This comes from a previous comment, but one that is pretty relevant given the "anti-diversity" hysteria that has gripped valley-connected people since some guy at Google suggested that maybe it might be worth considering the possibility that the Emperors clothes could be seen as a tad revealing.
Women still don't choose STEM careers because generally, they understand their natural advantage in life comes from group acceptance, and not tournament performance.
Many women can and do succeed in the natural tournament culture of STEM, but given their options, the effort/reward ratio and natural advantages, they prefer something that provides in-group security.
Given your esteem and position in that in-group is based on whether your peers can accept your code or not, and group survival is based on how little work your peers have to do to get your code checked in, STEM careers below the management level do not provide in-group security, or give commensurate rewards for the natural charisma and social navigation skills most women have. It's almost impossible to get people successfully into those management roles without having proven themselves at the tournament level. It means fewer women, but it could as plausibly be explained by women just having better effort/reward options to compete for than slugging it out as a code monkey. Outside academia, STEM jobs are indexed on these single, simple factors.
Men tend to invest and take tournament risk to achieve higher peer status, where women tend to seek security from relationships that insulate them from negative accountability or group censure/expulsion. Lots of exceptions, but it is a useful filter.
Where are the smart women? The smartest class of women are over represented in professions like medicine, law, academia, and others because for the same 7-10 year investment it would take to be a top tier engineer, scientist, programmer, you get a certification and you are in effect, "made," in society. For them it's a no-brainer. In group security, jobs for life, and no zero-sum performance-based existential threats to their certification status for the rest of their careers. The smartest women "get made," in these fields.
Second to those, you get women who work in large institutions that are hyper-political and lack objective accountability measures like P&L, works/doesn't-work, sales quotas, etc. where get-along skills trump outlier-level performance by a high margin. Government, social services, teaching, nursing, etc. Jobs where nobody actually gets fired for failure or incompetence, and rewards are either fixed or relationship based.
Smart men skew toward tournament careers like sales, finance, tech, advertising and others because the work they put in comes out as higher status among their peers, and failure means exile.
I have met great individual contributor women in science and on engineering teams, but their low numbers/high quality could be explained by the polarizing effect of a survivorship bias that weeds out women faster than men in STEM, leaving only the very strongest ones behind.
When a lot of women look at their options and real natural advantages, they quite logically select out of tournament careers in favor of political ones, leaving only the very best remaining technical ones in STEM.
It's like why we only meet rich hedge fund managers, because there is such a long tail of failed ones we never hear about so we mistakenly assume rich fund managers are the norm. Same is probably true for why the distribution of talent among female engineers is so polarized. The top quintile are genius level, and the below industry average ones just haven't selected out in favor of better options yet.
SJW culture in tech companies is the result of an investment bubble. People without a real problem to solve or a mission to accomplish, but with a sea of cash, are cannibalizing their own with witch hunts and purges as a means to seize control of these giant bubble assets. If a company can afford to waste time on invented social justice problems and political purges, it is probably rudderless, ungovernable, or both.
What should change? Smart women should recognize that their destiny is not shared with stupid women, just as most smart men recognize their destinies are not shared with stupid ones either. The tribal divisions defined by progressive identity politics are designed specifically to disadvantage intelligence, work, investment, genetics, family, and ethics, by people with a cancerous ideology that is very good at organizing to take things from you instead of building them themselves.
There is nothing sexist or anti-anything about having a serious discussion about political means and ends. There are kick ass women in tech, but they aren't staying home and being buthurt about their feels. This culture of "political accountability" for discourse needs to be put down decisively, and permanently.
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OneLifeSucks 8y ago
Alot of intelligent AND competitive women can be found in the music field; particularly in any sort of ensemble. Even getting to perform in a symphony orchestra takes years of dedication along with natural talent and you must outperform the other people auditioning for a spot (alot of them being men). Given all of that you routinely can find women holding first chair positions. Interesting enough most major orchestras in the US have around 50/50 gender representation and gender-blind auditions have actually increased hiring of female musicians over the last few decades.
0xdada 8y ago
Yes, but symphony attendance is dismal and diminishing, arguably because the musicians are good, but not great. Most music is about the quality of soul of the person performing it.
The distribution of talent among women in classical music is also just as polarized. Some of the ones who are considered good do not hold a candle to their equivalent male peers, but the ones who are excellent are legend. With practice, most women can play instruments, fewer can be transcendent and great.
OneLifeSucks 8y ago
You're right but that's with anything. Any guy if he plays sports his entire life can be good but few can do it professionally. At the end of the day the people we get in symphony orchestras may not be transcendent quality but they are professionals and leagues better than anyone else. I just think any occupation where women can compete with and occasionally (even if it's uncommon) surpass men at the professional level is worth noting especially when alot of guys here think they can't find a woman who will at the least be an intellectual/professional equal. We tend to talk about women here more as accessories to a man's life rather than potential partners (emphasis on partner).
0xdada 8y ago
I'm talking about relative skew and kurtosis in distributions of talent between men and women.
For intellectual and professional equals, I have colleagues and friends. I have some friends who are women, but my expectations for what those relationships will bear are different. It's just not reasonable to expect everything from everyone equally.
My experience (and the essential TRP view) has been that guys who think relationships are a negotiation are usually the only ones negotiating.
Most guys have zero interest in a partner other than as a way to think they can virtue signal themselves into bed with a girl.
People take on partners for things they can't do themselves. It's based on need, otherwise it's a companionship or something else.
You can be a partner in raising a kid, but a partner in living your life is not something a complete and self-accepting man can seriously have, as the need for something external to make him complete would be a deficit. It's like children needing their parental approval. Not fully formed. Women seek these guys out as "nice" dads because they feel security in having the reins.
Enjoy women, let them in and out of your life as freely and easily as they may come, and appreciate each one for who she is. Understand they are not a part or extension of you, and that you live on with or without them. Ideally they appreciate you, but if they don't, there is no harm either way.
The implication in the belief in partners is that you can transform your life, your identity, into a joint venture. The consequence is that failure of the partnership becomes a kind of personal death. You can treat women as partners, who are partially an extension of your life, and your life is somehow an extension of theirs, and some of them really enjoy it for a while, but that's a vice. A single woman is not essential to a man's complete self. "Accessory," seems like a a crude term, but if it means not-essential, or that a man is complete without a given one, then sure. He should have some, as he would be denying part of himself if he didn't have any, but one is too many and many are not enough.
The casualties of these co-dependent relationships wash up on TRP every day. Some 220k of them have stuck around.
Wissenschaft85 8y ago
Anther factor to consider is that women who excel in STEM have no issue working with men in a mans environment where bluntness and meritocracy rule. Women become an problem in STEM fields when they are too easily offended to criticism.
IRedEver 8y ago
Engineer here. I agree with this 100%. I do not care if my engineers fuck up as long as they take responsibility for it. When I mess up I fix the shit I caused, even if that sometimes means that I work unpaid overtime. I don't have to do it but I have a sense of responsibility and honor.
I have been called an idiot, incompetent and lazy. The reason I went from being a low level engineer to a mid-level boss in less than 2 years wasn't because I didn't make misstakes and did not fuck up, it was because I took responsibility of my shit and I have never been afraid of calling out BS.
I find that my female colleagues more often than not play the blame-game tho. Males do it too, but not as much.
max_peenor 8y ago
Yup. There is an unnatural amount of capital available to fund losing endeavors. This allows companies to operate based on their feelings, rather than sustainability. This is invariably a self-correcting problem. The only problem being the shear number of snowflakes that think this is the new normal. What they don't know is how many people lost their jobs in 2002 and 2003 and have yet to land another position with the same compensation. They will learn...
ChampOfTheFuture 8y ago
Good stuff.
On a slightly unrelated note, I was very surprised that "Google Memo" guy didn't cite the infamous Github blind peer-review conference, where 100% of accepted submissions where those of men. That would have been much more solid that his awkward graphs and dorky bullet-lists about how women are more emotional and whatnot.
Nullberri 8y ago
Do you have a link? I did a quick google search but didn't find anything definitive.
ChampOfTheFuture 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868
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Wissenschaft85 8y ago
Hes a nerd. What did you expect. lol
itsawomensworld 8y ago
I don't think you could expect a perfect essay in an internal memo. It did the job. It was a 9/10 given the circumstances. If it was a school paper sure maybe it's a 5 or 6.
He did ample research for what it was
Wissenschaft85 8y ago
No, I meant I liked it. I am a nerd. But nerds love graphs and bullet-lists. So no shock thats what was used. lol
itsawomensworld 8y ago
I liked it as well. I don't think the graphs were that impressive. What I was saying is the quality is top notch for what it was.
He isn't paid to write a paper on gender so we got a paper that was written quickly and it was good for that.
ChampOfTheFuture 8y ago
Yep. It's basically the anti-48 laws. I think that's mainly what he's been punished for, being too overt and candide.
Still, I hope the guy receives a big fat cheque from his lawsuit.
TheRedThrowAwayPill 8y ago
DISCLAIMER: the real reason tech has a huge push for more women is ABSOLUTELY to lower wages. Full stop. (Cuz this shit is a seller's market right now. Even a mediocre dev can pull 6-figures)
Now, with that said, yes it's totally possible to have women in tech. There are many good female programmers at my company but I will be the first to admit they are far and few between.
The ones who are doing it and good at it are just like the men. The ones that need devirsity quotas I dunno won't last as long. (But that goes the same for crap male programmers)
I swear I think this guy was paid off as corporate espionage by Google's competitors.
At the very least he will cause a slight shit in HR policies wrt reverse-discrimination against males for training and advancement programs.
Either way - deminazis haaaaaate that shit. It's like him still keeping the house during a divorce rape.
abstractplebbit 8y ago
If the whole point is to lower wages, then why are they wasting tons of money on empty positions that contribute negatively to the bottom line of the company?
newName543456 8y ago
I think they made a calculation and a few of such useless tenures cost much less than projected difference in wages across entire departments, should they plan succeed.
[deleted] 8y ago
Because a labor market determines how much any given positions get paid. The more people applying to a job, the more competitive it is to get said job, the likelihood of those applying accepting a lower wage goes up. Simple supply and demand. It's why we developed countries have minimum wage regulations, because less-skilled labor would, at times, create instances where people are competing for jobs and the employers could just lower the wage until it crowds out everyone but a few who would be willing to work for say, $2 an hour.
abstractplebbit 8y ago
Wow that was really insightful thx
[deleted] 8y ago
Enough of all this women in STEM talk. The only reason gender pay gap is an issue is so companies can pay everyone a lower wage.
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IDisagreeHere 8y ago
I'm not sure I exactly follow this. Law, for all intents and purposes, is very much a "tournament" style profession in the first 7-10 years. Law school is 100% pure competition with your fellow students. So much so that they've had trouble at larger universities with students ripping the pages out of important casebooks and supplements as a way to get ahead. Once you've landed an associate position, you're competing against other juniors on the partnership tract, and that is heavily heavily influenced by billable hour and billable realization. Once you've made equity partner, only then the game changes beyond pure competition to one of bringing in clients and cooperating with your other partners.
Law had a very high number of females in comparison to STEM fields, but I will say that in my limited experience very very few of them reached the elite status of class rankings. Even fewer made it to partner quick because a lot chose to at least try and have a family at that point in their life.
nninja 8y ago
Ya you gotta be hungry and aggressive to become partner. The ones that become partner are the ones bringing in clients, hence $$. They'll also step over other people when necessary, and work 60hrs a week regularly.
0xdada 8y ago
5 years ago there was an issue in the profession with a significant portion of women finishing law school, then not practicing, or doing articling, passing the bar, then not practicing. The result was that law schools were desperately trying to raise admissions, even though the number of actual jobs on the other side wasn't officially there to meet the supply of grads. Couldn't say what it looks like now.
Outside big law, it's not very competitive. The market for small town estate and family practices isn't that cutthroat or crowded. There are tons of in house council and government jobs that are basically sleepy administrative positions.
IDisagreeHere 8y ago
Of course there are less competitive sectors, but you could easily say the same about STEM. Also, in house counsel gets extremely competitive as well. It's probably the most popular exit strategy for biglaw associates.
I think a lot of women graduate law school and then decide not to practice and my suspicion is that it's due to the competition and workload required--but I don't really know for sure.
dragonfly08 8y ago
Prof Peterson did a lot of law consulting helping big law firms understand why they were losing women left and right as associates. Some of the conclusions:
[deleted] 8y ago
Thing for STEM is even in the less competative sectors like network admin or Sysadmin, it is a march or die environment that is metriced to death.
IDisagreeHere 8y ago
Fair enough, I'm just making the point that the legal sector, in general, is an incredibly competitive field. Most people who end up as the small town estate lawyers are there because they lost out at the chances of a better job, not because they're looking for an easy ride. Even then, it's not exactly a walk in the park--the competition doesn't really end. People don't go into the legal profession because they shy away from competition, that's absurd.
Gallobrax 8y ago
A very astute contribution.
[deleted] 8y ago
Does this actually even make sense to you? I mean, have you studied yourself? When you were choosing your degree, did you sit there and think (as a man) 'oh, my natural advantage comes from tournament performance so I should study X, Y, or Z'? I'm willing to bet you didn't.
As a girl in STEM who majored in Comp Sci, I really doubt women are sitting there thinking 'I prefer something that provides in-group security'. What human even speaks like that, let alone thinks like that?
In my experience, people study what they have an interest in and what they think they'd be good at.
0xdada 8y ago
Surely you took comp.sci "to get a job," as a hedge for when the money from modelling, party planning, and a marketing job ran out?
[deleted] 8y ago
Understand your perspective however you're reading it in a slightly spergish way.
Women don't (usually) consciously decide to shit-test, branch swing or get wet for rock stars. It just happens.
Similarly, I don't consciously make the decision over breakfast to stare at tits, hit on hot girls at the gym, etc.
Exactly. OP's point is that smart women are intrinsically driven to certain careers which align with their skills, preferences and abilities. As he pointed out there is much crossover however my anecdotal observations suggest he's broadly correct (the highly intelligent women I know are disproportionately in law, medicine and education, the men in finance and business).
The exceptions (and there are many) don't disprove the rule-TRP isn't a science, it's a praexology and rules of thumb are the rule here. One thing TRP teaches is that a major aspect of the female experience is solipsism, the perspective that women think that how they feel about something is how it is. Point being, be claiming you're a women in STEM therefore women as a whole don't have a preference for in group security is a classic example of this. If you want acceptance here (you may not) be careful to hide this characteristic. Your experience does not give you insight into mine.
People are animals and driven by instinct and we shoujldn't judge people on their nature, only their actions. TRP does a good job shining the light on true female nature so their behaviour isn't such a shock to naive men brought up in a blue pill world.
(Some) senior contributors like OP are good examples to follow regarding acceptance and how to have rational discourse on these matters.
[deleted] 8y ago
Although you said you understood my point, respectfully, you've completely misunderstood it. Here is what OP wrote:
What I am refuting is his (and your) rationale as to why that is. Why do women choose these careers? And further, why don't they choose STEM careers? Believe me, it's not my "female solipsism" when I say that I don't think women choose those careers because
Men do not apply to a university degree thinking "my advantage is tournament performance". Women do not apply to a university degree thinking "my advantage is from group acceptance".
[deleted] 8y ago
if, as you say,
...and smart women more often than not choose the professions OP listed...it sounds like you're agreeing with me.
COuldn't agree more. Nobody said they do. However the underlying subconscious drivers, the things we are innately attracted to, just sort of makes it happen.
Nobody makes conscious decisions about these things, men or women. Men don't plan to stare at breasts or get erections nor do they consciously decide to pick up a rugby ball instead of ballet shoes or tinker with cars or (insert typical masculine pursuit here). They are drawn to it as it matches their intrinsic interests and aptitudes.
Similarly, OP's point is that women don't consciously decide to NOT enter STEM or TO enter medicine/law etc. They make these decisions based on underlying interests, advantages etc, not conscious thought.
[deleted] 8y ago
But surely you can understand that there are a lot of influences (aka biases) that impact these decisions? Nature vs nurture..
[deleted] 8y ago
Sure, nurture has it's part to play. But nature is more important.
A criminal only behaves due to percieved consequences. Their innate desires and preferences don't change whether or not they can act on these impulses. Same with a paedophile, or an intrinsically good person.
Same with men and women in choosing activities.
Go to a under 5's nursery and see what the kids do when left to themselves. The majority of boys push toy cars around (or similair) and the majority of girls play with dolls.
It's who we are.
I don't understand the big deal. Women should be happy to be who they are instead of trying to prove they can compete with men.
Women aren't stupid enough to compete with men at strength based activites, nor are men stupid enough to compete with women at giving birth.
Those two activities aren't the only areas men and women are siginficantly different, the professional sphere demonstrates different aptitudes too.
You are an exception, not a rule and if I was you I'd be quietly happy to have the opportunity to excel in a masculine field, whilst still being feminine (whether you are or not is up to you of course).