[zxxon]

>> ...the truth is that they have beautiful offices, close-knit teams, a lifestyle with time for friends, a lot of influence, and a huge impact on real people’s lives through the software they create.

That's not "the truth", that's your experience in the amusement park that has been created for the pampered developers of the current dotcom bubble at companies like Google. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Regardless of gender, I'd rather have the doubters weeded out by an unrealistic negative perception than have them lured in by an unrealistic positive one.

[jenthoven]

Fair, I apologize for generalizing. You're right that Google is an outlier in this way. But I still think that there's a perception that CS is more anti-social than it actually is, and a perception that other professions are more social than they actually are.

[zxxon]

In my experience, programmers are generally less socially inept than people would think, while people in most other professions are less socially adept than they think they are.

The thing is, some programmers really are socially inept and CS work is one of their last refuges. That includes a bunch of socially inept women, too! Let's not disturb their natural habitat by bringing all these overly social people in, those will thrive in many other places as well.

[seanmcdirmid]

Software development is an increasingly social job NOT because the people doing it are more social, but out of necessity. Anti-social cowboy programmers just can't produce the results the industry needs at this point it in time. Stories of success like Notch are increasingly rare.

[kirillkh]

From my experience as a programmer, while some level of communication is certainly important, most of my time and effort is spent concentrating alone at the task at hand. That's the central part of the job, communication only supports it. Communication is necessary to divide work across the team and exchange experience; it also provides some psychological relief and motivation. While all of these are important, I consider the concentrated mental effort a far more important and difficult part.

[jenthoven]

Right, but isn’t this true about many other fields that women do go into, like art, design, medicine, journalism, earth sciences, finance, research, etc? In these fields, the “meat” of the job is also analytical and done alone, but they’re still seen as more social than CS.

[seanmcdirmid]

I personally find the social part hard and the concentrated part easy, but I’m not an a type :).

[kirillkh]

I used to be like that when I was younger and in earlier stages of my career. As time passed, the pride of achieving the status worn off, as did the novelty of problems I was solving. Many problems turned out to be reoccurring, so I moved on to harder and less mundane problems. I keep doing that to this day - moving away from mundane work to something new and/or more difficult.

At the same time, as I grew older, my social life improved, and I learned to understand humans, so that part became easier.