[NotMyMorals]

>And is that really an awful way for guys to hit on you? They're going to do that anyway, and at least this way they're expressing interest in your interests, rather than just staring at your chest.

If the man is attractive, women will generally welcome the flirtation. If he is unattractive, the woman will generally perceive it as an insult to her attractiveness, since the man should know better, that she is "out of his league."

Also, can anyone explain why it is considered a "good thing" to have a gender balance in tech, or any industry? Who decided that every industry must have an equal number of men and women?

[DanBC]

> Also, can anyone explain why it is considered a "good thing" to have a gender balance in tech, or any industry?

We strive for a balance because that's a good way to avoid excluding people. Excluding groups of people is bad because they may have different ways to attack problems or different insights to bring to development etc.

Mono-cultures are generally weak and vulnerable. Diversity is generally robust.

[NotMyMorals]

>We strive for a balance because that's a good way to avoid excluding people. Excluding groups of people is bad because they may have different ways to attack problems or different insights to bring to development etc.

We exclude all sorts of groups, including the incompetent, all the time. There are cases when the benefits of including some group may cause a net detriment due to other factors.

>Mono-cultures are generally weak and vulnerable. Diversity is generally robust.

These glittering generalities are not backed up by any facts. "Diversity" often causes more problems than it purportedly solves, and generalizing "mono-cultures" as "weak and vulnerable" is not something that you can base on facts.

[IAmNotMyself]

A lot of shops I have worked in the last 15 years had no such exclusion on incompetence....