Ask HN: Are men systemically ecluding women in tech?

4 points by LoveGracePeace 4 years ago | 7 comments

There was an article on Reddit in the Sysadmin area where a female claimed essentially, men are systemically excluding women from tech. As a Software Engineer, that's not close to what I've observed. Is it more common in the Sysadmin field?

tobinfekkes 4 years ago |

I have taught many software development classes, with dozens of students. It's completely open enrollment, no restrictions on age, experience, income, certainly not gender. Only 2 women ever asked, let alone attended.

The 1st was taking the class because her dad was a programmer, but she couldn't figure out how to use the mouse to save her life, and it was only frustrating for her after that.

The second one was taking the class because her dad is also a programmer, and she was bloody fantastic. She was the only female in that particular class, and she put older, more experienced men to shame with her critical thinking, problem solving, and pattern recognition over the course of the semester. A CEO of a multi-million dollar company was going over to the desk of a girl half his age to ask questions and get help. If I had 10 of her, I'd hire them all.

But I don't. It's like 1 in 25. And that's generous.

And it doesn't have to be someone's fault or society's fault. It just is.

I'll teach anyone that comes in wanting to learn. And for 15 years, it's mostly men are interested, and stick with it.

I've also had some exceptionally bad men in class, who realize they need to go do something else. The CEO took a semester, struggled, finished OK, and didn't continue. Meanwhile, the girl just finished her first year of a CS degree.

It's not like all men are great programmers because they show interest. But in my experience, most who show interest are men. And occasionally, you get a woman that's an absolute gem.

guiambros 4 years ago | |

> And it doesn't have to be someone's fault or society's fault. It just is.

I really have a problem with this line of thinking. It puts the blame on women for "not being interested in tech", and gives all the tech bros a free pass for their atrocious behaviors, and the toxic culture in tech.

If you never heard countless stories of abuses suffered by women in tech, including microaggressions, being talked over in meetings, passed over on promotions, pay inequality, company parties at the strip club, sexual harassment, conscious and unconscious biases, "you should smile more", etc, you're not looking hard enough.

Rinse and repeat this over 4+ decades, and you get your "1 in 25" ratio. Unfortunately the situation is so bad today that it will take a few decades to fix the systemic issues, before we start to see a better balance. But the first step is to recognize we have a problem.

If you're interested, there's many books and serious research in this area, but one I really liked is Brotopia, by Emily Chang. When you know what to look for, it's hard to unsee.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Brotopia-Breaking-Boys-Silicon-Valley...

raxxorraxor 4 years ago | | |

I doubt this is the issue although there might be cultural differences. In my country women never picked up CS in significant numbers.

Also I don't understand how someone is blamed if they have no interest and you turn around and blame it on men that allegedly discriminate. It is very unlikely that discrimination is the issue if there wasn't to many female computer scientists in the first place. On the contrary, scare stories about "tech bros" probably scare away more people overall. Women and men for that matter.

The book is about Silicon Valley that draws in all kinds of crowds but the usual developer is mostly introverted and polite. It is not all stereotypes but there is a difference between most programmers and most salesmen.

I reject the analysis that there are systemic issues, there is no evidence at all. This has become a religion of some sort.

al_borland 4 years ago |

No. I was involved in interviewing a couple hundred people for a bunch of Sysadmin roles. I'd say 98% of the applicants were male. When a woman applied she would generally get an offer if there was even a chance she'd be decent, just in an attempt to not have the staff be 100% male.

If we were to rank a candidate on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the most qualified person that exceeds anything we could have asked for in the job posting, and 1 being someone who can't figure out a mouse.... a 5/10 female applicant would win out over an 8/10 male applicant. If anything the bar is lower and it's easier for them to get in. And if I'm being perfectly honest, our bar wasn't that high to start with for these positions, many of the positions were entry level.

I can only remember maybe 4 or 5 who interviewed. Out of those 3 got offers. One of those 3 failed to show up her first day, because she was just using the job to leverage a raise from her current employer and didn't bother to tell us until after we called after she didn't show up. So it was 2 women on a team with about 20-30 guys. We tried and that's the best we could do.

The issue isn't males systematically excluding anyone, it's a lack of applicants.

daviddever23box 4 years ago |

One can be sensitive to the claim while, at the same time, working to ensure that all candidates get a fair shake. Some companies are better than others at making this happen, but it's not really THAT difficult to do in the first place.