If you took all the male foreveraloners and replaced them with normal people and women, would more women be attracted to the field? If so, why not do that?
It's one thing to say that women don't select into a profession because they don't have the aptitude to do it. I think the number of women who score 700+ on the Math SAT proves that at least a lot more women have the aptitude for tech than to into it. If its not aptitude, then it must be culture, and why should the male foreveraloners get to dictate the culture of the field? Because they were there first?
It's the forever-aloners who spent half a decade obsessively learning how computers work before college. If the women you're talking about are being driven away by something so tangential as the culture (which isn't between you and the keyboard), do they still have enough insatiable curiosity to be coding alone as a hobby? If not, how do you figure they have the aptitude?
We need more qualified people, but mostly fewer unqualified people. Most of the men we already have are worse than useless, and I don't want to attract anyone who isn't markedly better.
Your first sentence seems to imply that you believe it to be true. I think there are already a lot of IT companies with normal employees, but they still don't attract a lot of women (I have worked in several of them). I therefore don't think your assumption is correct.
Comments
If you took all the male foreveraloners and replaced them with normal people and women, would more women be attracted to the field? If so, why not do that?
It's one thing to say that women don't select into a profession because they don't have the aptitude to do it. I think the number of women who score 700+ on the Math SAT proves that at least a lot more women have the aptitude for tech than to into it. If its not aptitude, then it must be culture, and why should the male foreveraloners get to dictate the culture of the field? Because they were there first?
It's the forever-aloners who spent half a decade obsessively learning how computers work before college. If the women you're talking about are being driven away by something so tangential as the culture (which isn't between you and the keyboard), do they still have enough insatiable curiosity to be coding alone as a hobby? If not, how do you figure they have the aptitude?
We need more qualified people, but mostly fewer unqualified people. Most of the men we already have are worse than useless, and I don't want to attract anyone who isn't markedly better.
Culture is not tangential.
Your first sentence seems to imply that you believe it to be true. I think there are already a lot of IT companies with normal employees, but they still don't attract a lot of women (I have worked in several of them). I therefore don't think your assumption is correct.
I'm entertaining the assumption. I don't think engineers are any weirder than say accountants.