https://www.businessinsider.nl/coronavirus-kushner-impact-te...

>Jared Kushner’s coronavirus ‘impact team’ mocked as the ‘Slim Suit Crowd’ and a ‘frat party’ descended from a UFO

> We have to accept they may just not want the gig.

If this is true it's probably because the community isn't very friendly or welcoming to women like the poster said…

That being said, I don't think this is true. My only evidence is anecdotal, but at a previous company when we tried to recruit at events that weren't primarily male dominated, we got roughly equal percentages of responses from people who identified as female or male.

> Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.

Let's assume for a moment these statements are correct: you're not starting from the right place. Why don't most women want the software job? Why don't most men want to teach pre-school? It could be because they've been raised in a society that says that the burden of child rearing should be placed on the women and that pre-school isn't a "manly" profession. Just because people don't want the job doesn't make it less discriminatory against women somehow, it just means the reasons are likely ingrained and harder to fix.

> Why don't most women want the software job?

Amusingly, the damore memo was an attempt to address just this very question. Are we not beyond pretending responses outside the proscribed woke ideology will be engaged with in good faith, at this late stage?

There are actual things in the world that we know are true or false and aren't just part of some "ideology" as you put it it. One of them is that the kind of pseudoscientific bullshit damore was spouting is false. We know this. It is in no way engaging in good faith to post an internal memo to your coworkers full of stupid stuff that's been used for years to justify your dominance. His memo was not engaging in good faith, it was a deliberate attempt to lie and mislead, and we as a society need to move beyond this sort of thing.

Just because something is obvious doesn't make it trivial to fix. A lot like fixing a bug you know exists, but can't fix it because it's never brought in scope.

One of the more obvious problems is that software especially seems to have issues with sexual harassment. An example of that can be readily found with Susan Fowler's blogpost about Uber's rotten workplace culture.