Most people don't want to talk code. Thus, given a demographic breakdown that relates neither positively nor negatively with talking code, one can assume the general pattern applies.
Most old people don't want to talk code.
Most young people don't want to talk code.
Most left handed people don't want to talk code.
None of these are discriminating. They are stating that a pattern true of the general population also applies to a demographic partition of the population.
Because making broad assumptions about 50% of the population isn't a cool thing to do. Especially given the excessive amount of nonsense women in tech (and not in tech) have to deal with on a daily basis. Talk like this leads to women feeling excluded from the tech community.
Also, specifically calling out "young women" as not being interested in tech really makes a lot of assumptions. Generally, people will talk about most topics - even if they aren't passionate about those topics themselves. Most women I know will happily talk about tech stuff with me, so maybe your approach is wrong.
>Because making broad assumptions about 50% of the population isn't a cool thing to do.
Is it that those assumptions are not cool to make about 100% of the population either? Is it wrong of me to assume that the average person does not want to talk about code?
Because if it isn't wrong to make the assumption about the average person, but it is wrong to make it about some subset, then isn't that, at its very core, treating that demographic different than the average?
>Generally, people will talk about most topics - even if they aren't passionate about those topics themselves.
Yes, most people will engage in enough conversation to be polite. But there is a significant difference between talking about something a person cares about and them politely carrying on a conversation they aren't interested in. These are not the same behavior and do not generally result in the same outcome . And none of this has to do with gender as I notice this when talking with friends of either gender.
> Because if it isn't wrong to make the assumption about the average person, but it is wrong to make it about some subset, then isn't that, at its very core, treating that demographic different than the average?
No it is not in any meaningful way since the statement is true about both subsets as well as the average person set. The claim is no meaningful distinction is made by specifying the subset of women from all people. In fact I've found every generalization I have ever made about women or men on second thought has been true, and more meaningfully true, for all people (though it may apply differently to men or women).
Anyway all the women I've met in tech are exceptional though I guess it's caused by them being exceptions in a system that treats them as exceptions amongst exceptions. Which is the real reason to minimize talking about women as a subset since whatever causes anyone in a subset to identify with a group is roughly the same cause as the majority in the group.
>The claim is no meaningful distinction is made by specifying the subset of women from all people.
Unless the person was making the claim because that was the subset they were interested in dating, which is how I read the original statement. It was a generalization of all people, but in this case they were only concerned with how it applied to the subset of people they were interested in dating.
They could have avoided the whole problem by instead specifying "people I'm interested in dating", but one has to wonder the cost of having to take that level of care with one's words and the effect of this level of care being discriminatory in where it has to be applied.
I actually think most people do want to talk code. Specifically, how coding might work, or might not work. Whenever I bring up my software dev job, at least one person asks me what my day to day looks like, am I familiar with ML, do I know what blockchain is, etc. And then when I explain it, it comes off almost like revealing the man behind the curtain.
Technology touches everyone. Of course they want to know about how it works!
This has largely not been my experience. Most people I interact with don't care about under the hood and just want it to work. If you have managed to find a place in life where most people enjoy understanding how the things they depend upon work (IT tech or not), then count it as a blessing.
You can find your answer earlier in the same sentence:
> Finding intimate relationships becomes particularly difficult when you can't achieve the inspiration since most young women aren't exactly excited to talk about code, or tech, or any of the things HN types tend to dedicate our lives to.
they are talking about their personal dating life (or lack thereof).
[Edit] One of the neat things about formal reasoning is that it forces you to be explicit about your assumptions. In this case, the original comment seems to be making the assumption that most HN types are heterosexual males and homosexual women, single and with poor social skills.
I took it to be a more personal statement, that they themselves fall into that classification and are thus making the statement from their own perspective.
While most people are not programmers, most programmers are not women. It's a subset of a subset, seems pretty accurate. It's worth noting though that most men aren't interested in discussing programming either. People in our field are few and far between :(
I dare you to go to an average bar or club and try to talk about code with most young women. It's not happening. Most people don't code, and most coders are male.
Even in certain parts of SF, which I'd argue is the most engineer-dense part of the US, you can go into an average bar or club and discover that most of the men aren't interested in talking about code either.
Because lots of programmers loves to talk about code?
> A shared niche interest is not sufficient basis for a good relationship.
Then what is a good basis for a relationship? A shared interest in ubiquitous interests like food, blockbusters or travel? I don't think that is much better.
> I’m a woman in tech and I don’t necessarily wanna talk code on a first or second date, I’ve got professional development figured out on my own time.
Good for you, not everyone feels like that though.
The presumption was that it's sexist to assume you can't talk code with young women. I don't want to talk code with anyone 99% of my off time. But to say the reasoning is sexist is untrue.
Same. Though I do have to admit the gender ratio is skewed a bit at my company you can count on one hand the amount of female engineers while there is 100+ male ones. They even changed the female bathroom to be 2 male ones but left us a couple fancy individual ones which I'm fine with.
the wording was sort of clumsy, but this is not a very charitable take. most people (men and women) really don't want to talk in depth about code or any other of your specific interests.
"since most young women aren't exactly excited to talk about code"
is in fact some sexist bullshit.