... except that now the thieves have an incentive to buy the higher-operating-margin pre-paid phones when they need a "burn phone" to discuss illegal stuff.
They most certainly do! Your creating what-if scenarios that have no basis in TFA was just as lame as your attempt to say it wasn't practical because of the higher cost of electrical consumption, when TFA made it clear that electricity use wasn't a consideration. Trying for stupid post of the year award?
You just don't like that a woman caught you on your original mistake (not noticing that the original article specifically said to ignore electrical consumption). Again.
1. people fail to take into account their unbillable hours when they look at these sorts of jobs. They count. Everything from their time on those job boards to the emails, etc.
2. People tend to ignore the additional tax burden, comparing their current "gross" part-time hourly rate with their previous net full-time hourly rate, plus the value of any benefits.
3. People forget to include the value of vacation time and break times, which are paid when you work for someone else. Even a paid 10-minute break, twice a day, works out to an additional 83 hours of paid time over the course of a year. Throw in 2 weeks vacation, and that's an additional 8.15%. And that's not counting time for the occasional "visit to the powder room" or the occasional chat with a co-worker, or sleeping through a powerpoint.
It's not worth the hassle. When I was looking to do some freelancing between jobs a few years ago, I ended up working as a receptionist instead. Regular pay, regular hours, getting to meet with suppliers, clients, the general public, making the decisions when the boss was out, and being able to leave it all behind at the end of the day... it's simply a better quality of life than IT, and I'm seriously thinking of going back to it because, honestly, I am not interested in a futile attempt to compete with the 3rd world in a race to the bottom, or dealing any more with the lies and abuse that passes for IT "management" nowadays.
Unfortunately, one being "right" and so insistent about what is "wrong" just makes one seem like a trouble maker, regardless of gender.
A very true point. Then again, since only trouble-makers care enough to try to change things, we could say that all advances happen because of trouble-makers, if for no other reason than almost all change ends up goring someone's ox.
Bet what's the alternative? Pretending it doesn't exist, or that it only happens to "other people"?
The $847 is the average TOTAL income of the users, over the entire 12 year lifetime of the site, not the total value of the postings.
but fourth, excuse me but if you are just 'writing a half-decent initial spec for a project' for more than $800, you really are a relic of a bygone era. and expect way too much for way too little effort.
I have to disagree. A good initial spec states where you want to go, without specifying how you want to get there. A good spec for a serious project costs WAY more than $800. Good specs more than pay for themselves - bad specs are an invitation to throw money into a pit. Proper specifications, done early, can also be used as a tool to get the project approved and funded in the first place (and get you in on the ground floor:-)
They're also a good first test as to whether the necessary ingredients are in place - which includes a well-defined goal, a realistic budget, a target market and one or more well-defined user groups, and good communications between the client and the developer writing the spec.
How can you even draw up a budget without a specification to work against? How will you be able to say "here is the completed work, moneee pleeze!" without a specification? How will you be able to justify billing extra for feature creep? And just as important, how will your client justify it to THEIR boss without being able to say "Well, boss, you're the one who changed X,Y and Z, so this is why it costs more and is late, broken down by item."
If you don't provide them with the tools to cover their cabooses as well as your own, when push comes to shove, we both know who's going to get the dirty end of the stick.
But stick to elance... to each their own, and if it's what you want, nobody can say that it's wrong for you. But it's definitely not for me.
Nowhere has it been stated that the person posting the question is responsible for ongoing maintenance. Quit making up "what if" scenarios - just like you wrongly claimed that it would cost them more electricity when the summary itself says that someone else is paying for the juice, so it's not a concern.
BTW - your cited statistic on nurses contains another factor you overlooked - the majority - 58% - of the harassment came from patients, not co-workers, not bosses, not suppliers (pg. 452), and an additional 3% from visitors. Take those 61% out, and the ratio (the median value was 74% in the study you linked to), drops to 28.86% - which, while still deplorable, is below the 31% average for all women, and not anywhere near the 63% incidence reported in IT. IT is a pretty toxic environment for women.
So, is this another "utter logic fail", or is there a problem specific to IT? And btw, all this ignores the original point I made - that this discrimination/bias/whatever you wish to call it - is not just about harassment, but also about the lack of career options for women but not men by the time both sexes hit 50, not *just* the lower pay for women compared to men, and not *just* the misogyny that allows it to continue.
Because, after all, if you liked someone, you'd want them to have the same opportunities, not be actively discriminated against because of their gender.
If the failure rate is half, but the mtbf is much higher than the lifetime of the project, nobody is going to care. Most computer equipment has a half-life of 3 years or less - kind of like florescent tubes.
For a dim-bulb like you, I'll make it simple: Pretend I have a huge warehouse that I need illuminated for the next year. I can buy a few very expensive LED arrays (and still end up with shadows), or a ton of cheap florescents, and get complete coverage.
As per the article, I don't care about electrical costs. Maintenance? If a cheap bulb burns out, leave it be - there are a few thousand more still running (I said it was a HUGE warehouse, right?), nobody will notice. The LED array? One gone, I've got a huge blacked-out area, and I'm going to have to shell out $$$ for new equipment, plus down time. Some guy wacks one with a forklift - big bucks.
At the end of the year, most of the lightbulbs are still working. But now I've decided to partition the warehouse (the equivalent of changing the computing workload)... and there's no way that the LED arrays can be positioned properly to illuminate every area, so I have to go and buy some more. The lightbulbs? No need for new ones, and any dimwit - maybe even you - can replace a fluorescent tube.
You don't have more than half of all nurses quitting their field entirely after a decade. That's the quantitative difference. In IT, it's not just the money (and the discriminatory lower pay for more work) and it's not just the sexism and it's not just the isolation - it's the whole ball of wax all rolled into one. That's the qualitative one. Nurses have mentors, nurses have other nurses on the job rather than being the "odd woman out", female nurses have a union so they can have any complaints about lower pay than male co-workers addressed or favoritism in promotions.
How would you like it if you learned that the guy working under you, who you are supervising as well as coding the same project, is being paid 50% more than you? Fifty percent! And that when he quit they offered him, on the spot, $10k more to stay? I'm sure you wouldn't be too happy. How would you like to be sitting in a meeting with 2 other women and 4-5 men, and the men are just making assertions, without any facts to back them up, and any time one of you points out a flaw and suggests a better way, you're just talked over like none of you have anything of value to offer, even though you've been around longer than the new guys and have more experience...?
This is what is known as a hostile work environment, and it's the reality, more so in IT than anywhere else.
The "small percentage difference" that you cite is not based on the general population - it's based on those of both sexes still in the industry. That's your mathematical oversight. If a million women (way too small a number, btw) dropped out because of sexist practices, you now have a much smaller sample of women to draw your "small percentage difference" from.
So, let's make up some numbers, based somewhat loosely on the article, for illustrative purposes. If women make up 25% of the initial group going into IT, then for every 1,000,000 men, there are 333,333 women. Taken over 10 years, that's 10,000,000 men and 3,333,333 women. Now let's have 52% of the women drop out during that time because of the sexist practices, as per the article. Rounding, we have ~ 1.6 million women. It's from that already-depleted sample that you have your "minor difference".
This is relevant because you don't see a similar percentage of men dropping out for sexist practices.
In other words, you've already eliminated the majority of women who entered the field (never mind those who were discouraged from entering it in the first place) - the true unemployment rate is over 50% if you include those who wanted to work in the field but were forced out by its' hostile work environment, lower pay for women, and blocked career paths.
Yes, men have a hard time staying in the field after 50 - but if half of them dropped out within 10 years, you wouldn't be saying the same thing you're saying now. There would be all sorts of demands for things to change.
In other words, utter logic fail by you, babe. Now, you might think I am being anti-woman by calling you babe, but you are wrong. I am showing favoritism. If you were a man I would have called you a brain-dead retard. It's just another example of the favoritism women get in the industry: you get a compliment instead of an insult.
No, that's your paternalistic behaviour and bias showing through. I'm not trying to pick a fight here - I *am* trying to highlight an ongoing problem in the industry. Women have a shorter career arc in IT because of sexism. There's no getting around it. Being better isn't good enough.
I'm not buying it. A quick check of the site shows the following:
545,909 contractors, $462,697,171,00 paid out. Contractors have earned, on average, $847.57 TOTAL income. Considering the site has been around for more than a decade, that's not good. Heck, even writing a half-decent initial spec for a project is going to cost more than that.
Hags, dogs, whores, bitches. It's amazing how much hate you can pack into a few syllables. How do you spot a woman-hater? By the way they talk about women, treat women, react to women, represent women. Bitching about women, slagging off women â" even the language used to describe such slander comes from misogyny. The ubiquitous verbal violence supports physical violence and nobody, male or female, minds. If I were called a Paki in the street, I would have some hope of it being taken seriously. If I were called a slag â" as I was last summer by a man on a bicycle, in Stepney â" nobody would consider it report-worthy.
1. Lower failure rates mean less, not more, maintenance expenditures.
2. The more robust general (non-gpu-based) system can handle those failures better because the workload is distributed over a greater number of cores
3. The more robust system can also handle any future workload that doesn't translate easily into a gpu-based solution
4. Electricity was specifically not an issue - it was someone else's cost - which you failed to realize because you always post stupidity. Who's to say that maintenance isn't also someone else's cost? So don't make up an issue where there is none.
5. anyone looking at my profile will see what it stands for, you ignorant clod!
6. you're still smarting from the smackdown clone54321 gave you last year? You really are pathetic.
None of these have a bearing on how well a woman can do her job. And the 63% of women in IT who report being sexually harassed is double the 31% across all employers - also a scary number.
It's not "meaningless statistical noise." More than half of all women quit because of the sexist behaviour.
Between ages 25 and 30, 41% of the young talent with credentials in those subject matters (math and computers) are female.
...
The bad news is that a short way down the road, 52% of this talent drops out. We are finding that attrition rates among women spike between 35 and 40 -- what we call the fight-or-flight moment. Women vote with their feet; they get out of these sectors. Not only are they leaving technology and science companies, many are leaving the field altogether.
We found four other more important factors (than "starting a family" that caused women to leave the field) about the culture and the nature of the career path. We call them "antigens," because they repel women.
63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment... Demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes - who see them as genetically inferior. It's hard to take as a steady stream. It's predatory and demeaning.
The sheer isolation many women cope with daily. She might be the only woman on the team or the only senior woman at a facility. Isolation in and of itself is debilitating, with no mentors, no role models, no buddies. And if you're surrounded by men who don't appreciate you, that can be corrosive.
For many women, the career path is all very mysterious because they don't have mentors or sponsors or folks looking out for them (no "old girls network", etc).
Risky behavior patterns that are rewarded. We found, particularly in the tech firms, that the way to get promoted is to do a diving catch: Some system is crashing in Bulgaria, so you get on the plane in the middle of the night and dash off and spend the weekend wrestling with routers and come back a hero,
... Women have a hard time taking on those assignments because you can dive and fail to catch. If a man fails, his buddies dust him off and say, "It's not your fault; try again next time." A women fails and is never seen again. A woman('s career) cannot survive a failure.
... we found that women across industries will often take a brief break -- like for two years. But our sense is that this is distinctly worse. In many fields, almost 100% of women will try to get back into the industry [later]. Here, only 60% say they would be willing to give it another try if conditions were right. 40% leave the industry entirely. They've been too badly burned.
So, when you eliminate more than half of all those who started out well before they hit 50... it's not just statistical noise, it's not "I'm married, and hubby will pay the bills", and it's not a failure to keep up-to-date on skills. Unlike your anecdotal evidence, studies say it's the toxic environment.
But just look at your own "reason" #2 for an example of sexism.
Small businesses are the largest employer, and unfortunately, most small businesses doesn't have "diversity initiatives" - they're just too small.
And I can't recall the last time I saw an older than 50 woman applying for a tech line position. The few women I know of that age in tech, started at line positions 25 years ago, and are in senior management positions at this point
Not everyone subscribes to the "up or out" mentality...here on/. we hear that complaint often enough - some people actually like being able to express their creativity by writing code, are good at it, and don't want the increased back-biting and ever-nastier office politics that come with moving up the food chain. There's more than enough of that even at the lowest levels.
Think of it - if a guy is pushy as a boss, he's perceived as a "leader", and a "gets the job done" type, whereas a woman acting the same way is going to be called a few not-so-choice terms, all gender-specific ("b*tch", "c*nt", "butch", "dyke", "she's PMSing") - and not always behind her back. And if the woman isn't pushy, the perception is "she hasn't got the b*lls to do the job", even if the end results are the same or better. Perception has always been what guides prejudice and gender bias - not the facts.
Meetings? Women quickly learn that they can't just say things like "We should do it my way", but rather "Has anyone considered trying ____?" The first way is seen as a challenge/attack by too many men (and there's always at least one in every meeting who will see it that way). And of course later on, some guy will end up taking the credit, since after all, the woman didn't "claim it" as her own.
Another contributing factor as to why there so few women? Perhaps it's because IT is known for the "management by shouting" that goes on (not to mention the chair-throwing and other childish behaviour). Men don't like it that they "have to watch their mouths" around women, no swearing, no sexist jokes, no screaming or shouting. No man likes it when a woman tells him, especially in front of co-workers, "If you ever raise your voice to me like that again, it will be the last time. I'll be gone before the echo stops." And no, there's no "discrete" way to handle it without sending the message that it's somehow okay to everyone else. So it's one of those "darned if you do, darned if you don't" scenarios, where if you don't protest, you're encouraging it, but if you name it and shame it, you're labeled a b*tch or worse.
Unfortunately, employers can't address the root of the problem because in too many cases, they ARE the root problem. Given a choice between a woman and a less qualified man, they'll take the man since it doesn't push their "comfort zone" and aligns nicely with their prejudices. So, like the quoted article states, eventually women, unlike men, are generally frozen out of IT by 50. Great if you're a man - less competition. Not so great if you're a woman who suddenly finds that even being better isn't "good enough."
Well, why not switch to straight assembler for a portion of the code and run some benchmarks? If it pans out, it might be worth the cost to re-do it all. You won't know if you don't try, and you'll find more than a few of those "over-35" types who actually MISS it.
You can't be serious... bidding less than the minimum wage? It's very easy to lower your price, and very hard to raise it afterward... especially when anyone can look at your history and know you'll work for next to nothing.
Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves - elance is you voluntarily slapping the chains back on.
Troll much? The article linked to from the summary, and the quote from it that I posted, made it clear that these were women who were qualified - right up until they hit 50 when they suddenly aren't - whereas men continue to be "qualified".
It has nothing to do with training, nothing to do with skill sets, and everything to do with the pervasive gender discrimination in IT, at all ages.
Nanci Schimizzi, president of the mentoring and advocacy group Women in Technology, said jobless women 50 or older generally "remain unemployed for years, to the point where many have more or less given up" or changed careers.
--------------
That's pretty blatant misogyny. That it's illegal doesn't make a difference.
Have you considered that maybe there's a reason jobless women 50 or older generally remain unemployed for years? Or did you just jump to the conclusion that its misogyny? I mean, I can think of three potential explanations for this, and yet you automatically jump to a conclusion. Why would you do that?
Really? 3 different explanations?
For context, the article talks about women who are IT professionals - women who have made their career in IT and now, at 50, the doors are suddenly closed. Not women in general. Women in IT.
It can't be because we're stuck at home raising the kids... the kids are gone by then, or at least old enough to have their own door key...
It can't be because of "lost years" to child-rearing - the article is clear when it states that, up until ~50, there was no such barrier...
It can't be because we all have hubbies who are pulling down the big bux so we don't "need a job as badly as a man does"...
It can't be because men the same age are equally affected, when the stats say otherwise...
It can't be because of voluntary retirement - the article is dealing with women who are actively seeking to continue their careers...
So, I'd really like to hear these "3 reasons", and why any of them should be a more logical reason to "explain away" why women, but not men, are generally excluded by age 50. And while you're at it, you might try to also "explain away" the ongoing gender bias against women of all ages in IT.
Then ask yourself how you'd feel if a variation of your "reasons" were used to deny you, or one of your children, a parent, a friend or relative, an equal chance to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Would they still seem "reasonable?" Or are they just lame excuses to justify perpetuating something that is fundamentally wrong?
Or the 3rd alternative - which is the most likely - that it's just so all-pervasive that you're simply blind to it. That it's "normal" to deny IT jobs to women, but not men, beyond a certain age... and to discount the opinions of equally-qualified and experienced women, when compared to men, whether it's in meetings, the decision-making process, promotions, etc.
"Misogyny.... is a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies
How is being cut out of the job market based on gender not both "a sexist prejudice" and "an oppression of females"?
Nanci Schimizzi, president of the mentoring and advocacy group Women in Technology, said jobless women 50 or older generally "remain unemployed for years, to the point where many have more or less given up" or changed careers.
Men in the same age cohort aren't facing the same situation to such an extent that it's possible to make such a generalization for them.
Gender bias (to use your term) isn't just limited to women over 50 - it's all-pervasive in the developer world. I guess you've never been confronted with an employer saying "I'll never hire a woman because I can't scream at them." Sure, no woman is going to want to work in such an environment - but to be denied equal access to employment based on gender is the reality in IT, and to those on the receiving end, white-washing it by calling it "gender bias" doesn't change the fact, or the damage, any more than it would if it were "racial bias."
Slashdot Mirror
... except that now the thieves have an incentive to buy the higher-operating-margin pre-paid phones when they need a "burn phone" to discuss illegal stuff.
> "what if scenarios do not require creation."
They most certainly do! Your creating what-if scenarios that have no basis in TFA was just as lame as your attempt to say it wasn't practical because of the higher cost of electrical consumption, when TFA made it clear that electricity use wasn't a consideration. Trying for stupid post of the year award?
You just don't like that a woman caught you on your original mistake (not noticing that the original article specifically said to ignore electrical consumption). Again.
1. people fail to take into account their unbillable hours when they look at these sorts of jobs. They count. Everything from their time on those job boards to the emails, etc.
2. People tend to ignore the additional tax burden, comparing their current "gross" part-time hourly rate with their previous net full-time hourly rate, plus the value of any benefits.
3. People forget to include the value of vacation time and break times, which are paid when you work for someone else. Even a paid 10-minute break, twice a day, works out to an additional 83 hours of paid time over the course of a year. Throw in 2 weeks vacation, and that's an additional 8.15%. And that's not counting time for the occasional "visit to the powder room" or the occasional chat with a co-worker, or sleeping through a powerpoint.
It's not worth the hassle. When I was looking to do some freelancing between jobs a few years ago, I ended up working as a receptionist instead. Regular pay, regular hours, getting to meet with suppliers, clients, the general public, making the decisions when the boss was out, and being able to leave it all behind at the end of the day ... it's simply a better quality of life than IT, and I'm seriously thinking of going back to it because, honestly, I am not interested in a futile attempt to compete with the 3rd world in a race to the bottom, or dealing any more with the lies and abuse that passes for IT "management" nowadays.
A very true point. Then again, since only trouble-makers care enough to try to change things, we could say that all advances happen because of trouble-makers, if for no other reason than almost all change ends up goring someone's ox.
Bet what's the alternative? Pretending it doesn't exist, or that it only happens to "other people"?
The $847 is the average TOTAL income of the users, over the entire 12 year lifetime of the site, not the total value of the postings.
I have to disagree. A good initial spec states where you want to go, without specifying how you want to get there. A good spec for a serious project costs WAY more than $800. Good specs more than pay for themselves - bad specs are an invitation to throw money into a pit. Proper specifications, done early, can also be used as a tool to get the project approved and funded in the first place (and get you in on the ground floor :-)
They're also a good first test as to whether the necessary ingredients are in place - which includes a well-defined goal, a realistic budget, a target market and one or more well-defined user groups, and good communications between the client and the developer writing the spec.
How can you even draw up a budget without a specification to work against? How will you be able to say "here is the completed work, moneee pleeze!" without a specification? How will you be able to justify billing extra for feature creep? And just as important, how will your client justify it to THEIR boss without being able to say "Well, boss, you're the one who changed X,Y and Z, so this is why it costs more and is late, broken down by item."
If you don't provide them with the tools to cover their cabooses as well as your own, when push comes to shove, we both know who's going to get the dirty end of the stick.
But stick to elance ... to each their own, and if it's what you want, nobody can say that it's wrong for you. But it's definitely not for me.
Nowhere has it been stated that the person posting the question is responsible for ongoing maintenance. Quit making up "what if" scenarios - just like you wrongly claimed that it would cost them more electricity when the summary itself says that someone else is paying for the juice, so it's not a concern.
So, is this another "utter logic fail", or is there a problem specific to IT? And btw, all this ignores the original point I made - that this discrimination/bias/whatever you wish to call it - is not just about harassment, but also about the lack of career options for women but not men by the time both sexes hit 50, not *just* the lower pay for women compared to men, and not *just* the misogyny that allows it to continue.
Because, after all, if you liked someone, you'd want them to have the same opportunities, not be actively discriminated against because of their gender.
For a dim-bulb like you, I'll make it simple: Pretend I have a huge warehouse that I need illuminated for the next year. I can buy a few very expensive LED arrays (and still end up with shadows), or a ton of cheap florescents, and get complete coverage.
As per the article, I don't care about electrical costs. Maintenance? If a cheap bulb burns out, leave it be - there are a few thousand more still running (I said it was a HUGE warehouse, right?), nobody will notice. The LED array? One gone, I've got a huge blacked-out area, and I'm going to have to shell out $$$ for new equipment, plus down time. Some guy wacks one with a forklift - big bucks.
At the end of the year, most of the lightbulbs are still working. But now I've decided to partition the warehouse (the equivalent of changing the computing workload) ... and there's no way that the LED arrays can be positioned properly to illuminate every area, so I have to go and buy some more. The lightbulbs? No need for new ones, and any dimwit - maybe even you - can replace a fluorescent tube.
Let's try again, shall we?
You don't have more than half of all nurses quitting their field entirely after a decade. That's the quantitative difference. In IT, it's not just the money (and the discriminatory lower pay for more work) and it's not just the sexism and it's not just the isolation - it's the whole ball of wax all rolled into one. That's the qualitative one. Nurses have mentors, nurses have other nurses on the job rather than being the "odd woman out", female nurses have a union so they can have any complaints about lower pay than male co-workers addressed or favoritism in promotions.
How would you like it if you learned that the guy working under you, who you are supervising as well as coding the same project, is being paid 50% more than you? Fifty percent! And that when he quit they offered him, on the spot, $10k more to stay? I'm sure you wouldn't be too happy. How would you like to be sitting in a meeting with 2 other women and 4-5 men, and the men are just making assertions, without any facts to back them up, and any time one of you points out a flaw and suggests a better way, you're just talked over like none of you have anything of value to offer, even though you've been around longer than the new guys and have more experience ...?
This is what is known as a hostile work environment, and it's the reality, more so in IT than anywhere else.
The "small percentage difference" that you cite is not based on the general population - it's based on those of both sexes still in the industry. That's your mathematical oversight. If a million women (way too small a number, btw) dropped out because of sexist practices, you now have a much smaller sample of women to draw your "small percentage difference" from.
So, let's make up some numbers, based somewhat loosely on the article, for illustrative purposes. If women make up 25% of the initial group going into IT, then for every 1,000,000 men, there are 333,333 women. Taken over 10 years, that's 10,000,000 men and 3,333,333 women. Now let's have 52% of the women drop out during that time because of the sexist practices, as per the article. Rounding, we have ~ 1.6 million women. It's from that already-depleted sample that you have your "minor difference".
This is relevant because you don't see a similar percentage of men dropping out for sexist practices.
In other words, you've already eliminated the majority of women who entered the field (never mind those who were discouraged from entering it in the first place) - the true unemployment rate is over 50% if you include those who wanted to work in the field but were forced out by its' hostile work environment, lower pay for women, and blocked career paths.
Yes, men have a hard time staying in the field after 50 - but if half of them dropped out within 10 years, you wouldn't be saying the same thing you're saying now. There would be all sorts of demands for things to change.
No, that's your paternalistic behaviour and bias showing through. I'm not trying to pick a fight here - I *am* trying to highlight an ongoing problem in the industry. Women have a shorter career arc in IT because of sexism. There's no getting around it. Being better isn't good enough.
I'm not buying it. A quick check of the site shows the following:
545,909 contractors, $462,697,171,00 paid out. Contractors have earned, on average, $847.57 TOTAL income. Considering the site has been around for more than a decade, that's not good. Heck, even writing a half-decent initial spec for a project is going to cost more than that.
I'll leave it to the amateurs, thanks.
And what happens when they hit 50? After all, as long as you're "just filling quotas" instead of hiring based on performance ...
Misogynist - a person who hates, dislikes, mistrusts, or mistreats women.
Casual sexism is misogyny
When a workplace misogynist comes calling
Beauty and misogyny: harmful cultural practices in the West pp 115ff, dealing with the workplace.
Misogeny isn't just about the greek root word, and not all misogynists are looking to beat the pulp out of women.
1. Lower failure rates mean less, not more, maintenance expenditures.
2. The more robust general (non-gpu-based) system can handle those failures better because the workload is distributed over a greater number of cores
3. The more robust system can also handle any future workload that doesn't translate easily into a gpu-based solution
4. Electricity was specifically not an issue - it was someone else's cost - which you failed to realize because you always post stupidity. Who's to say that maintenance isn't also someone else's cost? So don't make up an issue where there is none.
5. anyone looking at my profile will see what it stands for, you ignorant clod!
6. you're still smarting from the smackdown clone54321 gave you last year? You really are pathetic.
Besides, the 63% of women in IT who have been sexually harassed - double the average across all industries - would also disagree with you.
Being groped by some clod certainly falls within the spectrum of behaviour of men who think women are lesser beings.
So why not read about a study that examined the issues as to why more than half of all women who start out in the field quit well before they hit 50 - sexual harassment, a toxic work environment, *any* failure being the "kiss of death" to a career, isolation, lack of peers and mentors, etc.
None of these have a bearing on how well a woman can do her job. And the 63% of women in IT who report being sexually harassed is double the 31% across all employers - also a scary number.
Here - the results of this study might help put things into perspective http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/319212/Why_Women_Quit_Technology
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/319212/Why_Women_Quit_Technology
It's not "meaningless statistical noise." More than half of all women quit because of the sexist behaviour.
So, when you eliminate more than half of all those who started out well before they hit 50 ... it's not just statistical noise, it's not "I'm married, and hubby will pay the bills", and it's not a failure to keep up-to-date on skills. Unlike your anecdotal evidence, studies say it's the toxic environment.
But just look at your own "reason" #2 for an example of sexism.
Small businesses are the largest employer, and unfortunately, most small businesses doesn't have "diversity initiatives" - they're just too small.
Not everyone subscribes to the "up or out" mentality ...here on /. we hear that complaint often enough - some people actually like being able to express their creativity by writing code, are good at it, and don't want the increased back-biting and ever-nastier office politics that come with moving up the food chain. There's more than enough of that even at the lowest levels.
Think of it - if a guy is pushy as a boss, he's perceived as a "leader", and a "gets the job done" type, whereas a woman acting the same way is going to be called a few not-so-choice terms, all gender-specific ("b*tch", "c*nt", "butch", "dyke", "she's PMSing") - and not always behind her back. And if the woman isn't pushy, the perception is "she hasn't got the b*lls to do the job", even if the end results are the same or better. Perception has always been what guides prejudice and gender bias - not the facts.
Meetings? Women quickly learn that they can't just say things like "We should do it my way", but rather "Has anyone considered trying ____?" The first way is seen as a challenge/attack by too many men (and there's always at least one in every meeting who will see it that way). And of course later on, some guy will end up taking the credit, since after all, the woman didn't "claim it" as her own.
Another contributing factor as to why there so few women? Perhaps it's because IT is known for the "management by shouting" that goes on (not to mention the chair-throwing and other childish behaviour). Men don't like it that they "have to watch their mouths" around women, no swearing, no sexist jokes, no screaming or shouting. No man likes it when a woman tells him, especially in front of co-workers, "If you ever raise your voice to me like that again, it will be the last time. I'll be gone before the echo stops." And no, there's no "discrete" way to handle it without sending the message that it's somehow okay to everyone else. So it's one of those "darned if you do, darned if you don't" scenarios, where if you don't protest, you're encouraging it, but if you name it and shame it, you're labeled a b*tch or worse.
Unfortunately, employers can't address the root of the problem because in too many cases, they ARE the root problem. Given a choice between a woman and a less qualified man, they'll take the man since it doesn't push their "comfort zone" and aligns nicely with their prejudices. So, like the quoted article states, eventually women, unlike men, are generally frozen out of IT by 50. Great if you're a man - less competition. Not so great if you're a woman who suddenly finds that even being better isn't "good enough."
I'm (somewhat) ashamed of you. He was asked the maximum, so it would have to be unsigned! Now, get back to work on the lawn :-)
Seriously, that people don't even know what a byte is? What next ... "how big is a bit?" "What's a nybble?"
Well, why not switch to straight assembler for a portion of the code and run some benchmarks? If it pans out, it might be worth the cost to re-do it all. You won't know if you don't try, and you'll find more than a few of those "over-35" types who actually MISS it.
You can't be serious ... bidding less than the minimum wage? It's very easy to lower your price, and very hard to raise it afterward ... especially when anyone can look at your history and know you'll work for next to nothing.
Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves - elance is you voluntarily slapping the chains back on.
Look who's the idiot - the article says they aren't paying for the power.
It has nothing to do with training, nothing to do with skill sets, and everything to do with the pervasive gender discrimination in IT, at all ages.
Really? 3 different explanations?
For context, the article talks about women who are IT professionals - women who have made their career in IT and now, at 50, the doors are suddenly closed. Not women in general. Women in IT.
It can't be because we're stuck at home raising the kids ... the kids are gone by then, or at least old enough to have their own door key ...
It can't be because of "lost years" to child-rearing - the article is clear when it states that, up until ~50, there was no such barrier ...
It can't be because we all have hubbies who are pulling down the big bux so we don't "need a job as badly as a man does" ...
It can't be because men the same age are equally affected, when the stats say otherwise ...
It can't be because of voluntary retirement - the article is dealing with women who are actively seeking to continue their careers ...
So, I'd really like to hear these "3 reasons", and why any of them should be a more logical reason to "explain away" why women, but not men, are generally excluded by age 50. And while you're at it, you might try to also "explain away" the ongoing gender bias against women of all ages in IT.
Then ask yourself how you'd feel if a variation of your "reasons" were used to deny you, or one of your children, a parent, a friend or relative, an equal chance to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Would they still seem "reasonable?" Or are they just lame excuses to justify perpetuating something that is fundamentally wrong?
Or the 3rd alternative - which is the most likely - that it's just so all-pervasive that you're simply blind to it. That it's "normal" to deny IT jobs to women, but not men, beyond a certain age ... and to discount the opinions of equally-qualified and experienced women, when compared to men, whether it's in meetings, the decision-making process, promotions, etc.
Misogyny - it doesn't mean what you think it means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny
How is being cut out of the job market based on gender not both "a sexist prejudice" and "an oppression of females"?
Here - I'll quote the article linked from TFS again:
Men in the same age cohort aren't facing the same situation to such an extent that it's possible to make such a generalization for them.
Gender bias (to use your term) isn't just limited to women over 50 - it's all-pervasive in the developer world. I guess you've never been confronted with an employer saying "I'll never hire a woman because I can't scream at them." Sure, no woman is going to want to work in such an environment - but to be denied equal access to employment based on gender is the reality in IT, and to those on the receiving end, white-washing it by calling it "gender bias" doesn't change the fact, or the damage, any more than it would if it were "racial bias."