[Semkas]

I have aspergers, and empathize with the feeling that society doesn't much care about our struggle (or, for that matter, knows how to deal with anyone who isn't neurotypical).

One thing I have come to realize though (and I know this will be controversial on here) is that SV and tech in general is this special place where people with limited social skills can go to work for really high salaries to create things of often dubious societal value.

I remember reading in a similar article that many "classical-liberal" types think that the wage-gap between man and woman may be caused by the fact that woman are naturally less competitive. Meaning that they are less careerist. This is of course a failure of meritocracy, in the same way that charisma often trumps skill at a job (which is the big problem for anti social men).

Here is my point: we have these different failures of meritocracy affecting different people, but for people (mostly men) with aspergers there is this special, well paying, industry. So I don't know that we have it that bad, or that efforts to attract more woman (even if you consider the given reasons to be bogus) are really misguided.

[greenrd]

> This is of course a failure of meritocracy, in the same way that charisma often trumps skill at a job (which is the big problem for anti social men).

It isn't a failure of meritocracy - in both cases, it's a failure to achieve meritocracy. Pet peeve.

And arguably the best solution to the lack of confidence in women problem is a two step process: to (a) educate women on the difference so that they can (b) try to address it themselves, if they choose to do so. If a woman wants to be a housewife or a teacher, what's wrong with that?

> So I don't know that we have it that bad, or that efforts to attract more woman (even if you consider the given reasons to be bogus) are really misguided.

To attract more women into tech in the numbers wanted, the only way is to solve the pipeline problem - encouraging girls at a relatively young age to choose programming as a career, and encouraging them to stick with their STEM major in the face of adversity (but ultimately it's their choice, of course). But multiple times on Twitter, I've seen the pipeline problem sneered at, ignored, or downplayed, by women who claim to be supporting women in tech. They've even sometimes attempted to shame me for focusing on the pipeline problem, as if it was somehow grubby and unhelpful.

The reality is, poaching female employees from one company to another achieves precisely zero for gender diversity in the industry as a whole, good as it may be for one company's PR in terms of its own gender numbers.

[catdograbbit]

> I remember reading in a similar article that many "classical-liberal" types think that the wage-gap between man and woman may be caused by the fact that woman are naturally less competitive. Meaning that they are less careerist. This is of course a failure of meritocracy, in the same way that charisma often trumps skill at a job (which is the big problem for anti social men).

How is this a failure of the meritocracy? To me, this is the meritocracy working correctly and succeeding. A competitive person will naturally work harder to improve their skills because they have a greater desire to be the best. In a true meritocracy, you'd expect them to outperform less competitive people.

[mcguire]

Are you really faster if you won the race by tripping your competitors?

[hateduser2]

The act that you don’t see the value in charisma says nothin about whether or not it should trump productivity. I think it’s highly reasonable that it would and maybe obvious that it should.

[Semkas]

I see the value in charisma, but it seems uncontroversial to me that what most people consider "fair" is hiring people for their skill at a job, not their ability to make the interviewer like them.

[chrisbroadfoot]

Charisma is a valuable skill as a software engineer. Have you ever needed to convince another team to implement a feature for you? Charisma helps greatly with that.

[yorwba]

Have you ever convinced someone to do something which turned out to be a bad idea? Charisma is a social amplifier. If what it is amplifying isn't good enough, more charisma only hurts instead of helping.

Essentially, you need just enough charisma to avoid being steamrolled by others when you're right and they are not, while not having enough to steamroll them when it's the other way around.