[marquis]

I'm working with a group of teenagers right now on a long-term technical project and my observations are that the boys are fantastic for giving immediate, interesting ideas but aren't interested in documenting their work. The only volunteers to maintain the project documentation were girls, who are also willing to spend their own time outside of the class on this. This is just an observation, mind, and I may be biased as I'm a woman but I consistently have found in the workplace that women are happier to do documentation/project management than men. Where the opposite is true, the men are often exceedingly good at the task. Would it be positing to tentatively suggest that men don't generally like to do things that they don't think they are good at, whereas women innately like to see a project successfully managed and will do what work is needed for the common goal? I would certainly place myself in this case, where I step in to make sure things are done regardless of my 'position' in the group.

[bluekeybox]

> Would it be positing to tentatively suggest that men don't generally like to do things that they don't think they are good at, whereas women innately like to see a project successfully managed

I personally think that (a) nobody likes to do things they are not good at -- neither men nor women to an equal measure, and that (b) from a very young age, girls are encouraged to rely on other people for help and support, are taught that other people are important, and that it is important to be nice them. In addition, most girls in Western culture acquire far more superior image-making skills to those of boys since they learn how to present themselves at a relatively young age and since they compete with their peers on this basis, while boys compete mostly on who is physically stronger (a culture of violence). In addition, anti-social behaviors in boys such as physical intimidation tend to be looked over the shoulder while they are strongly discouraged in girls.

TL;DR: Men in our culture (except gay men) often never learn how to be social and how to communicate with people.

Another TL;DR: I can't understand how so many people tend to their children in completely different ways depending whether the child is a boy or a girl, and then act all surprised when they hear how gender-divided the society is.

[callmeed]

Another TL;DR: I can't understand how so many people tend to their children in completely different ways depending whether the child is a boy or a girl, and then act all surprised when they hear how gender-divided the society is.

I give my kids (IMO) more or less equal care but the divisions are still there. It's in the toy aisles, the clothes, the TV/movies, etc.

[orangecat]

This is just an observation, mind, and I may be biased as I'm a woman but I consistently have found in the workplace that women are happier to do documentation/project management than men.

This matches my experience exactly. The last two project managers I've worked with have been women, and they've been fantastic at doing the documentation and organization that would drive me crazy if I had to. And it wasn't their formal titles; just as you said, they assumed the role because they saw that it needed to be done. The first one liked it so much that she got PMI certified and now has a much better job.

Would it be positing to tentatively suggest that men don't generally like to do things that they don't think they are good at

I don't think anybody does. But it may be more than that; I'm halfway decent at technical writing, and I don't like it at all. Not sure why.

[temphn]

Unfortunately this entire article is pseudoscience. The obvious fact is that men have founded and built the vast majority of technology companies, manage most of the largest businesses, and built up most of modern science.

To state these obvious facts at Harvard is verboten; even if you are the President of Harvard University, you cannot speculate that there might be more men capable/motivated to do top notch science/engineering/business.

And forget about linking these observed differences to evolutionary underpinnings; while it is a fact that wealthier men reproduce more (and that in particular the very wealthy men through history could have almost unbounded numbers of children, while a woman can have at most 20 or so), this cannot be used as a theoretical basis for differing incentives to achieve greatness (from the conscious down to the evolutionary levels).

Instead we have to read articles like this, grinning and smiling and playing along. At some level even the authors must know that they are trying to disprove the obvious, commonsense point: men are simply more innovative, harder working, and more likely to have extremely high levels of technical ability. Women have other strengths but we are prevented from acknowledging those as well; biology denial is a peculiarly common feature of our modern era, soon to be washed away by science.

[marquis]

I don't think this is about whether men are capable or not, that was never brought into question. It's about whether a team can work more efficiently if there is more of a mix of capabilities and interests.

The last paragraph of yours I'm going to pretend I didn't read, as I've probably met my gender-allocated quota of how hard I can work for the day, my sense of innovation is too limited to imagine that increased efficiency is possible and my technical knowledge means I really should be spending my time reading "How to pretend you know C, for Dummies", again, rather than procrastinating on the internet reading HN, most of which flies over my head.

[nkassis]

If I read this correctly, this article has nothing to do with Individual ability but of ability to work in groups. A lof of those rich successful men are loners. How many major new scientific theory have come out of a group? Quantum Theory maybe?

But in the end you are probably right, this isn't very solid science. But isn't it possible that woman have better group dynamics than all man groups?

[ugh]

Why should I believe you?

[keithnoizu]

Mhh documentation.

It is thankless work. I've been spearheading a continuous deployment project for my team here at microsoft. A team with fairly poor documentation. As much as everyone laments on this issue I get push back from my managers on writing specs, documenting components etc, instead of simply throwing together something no one understands or knows how to work with.

[irahul]

> whereas women innately like to see a project successfully managed and will do what work is needed for the common goal?

Just curious, does this "what work is needed for the common goal" extended to things which were complex compared to regular tasks? Or was it more on the documentation/project management side which the women showed initiative in?

[marquis]

I think, and I really am generalizing here based on experience, that girls/women less mind doing a task that doesn't directly benefit them. It may also be that girls don't mind being perceived as bossy? Management often dictates that you ask others in your group to complete tasks within a timeframe and girls may already be prepared for this (going into difficult territory here) by learning from their mothers run a household.

[irahul]

> girls/women less mind doing a task that doesn't directly benefit them.

I don't follow. Are you saying documentation doesn't benefit the assignee directly and coding does?

> Management often dictates that you ask others in your group to complete tasks within a timeframe and girls may already be prepared for this

We have different definitions of initiative here(I am putting words in your mouth. You said girls are more likely to take tasks which needs to be done and I am calling it initiative). Initiative for me is there is a task which needs to be done and no one wants to do it because it's difficult or unpleasant, and you voluntarily do it.

Asking others that it gets done, provided you have the authority to do so, isn't actually initiative. Authority is defined loosely here. Consider I am working with 3 people and I have done most of the coding. I will ask the other two to get the documentation done, even though we are peers.

My original question was more on the lines of if you are working on a regular programming project, and a module requires more work than the others, who was more likely to pick it?

[marquis]

> Are you saying documentation doesn't benefit the assignee directly and coding does?

Yes, in our current culture of software development. Perhaps less so in academic culture, and certainly not in literary culture. But in software development documentation is not seen as a glamorous task, even though we all know that good documentation makes for a better product.

>Asking others that it gets done, provided you have the authority to do so, isn't actually initiative

Sure, I agree with you.

>I will ask the other two to get the documentation done, even though we are peers.

What if this was an open source project? Or a school project, or any project where you weren't reimbursed somehow. I like to look to these examples to see how a 'natural' system would develop, because it's too easy to place false systems on a business structure where you use payment to get people do what you want. If you can use a naturally-occuring system, it would seem that any project model would then thrive naturally. Hope I am making sense here.

>if you are working on a regular programming project, and a module requires more work than the others, who was more likely to pick it?

Well, that depends on the project goals, and I'd be making too many (more) assumptions here if I were to give examples of what I thought might happen in theory. Ultimately it's up to the individual.

[wisty]

Girls tend to have a higher "conscientiousness" score on big 5. Which means they tend to work harder at delayed-gratification (or even no-gratification) work. Also, girls are often shy about getting the credit for things, and make good team players.

I guess you're right with men only working on these things if they are good at it - that's a survivor bias.