Slashdot Mirror
Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought
itwbennett writes "According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 about 22% of computer programmers, software and web developers in the United States were female. That number comes from the Current Population Survey, which is based on interviews with 60,000 households. But Tracy Chou, an engineer at Pinterest, thinks the number is actually much lower than that. And last month she created a GitHub project to collect data on how many females are employed full-time writing or architecting software. Even at this early point, the data is striking: Based on data reported for 107 companies, 438 of 3,594 engineers (12%) are female. Here's how some well-known companies stack up."
I'm more interested in the number of engineers than the percent that are female.
Apparently Reddit gets by with only 14 engineers, Khan Academy needs 24, SnapChat only 13, Flickr needs 42, but then Pinterest needs 105, Etsy needs 149, Dropbox needs 143, and Mozilla requires 500 engineers. Some of those companies are much more lean and efficient than I thought. And others are way more bloated.
14 people at Reddit can manage their entire infrastructure of servers and networking gear hosting all of their forums, in addition to the mobile version, browser extensions, buttons and widgets and whatever else, but Dropbox needs 143 people to manage file uploading, storage, and access. Not to downplay what Dropbox does, but I don't think they offer 10 times the product that Reddit does.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If they're wanting equal treatment, then being 'one of the guys' is what you get. If they're wanting to be treated like girls, then what that really means is being given all the additional benefits that they've come to expect from other social settings. I think the rude awakening for a lot of girls out there is the contrast between the two. They might see a guy being a jerk to them, when in reality they're probably just getting the degree of interaction/effort that any guy would expect to get in her place.
On average men are taller than women. Does that mean every man is taller than every woman? Obviously not. But if there is a job that requires reaching tall heights, you can bet that there will be more men working in that position than women.
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ
"Boys generally demonstrate superiority over female peers in areas of the brain involved in math and geometry. These areas of the brain mature about four years earlier in boys than in girls, according to a recent study that measured brain development in more than 500 children. Researchers concluded that when it comes to math, the brain of a 12-year-old girl resembles that of an 8-year-old boy. Conversely, the same researchers found that areas of the brain involved in language and fine motor skills (such as handwriting) mature about six years earlier in girls than in boys."