As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People
I have never seen any career that is so deeply tied to a certain culture as CS/SWE and a certain culture that I'll call X, to avoid any discussions on naming and so on.<p>I see far more diversity in tastes and interests in most other majors and careers, while in CS/SWE, X seems to hold a monopoly.<p>CS/SWE goes far beyond a career, usually becoming close to a religion or way of life. I rarely see doctors, lawyers, or most professions engaging in their practice outside work as a hobby, but in CS/SWE, you're evaluated by your hobbie-contributions on GitHub, your postings to HackerNews, etc.<p>There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all this non-work community.<p>And that brings us to X, a set of interests and values that permeate CS/SWE workers, and frequently makes those interested in CS/SWE feel unwelcome if they don't take part in X.<p>It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman (or any of the other identities/genders/etc.), if you don't like X (which might include sci-fi, fantasy, video-games, board games, certain types of discussions, and a lot more), there's a good chance that you might not feel like you belong in CS/SWE (this isn't universal, and I've seen many teams that embrace cultural diversity pretty well).<p>Sadly, for whatever reasons (I have my own hypothesis that the rise of male-dominated gaming culture in the 80's and its further attachment to CS studies due to the overlap between coding and gaming is the cause) X is male-dominated. So even if men who don't take part in X feel unwelcome, the impact is bigger on women, as they have a much lower representation in X.<p>One of the key pieces of information that led me to think like this, was this:
<a href="http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachelors-degrees-women-usa.png" rel="nofollow">http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...</a><p>I don't claim any authority on this, or even that this is correct. These are just my own (low-n) observations, and I'm pretty sure a good part (if not all) of it probably doesn't stand up to reality.<p>So I'm probably all wrong here, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.<p>My gut feeling is that I shouldn't post this, as the previous discussions here about this issue are borderline flamewars, from both sides, but I still have hope that some good discussions are possible here.