[raganwald]

Meta-question for both men and women. If you were a woman considering a career in IT and you were to read the comments on a thread like this, would you be more likely to join, less likely, or unaffected by reading the thread?

[benatkin]

Certainly less likely to join (unless it made me want to get in and change things, which I hope is what women reading this will do). What that gets me is the criticism of her writing, which seems harsher and less constructive than the average on HN. The thing is that it isn't completely false, and the people who post it think we won't notice they're being mean, because there's some truth to what they're saying. But it's only bad writing if you raise the bar of what makes good writing much higher than it normally is for a blog post on HN.

[raganwald]

John Gruber calls this "Grading on a curve." For example, if we make a big fuss over her throwing a water bottle in private but celebrate Steve Jobs for throwing temper tantrums over software quality, we're grading on a curve.

(Not that anybody is doing that, it's just an example).

[klaut]

If i was reading a thread like this, it would mean that I am already interested in tech and there was NO WAY that a thread like this would put me off continuing doing what i am interested in.

[raganwald]

Not necessarily. What if you are following @raganwald because you know him from mountain biking and he tweets about this thread?

More importantly, I think it's valid for you to have a very binary perspective on tech, either you aren't interested or you're so interested that "To hell with the torpedos, full speed ahead." I know of at least one such woman with the same perspective:

http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans-story

Of course, that doesn't mean everyone will have the same reaction. Some might be more inclined to join, perhaps some less. I'm not a woman, and I don't want to be patronizing and try to suggest that there's going to be one overwhelmingly consistent reaction.

I was just trying to point out that our discussions about gender are as much a part of our culture as the culture we're allegedly discussing.

[klaut]

Love the story! Very inspiring and i think this quote sums up what my belief is, too: “...The computer didn’t care that I was a woman or that I was black..." It is the same with any other passion one might have - you will always come across brick walls and jerks and what not. Perhaps I was lucky or unbeknownst to me, ignored all the obstacles that commenters here are stating, but i never had people stopping me to pursue programming and tech. Or looking down at me. I am in the field not because I want to make a difference and rise up the female % .. actually i do not even notice the ratios at all. To me, we are all just people that share a common interest - tech. And, frankly, I am a bit annoyed with all the winning that is becoming common. It really feels like people complain just for the sake of complaining.