First 100% Crowdsourced Book (80 authors) - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Not-Safe-Work-Neovella-ebook/dp/B004ZHE5I2/

<comment><USER2> How does this relate to HN or tech startups, you may wonder? This past Valentines Day, you might remember a post called "Neovella: Instantly co- author stories with your friends (or strangers)!" Neovella.com enables streamlined collaboration in writing short stories, through a turn-based "exquisite cadaver" method.

The monetization scheme was to publish the best works from that mode of literary production, and take a 10% cut while redistributing the rest out to all the co-authors involved. This anthology is the result of that first experiment. Every story (17 included) was written turn-by-turn, ranging from 2 to 10 authors. Compared to a paperback novel, this would total somewhere near 120 pages.

As for the content--well, it's definitely a reflection of Internet culture. :)

<comment><USER3> Great work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not to take away from this work, but the title is wrong, or at least needs more specification. There's at least one book that was 100% crowdsourced before this:

"Amazing But True Cat Stories"... <http://bjoern.org/projects/catbook/>

All of the stories were written by users on Mechanical Turk, around 2008. The project got a lot of press and attention at the time, on O'Reilly, Boing Boing, and the like. The "author" also wrote a how-to on Instructables: [http://www.instructables.com/id/Dont-Do-It-Yourself- Start-a-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Dont-Do-It-Yourself-Start-a-Book- Publishing-Empi/)

<comment><USER5> I think the difference here is that this book is crowdsourced on a more granular level, by sentence. So every sentence in a single story could have been written by a different author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> First, I love this kinda stuff, but this is not exactly the first. SMITH magazine published Six-Word Memoirs in Feb. 2008 and made the NYTimes Bestseller list. The book had almost 800 authors, each of whom received a copy.

<http://www.smithmag.net/sixwordbook/about/>

</comment><comment><USER7> For those that are interested, this book was the work of many people on the SomethingAwful forums. There's a thread about it here: [http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=341...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3411045)

Note that these are pay forums. Interesting to know the story behind it though.

<comment><USER2> Mostly correct. Only about half came from SA members, who were my fastest- adopting and highest-trafficking demographic upon launch. Their sense of humor also turned out to be quite a leap of unfathomable.

We're writing a new story right now, if anyone wants to watch. <http://www.neovella.com/Reader.aspx?ID=836>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.amazon.com/Aftershocks-Stories-Japan- Earthquake-e...](http://www.amazon.com/Aftershocks-Stories-Japan-Earthquake- ebook/dp/B004VP3KHK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=A12MGAGPLUJEQK&s=digital- text&qid=1305025597&sr=1-1)

This was a bit earlier.

</comment><comment><USER9> wiki</comment>


I'm an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I'm Sick of Our Approach to Diversity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999 <comment><USER4> " _In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech._ "

Precisely. This goes directly to the core of the issue and what I had brought up on the thread recently about the Google employee who got fired. Specifically, if companies were truly interested in fairness, the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions. By doing this you treat both sexes fairly and give everyone an equal chance. Otherwise, you end up with "reverse sexism", which the author does not explicitly say, however she does essentially admit to in her description of the hiring loop:

" _After some rounds of low to no success, we start to compromise and hire women just because we have to "_

The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from that is she hired at least a few women over men which she thought were better candidates simply because "we have to". That's a problem.

Overall, though, I thought her piece was well written and she seems to get at the real issue and even has a possible solution that doesn't involve just hiring women for purposes of optics only - fighting the battle far earlier and getting girls interested young so that they choose to enter these fields at a higher rate than they currently are doing.

<comment><USER5> I hear you when you say,"the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions". It just sounds like an HR platitude.

If you know how to do that, I actually think you have a multi-$B idea! Unless you mean "cultural fit", or "went to the same school I did" as the best person, I'm doubtful you have one though. I've done enough interviewing and worked with enough people to know that even the best hiring managers turn away good candidates and get a few duds.

Once you're into real hiring statistics you have to be very careful of confirmation bias and "I just like this guy"ism even after the fact... they look and act like your successful hires. It's hard to even say, unless you're personally looking at their work on a regular basis and know what direction they're being given.

<comment><USER6> > _I hear you when you say, "the only mandate for the interview process would > be to hire the best person, no exceptions". It just sounds like an HR > platitude. If you know how to do that, I actually think you have a multi-$B > idea! Unless you mean "cultural fit", or "went to the same school I did" as > the best person, I'm doubtful you have one though. I've done enough > interviewing and worked with enough people to know that even the best hiring > managers turn away good candidates and get a few duds._

Well, make me a multi-billionaire, I now present to you:

 _BLIND SOURCING AND HIRING_

I should only share the details in private, you say it's a multi-billion dollar idea and I'd hate to tip off the competitors.

In all seriousness, though, I know this is challenging. Especially at Google, there's still an opportunity for trouble after you've been hired but not yet assigned; though I doubt it would be enough of a problem to trash the whole system.

The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are indistinguishable from standard hiring.

<comment><USER7> > The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are > indistinguishable from standard hiring.

Or the fact that it's not really possible. Right now, most software engineering jobs are pretty communication heavy. Almost all company cultures contain a non-trivial amount of verbal communication, so with that premise, it's reasonable to have candidates verbally describe technical things or even make technical arguments.

Once you're listening to real voices, it's difficult to pretend that the hiring is blind.

The famous study involving auditions for positions in an orchestra worked really well because you could hide the person behind a screen and judge an entire work product without knowing anything about the instrumentalist.

Now, if most software jobs include a heavy remote work component some day, it might be more reasonable to throw a somewhat detailed spec at a candidate, have them code up a solution, then show the code (and only the code) to people evaluating the work product. But most devs don't have a day-to-day that looks like implementing textual programming problems for strangers.

<comment><USER8> > Once you're listening to real voices,

Use a voice scrambler.

<comment><USER9> People have tried that... specifically to show that women were being discriminated against, but guess what happened when it was implemented?

They found that contrary to their initial hypothesis, women with voices modulated to sound like men were still not getting hired at the same rate as the men masked to sound like women. Not only that, but they found women modulated to sound like men did worse than unmodulated women, and men modulated to sound like women did better than unmodulated men:

[http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to- mas...](http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender- in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/)

<comment><USER10> One very interesting finding of the study is that woman and men are faring equally once the attrition is removed.

It seemed to me that the natural conclusion was that woman have lower confidence and thus performed worse at interviews.

And this is a deep realization for me, because it pushes me in the direction of current diversity policies. You see, if there is perceived bias against you, then you lose confidence. So we must, for a while, try our best to remove that perfection. That might mean hiring more woman even if they don't seem to perform as well as men, because, once we have done that for a while, woman will feel more confident and the good candidates will appear.

In any case - whether my last paragraph makes sense or not - the conclusion of the experiment interviewing.io did is that only removing gender perception during the interview process isn't enough, for woman may already have been affected by the bias and thus will perform worse than men during the interview.

So we come back to the conclusion that we must invest to bring woman to tech early - during college or even high school - and fight biases there.

It's a long road anyway, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak.

It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year olds --- let alone 9 and 7 year olds --- neither has any clue what they're really going to end up doing.

The piece culminates in a recommendation that we focus our diversity efforts on college admissions and earlier stages in the pipeline. But that's a cop- out. We should work on all stages of the pipeline. It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline, but the fact is that virtually none of the software engineering we do in the industry --- very much including most of the work done at Google --- requires a college degree in the first place.

Most importantly, though, the only contribution this post makes to the discussion is to add "I'm a woman and I agree with one side of the debate" to the mix. Everything in it is a restatement of an argument that has been made, forcefully and loudly, already. Frankly: who cares?

 _Edit: I added "some of the" to the beginning of the comment, not because I believe that, but because I concede that there are arguments in the post that can't be dispatched with a single paragraph in a message board comment (through clearly there are some that can.)_

<comment><USER12> _> , and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. _

Fascinating how different readers take away different salient points. For me, her main buildup was hiring women to meet a "diversity goal" resulted in pressures to hire some women _who couldn 't do the work_. This creates a perverse feedback loop that unfairly taints future women candidates _who could do the work_ \-- which ends up undermining the whole point of diversity. Imo, the biological stuff about her son and daughter is more of a side note.

To restate her text, we could say that yes, there are talented female computer scientists like Grace Hopper and NASA's Margeret Hamilton.[1][2] However, if companies lower the bar to hire women who are not competent like them (because diversity is valued over skills), it will inadvertently make it harder to hire future Grace Hoppers and Margeret Hamiltons.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with her but her Google observation is getting lost in her boy/girl preferences sidebar.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_\(scientist\))

<comment><USER11> Because the piece isn't very well written†, it's unclear whether the "infinite loop" of mediocrity she's referring to is something she actually observed, or something she surmises is possible. She is clear and specific, presenting numbers, when talking about things she was personally involved in.

Since the cycle of increasing mediocrity has a prominent float in the parade of horribles conjured by the "anti-diversity" (for lack of any better term) side of this debate, I'm left assuming she _didn 't_ see that occur. But she could also clear that up easily.

Finally, an obvious point: evaluation of the performance of an individual software developer is one of the great unsolved problems of software engineering. Virtually all performance evaluation done today is at root subjective. Subjective performance evaluations are easily tainted by prejudice; in fact, you have to work hard _not_ to taint them.

If you think that's different at Google, re-evaluate: Google also runs one of the most famously capricious hiring programs in the industry. Despite constant rituals and genuflection towards data-driven decision making, Google continues to thrive based on its status as a premiere destination for new software developers, despite running a hiring process renowned for the quality of the people it has alienated. There is ample evidence of Google having scaled broken processes.

† _99% of what I write isn 't well-written either, in case this sounds like a jab at the author, who I am not familiar with._

<comment><USER13> I think that her "infinite loop" theory was her perception of the anecdote around hiring at her own startup. It does seem conceivable, but yeah obviously data is light here.

Good point on how the whole interview process is a crapshoot anyway. Hadn't really thought about that aspect, but obviously is a huge opportunity for subliminal bias since it is how it is.

<comment><USER11> Another weird attribute of her theory about setting the bar and paying premiums for talent is that her engineering team, according to LinkedIn, is in India --- which is a radically different market for software talent than SFBA. In particular, the gender distribution of CS grads and programmers in India is very different from what it is here.

One possible interpretation --- and there are probably equally credible others --- is that this founder found it difficult to compete in the (overheated) SFBA market for talent, irrespective of gender.

<comment><USER14> Oh interesting. Where did you find this? (My cursory check didn't show turn up any info on that)

<comment><USER11> I used the following advanced sleuthing techniques (don't share outside HN):

1\. I went to LinkedIn

2\. I searched for "Silverlabs"

3\. I found the page for their company

4\. I clicked on the link labeled "14 employees and former employees have LinkedIn profiles"

5\. I observed that all the engineering profiles were in Hyderabad.

I'm being a little snarky but also it's good to know how superficial this "research" was so it's not at all unlikely that I'm totally wrong about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see some good points on both sides of the discussion here but one thing occurs to me about the current diversity-pushback that I'm seeing(I'm not going to call it anti-diversity because I think a fair amount of it is well- meaning or at least not explicitly hateful).

We've surprisingly quickly moved from periods where it was common to simply refuse to even consider minorities or women in many fields to a time when many people see political correctness and reverse-racism/sexism as a greater problem than sexism and racism themselves.

I'm glad to see people being very thoughtful about fairness and equality, but I have an honest question: Before quotas and social justice warriors, were you thinking about fairness and equality when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded others not on their merit but race and gender? I'm asking honestly, not trying to point fingers but I would like to know because this community, while left-leaning on many issues (I think) tends more towards libertarian on issues of race and gender and seems especially defensive when it comes to the tech industry (especially when the term "privilege" is used, it turns downright hostile).

If you were active in supporting equality and diversity (by resisting arbitrarily exclusionary practices) when it wasn't popular to do so and now you are seeing the negative aspects of a push for artificial diversity I would like to know that.

If you have never even considered diversity issues until recently when seeing hiring practices that could negatively affect you I would like to know that too. Do you believe _any_ specific action needs to be taken to promote diversity or will the problem solve itself, or does the problem even exist at all?

<comment><USER16> > Before quotas and social justice warriors, were you thinking about fairness > and equality when the status quo potentially benefited you and excluded > others not on their merit but race and gender?

I was not thinking about that. And when I started being exposed to it, my immediate reaction was like you described: seeing political correctness and reverse-racism/sexism as a greater problem than sexism and racism themselves.

It took a while, but I now realize how silly that reaction was. I felt somewhat attacked by these 'social justice warriors and quotas'. And my reaction was in self defense to this perceived attack. I spent so much time reading about it on the internet. There were so many smart people applying logic and engineering skills to these social problems. I identified with these people and I agreed with most of it. They made it sound like these are all easy problems to solve and if everyone had read the same scientific studies as them and applied the same logical thinking then we would have a solution.

My view wasn't changed until I had much more experience in the real world. All these women that are being talked about as statistics are real people. They're become my friends and coworkers. I've learned to sympathize with them. I've learned that it's not us vs them. We are working together is this. I've learned that political correctness and reverse-racism/sexism are definitely not a greater problem than sexism and racism themselves.

I think the human aspect of all this is sorely missing on HN. At least it was for me.

<comment><USER17> Nothing you said here is a counter argument to either the comment you replied to or the linked post.

> All these women that are being talked about as statistics are real people.

Nobody denies that. However, once you say that there's not enough "equality" of engineers, you invoke statistics.

> I think the human aspect of all this is sorely missing on HN.

Think of those poor talented engineers denied a place of work because of "gender quotas"! These engineers have dreams and passions. They aren't just statistics!

See how this works?

> I've learned that it's not us vs them.

Except that's exactly the tactics used by SJWs.

> I've learned that political correctness and reverse-racism/sexism are > definitely not a greater problem than sexism and racism themselves.

Reverse sexism is exactly the same problem as sexism.

<comment><USER18> Well it's not. Not objectively. Not in any sense. Only in abstract terms.

<comment><USER19> > Not in any sense.

Eh?

> Only in abstract terms.

You want something literal? Lets throw some reverse-VIOLENCE into the mix!

I'm going to bash my neighbors head in, because he's "definitely" a violent psychopath (It said so on the internet remember).

The heart of the issue is DISCRIMINATION. Doesn't matter if its positive or negative, you're EXCLUDING groups/individuals which is divisive and breeds discontent.

Someone posted below

> judged by the content and quality of their character rather than some of the > variation of an attempt to combat discrimination through discrimination.

THAT is equality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech."

Awesome. A plea towards hiring based on quality, rather than quotas.

Towards a group that is judged by the content and quality of their character rather than some of the variation of an attempt to combat discrimination through discrimination.

<comment><USER21> So quotas are terrible, yes.

But what if there are still biases in hiring? That someone sees a woman and assumes this or that about her based on gender alone?

My own experience as a transgender person is that there are people who, as my gender presentation has shifted, really seem to view me as less competent. Not in a "girl's can't code" way, but like steadily viewing me as more junior, needing more hand holding, giving me simpler tasks, that kind of thing.

It's subtle enough to make me constantly second guess myself, but it's noticeable.

It happens in interviews, too. It's very easy to rationalize biases within certain bounds. Those kind of things - and toxic environments - are what needs to be corrected most in today's tech workplace.

Of course correcting toxic environments early in the pipeline would be the best, because then the men that share those environments don't normalize them, either! But it's not fair to ignore the adult realities of the current working world and just dump all the blame on the early part of the pipeline.

<comment><USER22> I believe that treating everyone as individuals, rather than as stereotypical groups, is the only way forward. It's the only truly fair approach.

What ever happened to the notion of being color-blind when it comes to policy enforcement? AKA, actually treating people equally, based on merit?

If biases are really that big of an issue (are there studies that show this is true in tech?) then what is wrong with "blind-hiring," instead of the current "diversity-conscious" hiring? You don't have to get to know someone's personality at a deep level to make a hiring decision, you need to know their skill level and aptitude.

It worked to remove the gender gap in orchestras. Why wouldn't it be good to use in tech?

[http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality- impact...](http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact..).

<comment><USER23> _You don 't have to get to know someone's personality at a deep level to make a hiring decision, you need to know their skill level and aptitude._

I agree, but how do you estimate their aptitude in an unbiased way? That mostly rules out face-to-face conversations, which is what most companies use.

Aptitude tests? I feel like those have a bad reputation, at least in Bay Area tech companies. Are there good tests we should be using? How do you customize the test to fit your own company? To the extent that "cultural fit" is important for effective teams (and isn't simply a way of excluding women, black people, etc) how do you test for that?

<comment><USER24> How about an artificially anonymized process. HR does know, or assumes, your gender from receiving your CV. But from that point onward your identity is anonymous.

For instance, HR creates a throw away email which will be used during the hiring process to coordinate the rest of the tasks. The coding interviews could use one of the many platforms we have for shared/same space coding with an added chat box for talking your way through the problem so to say.

And so hiring decisions are done by interviewers without knowing the gender or how the candidate looks.

I think this would allow for a good level of blind testing, but would provide some downsides in the side of cultural fit screening. It's a lot easier to pretend you're not an asshole in asynchronous text-only communications.

I guess everything carries a trade off.

<comment><USER9> > And so hiring decisions are done by interviewers without knowing the gender > or how the candidate looks.

It might make the situation worse: [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment- tria...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to- improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888)

<comment><USER25> It's very sad that "free from sexist, racist, ageist biases" is considered "worse", surely?

Do you agree?

<comment><USER26> The method (free from sexist…) is better but the outcome (employee similarity to general population) is worse.

<comment><USER27> I guess it really comes down to the ethical framework you accept as valid, deontological or utilitarian...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I worked at Google, and Alan Eustace, Google's most emphatic champion of gender diversity when I worked there, repeatedly emphasized that Google couldn't lower its hiring bar for women candidates, because that would hurt the reputation of women already there

The main forms of gender-diversity outreach that I remember Google engaging in were 1) programs for young girls, to introduce them to programming, 2) programs for women in college, to advocate for their studying computer science, and 3) the grace hopper conference for women who are engineers now. All those seem in line with the author's suggestions.

This article (and the letter last week, and similar rhetoric) really feel like they're attacking a strawman to me. I left a while ago, but have things changed that much?

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't it violate US equal-opportunity laws to lower the hiring bar for women?

<comment><USER30> Nope. Affirmative action towards historically marginalized groups is explicitly permitted by the law, and in some instances there's even a duty to do so (for .gov stuff mostly). There are some complexities and details to all this, but generally speaking, affirmative action is legal in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The most unfortunate thing about this article is how often the author has to say "I'm not a traitor" in different ways.

Regardless of the diversity issue, do we really value a culture where we branding people with opinions in tech as traitors? Sure, she's preempting name calling that may never occur - but that means we're in a culture of discussion where being called a "trator" for expressing an opinion is even a possibility in the first place!

</comment><comment><USER32> The author's post is odd. She's sick of "our" approach to diversity, by which I assume from the headline she means "Google's", although that's not clearly laid out in the text.

Her specific advice is:

> Go out and talk to freshmen and sophomore women about why they should pursue > a career in tech.

> Start a mentoring program.

> Educate men and women about how to detect and correct subliminal biases.

These are all things Google tries to do. For instance, Google has a mandatory class for interviewers about correcting subliminal biases. You may recall its existence from the recent document suggesting that Google remove it.

</comment><comment><USER33> On a lighter tone, here are some lessons I've learnt at !!con (a conference by Recurse Center aka Hacker School alumni): [http://p.migdal.pl/2017/08/14/bangbangcon.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2017/08/14/bangbangcon.html)

tl;dr: you can get great inclusivity primarily by being welcoming, accommodating for needs (in an open-ended way, not restricting it to a few axes) and, crucially, by not shaming or bulling otherwise good-willed transgressors

Sure, not all of these things may scale, or be copy-pastable to workplace environment.

<comment><USER30> Thanks for posting this. It was a really interesting read, and I think it's an under valued point in these discussions that there are lots of small things we could do better that add up in a big way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> One of the reasons I push for very objective, fixed, and carefully selected technical interview techniques is precisely to avoid these issues.

The goal is to reach a point where either you pass the technical, or you don't. But making a fair technical assessment for levels and roles in a company takes time and is very tempting (but, I argue, futile) to contract out.

I think in a larger context: the "pipeline problem" people want to point to as a source of the gender gap in hiring will become our primary issue when we first iron out the issues with the atrittion and harassment we see for women in the workplace.

As for gender essentialism, I think this woman has every right to her opinion and I support her efforts, but I think she's approaching the problem wrong. She's showing kids perhaps one of the ugliest and least rewarding facets of being a software engineer and wondering why her daughter (who has almost certainly had positive modeling for a lot of other roles) isn't interested.

<comment><USER35> >She's showing kids perhaps one of the ugliest and least rewarding facets of being a software engineer and wondering why her daughter... isn't interested.

And yet her son is. That seems an important detail. What is the virtue in hiding the "ugly" side of engineering when its generally the most common part of the process?

<comment><USER34> So you spend your days working arbitrary logic puzzles in a gross language like Python? I know I'd have never gotten into this field.

It's so easy to say, "Gosh this confirms our stereotypes!" But even if there are inherently measureable and statistically significant differences that doesn't really translate to "women are worse at programming and math."

<comment><USER35> Honestly, I would prefer if my days were spent doing logic puzzles. Most of it is doing tedious uninteresting coding tasks, i.e. code that takes no insight nor provides any intellectual stimulation. But the logic puzzles are what initially drew me in. The "sexy" stuff in software engineering is built on a boat load of unsexy behind the scenes. It's easy to be mislead.

>But even if there are inherently measureable and statistically significant differences that doesn't really translate to...

True, but the critical point is that programming is very hard and if you're not the type that's naturally drawn to logic puzzles it could be torture. Interest is related to aptitude in that those that are interested have the inherent motivation to get good at it. I strongly believe that interest is highly correlated with aptitude. That doesn't mean that those uninterested in logic puzzles can't hack it, its just that they have to be very highly motivated to learn. I'm just not sure I see the value in trying to engineer interest at such a young age if it doesn't come naturally.

> in a gross language like Python

Brave words to utter on this site!

<comment><USER34> > True, but the critical point is that programming is very hard and if you're > not the type that's naturally drawn to logic puzzles

Here I am, not that type until my late 30s. I've been programming or trying to since I was 5ish. And most folks who talk to, work with, or have worked for me regard my technical skills quite highly.

If all you want is an endless stream of puzzles with no responsibility or connection to reality, be a professional video gamer. The Minecraft folks, for example.

I tried it for awhile, but I find the life of video gaming without any real responsibility pretty empty.

> I'm just not sure I see the value in trying to engineer interest at such a > young age if it doesn't come naturally.

Logic puzzles in a language founded on principle of anti-intellectualism is not software engineering.

Maybe if they made things of issuing tests that's a better idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b She has very valid points about what should be fought against, like subliminal biases against women in tech. But then she's like 'we had to fire our women tech workers because they lacked the energy'. Isn't that something that's easily taken out of context and fuels exactly what she advocates against?

This feels to me that it's the kind of articles that causes engineer bros to say things like: 'see, even good women engineers think women suck at it'.

She could have gone with the stats: in a pool of candidates, you have 3% of very good people. And in that same pool of candidates, you have 90% of men. Given that there is not really any compelling reason that would explain why women would be better or worse than men at engineering, only 0.3% of your candidate pool are very good women. Plus given that pretty much every company out there will try to retain their exceptional women worker (in the name of diversity), exceptional women engineers are a rare sighting in the job market. Hence the diversity issue cannot be solved by forcing people to hire women.

No need to involve personal stories about how teenage girls are more interested in clothes than in assembly programming...

<comment><USER36> > She has very valid points about what should be fought against, like > subliminal biases against women in tech. But then she's like 'we had to fire > our women tech workers because they lacked the energy'. Isn't that something > that's easily taken out of context and fuels exactly what she advocates > against?

> This feels to me that it's the kind of articles that causes engineer bros to > say things like: 'see, even good women engineers think women suck at it'.

She stated literally what happened. No need for her to editorialize.

<comment> d--b Well 'lacking energy' and 'draining energy from others' is not exactly factual...

<comment><USER4> I think you mean that it is not easily quantifiable or provable with evidence. That does not mean the statement is not true and accurate.

<comment> d--b No I mean it's a subjective view from the boss that doesn't mean anything.

She could have said that they were procrastinating, or could have said that they were consistently tired and whiny about it. Or maybe these particular women did not want to work all their weekends away and complained about it. Or it could mean they weren't cheering at the beer pong event. Who knows?

I'm just saying that 'women I hired lacked energy' is the kind of blanket statement that overgeneralizes and that fans the vicious circle she described as damaging below.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Women are sick of being 'women in tech'. Being 'women speakers' at cons. They just want to be judged on their merits. Quotas are a check balance FOR quality not instead of. That you are finding and eliminating barriers to the best candidates in the hiring process because if you were doing it properly then there would be a balanced hire reflective of society at large. There should be no need for the quotas because as we all know there is no scientific evidence of any gender-based aptitude advantage. However it is evident from the numbers and in the wrongheaded attitudes of some people that there is some considerable adhesion to outdated, backward stereotypes. Yonatan Zunger also ex-Googler explains the diversity policy when he replied to the memo: [https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788)

I concur with him 100% and find it extremely frustrating that these old prejudices persist among otherwise intelligent people.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Try software engineers with experience in sensors, wireless and hardware > stacks before angrily correcting my stats there. There was no way I was > going to come out of that with a larger percentage of women hires than I > did.

This seems like false reasoning. She is using an intentionally biased sample (the candidate pipeline in a narrow subspecialty of software engineering) to draw conclusions about the larger software engineering candidate pipeline, which actually has a higher representation of women - not high overall - <USER2> higher than both her subspecialty and more importantly, higher than the current representation of women at tech companies.

> If we increase the inflow of women into tech education, we will > automatically increase diversity in hiring.

This is not enough. She would have us believe that companies are automata that will just adapt to the changing composition of the pipeline with no other action needed. It's an absolution of corporate responsibility for diversity (that perhaps reflects her self interest as a founder/executive). But companies are not automata, they are entities with their own inertial biases, and in the case of large companies, these biases often are often rooted in the communities from which the companies sprang.

Companies, especially major tech companies, are major cultural influencers - their businesses are based in part on the power of their cultural influence, and with that comes disproportionate responsibility to act, especially when society at large has not been successful enough at solving the pipeline problem.

<comment><USER39> It is not false reasoning. She is relating to her specific experiences. Where I work 80-90% of applications are from men. We now have 2 women on our team but it is still male dominated. The women are there because they were best we could find when we was hiring just like everyone else we have employed. They have earned it with their knowledge and skill.

Employing for any other reason will likely demoralise the team because they will likely under perform. They will likely under perform because instead of finding the best person, you find the best person based on a subset of arbitrary equality rules.

There is no reason why 50% of tech jobs cannot go to women. The main barrier we come across is there aren't enough skilled women applying. I think the author hit the nail on the head. It reflects my experiences.

You appear be asking tech companies to pass over excellent candidates so they can lead the way on equality. To have equality for equalities sake. It's wrong. Where there are descrepancies between genders we should ask why they exist.

Take child care, the majority of people in childcare are women. Should we be passing over women with years of experience and excellent qualifications to bump the number of men in the industry?

I would love to see a few guys at my kids nursery. However they should be there because they were the best for job. I would pull my kid out of the nursery if they passed over better candidates to fix this gender ratio. I want the best outcome for my children.

The same is true with business. Merit is the measure that matters. More women in tech will lead to more meriting jobs in the industry, which in turn will lead to the male/female ratio improving.

<comment><USER38> > You appear be asking tech companies to pass over excellent candidates so > they can lead the way on equality.

That is absolutely not what I said. I'm saying tech companies should take active measures to counter the historical bias against _qualified_ under- represented candidates, while simultaneously engaging in corporate efforts to influence the pipeline to produce more qualified candidates from those under- represented groups. If you don't think that such a historical bias against qualified female candidates exists at all stages of the candidate pipeline, from primary school through to job interviews, then we disagree on the basic assumptions.

The author is insisting that the sorts of efforts I described should not be the responsibility of corporations, but rather should be the result of virtuous charitable actions of individuals volunteering their time. This is like arguing that corporations should do no charitable giving to fight hunger, or fund environmental initiatives, and it should be left solely to charitable individuals to feed the hungry or advocate for a cleaner environment (I realize there are significant number of people who also hold that belief).

Fighting these sorts of large complex problems takes a lot of resources coordinated and guided by a set of values. Today, for better or for worse, those things lie in the hands of corporations. We could argue about whether that should be the case (i.e. perhaps government should be the responsible party), but it is manifestly the case today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> >Feminist outbursts are driving even the most genuine of men away from us.

I think this depends on what "genuine" refers to in this sentence. Many issues have loud and/or shrill advocates on any or all sides, but that has _nothing to do_ with the actual merits of any side. Anyone who is seriously interested in arriving at the best estimates of truth or utility available should disregard whether or not advocates are shrill and simply focus on facts.

<comment><USER7> When part of your pitch relies on trust and goodwill (open dialogues, open corporate culture, leaders worth voting for, etc.), there is a component you cannot neglect: trust.

If the pitch is "the future will be welcoming of all kinds of people from all perspectives unless you offend the mob, then good luck", your pitch is weaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> My one complaint with this is the authors tone as it relates to her daughters interest in design. I understand the main focus of diversity in tech is in engineering, but it kind of felt it was implying she wouldn't have a place in tech by going into design.

If the point of this is to fix the problems from the bottom, or the 'pipeline', wouldn't some of that also have to do with breaking down the stigma that programming is all that matters in tech?

<comment><USER42> Or to flip around your statement: it's a special kind of out-of-touch arrogance to assume that programming is the mecca of career paths. Great way to judge anyone who chooses a different field.

While we're at it, let's make sure everyone in other fields know they're victims of discrimination and if only they were strong enough to make their own decisions they'd be engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > I have told my daughter it isn't optional to learn coding and that she must > stick with it until she's good at it and then she can choose not to do it

This is what I don't understand of society. If someone is bad at something and I think it is important, then I force them to learn it. They will hate it more in the future. All those hours wasted instead of letting her doing what she is good at, and improving that skill.

Just for the records, few years ago it was important for the woman to know how to do the house work and things like cooking and sew. I see no difference with the coding thing. She has tried, she doesn't like it and she is bad at it. Let her move on and do something she will enjoy.

<comment><USER44> Absolutely not. I never liked math at school. I was bad at it too. But now it's a major part of my career and I love it. I would never have this opportunity if adults had let me just do what I felt like when I was a child.

Children are too young to make decisions for their future. Adults might not always be right but they're better at it than children. That's why school is compulsory, not "if the child feels like going"

<comment><USER43> There is a difference between having a bad teacher and not liking something. You always loved math, you didn't like how teachers were teaching you math. I have been a teacher, I know what a difference a teacher can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Yes, yes, yes. You have to go to the root of the problem. It's impossible to solve the problem by (only) changing the recruitment processes. It starts way earlier than that. You can't expect to have the current gender distribution in education and job applications that we have today and then expect the numbers to magically even out in recruitment no matter what policies the companies have. It basically doesn't matter what way you measure differences in programming interest, at every level there are vastly more men than women that are interested in programming, let alone has anything more than cursory experience with it.

I believe that can be changed. I don't think it's biological. But the changes needed are wide and deep. If you want it to change, you have to actually change something about culture. That also means letting go of things you are familiar and comfortable with, maybe even some thing you really like. Gender norms need to change. I'm not so sure a lot of people even actually want that. Many seem to want to fix some negative symptoms, but not fix the root cause.

<comment><USER44> Why does it need to change? Maybe both men and women are happy in their common jobs? Whatever the reason, nurses seem to choose nursing and programmers choose programming so they all get what they want.

There may be a sub-minority of women who want to be programmers but are discriminated out of it. That's not good but it's surely a tiny fraction of humans. Not worth changing everyone else's job for.

<comment><USER45> Do everyone seem to be fine with it? Why do we have these massive discussions about economic and work equality, then? Obviously a lot of people think it's a major problem. I think there's clear evidence for that. It's just that, in my opinion, most people are not really prepared to do what needs to be done to change, they'd rather just try in vain to treat the negative symptoms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This seems to be another version of: "the pipeline of potential talent from colleges has very few women, so if we go out of our way to hire extra women, we'll reduce our overall hiring quality. The college pipeline needs to be fixed first."

Even if you concede that, here's something I don't see discussed often: _hiring more women and minorities in big tech companies now could help to fix the college pipeline in future._ If tech companies are seen to be diverse, welcoming environments, maybe more kids of all backgrounds will get interested in tech in the first place.

<comment><USER22> That a big maybe, it's completely unproven. Maybe hiring slightly less qualified people just because of their demographic group will cause all sorts of strange resentments across the board. That seems to be what our current hiring protocols are doing now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm going to illustrate why I think the points brought up by this post have at minimum some level of validity with a toy example, that takes sex out of the equation completely.

Lets say you took a population of candidates with some distribution of individual programming skills, and assigned them _randomly_ into two categories, with a 90-10 split between A and B. E(skill of a candidate in A) = E(skill of a candidate in B)

Now you rank all the candidates in A and B respectively from best to worst, and you pick the top N candidates from A, and top N candidates from B. Taking that set, E(skill of picked candidates from A) > E(skill of picked candidates from B)

There is no prejudice here! A and B are randomly assigned, if you pick any one individual from A, they are exactly the same on average as an individual from B. But conditioning on the constraint that you need to pick the same number from A and B, where A and B have different population size, then you will get the result that A is on average better than B.

In a hypothetical world where sexism does not exist, _given the current ratio of men to women in tech_ we would expect to see a skill disparity in the average if we enforced hiring equal numbers of both men and women.

Edited to add some further points:

1) Note that the above does not hold true if the individual programming skills are constant after some threshold, so the top N from A and top N from B all have the same level of skill. I don't think this is true in my personal experience, but I have seen people make this argument.

2) The above also does not hold true if the ranking mechanism (interviewing process) does not actually rank the programming skills of A and B successfully. I've also seen people make this argument, but note that as long as some correlation exists between [interview result] and [programming skill] then the above still holds true. It seems highly unlikely that there is zero correlation.

3) I don't necessarily agree with the author that this is a bad thing - <USER3> think in the long run to get equal numbers of women and men in candidate pools, having equal numbers of female and male programmers at places like Google can only help. While theoretically there may be an average skill difference, I'm not sure that you can really notice it on an individual level because of the sheer number of qualified candidates that apply to a place like google.

<comment><USER25> Re 3) it mightn't make an appreciable difference to the skill set as a whole, but it's sexist.

Why do something sexist that didn't have a benefit.

How is it OK to respond to a candidate for hiring "sorry you're the wrong sex" if they're otherwise the best candidate. That's completely wrong IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Great article. Sad that if this article had been written by a man, it would not be getting any attention and the comments would be calling the author "sexist".

Here are my 2 cents as a male (thus my opinion on the issue automatically doesn't carry any weight to most of you). Women chose to pursue tech less than men (just look at any open source project), and this starts way before college. I took CS in high school - not because anybody encouraged me, but because I taught myself how to code as a kid in order to make videogames and cheat at them - and there were very few women in that class.

That's why it boggles my mind when people act as if discrimination is the reason why women are underrepresented in tech. Girls are underrepresented in introductory CS courses in high school, meaning they're clearly not even choosing to pursue the field as much as men. You can't claim discrimination if they're not even signing up for the introductory classes. And anyone who's taken a CS course in college knows that at least half the students there have been coding since they were kids (I graduated a while ago so I'd imagine that's even more the case now) - again, not because anybody told them to, but because they sought that knowledge out themselves - which can be intimidating to newcomers who've never seen "Hello, World".

Videogames are probably the main reason why men pursue CS more than women. The naive feminist will say "videogames are targeted towards boys". Yes they are - but that's because videogame developers are predominantly male, and game developers are more likely to create games that they themselves would enjoy. Videogames being male-dominated is simply a reflection of gendered biological differences, not some conspiracy to exclude women.

Any sort of discrimination on the basis of gender/race is a problem, that's a given and nobody will dispute that. But it should not be considered a problem that women choose to pursue tech less than men, just like it's not considered a problem that men are less likely to pursue nursing, primary/secondary education, psychiatry, fashion, and yoga teaching. Men who like yoga don't give a fuck about the underrepresentation of men in yoga classes.

At the end of the day, this "diversity" debate gets way too much attention. There used to be a time when the focus was on the tech and doing cool things, not what people looked like.

<comment><USER48> You're completely missing one of the main points of the whole gender discrimination discourse: that there are strong social influences that prevent women from going to tech long before your 'before college', as well as during college and after college. There are many turning points at which girls are influenced the way that discourages them from tech instead of helping them to develop interest in it. So yes, discrimination is definitely the reason why women are underrepresented in tech, even if there would not be 50/50 women/men ratio without discrimination. You can claim discrimination if the environment subtly discourages you with constantly signalling that you shouldn't pursue a certain path. And yes, men who'd like to pursue 'non-male' careers also often choose not to because of the social pressure. And no, the diversity debate doesn't 'get too much attention'. It gets significantly less attention than it should, given the scale of this problem and devastating effects the lack of diversity has on societies, working environments, women, men, children - basically, any social group.

<comment><USER47> Of course there are strong social influences - little boys are given toy trucks while little girls are given dolls. But that's not the same thing as discrimination in hiring and the workforce, which is what these affirmative action policies tackle.

> "And no, the diversity debate doesn't 'get too much attention'. It gets > significantly less attention than it should"

First of all, it's not even a "debate" as the memo has shown. It's a one-sided emotional crusade against the opposition, and you're not allowed to disagree with the hivemind.

Why is it only considered a "problem" and attention-worthy when women are underrepresented? Nobody gives a shit about men being underrepresented in certain professions, or women being underrepresented in the trades. There's a clear double standard here.

<comment><USER48> These early social influences are a very significant part of the whole diversity/discrimination story and of what the diversity policies are trying to solve. The best ways to improve diversity and fix gender biases are still 'debatable'. But speaking about the 'memo', this particular document is incorrect to the level it doesn't deserve the debate. Despite the author claimed he created it "all in the name of open discussion", he mainly created a hostile environment for his coworkers, which is unacceptable (and the fact he didn't even understand that doesn't excuse him). I agree with this comment on the 'memo' story, which is by far the most sane one: [https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788) Men are underrepresented in certain professions for sure (and it is a part of the diversity problem), but the current discussion is about underrepresentation in tech, and white men are definitely not the main subject to it (so I don't see any double standards here).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> "Men who reported to me liked and respected me. Men who managed me liked and respected me."

Starting straight off with this makes me wonder if it's a perception she had or if it was the reality. The majority of people to not tell someone if they dont like them or dont respect them.

<comment> apk-d Most people are entirely capable of reading the general attitude others have towards them. We occasionally make mistakes but a large sample goes a long way ("Jerry respects me" vs "most people at work respect me"). Is there any rational reason to think she's wrong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is anyone aware of how many female engineers come out of Iran? This has everything to do with education quality. Our math education is an absolute joke in the US, even mine and I went to a supposedly amazing public school. Add in cultural biases such as parents and teachers pushing bright girls to "girly" fields instead of math and you end up like this. Then in typical American fashion we try to impose quotas or other bandages at the endpoint rather than fixing the system itself.

<comment><USER51> I dislike the blog post for being poorly written but one of the author's points is that it's too late to attack diversity during recruiting because your pool of women applicants will already be tiny due to attrition. She is advocating approaching women in college but at you point out, even that's way too late. You can't have a society that instills shitty values into people from their first breath and then expect to undo all those years of mindfuckery because you work at a progressive place and are really passionate about diversity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Good article, but I was disappointed by her implying that "women lack energy". That's too broad a statement. The women she hired may have lacked energy but you can't generalize based on that small sample.

I agree that we need to fix the problem at the source, i.e., encourage more girls (actually, kids in general, why limit it to girls?) to be interested in tech while they are still in middle and high schools.

There is ample evidence that there is a cultural problem in the United States in this regard. The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015) Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe. So there is something in the US culture that makes American women not want to take up tech.

The diversity memo doesn't address the fact that more women take tech jobs when impediments are removed, as evidenced by the larger percentage of women in tech jobs in other countries.

</comment><comment><USER53> The central idea at the core of all the diversity ideology is that everybody can do anything, they just have to try and people who fail to become Google engineers or sports stars only have themselves to blame, or even better, since people are loath to blame themselves, some other dominant group.

Naturally, the only way to solve this dillema is for the less successful group to seize power after which they will be able to achieve everything they ever dreamed of.

</comment><comment><USER54> Finally someone is talking like a matured person about this whole issue. If you really wanted to fix this issue, you've to fix it at the source. i.e encourage girls to take up engineering courses in college.

I went to college in 2005 and there was only 1 girl who graduated with me from my engineering class. There were tons of girls/women in my optional classes (Geography, History) but very few (2 or 3) in some of the core engineering classes.

You can't fix this by sending women to coding bootcamps. It's like - what we call - a bandaid fix i.e applying patches without fixing it at the root level.

I've tried my best to convince my cousin to take up a career in STEM but she refuse to even consider that possibility. She claims Math is too hard for her and is choosing nursing as her major. I'm sure she will be a good nurse and there's nothing wrong with nursing as a career. In the end it's her choice and all I can do is talk and try to convince her.

</comment><comment><USER55> Everyone seems to agree that only the best should be hired. But may I ask isn't that a form of discrimination as well?. Being the best in an intelectual activity such as programming is highly corelated with the level of intelligence of an individual. No matter how hard you try if your IQ is below 80 you will never enter in Google. I even dare to say that even if you are in the normal range of intelligene your chances of entering in Google are still very low. Isn't intelligence a biological attribute in the same way of the color of the skin or a gender?. Who decided its own IQ level before they were born?.

<comment><USER56> I understand what you're saying but I think this perspective may be mis- framing the issue. One immutable requirement to a solution to the company diversity problem is to form an effective company. Another requirement is to ensure applicants don't suffer discrimination either during the hiring process or the employment period. Ensuring the entire pool of humanity has an equal opportunity to work anywhere / do anything is incontrovertibly not a requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> If this were written by a male, do we really think the reception would be so positive?

> To solve diversity, we must start at the source of the problem — encouraging > women to pursue engineering in college!

That is absolutely right. The solution is not to give people who aren't qualified or deserving jobs just so companies can fill a quota or prevent media backlash. Hire the best candidates for positions.

</comment><comment><USER58> An interesting point in the post is about the Google interview itself, and how she had to appeal in order to hire candidates who then turned out to each have a big impact. Google calls this the false negative problem but it seems to be a big problem. Google itself has already have shown that GPA and academic credentials do not correlate with job performance.

</comment><comment><USER59> TL; DR Woman startup CEO fires women, hires men who work for peanuts because men love coding and thus are higher "energy"; takes advantage of recent controversy to get free advertising on HN. Side note, said woman lacks professionalism and uses profanity in an appeal to the peanuts working, 20twenties'ish men reading the article.

</comment><comment><USER60> > Despite that, we paid premium salaries to bring a few women who did well in > our interviews. But, they lacked the energy to put us into overdrive. Worse, > they were starting to drain the energy from the rest of the team. > Eventually, we had to do the right thing for the company and let them go.

This is one of the most disturbing thing's I've ever read in an article proclaiming to promote change in the tech gender gap.

What exactly is this supposed to mean? What exactly does it mean to "lack energy" and to "drain energy" from other people? How on EARTH did she come to this conclusion? And WHY would this be a problem inherent to women? This tells me more about her management style than it does about any woman at her company.

This woman is NOT someone we should be listening to when it comes to closing the gender gap in software engineering.

<comment><USER61> >What exactly does it mean to "lack energy" and to "drain energy" from other people?

Yeah, it's annoying that she's forcing readers to interpret that. I would guess that she means that they weren't able to perform their job responsibilities adequately, and others had to pick up the slack.

<comment><USER62> I assume it means they didn't want to work the hours and/or play games at work with their co-workers.

<comment><USER61> >they didn't want to work the hours

Sadly, that could still fall under what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'm going to ask a practical advice here. As a male teacher, what can I do in a classroom to encourage more female students for math/logic/programming? I sometimes talk about how there are great female software developers out there and how gender shouldn't be hindering their talent, but that's about it. And when a female student isn't performing well and being bummed, I can't do much other than general vague-sounding encouragement. At the same time, I don't want to sound too pushy. I live in a very sexist country compared to the US (Japan) and there's not much advice on this kind of things from other educators. Is there anything else that I can do to help the cause?

</comment><comment><USER64> My Biggest grasp with the whole thing, ( If you think this is a well done post ), is that Intelligent and Wise have little correlation.

It takes a person with GRE 800 to figure all this blatantly obvious answer.

Now before you downvote me, it is also obvious this diversity topic is especially a problem in Silicon Valley ( Because most people in Silicon Valley are Liberal ? ) and mostly in US.

We dont see this being blow up in huge news anywhere else, the US neighbour Canada, or anywhere else in Europe.

Why is there such a difference? And it seems you aren't even allow to talk about it in US. Where in most places inside EU they will likely have an open discussion without Calling an All Hands meeting off.

Note: Never been to US. So there may be some cultural difference i am not getting.

<comment><USER48> Not sure about Canada and Europe, but many countries just didn't reach the level of development where this discussion can start. They are not grown up and are stuck on the lower level, having problems like absence of basic human rights and protections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I overheard a discussion between my HRG and department head, the discussion was about hiring temporary replacements for female employees who were on maternity leave, the HRG told that approval had to come from the country head and it will take almost 3 months because of a hiring freeze, and each case has to be dealt individually, the HOD was worried at this and said this sort of rules will hurt female hiring, the HRG was schocked to hear those words and remainded him that, all his reportees including him has an appraisal goal for diversity and he doesn't have an option

</comment><comment><USER66> I can't remember who said it, but there is a great quote that applies to management in general that seems to apply here.

"As soon as a good measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

<comment><USER67> Goodhart's Law [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> At this point, I find these discussions tiresome. Enough with the politics on HN. Everyone has picked a side and the last place a mind will be changed is the context free world of Internet arguments. The fact that these post get so many votes doesn't mean they're valuable discussion. It just means that even among the supposedly enlightened, we are attracted to drama just like everyone else. I wish the mods would do more to kill these garbage posts.

</comment><comment><USER69> Interesting. She's saying something different from Damore,

> "These women show up at work and perform not as great as we want them to"

Damore said his female coworkers were equally capable.

> "After some rounds of low to no success, we start to compromise and hire > women just because we have to"

It sounds like somebody in her chain misunderstood or misapplied Google's hiring practices. From what Google and Damore said, all the women and men there are equally capable.

</comment><comment> goodbye- So masking the interview... doesn't mean women will do better. You might be surprised why if your disposition leans towards social conspiracy theories.

[http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to- mas...](http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender- in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/)

</comment><comment><USER70> > _" In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it > up for the genuinely amazing women in tech."_

And, why aren't these genuinely amazing women in tech otherwise being found?

How is it that things are so easily "f'd up" for them?

<comment><USER71> Dilution of merit.

<comment><USER70> > _Dilution of merit._

Well, my question was rhetorical, but your answer underscores my point: when a man performs poorly, the "merit" of other men is not "diluted".

And, it certainly doesn't lead to the risk of other "genuinely amazing" men going undiscovered, which doesn't seem to be a problem in the first-place. In fact, it would be silly to make any of these assertions about men.

Such statements only apply to women and other "out-groups". By uttering them, the author is making the argument against her own case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Can anyone provide insight as to how transgendered people count in the "women in tech" discussion? As I see it, there's now a quadrant of biological (fe)males and psychological (fe)males. Would a woman in tech mean only biologically and psychologically female, or also biologically female, also psychologically female, depends on who's counting?

I ask only because I see this already hyper-sensitive topic very soon becoming nearly impossible to discuss without somebody taking offense due to the combined effects of the biological _and_ psychological gender sensitivities.

<comment><USER30> So to start with, don't conflate sex with gender.

Next, I'll make it really easy for you: women are women, and you can just count them as one group. That doesn't mean we should erase away the specific challenges and bigotry trans women face, but we also shouldn't be forcing them into a separate "quadrant" of women.

<comment><USER72> Wait...this didn't make it easy at all. When you said "women are women" were you speaking in terms of gender or sex? After that you said "trans women", so I take it you mean gender only? If so, does that mean a biological female who identifies as a male does not count as a woman in tech?

<comment><USER30> Gender.

A trans man is a man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> >Sooner or later, some such opinions get out there

Very carefully chosen words, regarding the Memo.

</comment><comment><USER74> To everyone agreeing with this post, I will ask you a question: Will YOU join a company with 40% females or 10% females with everything same. If the answer is former, there is a real value in hiring more females.

</comment><comment><USER75> Is diversity only defined as gender diversity?

<comment><USER76> I was having a conversation about this yesterday with my girlfriend. What minorities need protection and rebalancing?

We rarely talking about supporting the Jewish, for example, or Mexicans, or gays representation in engineering. What is the philosohpy at play here? And what if someday women became the majority, would you then fight to bring men back up to parity?

She didn't have answers, which to me just made me wonder if she was fighting for a vision of equality, or promoting her in-group.

<comment><USER51> Diversity is intersectional and people who actually fight for diversity absolutely talk about and work so that Mexicans, Asians, latinos, the disabled, gay people, trans people, etc, etc are given equal opportunities and treatment in the workplace. There are literally thousands of organizations in just the US advocating for workplace diversity for pretty much any and every minority you can imagine. I suspect the problem is your "we" has little to no contact with minorities and a even poorer understanding of their everyday struggles.

<comment><USER76> I disapprove of this response on a number of levels. One of the biggest reasons I avoid these discussions is ironically, the "safe-space" crowd has managed to offend, insult, and ignore me more effectively than almost any other group, and ironically, they do so because of my race and gender [white, male].

Working in tech I work with probably 80% minorities (Indians, Asians, women, gays, Iranians, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Russians, one Venezualen, one Egyptian). There was at least one time I was the only white guy on a team of 9.

Most of those I asked did not feel discriminated against.

So you tell your sob stories all you want, but the reality is most americans couldn't afford $500 in an emergency, and however bad you think skin color X or gender Y has it, that gulf pales in comparison to the problem of class-ism in America (and I don't here any SJWs speaking to that, and so I really have to question the motives at play).

And you're just dishonest to us and yourself if you are insinuating you, or Google, or SJW-crowd cares 1/10th as much about hiring an proportionate number of hispanics/jews/ugly-people/tatooed-people as it does a proportionate number of women.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Bravo! Every point here is spot on!

</comment><comment><USER78> Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt, scars, bruises, etc. Believing that stuff was by far the worst mistake of my life. Strong advice: Don't do that. For all the attempts at _gender diversity_ in STEM fields, f'get about it or, except in very rare cases as in the OP, suffer from pain to the agonies of the damned to serious harm to your life (I did) and worse, maybe death, literally, for the associated female.

I'll give details below, but, bluntly, bottom line, as essentially parents with any insight and objectivity at all with children of both genders learn quickly, in short, right from the crib, with rare exceptions, the girls are interested in people and the boys, in things. Sorry, that's just the way it is. They are BORN that way, and the difference does NOT go away with time. There is a small fraction of exceptions in both genders, but otherwise that's the fact, Jack. Sorry 'bout that. A really simple argument shows that the difference has held strongly for at least 40,000 years. Gads, from some recent research, the difference even holds for Rhesus monkeys which shows that it has held for some millions of years.

I tried that: As a college sophomore she told me "Women don't just have to be cared for. Women can do things, too. I want a career." Well, since she had been Valedictorian of her high school class, a year earlier in the freshman trigonometry course I was teaching, had been the best student in the class, with twice as many test points as the next best student, and was well on her way to _Summa Cum Laude_ , PBK, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and NSF Fellow, all of which she got, I believed her. Wrong. Dumb.

Later I was on the team that did IBM's artificial intelligence language KnowledgeTool. Well I understood the language, and on our team we had some very bright and aggressive guys, young men, who had written some early sample programs. KnowledgeTool was a pre-processor to IBM's PL/I, a huge language.

From one of the world's best research universities, she got her Ph.D. in mathematical sociology, with lots of multi-variate statistics, with matrix theory, analysis of variance and experimental design, hypothesis testing, SPSS usage, etc. All of that was easy for her.

So, I showed her how to use our home PC to logon to my office VM/CMS account, use the editor XEDIT, use the scripting language Rexx, and right away she wrote a nice, useful Rexx program to report on disk space usage. Then I gave her a one hour tutorial in KnowledgeTool. A week later she had a nice, first sample program running. It did what she wanted. I gave her a 30 minute lecture explaining the intended role of rules as _knowledge representation_ , and two weeks later she had fully in line with the idea of rules and knowledge representation by far the best early KnowledgeTool program I ever saw.

She was genuinely brilliant. She beat me like a rented mule in Scrabble. I kept asking her to play so that I could get better, and I did, but she got better faster than I did until the difference was absurd. The OP mentions GRE scores of 800 -- that's exactly the score I got on the Math GRE. So, I was bright enough, but she was brilliant, plenty good in math, and much better than me in verbal and essentially every other non-STEM subject.

She was brilliant and was a super fast, brilliant student at KnowledgeTool with essentially no instruction at all, no text, no notes, just did it.

A STEM field diversity success? Heck no. She hated the STEM fields, including computing. Her view of the STEM fields was "I'm not that kind of person.". What she wanted was "A career that helps people.", and that mostly meant volunteer work. The idea of working for money was an anathema to her -- so she had no future in business.

To get a job, she kept trying the STEM fields, e.g., with IBM. She was miserable, desperately miserable. In a training class, she made the highest score in the class, but she was miserable. She went into a depression and clinical depression, was trying to recover with her mother at her family farm, and soon her body was found floating in a lake.

Diversity? A grand failure.

To believe her "women can do things, too" for anything like the world of work, business, technology, computing, or the STEM fields, she could do it, best in class, for a while but HATED it and too soon found it fatal. Instead she desperately wanted a career that "helped people".

Bluntly, she was interested in people and not in things, technology, applied math, etc.

Are we learning yet?

Can some small fraction of women, as in the OP, do well in the STEM fields? Yup. Did I mention a "small fraction"?

Generally for "diversity", do everyone, men, women, universities, companies, society, a huge favor -- f'get about it. Certainly don't push it, encourage it, urge women to get into fields with _things_ instead of _people_. Don't do that. To do that is dumb de dumb dumb, dumb, harmful, and sometimes fatal.

Instead? Let women pick their own directions. Stop pushing women to be like a dog that walks on only two legs -- usually they can do it, but they nearly never do it well.

For this diversity stuff, to borrow from an Indiana Jones movie character Marcus Brody "You are meddling with forces you cannot possibly comprehend.".

I tried, HARD. Biggest mistake of my life. Diversity good? Don't believe that stuff, not for your sisters, girlfriends, wife, or daughters. DON'T do that. The author of the OP? She's one of the rare exceptions. Leave it at that.

</comment><comment><USER79> Hiring quotas are bad. Let's have quotas in engineering schools instead... O_o

</comment><comment><USER80> One thing that's becoming increasingly clear to me is that lumping everything under a single "diversity" label is becoming counterproductive. There are many types of diversity that we should be striving for and most have their own causes, concerns and there's limited overlap between the two. And, more importantly, the actions we need to take to address them are different.

Racial diversity is mostly inter-tribal. All jokes about the "I have black friends" protestations aside, the percentage of people who socialize primarily within their own race is high. It's very easy for people to go through life without making a deep connection with someone from a different race.

Gender diversity is very much intra-tribal. Most men still have very close relationships with women and vice versa. Whether it's mothers/fathers, brothers/sisters, girlfriends/boyfriends, wives/husbands or just close acquaintances, it's very difficult to go through life without caring deeply for someone of the opposite gender.

At my last company, we didn't have any explicit diversity quotas, but we tried harder to hire women and minorities because we felt it would add a diversity of perspectives that would make our products appeal to more people. Trying harder meant things like giving phone screens to candidates we might have otherwise rejected based solely on the resume or trying to arrange an interview panel that we felt would appeal to the candidate and, should they pass the interview, make them choose us over other companies. We never "lowered our bar" and accepted minority/female candidates that were unqualified.

But we started to notice an interesting phenomenon with how we composed our interview panels. When we had minority employees interview minority candidates, the results were good. Candidates tended to choose us more often, tended to be more comfortable in interviews and it was meaningful to our interviewers that we were making an effort and, in a way, validating their value to the company. The same cannot be said for when we had our female employees interview female candidates. They almost always found fault with and opposed hiring the candidate. It got so ridiculous that the male interviewers would often get on IM before the post-interview decision meeting so we could have our decision made before letting the women on the panel weigh in. Otherwise (and somewhat ironically), without providing that unified front and appearance of certainty, the women on our interview panels felt less heard and didn't feel like their input was appreciated. When we equivocated in that meeting, they'd notice and their opposition would be all the more sure.

And that's just one example of a concern that's different when considering the two most-scrutinized forms of diversity. There are many other forms of diversity that we should be striving for too...age diversity, socio-economic diversity, language diversity (related to, but not the same as racial diversity...a Russian speaker is still considered to be white)...even something as rarely-considered as diversity of physical attractiveness will lead to a team that's more resilient and has diversity of insight on the various subjects the business needs to consider to succeed. And each of these forms of diversity requires specific considerations be made during the hiring and review processes. Too many of the discussions on diversity lack the nuance necessary to improve the situation. We need to drop the generic "diversity" label and start discussing specifics of each kind of diversity.

</comment><comment><USER81> People are still trying to make weak links between biology and interest in a subject, as if there are some mysterious laws of nature that link work to body chemistry. There's no overwhelming scientific evidence proving this.

Others (like this article) assert that simply increasing the amount we invest in education will result in an immediate change in not only who decides to stay in tech as a career, but also, who gets hired. This of course ignores all the other factors that stop women from pursuing the jobs themselves, and the barriers they'll face when they get there.

A different perspective on the issue at hand (gender diversity in tech work) could be taken by modern intersectional feminists. It is generally thought now that progress should come from women, for women, and not "gifted" to them by the benevolent white male dictators who graciously allow them to work at parity in tech. By including all the different factors that lead to different kinds of oppression women face, they could better advocate for themselves and address their various needs. But this would mean that for women to reach parity in tech employment, they would actually have to _want_ to reach parity, and fight for it.

Of course, this route is more challenging, because not only do women have to change biases and fight discrimination, they would have to do it without the exclusive support of the existing power structure. But it would eventually allow a natural system to emerge, rather than artificially modifying the system to account for a perceived natural imbalance.

In Eastern Bloc countries during the cold war, women living in socialist states had more rights and more support from the state that allowed them have greater mobility, more freedoms, even better sex lives. The state identified the various unique factors that affected women's ability to be happy, healthy, and equal to their male comrades, and they provided support structures to achieve this. After the wall fell, young women had a harder time making a living, and generally were less happy than before, studies showed.

What do our supposedly superior capitalist democracies offer women today? Oppression! All over the US, women are limited by the government in their access to abortion, birth control, child care, a fair wage, a good job, etc. Society then steps on them further with heightened expectations for their gender and a generally demeaning attitude. Add in race, ethnicity, class, and other factors, and we have a veritable stone soup of oppression. And after all this, the biggest question we can muster is "Why aren't more of them working in tech?" Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees!

Somehow we consider technology this great bastion of the most ideal lifestyle anyone could aspire to. The fact is, tech is a boring, sometimes soul- crushing, time-demanding, rote, emotionless, competitive job market, where creativity is really only seen in brief spurts of code from time to time. For a high pay check, we dedicate our lives to making a blinking box perform logical feats, to allow our society to share pictures of cats.

To receive the privilege of these tasks, women get to work twice as hard in a field surrounded by people who don't relate to them and don't face the same challenges they do, get talked over and ignored, passed up for promotion. At the end of trying to juggle raising a kid/family, living up to western society's heightened expectations for their gender, and find some balance in between, and maybe a little harassment thrown in for good measure, they get a paycheck that's slightly lower than their peers.

Can someone please tell me why a woman would _want_ to work in tech in the first place? Maybe we should be asking why men are dumb enough to work in tech?

<comment><USER25> There's no evidence linking, for example, testosterone levels to bone and muscle mass?

Or progesterone levels to compassion and nurturing desires?

I think you need to look a little harder.

Of course more complex skills/desires/abilities are going to have more complex biological causation; though if you can prove otherwise, go ahead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> It has been kind of strange to watch the diversity programs and the conversations around it, because it all seems partially designed to sorta try to fix the problems, but also not be confrontational or force any hard questions to be asked/answered.

It seems more important to do something, and to be seen doing something, than to get real about what will work, and what won't, and why.

<comment><USER83> People have been using this tactic for ages, whether it be for political, professional or personal gains.

The software engineer who is rewarded for putting out the fires, when in reality they are a serial arsonist...

Modern progressivism ([https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american- liberal...](https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism)) ...

So on and so forth...

No one wants to put in the real, hard work and society continues to reward the facade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Funny... Many others were flagged. This one, for some odd reason, wasn't.

Go figure.

Ref: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14992859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14992859)

</comment><comment><USER84> A truly revolutionary idea in this era of authoritarian social justice causes.

<comment><USER85> In what way are social justice causes authoritarian?

<comment><USER86> Not in itself. I'll even sometimes step up myself and at some point managed to get my boss to hire the girl who cleaned our offices since she was qualified only hadn't been considered since she was Polish.

The insistence on punishment (firing, public shaming) for minor offences (wrongthink) withouth due process is worrying though.

<comment><USER87> I'm going to push back on the critique of shaming. It's literally the only consequence groups without any (economic/political) power have. It bears no force of law. It creates no consequence directly except for a little discomfort on the part of the recipient.

Tell historically disadvantaged communities--the ones with decades or centuries of societal biases working against them--they can't shame people they think are behaving shamefully, and what do you leave them with?

The critique of shaming just seems like another way to prop up a status quo that isn't a very good one for a lot of people.

<comment><USER88> Shaming by some groups is a badge of honor: If I'm hated by a certain unpopular political group, that's a real point in my favor in some regions. It's credibility you can't buy. And it doesn't matter if the group which hates me is powerful, as long as they're hated in turn by the people I want credibility with.

The only way shaming hurts me is if the group doing the shaming is powerful among people I care about. Thus shaming is an expression of power, and a use of social force which must come from groups which have power.

<comment><USER89> This goes back to that old adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> What I find really weird is that this post is at the bottom of the frontpage, even though it has the most upvotes of the entire frontpage (443 at time of writing) and achieved this in only 2 hours. This was the same case for the article containing the 10 page manifesto from last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937895](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937895)

Could @dang or some other moderator shed some light on why these specific posts are disapearing from the front page so fast? Because this seems like a failure of the ranking algorithm.

<comment><USER91> was wondering the same. the explanation i can think of is that people are flagging this and the algo lowers flagged posts?

its better than the alternative of @dang and friends manually moving this item down/off the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Google is obsolete.

<comment><USER51> I wish I could be as obsolete as Google. God, I might even start believing that you exist for Google level of obsolesce. Amen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Poorly written. Also does not contain facts to back up what she see's in the market.

I think this article just shows more that CEO's and upper management lack the facts to properly asses their own hiring pipeline and what may be the actual problem to their hiring diversity.</comment>


LCD Monitors: Why we are stuck at 100 ppi (from 2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.veritasetvisus.com/VVHR-2,%20Walker.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> With all the buzz about the new iPad recently, I was wondering why our PC monitors have failed to advance very much in the last few years. The article linked in this post describes it very well, quote from article on why there isn't demand:

• 100 ppi is "good enough" for the majority of PC applications.

• There are almost no examples of monitors over 100 ppi to create desire.

• Most consumers and business users have never experienced a high-ppi monitor.

• There's no broadly applicable "killer app" for high-ppi monitors

• Because the Windows UI doesn't scale well, higher ppi makes Windows harder to use

• Higher-ppi LCDs are more expensive.

7 years later and we are exactly in the same spot while most of the display R&D has moved to mobile. Let's hope this starts changing soon, I really want an affordable 200+ ppi 24" monitor.</comment>


Are we living in a covert totalitarian society? - <AUTHOR> http://philosophizethis.org/episode-112-transcript/ <comment><USER2> Yes.</comment>


Tumblr Suspends Violent Extremism Researcher's Account - <AUTHOR> http://boredjihadi.tumblr.com/post/161111919522/bring-ibn-siqilli-back <comment><USER2> this brings into discussion what identifying propaganda actually entails when corner cases like this pop up. interesting circumstances.

it makes me wonder: if you're actively doing research on these modern day areas of conflict and the culture that's in them, would you rather ask for forgiveness or permission when posting your material to a site that monitors material of that nature? and if it was so easy to gain forgiveness, what would stop people from framing said areas of conflict in different lights under the guise of research?

<comment><USER3> I can't see how one would ponder either of these things before the much simpler 'is this a good platform on which to distribute my research on a highly sensitive topic' and then somehow arrive at 'yes, yes Tumblr is'.

<comment><USER4> I can't believe that apparently some people see "Tumblr" but not the "researcher employed by NATO". It's just text and images and video, the "place" where it's at matters only for the people having to pay for pipes, really. Some of the best things in the world get posted in totally random places, it has always been thus.

<comment><USER3> The 'place' matters an awful lot. For instance, it's perfectly fine to take a poop in your own bathroom. Something being digital doesn't magically free us from context and norms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Somebody's account has been suspended. Ok, why? "I assume he has been suspended because Tumblr thinks Chris is spreading jihadi propaganda.". So (unless it wasn't posted for some reason) nothing to back this up at all and we actually don't know why he was suspended.

<comment><USER5> So we're not allowed to draw inferences now? It's not like tumblr is gonna issue a press release to spell it out, so waiting for that before talking about the thing seems counterproductive.

<comment><USER6> Signal is preferred to noise.

If you have actually worked at Tumblr, or another social company that has to deal with blocking accounts, and can provide some analysis of what goes into these decisions (is it automated? How many people are involved? How much discretion is given to individual employees? What are the legal implications if Tumblr did nothing?) that would be interesting and informative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tumblr always felt like an odd place for anything academic or serious. Am I alone in that thought?

<comment><USER8> Not at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As it is said on Tumblr itself: "This Blue Fucking Hellsite"

</comment><comment><USER10> This is one of the taboo subjects of our times. It's ok to be a jihadi and post your stuff, but to criticize the jihadi culture and expose its inner workings is not ok since it implies moral judgment. We can't have any of that.

<comment><USER6> There is no evidence that is the case. In fact, the linked article says:

'I assume he has been suspended because Tumblr thinks Chris is spreading jihadi propaganda'

Which would be Tumblr doing the exact opposite of what you say they do.

<comment><USER10> But then he goes on to say that "Suspending his account makes all the less sense considering the numerous genuine jihadi propaganda blogs that Tumblr has not taken action against." Which would be Tumblr doing the exact thing I said they did, as are the down voters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are jihadist's tumblrs suspended?</comment>


Secret's Founder Should Keep His Ferrari - <AUTHOR> http://www.trevorowens.com/secrets-founder-should-have-kept-his-ferrari/

<comment><USER2> I think you're right - the people who paid for the founder's stock knew the risk probably better than the founders. They should live with the decision.</comment>


Tesla opens European factory for Model S - <AUTHOR> http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tesla/model-s/92953/tesla-opens-european-factory-for-model-s <comment><USER2> The purpose of this final assembly plant is to be able to sell Tesla cars in Europe without requiring VAT (import) tax. Performing final assembly in the EU allows Telsa to label the cars as manufactured in Europe and therefore, no import taxes are assessed. Effectively, it presents a 20% discount for EU buyers (outside of Norway where the VAT tax is waived).

See: [http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-prices- europe](http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-prices-europe)</comment>


With great power comes great uncertainty: Marvel's slowly evolving politics - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/26/17029572/black-panther-marvel-politics <comment><AUTHOR> A couple of good quotes:

" _This skepticism about Wakanda is both Black Panther's greatest strength and, ultimately, the reason its climactic battle lets down the rest of the movie just a little bit. But it's also part and parcel of Marvel's recent slate of movies, which has been interested, more than ever, in the idea that American hegemony and military power maybe isn't everything it's cracked up to be — even as every movie seems to conclude with a big shrug. "Well?" the films seem to ask. "What else are you gonna do?"_ "

Well? What else _are_ you gonna do?

" _In the deconstructionist corner are works like the comic Watchmen or even the Pixar film The Incredibles. The former asks what kind of psychological trauma you'd have to experience to think putting on a costume and beating people up is the way to live your life; the latter flirts with objectivism in its insistence that everybody is special but some people are more special than others. (The Incredibles remains the best superhero movie, but it's constantly about two adaptation choices away from becoming a straightforward rendition of Atlas Shrugged — for kids!)_ "

I'm going to have to think about that last one.</comment>


Mapillary has been acquired by Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/18/mapillary-facebook/ <comment><AUTHOR> When this came out 6-7 years ago, there was some discussion about helping OSM volunteers and being an alternative to Google. Now that FB has acquired this, I am not sure how I feel about it :-/</comment>


What mechanical arms for holding laptops are available? - <AUTHOR> I would like a mechanical arm that I can use to hold a laptop in a variety of positions, allowing for example, typing while leaning back in a chair, or lying on my back in a horizontal position. I think this would be of use to many people, for example people with physical disabilities as well as people who want to work in a different body position for a while. What good solutions are available? <comment><USER2> There are lots of mechanical options available for the purpose of mounting laptops in cars. The mounting hardware can easily be re-purposed to bolt to a piece of furniture or some kind of rolling cart.

For instance: [https://www.amazon.com/Mount-Rotating-Adjustable-Notebook- Ca...](https://www.amazon.com/Mount-Rotating-Adjustable-Notebook- Capacity/dp/B017AGOVZ6)

It's a large enough product category that there are multiple manufacturers that compete with each other, driving down prices and increasing quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the lead. I didn't think to look for car stuff, although I have seen police officers in the US with something like that in their cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check out Ram Mounts ([http://www.rammount.com](http://www.rammount.com)), they mostly apply to mobile environments. But we also repurposed them for wall mounts, and furniture mounts without any real modifications. Just some basic hardware.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same as my comment below, thanks for the lead!

<comment><USER3> Yep, I actually used Ram Mounts in ambulances and fire trucks and they hold up really well. And those things shake rattle and roll all day long and go over crazy roads we would never want to take our own vehicles. So I am kinda partial to Ram for the lack of failures and solid support for when we needed a little extra help.</comment></comment></comment>