Couching something in mainly competitive terms does not just advertise that it's competitive, it also hints that there's a sort of pissing contest atmosphere at work. In the case of Fog Creek, it was an inadvertent, false signal, but what this woman is saying is that it's a negative indicator many women watch out for.

You can be at once highly qualified for a competitive field and drawn to that field for reasons having nothing to do with competition. Those female premeds are almost certainly more interested in working with patients than in beating their chest and bragging about how they got into a good med school. (And I'd venture the same holds true for the males.)

I done a lot of contracting over the years. Usually 3-6 month placements and I've learnt to spot a company culture from the ad. Sort of like after you've been looking at house ads for a while you start to understand the lies that are going on.

Disclaimer: before reading on I'm jaded and bitter from years of dealign with a/holes, liars, and bad contracts. So its best to make up your mind as whats suits you. But my learnt experiences:

Worded competitively usually means you are working for a money first workplace, and the boss will usually be sleazy sales men.

with it you get extremely short times lines, under cutting competition, lots of pressure to finish perfectly first iteration (i.e. no time to refactor code which organic grew as you worked), and any bugs in the first and only iteration are a big deal... many projects I've worked on just don't have a testing cycle or bug fix cycle. They chew developers up and make them bitter and cynical.

The other ones to watch out for are ego stroking, the old "rock star developer". Thats usually a sign when over times come they will to pay you with ego rewards instead of money. The play will use every manipulative trick they can think of get you to work for free, and make you think you are doing it because you love it. Don't fall for that, working is a partnership and they need to offer you the respect and payment you deserve, even for work you like doing.

Buzz words are a keen sign you are going to be working with a bunch of sales men. It can also mean its a design agency who don't under stand what they are saying.

For example I've been to some great interviews listing HTML 5 as a pre-req ... where 10 minutes in I've been trying to end the interview and escape. When they tll you they are building every website in AJAX, MVC, REST, and HTML 5 head for the door.

IMO that is showing a lack of understanding of technologies and a failure to do proper analytical process into work. Firstly HTML 5 doesn't have great legacy support, its pre-mature in my mind to be using it for a lot of work especially considering most of these people are build simple ecommerce and brochure sites... often meaning yoga re dealing with small businesses who can't afford to retro fit when they discover 20% of the user base can't complete purchasing because of IE 6. Mobile is a different story its ready, but thats the analytical process, choose the right tool, and if you see people nailing in nails with nails walk away.

Another two which go instantly on my nervous list are gloating about team culture or how great the office is. I don't let these stop me chasing a job, but I do get extra cautious when going threw the interview process that those items are intact true.

Because in 15 years of programming I've never really had a bad team. A few toxic characters for sure, but most teams are great. Often it can actually be a good sign, they are after team fit, and that can be the best thing ever.

Most developers are just normal average people, usually with one freakishly intelligent person, and a few play doh eaters. "Amazing" teams often have several gifted people, and I don't like working in those teams to much, conflict always arises because people have cleverly thought of a solution, and instead of implementing they fight. I prefer normal teams with mixed backgrounds and age spread, so water cooler talk in the office is at least interested and I find I bond better with genuine people, and that makes them easier to deal with because I can approach them problems and negative issues.

I won't take a position with a crap office full stop, I'm actually effected by environment. So before accepting a job I ask to see the offices. Its extremely important to me.

In saying that I'm not sure what it has to the work advertisement, it usually sets off my paranoia that either the job is boring as hell and they couldn't think of anything else for the ad. Or the complete opposite they have built an nice office to stroke your ego, or compensate for work overload.

The prejudicial reaction to buzz words is one of the things that I've found really weird in the programming fields. Often, a buzz word was a legitimate technical term just a few years, or a couple of decades ago. It's not the word, it's how it's used. Rejecting someone because they use a given buzz word is just prejudice. It just means you're selecting those people who are so aware of the march of buzzwords, they don't use the stale ones. In some cases, these will be savvy programmers. In other cases, this will be skilled users of word salad.

Buzz words shouldn't trigger a decision. They should trigger questions.

But where you see "savvy" I generally see naive.

I find people that get hooked up on buzzwords are younger people trying to make a mark and people trying to cash in. Been that demographic myself, been burned, and I watch others burn to this day.

I'm seen so many millions go down the drain to buzz terms and over sold open source initiatives. But then again thats why I put a disclaimer saying I was bitter and jaded LOL

Yes, but that's a level of complication that wasn't relevant to the point I was making.

At one level, like Google aggregating signals, responding to an abundance of buzz words is one of several ways to classify a given posting as promising or not. A few buzz words could be fine, but a company actually saying they "are building every website in AJAX, MVC, REST, and HTML 5" all in the same sentence is definitely problematic.

Separately, I think there are people who use buzz words to earn points among their non-technical colleagues, which seems to be cultural appropriation from programmers. You can also see this with words that have been redefined in pop culture, like 'hacker'. This naturally breeds resent and wariness of buzz words in general.

What you call "Buzzwords" many would call technical jargon.

Jargon is a shorthand way of communicating quickly with others who understand it.

You see "Buzzwords" in are building every website in AJAX, MVC, REST, and HTML 5, where as I think "I wonder if the MVC is a front end Javascript MVC framework operating against the REST backend, or if the model & controller parts are shared by the REST and AJAX front ends, but have different views?"

I know you meant it as an example, but to me it was a perfectly legitimate description of a development stack.

So starting with "we are an HTML 5 AJAX shop..." I would roll my eyes, where as compared to "Our stack makes heavy use of REST methodologies..." I would mull the description.

I guess its a level of understanding that goes into the use of the terms.

If I were describing a technology stack, it would include the actual development language and further specific, relevant details. That might include the exact example as given, but the example standing on its own still ranks low on the desirability scale.

Also, my description would exclude "building every website in".

You have to take those jobs to find your niche sometimes. Thats why I put the disclaimer at the top, its my point of view, everyone has to find there own, find what makes them happy. Some people need there egos stroked, some people love high pressure, everyones different.

Having the courage to quit is a big thing, I remember the first time I quit I almost vomited, my last job I was yelling at a director of the company. I had the courage to stand up for myself and faith, but you have to earn that, most people aren't born with it.

Networking has always been the best for me, every big break I've had has been over a drink at the pub. Which is easy for me as I'm an extrovert and have a good sense of humor, so people take a liking to me.

But theres way to network if you're not extroverted, I attended programming groups and go to presentations, heaps of my friends don't leave the house except for those meetings.

Theres heaps of tips about helping in community projects (even just testing), twitter, a blog.

Infact friend of mine got head hunted for £300,000 because he ran a blog and had become a subject matter expert on security and identity, so ads aren't the only way.

For the love of good don't let me put you off applying just because Im bitter and jaded ;)

CS is one of the very few industries i've ever been been around which engages in the "i'm better than you" pissing contest, EVERY SINGLE DAY, and yet asks itself why everyone looks the same.

I really do hope that at some point, we lose our sneer and arrogance and stop thinking that we're better than everyone just because we have some kind of exclusive skill that's alien to most.

Sports

I'm struggling to think of other things. Maybe a News Anchor and other media jobs?

Other Creative Industries (i.e. Art, Design)

In fact, if "typical" girl programmers are anything like your stereotypical boy programmers, it may be that they are highly likely to lack such skills. There have been a number of articles posted to HN where women in the industry complain about these sorts of issues (while I read between the lines and wonder how she could have done something so dumb given the context) and I do kind of get the impression that most women really don't know how to effectively deal with stuff that may not really be intended as sexist but is frequently just kind of juvenile (for lack of a better word).

Today we face a similar taboo, held for similar quasi-religious reasons. Our latest epicycle is competitive job postings. This at least is laudably specific; most of these kinds of explanations aren't testable at all.

The obvious but taboo answer is that women will generally gravitate to fields which are more social/people focused and less technical/mathematical. That spectrum runs from teaching through medicine in the middle through CS.

These trends are due in nontrivial part to genetics. Women are just more social and men more systematizing, on average.

As programming went from rote punch card/data entry to something more like physics or math, the percentage of women dropped.

All this breast beating is about a refusal to accept that basic biological differences could possibly affect behavior. Indeed, not even the tenured President of Harvard can broach the topic, even if he only moots the possibility of differences in variance rather than mean!

It's not much of a debate when those who voice the "partially genetic" position are at risk of losing their jobs.

Also as a whole I have found that even if I am more knowledgeable than everyone around me, I still have people come up and in some of the most condescending ways possible. Many times I am talked down to like I am some sort of child. (I once had someone try to explain how multicast and ssl works to me. They are studying for their A+, I am about to get my CCNP and also churning out all sorts of neat code for our department to help automate a lot of the boring tasks.)

I would say its not so much a genetic issue, but more the field itself has many cultural issues it needs to get past.

Last note: Filing complaints about a lot of these problems would most likely hurt me in the long run. I figured out after my first couple jobs it is easier to ignore them than try to find a new job.

Edit: Regarding skills themselves. It is a much simpler answer to claim that society 'encourages' woman into positions. Even if there was such a gap (Not saying it may not exist mind you) their would still be tremendous overlap and there would be some males within female bounds and females within the male bounds. The odds of that gap being massive enough to overshadow cultural issues is highly unlikely.

Also these stories are not representative of my whole experience in the field. They have been cherry picked to help illustrate a point.

As far as the blatant sexism in every job you work at, that does sound pretty bad. Level 1 techs are (imho) ridiculously crass and politically incorrect, imo because they get paid crap and have a stressful job and you're not going to find pillars of polite society in that kind of environment. In higher level positions I don't think i've ever personally seen an example of sexism directed at female co-workers, though i'm sure it must happen somewhere.

In fact, heh, i've often seen politically-incorrect jokes and sexism amongst guys (because let's face it that's what guys do when they're together in a group) but they explicitly stop as soon as a female is around to prevent her from being made uncomfortable. Granted, it's bad that they're making those jokes whether or not a woman is around, but I think them choosing to censor themselves is a positive thing (because let's face it, there's no way to change the thought process of a sexist, but you can at least prevent them from speaking or acting out based on their thoughts).

You can probably name at least one woman amazing at math, or one woman amazing at programming. The fact that you can name even one counterexample refutes the proposition that all women are predisposed against mathematical thinking genetically.

Regarding your statistical "argument", obviously the example of Lisa Leslie does not mean the median height of women is greater than or equal to the median height of men. Overlap does not imply equality.

I often wonder why people who can understand fine statistical distinctions in other contexts, and are capable of calculating over/under representations down to three decimal points, lose about 50 IQ points on this topic.

It is similar to the selective and highly asymmetric demands for evidence. I assure you, there are reams of papers on Pubmed concerning the effect of fetal testosterone levels on spatial reasoning. Indeed, there are many more such technical papers than there are well-controlled studies on the disparate impact effects of "competitive job postings".

This hard evidence differential obtains in spite of the fact that researchers must conduct their studies under dark of night, lest they meet the fate of Larry Summers.

The Wikipedia category for Women mathematicians [1] has 125 pages, many of which are to women who were not professional mathematicians.

If in response to the challenge "name at least one woman amazing at math" you don't think of Emmy Noether, then you are not all that interested in maths.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_mathematicians

Looking at gender ratios in students it's about 50-50 now (ETH Zürich, Switzerland), massively thinning out towards the top (professors are just a few out of 50). It'll take time and untill female mathematicians have an about equal importance in the curriculum students learn, likely a few hundres years. Maths really ages slowly (often because theories get update/extended, but the name sticks).

So being able to name female mathematicians imo doesn't have much relevance to the gender discussion. Luckily society changes faster than math ages ;-)

Maybe they are just more practical. The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers. If you do pre-med but can't get into med school, you can still get into public health, physical therapy, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, etc... If you do CS but can't get a job at Google, you can get into TPS reports or be unemployed. That last part is grossly simplifying, but compare getting a programming job someplace like Wyoming or North Dakota vs. getting a medical job in the same place.

At a typical large company, the ingress point into the company is at an entry-level position. Many women want to interrupt employment when they have children, which isn't practical for a IT person or programmer at a bank or government agency.

My mother, to use a fairly typical example, is a nurse. She took 5-6 years off at various times when my siblings were born or when daycare costs became prohibitive. Impact on her career? Not too bad -- hospitals need nurses, especially nurses with the specialist certifications she had.

Most of the places I've seen that advertise telecommuting are really only paying lip service to the idea that where you develop software simply doesn't matter all that much. You see places that say you can work from home one day a week, and call that "remote work." There are some companies that acknowledge this fact, and are structured for true remote work, but software engineers as a class are far more tied to location than doctors are.

So the issue is not with the profession per se - that leaves the employers. And there, you have a point for large swaths of the industry. But it seems the world of web/backend development is a bit more flexible there, no?

There is, however, stronger certification around medicine: once you have a medical license, it's pretty hard to lose it - especially through inactivity.

If you are hiring based on candidates winning resume buzzword bingo, you are going to get crappy candidates anyway. Hire for intelligence and capability and five years off to have a couple of kids is meaningless.

It would hurt me atleast. If I knew I would face a such situation I will rather take up some other profession.

My boss is a woman who was my peer in school and has children now. She is one of the best techies I have ever worked with and I love having her aboard.

The problem with such systems is that it is difficult to assess someone's ability to perform a job objectively. So the systems are design around measurable facts (ie. years of experience, education), biased towards promoting from withing, with the final selection being made by rolling the dice using tools like job interviews that are at best randomizers.

Humans aren't "resources" -- they are people. But we try to treat them like commodity goods, and in the process create some crappy situations for many people.

I would love it if things worked this way. But I told someone I could get coding in C# in a week, and probably be quite comfortable in a few months, and they sent me a polite rejection letter saying they were "impressed with my confidence" but there were many highly qualified candidates, etc. But then, that's probably the only advertised tech job I pursued that I didn't land an offer for.

I think paid sabbaticals have positive ROI too. Number crunchers don't think in those terms though.

It's a pity that when I read your good comments and the one above it, both had been downvoted into the grey. Many newcomers here at HN don't seem to understand that downvoting here is not meant to indicate that one doesn't like an opinion, it's supposed to be for comments that are abusive, obviously trolling, or that contribute nothing.

I propose an improvement to the downvoting API: One can downvote all they want, but each downvote will cost 1 karma/reputation point. That way, people with much good reputation can as needed mark abusive posts. But the newcomers will think more carefully about marking down posts they simply don't agree with since it can plunge them into negative.

Or perhaps there is a perception that doctors are really helping people, as opposed to CS professionals. Didn't we just have a spate of articles that complained that startups weren't doing enough to "help the world".

For all the talk of how doctors make a lot of money, the reason they do is that so few are both qualified and willing to take the long, grinding road through 8 years of medical school and residency, $200k in debt, and 80 hour work weeks, with fierce competition at every step of the way. According to the med students I know, if you aren't inspired by some higher calling it's almost not worth it because you won't make it through.

That's tongue-in-cheek, but I'll bet there is a study out there to support the idea that humans do not value indirect effects as much as direct effects.

And they have to spend ten extra years in school, none of which is guaranteed to do anything but leave them poorer.

As they fought for the right to simply become refuse collectors. Now that they have equal rights, no one is stomping about saying "but wait... why isn't it a 50/50 split?".

Similarly, no one wishes for their child to grow up and join the wild world of hands-on sanitation engineering. They may not look down on those with such jobs, but it can hardly be argued that it is a prestigious job.

In my city, they gave a civil service exam for a garbage collector -- 2,000 people took the test.

The fact that a large number of the original "computers" were actually women would seem to indicate not.

Well, yes and no :). Depends on where you work. If you work at a tech company then yeah, that's probably not the most secure workplace, but I work at a bank, and the only way you're ever going to get fired from there is if you're a really, really crappy worker, or if you screw up big time.

Those tasks which cannot be easily roboticized (for example, all the soft skills) will be shifted over to nurses.

I was all primed with a fiery response about how good programmers in hot markets should be pulling more than 200k, lousy markets at least 100k, and anyone who wasn't is either a lousy negotiator or not good, but then I remembered where I was. The crème de la crème. Yeah, "staff programmers" (as I call them) might well earn less, on average, than nurses. And it's a guaranteed, standardised wage, none of this grasping meritocracy competitive nonsense.

The thing about programming is that it gives you a chance to shine. I mean really shine. God bless the nurses, etc, but realistically speaking any one nurse is not going to change the world just by being a bloody good nurse. I think the attraction to the high-stakes sink-or-swim pure meritocracy game is a very male thing.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-San... http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Software-Engineer-P... http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Microsoft-Software-Developme...

160k CHF in 2000 = 88 USD

160k CHF today = 200k USD

160k CHF after US defaults = ???

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=CHFUSD=X&t=5y

Demand that you get paid in bullion today!!

However, my dad hires physicians for a rural health care system. A cardiologist in this area can get paid a salary of $350,000 per year, guaranteed three year contract. This is in the middle of nowhere, where a nice house can cost $100K and a king's mansion costs about $400K. That is "rich" by most of the world's standards. The option to throw a dart at a map, move there, and make a $300K+ a year without running a business is simply not available to programmers (or any other profession.)

Who are they and where do they work? I am looking for a job.

That's not how the real world works.

The average salary for a cardiologist is $308,000/yr. The average salary for a software engineer is $58,000/yr.

The cardiologist makes six times as much money. Even with a 12 year head start the programmer comes out behind. Medical school debt can be paid off in 2-5 years. In addition, the cardiologist can keep practicing into her 60s whereas a programmer should plan on changing careers in his 40s.

That seems awfully low. I would never have stayed in this business if I was making anything close to that.

Let's draw a more valid comparison: that between cardiologists and graduates of good engineering programs. Graduates from top CS programs are making significantly more than 58K fresh out of college. The standard offer from Microsoft for a good UIUC CS student is 80K + starting bonus. Conservatively assuming an average salary of 100K over 15 years for the programmer, he is 1.5 million ahead once the cardiologist is finally debt free (12 years of school + 3 years to pay back debt). The cardiologist will then take 7.5 years to catch up, by which time the cardiologist will be in his 50s. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be debt free and making 100K in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, then being the guy on top when I'm 50.

After medical school comes residency, which lasts from 3-6 years depending on speciality. Compensation during residency is $40k-$60k.

After residency, you can get a job. At that level of training, the salary will be $150k-$250k.

Optionally, you can get a fellowship after residency. This will be another 3-6 years of training, with compensation around $50k-$70k.

After fellowship, jobs pay in the $250k-$500k range.

And from where do you find this Bullshit?

The number of practicing dermatologiests strictly limited to an amount determined by a council of dermatologists via the AMA. Programmers have nothing remotely similar.

Paramedics can make $125k+. http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/20...

Doctors can make $200k+. See both of previously mentioned lists.

Thats the key right there - women are comfortable competing, they just have a hard time picturing themselves as the alpha geek hacker that this competitive language brings to mind for many people. At least thats how I interpreted it.

Also there are studies that women tend to underestimate their skills while men tend to overestimate them which might also be relevant, see Sheryl Sandberg's commencement address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdvXCKFNqTY

In general, men have far more pressure to be confident than women do.

On the other hand, If I were to be a girl I would be a lot more relaxed in may approach because I know my earnings are not the primary source of income to my family. And husband is going to take care of it anyways.

I've met more women who would prefer a relationship with a confident man who earned less than they do than I've met women who would prefer a relationship with a less-confident man who did earn more. I mean, that's all anecdotal, but I've been both (comparatively) wealthy and unconfident, poor and confident, and wealthy and confident, and as far as I can tell, the comparative level of wealth involved has little to do with dating outcomes.

On the subject of being out-earned, with traditionally male jobs falling out of favor and traditionally female jobs rising in importance and pay, it seems that us men may not end up being the primary provider for our families[1]

this is consistent with my observation both of the lower class and the upper middle class people I know.

[1]http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00....

Even when I was in highschool 10 years ago the top 10 students, 6 of them were girls. The salutatorian was a girl and she let everyone know how displeased she was for not getting valedictorian (beaten by 1/100 of a point).

Women are turned off of CS and I can assure it's not the competitive language.

But actually, I love that. They asked her for advice on marketing their program to women, and she gave them advice on marketing their program in general. Good show.

I usually look for some measure of professionalism. There is nothing wrong with being passionate about your work but talk of ninjas and rockstars stinks of arrogance and is always offputting. Things like this are much more attractive, personally:

Rethinkdb: "While everyone at RethinkDB has the determination to move heaven and earth to succeed, we prefer to get stuff done quickly and go home to our families, instead of living our lives in the office."

Jane St: "We put aside ego, politics, and appearance to focus on truth. We try to admit when we are wrong, talk about our mistakes, and challenge our previous conclusions."

Basho: "If you are smarter than everyone else, the absolute smartest person you know -- as in you win every argument because you are so smart and no problem cannot be solved by a quick application of your smarts -- please do not apply. We are human and will disappoint you."

From my experience, the primary thing driving those who aspire to work in the medical field is not so much salary as employment security. They compete early on (in college and in medical school) so they wouldn't have to compete later when they enter the workspace. I think that the promise of job security (guaranteed employment) has a particular appeal to women. I suspect that their thinking is that once they graduate, they can relax at the high-paying secure job and invest their time and resources into growing children. On the other hand, to me, as a young man looking to enter the startup field, ventures with ongoing high risk and high payoff appeal more than employment guarantees.

I dropped out of premed and started programming and studying art sometime in college partly because I was turned off by people whose primary career motivation was job security and who did not have any serious creative pursuits besides their career goals.

But is that criteria what best motivates inventors and designers as well?

Myself, I design things because I like to make cool stuff for people to use and I am really good at it. I spend a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with usability. I have found that an interest in making cool useful things is something that brilliant talented designers share with me. I have yet to meet any brilliant designers who are motivated primarily by wanting to destroy their rivals.

It took med schools a few decades too, over which they first removed overt barriers (like "medicine isn't for women" attitudes among faculty), then successfully convinced more women to apply, and then finally accepted many of those applying women. CS's troubles are complex, but I think one of the stickiest ones is that interest/disinterest in studying CS seems to develop around high-school (same as studying math), so the imbalance somehow has to be addressed at the pre-university level. Med-school doesn't seem to have the same differentiate-by-age-15 aspect.

Given the importance of medicine to leading a happy life, it's important to get as much information out of patients as possible - so it's in the interest of the industry to make sure that the client-facing staff have plenty of both genders.

It's much less important in programming as users and programmers rarely interact. Was Firefox written mostly by men or by women? It doesn't matter to me as I don't interact with them in order to use the service Firefox offers.

I'd love to work on a team of mixed genders (that includes all known genders) - I have yet to have the pleasure. I find working in a team of hetero males can be exclusionary and exhausting, and prefer to work remotely much of the time rather than be in a room of constant male posturing (which many of you do unawares and outside of the work office I'm quite happy to enjoy watching the escapades).

To be honest, the nature of the work is that most time working is spent in solitude. It's the same if you write novels or compose operas. Do we also say that writing novels is unfriendly to girls because sitting in front of the typewriter alone is not all that interesting? It is interesting if you are a writer or developer or opera composer because that is the nature of the work.

However, it should be noted that all these fields also have times when you are not deeply immersed in a project during which you socialize, travel, or even party. Many IT shops are run like slave ships with 16 hr days 7 days a week, that is not possible and yes such shops are deeply dysfunctional, and a turn off for psychologically healthy women and men.

However, if one doesn't like being alone and primarily loves to socialize with people, developing software and writing novels are the wrong careers. Not because of a conspiracy. Because of the way the work is. I would also likewise not recommend high pressure sales jobs to introverts.

Well, to write a novel you have to have spent some time learning to write, and hopefully have either lived a little or have an imagination. To learn to program you have to spend a LOT of time focused on a computer taking in technical information. After you have acquired a certain amount of technical knowledge you can then program a utility. I wouldn't put this in the same boat as an artistic pursuit as the mode of acquiring information is different.

Once you have learnt sufficient computer knowledge then yes, you can work in a team, but the learning process requires a lot of time alone, while also having a technical aptitude. From my experience, from my friends, the girls who like to spend time alone are artists (painters/writers whatever) and the girls who have technical aptitude are scientists or in the medical profession. It really is my belief that if we want more women in computing it has to become less of an isolated pursuit - I'd like to see other suggestions but I've yet to find any other solution.

If you're a woman and reading this I'd really love to have some feedback from how you've found computing as a profession. Personally I find its isolation the core challenge.

To clarify: I love working in any environment where I get on with everyone, regardless of gender/choice of music/language. But it's harder if it's a guy I don't get on with, or there is tension of any kind. Having another girl around to offset that makes a huge difference. Wouldn't it be the same if you're a guy and your workplace is all women?

For what it's worth, it's the same deal if you're the only guy on an almost exclusively female team.

Wouldn't it be the same if you're a guy and your workplace is all women?

Yep. Been there, done that. I think it pretty much always sucks to be "the only one of X" where X is any significant characteristic, such as gender.

When I was one of only two guys in a 14 person IT department a few years ago (and the other guy was the IT director and he was never around on a day to day basis, so basically my work environment was me and 12 girls) there was definitely a sense of exclusion... I was obviously an outsider and nothing was going to change that. Now I don't think it was intentional on their part, any more than it's intention on the part of the men when the situation is reversed. It's just that groups of similar people tend to fall into certain patterns of behavior and a small minority group is always going to feel excluded to some degree.