Girls Who Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/12/girls-who-code.html <comment><USER3> When I hear about this being a cultural thing, an important aspect people leave out is that men aren't exactly encouraged to be coders either. Writing code has pretty much no social cred until you're out of school, and pretty much automatically gets you tagged as a nerd. No coder I know started coding because it was cool, they just sort of enjoyed it and accepted the social consequences.

I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. Yet I rarely hear about the cultural problem of not having enough males in nursing, or how we can encourage more male nurses. Same goes for elementary school teachers. Why is that?

Just because there's a gender imbalance doesn't necessarily mean anyone is keeping anyone out. And if a few insensitive comments can keep you from doing what you want to do in life, maybe that's something you have to deal with -- there's always going to be haters no matter what you want to do.

<comment><USER4> Yep, and a series of uncomfortable truths about how things work against men (specially Asian men) who are trying to learn to code:

1\. At school and such, no one tries to _encourage_ you to code. People naturally think, "Oh, male and Asian, screw _him_ , the world doesn't need another Asian dude coding. Let's try and teach Rails to that cute girl -- we need more of her kind."

2\. People _assume_ you are better at coding, math, and suchlike, and are more strident in their criticism of you when you fail to live up to their standards. I have had people tell me "yeah, if you can't understand this, you might not be smart enough". Think of the brouhaha that would result (gasp!) if someone said that to a girl.

3\. You are naturally left out of all of the outreach events. Everyone is trying to get more women into coding, for some yet-as-undefined goal (getting exactly 51% women, maybe?). But you -- you are just another male nerd, and you have apparently had a red carpet laid out for you to the world of coding, so you must be privileged.

There are tons of jobs that are female dominated. Nursing? Teaching? Fashion? Yet no one's complaining that there aren't enough men on the editorial staff of Cosmopolitan magazine, or starting movements for "Men Who Are Interested In Fashion". Draw your own conclusions from this.

<comment><USER5> Are you joking? The fashion world has massively outreached to men in recent couple of decades. Axe and chest shaving and all that other metrosexual stuff.

And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education world, especially with respect to the need to provide male role models for kids of single moms.

<comment><USER4> > The fashion world has massively outreached to men in recent couple of > decades. Axe and chest shaving and all that other metrosexual stuff.

I mean men _working_ in fashion, not being marketed to. And Axe is not fashion, thank you very much.

> And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education > world...

Show me the equivalent of "Rails Girls" or "Girls Who Code" for male teachers or fashion designers. For example, the list of sponsors on this page ([http://www.girlswhocode.com/about-us/](http://www.girlswhocode.com/about- us/)).

<comment><USER6> As well as girlswhocode there are also many non-gender-specific organizations aimed at helping young people into computer science.

Instead of asking whether gender-specific orgs for young people exist in the fashion or teaching world, you should also be asking whether non-gender- specific orgs exist in those fields as well.

The possible lack of "Young Male Teachers" organizations doesn't make much of a point if there's also a lack of "Young Teachers" organizations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to thank Valleywag for doing me the favor of helping me prune people who lack reading comprehension from twitter. I'm still kind of amazed how so many people un-ironically cited valleywag in their tweets.

It's pretty obvious what pg was saying in this particular "smoking gun" quote: that figuring out a way to get _more_ girls interested in programming at 13 is an incredibly important and hard problem. The willingness for people to quickly swallow and parrot a 1-dimensional narrative of "Paul Graham, sexist pig" based upon a few quotes taken out of context in a highly edited, 3rd hand rage-blog by fucking _Vallywag_ is the type of behavior I expect from political spinmeister hacks trotted out on the 24 hour news channels, not from smart people who I respect.

<comment><USER8> Right, but when he had a chance to comment _again_ to defend his statements, he instead went after the angle of saving himself rather than addressing the issue at the core.

He could have talked about the work he's doing to help girls learn to code. He could have talked about others' work to help girls learn code. He could have talked about how he is _not_ biased towards men.

Instead, he just attacked journalists in general and didn't bother to address the root problem. It's all about saving oneself.

<comment><USER9> The root problem is that when he tried talking about the root problem, his words were taken out of context and used against him. There's no way to win with character assassins and tabloids, and calling them out as people who don't discuss issues in good faith is the best you can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In a far off land, bounceyball was the national sport. A funny cross between basketball and volleyball, it was hugely popular, and to be a professional player was considered the most prestigious occupation.

A minor scandal erupted when was noted that there were few women in the co-ed national league, and a huge about of effort was made to recruit female players. Every family wanted the prestige, fame, and fortune that came with having a daughter in the league. Male players wanted more females playing so it didn't feel like a damn sausagefest all the time, and to help with dating (for some odd reason, most male bounceyball players were surprisingly unattractive).

Eventually it was suggested that the problem lay upstream, so major efforts were made to recruit teenage girls for the middle and high school leagues, which were also coed.

However, for some reason this attempt also failed. Finally, an anonymous poster on the Internet noted that, as a broad generalization, taller bounceyball players were more suited to the game, scoring more points. Perhaps a gender difference in height was to blame, discouraging female players and hurting them in the draft. The poster tracked down these differences in height to a disparity in average male and female birth weights, and suggested that perhaps a cocktail of experimental prenatal hormones (primarily testosterone), continued until age 15, would do the trick.

The anonymous poster was promptly downvoted and the discussion turned to topics of sexism, discrimination, and cultural bias in the bounceyball leagues. Various horror stories were recounted by female bounceyball players and a new round of self-flagellation began among those in the industry.

<comment><USER11> I don't necessarily agree with this metaphor, but it was entertaining and a fresh approach to the girls in tech problem. I especially thought 'Male players wanted more females playing so it didn't feel like a damn sausagefest all the time, and to help with dating' was hilarious.

Anyway, my major problem with your assertion is that we know that the number of female bouncyballers has been going down significantly over the last few decades. It's not as if women have gotten significantly shorter, or men have gotten significantly taller in that time period, so the difference in participation rates can't be explained entirely with biology.

<comment><USER12> It could be that the industry has become more flexible and meritocratic. The top post in this article mentions IBM and other big companies being more minority-friendly. But they also represent an older management style. The current industry with its focus on innovation and getting things done, may actually be more meritocratic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of that impresses me, and kind of amuses me, is how PG will talk these issues out, even though the danger of being misquoted or misinterpreted is much higher than the chances of being appreciated, especially for someone in his position. The phrase _" God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers?"_, as a standalone statement, is ripe for ripping apart. But I think in its context, it only expresses his frustration at the problem, which is much, _much_ better than the apathy expressed by others. It's a problem with much more societal and institutional inertia behind it than just VC men looking down on female entrepreneurs, or even tech companies being discriminatory. He's absolutely right to say that the focus should be on early education, and if anyone knows the best way (on a timetable that would satisfy current observers) to implement that, then they should speak up.

In terms of current harmful perceptions that can be stamped out in the short- term...I think the belief that females aren't genetically cut out to be programmers is one. The "world's first computer programmer" was a woman and COBOL, of course, was invented by Grace Hopper. These women were pioneers in early computing at a time when women were still struggling to be recognized as equal citizens. To argue that women can't make it as hackers is like arguing, post-Jackie Robinson, that blacks can't develop professional baseball skills. The lack of women computer scientists and programmers today more likely point to institutional/cultural problems rather than genetic ones.

<comment><USER14> Once again: after establishing bona fides by saying "fuck Vallywag and everything they stand for", I feel like I need to say that Graham wasn't hugely distorted.

He was asked whether YC discriminates against women. The obvious subtext of that question is that there's a large imbalance between men & women among YC founders. He could have said "no, we don't discriminate; I don't know why the imbalance among YC founders exist or exactly how to correct it, but here are some reasons I don't think our process is what creates it". He does not say that.

Instead, he composes a small essay about the roots of gender imbalance in the industry off the top of his head, and that impromptu essay manages to reinforce a lot of young- white- male privilege. "If women were going to be good coders", he seems to a reasonable reader to be saying, "they would have found coding on their own". But that's not true: it conflates affinity and aptitude with opportunity and support. It also conflates "living and breathing technology" with "ability to masterfully execute a role"; the correlation between living the life and ability to execute is dubious at best.

It does not help that Paul Graham has said other things in the past that also reinforce privilege.

"Privilege" is a dirty word on HN (I guess it makes me some kind of "nth wave feminist" to use it), but it isn't an indictment. Nobody is saying privilege needs to be rooted out and eliminated. How could you ever do that, anyways? The point is not to brand young white dudes with the word, but simply to recognize that it exists, and be wary about attitudes that reinforce it and allow it to feed on itself. That's the concern I have with the interview The Information published.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure this is a fair assessment. The (admittedly likely butchered at this point) quote:

> If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found > it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this > is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What > that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us.

In the very next sentence pg states that the lack of interest in young girls at age 13 is an _actual problem_. If he had some inherent belief that "girls just don't like computers" thing (ie, the great "male tech misogyny" strawman) he wouldn't cast it as a problem to be solved.

<comment><USER14> Once again: misogyny is a specific thing. It connotes an overt bias against women. That bias, while definitely present in our industry (and for some reason especially well-represented on HN) is rare. I would be shocked to find out that Paul Graham was a misogynist: it would not fit the rest of the picture that I have of him from what he writes.

But the absence of bias against women is inadequate innoculation against gender imbalance in the industry. It doesn't correct for bias _towards men_. That bias is pervasive. It's easy to see why: it involves saying nice things about people who do good work, and then simply generalizing it out a bit. The end result is a system of privilege for people who "fit the mold" for successful startup hackers.

<comment><USER7> It sounded to me like you took pg's quote to mean he felt was blind to the factor opportunity takes towards gaining affinity for a subject. If this were true (and his next sentence seems to invalidate this) it would mean he felt that women were less capable, inherently, of appreciating computers and programming. At the risk of splitting hairs, this would be a misogynistic viewpoint. This is the narrative these clowns want people to believe anyway, that someone like pg is a 1-dimensional cartoon villain who thinks "girls' brains can't code, what am I supposed to do about it?!"

<comment><USER14> It's easier at this point to just say what I do and don't actually think. I don't think Paul Graham believes women are intrinsically less capable than men. I do think he has a blind spot regarding privilege and specifically the way his reputational energy reinforces privilege, and another related blind spot about how that fortified privilege impedes the progress of women in our field.

Another way to put it would be, if Paul Graham acted personally as the hiring manager for every YC company, I wouldn't be too concerned. But he's not: his thoughts about capability and aptitude are filtered through the brains of hundreds of (mostly young, male) nerds.

<comment><USER15> > I do think he has a blind spot regarding privilege and specifically the way > his reputational energy reinforces privilege, and another related blind spot > about how that fortified privilege impedes the progress of women in our > field.

I don't know whether I agree or disagree with this (mostly, I just don't know what Paul Graham thinks about what he hasn't publicly spoken of), but this is a pretty serious claim to extrapolate from, as you wrote, an "impromptu essay".

I want to see meaningful change in the gender distribution/bias of this industry, but it's a shame that conversations about this frequently seem to contain detailed analyses of a reasonable person's "controversial remarks". It feeds a fire that shouldn't be fed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think we've come anywhere close to rejecting the hypothesis of some kind of innate personality and ability differences between male and female. Men are higher represented in diseases like autism, which involve lower social functioning/higher affinity for the abstract. Men score higher on Math SAT[1], despite the school system being tilted more and more in favor of female.

More women than men graduate from college and women have flooded into traditionally male majors in the sciences. There are plenty of female biologists and doctors. But they have not penetrated the most mathy majors, like engineering or Math itself.

Maybe men and women aren't interchangeable cogs, and some combination of difference in interest and average ability will always mean that the way to get females into your tech company is by having a big non-software department.

[1] [http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a- hug...](http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a-huge-gender- math-gap-persists-with-a-33-point-advantage-for-high-school-boys/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Apparently the definition of sexism is now just not telling women what they want to hear. The vast majority of the criticism of pg's answer that I saw wasn't even claiming that he was wrong, but just calling him sexist because his answer wasn't masturbatory enough. C.f. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840377)

<comment><USER18> Pretty much. The definition of sexism also involves endless discussions about the almost last job category still ruled by the evil patriarchy - <USER2> engineers - among the 15 projected to grow the most over the next decade [1]. For the record, the only other male dominated job category is janitors but I somehow doubt it faces similar outrage by the gender equality knight templars.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the- end-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of- men/308135/?single_page=true)

<comment><USER19> > For the record, the only other male dominated job category is janitors but I > somehow doubt it faces similar outrage by the gender equality knight > templars.

I'm really curious where you got this information because it doesn't agree with anything else I've read. Among other things, about 75% of US doctors are male[1].

[1] [http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/1078/](http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/1078/)

<comment><USER20> That's of the 15 job categories expected to grow the most over the next decade. Doctors likely aren't one of those high-growth categories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In tech, saying anything about gender is an opportunity to be lambasted vigorously. But I think I can contribute something.

Having read what I could over the years on the academic side of "women in tech" (i.e., academic research studying the matter, rather than opinion pieces), the consensus seems to be that the early teens are the time where the decision is taken to move away (or not) from STEM fields. That is part of why the Girls Who Code initiative & others like it is such a big deal.

There are a lot of different factors and stereotypes playing into the decision to exit STEM tracks, but among them are - "unpleasant male geeks", "programmers work alone", "girls don't need to know math", "boys figure things out" and so forth. ( _Clearly_ these are a subset of examples, and also clearly not all of these are 100% influential for any particular person, place, time). So the stereotypical 13 y/o girl and her interest in STEM is actually the target of a lot of research and policy efforts.

There's also a self-reinforcing aspect to this: heavily gender-coded places aren't typically presenting a welcome to people of the other gender. I read a academic paper on this in the last several years, but can't recall the experiment in detail or the citation. The implication is that a workspace festooned with seriously masculine widgets often tells many women that, "hey, man cave here. not so welcome".

For the interested person, the academic experiments are usually well done and their results, while not always surprising, clearly quantify certain sexist aspects in the tech world.

<comment><USER22> If you have some links to the studies you have read, I would be really interested to read them.

Thank you

<comment><USER21> I apologize, I do not. I read widely and generally do not maintain an annotated bibliography of what I read. Perhaps I should.

<comment><USER23> I try to, surprisingly it's quite useful even outside of this small use-case. Evernote or OneNotes clipping functionality is perfect for it. Give it a try, even if only for a few weeks, it's super useful IMO!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What great timing. BTW, thanks to all of you who backed my crowdtilt to bring BlackGirlsCode to Brooklyn! [https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/no-sleep- till-brooklyn-f...](https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/no-sleep-till- brooklyn-for-black-girls-code-ny)

<comment><USER25> I am so, so glad to see a much more high quality discussion (thanks in large part to lkrubner's insightful top comment) going on here today than the travesty that accompanied your post about Black Girls Code. The reactions that provoked made me feel sick. I guess the important think is your campaign is being supported and funded! But It's always a shock to see the dark side of this community revealed so starkly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > There is a lot of systemic bias in the system against young women taking > this kind of direction with their studies and their career.

I understand there is cultural bias, but systemic? There are more women attending and graduating college than men, they're more economically prosperous in their early twenties as well.[1]

[1][http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/27/young-w...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/27/young- women-earning-more-men)

<comment><USER14> Yes, because they are very well represented in the traditional professions: law, accounting, and medicine.

They are _not_ well represented in computer software. That's what we're talking about.

Go to a crypto conference sometime. If, like me, you hail from computer software and not from academic cryptography and mathematics, you will probably be surprised at how much better women are represented there than in software. The technology of cryptography is more demanding than computer software, but very similar in spirit.

What is it about the field of computer software development that keeps so many women out?

I suspect some of it has to do with the way we take observations about what successful developers have looked like in the past --- young white dudes --- and create fast paths for those people. People who "fit the mold" have an easier time making progress in our field. People who don't fit the mold have to contend with more interrogation, more doubt, and slower progress. It's true of other minorities (relative to software development demographics) as well, particularly older people.

<comment><USER27> >They are not well represented in computer software

Are they "well represented" in any skilled trade? Why is this one specific skilled trade such a unique cause for concern and inventing crazy reasons to blame the people in the trade?

<comment><USER28> Because software is eating the world.

Because entrepreneurship creates jobs.

Because software is the new means of production.

Because people different than you have problems which are different than yours.

Because dog-fooding is a great way to make something people want.

Lots more reasons, but chew on those.

<comment><USER27> Only 1 and 3 are relevant, and I don't believe either of them are true. The rest of those apply equally to all sorts of other skilled trades.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for showing your confirmation bias. Keep asking questions you don't want to think about.

<comment><USER27> If you don't have any interest in engaging in a good faith discussion that don't reply. This isn't reddit, shitposting isn't rewarded here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> No one seems to talk about where these girls are being pulled _from_ , as if labor shifts don't have two sides. What often seems to happen in initiatives like this is that all the sectors which decide they need higher female participation end up fighting over the same pool of "high-achieving" (high IQ, upper class, family connections) individuals. "We need to shift women from MBA programs into comp sci master's programs" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

<comment><USER30> Keep in mind, too, that female unemployment is lower than male unemployment. Your average female in the labor force has more options than your average male.

<comment><USER31> > Keep in mind, too, that female unemployment is lower than male unemployment. > Your average female in the labor force has more options than your average > male.

A society which views it as more acceptable for women to opt-out of the labor force may distort this: when employment becomes less scarce, women may be more likely to opt-out of the labor force -- since unemployment measures (actively looking for work) / (employed + actively looking for work), people dropping out of the active labor force when out of work shows up as lower unemployment, but it doesn't mean "more options" for those _in_ the labor force.

<comment><USER32> _when employment becomes less scarce, women may be more likely to opt-out of the labor force_

We've been in that situation for 5 years in the US. What you're describing did not happen—declines in labor participation among men still exceed women by a significant amount.

One explanation I've heard is that since women earn less, but do "the same" work, it's cheaper to keep them on vs. men. I have no idea if that's correct or not, or if it is, explains the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It sounds like Harvey Mudd's program improves female enrollment but it's just seems like a good idea in general

The quick program for Harvey Mudd seems to be 1) Make the problems more practical in application (ie controlling a robot, modelling a disease) 2) Giving students choices in what problems they are interested in 3) Segmenting students according to skill set, thus putting people who have been programming in another course that will match their pace better and allowing students who are more new to have their own pace.

<comment><USER34> I think Harvey Mudd's approach is fantastic. I love the idea of two separate tracks for getting people to code. It allows people to take an academic risk which they normally wouldn't be able to take for fear of destroying their GPA.

I think this is a fundamental problem with STEM programs in general. Why have grades and tracks at all? The important thing is to learn the material, and not what grade you got on a test at some arbitrary point in time. This is what is so brilliant about MOOCs like Khan Academy. No grades, and you can repeat the material until you _know_ it.

<comment><USER35> The problem with MOOCs is that they have a pretty low retention rate. Sure you can repeat the material until you know it, but how many people actually will? The benefit of having a physical class is that you can turn to the professor or TAs for help if you're having trouble. It's also more difficult to completely fall behind because there are milestones in place (tests, assignments, projects, etc.). This isn't to say that MOOCs don't have their place, but they are not a replacement for the traditional classroom model.

<comment><USER31> > The problem with MOOCs is that they have a pretty low retention rate.

Actually, I think that's one of the strengths of MOOCs (or, at least, a symptom of its strengths.)

> The benefit of having a physical class is that you can turn to the professor > or TAs for help if you're having trouble. It's also more difficult to > completely fall behind because there are milestones in place (tests, > assignments, projects, etc.).

The MOOCs I've been in EdX and Coursera all have had both milestones of the type described, and TAs to go to for help.

What they don't have is a large up-front cost to enter, so there's no reason for people not to try out classes when they aren't completely certain are the right fit -- and little reason, even if the fit is good, not to drop out of one iteration and come back and take the course again if other life events that _do_ have a cost for not dealing with now erupt.

So, yeah, a higher rate of people starting MOOCs and not completing them compared to traditional courses is to be expected -- and that's a _good_ thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am a man.

These initiatives will simply not work. Imagine "Men Nurse."

Many women SIMPLY do not code for the same reason many men do not code. Most of us were not exposed to the science as kids, hence step 1 is to make Programming mandatory. Note I say programming and not C.S.. I am an amateur programmer and I can say wit confidence that this is as fundamental as basic arithmetic. Full stop.

I frankly wish they shut down "Girls Who Code" entirely and all the likes. Instead we can put our efforts into teaching everyone to code: "We Code." Because once someone does something as simple as _print (2+2)-(3-2)_ or _print $first_name + $last_name_ or (my favorite) _< html><h1>The Website of Me</h1><p>My name is Joanna. This is my first web page.<img src='..'></p></html>_, once they do this, there is simply no going back for them.

<comment><USER14> There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is an ER nurse.

Back of the envelope:

There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female: there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US.

There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa.

There have probably been several "Tulsa Codes!" events in the past couple years, but either way just stipulate that it could happen. A "Tulsa Codes!" event addresses just 400,000 people. For logistical and practical reasons, that event locks out an overwhelmingly huge number of potential beneficiaries.

But nobody has a problem with "Tulsa Codes!". Threads aren't full of people ranting about "third wave feminism" when they do.

<comment><USER37> 9.6% of all RNs are male [0]

Why is there not a male nurse initiative? Or male elementary teacher initiative[1]?

I have to admit, I am strongly against things like "Girls who code". If there truly are issues in our culture that prevent girls from looking into coding, then absolutely let's get rid of those as best we can. But a girl can look into and explore coding just as easily as a boy can. There's really nothing stopping them. I have a few male nurse friends too. Nothing stopped them either, they simply found nursing interesting and pursued it. There might simply be fewer female coders because they tend to not be interested in this profession, same as male nurses.

[0] -- [http://www.minoritynurse.com/minority-nursing- statistics](http://www.minoritynurse.com/minority-nursing-statistics) [1] -- [http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers](http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers)

<comment><USER7> I don't know why you're getting downvoted. The question you ask is a good one, though you are jumping to some conclusions. I think it may very well be that there _should_ be a "male nurse initiative", or at least that the lack of one doesn't somehow dictate the ethics and obligations of _our_ field.

<comment><USER37> Possibly I am jumping to conclusions. I have nothing against females in tech. I strongly believe anyone should be able to pursue whatever they want.

My local hacker's space hosts coding dojos to teach children how to code. There is no special treatment given to girls in these. Everyone is welcome and encouraged. The dojo organizers _are_ conscious of making sure there is a good representation of female teachers/mentors in the program. That is a different -- and more effective -- approach to this issue. The difference seems subtle, yet it's key.

I'm male and I knit. It's something my Mom taught me when I was young and it's stuck with me. Yet I _hate_ when my gender is made such a big deal here. I'm not a male knitter, I'm just a knitter. I don't want to talk about my gender and how great it is I have pursued this hobby, I want to talk about the hobby. I can't help but think females would feel similar to programs like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One thing that came out of the discussion in the last article on this topic, was the people who support this kind of affirmative action were very interested in hearing from HN posters who opposed it (especially men), so they could understand what our reasons were, and a respectful discussion could be had. In response to this request, here is my opinion on the matter.

In fact, I think there is truth to what both sides say. On the pro AA side, it is true that women probably feel unwelcome in the tech industry. Even when men don't do anything consciously to exclude women, programming culture revolves around certain attitudes and mindsets that are associated with young men in our culture. E.g. being interested in science fiction, being obsessive about one's work and hobbies, . None of these things are strictly related to programming, and an excessive focus on them makes it harder for women (and minorities) to enter the field. The fact that male programmers are attracted to the minority of female programmers doesn't help with this feeling of unwelcomeness, in fact it adds to the awkwardness (although I think that most of this is completely innocent and could not be called harassment, and actual harassment is rarer in our industry than others).

On the anti-AA side, I think that women, due to reverse-discrimination and old fashion chivalry, are objectively advantaged in every field. Furthermore, some things that would seem to advantage men like long hours, stressful work, and being judged on results, are not bad or discriminatory in themselves. But they will tend to favor men over women because our society provides greater incentives for men to obtain money and positions of power. When people talk about work life balance, what they really mean is that the industry should stop providing people with an opportunity to advance their career by putting in extra time and effort.

Thank you for hearing my opinions on the issue, and I hope more people who oppose AA will answer the call to explain their viewpoints.

</comment><comment><USER38> A place I worked at previously had a manager who managed 2 small teams. One that did analytics, and another that did media/communications, for a total of about 10 people. On my first week of work, we had a meeting and in the middle of some discussion, he literally said "girls are better than guys. If I could, I would hire only girls". No specific reason, just girls are better than guys (he had 3 daughters though, so I don't know if that was the reason). It still blows my mind to this day that he said that out loud.

At one point we had a female intern who was on a 8 month work term. 3 months into her workterm, the manager offered her a full-time position, not contingent on her graduation (she was in 3rd year and planned to return to complete school). Now I'm not anyone to judge, but I will say her performance wasn't particularly impressive, especially compared to other interns on the team, one of who (male) had already graduated, interned for a total of 20 months, and took on plenty of duties. 5 months into the workterm, she ended up wiping a ton of live data of a fairly important legacy application, effectively costing the company a few hundred k. A year later she's working there full-time as expected, but from what I understand, she didn't end up graduating anyways. The male intern worked on that team for 13ish months, then finally got full-time through a different team. All I will say is that this company is one of the tech giants.

I agree we need more females in the field, but like many other people have mentioned, lowering the hiring bar in an intentional effort to hire a female hacker isn't very helpful. The problem is we're not producing enough qualified women, and overcompensating to fix that is not a good long term solution. There are plenty of very talented female hackers, and we do need them, but we also need to fix the root of the problem, and not intentionally skewing hiring to meet level of acceptable gender diversity.

Women in the field also face other challenges, such as not being as vocal as males when it comes to promotions/raises, so it's common for them to have lower salaries than their male counterparts. There are lots of issues females face in this field, but let's look at fixing the root cause.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is interesting: Of the 100 top academic authors in computer science today, per Microsoft, 96 are male: [http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=2...](http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=2&topDomainID=2&subDomainID=0)

The owner of this site appears to be a woman. Again, 20 males: [http://www.bestcomputersciencedegrees.com/author/2admin/](http://www.bestcomputersciencedegrees.com/author/2admin/)

And there is a preponderance of white males in the annals of computer history: [http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm](http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm)

Even among software professionals, there is divergence in the types of roles women take vs. men. Search LinkedIn (3rd & everyone else) for SQA, and you get about 25% women. Search "Full Stack" and you get about 10% women.

Is this really YC's problem to solve?

<comment><USER40> > Is this really YC's problem to solve?

I think it's up to everyone to do their part. This problem, like all big problems, is made up of lots of little problems.

<comment><USER39> I don't think there is much they can do.

A similar review of Human Resources professionals, also courtesy LinkedIn, shows about 70% are women.

In another report, in 2013, 41% of college seniors that elected majors in Physical Science were women. Yet, only 18% of those who chose computer science or engineering were women. It seems they'd be equally capable in chemistry and physics as in computer science and engineer. But their major choices indicate it is not about ability and something else is going on:

[http://www.directemployers.org/2012/08/16/the-college- class-...](http://www.directemployers.org/2012/08/16/the-college-class- of-2013-current-demographics/)

I believe that the whole dust up is a matter of gender-based difference in interests. Nothing more, and not a real problem. Which is why YC is scratching their heads about how to solve it.

<comment><USER40> > I believe that the whole dust up is a matter of gender-based difference in > interests. Nothing more, and not a real problem. Which is why YC is > scratching their heads about how to solve it.

This argument doesn't entirely follow and in my opinion unfairly misrepresents pg's position. Pg hasn't said that there is no "real problem", what he said was that he didn't know what he could do to solve it.

Personally I have witnessed a lot of sexism and even discrimination, so I don't believe there is no real problem. Maybe women are less interested in computer science than men, but maybe a few of them drop out due to the pervasiveness of sexism in the field? Or maybe interest would be higher if it didn't have this reputation?

<comment><USER39> I am certain that a few have dropped out due to sexism and discrimination. And certain that a few others have tried and found that the social aspects of working in a team of programmers, even polite, respectful ones, is just not rewarding.

Can we hear from those who felt kept or pushed out, please? If it is a real problem, where are the marches and movements and leaders at the podium? I suppose they don't hang out on HN, but they should be high profile, given that the media seems to be really interested in this story.

Here's a recent, related article (October, 2013) with a few anecdotes. [http://www.businessinsider.com/7-things-keeping-women-out- of...](http://www.businessinsider.com/7-things-keeping-women-out-of- science-2013-10)

There is one comment. From a guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> One fascinating aspect of this is how bad the post 1990 startup culture has been for women. There was something about those big, boring corporations of the 1970s and 1980s that actually gave female hackers more acceptance than what startups have offered.

You can see female interest in programming change in the charts on these pages:

[http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21993/women- comput...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21993/women-computer- science-visual-trendline)

Note that those graphs show raw numbers, not a percentage of the population -- if you adjust for the growing population, female graduation rates in computer science peak in the 1980s. As it says in the text:

"As a share of all CS bachelor's degrees granted that year, females had slipped almost 10 points, from 37% in 1984/1985 to 27% in 2003."

A family anecdote: my mom was working on her Phd in urban planning back in the 1970s and her advisor said to her "You know, in the future, many of these issues of traffic and resource allocation will be resolved through computer simulations, so you should learn to program." My mom thought that was a good idea so she took some classes and learned basic programming. She does not recall feeling like an outsider in those classes: the computer field was still new and felt wide open.

Nowadays a lot of startups talk about the need for "culture fit". This tends to limit the diversity of the gender and race and class of who is hired. For contrast, consider people like Evelyn Boyd Granville, and her acceptance at IBM.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Boyd_Granville](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Boyd_Granville)

Here on Hacker News we also discussed the story that Raganwald posted, about another black woman at IBM, though that article is now offline:

[http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans- story](http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans-story)

If IBM applied a filter of "culture fit" then these women would not have been hired. But IBM, and many of the big corporations in the USA, followed very liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place.

There were some startups from the 1950s and 1960s that broke new ground in terms of diversity. Ray Kroc built up a small startup called McDonalds and in a quiet way he made feminist history in his treatment of June Martino. She was initially hired as the bookkeeper, but she was later entrusted with vast responsibilities and finally, in 1965, when McDonalds went public, she was given shares in the company, exactly like any other cofounder of a startup. This was apparently the first time in history that a woman was treated as a real cofounder and given stock.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Martino](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Martino)

If you look at the numbers, it seems clear that the emergence of the tech- based startup scene, in the 1990s, changed things for women. The startups have not emphasized hiring diversity. The startups tend to emphasize culture fit, and they were doing so even before that phrase came into existence. Why this should be, I am not sure. There have been startups in the past that have emphasized diversity in hiring, so I am not clear why the current generation of startups cannot do so. But what is clear is that it is not a priority for them. The big and boring corporations of the past did a better job of creating spaces for women in tech.

Edit to add: to avoid being overly innocent, we should note how much the talk of "culture" is sometimes a smokescreen to hide power dynamics. Shanley Kane said "In Silicon Valley, and the tech industry in general, a lot of people were giving these talks about what their culture was and it was really superficial and focused on the privileged aspects of the company like free food and massages." Here on Hacker News we have already discussed the post "Google's 'free food' is not free" but it is worth remembering how much the talk about "culture" is just a negotiating tactic.

[http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/](http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/)

<comment><USER30> FWIW, the startup I was at seemed to have a soft affirmative action for females. They would reject males that didn't do much outside of college work, but would be willing to consider females with the same resume because "it would be nice to have more female coders".

Culture fit was about a modicum of friendliness. You could get rejected for culture fit by, say, looking away from your interviewer and mumbling to yourself. There could have been some great (and disadvantaged!) candidates with Eyeball Avoidance Syndrome + Tourette's that were rejected unfairly by the process, but so it goes.

The company was still 90% men in engineering, because that's what your talent pipeline looks like. I'm sure they were secret sexists, or something. Valleywag would write a scathing article about them.

In your example, I bet IBM was still predominantly male despite the anecdotal hiring of a few women that you mention.

<comment><USER42> Nope. IBM was >30% women engineers when I interned there in 2004/2005\. About half the interns were women and there was plenty of racial diversity as well. My boss was a woman, my mentor was a woman, and frankly it was the most diverse place I have ever worked.

<comment><USER30> Google is reportedly over 30% women, too. I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower guaranteed reward, worse training programs, higher pressure. The startup world compares well to the original California gold rush - a risk for a small shot at a high reward - and that was mostly male, too.

Also, keep in mind that it's a zero-sum game. If Google and IBM each hire 1,000 female engineers from top schools, that means that startups get less diverse.

<comment><USER43> > I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower > guaranteed reward, worse training programs, higher pressure.

This is explained equally well by inexperienced managers hiring people similar to themselves culturally, racially, and socioeconomically. Likewise, if I were a woman, I wouldn't want to work on a team with five dudes oblivious to their dude-dom.

<comment><USER44> Across all cultures (perhaps across all of history), women are more risk averse.

In fact, feminist activists didn't push to get more women into tech until tech was a higher paying, lower risk endeavor.

Only _then_ did it become scandalous that young women were choosing different career paths (but interestingly, the fact that young women are earning more than young men and graduating from college in far greater rates than young men isn't scandalous).

<comment><USER45> Do you have any evidence to back up your broad-brushed claims?

And who are these "feminist activist" strawmen(straw-women?) you have set up?

<comment><USER16> 5 minutes of googling:

"MEN, WOMEN AND RISK AVERSION:EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE" \- [http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf](http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf)

"Sex Differences in Everyday Risk-Taking Behavior in Humans" \- [http://www.epjournal.net/wp- content/uploads/ep062942.pdf](http://www.epjournal.net/wp- content/uploads/ep062942.pdf)

Reality fits egalitarian beliefs quite poorly.

<comment><USER43> You've obviously made a serious study of this and that's why you have such justifiably strong opinions on the matter. Can you do 10 minutes of googling next time and share more? Or maybe 20?! Think of how informed you'd be after _20 minutes_!

<comment><USER46> If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.

It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully define and prove every single piece of content in a comment.

Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here.

<comment><USER43> > If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the > universe.

There's plenty of room between "justify everything from first principles" and "perform an ad hoc 5-minute search of the web for research that confirms what I already believe." I'd also say, the closer one is to the former, the more justified one is in feeling certain about their beliefs.

> It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully > define and prove every single piece of content in a comment.

That's good, because nobody here is advocating that!

> Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here.

Well, as they say, "Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen."

What's "common sense," here? That women are more risk-averse? I disagree, at the very least until one defines "risk" and "risk-averse" very precisely. My "common sense" tells me otherwise. Shucks. Ain't that the problem with "common sense?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'd like to call attention to this part of Fred's post which many of the sub- threads appear to have overlooked:

 _Instead of turning Paul 's comments into a blogosphere shitstorm, maybe we would all be better off staring the issue in the face and thinking about how each of us could help make a difference on this issue_

How would you help a 13-year-old -- of either gender? -- get interested in programming?

Raspberry Pi? PyGame? Lego FIRST robotics? How can some of these initiatives be spread more widely to those who maybe don't have supportive family or communities to encourage their nerdy, high-school-pariah interest in tech?

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't understand all this excitement about the magical age of 13. Personally, I've never stopped learning--whether it's analytics, business, software development, or machine learning.

I don't think it's any harder for me to learn stuff now at 28 than it was when I was 13. If anything, it's easier, because I have a much wider baseline of knowledge that I can use to reference things. For example, I learned set theory in high school => I can apply that to relational databases today.

I do know some people, both men and women, that sort of stopped learning new stuff in their twenties, and now they're pretty much stuck. They can't keep up with technology changes (e.g., how does the router work) and they don't have a good baseline for learning new stuff. Nor the will.

</comment><comment><USER49> > _There was something about those big, boring corporations of the 1970s and > 1980s that actually gave female hackers more acceptance than what startups > have offered._

Yes: a 9-5 job mentality and a lack of emphasis on nerdy type hackers doing their thing.

</comment><comment><USER50> My daughter doesn't code, but she and another friend of hers do a lot of work to find, get and set up game emulators and related wares.

Motivated to do light "sys admin" work, but not coding, I guess.

<comment><USER40> Does they play Megadrive games? If so I know a really cool nerdy trick:

Sonic & Knuckles was a pretty awesome Sonic installment for the Megadrive that had a really weird cartridge. On top, it had a flip-open cartridge slot... You could plug in Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 to play through those previously existing games with the Knuckles character. Awesome!

So how do you play the games like that on your emulator? Turns out it's really simple:

> cat snk.bin sonic3.bin > sonic3nk.bin

Or on Windows, as I first learnt it (I had no idea what the command actually did back then, it was magic to me):

> copy /b snk.bin + sonic3.bin sonic3nk.bin

Suddenly I have a brand new game to play!

How it works: When you plug another cartridge into the top of Sonic & Knuckles the console sees both games combined as a contiguous block of memory, which is equivalent to concatenating together the binary dumps of the cartridges.

More details about this are available on this slightly horrific but very thorough webpage: [http://www.emulationzone.org/projects/s&k/thesis.htm](http://www.emulationzone.org/projects/s&k/thesis.htm)

<comment><USER51> Very cool - thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Mandatory plug for:

 _Free Ruby on Rails workshops [sf] for women and their friends_

[http://sfrubyworkshops.com/](http://sfrubyworkshops.com/)

It's run by the same folks that run the SF Ruby meetup (the huge one)... they're neat, chill folks.

</comment><comment><USER53> I hope PG doesn't get too frightened by the press from this and stops being his usual honest plainspoken self. We need more people like him trying to portray an accurate map of the territory, rather than being afraid of how quotes may be spun by cheap journalists.

<comment><USER9> If he takes his own advice[1], he'd be hard pressed to say anything at all. When people furiously accuse you of misogyny for not repeating the party line, there's no good faith discussion possible.

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

<comment><USER30> "Party line" is an interesting choice of words. There's definitely some unhealthy groupthink going on that's gaining in power. It's never been easier to have something said taken out of context and have your reputation dragged through the mud by people who are professional social justice warriors and not much else (I doubt Nitasha Tiku could program "hello world")

Maybe it's due to the rise of twitter and the ease of taking things out of context. It seems to fuel tabloid "journalists" like Sam Biddle who sit around on twitter all day, looking for tweets that he can read X-ism into.

The sad thing is that if Paul Graham were an employee of a tech company, he'd probably be fired by now[1]. The room for thought and discussion is much smaller than it used to be, even though we have more tools for self-expression than ever before.

Moldbug saw this happening and he decided that "America is a Communist Country". I think that's a bit strong, but I agree that at least the progressive half of the country is converging on a narrow, extreme Social Justice ideology.

First they came for the dongle jokers, and I did not speak, because I was not a dongle joker...

[1] [http://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and- badg...](http://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-badgered- pressured-and-purged/)

<comment><USER54> Shanley Kane and her circle and sympathizers are spearheading this. Many of them show up in every HN thread about charged topics. I fully expect defense of them to show up in reply. It is part of my core being to be respectful to everyone, to listen to all sides, to feel empathy; however, when I am presented with a popular group in my industry that does none of those things, I am not sure how to react.

What's depressing is how many people get added to that list, some unexpectedly; I had a lot of respect for Alex Gaynor until he filed that famous pull request and threw his lot in with that crowd (which he did when he wrote a blog post that said "if you disagree, you are wrong," effectively ending the possibility of rationally disagreeing with him).

I want to make things better as a white male, but I am fairly tired of her group trying to make me regret the situation I was born into. It's not my fault I'm a white male, I am cognizant of my advantage, and I want to help other groups in this industry; however, there is no speaking to them. I've tried. I'm a white male and I am evil to them, the irony of which is not lost on me given their purpose. I think I partially know how it feels to be gay, because I didn't choose my situation yet there is an extremely vocal group that wants me to believe I am doing something wrong.

On top of that, I know several women in the industry, from marketing wizard to expert programmer with publish credits, who have to tip toe when they go to a company because men are being trained that all women are like Shanley in the industry. I have yet to meet a woman that appreciates the efforts of the Twitter cabal. Some of them won't share that opinion because they're scared to death of being marked. Just look at historical precedent. Shanley never misses a chance to go after Sarah Lacy. Zed Shaw is _still_ going after Steve Holden every chance he gets. Once you fuck up you are followed for life. I bet people are religiously looking for the guy from PlayHaven to see what he does next.

More apropos, Shanley is now furiously trying to get journalists to support her anti-HN agenda, and is calling for a boycott of all portfolio companies, simply based on one comment by pg. That's the modus operandae of these people: all it takes is one mistake, one out of context quote, anything, and the party line is now that Y Combinator is misogynistic and represents the active VC discrimination against women. Some brave soul asked her for proof on Twitter and got a healthy "fuck you" back after she told him to Google it. That's some McCarthyesque shit right there. Is that what we are now? Communist hunters? Because I could have sworn we were smart folks trying to make the world a better place.

I worry about the outright animosity that is gaining support in our industry. There is no inclination to work together, only standing around and yelling at each other. Enough people seem to think that's a good thing because several of her circle started Gittip accounts and they are cleaning house. I have no idea what to make of that.

My only recourse thus far has been to keep distance and remember the companies that foster this animosity by employing those folks and publicly supporting their ideals. Then I think twice about ever working there. Basho and Joyent come to mind. On the flip side, I'd be privileged to work at SendGrid, who publicly took a stand against such behavior.

2013 for me: the US government is now an advanced persistent threat against my infrastructure and there is also an advanced persistent threat developing against my career, lest I not suppress independent thought.

<comment><USER55> Watching you clutch your pearls is fucking hilarious, so I've set up a weekly donation of a fair chunk of change to Shanley's Gittip account.

Keep up the good work.

<comment><USER54> Unlike most folks, I know who you are (I am not far removed from your social circle from prior employment) and you'll have to try that on someone else. I would encourage you to formulate a substantive point, for once, and seek a rational discussion on this with me but I know from experience that's not Coda Hale Style.

Last year I donated more than your annual contribution to Shanley's Gittip on causes for hunger and urban outreach, too. Since 2010 I have done a 50/50 split between my own 401(k) and hand-selected charities, and my 401(k) contribution is currently 3%. You can do the math. So, you can't hurt my feelings by tossing your big bad salary at another salaried worker in the industry in SF instead of, you know, helping people that need it.

Finally, between you and Michael Church I just can't use Scala any more for fear of remembering that you exist.

<comment><USER55> I'm happy to hear you're donating to charity, but you're missing out on a great opportunity to reduce your taxable income and save for retirement. The 2013 contribution limit is $17,500, and most financial planners would be aghast at a well-paid professional like yourself not taking such an easy step to lower your tax liability. The good news is that if you max out your contribution either today or tomorrow, you'll still make the 2013 contribution deadline.

Say hey to the folks we both know for me when you see them.

<comment><USER56> This is what I believe you call derailing. Like the other person, I'm also still waiting for substantive points to be made rather than shaming and cherry picking.

<comment><USER55> I'm not here for debate club, Johnonymous. Like I said before, I'm here for the pearl-clutching.

<comment><USER56> No indeed, that would mean not being a self righteous prick. You know what the effect of people like Kane was in the skeptic community? Female conference attendance dropped from 40% to 10% in a single year.

Enjoy your self defeating efforts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > Paul asks "God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested > in computers?"

(My comment, repeated from the other similar thread that got go superseded by this one)

The problem of getting anyone, young or adult, interested in a subject --any subject-- isn't one with a simple solution. Technical subjects have the added difficulty that they require you to use your brain in non-trivial ways. Given equal exposure to the subject matter, I fail to see how a male or female subject would react differently to the idea of learning that subject. This, of course, assuming that both the male and female subjects got to that moment in time with a similar educational and perhaps even cultural frame of reference. If a mother only ever bought a little girl frilly pink and shiny things, well, it is probably unlikely that as a teenage girl or an adult woman she would even remotely show interest in learning more technical subjects. She will probably be a dancer and go into the arts or some other less "brainy" occupation. That's not to say that there aren't exceptions to this, but they are probably few and far between.

The same is true of boys. If they are brought-up in front of a playstation, shooting at things, playing sports, and well outside of more academically focused areas he will probably grow up to be a jock and then move on to careers that do well when you use half your brain. Hell, he might even go into sales! Things are vastly different if you feed your kids a constant diet of what they should be learning in order to operate at a different level when they are older. My teenage son finished MIT's CS 6.00.1x course just a few weeks ago. That did not happen magically. That was a lot of work. For me and for him! And that also required a lot of work to get to the point where he could even be shoved into that end of the pool.

My little girl is too young to think about formal learning of these kinds of subject, but this year she got introduced to Lego robotics and is starting to like it. Yet, the situation is exactly the same: It requires a ton of time and dedication on my part --as the designated nerd at home-- to keep her exposed to such subjects and make it fun. I have to get silly while teaching something useful. I have to figure out ways to make robotics fun, silly, exciting and something she wants to do. We don't buy lots of silly frilly things for her. That said, I have to tell you, it is hard to fight both genetics and exposure to such things through her peers.

I guess my message is that parents needs to be very engaged and active in bringing up a child into the sciences and technology. It will not happen by osmosis. And, I really don't think gender makes a huge difference. It might change the approach, but I don't think it is the primary determinant of success or failure. One way I've explained this in the past to friends who marvel at what my kids are doing is that this is like a Formula 1 car drafting a car in front of them. You need to drive well and use a lot of effort to get close enough to be within the zone where drafting happens. Up until that point you are using a lot more energy to chase the car in front of you. Once you get into the drafting zone you need less power to maintain the same speed. Yet, you still need that foot solidly planted on the accelerator.

With kids you have to push, push, push. I have navigated through really frustrating moments when I've gotten angry because I couldn't understand why he (my oldest son) didn't just grab that book I bought for him and launched himself into software development nirvana. Of course, I always reflected upon these things and never externalized them --not much of a motivator to yell and scream at your kid about learning something-- and realized that (a) he is still young and (b) we are not in the "draft zone" yet. It'll take a lot more effort --and this is different from kid to kid-- to get him into the "draft zone". Once we reach that zone it will require a lot less energy on my part and, if interested, he will ultimately need virtually no support from me.

This is where I look at some of the things being said about STEM education and can't help but think we are just throwing money into a big bonfire. You can't force people into learning anything. A lot of my kid's friends are, well, jocks or exhibit no interest in anything at all. They are navigating through school with no guidance or encouragement in any direction whatsoever. You can't just throw money at that and expect things to change. For most kids it requires far more work than can be done during the time they are at school. Yes, of course, there are a few kids in every sample group that need almost zero work. These kids get hooked on a subject like programming and just go, go , go. Most kids are not like that. Just like most successful businesses did not get launched with a long coding session over a weekend while eating popcorn.

Going back to my little girl, she is not seriously exposed to Lego robotics. In fact, our living room table is an official FLL table with the official field mat and everything. Yes, we are serious about this. I'd rather have a learning environment in my living room than a fancy dinning room table. As far as why there aren't more women in tech today. I don't have the answer for that. I only know that when I was a teenager girls mostly did different stuff. Not because they were being forced away from tech, they simply showed no interest in what we were doing. My guess is that it all came from home. So, as our culture changes so will that aspect of things.

Evolution?

</comment><comment><USER58> What company has Fred Wilson ever started?

</comment><comment><USER59> I am a male who started programming in my early teens on large computers at a major tech university along with other boys who were passionate about programming computers (and working on bicycles, in garages, etc.). We tried to get girls interested but they were not interested in programming computers, they had other interests which is alright. You do not need computer science course to start programming. What you need is a passion and what is very helpful is the assistance of someone who can help you with your questions.

75% of the graduates with PhDs in psychology are women and the fields of fashion and ballet/dance are dominated by women by you never hear calls for more males to enter these fields.

IMHO, computer programming, like medicine are fields that one should not enter unless they have a passion for the field.

Autism research Simon Baron-Cohen speaks of the differences between male and female brains. Boys are 8 times more likely to be autistic than girls. Autism (and the related Aspergers) and very good at systemitizing but bad at empathisizing. Females are more likely to be empathizers than males. Of course there is overlap and some women are better at sytemitizing than some men and some men are better at empathizing than some women, but that 8:1 difference in Autism in boys over girls probably is an indication of the imbalance of boys over girls who are passionate about programming computers.

See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory)

These are three on-line tests from Baron-Cohen that help determine your EQ and SQ (empathizing quotient and systemitizing quotient).

[http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/faces/eyestest.aspx](http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/faces/eyestest.aspx)

[http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/empathyquotient/empathyquoti...](http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/empathyquotient/empathyquotient.aspx)

[http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/systemizingquotient/systemiz...](http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/systemizingquotient/systemizingquotient.aspx)

<comment><USER60> is the eye test baiting me?!

INSERT INTO EyesTest VALUES('al', 'Male', 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 0, 3, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 0, 3, 2, 2, 3, 0, 1, 1, 0, 3, 2, 3, 2, 22, '220.127.116.11', '2013-12-30 17:22:41')

I bet you they've long since lost their database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> go girls! :D

<comment><USER62> Girl Power <3 <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> And..? I would be much more interested if the title was "Cats Who Code".

</comment><comment><USER64> If you want to get girls coding, get Windows OSes out of schools. They kill interest in computers before you have time to get interested in them.

<comment><USER65> What a weird comment. How would this be worse for girls than for boys?

<comment><USER64> > _What a weird comment. How would this be worse for girls than for boys?_

I didn't say it was worse. I simply posted it because nobody else has mentioned it. Teaching computing these days is seen as a joke, much like learning to code.</comment></comment></comment>


Eye Movements Could Be Next PC Password - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/23940-eye-movements-could-be-next-pc-password.html

<comment><USER2> Neural brainwaves. Duh.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the skillset required to be employable as jr dev? - <AUTHOR> When hiring someone as a junior developer, what do you look for if they don't have a college degree? <comment><USER3> \- a good working knowledge of the command line (up to say piping, xargs)

\- basic networking

\- show me a hobby or project you have worked on, I'll ask you questions

\- I'll likely try to teach you a command or small factoid to see how receptive you are to learning

\- I'll likely query you on this factoid at the end of the interview to test your memory and comprehension

\- if you haven't said "I don't know" in the interview I'll ask you a very hard question to see how you react to not knowing something (hint: getting angry or defensive is not good)

\- I will try and get you to teach me something, so I can make sure you know that senior members are life learners too. This is to identify if you're one of those people who lose respect for someone not knowing something you know, as I think this is a strong negative sign

Bonus points if you have competed an end-to-end project, it doesn't have to be deployed online, but being about to talk full stack is great!

</comment><comment><USER4> A brain, and the ability and willingness to learn. None of us really know what we're doing in this industry anyway, and you're constantly on the treadmill of learning new things to keep up.

Being able to effectively use the internet to search for information is a big deal.

Honestly, it doesn't make a huge difference if they have a degree or not. Most universities don't teach much of anything that is particularly relevant to actual software development in their curricula. If the practices and technologies that are taught are only ten years out of date, that's cutting edge.

You're going to be spending 3-6 months training up a junior developer before they are at all useful anyway. You just want to find the ones that will be continue to progress at the twelve month mark.

</comment><comment><USER5> Someone who can talk through a problem, ask questions and think critically. I know HN hates the "consulting" type interview questions; but I find for jr devs its a great barometer of how they would react in the real world to a problem they were unfamiliar with. Ie: how much would you charge me to wash every window in the city? I don't care about the total price, I care they ask and answer the questions, well how many buildings, how long would it take to do one window, how many different building types are there. I want to see them take what looks to be an insurmountable problem, and break it down in to small manageable problems. If they can do that, they can reason about any bug or feature on a system they are not familiar with. The only "wrong" answers are if someone blurts out a number without thinking, or someone who just shrugs and goes, I have no idea how to do that.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was hired as a junior developer, without a degree, with the following things:

\- A personal blog

\- roughly 20 personal projects that I've worked on throughout my lifetime as a hobbyist, most of which weren't very complete but demonstrated my passion

\- A willingness to learn

\- A good attitude

<comment><USER7> That's very impressive. You should be proud of yourself for putting so much work in!

<comment><USER6> Thank you! I did most of those project during my high school and college years. I've found that there's no substitute for hard work in life, you can either go to school and work hard to get a degree or you can work hard on entrepreneurial endeavors but you have to work hard. How you choose to gain experience isn't that important, especially as a software developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a developer without a degree and transitioned from IT into development. I am in my last year of my Undergrad in CS now.

What you need more than anything are skills. Ranging from networking knowledge to having a good command on linux. In addition you have to be able to program in Python, Java, JavaScript, C. You also have to understand data structures like linked lists, queues, b-trees..., and to top it all of understand algorithm analysis to judge the efficiency of the code you write or look at.

My recommendation is to get the degree, medium to long term you will need it, and it will benefit you greatly. It seems to be popular to claim a degree is not needed for CS but if you want to do anything besides simple web apps then you will need the knowledge.

<comment><USER9> Lets go through this one by one:

 _In addition you have to be able to program in Python, Java, JavaScript, C._

This is objectively false. To expect a junior developer to know all these is unrealistic, plain and simple. If you have working knowledge of one or two programming languages and have an appetite to learn you are good to go.

 _You also have to understand data structures like linked lists, queues, b-trees..., and to top it all of understand algorithm analysis to judge the efficiency of the code you write or look at._

For 99% of the work out there, this is also not true. This is the horse crap that is fed to everyone so that folks can ask questions that have little to no relation to day to day development. If you are doing web development, then some knowledge of database query optimization will come in handy. But I don't remember the last time I had to figure out how a linked list worked whenever I was doing any server side or front-end optimization.

<comment><USER10> > > In addition you have to be able to program in Python, Java, JavaScript, C.

> This is objectively false. To expect a junior developer to know all these is > unrealistic, plain and simple. If you have working knowledge of one or two > programming languages and have an appetite to learn you are good to go.

Still in school, so haven't had even begun to look at jobs yet, but I know python, java, and c (and a few others), and have a basic knowledge of js. Does that give me an edge, then?

<comment><USER11> nope; its actually not that uncommon for a college graduate; An edge may be gained if you vary paradigms for some companies (Procedural, Functional, OOP, Logical, Interesting Type System)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> (Optional: Where do I ask:) Who's hiring Jr. Devs? Because as far as being passionate to learn (and knowing some of the basics of .NET flavored development), I'd like to grow my skillset beyond that of IT Generalist.

<comment><USER13> As someone who doesn't have much of a resume, but has a lot of knowledge and passion, I have no idea where to present myself.

Every "job listing" I find for programming asks for a 4 year degree and years experience. Since I don't have either (on paper), I have no idea where to show myself.

Who is hiring Jr. Devs? Where?

<comment><USER7> I don't think that the traditional "find a job post - click apply - <USER2> resume off into the void - wait" model will work very well for you. So instead, I would focus on researching companies and then reaching out directly to founders/very senior engineers. If you work hard to demonstrate passion for both their product and learning how to help build it, you will get some opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a lot of great advice here which can be broken down into two categories: specialist vs generalist. A really important thing to figure out is what kind of developer you are. Which sounds better: a. Constantly being challenged to learn new things, a rapid paced environment where lots of change and challenge are introduced b. Organized environment where work is split up by expertise, groups have a narrow focus where they become experts in their domain and iterate to perfection

Obviously you should have a nice balance of both, but I've found many company cultures to lean more one way or another, and the advice on this post seems to divide similarly. If you like option A I'd recommend getting a good overview of a variety of languages, data stores, and tools/frameworks so you can at least have an idea of which one you'd learn more of for a given problem. If you like option B I'd do a deep dive into algorithms and CS fundamentals with one language (C, Java, etc) and target companies that work with that language. They're also more likely to have a well defined intern/junior dev role than the fast paced shops, but a slower pace of learning/advancement.

</comment><comment><USER15> Working in semi academia I do see these kind of applications. The following are personal opinions that work for convincing me when I am in an hiring committee.

* A good cover letter * Having worked with a version control system * Shown initiative

For me a good cover letter makes a world of a difference. Anything at all that shows you have thought about the problems that the organization you are applying to is gold and basically an guaranteed phone call.

I still see CV's and get people at phone stage that never used a version control system e.g. git. I don't care which one you used. Its just that it is my baseline for competence.

For a junior position our main aim is to have someone who is willing to grow to a senior and that requires initiative i.e. doing more than what they are told to do but seeing what needs to be done and starting on it. Being in semi- academia I also know that we can rarely keep people once they become senior level due to wage differences. Initiative can be shown in many ways, from the way you reach out to us in the pre-interview stage, to highlighting things you have started in your social live e.g. club activities etc...

</comment><comment><USER16> I got hired as a junior developer (a _long_ time ago) with a math and physics degree, _one_ computer class on my transcript, no experience, and "mostly self-taught with respect to computers". I got hired by a manager who had a master's degree in math and was mostly self-taught with respect to computers.

So the skill set required to be employable as a junior dev is to be able to convince one hiring manager that you can do it. Then, after that, you have to learn enough to be able to actually do the work, so that you can _remain_ employable. That's different, though. Learn what you need for the job you have. Don't worry about learning other things; learn what you need as fast as you can. You'll pick up other stuff around the edges, and that's good, but they're paying you to learn (and then do) what you need for _this_ job.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have a question for interviewers:

how much, if any, white boarding do you have the interviewee do for a front end junior position? And what are you looking for - memorization of common problems/solutions? ability to think through problem? something else?

As someone who has pretty poor memorization and does poor on tests in general - this portion of interviewing gives me the most anxiety.

<comment><USER18> We don't use any whiteboarding questions. There is a coding component of our interview process, but it's all done on a laptop.

Our goal is to test like you work, so you have an IDE, access to Google and StackOverflow, and when we ask you to implement an algorithm (like QuickSort) we link to the Wikipedia page in the instructions.

We've found that the ability to memorize is basically useless is identifying good candidates, but the ability to implement when given proper instructions is really valuable.

<comment><USER17> This is what I was hoping to hear! Thanks for replying.

<comment><USER14> At many bay area startups I've worked for we would do whiteboarding sessions but I would stress that the candidate "treat me like google". I would actively encourage them to ask questions of the type they'd look up, to be comfortable being collaborative. This to me showed much more about a candidate's ability to work on a team, learn quickly, and apply what they've learned than any whiteboard session entirely from memory could prove. This becomes even more important the further out of school a candidate is; some of us took algorithm classes decades ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Having a good understanding of things you claim to know (even if that is not a huge set), and ability to effectively convey that understanding to someone else.

Personal or commercial projects that demonstrate relevant skills. Bonus points if I can see the source.

Having a mentor really helps to prioritize your learning efforts in the right spots, both before and after getting the job.

</comment><comment><USER11> Without a degree you need a ledger of work, and preferably references by people you have collaborated on something on.

\- You must have projects in at least two programming languages with at least one programming language listed in the job posting

\- at least one project to 'completion' that uses a database (sqlite counts) (MVP of MVC with DB) (preferably something remote so you have do deal with networks and latency)

\- Either know how to navigate Linux command line Environment xor a Microsoft/Netbeans Style IDE

\- Use of a version control system (preferably in collaborative environment)

\- Depending on company culture you may also need to have reviewed algorithms and abstract data types. (you can usually skip this requirement by being hired as an intern first, and bootstrapping your employment)

\- willingness to document and report work completed during a time period (as a ledger of progress)

</comment><comment><USER20> Background: Recently started my second job (mid-level) after leaving my previous job (junior, first programming job). Switched to programming from journalism

How: Wanted to create a news aggregator, so I teamed up with a friend (backend guy) and learnt how to do frontend. 14-months later I got hired after creating some side-projects and learning enough to convince my first employer to take a chance on me.

What worked for me: Learning JavaScript, the language, instead of trying to learn shiny, new frameworks. Learning how to read source code (a more recent habit but it helped me get my second job). Showing a genuine passion for coding through getting involved in open-source communities and learning outside of work

</comment><comment><USER21> Know SQL. Not because you'll be needing it, but because of the bias among older developers that junior developers just glue together frameworks and libraries, and lack real problem solving knowledge. Learning SQL is probably the quickest way to diffuse that.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have hired junior web developers, both those right out of school and those without CS degrees. I look for:

\- a portfolio website that deploys a range of recent web technologies. This demonstrates initiative, and also the fact that you can set up a web site somehow.

\- some freelance work on your resume, even if it's as simple as setting up a WordPress site.

\- a code sample, so have something decent ready, again showing an interest in more than basic web development. Deploying a framework other than jQuery is a plus, as long as you show some sufficient hand-coding skills.

\- interest in back-end technologies is a plus even of the job doesn't require it

\- in the interview, openness, honesty and drive

\- and finally the coding test I give you will show if you know what you are talking about

</comment><comment><USER23> We look for junior developers who are "coachable": we can teach them the skills they lack and they will learn quickly.

As a junior developer where I work, we aren't expecting you to know a lot coming in. But we do expect you to have a good attitude and to want to learn. We can teach you how to write software, but we can't teach you about work ethic.

We have one developer who started 10 years ago without a college degree. He's a team lead now.

In summary: \- You should want to learn from the senior developers \- You should have a positive attitude \- You should have a good work ethic (show up on time, help your coworkers, shouldn't act like any task is beneath your skill level)

</comment><comment><USER24> Resourcefulness. Being able to get things done.

Curiosity. Always wanting to learn more.

Growth Oriented. Constantly learning.

Humility. Knowing when to say, I don't know and ask for help.

Pride. Having a decent ego, wanting to be the best and showing it by putting in the work.

</comment><comment><USER25> Smart and gets things done.

Every other thing is related to that. Are you a freelancer asked to build a website? Who cares whether it's PHP or JS, it just has to be done. Are you maintaining a PHP website? Then you need PHP to get things done.

The rest of the interview process is to filter out the smart part.

</comment><comment><USER26> First, look for companies that you'd like to work. See if the technologies that they work with are the ones you know, and start developing more skills on them. That will increase your chances of getting hired.</comment>


Nobody Wants to Let Google Win the War for Maps All Over Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-21/nobody-wants-to-let-google-win-the-war-for-maps-all-over-again <comment><USER2> lvl5 is a formidable contender in the race too. We're looking for talented computer vision / 3D reconstruction engineers. ([http://www.lvl5.ai/careers.html](http://www.lvl5.ai/careers.html)) if you're interested in this industry.</comment>


TLS 1.3 at Apple - <AUTHOR> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/38hn9mRARfDpNdwVKXSpCFhRXs4 <comment><USER2> > Note, we currently do not have 0-RTT data support.

That is like the most exiting feature of TLS 1.3.

<comment><USER3> It's also a contested one as it can open one up to issues. Some of these are detailed here, for example: [https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/issues/1001](https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/issues/1001)

It seems prudent to not support something like 0-RTT until the consequences of it are well understood and an informed decision can be made on if the increased speed is worth its trade-offs and how best to protect the data in transit from its potential issues.

<comment><USER4> How is anyone going to understand the consequences unless someone actually implements it in a stack (behind a feature-flag) that people are then encouraged to go play with—exactly as is being done here with TLS 1.3 itself?

In other words: wouldn't 0-RTT be the thing it'd be most interesting to see a limited-opt-in real-world test of? Why bother testing TLS 1.3 without it?

<comment><USER3> > How is anyone going to understand the consequences unless someone actually > implements it in a stack (behind a feature-flag) that people are then > encouraged to go play with—exactly as is being done here with TLS 1.3 > itself?

If you read the issue that I linked, it's already been tested and a number of flaws found. It has also been tested by others who've also verified the issue with potential replay attacks. Putting something that is known to already have flaws behind a feature flag so others can, potentially unknowingly, start using it doesn't seem like a useful exercise to me and does little to gain additional data on the matter. Once the existing issues are resolved it might be more interesting to try what you're suggesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Please download and distribute" Stephanie Hofeller's gerymandering dad's backup - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Pw3lc2QPJ-eEeHszCdcfjbe3uZC1DbKz <comment><AUTHOR> "Deceased GOP Strategist's Daughter Makes Files Public That Republicans Wanted Sealed":

[https://www.npr.org/2020/01/05/785672201/deceased-gop- strate...](https://www.npr.org/2020/01/05/785672201/deceased-gop-strategists- daughter-makes-files-public-that-republicans-wanted-sea)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a currently "flagged" thread about it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964298)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to improve self-esteem? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The outside: Failure and/or success is not the end. The inside: Accept the ups and downs and learn from them. The border: Push the comfort zone further by small steps, every day. The glue: Forgive and forget yourself, support and sustain the others.</comment>


Tor Browser and Tails Version Fingerprint - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jonaslejon/tor-fingerprint <comment><USER2> It detected Whonix as well

Not that it wasn't supposed to, just letting anyone know because its a waste of time for someone else to boot up their VMs just to see it, like I did.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am trying with Torbrowser 5.5.5 on MacOS X with javascript activated, and weak privacy settings, and the webpage detects neither that it is TorBrowser nor that it's on MacOS X.

I have also installed uBlock Origin; maybe it is what makes the difference?

<comment> ryan-c Installing any extensions in Torbrowser that it doesn't come with makes you very trackable.

<comment><USER3> I'm quite sure I'm not the only one to use an ad-blocker with TorBrowser, so this would not be a unique fingerprint.

<comment><USER4> It's not going to leave a unique finger print but not will certainly be able to track you...unless you completely trust your ad blocker

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Idea: combine TOR + Guacamole.

Client runs guacamole client, one of the intermediate TOR nodes runs guacamole host. Fingerprinting takes place on intermediate node which is randomly chosen every time client starts up service. End result: Client remains anonymous to these sort of fingerprinting efforts

The downside is TOR, which is not terribly performant because of extra intermediate hops, will be degraded further by guacamole service.

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I wrong in thinking that all this does is look at window.navigator? It doesn't seem to work for me though.

<comment><USER7> Yes, you're wrong :) It actually opens up this page in the background:

        chrome://torbutton/locale/aboutTor.properties

If it exists, you're using Tor. Pretty obvious. For the version, it concats a few variables from `window.navigator', CRCs them, then compares the result against known CRCs. The code[0] is pretty easy to follow. I'm surprised Tor exposes these variables at all.

[0]: [https://github.com/jonaslejon/tor- fingerprint/blob/master/to...](https://github.com/jonaslejon/tor- fingerprint/blob/master/tor-fingerprint.js)

<comment><USER8> Isn't that only for Chrome? Tor Browser's based on Firefox eh. I thought XHR wasn't allowed cross-domain anyways, so shouldn't these things fail? Though I admit having no knowledge of how the addon system works.

Detecting Tor should be easier though, since exit nodes are published. So just check the IP?

I imagine all the variables have to be exposed because sites will break otherwise.

<comment><USER9> >Isn't that only for Chrome? Tor Browser's based on Firefox eh

"chrome" in this context refers to the control elements of the browser

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_interface_and_interaction_design)

<comment><USER8> Right but I was unaware FF exposed a "chrome" Uri scheme.

I'm sure they have their reasons for letting pages make Xhr calls to add-ons like that but seems complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suppose Tails should at least update its support page regarding fingerprinting[1].

[1] [https://tails.boum.org/support/known_issues/index.en.html#fi...](https://tails.boum.org/support/known_issues/index.en.html#fingerprint)

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks like it fails to identify Tor Browser 6.0a5-hardened...

</comment><comment> r-w Cue them saying something along the lines of "our goal is to prevent tracing, not fingerprinting". But I hope they're hard at work on a fix regardless.

<comment> ryan-c Torbrowser includes patches to Firefox that make it more difficult to fingerprint individual machines, however this is at the expense of making it trivial to identify as Torbrowser when javascript is enabled. It doesn't appear possible to fix.

<comment><USER12> Also, the requests seem to come from a node exit IP, which are public, so identifying a Tor user is easy.

Tor provides anonymity by giving all its users the same fingerprint. The fact that you're using Tor isn't a secret.

About the Tor version number in window.navigator, I guess they can't easily block it since the browser itself leaks some information via the features added in each release (e.g. a new JS API introduced in Firefox XX).

<comment><USER13> Strangley, the tor site at one point mentions having javascript enabled by default. As far as I know, that is a no no for anonymous browsing using tor. But it also breaks most sites so there are not many times I actually use it. Even with javascript enabled, I'm sure you can still do a fair bit of anonymous browsing but I just don't trust java or the internet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Interesting Take on Captcha - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronkato.co.uk/portfolio/captcha.jpg

<comment><USER2> I saw a website that actually did have a captcha like this, but I do not remember which off-hand.

However, just like ever other proposed captcha replacement it has many issues. Someone should make a 'Your new captcha will not work because...' checklist like the one for email spam.

edit: <http://theymakeapps.com/users/add> is the example of a slider captcha I was remembering. It was previously discussed <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1479411>.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Akamai silently acquiring CloudFlare? - <AUTHOR> CloudFlare employees in SF and London have apparently changed their work addresses and are now using Akamai Offices <comment><USER2> [https://www.techzim.co.zw/2019/02/exclusive-breaking-news- it...](https://www.techzim.co.zw/2019/02/exclusive-breaking-news-it-seems- cloudflare-is-merging-with-akamai/)

Doesn't add much beyond what you've mentioned, but if the observations are true, it sounds like an acquisition is in progress. Maybe announced at RSA in early March?

Total funding was $182.1 million (over 10 years), so interested to see what the acquisition deal is.

</comment><comment><USER3> It could be that Akamai and CloudFlare are working together on something, or any number of things including CloudFlare coincidentally renting space in the same buildings where Akamai already has operations.

Without more data, such as when they changed the address, what their job roles are, what are the address in question? It's hard to do anything but generate idle speculation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow. If true, it's interesting given that Cloudflare was rumored to be preparing for an IPO. Perhaps Akamai is offering a better deal? There certainly should be synergies between the two companies.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cloud Flare is Best...</comment>


Equifax Deserves the Corporate Death Penalty - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/equifax-deserves-the-corporate-death-penalty/?mbid=social_fb <comment><USER2> I agree. EquiFax deserves complete dissolution as a corporate entity. Much like Arthur Anderson dissolved itself after being caught as the approving auditor in the Enron scam.

Corporations and executives as well as stockholders must suffer. For executives there must be clear disincentives to bad management. Stockholders must learn to NOT invest in unethical companies. And employees need to learn that working for poorly run companies is a poor career choice.

Otherwise, these events will continue to occur and everyone on the inside will glad hand each other about how they got away with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe not dissolution, but surely:

1\. Such a big fine that their stock goes broke

2\. Arresting the execs who took high salaries but did not take their jobs seriously enough

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure about arresting, but, clawing back huge amounts of the money (particularly any bonuses/options/stock but perhaps not salary).

And, as far as fines, I think just providing a very simple path whereby they are deemed responsible for losses resulting from the breach is enough. Me having to personally sue them and personally prove their responsibility in a court is a very high bar. A class action is a much lower bar, but, will result in me getting significantly diminished compensation. Some process in-between that where their guilt is established beforehand and I merely need to prove what my damages are and I can collect, say, treble damages from Equifax would fix the Equifax problem in a more egalitarian way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it can't happen to Transocean after Deepwater Horizon; If it can't happen to PG&E after San Bruno; It's not happening here.

<comment><USER4> I disagree very strongly. The results of the Deepwater Horizon were terrible, indeed, but Transocean runs many deepwater oil rigs (in addition to many other O&G ventures) with a single (huge/terrible) accident.

Equifax has a single database to protect and they failed at it, I will also argue that a company like Equifax offers minimal legitimate value and what value they suggest to offer is really an anti-value and therefore are, perhaps, eligible for such an extreme sanction.

<comment><USER5> I hope you're right. Time will tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It was just a matter of time. Probably the number of identities breached in the US has approached 100% even before the Equifax data. I personally have seen almost all my data lost in three known breaches before Equifax. The only hope I have is that this will get government attention to start enforcing better standards on credit issuers when authenticating customers and preventing fraud.</comment>