My daughter is very sensitive? observant? of school personalities. She found many schools to have great personalities, that she felt she would be totally comfortable at.
But I think once you get to college, it’s probably too late. Or at least I think much more damage is done (to the funnel) in middle school, and maybe high school.
I graduated with a CS degree in the mid 80s. I can’t say exactly what the percentage of women was in the program, but more than once I was the only woman in the class. The department had one female professor. The environment wasn’t unwelcoming, it was more like I was a novelty. I got along well with most of the guys and married one of them.
Last year D was the only woman one of her ME required classes. She reports that the highest percentage was about 20%. When D was in high school, I counted the girls at a robotics competition at <10%.
I mean no disrespect, but CS in the 70s and 80s was 30-40 years ago and things have changed. My CS major’s best friends are also CS students or grads, one of the gals has multi-million dollar funding for a company at age 23, the other females are at incredible jobs with big starting salaries where gender is irrelevant, perhaps because they are all equally talented or are with modern high tech employers where respect is no problem…Each one of them is amazing and frankly, tough to the core, they don’t lack confidence that’s for sure. No guy is gonna hold them back and I know the guys in this group respect their female friends as talented peers. Perhaps some of it is a geographical issue as certain parts of the country are 20 years behind others?
My daughter is in a pre-engineering program at her all-girls school. I’m quite sure that she would not have developed so much self confidence in the tech area if not for the very positive and supportive all-girls environment. She plans to major in CS and I do wonder what the atmosphere will be like in college… We have heard both positive and negative stories from current college students. One of the (techy) schools she really likes has a 70/30 male/female ratio… And she will be attending an all-day admissions program there next week, aimed specifically at the female applicants. She does love to code… I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
It might be considerably easier now. A few decades ago, students had to go to the computer terminal room to use a terminal (like the [DEC VT100](VT100 - Wikipedia) or the [Lear Siegler ADM-3A](ADM-3A - Wikipedia)) connected to a shared computer (like a [DEC PDP-11](PDP-11 - Wikipedia) or [DEC VAX-11](VAX-11 - Wikipedia)) that had a tiny fraction of the compute power that a low cost computer that a college student has in his/her dorm room today. Watching programs compile and then take a while to run meant spending a lot of time on programming assignments and projects. Of course, go back further to the punch card era to see the turnaround time get even longer.
No @ucbalumnus I would think the curriculum now is much more difficult, and more demanding, especially since there’s much more to learn!
ETA: Yes, sending a stack of punch cards through, would sometimes take an entire day. If you had a mistake on a card, you had to correct it and send it in again, putting you back a whole day. And the lab wasn’t open 24/7!
In my (anecdotal) experience, plenty of nerdy guys - including those who like to play games - are in fact kind, smart, thoughtful young men who would be horrified at the sexist and misogynist conduct described in the NYT article from 2014.
Is this culture a problem at big, established tech companies, as compared to the start-ups that seem to be the focus of the NYT article?
@nycparent12, my wife is in tech, albeit as a manager, but she began as a programmer and still makes technology decisions and develops strategy. She has worked in the financial services industry for many years. The misogyny there is more subtle and hidden, which makes it worse IMO. It was not unusual to attend senior level meetings with 30 men, her, and the female HR person.
Her CEO was asked, years ago at a previous employer, why he didn’t have any women among his direct reports. He replied that they often had to travel together, and that if a woman were traveling with them, people would assume that they were sleeping together, and that he couldn’t have that. He said that on camera, with no sense that an injustice was being committed to anyone but himself, completely tone-deaf. It should be noted that he was not American.
Attempts to fix this at senior levels are wired for failure. DW is given “diversity targets,” at her new employer, and she is able to implement those at junior to middle levels, happily. She resists the temptation to hire under-qualified senior women, because the population of qualified senior women is very small, they’ve been bribed with comp well past what they should be paid, and, being painfully blunt, many of them coast on their diversity credentials. DW has gotten headhunter calls that don’t disguise the fact that they are looking for a female, presumably to meet some other organization’s diversity target. Fwiw, she works at an organization that truly cares about hiring POC, women, veterans, etc. CS is a field where it is difficult to “fake it until you make it,” and hiring underqualified people perpetuates negative prejudices and stereotypes.
My DD is a rising senior in CE with a major focus on CS at a large state university. She is a good student - deans list every semester. There has been issues - the only female in classes, the last person asked to be on group projects, being told the only reason she is there is find a husband. She says the engineers are more accepting than the CS students. She has passed the Google tech interviews several times and presently has a premiere internship with a large, well established tech firm but she says she still has the imposter syndrome. She has other interests beyond her degree and because she is not living it 24 hrs/day, she is not one of them. Presently, she is considering law school to become a patent attorney. She might be leaving the field before she even starts.
@GTAustin, it might be scant consolation, but males who get selected after rigorous tech interviews also deal with Imposter Syndrome. DS, after doing well for three hours, said “Dad, I was lucky that they asked me about things I knew. One more question and I would have fallen flat on my face.” It is a syndrome especially among the thoughtful.
I hope she sticks with it.
@IxnayBob, I do to! Her present company for her internship is doing a great job for all the interns, which actually is 50/50 on gender, on showing multiple career paths and a good work/life balance. Her problem is with her compadres. They live to code and that is just not her.
Another problem that has effected my DD is that she has made it thru the technical interviews for several companies and then after very positive reviews cannot get project matched. She has had feedback that they are going to submit a project specifically to hire her, leave her dangling for months and then come back and say no project match. I don’t know if this is a common experience but it has effected her confidence in herself.
GTAustin, it did take several months for my D to get matched for her current internship - interviewed online while studying abroad last fall in Oct and November, did not hear back until end of January. I don’t think she knows anyone who lives to code! My S who is also in CS, lives to play games but not to code.
She has had 3 experiences of making it thru the technical interviews and then not getting project matched, 2 with the same company who has approached her again this summer. As she says, if they wanted her, they should have hired her. The company she is interning with is looking for long term employees that they can develop. I do think it would be a great place to start a career but it is up to her.
“stuck in a dark room with fat nerdy men who have cheerios stuck to their shirts” - apparently the author has no idea w This is beyond funny, it is hilarious! There are practically no nerdy men in CS, I mean the IS / IT departments. You better be outgoing with great communication skills to be able to extract from various users the information for your design. “Nerdy men in dark room” will not be able to do that! I have a ear to ear grin on my face, this comment has made my day!!! Very funny!! - I am a female computer programmer (the job position will not be understood by most people here, so it is irrelevant to mention). This is my job #9. I agree with the fact that most new hires have been males in more recent years of my 34 years in IS / IT departments. I do not know why at the beginning, these departments were largely female with many female bosses. It is a fun job, many have hard time to retire from. And this includes me. I frankly do not care, who are people in my departments, male / female / nerdy or otherwise. We deal with the users and the customers much more than we deal with each other… and the funny part is that because we deal specifically with a lot of them being in Europe, in many occasions we cannot tell male from female because of unfamiliar first names. BTW, we are on the 4th floor of the “glass” building, no dark rooms, in fact, way too much light at times!
Very entertaining post!!!
In my thirty years in IT my experience has never been that there were many females. In fact, when I started working at a giant international software/hardware development company, I was thankful I was married as it was clear most of the guys in the office were never going to meet a woman outside of work. Their only hobbies were building/flying remote control helicopters and building server farms in their mother’s basement.
Today, it is still primarily male. My (small but quickly growing) company has had much more luck recruiting talented developers with different racial/ethnic backgrounds than recruiting females. We don’t have many female applicants from the local State U apply for our internships - which is a major recruiting vehicle for us.
The guys - and gals - are often still nerdy, but a bit more polished than the nerds I worked with starting out. But they also judge people on how they contribute to the team, not what color/gender/orientation or any other category they fall into. We range from developers who wear vests and ties to ones with full sleeve tattoos and multiple piercings. Hobbies range from making origami Pokemon figures to lead guitar in a rock band. We talk about Game of Thrones and Objectivism.
I’m still of the opinion that girls get diverted in middle school to more traditional roles - which is why organizations like Girls who Code could be key in breaking that stereotype.
GTAustin, One of my sons went through something like that with Google. First time with them, he got through two rounds. Second time ,got through 3 rounds with them (including all day thing they flew him in for ). Didn’t hire him for one location and project but said they would be keeping him in mind for another. He never even had any major interest in working for Google. A recruiter approached him. He moved on -went with another employer who made a great offer. I don’t think he would even go through that with Google again . Luckily, there are other great employees besides Google. And your daughter sounds very talented. Good luck to her.
Every guy I know in CS except is pretty nerdy except one of my two brothers. But none of them are fat or slobs and all of them respect women. My non nerdy brother ran a company that taught computer programmers to meet their customers needs better, so not surprisingly his job required him to be less nerd-like. I know quite a few nerds since my dhs three college roommates were all CS majors as well as my two brothers. So much for my anecdotes. 
@sevmom, actually it is Google that keeps coming back to her but never a successful project match and she also, at this point, does not have a major interest for working for them. I’m glad to hear that it just is not her but Google!