Luckily tech is one of the few fields where having the corresponding degree is not necessary and you can make a good life for yourself without following a traditional path to upper middle class (like law, medicine, finance etc)

> go to a bar, tell someone you make 300K

you must be having way different bar conversations than I've ever had - maybe they just don't like you as a person lol

I love how you found a way to blame men for womens choices.

Those darned smelly CS grads with their non-matching clothes, if not for them more women would be in CS!

Except that's exactly what it is. BO in CS classrooms is the worst. Every other department had less of this problem at my large public university.

Not just the BO, a big part of it is the personalities; aggressive know it all nerds are the worst. This is anecdotabl buy my now wife has always said she felt like she was taking a chance on me due to my job in software. And judging from the people I've worked with over the years, I have to agree. One of the worst things about software development is other software developers.

Well if we're providing anecdotal counterpoints I would argue that software development has the least number of "type a personalities" especially when compared to other engineering fields such as mechanical and electrical - just by virtue of the fact that it encompasses such a wide swath of careers,

for example you've got lots of people who would fall under the umbrella of software development that mostly just do web design and WordPress, they're about the least engineer-type people you can have.

What is "type a", like just being competitive?

What's hilarious is what you're actually saying (and don't realize it).

You're describing many of those who are what we would call "non-normative", if you will. aspergers, autism, and the like. Yes, it's statistically understood those who choose this career are more likely to fall into that category.

So what's really being said here is that women are being chased out of well paying STEM field because they're too judgemental to deal with those who are non-normative.

Is that really the fault of men, or maybe we should blame these self-same non-normative folks?

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Can you imagine if someone were to claim the reason so many men choose not to go into nursing is because of the smell that happens roughly once/month?

Think about why one is acceptable and the other is not.

What's hilarious is what you're actually saying (and don't realize it). I didn’t mention gender, you did. GP didn’t either.

And Most CS Women smell like fish. Whats your point

This must be a parody. If this was really the only barrier to women being in CS then a university could just sanction individuals with heavy body odor and tell them to take a shower and voila you have your women in CS utopia.

I urge you to go speak (in depth) with women who did CS and then worked 5+ years in tech.

IME doing this, many are happy with no regrets, but all have truly horrific stories to tell.

> all have truly horrific stories to tell.

Unless the situation is different for women in law, or women in medicine, it still does not explain the lack of women in CS.

My impression from people in medicine and law is that they are much better.

I have no idea where you live, but in my 15 years as a professional software developer, I have never experienced a single instance of someone not respecting my career.

In the UK it isn't respected at all. It's about the same as being a taxi driver.

Agreed I've been a software engineer for 20 years and not once in my professional career have I felt like the industry was disrespected. This is in the United States.

In KZ I feel like people think that I'm getting money unfairly.

Sometimes I think the same. Like I can get $2k per month sitting in the office meanwhile road worker will wake up at 3AM, work 12 hours in rain and winter, trading his health for $300 per month.

Anyway I avoid mentioning my profession unless asked directly. It's not a question of respect, but rather question of envy which i don't like to be target of.

I'm not sure it's so much "respecting the career", as the stereotype of the nerd with poor social skills is still strong enough to raise red flags for many. Not all of course, and it probably depends a lot on how you interact with others before they learn what you do. I can't say if that's fair or not, but it doesn't seem any less so than any of the other ways people choose partners or friends.

Well, reporters do disrespect us.

When I had TV appearances they were calling me "Pulli Traeger" (wearing casual outfit). In publicity you are respected how you look, not what you can. Experts are frequently looked down, as they rarely can express themselves to a TV audience. On smaller private TV it was fine though.

Also upper management in Europe used to disrespect us as overpaid "coders" or code monkeys.

Perhaps you get no extra respect for being a programmer, but you also do not get extra disrespect. People who disrespect a bad looking programmer would also disrespect a bad looking non-programmer. The upper management probably disrespects all their employees.

This is a pretty cynical view of things, and definitely isn’t nearly as true anymore. Software engineers, depending on where in the country you are, are often extremely well respected now.

I am genuinely curious. Where and when did you go to school?

My university actually has a near 1:1 ratio in its CS course. It helps that we are in the middle of a large metropolis...