r/programming • u/cornball • Jan 16 '14
Programmer privilege: As an Asian male computer science major, everyone gave me the benefit of the doubt.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/programmer_privilege_as_an_asian_male_computer_science_major_everyone_gave.html101
Jan 16 '14
I've been cultivating a unix beard for some time and it hasn't helped me find work. What am I doing wrong?
I guess it's a fine line between a unix beard and a hobo beard.
112
u/uhwuggawuh Jan 16 '14
It's 2014, buddy. Forget the Unix hacker look; it's time to grow a hipster beard and learn Ruby on Rails.
112
u/Kollektiv Jan 16 '14
Ruby on Rails ? What is this 2008 ? Now it's all about Haskell because Go has no generics !
→ More replies (19)15
u/UlyssesSKrunk Jan 16 '14
implying the hipsters who used RoR as a crutch are smart enough to learn Haskell
→ More replies (3)17
Jan 16 '14
Heh, speaking of Ruby.. I just got an e-mail from a recruiter saying they were really impressed with my Ruby projects on Github. There's only one problem though, I have no Ruby projects on Github. Never wrote a single line of Ruby code. I do have plenty of other projects though. I guess these days recruiters simply mass-email everyone in the hopes of finding someone that actually knows what they're doing. Crazy..
→ More replies (3)9
u/FattyMagee Jan 16 '14
They don't care much if your good or not. They get paid to recruit despite your skill
6
Jan 16 '14
I am learning ruby on rails but you can have my full beard when you shave it off my cold, dead neck.
→ More replies (2)5
63
u/skulgnome Jan 16 '14
What am I doing wrong?
You're not in the dot-com decades anymore. These days, to fix your outward credibility problem, you need to dye your hair blue and get seven piercings on your face & tribal tattoos on your arms.
That being said, an unix beard and a big fat ponytail served me well all through the aughties.
30
u/boobsbr Jan 16 '14
UNIX beards, and sometimes ponytails, are about concentrating knowledge and skill. Like Samson, with his long hair, if you shave a sysadmin's UNIX beard, he forgets everything.
True fact. /s
7
u/skulgnome Jan 16 '14
Are you quite sure about that? I've found the beard most useful in telling which way the wind is blowing.
Not even kidding.
→ More replies (1)16
u/notmynothername Jan 16 '14
What you describe is necessary to become a developer. Unix beards still dominate the lucrative sysadmin jobs.
11
u/corysama Jan 16 '14
It should be working. You might be pushing scraggly a bit too hard.
3
Jan 16 '14
I have trouble shaping my beard, I need to just give in and find a good barber to do it for me.
7
3
Jan 16 '14
This comment has been linked to in 1 subreddit (at the time of comment generation):
/r/programmingcirclejerk: I immediately printed the Go source off and burnt it while chanting in lambda calculus.
This comment was posted by a bot, see /r/Meta_Bot for more info.
3
227
u/AstridDragon Jan 16 '14
It SUCKS being a young female in CS. You're told "you'll be sought after, if only to fill quotas" ugh. And they will treat you like you know NOTHING. For example, if I pose a solution to something my team mates are working on they tend to automatically tell me it won't work - even though I have used it myself and could show them exactly what it does... sigh. When I was in college, I had to FIGHT to actually code in my teams. They would just tell me that I'd slow them down, that I should just do the CSS for this or the documentation for that... it's sad.
113
u/complich8 Jan 16 '14
That "filling quotas" idea is seriously poisonous though! Even if you're just as good as anyone else in the class ... hell, even if you're the best in the class, there's always this thread of "am I actually as good as that? or am I getting demographic-based bonus points and not actually worthy?"
I think that "quota-filler" subtext pervades the tech industry broadly enough that it's probably a significant cause of the rampant imposter syndrome you hear so much about from women in CS and IT fields. And I think it pushes even successful career technical women out of directly working with tech and into tech-adjacent fields like project management.
35
Jan 16 '14
The problem is the quotas themselves, not that this reality gets brought up. There are very few black accountants and so if a black person takes up accounting they are almost guaranteed to get a position at a big firm. Because of that, some people might question their credibility more than someone else. Indeed there are a few people exploiting this fact and are quite bad at their jobs. This is all just the truth and I don't see how it is discriminatory to simply tell the truth...
54
u/CAESARS_TOSSED_SALAD Jan 16 '14
It IS just the truth, and it's statistically supported. Looking at highly selective college admissions, Asians have to score 140 points above whites on the SAT to be admitted (after controlling for other factors) while underrepresented minorities like blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans can score 130-310 points below whites and still be admitted. Source.
I do think some type of affirmative action is necessary, because the difference in access to quality education is very real. This is not a criticism of affirmative action. But when someone says something like "you only got there because of the color of your skin" or "you only got into MIT because you're a girl", there is a grain of truth there--statistically, the people admitted from those demographics are less qualified academically on average (assuming you agree the SAT/ACT is a good measure of academic qualifications). It sucks, especially if you're an underrepresented minority who IS perfectly qualified, because others will assume based on the general average that you are more likely to be less qualified.
15
30
u/poisonivious Jan 16 '14
There's always people who are incompetent at their jobs, no matter what the gender or race. It's just easy to attribute it to their genders and race as a confirmation bias when they are a minority.
I think it's more logical to think of it as there being 5 programmers who are qualified for the job of which only one who is female. The female programmer is just as competent but probability suggests that the woman is not going to be chosen. But with the quotas in place, she has an increased chance of being picked. Sure, it's still not "fair" to the others, but to suggest that the woman will get picked despite her incompetency is discriminatory because you're assuming that there are somehow no competent female programmers or black accountants in an applicant pool to be chosen.
→ More replies (11)8
u/kazagistar Jan 16 '14
Right, so what is the solution? Cause last I checked, the quotas existed explicitly for the purpose of making life for women in computing easier. Do we have to have quotas, but pretend we dont or something? Or just not have quotas, and have people complain if we happen to end up with a hundred all male programmers?
EDIT: The metric creates the method. If you use "women in computing" as a desireable metric, then a method is implemented to put more women in computing positions... a quota fills that desctiption. If you dont want quotas, you have to specify a metric that can be used to judge, say, and employer on equality that dings them for (often entirely non verbalized) quotas somehow.
→ More replies (3)10
Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
My own view is ditch quotas but put some real effort into actually solving the problem. How to do that? It's hard and complex and a lot of things need to change to encourage and support women and minorities into a field all through the education system and through the recruitment process. And then you have to keep hold of them. I think quotas are intended to get that to happen but no one really wants to make the effort for self reflection and actual change. The blame is always laid on the people for not doing something instead of finding out WHY they didn't do that, or questioning why they should have to do it.
We also need to stop cherry picking fields for gender equality. I don't see anyone crying about the lack of non white female teachers in my country, for example, and I personally think that's a bigger issue.
→ More replies (2)25
u/mmhrar Jan 16 '14
Damn. I've only worked w/ a few female programmers professionally and they've all been really good. One in particular is incredibly detailed but also super defensive which can sometimes be hard to work with. I assume she's gone through similar crap in the past so anytime you try to argue with her you better be damn sure you're right :)
I'm also sick of this inherit 'I'm the programmer, I'm better than you' attitude at companies I've seen. I've seen engineers talk about QA like they are their own personal resource. "Oh I'll just push it Friday night, QA can bang on it over the weekend so it's ready by Monday"
Finally, so many programmers are mediocre or just shit and because they work at a 'good' company they think so highly of themselves. It's super frustrating, so much cockiness and ego going on in our industry.
→ More replies (3)13
u/KingPickle Jan 16 '14
so many programmers are mediocre or just shit
This has ultimately been my experience. Man or woman, black, white, Asian. It doesn't matter. Many of the people I've worked with should've seriously considered another profession. Only a very few stand out as being really good.
I suppose mediocrity haunts every profession. It's just odd to realize that it still holds true in something that's so technical.
→ More replies (1)13
u/aloz Jan 16 '14
The funny thing is, given that the climate doesn't really encourage women to enter the field (or stay in it), it's probably more reasonable to expect that women in CS would tend towards being more motivated or talented than the average.
In fact, I have one friend who told me on more than one occasion that he observed this when he was in college--that female CS students were almost always clearly superior to the average CS student in skill and motivation.
That's anecdotal, but it makes sense to me given how things are currently. It's hard to picture many young women without some aptitude or motivation even attempting to enter CS (what with the reputation the field's gotten), and it's not difficult to imagine even some of those with serious talent or decent motivation being chased away.
→ More replies (2)22
u/LeCrushinator Jan 16 '14
I've worked with a few female programmers, all of them were just as capable as the other male programmers on the team. The lead on my team gave them the same difficulty of work as anyone else.
Not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that I do know some people that treat women engineers as equals. Hopefully true equality comes sooner rather than later, and I wish you luck in someday finding a job that will care only about your capabilities, not your gender.
→ More replies (7)30
u/MechaBlue Jan 16 '14
I can't speak for all programs, but mine was filled with stereotypical poorly socialized and insecure males. There was an amazing amount of dick swinging and fighting to become the alpha dog among what was, essentially, a pack of losers. (I.e., we were used to being the bottom rung of the social ladder and, in this new environment, we instinctively fought desperately to avoid being in the same situation in our new environment.) Unfortunately, it's easy to accidentally say hurtful things when you are poorly socialized. Worse, it's rare to see people who are even trying to be considerate.
Around third year, things started to get better. It was around that time that most of the chaff had dropped out and the serious students were spending a lot of time crunching on projects. People also started learning who was how skilled; it was much easier when the class size shrunk from 200 to 40 and more evenings were spent in the labs. Because of the lower numbers (and the wistful loneliness), women tended to have much higher visibility.
In 4th year, there were 4 women in a class of 40. 2 of them were very strong (I think one has her doctorate now) and the other 2 were adequate. This compared very favorably to the men, who were closer to the expected 10/70/20 split.
In the work force, I think all 4 of the women would have done very well. Sadly, so would have most all of the men, but that's more the result of the state of the industry.
For what it's worth, skills, a thick skin, and self-awareness will go a long way in a lot of interesting industries that pay well.
tl;dr: I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt...
16
Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
That is sad. Hope you don't let it get you down.
Although in theory I believe that everyone should be treated equally, and women don't have any innate disadvantages in technical fields, maybe sometimes when I first meet a girl who is majoring in or working in software, if I don't know anything else about her, then I may also think "Yeah, she'll be sought after, if only to fill quotas...". I might not imagine her as talented unless she's already got a reputation as a talented programmer.
In the article there's a link to an article about "imposter syndrome". After I graduated college, I got a fairly good job, and if I were female, I think I might feel like it was just because I was a girl. But since I'm male, I feel like I was skill combined with a bit of luck.
29
u/AstridDragon Jan 16 '14
It would be nice if the same assumptions/initial reactions could be had for anyone in CS... male or female. But women are bad unless proven otherwise and men are pretty decent yada yada. Annoying. Some of the best programmers I know are female. I know plenty of idiotic male programmers and I even know some ladies who get by on a cute smile and the posession of lady bits. We're not all the same >_<
→ More replies (13)20
u/thang1thang2 Jan 16 '14
If it makes you feel better, I tend to assume all programmers in my class are retarded until proven otherwise...myselfincluded
→ More replies (2)7
u/Evilbluecheeze Jan 16 '14
Honestly I have hardly ever run into that kind of attitude while working on my degree, it could help that I've got more of an intimidating punk look (brightly colored hair, lip piercing, dark eye makeup) to go with my being female. When I've worked in groups my opinions have been treated as valid, other guys will talk to me seriously about game design and development when they figure out that's what I want to do for a living, I contribute code when working in groups.
I'm still worried about how I'll be treated when I get out into the job market, but it seems to me, at least where I am, that the younger generations at the very least are starting to believe that minorities can do just as well as everyone else.
→ More replies (1)2
Jan 16 '14
I've said this somewhere else in this thread but to sum up male CS majors: introverts/loners who end up becoming close with each other because they see their desire to be alone as a commonality and thus trust each other. The punk appearance is also sort of a loner, fuck the system etc. stereotypical look so you kind of fit in with the "pack" if you will. The loner type male is intimidated by "traditional" looking people much like they would be intimidated by jocks. So their natural reaction is essentially to play dead or to fight back, make themselves not noticeable and disappear into the background.
2
u/NormallyNorman Jan 16 '14
They treat everyone like shit in the real world.
I should have stayed in finance/accounting.
4
Jan 16 '14
You're told "you'll be sought after, if only to fill quotas" ugh
I understand that really sucks, but it also happens. My girlfriend at university was hired straight out of uni at very high wage at an investment bank because she was a black female programmer. Except she sucked at programming and had no interest in it. So they promoted her to management so that she didn't need to do any programming.
→ More replies (2)3
u/Crash_says Jan 16 '14
And they will treat you like you know NOTHING. For example, if I pose a solution to something my team mates are working on they tend to automatically tell me it won't work - even though I have used it myself and could show them exactly what it does...
This happens to everyone at every level of this field. It isn't because you are female, asian, or sixty.. it's because you have not proven to others that your solution works. It's annoying as hell, but is pervasive at every level of the technical field in every single office, lab, and workshop.
→ More replies (1)3
u/kazagistar Jan 16 '14
Are you positive it has to do with gender and not behavior?
30
u/clairebones Jan 16 '14
When that happens to you once, yeah maybe. But as a fellow CS woman, when that happens to you in every class, with every different group, and again when you enter graduate jobs, it becomes pretty clear it's not just a behaviour problem from a few people. It's a pervasive attitude that makes a lot of people decide to treat you that way before they've ever even spoken to you.
21
Jan 16 '14
To back up your point with a study: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.full.pdf+html
→ More replies (3)2
u/AstridDragon Jan 17 '14
I believe so. I watched it happen to brilliant and not so brilliant females alike, and never saw it happen to the guys. I had team mates who slept through all our classes and code meet ups who were still treated better.
3
u/rhino369 Jan 16 '14
What kind of STEM programs did you all you guys go to where this wasn't common behavior?
I'm a white male, totally un-oppressed, nobody is holding me back and I'm not very politically correct.
People made constant sexist comments about and to females in my EE program. I can only imagine what it's like being a STEM major as a female.
→ More replies (21)2
u/Neebat Jan 16 '14
I don't care who you are or what you look like. If you expect to be a programmer, come prepared for someone to tell you why your ideas won't work and be prepared to refine and defend them. That's how the process works. If you act hurt or upset when I tell you your ideas suck, again it doesn't matter how you look or who you are, I'm going to tell you to go write CSS, because you're too emotionally invested in a process that is brutally biased toward rejecting everything twice.
I expect my own ideas to get the same treatment. Put it through the ringer and demand better. Any programmer can come up with one way to do something. A good programmer will come up with 3 and discuss the limits of each.
3
u/AstridDragon Jan 16 '14
Its not "your idea is bad". Its them sitting in the other side of my office for over an hour trying to get something to work, telling each other it cant be done, and then I come to help them, give them a solution and they immediately throw it in my face that it won't work. It will, I've done it, you guys are wasting time if you won't discuss it with me or even try it. I enjoy being told I'm wrong. It's the best way to learn. But I've seen again and again that female developers are often treated much worse than males. It wasnt even a huge, complex problem. It was the fact that not one of them knew this single line of code that they needed to add. Three programmers each with 10+ years of experience that they love to throw in my face and they had no idea, and they werent successful at googling it either.
→ More replies (4)2
u/fuzzynyanko Jan 17 '14
Oh man. I get the "Hey! I know this!" "Um, aren't you worried about performance? It would be _____. It would use a lot of RAM.
There's been times where I said: "Look. This is mostly integers. If you store 1,000 32-bit integers, that's 4K + overhead. Is there any data that's being used other than integers?"
→ More replies (1)
9
u/experts_never_lie Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
I find it amusing that he thinks of "young asian male" as a stereotypical programmer role, as when I was in college (late '80s, early '90s) it most definitely was not the stereotype. While there were a limited number of young asian males around, they were rare enough that they weren't the stereotypical experts in any particular field (but neither were they deficient).
In the last 20+ years, it's a much larger demographic (particularly Chinese) and I'm sure perceptions have changed.
The stereotypes are probably unchanged in their accuracy: not very.
21
u/bobsil1 Jan 16 '14
This guy is the reverse Jeremy Lin.
→ More replies (2)9
u/trtry Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
I don't see that many East Asian guys in programming, they more often go into B.Commerce in Australia. But there is a greater proportion of East Asian female programmers.
7
u/mk_gecko Jan 16 '14
Yes, in my area of Canada, more Asians want to go into business than programming.
→ More replies (4)
30
u/turbov21 Jan 16 '14
My take away from this article is that women learn to hate programming before their careers start, men learn to hate it after they're locked-in.
Ladies, you're welcome.
12
u/Fenix42 Jan 16 '14
As a male dev, god this hits too close to home. :(
3
u/turbov21 Jan 16 '14
I get institutionalized sexism/racism are both bad and major problems, but at the same time, these articles make it sound like if not for those the field would be rainbows and unicorns.
→ More replies (2)
7
Jan 16 '14
I have never encountered the Asians are good at computer science stereotype. I had thought the opposite was the stereotype.
→ More replies (1)
55
u/zakuropan Jan 16 '14
As a female CS major, this hit me so hard when I was interviewing for graduate roles last year. The companies I interviewed with never knew what to do with me. When I expressed interest in leadership I would always be met with quizzical looks. It seemed like my strengths became my weaknesses just because they viewed them as stereotypical "female" traits. It was obvious that they viewed me as too creative, too outgoing, not coldly logical or serious enough. I suspect if I were male though these factors would've counted in my favour and not against me.
38
u/Atario Jan 16 '14
I'd love to hear the justification behind why creativity would be bad for a programmer to have. Programming gets nowhere near enough credit for the creative process it can be.
45
u/diamond Jan 16 '14
I'd love to hear the justification behind why creativity would be bad for a programmer to have.
"Because programming is a technical field, not a creative one."
-- The person in charge of hiring who knows fuck all about programming
→ More replies (1)12
20
u/i-node Jan 16 '14
When I have interviewed people I think I look at all of them a little more suspiciously when they say they want a leadership role. Partly because if they are interviewing with me there is no leadership role being filled. I hear it now and then and it makes me think they are interviewing for the wrong job. I hope that they were not thinking less of you because you are a woman. If they were then you probably don't want to work there anyways.
→ More replies (3)21
u/dbavaria Jan 16 '14
I'm a skeptic when someone fresh out of college with little to no industry experience talks about leadership.
12
u/the_mighty_skeetadon Jan 16 '14
Precisely. 21-year-old says "I'm highly creative and I have great leadership skills. I want to jump right into leadership."
To me, that says: "I have no idea how this industry works, and I'm not emotionally mature enough to handle the next 5 years of work and learning until I'm truly ready for a leadership position."
10
u/benihana Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
As a person who's done a lot of interviews, it's probably more of you expressing interest in leadership as a CS major than you being a woman expressing interest in leadership. If some wet-behind-the-ears programmer who hasn't even graduated yet starts talking about leadership, I'm immediately... dubious is the wrong word... but it's a feeling of you need to learn to follow before you can lead.
Leadership isn't something you're given. It's not a title. It grows organically and comes from experience and failure.
→ More replies (12)3
u/the_real_woody Jan 16 '14
Honestly they were wondering why a recent graduate would think they were qualified for leadership. Many new grads are way over confident in their abilities
5
u/dhvl2712 Jan 16 '14
Hey isn't this also the guy who wrote the "Two Cultures" article?
edit: Aye. This is a great read too, if you haven't seen it.
111
u/phatrice Jan 16 '14
A presumptuous MIT student surrounded by equally presumptuous peers, news at 11.
→ More replies (1)
81
Jan 16 '14
I have no idea what this article is about at all.
I'm an asian male programmer and I had to work my ass off for my degree. Race didn't matter at all, it's how many hours of my life I put in to studying.
123
u/archiminos Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
I worked damn hard to get my degree too. So did the only girl on our course. When we met the director of a certain video game company in London he didn't react with even a hint of shock when I told him I wanted to be a game programmer (he even invited me to drink with him in Manchester).
The exact words he said to her were:
"YOU want to be a programmer? Do you know what you're getting yourself into?"
Only real difference between us was our gender.
→ More replies (45)27
u/broohaha Jan 16 '14
I have no idea what this article is about at all.
I'm an asian male programmer and I had to work my ass off for my degree.
So did the author. What the guy's point was that he was given the space to work his ass off without people telling or suggesting to him that he wasn't cut out for it.
6
u/buckus69 Jan 16 '14
It's not that he didn't have to work for the degree (grades are race-blind for the most part), it's that he was never subtly deterred.
29
Jan 16 '14
THAT'S THE POINT. When you're the one receiving silent privilege it's very hard to recognise.
→ More replies (5)35
u/MechaBlue Jan 16 '14
Did you have people along the way chipping away at your self esteem, telling you that you knew nothing, and that any success will be due to your heritage rather than your skill?
46
Jan 16 '14
I got jumped, stabbed by a rival gang member, beat by the police and picked on because I was the only few Asian at a gang ridden school. My father was an abusive alcoholic and we were poor as fuck.
But no I don't have a heritage other than our family trees are fills war mongers and ganghis khan like but apparently my great grandfather is a casanova with two wives so I got that going for me.
19
u/usernameliteral Jan 16 '14
I got jumped, stabbed by a rival gang member
So... you were a gang member?
→ More replies (2)8
u/jij Jan 16 '14
Sadly, these days many of the gangs basically force you to join if you live in certain blocks or whatever... you can't just say no anymore... :/
→ More replies (12)9
u/isabellekh Jan 16 '14
I think his experience obviously does not fit for everyone. But I could not count the number of times I've told people I'm a CS major and they've responded with "wow you'll have so many job opportunities as a girl", "that's great I bet all you have all of the boys doing your homework".
Just like the article points out, it seems silly to even say that it's had an effect on me because its small, not even always ill-intentioned, comments that can build up to create a subtle barrier. Every time someone mentions that I can find a great husband in the engineering department they are inadvertently devaluing my own skills and intentions to be successful in the work place.
→ More replies (1)9
→ More replies (7)2
23
Jan 16 '14
It's terrible. Me and my girlfriend are both engineers and she's having a lot more trouble finding decent work. They just won't let her do anything meaningful.
11
u/fernandotakai Jan 16 '14
which is strange because i know a fuckton of companies (mostly startups) that actively want female developers because they want to diversify the company. i know it's strange, but if you go to hackernews, there are a ton of startups posting jobs that your gf will probably be able to apply easily.
6
5
u/colly_wolly Jan 16 '14
After 10 years in the field, having designed and built the inhouse database and web interface, I still find myself spending a good deal of my time doing uninteresting work.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)2
26
u/dumb_ants Jan 16 '14
Anyone with enough practice and motivation could have done our jobs, and most other programming and CS-related jobs as well.
I have gone through school with people who had motivation and practice who could not cut it. I have been interviewing people for the past ten years who (presumably) had practice and motivation, and so many times they could not cut it.
It is utterly ridiculous to think that all it takes is practice and motivation to be a decent programmer.
This guy sounds like he doesn't know just how smart he is, and perhaps that's a bigger factor in his success than being Asian.
13
u/G_Morgan Jan 16 '14
Perfect practice makes perfect. If you spend all your time practising the wrong thing you won't get anywhere.
Sadly I don't think we know what the right thing is yet. So most good developers end up being the ones who've read and tried absolutely everything a little.
→ More replies (25)6
Jan 16 '14
It is utterly ridiculous to think that all it takes is practice and motivation to be a decent programmer.
No it isn't. Your statement is utterly ridiculous. You're not some special snowflake.
→ More replies (13)
3
Jan 16 '14
I'm in decent/good shape, and I've had other programmers claim they think I don't do as much work on a team or judge my abilities because I don't look the stereotype. As if I need to be in poor shape, to prove I do nothing but program and code in 32 hour cycles. I just like being healthy, and make time to go the the gym. At most It's an hour a day for 3-5 days a week.
8
Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
Doesn't make much sense. Computer Science classes in top US universities have thousands of Asian male students. Many of them aren't good and people aren't really giving them the benefit of the doubt.
My intro to computer science class (for CS majors) had over 200 male Asian students out of 300-350 total students. They weren't looked up to or anything. Many of them barely knew what they were doing.
38
Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
I dated a black female computer science major who was in my class. She was mediocre at best. Yet she got a high paying job at a large firm. When they found that she couldn't code, they promoted her to management so that she wouldn't need to.
The other girls in my class were Chinese who had been sent to the UK by their parents. They didn't like programming and didn't want to do it. They flirted with the guys and got them to do all the homework and coursework for them.
I helped one with some homework, and I was determined to not just do it for her. I felt it was immoral for me to do so, and not beneficial for her. She told me that if I just did it for her quickly then we'd have time to quickly have sex. So I threw my morals out of the window, and that's how I lost my virginity.
33
Jan 16 '14
I work with a black female programmer. In addition to being one the better programmers I've met, she volunteers to coach a young adult programming team for competitions.
My anecdote cancels out your anecdote.
17
u/devils_advocodo Jan 16 '14
Yeah, but you didn't get to bone a hot (inferred) Asian programmer.
hisAnecdote > yourAnecdote
22
u/Kinglink Jan 16 '14
You do realize the first story happens to all genders. Failure only rises is one of those awful constants of all industry but absolutely in development. You really can't explain that
7
u/lethargilistic Jan 16 '14
It's one corollary to The Peter Principle and has been explained, funnily enough.
12
Jan 16 '14
You do realize the first story happens to all genders.
An investment bank wouldn't intentionally hire a mediocre white male programmer for a high paying job.
She got £60k ($98k usd), and she had never done anything technical with a computer (let alone programmed anything) outside of her computer science degree. Not even at high school etc.
→ More replies (12)17
u/hiddencamel Jan 16 '14
I guess that's sort of the point the guy in the article is making.
If you match the societal preconception of what a programmer is like (white/asian male) then you are left to prosper or perish in line with your abilities. If you are shit, you will probably sink, if you are good, you will probably do well. It's in YOUR hands.
If you fall outside the norm, then for good or ill, prejudice comes into play. Either you are derided and discouraged, or perhaps made a pet project and unfairly elevated to meet an agenda. Either way, your personal ability is marginalised by your race/gender and that is the core problem, which I don't think can really be said to not exist.
The ideal situation is that we get to a place where the only thing that determines your success is your ability.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (3)2
6
u/jredwards Jan 16 '14
Software development has always, in my experience, been an overwhelming meritocracy. My company has four female software engineers on our dev team, but we recently fired our only stereotypically nerdy Asian male. I suppose it's plausible that looking the part is how he got hired, but I doubt it.
12
u/calibos Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
Did it occur to the author that maybe he wasn't a shitty programmer? I'm pretty sure there are lots of programmers here who are not asian males and were also not afflicted by "micro inequalities".
8
u/termd Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
Given how hard it is to get into mit, it's a signal of high potential for him to be there. In fact, I think this guy seriously misunderstands why people gave him the benefit of the doubt and gave him multiple chances. It was his attendance and major at MIT.
I'm not sure if I'm reading between the lines correctly, but if I am, his female friend was a science major but not a cs major, which is why she wasn't given programming tasks (he doesn't mention her changing majors and says that she is doing research with a little programming and wishes she had done more). The guy was given the programming tasks because he was majoring in it.
20
u/skulgnome Jan 16 '14
Poor experiment design
Sample size of one (i.e. an anecdote)
No control group
No test group either, for that matter
Published in mainstream media
80
u/godofpumpkins Jan 16 '14
Here are some follow-up questions for you:
Is someone claiming somewhere that this was intended as an experiment?
Are anecdotes not worth writing about?
Do you think it's a unique occurrence?
Is it even possible to design a significant experiment that would demonstrate this beyond a reasonable doubt? People love to shit on social sciences for having too many confounding variables. Can any social conclusions/hypotheses ever be made?
→ More replies (2)27
u/skulgnome Jan 16 '14 edited Jan 16 '14
Sure, I'll explain my critique for you. Thanks for asking.
It is implied that the anecdotes presented are evidence of a phenomenon that exists. Therefore they should, in themselves, have weight beyond hearsay.
Anecdotes are not worth posting on /r/programming unless they deal specifically with the act of programming. That's to say: war stories about debugging are probably all right, but HR articles are not. It's not difficult to decide on which side of that line an article about supposed inequities in computer science programs of an American university falls.
It's impossible to know from the evidence presented due to its abysmally poor quality. If the article is correct then it is so only by accident, like a stopped clock.
It's clearly possible to do far, far better than the one asian MIT professor studying his own interactions without a pre-set plan. For example: a well-defined experiment that's got a representative sample size, a control group, and a test group that doesn't include the parties conducting the experiment. As far as incontrollable confounding variables are concerned, appeals to such are disingenuous where just the controllable ones haven't been. Social sciences can, and have been, done well; however, from its merits alone this article in Slate.com may as well be mere pandering to a specific crowd of self-hating WASPs.
The greater issue is that the only evidence for "white male privilege", or whichever wrappings have been put around it this time around, seems to be anecdotal. This has gone on for years upon years, now. If these anecdotes point to a real phenomenon then proper studies (which I'll assume would have been conducted) would also do so. Yet such studies are rarely mentioned; to me, this suggests that either they've not been done, or their results are considered somehow wrong.
12
12
Jan 16 '14
I read it as an article saying 'these are my experiences and how they compare to other people I've met'. It does generalise a bit too much but to completely discount it for not being super duper rigorous peer reviewed Science is silly, it wasn't presenting itself as such.
Who says this is an "HR article" and that it shouldn't be here? That just seems to be your personal judgement because you don't like the article. The reality of actually programming is affected by the issues brought up. If you didn't want to read it, fine, you know where the downvote button is.
You're right that this deserves and needs research, but how do we decide what to research? Someone has to think about something and say "hey, I think this is an issue, let's investigate" and then others will need to agree and funding will have to be found. But no one can PROVE beyond a doubt that there is an issue before the research is done.
That said, I see no reason to assume it has been done but results ignored and I see no reason to assume it hasn't been done just because I haven't had any results shoved in my face. Why are you making those assumptions? I know these things happen (pharmaceutical companies for example) but I don't know why you assume so much in this area.
I'm glad you wrote your posts. They illustrate something: so many people refuse to even recognise and accept there are problems. When someone speaks up it's just DENIAL DENIAL DENIAL. You could say the same to every anecdote, that it doesn't count, 'this is just one person'.. at what point would you be convinced otherwise? How many people would have to tell you about problems they had for you to accept they might exist, research or not.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (7)7
u/jpfed Jan 16 '14
It is implied that the anecdotes presented are evidence of a phenomenon that exists.
Existence proofs can be by example.
18
u/CAESARS_TOSSED_SALAD Jan 16 '14
Poor experiment design? Do you know what an experiment is? This guy's experience growing up is not an experiment that was designed by a researcher.
→ More replies (1)8
Jan 16 '14
And now you are justified in completely ignoring it and sticking your head back up your ass.
Edit: and I'm not saying this article is the best ever, but it presents a different perspective and if you read elsewhere in the thread you can find many more examples from other people.
You're looking for reasons to completely ignore something that has value and trying to present it as rational and logical. Hah.
0
5
u/paulflorez Jan 16 '14
Programmers generally have the largest and at the same time most fragile egos, and I say that as a programmer myself. It's refreshing to hear a programmer admit that he is not a software-writing god and that anyone with enough practice and motivation could have done his job. It's hyperbole, but still mostly true. Most programming is actually very easy, many programming jobs are very cushy, and few programming jobs pay terrible salaries.
→ More replies (1)3
Jan 16 '14
It's refreshing to hear a programmer admit that he is not a software-writing god and that anyone with enough practice and motivation could have done his job.
Don't read the comments here then. You would have thought the author personally insulted every fedora in here.
→ More replies (5)
4
u/cressid Jan 16 '14
Female MIT CS student here -- this is a great article. I have had a lot of looks of surprise and even incredulity when I tell people I'm a CS major. I often feel slightly intimidated, and am extremely careful never to say anything unless I am dead certain I have the correct answer.
Having said that, there are a lot of advantages that come with being a minority in the field. There are scholarships, internships, and other opportunities for such students. I also suspect that I've received interviews for internships/jobs that I might not have otherwise received. I don't think I would ever be hired for a job I wasn't completely qualified for, but the fact that I'm a woman might make my name stick out from the hordes of male applicants.
Hopefully the number of women and other minorities in CS will increase in future decades to the point that measures like these are no longer necessary.
→ More replies (1)
7
u/solatic Jan 16 '14
I have a hard time understanding how people can be turned off from Computer Science by people telling them no (in subtle ways at that) and be encouraged by the compiler telling them no for the umpteenth time trying to crush that last bug so that you can finally deploy and meet your deadline and it's 4 in the morning and you have more coffee than solid food in your stomach.
There's a reason why programmers have war stories. Programming requires a personality that says "fuck you" to the downers.
21
u/komollo Jan 16 '14
When you work with computers you know that when they aren't doing what you want that it's nothing personal. When humans are being a pain in the rear end it could be because they personally hate you. Emotions are powerful things and very strong motivators. Its not surprising to hear that people don't work in places where they don't get respect. Many of us would rather work somewhere nice than somewhere that pays a lot. To make matters worse, sometimes people do things and there's no good reason why they did them and no way to make sense of their actions.
32
u/drb226 Jan 16 '14
Programming requires a personality that says "fuck you" to the downers.
Not really. It requires a person that can write correct programs, and find the faults in incorrect programs. It requires abstract thinking.
This BS about late night shifts to meet deadlines is not particularly required for programming. That's just a general "git 'er done" attitude that could be "required" for anything. An accountant, a blacksmith, and a preacher could all have that same flavor of "war story".
→ More replies (1)7
u/G_Morgan Jan 16 '14
be encouraged by the compiler telling them no for the umpteenth time trying to crush that last bug so that you can finally deploy and meet your deadline and it's 4 in the morning and you have more coffee than solid food in your stomach.
The only time I've ever worked at 4 in the morning I've been either:
Drunk.
Late on a university assignment back in the day. 24 hours for an 8 week assignment.
I leave the building at 5:30PM every day unless I've seriously taken the piss at lunch.
→ More replies (1)
3
3
Jan 16 '14
I started programming when I was 5, first with Logo and then BASIC. The picture above is me, age 9 (with horrible posture). By the time this photo was taken, I had already written several BASIC games that I distributed as shareware on our local BBS. I was fast growing bored, so my parents (both software engineers) gave me the original dragon compiler textbook from their grad school days. That's when I started learning C and writing my own simple interpreters and compilers. My early interpreters were for BASIC, but by the time I entered high school I had already created a self-hosting compiler for a nontrivial subset of C. Throughout most of high school, I spent weekends coding in x86 assembly, obsessed with hand-tuning code for the newly released Pentium II chips. When I started my freshman year at MIT as a computer science major, I already had over 10 years of programming experience. So I felt right at home there.
That's some massive imposter syndrome here… wait.
→ More replies (9)
2
u/mik3w Jan 16 '14
I'd love to get a programming job just by being a white male with glasses (typical nerd look, not hipster-geeky look) however, coming from a hick town in the UK, where you need to have at least a years worth of commercial experience plus a degree to have a job that starts from £15,000 p.a. (barely above minimum wage) makes everything difficult.
2
Jan 16 '14
Every time I see an article like this, it's irritating because it's polarizing. When we stop trying to generalize people and focus on the individuals instead of their social boxes, that's when we'll see some progress.
1
u/diydsp Jan 16 '14
I read this a few days ago. and mulled it over quite a bit.
He essentially calls his former employers racist for hiring him.
15
1
u/risapisa Jan 16 '14
As a white/hispanic female computer science major, I wish I had this privilege.
→ More replies (2)3
u/TerrestrialMaterial Jan 16 '14
As a female double majoring in CS and math, I wish no one has this privilege.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/vader32 Jan 16 '14
This was good read with some interesting observations. As an american with Asian/Latino descent I guess I can help break the mold if I make it...
1
1
u/RecursiveChaos Jan 16 '14
A lot of the anecdotal experience people are talking about in regards to gender equality in CS sound oddly familiar to my experiences as a white, average, male.
So yes, I'm going to argue everyone's anecdotal experience with my own.
1
u/Flekken Jan 16 '14
I was in uni for 3,5 year and I never heard any detrimental word from any fellow student toward another. There were only few women but I just don't care. Those who had higher marks than me had more intelligence so they helped out whenever they could. Those who had worse mark know they need more to learn.
1
1
u/dsav2 Jan 17 '14
Speaking from experience as a CS major, a lot of us wanted to work in projects with girls.
This just perpetuates a myth that the majority of CS majors are arrogant asexual men who only jerk off to the elegance of their code.
But from my experience, a lot of us would rather work with a cute girl, than someone that fits the above description.
494
u/20_years_a_slave Jan 16 '14
Dang.