There are so few female programmers because they find it BORING
I was thinking again, today, about why there are so few female computer programmers.
Some will say it’s because women aren’t good at math. Now it’s true that girls score lower, on average, on the math SAT than boys. And I agree that aptitude to do well on the math SAT is very similar to the aptitude to do well at computer programming. However, I’ve worked with a lot of Indian computer programmers and the vast majority of them are not mathematical geniuses. I am certain that there are millions of women in the United States who scored high enough on the math SAT to have the aptitude to program at the level of the typical Indian immigrant mediocrity.
I believe that the BORINGNESS factor plays a very important role. Girls find computer programming BORING. They also find math really boring, which could explain in part why they don’t do as well on the math SAT. This is not to say that there aren’t biological differences between the sexes, but is it that girls are biologically inclinded to do poorly at math (relative to boys), or are they biologically inclined to find math boring, which in turns demotivates them from studying and learning the material, which causes the lower math SAT scores? I say that it’s probably a little of both. And the BORING factor can run in the other direction, because people are naturally less interested in things they are bad at.
Computer programming is pure logical thinking, and women prefer emotional thinking over logical thinking. Logical thinking is something they can do when they have to, but their preferred mode of thinking is emotional rather than logical. I also believe that the majority of men favor emotional thinking over logical thinking as well. But of those people whose preferred mode of thinking is logical rather than emotional, probably 95% of them are men.
We don’t live in a society where young people are normally told that they should persevere with boring material because it would lead to a higher paying, but boring, career. Young people are more often told the opposite. “Follow your passion.” “Do what you love and the money will follow.” You are ten times more likely to hear a high school commencement speaker say something like that rather than “study something BORING that pays well.” But in India, the opposite is true. Everyone in India wants to learn IT, not because they love it or have passion for it, but because they see it as a ticket for moving to America and getting a job here. (And I should add that American corporations seem happy to punch a lot of Indian tickets.)
Lion of the Blogosphere 
If you’re a woman your primary method for interacting with the world is to emotionally engage another person and get that person to do something you want done. Women do this so often and so naturally they don’t even acknowledge that they do it – since they don’t reflect on it, they don’t even realize that there is another way to interact with the world.
The biggest barrier in programming is the divide between “it does what I want it to do” and “it does what I told it to do”. Women have much less of a concept of the difference between those things.
Steve Johnson
June 2, 2016 at 3:31 PM
Girls also don’t go into computer programming because it is not the best place to find an attractive, alpha male partner. Many attractive and capable women venture into alpha territories such as finance, real estate or politics with the quiet goal of finding an alpha provider. Then they can just quit, stay at home and raise a family (See Anne Romney). If not they can still use their looks to make a go of it on their own although this rarely happens unless said female is a hard charging closet lesbian/sociopath (See Carly Fiorina). These types of women tend to be more conservative and oppose the feminist agenda because they don’t need it.
Unattractive and capable women tend to show up in the usual wealth redistribution realms of non-profits, social work and academic bureaucracy. These types of institutions support their underlying feminist agenda which is to steal resources from the men that would never sleep with them. As always, feminism is a survival strategy for ugly women.
In either case, the last thing they want to do is real (and mentally taxing) work such as computer programming.
B.T.D.T.
June 2, 2016 at 3:47 PM
I can confirm. The best looking woman in my law school class, by far, also finished at the top of the class and got a job with Biglaw. After about 3 yrs she quit to become a full time mom, while hubby went on with his law career. I ran I to her when she was 45, and she looked 30.
Nina
June 2, 2016 at 7:11 PM
There are attractive and unattractive women in both value transference realms. I can attest that there are far fewer women in the 1st group, and the ones who end up in those careers, tend to be better looking. Not really in finance, but definitely in real estate (or sales), and not in politics.
The cutest women I’ve encountered are found in Academia. However, they lose their femininity, when they enter a PhD program.
JS
June 3, 2016 at 12:22 AM
Feminine women congregate around feminine professions. Women don’t pick professions to find men per se.
The Norwegian documentary showed how prosperity drives men and women into more extreme masculine and feminine roles even with ‘modern attiudeds to gender’.
My hunch is, depending on the wealth of the country you’re in, the best looking women will be found in fashion, nursing, social work/psychology, teaching and some of the arts. As they will be financially free to follow their biology.
Funnily enough, prosperity is also linked to tanking T levels which does not mean men will go into the army, police, fire service, security more though.
Note how all the traditional male jobs are also government redistribution gigs.
I include banking and real estate in redistribution jobs.
Check yo privilege sucka.
The Philosopher
June 3, 2016 at 3:36 AM
The traditional male jobs described are not redistributive because they require an inordinate amount of intestinal fortitude and sacrifice in highly competitive environments. I checked my privilege. It’s still there and not going anyplace.
B.T.D.T.
June 3, 2016 at 11:48 AM
“My hunch is, depending on the wealth of the country you’re in, the best looking women will be found in fashion, nursing, social work/psychology, teaching and some of the arts.”
Fashion, yes — all the rest, hell to the no. The best looking women are in services: waitress, retail sales. Nursing, social work, and teaching attract, at best, nebbishy-cute girls, but most are somewhere between plain and warpig. My experience is direct.
hard9bf
June 3, 2016 at 3:42 PM
BTDT
Many government millitary, CIA/NSA/FBI and police jobs exist to keep domestic and of foreign people in their boxes for the masterminds.
The last war America fought where the homeland was actually at risk was the the founding revolutionary war. All later wars were expansionary efforts and wars later still, under direction from higher IQ peoples who shall not be named for risk of my comment not being published again.
The Philosopher
June 3, 2016 at 7:28 PM
I think you’re overestimating the allure of nursing because it’s a very odd profession. I mean that it’s odd profession because nursing is a blanket term that describes people with medical training ranging from a certificate that requires a few months of school all the way to having a doctorate. It draws in some attractive women, at certain levels, but some very unattractive ones at others. In my experience, the women at the lower end of the nursing spectrum (caretaker’s, nursing assistants, orderlies, etc) are often NAMs or rednecks who entered into the field as essentially a low education, but relatively high paying trade. On the other hand, girls who get MSNs and do the higher level nursing work tend to be more attractive and come from higher SES backgrounds. One theory could be the proximity to literal shit in the jobs. For example, I dated an attractive girl who was getting a MSN with a focus on midwifery, so that makes sense as a feminine job that also pays very well. On the other hand, the people from my public southern high school who brag about being a nursing assistant on Facebook are often much less attractive and a large part of their job is centered around changing geriatric diapers.
Aristippus
June 3, 2016 at 10:41 PM
The computer primary school here in my town had free admission for girls, no entry exams, no nothing, and still only two or three “applied” every year, and one usually dropped out.
There is also no room for opinions in STEM, when something goes up in flames, or lights blow out, you know you are wrong 100%, that’s hell for progressives and women, such intolerant environment.
guest
June 2, 2016 at 3:57 PM
That explains why Silicon Valley is such a paradise for conservatives, right?
Anon
June 2, 2016 at 5:12 PM
There’s very little emotional opinion in STEM itself because it usually doesn’t punch emotional buttons the way other things do. But people who work in STEM still have plenty of social, economic and political opinions based on values and emotion rather reason. It’s much easier for people who are separated from the consequences of their actions and opinions to have stupid opinions even if they personally have high IQs. In fact, having a higher IQ means its much more likely for someone to be shielded from their stupid opinions. Which is part of the reason so many smart people are leftwing idiots.
destructure
June 2, 2016 at 11:15 PM
It didn’t used to be this lopsided. And programs are certainly less boring then they used to be when they just produced huge lists of ASCII stuff. What has changed?
1. Steve Sailer has cited the changes in language structure, from talky structured COBOL to object-oriented abstraction.
2. the departmental executive over IT folks is usually no longer an IT person but someone with a business or finance background. Reinforces the image of programmers as betas who are poor prospects for acquiring power.
3. increased on-call requirements, having the job follow you home
Fiddlesticks
June 2, 2016 at 4:08 PM
Even though I’m a woman, I actually agree with most of what’s being said here about women in general. They often have a problem with accepting objective truth. I’ve never been this way even though I never had much interest in the hard sciences. My poor math skills are a result of my not having much interest in math, even though the aptitude tests I took in school showed that I had considerable “math ability.” I’m trying now to remedy this failure by studying math in my spare time. But I always noticed among woman a great tendency to claim that many things which were pretty much proven by research (solid research, not BS “studies” that change every year) were “just one way of looking at things.” Women were not against hard academic work or abstractions. But they always wanted to see things the way they wanted them to be. They seem to have a natural aversion to accepting realities they don’t like.
My Mother, who was an English teacher (and did very well in math, having an IQ of 127) always insisted that social science was nonsense, claiming that “you can make statistics say anything you want them to say.” I eventually gave up trying to reason with her. She would often argue for something totally unrealistic and then when I’d point out how the evidence worked against her goals/advice she’d fall back on the ” you only need one” argument. I wanted to tell her that for that matter, you only need one winning lottery ticket, or one rich uncle who dies and leaves you a fortune, etc… But it’s best no to get a Sicilian woman angry!
Maryk
June 2, 2016 at 4:14 PM
Not sure I follow. Understanding that social science is largely nonsense is a clear sign of excellent critical thinking skills. Check out @real_peerreview on twitter to see what kind of garbage our academic clerisy is producing these days.
Apothecary
June 3, 2016 at 1:17 AM
My mother has the same aversion to objective truth, and she’s Toscano.
West Coast IA
June 3, 2016 at 6:00 PM
ive heard a lot of computer programming is just googling answers to stuff and copying and pasting other peoples code into your own work. it sounds like pure dredgery. it is no surprise women are not attracted to it; boring, low status work where you are surrounded by creepy and unattractive indians/beta males all day with no social skills.
james n.s.w
June 2, 2016 at 4:20 PM
For hack job coding yes. Good coding though would require high IQ (145+ and sometimes I feel it’s 155+ given project complexity these days) and a great memory to utilize libraries effectively. Coding is actually quite egalitarian in that there is coding at all levels from IQ 105 – infinity. There’s the bottom of the barrel copy and pasters and then there are the truly exceptional developers that make efficient highly effective code (Richard Hendricks on that Silicon Valley show). A good coder versus bad coder can be the difference between an electrician and an electrical engineer.
Programmerofthepostmoderndystopia
June 2, 2016 at 6:44 PM
Analogy to the difference between an electrician and a electrical engineer would be nurse vs physician or paralegal vs lawyer, that is, assistant vs the trained professional who makes the decisions.
Michael
June 2, 2016 at 10:50 PM
An electrician does not assist an electrical engineer. That’s the whole point is an electrician works on splicing wires and making sure electronics work/basic maintenance tasks. An electrical engineer develops new schema and circuit boards and maintains advanced equipment. Just as bad coders (I should really say glut labor CS coders – those that do routine maintenance and other basic tasks for systems) do basic maintenance and copy paste together simple modules/small applications for users. Whereas great coders create original architectures and work on more high level tasks.
Programmerofthepostmoderndystopia
June 3, 2016 at 1:44 PM
Look, if you have to make distinctions between “good” coding and “bad” coding, or between coding for the 105 iq set vs. the 150 iq set then you already have your answer as to whether entering such a profession is a good idea. It isn’t. You’ve lost.
No one argues that there are doctors practicing “bad” or “good” medicine and no one argues that there are lawyers practicing “good” or “bad” law. Practicing law or medicine is simply that.
The jobs for truly brilliant systems architects have been maxed out. Those guys already have long-term employment at high salaries. Google and Facebook need monkey coders at ever lower price points. They certainly don’t need Richard Hendrick types at the premiums someone like that would command. So all this talk about electrical engineers or computer science majors being some kind of geniuses that really increase productivity is belied by the actions of the companies that actually hire these people.
Heck, you could probably do better as an electrician in most cases than a computer scientists. Most computer programming is like the equivalent of document review in law.
map
June 4, 2016 at 6:33 PM
In fact, most doctors suck at diagnosing unusual things they’ve never seen before.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 4, 2016 at 8:41 PM
STEM employers are bringing in immigrant labor, to a large extent, so that they won’t ever have to employ women. Something people don’t seem capable of understanding is that, if you can’t get people to do the work at whatever wages and conditions you’re offering, that’s a market signal. You need to up wages, conditions, etc. And/or you mechanize so you don’t need the labor, or as much of it. Or you go bust. Most of the bringing in workers garbage is simply employers feeling that the market shouldn’t apply to them. Nah, that should just apply to arguing that the minimum wage should be reduced/abolished, because FREE MARKETS (when it’s convenient) Y’ALL.
How this applies to women is that the employers could easily fill places with native born Americans, many of them women. But they’d have to up wages, improve conditions, treat employees like human beings. That might mean upping wages for older, more experienced workers. It might even mean – you might want to sit down for this – respecting their family responsibilities and work-life balance. Maternity/paternity leave. regular hours, options for flexi time. And because employers know that that’s what the market wants, they circumvent it. And women seem better able – possibly because they find STEM far more boring than men do – to see through the bullshit of ZOMG stem shortage! and realize that it won’t even provide a decent, boring career. Certainly not once they reach 35 or want to start a family. (This doesn’t even touch the fact that this system is flooding the country with groups, like Muslims, who hate women.)
Now, this is a system wide problem, and most likely the STEM careers would be predominantly male anyway. I’m not bothered by that. I am, however, bothered by Big Business deciding that the market doesn’t apply to them and destroying their country in the process.
Jesse
June 2, 2016 at 4:49 PM
When a woman takes maternity leave, and her work is dumped in the laps of her colleagues, who have no say in the matter and receive no extra pay for their trouble, how likely is it that those colleagues will think their own “family responsibilities and work/life balance” is being respected?
silberstreak
June 3, 2016 at 11:09 AM
And here’s why being a White prole in America sucks @ss, where 3 strikes you’re no longer relevant:
1) Mid-tier to low-tier jobs are being taken by non-Whites
2) Most of the attractive prolesses in America, leave for the big SWPL cities
3) If you’re lucky, you only strive for mind numbing work, much of it has no real value to society
JS
June 3, 2016 at 11:54 AM
I’m a female who liked programming and so does my sister. She spent her whole career writing code and hated the idea of going into management. She is retired now. (She had a degree in physics) I started out studying Forestry, but wasn’t really interested in it. I was aimless. This was in the early 70’s. I made the decision to switch into computer science. As I walk into my first computer science class i pause, stunned. Almost all the students were Chinese! Or at least this was my impression. This was at the time when Canada was just beginning to take immigrants and students from China, apparently. Certainly I had never seen so many Chinese people together in one spot! I slowly backed out of the room and went back into forestry. There I met the man I would marry. We have been married for almost 40 years.
After my kids were older I went back and got degrees in math and took a lot of computer science courses. My MSc thesis in math involved a lot of programming, and I loved it. It was like playing a game. I teach math now at a small university.
Rosenmops
June 2, 2016 at 4:58 PM
Your points are 100% true. I used to work as an IT headhunter. With very few exceptions the only women we would see were 1) relatively older Russian/Jewish women who were trained and steered into computer programming (COBOL) by Jewish social service agencies, as a way to get a decent paying job when one’s English was poor, 2) Chinese immigrant women (never saw the resume of a Chinese, Russian, or Indian women who was born or grew up in the USA) who got a STEM graduate degree at US university. Note, these women were not H1Bs. At the time of the Tiananmen square massacre EVERY singe Chinese in American universities was granted a US immigrant visa, due to the efforts of some California congressmen. 3) the occasional Indian immigrant woman, in the USA with her H1B husband, who was only motivated enough to learn Powerbuilder (remember that one), SQL DBA work, or QA testing.
There were a few exceptions. Some native born American women would actually end up programming, and some of them were very good. One notable example: a squat, overweight, black female from the Bronx, who looked like she should be working at McDonalds, but aced the very difficult programming test administered by a prominent hedge fund client. They offered her a job on the spot. This young lady attended Bronx Science, Carnegie Mellon and was in the Ph.D program for Computer Science at U Mass, Amherst before dropping that to make some money. I sent this young lady in sight unseen – she was so well educated and spoke so well that I had no idea that she was black. When I met her afterward I was ashamed of my racist presumptions and vowed henceforth to make every effort to eliminated them when making decisions on submitting candidates. I will tell you what stood out the most on her resume for me as a headhunter, though: Bronx High School of science. There is no affirmative action help in getting into either Science or Stuyvesant. A recruiter can be assured that a graduate from either of those two high schools has a superior IQ, and with a superior IQ any motivated individual can master computer programming to a high degree.
Yes, American women just do not want to program computers. To them the appeal is incomprehensible, notwithstanding the decent money that can be earned. A high IQ, female Ivy grad would much prefer to work as a waitress than sit in front of computer and program all day.
Daniel
June 2, 2016 at 5:05 PM
This is an excellent comment.
Ava Lon
June 2, 2016 at 5:27 PM
This was indeed an excellent comment. It’s the kind of anecdote we need to crush the sexist, racist, not to mention self-hating stereotypes that the rabid HBDers who dominate the comments on this blog indulge in about any occupation involving computers.
Plastic Paddy
June 23, 2016 at 10:48 AM
Why are they so few male nurses or early childhood educators? It’s not like there aren’t plenty of men smart enough to do both. Same reason. 😉
Now, that said, at the upper career levels, the fraction female tightly correlates to mathematic ability:
Perceptions Of Required Ability Act As A Proxy For Actual Required Ability In Explaining The Gender Gap | Slate Star Codex
JayMan
June 2, 2016 at 5:07 PM
A male nurse is a subordinate position. Just as male nurses are rare, so are male dental hygienists–also subordinate position. In a position like this, you have to tell girls that you serve another man because you were not smart enough to have his position. It’s different than saying you are reporting to a middle manager in some business.
Steven J.
June 2, 2016 at 5:42 PM
Male nurses are generally superior to female nurses.
And fuck, not everybody can be the boss (in this case the doctor). Time to stop demeaning workers; they’re not all idiots and the bosses aren’t all geniuses.
fakeemail
June 2, 2016 at 10:05 PM
Male nurses aren’t that rare anymore. Everyone is subordinate to someone.
David Pinsen
June 2, 2016 at 10:40 PM
Traditionally male nurses were usually homosexuals. Currently more straight men are becoming nurses because they realize it’s a good career to pursue at this time. In the Philippines, many men become nurses because they view it as a way out of poverty.
I believe that women tend to make better nurses (or at least have a better bedside manner) because they have more empathy and tend to function better among sick and dying people. Men are not nearly as comfortable in that environment as women are.
Lewis Medlock
June 3, 2016 at 11:50 AM
Historically, men have always been nurses in armies or when men got injured hunting. Caring for other men hurt during group activities was always part of being a man.
Women care about their own children, but I don’t believe they care more about strangers than men do.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 3, 2016 at 2:32 PM
San Francisco is full of male nurses, dear. Visit a hospital some time.
Vi
June 2, 2016 at 7:18 PM
Most men would be a lot better off going into nursing than construction. But there’s a social stigma against it. I just googled and saw that men are 10% of nurses.
destructure
June 2, 2016 at 11:34 PM
Nursing is a low status profession for men.
Computer programming is a low status profession because of the all the Third-Worlders in it. Really, if nations that can’t seem to produce indoor plumbing are somehow churning out first-rate engineers and computer scientists, enough to replace Western engineers and scientists, then how “alpha” could a western engineer/scientist really be?
Staying away from low-status professions is of paramount importance.
map
June 3, 2016 at 12:56 AM
There’s nothing “low status” about working at Microsoft or Google. They make a pile of money. The reason they recruit people from 3rd world countries is because they’re cheaper. But don’t think that the people being recruited are average. They come from the top 5% and are well above average even for first world countries. But the top 5% of a country with a billion people is still 50 million people. And they ALL want to come to America. So they all choose careers that will help them immigrate.
destructure
June 4, 2016 at 8:17 AM
Destructure,
Whether they are average or not is irrelevant. It’s low status because it does not pay well for the work being done and third-worlders do the work. A white male telling anyone he works at Google or Microsoft is of a much lower order than the same white guy saying he is a lawyer at Skaaden Arps.
map
June 4, 2016 at 6:37 PM
Oooh. Skadden Arps [said in a hushed voice]
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 4, 2016 at 8:42 PM
Yep. All IT work in the United States is deemed low status. In the Northeast, such work is performed by racial minorities, and in the prolier areas, by its respective demographic.
High power careers are coming to an end. Over-saturated with students in finance, law and media, the competition is so fierce, that only a few get to work in these fields with its grandfathered candidates, not leaving anytime soon.
Here some good news for some of Lion’s Anglo Prole readers from Canada:
http://www.sciencealert.com/a-canadian-province-is-about-start-giving-everyone-a-universal-basic-income
Ontario is doling out a basic income to everybody living there this coming fall.
JS
June 4, 2016 at 10:12 PM
It’s interesting that girls don’t avoid accounting, which is roughly as boring.
Steven J.
June 2, 2016 at 5:33 PM
This is a good point. At a high level, accounting and programming have a lot in common — they both require precise interpretation and application of rules, they’re both quantitatively-oriented without requiring upper-level math (at least in the programming I’ve encountered), and they’re both a domain for bookish types.
On the other hand, the men who are drawn to programming are very different from the type drawn to accounting. Perhaps I’d call accountants more mainstream bookish? They’re generally introverts and usually at least somewhat socially awkward, but not true nerds as they tend to embrace popular culture and reject nerd culture.
Programming is in a sense more masculine in that it ties into man’s yearning for mastery of his environment. Accountants examine and report on the environment — they do not affect it.
Final anecdote: I worked for a company that was audited by a young female accountant who was easily a 10/10. I had a tendency to forget my own name when she came in my office to ask me questions. She could have leveraged her beauty in many ways, yet she chose to be an accountant.
Wency
June 3, 2016 at 12:45 AM
That would speak to B.T.D.T’s point above. Accounting firms, especially the Big 4, are good places to meet a mate. I had friends at PwC and the junior staff on the audit teams was hooking up all the time. There is also a lot more human interaction in accounting (at least in audit) than in programming, and the travel perks can be pretty good.
Peter Akuleyev
June 3, 2016 at 7:16 AM
This might be true in greater America, but the Big Bean Counters in NYC are not a good place to meet desirable American White women, and this is from a White guy’s perspective. Most of them avoid technical fields, including accounting, where non-Whites, are in fact the majority. Furthermore, Accounting is a generic field across the board, and it is not exclusively a NYC thing. Desirable White women in NYC are found mostly in very prestigious ad/media companies, business consulting and Big Law firms — which goes along with Lion’s Bobo-SWPL theme. The 80/20 rule applies succinctly here in the Big Apple. Perhaps any guy with a taste for Asian, Indian or the immigrant accented-Pollack or Rusky chic, might want to heed your advice.
JS
June 3, 2016 at 11:36 AM
I furthermore get the impression that accounting is a low risk profession, as compared to vile IT which our host has documented so well.
IT probably should become a profession like accounting, except there still seem to be many hopeful cowboys who resist professionalization. They just want to write incredible code and won’t see the big picture. They imagine flipping their awesome future tech company in a few years anyway, so who cares.
Part of the general lack of respect probably is the professional stakes are so small when working in IT. Nobody expects much with respect to quality of work, though long and irregular hours (“passionate”) seems to be desirable. It might even be that a bit of drama is needed by all involved, working long hours before the ‘aggressive deadline’ (management high-five) and all that. Mostly dysfunctional.
Glengarry
June 5, 2016 at 12:28 PM
Woman also used to be well represented in Cobol and CISC programming. The “programmer analyst” I used to see around in my childhood was often a woman.
Probably because that job was essentially rote and secretarial.
Lion of the Turambar
June 3, 2016 at 8:03 AM
At most companies, accounting provides a clearer upward career trajectory and less likelihood of being glass ceilinged. Accountants managing programmers is far more common than the reverse.
Fiddlesticks
June 3, 2016 at 8:28 AM
Accounting has professional certifications like law or medicine that help keep out the riffraff to a moderate degree. You don’t have to be a genius or anything to pass the CPA exam but many states have class-hour requirements that exceed a standard undergrad degree to even sit for the exam, so that’s going to exclude a lot of people right off the bat.
Also, within accounting, auditing (as opposed to tax accounting or bookkeeping), in spite of the stereotypes, is a pretty social job where you have a lot of face-to-face interaction with clients. To be good, you need your “stack” to include the social skills to make people like you and the intelligence to understanding what they’re saying, and a lot of women meet these requirements.
Jokah Macpherson
June 3, 2016 at 10:36 AM
Last year my employer built a brand new 6-story office building for 600 employees to be housed, including IT, Finance, Accounting, HR, and Sr. Executive management. Aside from secretaries and IT, every single worker, including Jr. accountants, got their own private office w/ brand new furniture, built-in cabinetry, and a locking office door. IT staff got 3-sided, low-walled cubicles, and very minimal to no cabinetry. Sr. management, including the IT Director, said the cubicle layout would be good for “collaboration” among the programmers and systems analysts. Of course, the IT Director got a private office. At my employer, IT is paid as well or better than many in Accounting and Finance, but IT gets no respect. At my employer, IT is nearly 100% male-dominated, while Accounting, Finance, and HR are nearly 100% female dominated. Sr. executive management is about evenly split.
E. Rekshun
June 2, 2016 at 6:27 PM
Law is super boring. Reading all that crap with latin terms and silly case references is just as if not more boring than math and programming. Yet a lot of women go for law degrees and find the professional field a viable backdrop for TV dramas. This also goes for medicine. Organic chemistry is the weed out course.
I think it’s basically a labor relations thing. IT workers failed to professionalize like lawyers and doctors and architectural engineers. So the field got flooded with weird people and foreigners who are usually not even smart enough to do the job. This was mostly the result of misguided decisions by non-technical management looking to save money on wages.
The top third of guys doing software development are well smarter than the typical doctor or lawyer. If those guys professionalized and insisted on suits and ties and some level of “bar” or “boards” to be a part of the guild, attitudes would rapidly change. The field would be *mostly* nice white and asian guys speaking fluent American english and making $150k+. Suddenly women would find it interesting.
bobbybobbob
June 2, 2016 at 6:46 PM
Women don’t find law to be remotely boring. There are two reasons. First, depositions allow you to ask witnesses a lot of minutiae type questions. For example, to an asbestos plaintiff, you’d ask, “how many cigarettes did you typically smoke per day in 1977? Women love that stuff. Imagine getting paid roughly $80 per hour (associate salary/yearly hours) doing stuff like that. Second, once you’re more senior, your game becomes trying to pull the wool over the Judge’s eyes with specious arguments and inapplicable authorities. Again, women love misdirection like that. It’s just like dealing with a boyfriend.
Vi
June 2, 2016 at 10:25 PM
Most lawyers don’t have anything to do with litigation.
destructure
June 2, 2016 at 11:42 PM
“Most lawyers don’t have anything to do with litigation.”
Just the reverse. Most lawyers don’t do transactional work. And most document review is of course connected with litigation.
Vi
June 3, 2016 at 1:34 PM
Vi — My personal experience is that very few lawyers spend any time in litigation. But I didn’t just rely on personal experience. I googled it first and found where someone had asked the question. A number of lawyers responded and they all said the same. Most lawyering doesn’t look like Perry Mason. But sitting in a cubicle dong legal drudgery doesn’t make for exciting TV.
https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-lawyers-are-trial-lawyers
destructure
June 4, 2016 at 8:33 AM
Perhaps you’re confusing spending time in litigation with spending time in a courtroom.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 4, 2016 at 9:42 AM
The context of his original comment was taking depositions, questioning witnesses, etc. Which most lawyers rarely if ever do. So. while I may have conflated litigation with being in a courtroom, my point was valid and his argument was based on fantasy.
destructure
June 4, 2016 at 12:35 PM
Bob.
In my iifetime, most lawyers I have met are much smarter than programmers. They know how to dress themselves and have clean clothes on. They don’t have BO. They cook and eat proper food. They don’t have childish interests and hobbies. They are rarely obese. They can hold a conversation about non-job related things.
They also know how to get political power. Hence why the Senate and Presidency are almost always lawyers.
IT workers are tarred by their low sexual market value. Not their badges, or lack of.
The Philosopher
June 3, 2016 at 7:44 PM
Most lawyers are boring grinds. Most of them are fat or pencil necked. I don’t really get what you’re talking about.
IT department dweebs making your internal business app are usually weird but people working on actual software products or in high margin stuff like trading are not. In today’s world skilled software engineers make quite a bit more than lawyers and are usually not at all weird people. This is the top third I referred to.
bobbybobbob
June 4, 2016 at 12:46 AM
Everyone in the world of careerism is boring. Those who move and shake society are not. Politicians and revolutionaries are great examples.
JS
June 4, 2016 at 9:23 AM
Women who go into science overwhelming choose the life sciences. Take a guess why.
gothamette
June 2, 2016 at 7:15 PM
The guy that killed his wife and then his former graduate advisor actually followed his passion.
My Two Cents
June 2, 2016 at 9:05 PM
I am totally serious and I mean this from the bottom of my heart:
WOMEN SHOULD NOT WORK. AT ALL. IT FUCKS EVERYTHING UP. ALL PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED AND PREVENTED IF THEY NEITHER WORK NOR VOTE.
fakeemail
June 2, 2016 at 10:02 PM
I agree. But I don’t think most men should be voting either.
destructure
June 2, 2016 at 11:54 PM
The 40+ hour mind numbing with bouts of stress, found in American work that pays a living wage, plus all your boring co-workers, with the same conspicuous consumption mentality, lifeless!
JS
June 3, 2016 at 11:39 AM
@JS, stop trolling. Nothing beats working in America. America pays the most and respects work. You can afford the best tools and equipment here. The sky isn’t the limit in America, maybe the moon, but who knows. Also, Americans can have great lunch at subways for peanuts. Americans are very fortunate. Why don’t you just be quiet for a week or two and just look around you, eh?
Yakov
June 3, 2016 at 3:24 PM
Yakov – Look, I respect your prole, yet pragmatic outlook in life. However, society does not progress with throwbacks like you —–>symbolic of your Subway take of a cheap quality meal.
Americans are retardants, when it comes to work. Workaholics do not make high quality products.
JS
June 3, 2016 at 4:19 PM
People who love work and see quality worksmanship as a Devine commandment produce. Dedicated communists do good work. WTH are you talking about? What’s there to stop a workaholic from doing a good job?
Yakov
June 3, 2016 at 6:07 PM
Well its a good point. Voting was intended for male property owners to prove you had some sort of probity and value to society.
The “mania for counting noses” is well and good but what if those voting have little to no take in society? Voting for tax increases they know they will never pay/
Lion of the Turambar
June 3, 2016 at 8:00 AM
When it comes to handling women, we could learn a thing or two from those dreadful Muslims.
silberstreak
June 3, 2016 at 11:18 AM
Beheading Rachel Maddow doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me. Not sure if she’s a woman though.
Lewis Medlock
June 3, 2016 at 4:11 PM
Women need to give birth to the next generation and then stay home to nurture it. This is the main function. Working is secondary. Their main thing is kids, grandkids, etc. I’m talking about our demographic, obviously. Sleeping around and working is an evolutionary dead end. I’m a feminist, but within the framework of reasons and common sense. A penguin and a pigeon are both birds, but they are different. A pigeon isn’t gonna swallow a fish and a penguin can’t deliver mail. Both could vote, except that neither can.
Yakov
June 3, 2016 at 3:35 PM
SWPLs believe that working in a self-actualizing career career is the most important thing for anyone of either sex. Having children is a secondary minor plus.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 3, 2016 at 3:48 PM
Given the decreasing White demographic in America, proles are also not having kids as 1st priority.
JS
June 3, 2016 at 4:22 PM
I agree. They create more problems than they solve. They refuse to keep their rumoring, manipulative nature, and emotionalism in check. Their disdain for un-fun stuff like reason is incompatible with technological/scientific/rational culture. The US’s economy requires a lot of STEM to function.
hack of hacks
June 4, 2016 at 10:46 AM
So what is the role of women?
As long as there’s beta dorks, there’s always Alpha works.
To clarify, without STEM taken up by betas in modern day civilization, value transference parasites (or Alpha men who suck and f*ck), would not exist.
JS
June 4, 2016 at 12:25 PM
I am reading a book called Cubed, about office life. During the Civil War government agencies discovered women made great clerical workers because they worked cheap and had no great expectations. LOL.
My parent claimed she hated to work yet she started early and was rarely at home. I think it was a way to be “out there” and find men. With some money to augment alimony and child support.
Mrs Stitch
June 4, 2016 at 5:29 PM
you suggest that Western women avoid STEM because it is boring. I believe they do it because it isn’t sexy and because the West thinks sexy and smart are mutually exclusive. In Asia, women are not supposed to be sexy but smart and feminine, which are not mutually exclusive.
In Asia, nerds are respected (less value transference?) and Asian cultures value learning and scholarship. You only have to look at the big band theory to understand the West’s views about nerds. Western cultures value jocks.
Contrast the USA with Israel where women are smart AND sexy because Jewish culture values learning.
Xan
June 2, 2016 at 10:52 PM
Wrong.
Men don’t think STEM is sexy. Men think youth and beauty and feminity are sexy. It only appears otherwise because the men who control the media and the government emphasize it thusly. Absent the media hype and government influenced value transference, and the respected Asian nerds and sexy Israeli STEM girls instantly disappear.
——
Young women have youth and beauty, and don’t get to leverage these advantages into $$ by entering computer programming. That’s another reason why they don’t go into programming: other fields, such as sales and marketing, offer better initial opportunities!
Rotten
June 3, 2016 at 12:16 AM
Whoever said American women are classier than let’s say Continental Euro women? Anglo-Prole women are proles.
JS
June 3, 2016 at 12:28 AM
The situation in Israel is not so much different to the rest of the western world, maybe a little bit due to the massive influence of the Russian immigration in the 90′. There are more girls in CS there but they tend not to be programmers after that, instead they usually work as project managers or in the business side like marketing and such.
I think it is not only that they find it boring, it is just that women are not in the business of creating value, Whether it is in STEM or in the arts or in any other profession. If you look at music for example, most of the music is created and produced by men, most bands are formed by men and there is no one music genre which was invented by women, they just perform. Is this also boring to women?
It is just that programming is more discussed because of its influence on the world today.
If you search in youtube for “Look at this amazing thing this _____ did in the garage”, in 95% of the cases you would expect the underline to be “guy”, and you will be correct. Those are not necessarily educated people or in some industry, it is just the drive that men have to explore, create and invent, even if there is no personal or global benefit to it, it could be the most ridiculous project, men will still pursue it.
Women by and large are just doing caring job and value transference jobs which was their traditional role in the family, caring for the kids and transferring the money from their husbands to the nearest department store. Nothing changed.
Hashed
June 3, 2016 at 6:54 AM
When I was in college, in the 90’s, it did seem like the women college students were less interested in moneymaking careers. More into what you call self-actualization. Different set of ambitions. A lot of guys were serious, very serious, about finding some way to make a good living, and knew they weren’t going to get it studying Art History or whatever.
Also, beta or not, a lot of stem guys are just unlikable. The mindset of a lot of my professors was provocative, as if it were a competition. Much the same with many of the other students. Competition can be rough, nasty, and unattractive.
esiz
June 2, 2016 at 11:52 PM
Seems like those girls were mainly counting on a Mrs degree.
Art History could be a play to encounter a steady flow of hot and/or rich guys while working at some Manhattan gallery.
Glengarry
June 5, 2016 at 12:35 PM
Programming takes patience and persistence. It’s obvious why there aren’t many hot chicks taking assembly language intro to programming classes.
Maybe Hillary will get on this. (Though I think Trump may have just more common sense here.)
esiz
June 3, 2016 at 12:58 AM
Unfortunately I forgot where I read it (might even have been Steve Sailer some time ago). But there was apparently almost no female-male difference in STEM fields (at least not for the graduate gruntwork, maybe at the top) in the former soviet bloc, so there almost certainly is a cultural factor.
And there were actually MORE women in IT until it became a big sexy field around 1980 because in the 1960s and 70s “real engineers” were better paid and regarded more highly and that was what men became, so the STEM women often went into programming.
(There is also apparently a result from the most equal Scandinavian countries, that there are now again MORE women in traditional “female” fields, e.g. nurses because nurses are very well paid in Norway whereas in the 1970s women who wanted to make decent money tended to enter “male” fields like engineering. This was mentioned in that “brainwashed” TV series by that Norwegian guy.)
Still, there are some indications that women on average are slightly worse than men in math-related fields and slightly better in language-related fields. This might explain that there considerably more women in e.g. law. In academia I think by now women are a majority (or at least not clearly in the minority) in many life sciences as well as psychology. Not sure how this is to be explained but at least the clichee is that women prefer working with humans, not with things.
There is another factor: at least in high school and maybe also college and later girls/women are often better behaved, more studious etc. whereas (even/especially gifted) men are lazy, prone to mental health problems etc. A slightly above average, say IQ 110, girl will very probably do better in most fields than a similar boy because the boy thinks he can coast along (but he is not smart enough for that) is considerably less studious etc. This will very probably be relevant also at the higher end of achievement for many fields where learning/memorizing a lot of stuff as well as thorough and conscientious work is very important.
parrhesia
June 3, 2016 at 4:25 AM
Women are uncreative. Few of even the smartest among them produce anything new and important.
silberstreak
June 3, 2016 at 11:26 AM
If no women had worked in STEM in the past fifty years, what inventions and technologies of importance would the world be without today?
silberstreak
June 3, 2016 at 11:31 AM
Do women repair trucks, buses, RVs, airplanes, tanks, cars, motorcycles etc. anywhere in the world? Do they even do bicycle or small engine repair? Do teenage girls take apart computers, lawn mowers, air conditioners, etc? Are they interested in electronics or gunsmithing?
Maybe if we look at the way man evolved it might give us some clues, rather than relying strictly on sociological or cultural explanations.
Lewis Medlock
June 3, 2016 at 12:39 PM
Off-topic:
The anti-Trump protest in San Jose was something to see. The local reporter who covered the protest seemed a little stunned.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/02/protesters-clash-with-trump-supporters-at-san-jose-rally/
SQ
June 3, 2016 at 4:54 AM
Another “job” women mostly avoid is stand-up comedy. In the shows where I perform, they usually make up 5 – 10% of the comics, so it’s not unusual to have an all male lineup on a given night. It would be hard to argue that it’s boring (and in fact women are strongly drawn to most of the performing arts), but I imagine there’s other reasons they stay away.
Jokah Macpherson
June 3, 2016 at 10:44 AM
I used to watch alt of comedy shows in the 9″‘s. There was a pattern to the material of the girl comedians. They would always be riffing on sex with their boyfriends, or their bodies. But now, men and women don’t have sex anymore, what their bodies look like is irrelevant, and there’s no more material, so fewer women comics.
West Coast IA
June 3, 2016 at 6:13 PM
Now you tell me!
Vincent
June 4, 2016 at 4:49 PM
I think this blog a while back discussed the fact that women just aren’t funny.
E. Rekshun
June 3, 2016 at 6:20 PM
I think the problem with modern IT is that C-Suite executives consider it to be a threat. The result of the PC revolution starting in the 1980’s ended up re-inventing the IT field in unexpected and unwanted ways.
Back in the old days of the third-generation language, engineering programming and business programming was primarily handled by two types of programs: Cobol for business and Fortran for engineering/sciences.
Cobol is an English-like language primarily designed to deal with data that does not go beyond two significant digits. It is perfect for generating reports based on accounting and inventory data. Because the code itself is very English-like, Cobol is literally self-documenting. The logic itself is english-like, meaning non-programmers like accountants, financiers, managers, sales, etc., can read Cobol code and know exactly what the programmer was doing to their data. Cobol programmers also had specific industry knowledge about the data they were coding. Thus, cobol programmers were very useful without management losing control of the business.
With the PC revolution, all of that changed. Business programming started devolving toward Unix and C, the result that most non-programmers could no longer understand what programmers were doing to their data. C and C++ are systems programming languages, primarily designed to build operating systems. Why you would use this to build accounting software is anyone’s guess. So, the movement away from expensive IBM Big Iron to smaller PC’s had the unintended consequence of managers losing control of their businesses, with their business data being wrapped in impenetrable C code and requiring interpreters to understand it.
This loss of control is alarming to C-Suite management, so every effort was taken to reduce the risk of this department, including hammering it with H1B visas and low-status open floor-plan layouts instead of offices. As long as you had a steady supply of cheap, easily-replaceable labor worried about their jobs, you never had to worry about being held-hostage to your coders.
Accounting and other fields are not treated as badly as IT because accounting data can be evaluated by non-accountants pretty easily. There is no loss of control represented by accounting.
map
June 3, 2016 at 11:30 AM
This makes a lot of sense, and it fits the pattern of powerful people using immigrants as a way of maintaining their power at the expense of middle-class nobodies (who are quite capable of capitalizing on opportunities and improving their position when opportunities are open to them).
SQ
June 3, 2016 at 4:17 PM
This seems to make sense. Back in the mid ’80s when I was a software engineer for a large government defense contractor, there were practically zero H1-B programmers and engineers. My coworkers and I received a couple of headhunter calls each week and, to management’s dismay, people were job-hopping every two years, getting 25% wage jumps. Sometimes, after two or three job-hops, a software engineer would wind up back at the original company making double what he had made five years earlier. Low cost immigrants seem to have put a stop to that easy, lucrative job-hopping practice.
E. Rekshun
June 3, 2016 at 6:28 PM
H-1Bs are legally not allowed to job hop. Very convenient for the employer.
Lion of the Blogosphere
June 3, 2016 at 6:40 PM
As long as you had a steady supply of cheap, easily-replaceable labor worried about their jobs, you never had to worry about being held-hostage to your coders.
If that was the initial intent it later backfired. Indian programmers create overly complex code to prevent their employers from easily replacing them.
The Undiscovered Jew
June 3, 2016 at 9:35 PM
it would help if your badass male programmers would document their code, yes?
Mrs Stitch
June 4, 2016 at 5:37 PM
It was difficult to write, it should be difficult to read.
Glengarry
June 5, 2016 at 12:13 PM
what does everybody else here think about React.js?
Otis the Sweaty
June 3, 2016 at 6:27 PM
Javascript web frameworks need to all die. There are 10 new ones every week. I wish applications could be developed in sane systems like Cocoa and Objective-C. The whole experience is much nicer than web development. Web dev is VIM and the command line.
NotWesley
June 4, 2016 at 10:12 PM
A man brings status to the job by his actions. A workplace isn’t a place to chase tail, losers. Got to go to gym now, but if i have time gonna give you a piece of my mind.
This is funny: a guy goes to work to get status and tail and gets neither so he concludes that he is in the field is no good. Now THIS is funny.
Yakov
June 4, 2016 at 10:13 PM
As usual, the assumption that math predicts ability is assumed. Did you do any research of published data? Also, you likely do not realize that mathematics majors score equal well on the mathematical and verbal portions of the SAT/GRE. Math is not simply math.
Some samples, from four different studies:
This study supports prior research showing mathematics reasoning and verbal ability were each significant predictors of success in computer programming.
The results of the study indicate that high scores on the verbal part of the SAT test facilitate generating solutions on the word programming problems; however, the high scores obtained on the SAT test are not significant if the students do not posses specific problem solving skills in their background.
About 60% of the variance in programming aptitude was accounted for by this single factor. Six, out of 18, cognitive factors loaded significantly on this factor: REASONING, LOGICAL (Loading: r = .81, p < .0001, n = 45) Ability to reason from premise to conclusion or to evaluate the correctness of a conclusion. VERBAL COMPREHENSION (Loading: r = .61, p < .0001, n = 45) Ability to understand verbal symbols. INTEGRATIVE PROCESS (Loading: r = .54, p < .001, n = 45) Ability to keep in mind several things simultaneously. FLEXIBILITY OF USE (Loading: r = .41, p < .01, n = 45) Ability to think of different uses for objects. CLOSURE, SPEED OF (Loading: r = .39, p < .01, n = 45) Ability to quickly recognize ambiguous visual stimuli. SEQUENTIAL MEMORY SPAN (Loading: r = .30, p < .05, n = 45) Ability to remember distinct items in correct sequence. These cognitive tests have also served well for prediction equations using stepwise regression. The multiple-R was .71, p = .000, n = 45. With other variables (preference for graphics, gender, algorithm comprehension), the multiple-R climbed to .82, p = .000, n = 45. To the best of my knowledge .82 is the highest multiple-R in the literature. Only variables with F-ratios of 3 or more were allowed into the equation.
Quantitative and verbal ability were the best predictors of programming outcomes in the individual setting. Nonverbal reasoning, spatial ability, and age were additional potent predictors of learning in the group setting.
james igoe
June 5, 2016 at 9:13 AM
Someone needs to explain this to me about programming.
The state of the art in computer programming is object-oriented programming. Object-oriented programming is about moving away from designing code and, instead, employing “objects” that already have code written in them. So, if you need a sorting algorithm, then you would not code one from scratch or copy a sort routine that you used elsewhere. You would simply search for a “sort” routine within the object library contained in some developers environment like Visual Studio or whatever equivalent they are using in the Unix/Linus/BSD space. The idea is to speed production by having reusable, standardized code.
The problem is that “objects” don’t simply exist in the ether. The objects with canned routines need to be created to begin with before they can enter object libraries to be used. Moreover, how does one know that the canned routine represents the most efficient code available to do a task? It may not.
So, who is writing the objects that go into the object library? Who decides that this is an efficient use of time?
It seems that what used to be called traditional procedural programming is now called “Algorithmic Design.” Real coding is not using a Sort object, but designing the Sort routine that goes into the object. But then, object-oriented programming really isn’t programming at all. It is script-kiddying tool-use.
So, when we talk about the IQ divide in computer programming, we are talking about the difference between tool use and tool design.
map
June 5, 2016 at 12:09 PM
Reorient thyself to reality, “map”. If programmers who use modules developed by other programmers are not themselves “real programmers”, does that mean that doctors who diagnose diseases and syndromes identified by other doctors, or who prescribe drugs they themselves did not formulate, are not “real doctors”, or that lawyers who cite supreme court decisions and other legal precedents made by other lawyers are not “real lawyers”, or that generals who employ tactics they learned at West Point and deploy weapon systems they themselves did not devise are not “real generals”? All professionals utilize the accumulated wisdom and techniques of their predecessors. It would be inefficient, ignorant and irresponsible to do otherwise. Even most of those sainted developers creating reusable “objects” in C++ or whatever did not write the compilers that underlay the languages they use. To invalidate the expertise and professional identity of anyone who builds upon the efforts of their colleagues is the height of atavistic imbecility. Should we all be expected to cast ourselves back to the very Paleolithic of professionalism and create everything we need literally from scratch as though we were chipping flint stones into spearheads? I myself would not hire any programmer pig-headed enough to insist on “rolling his own” solutions to every technical problem. Even Isaac Newton admitted that he could see as far as he could because he stood on the shoulders of giants.
Plastic Paddy
June 23, 2016 at 11:37 AM