> gender differences appear to be greater in societies with greater gender equality and in which people have greater economic resources
I don't think this is a paradox at all. Discouraging 50% of the workforce talent pool is a wasteful luxury that only countries with abundant resources can afford.
I experienced this first hand when I moved to Sweden. I had never been made to feel like a freak for being a programmer until I moved to Sweden. I had never experienced being constantly excluded, discouraged and pushed away from technical activities in order to "rescue" me from things I'm being told me I'm not interested in.
I have a legal right to parental leave and I can get an IUD for free, so it's considered a paradox that there are so few female programmers in such an equal country. I don't see how there is a paradox.
Please keep in mind that if really true, it is not a binary thing. It’s a distribution. There are going to be plenty of women who are more interested in things than the median man, and there are plenty of men who are more interested in people than the median woman.
There are going to be plenty of women who are more interested in things than the median man
Probably. Distributions don't necessarily have a huge amount of overlap. For example, upper body strength is also a distribution but the overlap is so small that 95% of men have stronger arms than 95% of women. With something as general as aptitude for things vs people the overlap is probably much greater than that but not certain without more data.
When talking about populations, this should be implicitly assumed - just like that the experiment took place on Earth and the participants were breathing air. I don't know why this isn't burned into peoples brains with a big flashing neon sign, and why someone inevitably comes up with a counterargument of 'but not all X' when these things are discussed.
However I think the last sentence isn't as true as you make it out to be. I remember seeing statistic couple years back about this very subject and in that data woman had to be in the top 10% of "women who prefer working with things to people" to be as likely to work with things than "men who prefer to work with things to people" and it was pretty much same vice-versa.
The definition of working with people vs. working with things doesn't seem obvious to me. As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer. Therefore I must be working with things! But... I am just as much working with my soft skills. Scrum retros, talking to stakeholders, discussions on design with fellow engineers, testing with end-users. Some days I don't spend even a minute working with "things".
I don't think the distinction of working with people vs working with things is clear enough to say wheter my job means I am doing the one or the other. So how could the participants in the study do the same? I'm assuming there are lots of occupations in this grey zone and even situations where in one company the same occupation is considered working with people while in another company it would be considered working with things.
I can see multiple issues the study runs into which would be interesting to see how/if it answers. A) Does it measure peoples perception of wheter they work with people or thing? B) Do the authors make their own interpretation of which occupations lands in which category? How do they then eliminate their own biases in what working with that occupation means? C) Did the authors observe the participants and make a judgement call based on their day-to-day activity? This would likely be the most accurate, but I can't imagine they did this because of the sheer cost of such an experiment.
I think it’s pretty clear to me. I am much happier to be quietly doing research, writing code, testing, writing documentation, fixing bugs, writing emails, etc. Now stick me in a meeting and I soon become very unhappy. Why? Because I’m really not interested in listening to people complain about stuff unrelated to my tasks or giving updates about random stuff or whatever.
Now I don’t mind socializing with people at work and making a bit of small talk but I have zero interest in the sort of collaborative work that involves daily meetings. I’m far more productive when I can be left alone to focus on the task and it drives me crazy when people constantly interrupt me.
A bricklayer works with things. Daycare staff work with people. These are very clear-cut.
Then there are a lot of points along that continuum -- nurses and HR reps work mostly with people. Economists a little of both. Software engineers and carpenters mostly with things.
We may not agree on a complete ordering but we will get reasonably close to each other, I suppose.
>As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer. Therefore I must be working with things! But... I am just as much working with my soft skills. Scrum retros, talking to stakeholders, discussions on design with fellow engineers, testing with end-users. Some days I don't spend even a minute working with "things".
Yes but did you join the profession for the Scrum meetings or for the programming?
software is an industry that supports both types of workers, and you probably can pick out amongst your working group which ones are the people who prefer things vs people. your job may ask you to do soft work, but that doesn’t mean you prefer it
I know some of my friends who would never like to work with people through things (like computers or the Internet). They prefer to have a real office or retail with actual persons around them and don't like working in solitude physically (and a co-working does not cut it for them).
This is a comment only an engineer could come up with. It's not a "grey zone" ffs. You compare talking to people in order to do your job with teaching a class of pubescent kids or wiping old people's asses. Those are not even remotely comparable.
I've never heard it called "working with things", but it is true for me. I love working with things. I dislike working with people so much that I have actively refused efforts to move me into lead and management type roles.
There is nothing wrong about having male dominated roles and female dominated roles, pushing equity down everyone's throat only profits corporation exploiting the less fortuned.
It is well known in healthcare that women are better nurses and males are better surgeons, in general.
> Instead, it was those countries with greater uncertainty avoidance that had larger differences in interests in people/things between men and women. Uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree to which a culture teaches its members to feel unpleasant in situations that are new, not previously known, surprising, or generally just different from usual.
I wouldn't mind seeing a ranking of countries by uncertainty avoidance. That sounds interesting enough itself.
I worked in a financial company in Norway as a consultant for few years on IT project. In a division with over 20 people only 2 were women with one of them being an immigrant from a not-so-rich country. My boss even complained few times that the upper management put pressure on him to do something about it, but he simply cannot find suitable women.
Then at the management level things were more even. Like 30 % were women.
Then there was a few programmers and system administrators from India working on outsourced projects . Like 50% were women. Yet anything related to management position in Indian company was exclusively for men. That was including minor management roles like a team lead even when everybody else on the team was woman.
I hope people don't jump to the conclusion that they like what they like because of their gender. It could be equally attributed to what they're working with. As in, you like what you know. I've never worked in a people heavy environment, so I couldn't say I like working in one.
The article speaks in very broad terms but there are precise preferential differences by sex.
More than just working with things males tend to prefer working with tools more than building new things. Yes there are many males that are creative and only prefer creating original works, but not most. When it comes to working with things females, unlike males, tend to prefer the ideas of things, theory, more than the implementation or practical application, which may speak to planning.
There was a recently published study that females across the world score higher in cognitive (learned) empathy than males. The same study found no distinction by sex in innate (natural) empathy.
None of this should come as a surprise. For decades we have known that females score higher in agreeability and males score higher in assertiveness. As such females will tend to position themselves into interests of lower social friction and higher direct engagement than males. Males will tend to position their interests into areas of greater critical reasoning at sacrifice to social engagement than will females. Yet despite that most males remain fully unwilling to distance their interests from those that are perceived as higher value by their group dynamics.
So, they have linked different sexual reproductive strategies to differences in behavior.
That cannot be that surprising, right? Different sexual reproductive strategies almost necessitate differences in behavior in general, if the strategies are different enough, which they most certainly are for any kind of mammal or bird.
Given the many examples of wildly different behaviors between the sexes in other species - bower birds as an example - any lack of specific behavioral differences would be surprising.
It's also no surprising that this sex differences (I don't think these are gender differences; these are the differences that shape gender) are more prevalent in societies with greater economic prosperity; it allows the individuals to follow their own generic preferences, unburdened by economic pressure.
You can try to take whatever job is available, but if you're a typical "people person" you're less likely to have developed the skills to get hired in most technical jobs, and if you're a more technically-oriented person you're less likely to have developed the people skills to get hired in jobs where those are important.
Almost anyone can develop either, but when they don't, through whatever combination of chance and default temperament.... very few employers will give someone a chance at crossing that divide without some prior indication the prospective employee will be decent at it, because chances are they won't be.
> in many situations there is not much of a choice.
The problem with this explanation is - the more choice women have - the BIGGER the difference.
In countries where life is hard - women are more likely to work in STEM than in countries where you can live a good life working anywhere (or not at all).
i find it interesting that the study minimizes the “working with people” aspects of executive roles.
working with people may be the most important piece of an executive yet they ignore the “working with people” aspects and try to shoehorn it into a data driven role.
seems like an absurd and arbitrary category definition.
I think this is a worthwhile study but also think we place too much emphasis on personality types.
My wife studied primary (elementary) school teaching for 4 years and then was a teacher for over 6 years. After she became tired of the profession she was able to self-teach web dev for 9 months using Udemy and now has been working as a software developer for roughly a year now.
Nominally a study like this might have put her into the caring profession box a few years ago but she is professionally ambidextrous, and likely other people surveyed will be too.
Yes, he was very careful in his wording and close to 100% correct.
What the outrage mob did was as follows:
1. Change preference to ability: so "the research suggests that women, on average, prefer to do things other than code" to "women can't code"
2. Change a statistical argument to an essentialist one. So "on average" to "no women"
3. Change the population/sample from the general population to "people who work at Google". So at this point we have gone from "in the general population, there appear to be more men who like the sorts of tasks associated with coding than women who like the same kinds of tasks" to "Women at Google can't code"
4. Get horribly upset about someone claiming that they can't code.
5. Use the demonstrable fact of their being so horribly upset as evidence that he is the one creating a toxic work environment.
6. Voilà, he just has to go.
(7. Also: claim, falsely, that there is no research for what he said)
This multi-level shifting of definitions and wording is a common pattern, so something to watch out for.
You don't need confirmations like that to say he was right. He was right, and we know that because his arguments were (relatively) well-built, so they are really worth considering.
[+] [-] unknownsky|3 years ago|reply
I don't think this is a paradox at all. Discouraging 50% of the workforce talent pool is a wasteful luxury that only countries with abundant resources can afford.
I experienced this first hand when I moved to Sweden. I had never been made to feel like a freak for being a programmer until I moved to Sweden. I had never experienced being constantly excluded, discouraged and pushed away from technical activities in order to "rescue" me from things I'm being told me I'm not interested in.
I have a legal right to parental leave and I can get an IUD for free, so it's considered a paradox that there are so few female programmers in such an equal country. I don't see how there is a paradox.
[+] [-] baron816|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] causi|3 years ago|reply
Probably. Distributions don't necessarily have a huge amount of overlap. For example, upper body strength is also a distribution but the overlap is so small that 95% of men have stronger arms than 95% of women. With something as general as aptitude for things vs people the overlap is probably much greater than that but not certain without more data.
[+] [-] torginus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextlevelwizard|3 years ago|reply
However I think the last sentence isn't as true as you make it out to be. I remember seeing statistic couple years back about this very subject and in that data woman had to be in the top 10% of "women who prefer working with things to people" to be as likely to work with things than "men who prefer to work with things to people" and it was pretty much same vice-versa.
[+] [-] Laaas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] postsantum|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catears|3 years ago|reply
I don't think the distinction of working with people vs working with things is clear enough to say wheter my job means I am doing the one or the other. So how could the participants in the study do the same? I'm assuming there are lots of occupations in this grey zone and even situations where in one company the same occupation is considered working with people while in another company it would be considered working with things.
I can see multiple issues the study runs into which would be interesting to see how/if it answers. A) Does it measure peoples perception of wheter they work with people or thing? B) Do the authors make their own interpretation of which occupations lands in which category? How do they then eliminate their own biases in what working with that occupation means? C) Did the authors observe the participants and make a judgement call based on their day-to-day activity? This would likely be the most accurate, but I can't imagine they did this because of the sheer cost of such an experiment.
[+] [-] chongli|3 years ago|reply
Now I don’t mind socializing with people at work and making a bit of small talk but I have zero interest in the sort of collaborative work that involves daily meetings. I’m far more productive when I can be left alone to focus on the task and it drives me crazy when people constantly interrupt me.
[+] [-] kqr|3 years ago|reply
Then there are a lot of points along that continuum -- nurses and HR reps work mostly with people. Economists a little of both. Software engineers and carpenters mostly with things.
We may not agree on a complete ordering but we will get reasonably close to each other, I suppose.
[+] [-] Scarblac|3 years ago|reply
Yes but did you join the profession for the Scrum meetings or for the programming?
[+] [-] ajuc|3 years ago|reply
When you're working how often are you thinking about other person's state of mind vs a state of some inanimate (or abstract) object?
Ultimately almost all the jobs are done in groups, including stuff like coal mining. But people aren't your focus there.
[+] [-] AlexTWithBeard|3 years ago|reply
And with ChatGPT coming up we all will have soon to resort to a mixture of arguing, begging and threatening to make computers do what we want.
[+] [-] foolfoolz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therealmarv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emsy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ajuc|3 years ago|reply
In Poland accounting is traditionally a female occupation. I know 0 male accountants and like 20 female ones.
[+] [-] torginus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irrational|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psyfi|3 years ago|reply
It is well known in healthcare that women are better nurses and males are better surgeons, in general.
[+] [-] guerrilla|3 years ago|reply
I wouldn't mind seeing a ranking of countries by uncertainty avoidance. That sounds interesting enough itself.
[+] [-] _trampeltier|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _0w8t|3 years ago|reply
I worked in a financial company in Norway as a consultant for few years on IT project. In a division with over 20 people only 2 were women with one of them being an immigrant from a not-so-rich country. My boss even complained few times that the upper management put pressure on him to do something about it, but he simply cannot find suitable women.
Then at the management level things were more even. Like 30 % were women.
Then there was a few programmers and system administrators from India working on outsourced projects . Like 50% were women. Yet anything related to management position in Indian company was exclusively for men. That was including minor management roles like a team lead even when everybody else on the team was woman.
[+] [-] byrnedo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austin-cheney|3 years ago|reply
More than just working with things males tend to prefer working with tools more than building new things. Yes there are many males that are creative and only prefer creating original works, but not most. When it comes to working with things females, unlike males, tend to prefer the ideas of things, theory, more than the implementation or practical application, which may speak to planning.
There was a recently published study that females across the world score higher in cognitive (learned) empathy than males. The same study found no distinction by sex in innate (natural) empathy.
None of this should come as a surprise. For decades we have known that females score higher in agreeability and males score higher in assertiveness. As such females will tend to position themselves into interests of lower social friction and higher direct engagement than males. Males will tend to position their interests into areas of greater critical reasoning at sacrifice to social engagement than will females. Yet despite that most males remain fully unwilling to distance their interests from those that are perceived as higher value by their group dynamics.
[+] [-] afpx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexTWithBeard|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] esarbe|3 years ago|reply
That cannot be that surprising, right? Different sexual reproductive strategies almost necessitate differences in behavior in general, if the strategies are different enough, which they most certainly are for any kind of mammal or bird.
Given the many examples of wildly different behaviors between the sexes in other species - bower birds as an example - any lack of specific behavioral differences would be surprising.
It's also no surprising that this sex differences (I don't think these are gender differences; these are the differences that shape gender) are more prevalent in societies with greater economic prosperity; it allows the individuals to follow their own generic preferences, unburdened by economic pressure.
[+] [-] sourcecodeplz|3 years ago|reply
Reality is though, in many situations there is not much of a choice. You gotta eat and will take whatever job is available.
I personally have had jobs where I've been going in with pleasure and others when I would have rather stayed home.
[+] [-] harshreality|3 years ago|reply
Almost anyone can develop either, but when they don't, through whatever combination of chance and default temperament.... very few employers will give someone a chance at crossing that divide without some prior indication the prospective employee will be decent at it, because chances are they won't be.
[+] [-] ajuc|3 years ago|reply
The problem with this explanation is - the more choice women have - the BIGGER the difference.
In countries where life is hard - women are more likely to work in STEM than in countries where you can live a good life working anywhere (or not at all).
[+] [-] toofy|3 years ago|reply
working with people may be the most important piece of an executive yet they ignore the “working with people” aspects and try to shoehorn it into a data driven role.
seems like an absurd and arbitrary category definition.
[+] [-] tareqak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jdthedisciple|3 years ago|reply
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PjE_yaJjXE8
Very enlightening imom
[+] [-] yung_steezy|3 years ago|reply
My wife studied primary (elementary) school teaching for 4 years and then was a teacher for over 6 years. After she became tired of the profession she was able to self-teach web dev for 9 months using Udemy and now has been working as a software developer for roughly a year now.
Nominally a study like this might have put her into the caring profession box a few years ago but she is professionally ambidextrous, and likely other people surveyed will be too.
[+] [-] epicureanideal|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergocoder|3 years ago|reply
"a good number of the people you [Damore] might have to work with may simply punch you in the face"
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
I have no idea why this guy Yonatan is still allowed to work anywhere.
[+] [-] mpweiher|3 years ago|reply
What the outrage mob did was as follows:
1. Change preference to ability: so "the research suggests that women, on average, prefer to do things other than code" to "women can't code"
2. Change a statistical argument to an essentialist one. So "on average" to "no women"
3. Change the population/sample from the general population to "people who work at Google". So at this point we have gone from "in the general population, there appear to be more men who like the sorts of tasks associated with coding than women who like the same kinds of tasks" to "Women at Google can't code"
4. Get horribly upset about someone claiming that they can't code.
5. Use the demonstrable fact of their being so horribly upset as evidence that he is the one creating a toxic work environment.
6. Voilà, he just has to go.
(7. Also: claim, falsely, that there is no research for what he said)
This multi-level shifting of definitions and wording is a common pattern, so something to watch out for.
[+] [-] tick_tock_tick|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnull|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiousguy|3 years ago|reply
One of the best pg articles imo:
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] exolymph|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rowanG077|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|3 years ago|reply
He made more points than men prefer things and women prefer people.
If you make 1000 points, and one of them is right, it doesn't make the other 999 right.