From what I understand, the hackathon itself was advertised from the start as "50 men/50 women". When 50 men signed up, they stopped accepting male applicants.
So they did find 50 women that wanted to attend a hackathon, but they did it by leaving the door open for women to attend when otherwise the entire hackathon would have filled up with men. Not mentioning that approach in their blog post seems ... disingenuous.
That's not entirely accurate. We needed to control the number of attendees to accomodate the venue's space constraints. We set aside 100 tickets, 50 male and 50 female. The male tickets sold out first, then the women's. We then opened up the waitlist in batches as people changed their RSVPs.
Eventbrite made this pretty confusing, as you can't waitlist more than 1 type of ticket (e.g. we couldn't waitlist male and female tickets). We'll come up with a better system for the next one.
I understand some people having trouble with reading comprehension, but.... that's the very first line of the post.
I'm not sure what the problem is with that, but getting 50 women to a hackathon, much less any event, is quite an achievement. Perhaps you should focus on that, rather than immediately poking holes?
Lots of events work this way...take the Boston Marathon, for example, which has more forgiving qualifying times for women to ensure that it's not overly-male dominated.
I was at this hackathon. Sure, if you micromanage every single aspect of the event, you're going to achieve what you set out, but getting people to hack together over a weekend does not create a culture in which men and women can collaborate and work together after the event is over.
Specifically, as a guy, I found some of the marketing material distributed at the event pretty offputting. Most of the stuff was color-coded, either pink or blue, and that was the first weird thing. Why would you reinforce the traditional gender roles like this if you are truly trying to change them?
Second, I didn't keep the materials, but as I recall there was one that was making the suggestion that "every fairy tale starts this way." Well, maybe, but that suggestion is not really welcome in a professional setting. I wonder if that's the right approach to encourage guys to start taking women seriously in the work setting.
Bottomline, the motivation of the event is commendable, and I am all for adding more women to the technology sector, but adding sex into the promotion of a hackathon, and so badly, will not get us there.
I was there, too, and I came away with different impressions. A big part of hackathons is meeting other devs and sharing product/project ideas. Then if you find you like working with someone over the weekend, you're more likely to do so in the future. So it seems like having a hackathon where they reach out specifically to women would be very conducive to helping women feel more a part of the scene.
Their swag certainly had a blue and pink/red palette (see also their website: http://www.hacknjill.com/), but it wasn't color coded. They just handed out bags of stuff, and you got whatever happened to be in them. Similarly, the t-shirts had the logo and whatnot on them, but they were all the same design IIRC. The color palette reminds me of an instagram photo, which fit with their hackyoursummer motif.
I don't remember that marketing line anywhere, and upon a cursory glance, I don't see it on their site, but even if it was, so what? Whimsy is commonplaces in marketing materials these days, and is definitely something you see in a light-hearted professional setting. This isn't a corporate-lawyer lawyer-a-thon where one would expect things to be staid, it's a casual hackathon.
Interesting, I have been told that (many) women prefer not to have their real names published online especially not in connection with a particular real-life event they are attending. It multiplies that amount of harassment they are open to.
That's an interesting point, and one I hadn't thought of. I'd argue that it probably depends on the nature of the event and what you're looking to get out of it. (e.g. if you're coming to a hackathon without a team, it's probably in your best interest to make your name public).
We'll definitely consider an opt-in box for the next go-around.
In running similar events in the past, I have found adding a single checkbox to the sign up form labeled 'Please include my name and contact information in the official attendee list' is both simple and effective.
It's great to see that the list of changes to make does not include anything enormous, ground-breaking or incredibly difficult. The author is basically proposing a few subtle changes to the tone of the hackathon -- I'm glad to see it had such a huge impact.
There is no evidence that the huge impact was caused by these subtle changes. It is far more likely that the even gender split was obtained by the ticket quotas omitted in the original post. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4282226
Is it just me or does all this talk about women in tech and efforts to balance things out (artificially) just devalue what good work women engineers are doing?
It's the classic affirmative action problem: if you lower the bar for one group in the eyes of everyone else members of that group are viewed as having less merit regardless of whether or not its true.
I'm all for having more good female engineers because I'm all for having more good engineers (male or female). The counterargument seems to be that women find the male dominance of tech intimidating or engineering careers aren't presented to women as possibilities. If there is gender bias is science/engineering/maths classes or with career guidance and so forth then I'm all for eliminating that.
But as far as the first goes, I have two words for you: Grace Hopper.
This isn't a quality problem: it is a cultural problem. There are enough high-quality women programmers out there to have 50/50 gender balance (obviously). It does not usually happen because of self-perpetuating social dynamics.
I notice you are only in favor of interventions that don't require you to do anything. What if overcoming bias required you, and everyone like you, to take a step back and create space where women can participate? Would you be willing to forgo participation in a hackathon to an equally-qualified women so that the other women would find it a more welcoming space?
I would, because the comfort of more-than-one woman is more important to me than my own participation. If I don't have a hackathon to participate in I can always start one of my own; I don't need to see participation as a zero-sum competition with the women and men around me.
> Is it just me or does all this talk about women in tech and efforts to balance things out (artificially) just devalue what good work women engineers are doing?
It's just you. No one is asking to accept sub-par work.
The problem with the Grace Hooper example is that she is from back when programming was still considered a "secretarial" and "womanly" profession. Software Engineering has become a more male-dominated since then and the percentage of women has gone down.
I'm female and I believe this is true to some extent, but that the good work done by women engineers and women in tech groups outweighs it.
It is hard going to an event and wondering if people think I was invited for free because I'm a woman. Going to a hackathon and having people believe I'm a designer on sight. Having people nod their heads understandingly when I mention I'm a PM, not a full time engineer (any more).
It's rare, but once you get a touch of the impostor syndrome it's very hard to shake. I'd believe rationally that 90% of the people at one of these events would be ready to embrace me for my abilities and not care about my gender. The people I work with certainly do an outstanding job of that. I've just had enough odd comments and sceptical looks that I believe there's a grain of truth to the paranoia.
On the flipside, the last Startup Weekend I went to was SWEDU, where I worked with two other female iOS engineers, a female marketer and a male teacher to pull out an awesome iOS learning game in less than 54 hours. So.. good things do happen. :)
> if you lower the bar for one group in the eyes of everyone else members of that group are viewed as having less merit regardless of whether or not its true.
Meanwhile, the group of people who got in thanks to affirmative action keep proving the nay-sayers wrong, and setting examples for people like them to follow them into the field.
You can't eliminate gender bias simply by removing barriers to entry. You have to actively encourage people to enter, otherwise they will never even consider it. The term of art here is “substantive equality” and I'd encourage you to Google it to read more arguments in favor and opposed to it.
So for me, to be honest, I would be excited to go to this type of event because I hardly ever interact with women. Which is just because my life is sad. LOL.
But anyway, I think that to sell it to men would be pretty easy: tell them "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!".
To sell it to the women, you would probably tell them the same thing: "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!" The motivation for the women would be to finally get do work in an environment that wasn't completely saturated with men.
Then of course you have to limit the number of men you allow in. The real trick I think is just finding enough women who are in tech, can commit to going to the event, and convincing them that there really will be lots of women there. I think the secret to that is to access to and pull in existing networks of women in technology.
Hey ilaksh, some of what you have said is actually a big part of the problem. At professional events, you should refrain from seeing women there as holding the potential for interaction outside of a professional setting. Sexualizing women you meet in such contexts is NOT okay.
Change the genders and you see how fucking ridiculous it is. 'How we got 50 men to go to our [stereotypically female activity].
Have fun with stereotyping yourselves...
"Feed People Well: Offer vegetarian-friendly options, salad, fruit, and wine in addition to the usual beer/pizza/redbull. We got at least a dozen thank-you’s specifically for having fruit with breakfast. Everyone likes healthy food – so why not go the extra mile?"
There are so many other demographics in tech that are also under-represented. African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies.
Every week on Twitter or HN I see great stories about people trying to advance women's presence in tech. I don't disagree with that movement at all. But I hear very few talking about the other subgroups in the male gender that may have obstacles from going into tech.
I don't see anything ridiculous to a post titled "How we got 50 men to go to our craft fair" or "How we got 50 men to our nursing career fair" or even "How we got 50 men to stop being sexist assholes".
It seems like you're being sarcastic, since the hackathon took place in the past and, therefore, signing up is no longer a possibility. Despite the exhaustive observations you surely made while not attending the event, I find your insinuation that only teams of back end developers have the qualifications required to organize hackathons to be facile and, frankly, untenable.
I think that the founders came from heterogenous backgrounds is, in fact, a positive thing. Part of the point of the hackathon was to create an environment that values different perspectives. The fact that the organizers have experienced the tech scene from avenues other than coding gives them different perspectives, which, all other things being equal, is probably a good thing.
Perhaps all else is not equal, but I'm not convinced. I volunteered at the hackathon. The hacks were quite good and--possibly more importantly--the atmosphere was phenomenal. People worked and played well together, and a number of individuals made comments to me along the lines of the following:
- I feel really comfortable working at this hackathon.
- This hackathon is really well-organized.
- I appreciate that this hackathon doesn't require me to do unreasonable things like sleep in this office, or not sleep at all, or expect me to do tequila shots like other hackathons.
I'm sure a team of 4 back-end devs or 4 startup CEOs could have put together a similarly great hackathon. But is that sort of team composition a necessary condition for the event to have been a success? No.
Reladtedly, how funny/sad/appropriate is it that in a discussion involving the exclusion of females from the tech community, someone would protest that teams composed of non-developers should be excluded from organizing hackathons?
sure, having four devs organize this event would have been nice for credibility, but they wouldn't have necessarily throw a better hackathon just by being devs.
there's a learning curve to throwing good hackathons, just like with anything else. we talked to a ton of people before this event, including devs and other hackathon organizers, read every best practice we could find, and solicited a lot feedback from our attendees. sure, we made some mistakes (demos need to be queued up a la TC, peoples choice award needs to be fail-safe), but we'll fix them moving forward.
It is pretty amazing to see how much the term "hackathon" has been diluted in such a short time. How did we go from a very literal "a hacking marathon" where the developers of project X get together to hack non-stop for a week on their project to "non-programmers scraping together some off the shelf javascript/css frameworks into a trivial web app for a couple of hours, and then having some marketing person call it an awesome hack"?
From an evolutionary psychological standpoint I find this ridiculous:
Traditional standpoint is that men go to places where women are (e.g. bars) and hit on them. This requires a combination of various skills on the part of men, including resource acquisition (to be able to buy drinks for women), social skills, and the ability to be aggressive in a non-threatening way (e.g. to approach an attractive woman and chat her up).
There are of course many variations on this, but the skills that men ostensibly need to succeed in them are, generally speaking, some rough combination of the above -- which, perhaps unsurprisingly -- are some combination of the same skills that many women would want for a male partner (i.e. assertive, successful, socially capable, attractive).
The presence of these so-called "feminist" threads on HN often take the form of hackers, who presumably do not have all of the aforementioned skills, attempting to get women to come to them. I think it is reasonably obvious that the motivations include the fact that people who do not have all of the aforementioned capabilities and who are limited to incredible hacking skills, want to be able to succeed with women (e.g. obtain sex and/or relationship) on their own terms.
Personally, I believe this is both selfish and a violation of evolutionary norms. Certainly, there is a place for certain types of affirmative action, but in this case (and many like it) it is pretty clear that the action is not made so that the end product is better (i.e. better computer programs built in less time), but that nerds get babes.
While there may be some success with respect to the unstated motivation, I think the fundamental dishonesty with respect to the approach vector means that you will never attract the type of woman that you would ideally want to couple with (yes, I'm speaking primarily to a male audience here).
There may be "good enough" couplings insofar as there clearly is some appeal here from the standpoint of women, given the relatively high salary of nerds (I saw some unusual couplings
in silicon valley along these lines, particularly in the South Bay), but I don't think this is a very good strategy long term.
At the very least, I think the motivations need to be clear. Why do dudes in industries that are dominated by dudes want to have women around them in the work place so bad? Yes, we know why, and so do most women. There are other reasons of course, but we have to be honest about all of them when we are coming up with a supposed "solution."
Wow, I have to say this was a pretty disgusting comment. Didn't expect to see this on HN.
If you start your post off with any variant of "from an evolutionary psychological standpoint" in a thread about sexism/feminist issues you need to seriously consider not clicking the "add comment" button. Also, look up "projection". I can honestly tell you that no, the reason I support women in tech is absolutely not so I can "get babes."
It was organized by women. I presume that if she wanted babies she would have them. Sperm is not that expensive.
Programmers who happen to be women are coworkers, not baby-making machines. Your attitude is so wrong I don't even know where to start, except to suggest that you clearly don't understand emergence, evolution or humanity.
[+] [-] roguecoder|13 years ago|reply
So they did find 50 women that wanted to attend a hackathon, but they did it by leaving the door open for women to attend when otherwise the entire hackathon would have filled up with men. Not mentioning that approach in their blog post seems ... disingenuous.
[+] [-] lgilchrist|13 years ago|reply
Eventbrite made this pretty confusing, as you can't waitlist more than 1 type of ticket (e.g. we couldn't waitlist male and female tickets). We'll come up with a better system for the next one.
[+] [-] anthonyb|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure what the problem is with that, but getting 50 women to a hackathon, much less any event, is quite an achievement. Perhaps you should focus on that, rather than immediately poking holes?
[+] [-] joeyduds|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] picardo|13 years ago|reply
Specifically, as a guy, I found some of the marketing material distributed at the event pretty offputting. Most of the stuff was color-coded, either pink or blue, and that was the first weird thing. Why would you reinforce the traditional gender roles like this if you are truly trying to change them?
Second, I didn't keep the materials, but as I recall there was one that was making the suggestion that "every fairy tale starts this way." Well, maybe, but that suggestion is not really welcome in a professional setting. I wonder if that's the right approach to encourage guys to start taking women seriously in the work setting.
Bottomline, the motivation of the event is commendable, and I am all for adding more women to the technology sector, but adding sex into the promotion of a hackathon, and so badly, will not get us there.
[+] [-] notJim|13 years ago|reply
Their swag certainly had a blue and pink/red palette (see also their website: http://www.hacknjill.com/), but it wasn't color coded. They just handed out bags of stuff, and you got whatever happened to be in them. Similarly, the t-shirts had the logo and whatnot on them, but they were all the same design IIRC. The color palette reminds me of an instagram photo, which fit with their hackyoursummer motif.
I don't remember that marketing line anywhere, and upon a cursory glance, I don't see it on their site, but even if it was, so what? Whimsy is commonplaces in marketing materials these days, and is definitely something you see in a light-hearted professional setting. This isn't a corporate-lawyer lawyer-a-thon where one would expect things to be staid, it's a casual hackathon.
[+] [-] sp332|13 years ago|reply
Interesting, I have been told that (many) women prefer not to have their real names published online especially not in connection with a particular real-life event they are attending. It multiplies that amount of harassment they are open to.
[+] [-] lgilchrist|13 years ago|reply
We'll definitely consider an opt-in box for the next go-around.
[+] [-] phon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lbarrow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bwaldrep|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|13 years ago|reply
It's the classic affirmative action problem: if you lower the bar for one group in the eyes of everyone else members of that group are viewed as having less merit regardless of whether or not its true.
I'm all for having more good female engineers because I'm all for having more good engineers (male or female). The counterargument seems to be that women find the male dominance of tech intimidating or engineering careers aren't presented to women as possibilities. If there is gender bias is science/engineering/maths classes or with career guidance and so forth then I'm all for eliminating that.
But as far as the first goes, I have two words for you: Grace Hopper.
[+] [-] roguecoder|13 years ago|reply
This isn't a quality problem: it is a cultural problem. There are enough high-quality women programmers out there to have 50/50 gender balance (obviously). It does not usually happen because of self-perpetuating social dynamics.
I notice you are only in favor of interventions that don't require you to do anything. What if overcoming bias required you, and everyone like you, to take a step back and create space where women can participate? Would you be willing to forgo participation in a hackathon to an equally-qualified women so that the other women would find it a more welcoming space?
I would, because the comfort of more-than-one woman is more important to me than my own participation. If I don't have a hackathon to participate in I can always start one of my own; I don't need to see participation as a zero-sum competition with the women and men around me.
[+] [-] ceol|13 years ago|reply
It's just you. No one is asking to accept sub-par work.
[+] [-] MartinCron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ufo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlees|13 years ago|reply
It is hard going to an event and wondering if people think I was invited for free because I'm a woman. Going to a hackathon and having people believe I'm a designer on sight. Having people nod their heads understandingly when I mention I'm a PM, not a full time engineer (any more).
It's rare, but once you get a touch of the impostor syndrome it's very hard to shake. I'd believe rationally that 90% of the people at one of these events would be ready to embrace me for my abilities and not care about my gender. The people I work with certainly do an outstanding job of that. I've just had enough odd comments and sceptical looks that I believe there's a grain of truth to the paranoia.
On the flipside, the last Startup Weekend I went to was SWEDU, where I worked with two other female iOS engineers, a female marketer and a male teacher to pull out an awesome iOS learning game in less than 54 hours. So.. good things do happen. :)
[+] [-] notJim|13 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, the group of people who got in thanks to affirmative action keep proving the nay-sayers wrong, and setting examples for people like them to follow them into the field.
You can't eliminate gender bias simply by removing barriers to entry. You have to actively encourage people to enter, otherwise they will never even consider it. The term of art here is “substantive equality” and I'd encourage you to Google it to read more arguments in favor and opposed to it.
[+] [-] drhowarddrfine|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ilaksh|13 years ago|reply
But anyway, I think that to sell it to men would be pretty easy: tell them "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!".
To sell it to the women, you would probably tell them the same thing: "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!" The motivation for the women would be to finally get do work in an environment that wasn't completely saturated with men.
Then of course you have to limit the number of men you allow in. The real trick I think is just finding enough women who are in tech, can commit to going to the event, and convincing them that there really will be lots of women there. I think the secret to that is to access to and pull in existing networks of women in technology.
[+] [-] ahelwer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theyCallMeSwift|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lallysingh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ixacto|13 years ago|reply
Have fun with stereotyping yourselves... "Feed People Well: Offer vegetarian-friendly options, salad, fruit, and wine in addition to the usual beer/pizza/redbull. We got at least a dozen thank-you’s specifically for having fruit with breakfast. Everyone likes healthy food – so why not go the extra mile?"
[+] [-] jaems33|13 years ago|reply
Every week on Twitter or HN I see great stories about people trying to advance women's presence in tech. I don't disagree with that movement at all. But I hear very few talking about the other subgroups in the male gender that may have obstacles from going into tech.
[+] [-] MartinCron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahelwer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fearfries|13 years ago|reply
I think that the founders came from heterogenous backgrounds is, in fact, a positive thing. Part of the point of the hackathon was to create an environment that values different perspectives. The fact that the organizers have experienced the tech scene from avenues other than coding gives them different perspectives, which, all other things being equal, is probably a good thing.
Perhaps all else is not equal, but I'm not convinced. I volunteered at the hackathon. The hacks were quite good and--possibly more importantly--the atmosphere was phenomenal. People worked and played well together, and a number of individuals made comments to me along the lines of the following: - I feel really comfortable working at this hackathon. - This hackathon is really well-organized. - I appreciate that this hackathon doesn't require me to do unreasonable things like sleep in this office, or not sleep at all, or expect me to do tequila shots like other hackathons.
I'm sure a team of 4 back-end devs or 4 startup CEOs could have put together a similarly great hackathon. But is that sort of team composition a necessary condition for the event to have been a success? No.
Reladtedly, how funny/sad/appropriate is it that in a discussion involving the exclusion of females from the tech community, someone would protest that teams composed of non-developers should be excluded from organizing hackathons?
[+] [-] lgilchrist|13 years ago|reply
there's a learning curve to throwing good hackathons, just like with anything else. we talked to a ton of people before this event, including devs and other hackathon organizers, read every best practice we could find, and solicited a lot feedback from our attendees. sure, we made some mistakes (demos need to be queued up a la TC, peoples choice award needs to be fail-safe), but we'll fix them moving forward.
what would you have done differently?
[+] [-] HamiltonMD|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helen842000|13 years ago|reply
If they hadn't done all of the other stuff it may have been the case they sold 50 male tickets and zero female tickets.
People seem to assume that if tickets are there then women show up. It takes a lot of encouragement to get that to happen.
Also I'd like to add I'd be more encouraged to join a 50/50 style hackathon than a female only one. I think they did a great job.
[+] [-] cbsmith|13 years ago|reply
Men: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (male) even staff get that for you.
Which would surely work right? --particularly if you add a giggle about "staff" as a metaphor....
[+] [-] meanJim|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] papsosouid|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicolethenerd|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwhittemore|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herbig|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] MetalMASK|13 years ago|reply
Fundamentally a psychological problem. Whether the attendee can keep it professional or not would make or break this hackathon
[+] [-] Jd|13 years ago|reply
Traditional standpoint is that men go to places where women are (e.g. bars) and hit on them. This requires a combination of various skills on the part of men, including resource acquisition (to be able to buy drinks for women), social skills, and the ability to be aggressive in a non-threatening way (e.g. to approach an attractive woman and chat her up).
There are of course many variations on this, but the skills that men ostensibly need to succeed in them are, generally speaking, some rough combination of the above -- which, perhaps unsurprisingly -- are some combination of the same skills that many women would want for a male partner (i.e. assertive, successful, socially capable, attractive).
The presence of these so-called "feminist" threads on HN often take the form of hackers, who presumably do not have all of the aforementioned skills, attempting to get women to come to them. I think it is reasonably obvious that the motivations include the fact that people who do not have all of the aforementioned capabilities and who are limited to incredible hacking skills, want to be able to succeed with women (e.g. obtain sex and/or relationship) on their own terms.
Personally, I believe this is both selfish and a violation of evolutionary norms. Certainly, there is a place for certain types of affirmative action, but in this case (and many like it) it is pretty clear that the action is not made so that the end product is better (i.e. better computer programs built in less time), but that nerds get babes.
While there may be some success with respect to the unstated motivation, I think the fundamental dishonesty with respect to the approach vector means that you will never attract the type of woman that you would ideally want to couple with (yes, I'm speaking primarily to a male audience here).
There may be "good enough" couplings insofar as there clearly is some appeal here from the standpoint of women, given the relatively high salary of nerds (I saw some unusual couplings in silicon valley along these lines, particularly in the South Bay), but I don't think this is a very good strategy long term.
At the very least, I think the motivations need to be clear. Why do dudes in industries that are dominated by dudes want to have women around them in the work place so bad? Yes, we know why, and so do most women. There are other reasons of course, but we have to be honest about all of them when we are coming up with a supposed "solution."
[+] [-] ahelwer|13 years ago|reply
If you start your post off with any variant of "from an evolutionary psychological standpoint" in a thread about sexism/feminist issues you need to seriously consider not clicking the "add comment" button. Also, look up "projection". I can honestly tell you that no, the reason I support women in tech is absolutely not so I can "get babes."
Really, your post was unbelievable.
[+] [-] roguecoder|13 years ago|reply
Programmers who happen to be women are coworkers, not baby-making machines. Your attitude is so wrong I don't even know where to start, except to suggest that you clearly don't understand emergence, evolution or humanity.
[+] [-] hamax|13 years ago|reply
What king of bullshit is this?
[+] [-] mispy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bulltish|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Torgo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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