Why Most Women Can't Engineer

WaynesCotting · 2015-05-31T01:42:22+00:00

I've thought about this a lot, being on a team that has interviewed dozens of candidates and found that the few female candidates who are qualified on their CVs get absolutely destroyed in the team interviews. We have a one day interview process where the current developers sit down with the candidate and ask some problems, going from easy bug-finding exercises to questions about architecting a solution to common and practical tasks, such as how to find duplicate strings, and requiring them to do pseudocode to prove that they can do basic loops and solve simple logic problems. We work with Java, but we even let the applicants use any language they want, as a good engineer can pick up languages easily. The goal isn't to see if they immediately come up with a solution we like, but instead to see how they think, ask questions, and approach the solution.

Without exception, all of the female coders couldn't do these basic problems, and many of them were crushed by this process, and I don't mean that they just didn't do well, but I mean they found it exhausting to have to discuss engineering and defend their ideas for just a few hours. One candidate did so poorly that she just gave up and didn't even try for the rest of the interview, which was cut short. This isn't some rigoroussituation where these people are brow beaten or treated poorly. We give them time to think, are pleasant, give them hints, joke with them, give them breaks, try to do one-on-one interviews, and so on, because we know it's stressful for anyone. The fact of the matter is that the job requires you to come up with solutions and defend them to your coworkers, and also requires you to take charge of features and work to become an expert in certain aspects of a complicated program. You have to think in abstract terms, discuss new ideas, be adaptable, and understand very complexd systems intuitively. The stakes in our company aren't even that high, and it's a very relaxed atmosphere.

There are some men who have reacted like this to the interviews too, and who did poorly of course, but there are also men who enjoyed talking about engineering. We'd pose the problem, and rather than them seeing it as some laborious chore, their eyes would light up and they'd have fun figuring out a solution. Those are the people who did the best, and those are the ones we hired.

One of the conclusions I think is that the people who really relished the challenge are the guys that go home at night and spend even more time engineering. They're the ones who have a passion for it, and who buy textbooks, build computers, learn how to mess with an Arduino, etc, just because they have a passion for learning about computers. I have a very hard time imagining any of the female candidates going home and spending hours and hours alone in front of their computer working out how to get some new Linux kernel to compile or making their own silly games on the side. I think if you take those differences and combine them over a person's teenage and adult lifetime, that's what makes up the difference between good engineers and bad. I think that's why many of the women just can't hack it, because they don't have a passion that runs deep enough, because so many of them find it unnatural to what they really want to do, and so many men find that it just clicks with them and is deeply satisfying.

firstpitchthrow · 2015-05-31T03:49:24+00:00

story time, if you'll indulge me. I work for a silicon valley engineering firm (we do both EE and CS/IT). I've been with my current company for almost eight years. In that time, we've tried three female engineers (ones that made the hiring cut). Here's how the three turned out:

Number one years ago, we brought in an engineer to solve a problem we were having with an internal software system. We gave her a two week trial period, and if she could solve the issue in that time, we'd hire her on as a full-time consultant. She spent the entire two weeks doing research, working, trying, but she just didn't have the problem solving skills for the job and couldn't budge it. Her last day with us, she was running late, and my boss was getting tired of waiting, so he gave me a crack at the problem. I solved it in five minutes. My boss called her and told her the check was in the mail and to not bother showing up her last day. I got a raise out of that.

The second one, we hired a contract programmer who was a friend of my boss to help up with the design of a programming application. She was going to be the lead developer, my friend and I were going to assist her. She shows up and does nothing on the project for the first three months. We're up a creek without a paddle on this, so my boss brings her in for a sit down chat on how to apply a course correction. She informs us she doesn't know how to program in the language the client wants, and to ask the client to change the implementation (the client's wants is the one thing that isn't negotiable, if the client wants something done a certain way, that's the way you do it. They pay the check). My boss, in response, puts more of the work on my shoulders. As time goes on, the female engineer stops doing any work at all, and I pick up the entire thing (at the end, I learned the language and tech the client wanted and wound up programming the entire system myself). My other co-workers notice, and start a "fire (name of female engineer)" campaign, complete with chants (even the other women in the office were sick it). However, she's a friend of the boss, so she gets a significant amount of rope. Eventually, even he figures out "this isn't working" and fires her, a full two months (and a lot of wasted $$$) after everyone else in the office figured it out.

The third might be the worst of the lot, and I don't want to go into details, except to say that, of all the jobs i have ever worked, she was, by far, the worst person I have ever had as a co-worker. She didn't get on my nerves, she didn't put me down, we rarely spoke, and when we did, she was polite, but she burned down every single bridge, with every single person in the company. She lied to us, deceived us, stole from us, and put through the burner one of the most decent people I have ever known. Put it this way, there are co-workers who I have gotten into screaming matches with who I regard more highly than her, because at least they were honest. Her name, today, is a byword at my company for terrible employee, male or female. She was a wolf in sheep's clothing, all the way.

My boss tries to hire women, because in the valley, having women on staff is an advantage to being able to do business and winning contracts. People are skeptical when your org chart is a sausage fest. He's sunk money into it, and can't find anybody capable or qualified.

unsafeword · 2015-05-31T15:21:19+00:00

I have a few ruthlessly capable female coworkers. But a few years ago we got a mandate to select applicants in favor of evening out gender ratios. Given that few females apply in STEM fields (it's a supply problem, not a discriminatory hiring problem), we end up having to hire almost every female who applies.

The new hires are uniformly awful. Some go limp and quietly occupy a chair once orientation ends. No work is produced, but the team is down a requisition regardless and rectifying the situation involves tiptoeing through HR land mines. A majority of the remaining female hires work harder at politicizing the office and finding their scapegoats than they do at learning to become effective workers.

The most interesting thing is that the older merit-based female hires refuse to work on any projects with most of the new ones. They're the only ones who can get away with that. This makes these old female wards an essential part of any productive team.

exactlydisease · 2015-05-31T04:42:18+00:00

I work for the government with state and federal funding. I don't want to get into heavy detail but I work with mostly women. I used to work in construction but because the economy tanked in 08 I had to switch gears...

If you had to translate how the company functions in terms of a functioning car. This thing would have 15 tires, steering wheel in the trunk, 12 oz gas tank, no engine, being pushed by midgets, and a retard yelling VROOOOMMMMMM!!!! the whole time.

I'm currently looking into going to school as an engineer because I had an engineer background in high school and college before I needed to find a job due to being poor and from another country.

Anyway...

kempff · 2015-05-31T02:20:48+00:00

We all have our own anecdotes.

I was working as gallery staff at a science museum. One of our temporary exhibits was about paleontology, and one of its interactive components was a set of life-sized fiberglass "fossils" encased in a "matrix" made from sand that had been impregnated with paraffin, and museum visitors were invited to scrape away at the matrix to reveal the fossil underneath, just like a real paleontologist in a lab.

The wax-sand mixture was reusable, and all we needed to do was sweep up the spent sand, sift out foreign matter, warm it in a pot, dump it back over the fossil, and let it cool and harden. Unfortunately this process was time-consuming, messy, and smelly. I spent roughly a third of my time re-encasing the fossil demonstration pieces to keep pace with demand, and every day I would come home smelling like smoldering candle wax, with bits of sand stuck to my clothes and shoes. But I had the process down to a science.

At one point, one of my (female, of course) coworkers complained that I spent too much time away from the exhibit and that it was unfair of me to force my coworkers to deal with the public more than I did.

I knew exactly what was about to happen. So I backed off the re-encasement duties and spent more time in the exhibit. As soon as the girls took over, the fit hit the shan. They cooked the reclaimed waxy sand too hot and filled the exhibit with acrid paraffin smoke. They didn't understand how my sifting system worked - a system I created, naturally - and left the matrix filled with all sorts of garbage, including long human hairs. And of course they got dirty and smelled bad at the end of the day. Ew, right?

Then they complained I wasn't doing my fair share of the re-encasing.

Another component of the same exhibit was a small theater with a stage for live presentations. The backstage area had a door leading to the rest of the exhibit. The tech crew for some reason never installed the handle or latch hardware on the door. So my staff manager - and remember, this is at a science museum - took it upon herself to install the hardware on her own. She installed it backwards. She was a manager of an entire department with a half-dozen subordinates at a science museum, and she couldn't tell she was installing a door latch backwards.

That same manager, when I was first hired, asked me to review the exhibit as a whole, to familiarize myself with it and to offer constructive feedback about how to improve it. One component was an interactive kiosk with a computer monitor and a trackball, and the software modeled the conjectured kinematics of a dinosaur skeleton. Someone experiencing this component would move the trackball to make the dinosaur's head and tail move.

It was far and away the worst-designed piece of garbage I had ever seen. The trackball only rolled left and right, but the dinosaur's head and tail moved up and down. When the software projected the model skeleton, the skeleton would twirl around for several seconds before the trackball had any effect. It's hard to describe just how incompetently the whole thing was set up. Museum visitors would walk up to it, try to move the trackball in any direction, not knowing that the trackball wasn't even in effect at that moment even though the skeleton was twirling, and just walk away with a confused look on their faces.

When I brought this to her attention, I described the problems with its design and noted its effect on visitors, and I recommended that the whole kiosk just be taken off the floor altogether.

And do you know what she said in response? "But the guy who made it worked so hard on it."

In retrospect, I should have quit on the spot, 1 day after being hired.

I have more anecdotes where these came from. I'm sure we all do.

ioillusion · 2015-05-31T09:07:12+00:00

I have worked with some very competent female programers, but there does tend to be a different standard.

I've been in software for about 20 years now. If you are a female in this kind of field; you tend to have the option of getting a fellow male student or coworker to help you through the rough patches. There's where the divide happens. The ones who stick it out and work through the problems themselves turn into good engineers, the others fall way behind.

I'm not sure if men are always aware of it, but they also tend to go easy when interviewing female candidates. So being behind doesn't always translate into being unemployable.

I've seen this happen with candidates who are perceivably from poor countries or backgrounds that others tend to be sensitive towards as well. I recall an interview with an applicant from Africa some years ago. They fielded him really simple questions and were impressed by his ability to answer them.

Only two of us, myself and another coworker seemed to be able to see what was happening - we both looked at each other like we'd been dropped into another dimension while this was going on. But, everyone else came out of the interview ready to hire this guy on. They did, and as it turns out - he'd never actually programmed anything before; but, he'd "heard about how to do it". They ended up moving him into marketing after about 3 failed projects.

nuclear_coffee · 2015-05-31T19:13:10+00:00

Female engineer here. I want to add something I've been thinking about. Obviously knowing how lacking in females my field is. I believe that pushing women into any of the STEM fields at all is a bad idea. Here's why. These fields have been open for women for ages. No one said "don't you dare step foot into this field/major." No, some simply said 'hey, this field is pretty difficult' and automatically women didn't go into it. Now, these fields haven't gotten any easier. And we keep saying how women should go into them and please go into them, but if a woman doesn't have a passion/want to go into these fields, no matter how hard you're pushing, she won't. And it's stupid that our country is pushing so much money into trying to put females into STEM fields, when this money should really go into something more serious. Secondly, look at the STEM majors and pre-med majors. Look at the students in those majors. Look at their skin color, look at where they are from. The chances of finding a white, blonde, all American girl in any of these fields are VERY slim. It's all Indian, Paki, foreign women. For some reason, American women, it seems, are not bred for tough jobs and majors. Now look at students in the Communications or Education major. Ah yes, found all of the American women. It seems to me that the American women are a lot more afraid of challenge and difficulty than foreign women. Once it gets too difficult, they quit right away and switch to something that takes less brain power. I'm a foreign woman myself, I moved here from Russia. These are my observations and my opinion on the subject.

DRMMR76 · 2015-05-31T11:40:08+00:00

Since the dawn of man a woman's strength has been in manipulating relationships, while a man's strength has been manipulating the environment. Engineering is a field that relies almost entirely on the latter. You have a problem, you fix the problem. You have a task, you put together a solution. It has nothing to do with forging alliances, making people feel good, gaining dirt on others, or ingratiating oneself to others. Those are feminine skills and they are entirely useless when it comes to actual work.

whatyearisthisagain · 2015-05-31T22:57:18+00:00

Women learn by mimic learning. This is why they excel in many schools today that constist 100% of mimic learning, ie. watching the teacher at the blackboard and redoing what the teacher did.

Men learn by explorative learning. They, so to speak, teach themselves by doing. Engineering is in many regards reliant on the engineer being capable (often excelling) at exploring a solution because there isn't one to copy.

Why are so many women lawyers? Because the laws to be learnt are all already neatly written down.

rapethrowawayy · 2015-05-31T08:27:55+00:00

I remember freshman year I was doing this computer science girl's homework because I thought maybe she'd give me a chance and end up fucking me / get in a relationship. Well, never happened. Next year she was on her own. I later found out she switched to journalism her sophomore year LMAO.

PlanB_pedofile · 2015-05-31T05:18:01+00:00

This comes down to female brain wiring.

Women are wired to regurgitate info... this is how woman can recite birthdays, anniversaries, dates, events, numbers, names, faces, like a text book. But what they cant do is problem solve.

A woman be a 4.0 and can know every engineering text book term, formula, design, date, and answer every question on a test but put her in a situation that doesn't fit the pattern and requires thinking outside the box, she under performs.

Men solve problems as well as invent and create. Women follow structure and identify anything that goes outside their norm.

watersign · 2015-05-31T03:29:41+00:00

im a "data analyst" so im pretty much a glorified spreadsheet jockey but i know some statistics, some coding, etc .. ...... at my last company they were re-engineering this reporting tool..and during the requirement gathering part of the job there were quite a few women involved and they literally said more than anyone but literally added no value..at all. no one there knew wtf they were talking about but they were all in charge

LC2775 · 2015-05-31T21:47:18+00:00

Thats what I like about math related subjects. Its either right or wrong no BS. Unfortunatly I was never that good in math and I also love economics so I followed that path. Sometimes I have these bullshit lectures with leftist teachers with their bullshit essays were we need to write even more unrelated/irrelevant bullshit to get a good grade

RPaccount1000 · 2015-05-31T03:53:40+00:00

The issue I observed is that women are under pressure from their child years to focus on their appearances, that it skews their world view to demand attention and respect just because they look good. A superficial way to earn respect especially in the engineering field.

This may play a small role, but the data suggests that women are, generally, just not interested in engineering. For a great documentary on this issue, check out "The Gender Equality Paradox," from the sidebar link "Gender Studies is Nonsense." It's a great watch. The entire series is actually outstanding and worth your time.

MachineOonz · 2015-05-31T07:52:27+00:00

This is why I really dislike affirmative action.

My company is required to hire women/blacks, but luckily they are given "out of the way" duties. It's all once big farce.

We're also required to hire other "minorities", of course. However, even without affirmative action, we'd be taking in Hispanics and Asians, as they are actually capable of doing their work unaided.

monteboss · 2015-05-31T14:14:29+00:00

Those employement equality bullshit kills business, thats why they go in China or Mexico.

max_peenor · 2015-05-31T16:22:10+00:00

As a favor to a long time friend I did a short consultancy at a company where he is an executive. It's a rising star in the SF bay area and growing rapidly. They love diversity and all those other wonderful things that having nothing to do with product, but whatever--if it makes the employees happy, cool.

Anyway, I did some recruiting for development and was literally the first person to hire a female into R&D (as a developer, there were already doc writers, of course). About a month after she was on the job, HR and various other orgs packed with women decided to do something about the lack of women in STEM. They formed a club (? it seemed more like a playhouse than something serious) and would have meetings every couple weeks to discuss what they would do about this egregious insult to the womankind. I shit you not, they actually decorated a conference room with frilly stuff and had fancy cakes at their meeting. After a couple months of this, I think the only thing anyone actually did was send a couple of recruiters on a tour of eastern universities to talk to women about the company--in other words, they gave themselves paid vacations.

And the best part? They never invited the female developer I hired to any of the meetings...

cruyff8 · 2015-05-31T17:55:27+00:00

This doesn't mean women aren't excelling as engineers, they are and to some extents of the highest caliber of problem solving.

This (and more /u/WaynesCotting's comment) are key. It's not ipso facto because women have an extra strand on every chromosome that makes them ill-suited for a field such as software engineering.

It is the fact that when I get home, the gf expects me to be able to remove viruses from the computer, reinstall Excel, etc. If she were to do this herself (and she's getting there slowly), she may develop a passion for it and the curiosity necessary to figure out why things work the way they do and (more importantly) how to make things work the way she wants. That's the genesis of software engineering.

Note, I'm not resentful of this, and she isn't a clueless bimbo -- she has her own PhD in infectious diseases and does research finding a cure for cancer after all -- but this is my field (at the graduate level, under grad was mathematics, PhD is statistics). Of course, were I to do biostatistics, you bet your last pfennig I defer to her expertise in the field to fill the (obvious) gaps in my knowledge, not having taken any biology classes in 15 years.

MSCHVSVCTRY · 2015-05-31T19:43:11+00:00

I'm glad you added "most" in the title. One the whole (pun), I've always suspected this to be true of engineering. I think in time we'll see a lot more specialization / streamlining parts of engineering to include the natural abilities / characteristics of women. It'd only be logical.

lightfire409 · 2015-06-01T03:41:37+00:00

From my own personal experiences working as an engineer, if you are female and competent you are not an American women. In the software field, you're probably Asian.

narazz · 2015-06-02T17:02:53+00:00

just got ot say this thread reinspired me!

i actually tried to get into pc science. just couldnt hack the math. getting through my other passion graphic design i stumbled on html which i found im not that bad at. hoping to get more into websites down the road. :)

EurasianAesthetics · 2015-05-31T09:35:22+00:00

Men have built and designed pretty much EVERYTHING from the chair you sit on to the house you live and the car you drive in. A woman's value comes from her pink dripping meat hole between her legs.

ChopsNZ · 2015-05-31T07:16:59+00:00

Engineering is a broad term. Are you building a bridge or piss arsing around with someones server?

watersign · 2015-05-31T14:47:57+00:00

Whatever field you're in...working with or for a woman is a good way to possibly throw your career down the garbage or set it back.

asianmasaccount · 2015-05-31T05:41:59+00:00

I get what you're saying and wanted to agree, but then I tried to apply it to my own life a bit. The women in medicine seem to do pretty well at the student, resident and attending physician level. The disease doesn't know if its a man or woman treating it and can't implement affirmative action.

Why do you think that is?

[deleted] · 2015-05-31T18:42:56+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Neverd0wn · 2015-05-31T06:01:33+00:00

Replace female with male in all these anecdotes and they are still perfectly valid. Hypocrites.

MoonLair · 2015-05-31T05:03:37+00:00

I was once talking to my ex about how I am concerned about how few women are in Computer Science, as women have the right just as anyone else to help forge the new generation of technology and the internet.

She said that Computer Science should be made more approachable to women. Programming isn't made more approachable just because I have a penis, STEM subjects require dedication and hard work to do well.

The biggest obstacle is stigma and culture. We need to believe more than ever that anyone can do it if they put the work in. Women have to believe in themselves, they are ultimately responsible for erasing the stigma, to study hard, learn, and create! It's the job of everyone else to get out of their way and allow them to change the norm without making empty statements like "Women are too stupid to learn this."

Title	Why Most Women Can't Engineer
Author	RationalistFaith1
Upvotes	126
Comments	123
Date	May 31, 2015 12:54 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/37wopm/why_most_women_cant_engineer/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/why-most-women-cant-engineer.33105 https://theredarchive.com/post/33105

Comments