I'm ... not sure what to make of this. I'm not a woman, so not qualified to comment as such, but I can say without question that I've had to struggle through many similar issues, just take sex out of the picture - everything from watching classmates apparently breeze through classes that I've had to take four times to wondering if my career success is just because I'm a white American male.
Edit: I took a risk saying something like this, and have some karma to burn, but please, if you downvote, at least say why.
There's a well documented and researched confidence gap between men and women. While confidence isn't an issue restricted to just women, it is a more prominent issue for them on average. Did a quick search, and here's the first paper I found on the topic. There's a ton more, though I'm not sure which are publicly available.
Also, what you're talking about is also called stereotype threat, which is where "people feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group". First step to combating those feelings is often recognizing them!
And how is this sexism? Or are you suggesting they professors should treat women differently?
I was half way through the article before realizing the author was female. She could have been anyone, and have the same issues. And then we find out the professor encouraged her.
I don't have confidence in myself. Fault of society. Sexism.
I don't know how how to reject advances. Fault of men. Sexism. (BTW. How is giving anyone's a t-shirt with your name a sexual harassment? I could totally imagine a guy giving one to another guy and other than being rather lame gift, not be a big deal.)
Obviously being a guy makes it so much different, and your road to becoming an engineer is very straightforward. You're always overconfident, never shy, noone ever is mean to you, noone ever bullies you, society melted you to be a perfect human being capable of anything you desire.
It's amusing to see how woman raised in America (especially CA!), where everything is super sexist-conscious, and sometimes plain rigged in favor of girls (eg. how many boys vs girls gets drugged for ADHD, as they naturally can't stand still in the class?), still find a way to blame everything on sexism.
Whatever you say about her, the sexism she has faced in certain situations cannot be denied.
Giving a t-shirt with your name on it to a dude friend of yours is not the same as giving a t-shirt with your name on it to the intern who has joined the company.
The first comes off as a joke, the second is just downright creepy and is the side effect of poor social skills.
Are you saying that you should take into account the... wait for it... sex of the person you're giving the gift to? Wouldn't that be, you know, sexist?
Giving a woman a t-shirt with your name on it after she shot you down for trying to corner her in a dark room is sexual harassment because it's a repeated sexual advance targeted towards someone who has made it clear that she is not interested. You can find the definition of sexual harassment on the government website that defines it.
As a guy, I experienced the same feelings of not being good enough to make it as a programmer, throughout school and my early career.
Of my programmer friends and classmates who quickly landed good jobs, only one ever took the initiative to ask his boss to consider hiring me. The others just smiled and shrugged when I begged for career advice.
Once I had squeezed into my first company, I rarely received support from my coworkers, and mostly advanced my skills through staying at work for extra hours and spending lonely weekends on side projects. I've come a long way, but I still wonder how far ahead I would be today if I'd just received a bit more support early on.
I'm not convinced that there is widespread sexism in the computer industry, because I've worked alongside and been managed by many fantastic women, and witnessed them advance as quickly as me.
However, I think it's a rare individual who can become a great programmer without having strong support, mentorship and encouragement. Women need that support just as crucially as men, and it's important to draw attention to the places where they are not receiving it.
ahris's response to another comment applies here as well:
"While confidence isn't an issue restricted to just women, it is a more prominent issue for them on average."
This is generally an important thing to consider. Just because a particular issue applies to you or you've seen a similar pattern amongst male colleagues doesn't mean that it isn't a more acute issue for women.
> I'm not convinced that there is widespread sexism in the computer industry, because I've worked alongside and been managed by many fantastic women, and witnessed them advance as quickly as me.
Relying on just the evidence you have directly around you is the same as relying on anecdotes. It's possible you've been lucky and work at a particularly un-sexist companies, but that perhaps the industry as a whole has an issue with sexism.
You're entirely correct, though I want to emphasize that while I understand that my own experiences are limited, I haven't found arguments that there is widespread sexism to be more convincing than my own experience. I'm quite open to being convinced otherwise, should a strong argument be made.
This is a bit off-topic. I noticed the author was listed as one of "Forbes 30 under 30" in 2014. I'm sorry, but I must ask: how? The other folks on the list include the founders of Dropcam, Snapchaat, Stripe, etc., while the author is listed as merely "software engineer at Pinterest" with a great resume of good schools, scholarships and internships. Similarly, there is one other fellow who is simply listed as "security expert". I guess this is more of a critique of Forbes than anything.
A cursory google search says that she's done work[1] in[2] diversity[3] for women, which is a pretty big deal, even if people are tired of hearing about it.
Each of those sources were written after she was chosen as a 30-under-30 so it doesn't really answer the question of what made Forbes choose her.
You have to admit that it is kind of interesting that the list are pretty much all founders or people who have invented something incredible. Her bio on Forbes's article lists her as a "rising star"[1]. Founder, founder, founder, founder, rising-star, founder, founder, founder. Am I sexist for pointing this out?
I agree with you based on the data you're giving. It would seem like a PC stunt to add her to the same list as those people. I'm also saying this as a gripe at Forbes rather than critiquing her work. Just seems like a different category.
> Like many a woman before me, I had run smack into the confidence gap.
I was thinking about this lately. I realized, that among my friends, we have been playing this weird game of terrible insults and trying to appear the smartest guy in the room since we were 10. We still do it while in pub some-times :)
Interestingly, girls never wanted to participate. I remember talking to one of my friends in High School where she told me how terrible one of my friends was, where he was always ridiculing her. I tried to explain, that this was normal among that particular group of friends, and that she should ridicule him back. She thought that attempting that wasn't worth the time and effort, because the result of her trying to flip the ridicule would probably be just more ridicule towards her. My thoughts were, yes, it took me 3 years to learn to endure the ridicule and fire back ... so, yeah, probably not worth it to get into this game, if you don't find it fun.
But as a esult, with this way we were trying to one-up each other for better part of a decade, of course "we were unfazed by any of the challenges professors might throw our way".
This doesn't sound so much like an issue with sexism in tech so much as an issue with sexism and social conditioning. Women are taught to be perfectionist and hyperjudgemental about themselves. Of course this translates miserably into tech, rather than a more stable job with less unknowns and better integrated into the rest of societal structures, not a field hardly more than fifty years old in its modern state. Which I find interesting, as those very social structures are the ones not kind to women in the first place. I guess it just goes to show how deep the pressure placed on women runs.
IMHO there's nothing that can really be done about the examples guys being assholes, or nothing that can be realistically done about all of them, but I think nine tenths of this article wouldn't exist if we start raising girls to be risk takers instead of social objects. Notice how much the author obsessed over themself in relation to everyone surrounding them. Fifteen hours on an assignment wasn't a problem until she heard of her peers doing it in less time. We're simply not going to have women succeeding in tech and entrepreneurship until we break down the construct of women existing solely as objects that are parts their society. We're all the absolute worst kinds of sexists, because of what men and women expect of young girls. Of course they're going to fail when they're raised believing that trying and failing is worse than not trying at all.
>We're simply not going to have women succeeding in tech and entrepreneurship until we break down the construct of women existing solely as objects that are parts their society.
Women are taken very seriously (helped and protected) when they portrays themselves as objects in need of help, and are not taken seriously as seriously when they try to act as free agents. Men are taken more seriously when they act as free agents, but are cast aside when they show vulnerability. Some believe that this is purely because of societal expectations, some believe that this is purely because of biology, and some believe it is somewhere in between. But no matter which you believe is true, it should be clear that continuing to portray yourself and your gender as vulnerable and incapable of achieving their goals without external (male) support is doing the exact opposite of making you seem like a mature free agent. It makes you seem like a child.
She didn't think she was good enough to take up Comp Sci because the guys had a lot of bluster and seem to 'get things' quicker than her... Is that sexism?
It looks like she hadn't been in many competitive environments vis-a-vis against men, so her first experiences were quite intimidating because she didn't understand their behaviour. It's less common for women to have a lot of bluster and be overtly confident in competition.
[edit, in this case I'd suggest that...]Sexism is a side effect of engineers being utter arseholes.
Fortunately the toxic "bow down to my magisterial knowledge, any person that dares to ask questions shall be cast into apostasy" isn't pervasive in any of the companies I work.
Having a daughter, it really shows in stark relief that girls are not allowed to be leaders, they are just bossy little [insert word here].
Women in meetings have to steep themselves in business passive to get an idea across, which is both fucking sad and annoying in equal terms.
As for watching nerdy bro's hit on women, if fucking pathetic. Iterative a/b tests of single chatup lines do not work on the same person.
Its a shame you weren't confident of your own opinion enough to use a real account.
Is sexism a side effect of engineers being assholes or is engineers being assholes a problem because sexism exists so much in the first place? It's very easy to blame a company or a subculture as being sexist, but no one thinks about how the entirety of Western society is still damn sexist. The fact that makeup exists, for example. Women are universally expected to be subordinate and seen before heard. Women keep getting pushed around because that's what our social structure expects them to do. Engineers not being assholes isn't going to solve the problem. Women being assholes, and everyone getting used to that, just might.
I broadly agree here, but I'd suggest that its more nuanced than 'western culture' sexism in britian is different to in america.
However, I work in tech, so I can't comment on other areas. But I'd love engineers to stop being arseholes, it make life much easer, and we'd get more things done.
Any bossy child is a bossy little [insert word here], not just girls.
I'm not familiar with work environments where women have to 'steep themselves in business passive'. My wife was never like that when I met her nor are most of the women I've worked with. Please show me where all these passive women are at work, might make my life easier...
There's no one you can really blame it on, but I think her thinking that is a result of the fact that we live in a very sexist society. Women are expected to grow up as essential gears in that machine, keeping each other in check and never fumble, god forbid someone would see that. I think it's present everywhere, but we're seeing it blatantly with women in technology because it's such a maverick industry, and that very tenacity which makes it successful is a trait that is so strongly frowned upon for women in our society to have.
Beats me on how to fix that. You can't just tell someone that no one cares, or that their worst critic is themself, when their reality is structured around believing elsewise.
It sure doesn't sound like it. It's hard to blame someone else for your problems just because they have more self esteem than you. Regardless of whether it's deserved.
She is living a life of great privilege. But she wants to be a victim. (Society teaches that this is a good thing to be.) But no--nerdy guys occasionally flirting with you doesn't make you a victim. No, the mere existence and layout of pink dolls in Walmart don't make you a victim. No, applying meme-of-the-day terms like "Impostor Syndrome" to yourself doesn't make you a victim. Sorry.
You're more privileged than 99.9 percent of the world. Just admit it and drop the false morality.
One offered to give me a massage “because I looked stressed.” Another tried to get me to watch a movie with him in a dark room with the door locked and blinds closed. Later, he gave me a custom-made t-shirt with his name emblazoned across the front.
These repeated unwanted sexual advances are textbook sexual harassment, specifically creating a hostile work environment. If she had gotten them to text those things to her, she would have grounds for a lawsuit.
Here's the definition of sexual harassment:
Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature...
harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment.
I never understood the whole sexual harassment thing in tech. Don't get me wrong, I understand how awful the entire situation is, but it sounds much more like a systemic issue than an issue that simply affects tech. The whole idea that many, many, many people find their significant others through work seems to indicate that in tech, it's "just" a hyper-condensed artifact of a much larger issue. I'm very curious what others think or if they know of any recent and relevant papers in either direction.
Sexual harassment is pervasive throughout all industries. I was replying to a comment that was ridiculously dismissive of a clear example of sexual harassment without speaking specifically about tech.
Basically, the law as it stands says that you can express romantic interest to a coworker once for free, but you have to drop it if they're not receptive.
I think the poster's point still somewhat stands which is that having guys uncomfortably advance is very much a first world problem.
I have had advances from a couple of females during my career (clients looking to gain favor for cheaper/better work) but I would never consider it something I should be suing or even worrying over.
Would you think about leaving a firm if you were getting hit on aggressively by unattractive people as often as you got recruiter spam? That's an example of what would amount to constructive dismissal (grounds for a lawsuit).
Pinterest engineer, facebook and google intern, daughter of two engineers tells us how awful her life was because her classmates were absurdly arrogant (all of them) and two co-workers were dicks. Right. I'll never get this successful, but I'm white cis male so I should pity her I guess?
I see her complaints about her misperceived technical competence relative to her peers as orthogonal to the sexism. I'm going to skip the sexism part because I really don't have the competence to talk about it.
First, she went to Stanford, a school absolutely BUILT on bullshit, bluster, competitiveness and social networking. I'm about as dead center of the stereotypical male engineer as it gets--and the Stanford attitude came through and sure made me cringe when looking at graduate school. UC Berkeley matched my personality much more strongly.
Second, her parents inculcated into her to care way too much about her relative competence rather than doing something interesting. This, in my opinion, is always the dividing line that separates out the genuinely good from the mediocre. When you write a website to optimize trading card game returns, who cares whether it took you 5 hours or 15 hours to write it? It does something you think is interesting, and that is good enough.
Third, it seems like being the offspring of two PhD parents that she was missing a few social survival skills that most people learn from home. To quote House: "It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what." That doesn't make people bad, but everybody has their own wants, needs, desires, agendas, etc. Everybody has to learn to deal with that at some point.
And, my thanks to that professor who made you a TA. I have occasionally, myself, had to twist the arm of a female undergraduate to become a TA, take on a programming assignment for a company, or enter a programming competition.
This was a good article about the stresses of entering a programming career.
The strained sexism tie-ins were unnecessary because most of the challenges she faced are universal, I remember hearing the same gloating conversations and feeling the same way when I was young.
As for the back massages and tshirts with men's names on them, that is a bit weird and should probably be taken up with their supervisor if it continues. It's most likely to be caused by poorly calibrated social cues than straight up sexism. There's nothing sexist about awkwardly showing interest in someone, it's only a problem if they don't take no for an answer.
Except that men disproportionately "awkwardly show interest" in random colleagues, strangers, passer-by.
All the women you know have experienced it, several times. Most of the men you know never experienced it.
So there is something sexist here, because women experience a flow of continual "akward interests" from random men that they have to manage. It's all on the women to manage men's akward interests, and from what my female friends tell me it is really stressing and wearing them down.
(I did an art-documentarish piece a few years ago, going and interviewing my friends about public space harassment and how they built techniques to manage mens. There's an excerpt in french there: https://www.facebook.com/Le-sac-%C3%A0-main-269196498659/ )
Where was the sexism? Her professor encouraged her. She went to a prestigious school. She got an internship at some big companies that don't give internships out to everyone. She was treated as an intern, because she was an intern, not because she was female.
And it sounds like she was treated like a female in some social situations.
There isn't enough info in the article to determine if those situations were sexual harassment.
But the article didn't mention any cases where her superiors treated her differently because of her gender.
I felt as if I was welcomed because I was cute to keep around, not because there was any expectation of my doing useful, good work.
It's hard to do the latter - I think I'd succumb to welcoming women in the workplace to avoid being sexist, as opposed to the expectation of the colleague doing useful, good work - now that I think about it - ironically in trying to reduce sexism in the workplace, I would make a sexist situation worse. Maybe it would be better not to have read the article at all.
I think men have relatively few social experiences where they see women create and maintain a driven, competitive environment -- for one another or for both men and women. I experienced this only rather late in life when I took ballet.
Good point - I haven't been in many situations where I had to compete with a woman directly. I suspect part of the reason why it's uncomfortable for women to break into software engineering is because it's mostly men. It'd be uncomfortable for me to work 8 hours a day in a room full of women, at least until I got used to it.
What do you think of ballet? Was it hard to get into as a man? Were there any prejudice issues where you were discriminated against on the basis of your gender, or was it as easy as in other fields of work?
I never worked in it, I only took classes as a hobby. I had private lessons for a time; I think that made things easier. And having a male instructor early on certainly made a difference.
There is no discrimination but there can definitely be a sense of being out of place.
What is hard (and it's made obvious by all the comments) is to put yourself in the shoes of someone who's a minority in their environment. I encourage all guys here to do something simple: go to a Women in <something> meetup (or Black engineers, anything where you'll be a minority). Chances are, you'll be one of very few guys/white people, and you might start thinking "do I really belong here?", and you'll feel a lot more self-conscious. Now imagine if it felt like that every time you went to classes/to your job - it's hard to imagine the consequences it could have after a few months or years.
ITT: Hacker news believing that sexism isn't a big deal or otherwise downplaying it's role. It's like watching people who have never had a mental illness wonder why it's a big deal. For any normal feeling, assume it's greater magnitude and a peergroup doesn't exist for support.
Sexism isn't necessarily intentional (socially inexperienced college guys hitting on the only girls in their peergroup when they are unwanted). However; it exists and is very measurable. The least we can do is acknowledge it, even if we don't know what to do about it.
I'm not sure about most of you men, but I happen to like having women around. If we can't encourage more to work with us, we can at least do our best to be accepting to the people we already work with.
Edit: We do have great, data-backed responses to all posts as always. Its a difficult problem to understand because most people won't experience it and are probably tired of being reminded about.
> ITT: Hacker news believing that sexism isn't a big deal
It would be better not to anthropomorphize Hacker News. You're as much a part of it as anyone, after all.
When people diss Hacker News for 'believing' and 'saying' things, it's usually as a rhetorical device—the opposing 'opinion' of pseudo-Hacker-News makes oneself the underdog. But these rhetorical generalizations are nearly always wrong, and they worsen the divisions in the community.
That's an interesting view and most probably correct. I was surprised that the first posts I saw appeared to downplay the issue and also use reddit quite frequently, which carries over sometimes.
Should I rephrase it or simply post an argument that supports her if my ultimate goal is changing the opinions of people who don't recognize the issue.
I find social issues fairly important; years ago I had hoped that technology alone could help, but lately I think that a much broader view is required. If I could communicate more effectively, it would go a long way towards having a larger impact.
Largely the magnitude. That guy that got her a shirt with his name on it for example. It probably wouldnt be a problem if there was a more even split. When there is a 10:1 ratio (at my school this was true), literally every guy will be hitting on those girls.
In this case, it's more the environment that is the problem than the individual act.
Ok. I wasn't thinking about her experience, but your description (the sentence I quoted) applied generally. To me, that is not a symptom of prejudice or discrimination.
Sorry, I should make it more clear that it is different from the norm in most environments.
Defining discrimination is somewhat difficult. As an example: in America, crack cocaine is considered to be more potent than regular cocaine and punished much more harshly (1:100 ratio at one point in time). Crack is also used much more often by blacks than any other race. As a result, far more black people are in jail for long periods of time for drug charges. This would be true even if police treated everyone equally. Is the law racist? It's generally agreed upon by most experts that it is.
In addition, very few black people in America are interested in becoming a police officer. Is this a product of racism? I'd say, yes. Unfortunately, this means that many officers don't represent their peers, which reinforces the racism itself.
There is a huge asymmetry in men:women joining computer science and it creates a more difficult environment for women. This most likely both a symptom and cause of sexism.
How does someone with such a pedigree not know how to program before university? I grew up poor in an immigrant neighborhood and even in the early '80s (really bad time in NYC), I was coding Basic in sixth grade on a Commodore Vic-20. In high school, I was doing Pascal on PCs and assembly on a Zilog Z-80. Did I mention my family was dirt poor? My parents never even have a chance to go to high school.
Let's face it, writing software is not for everybody. The author is such a person.
This seems way too dismissive. The world is extremely varied; plenty of people aren't predicted by their 'pedigree'. It's great that you got into programming despite poverty, but that doesn't generalize.
And your last paragraph is just a putdown, which is not ok here. Please don't do that in HN comments.
The article doesn't mention the author's programming experience before university.
The author also has a CS degree from Stanford, interned at Facebook and Google, and is currently a software engineer at Pinterest. Even if your earlier assertion about lack of programming experience is true, it's obvious the author isn't incapable of writing software. Did you even read the article before commenting?
"At Stanford, I took two introductory computer science classes. I soon became convinced that I was much too behind my male classmates to ever catch up."
I did not even know it was possible to take TWO introductory courses, but what do I know, I did not go to Stanford. Everyone that knew how to code before university breezed through the intro course. This was still true when I was a TA for undergraduate courses during grad school.
I have worked with plenty of CS graduates that cannot code during my decades in the field.
Well I don't know the guts of Stanford's CS program either, but the term 'introductory computer science class', particularly pluralized, could easily be a course of the form 'Introduction to X' where X is some broad CS speciality, not necessarily a programming one. It could be Introduction to HCI, Artificial Intelligence, Complexity Theory, whatever...
And of course, if she had no programming ability beforehand, the fact she overcame your hypothetical hurdle to be able to put 'Software Engineer of <famous silicon valley company>' on her resume suggests she's not in the class of programming-incapables to be completely written off.
Programming and STEM in general are targeted towards men (though this message is getting better with the various diversity initiatives). Boys have male role models and are socialized into engineering career paths. This messaging is missing for girls and women. Since they are not encouraged or do not see themselves as programmers, they inadvertently miss the opportunity to pursue these paths at a young age.
In your case, you overcame the class barriers of learning programming. This doesn't preclude the existence of other social barriers, such as gender, race, etc.
It's very admirable of you to have been programming from such a young age, but is it entirely unimaginable for someone to start coding in university? You're glibly discounting the experience of many many talented people. Tech is becoming a field with many different types of people with diverse backgrounds and it's necessary to recognize and accept that fact.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that only people who have been doing things since their childhood can or should become experts in those things.
You may want to compile some list of counterexamples or few will treat you seriously.
I'm skeptic. It takes dedication and time to become an expert. And the older you are, the easier it is to find yourself working for survival all your time or get lost in bullshit and no longer have the clarity of mind to learn.
Edit: I took a risk saying something like this, and have some karma to burn, but please, if you downvote, at least say why.