You've Got Male: Amazon's Growth Impacting Seattle Dating Scene 315
reifman (786887) writes "San Francisco's gender imbalance is so bad that a startup recently proposed flying women in from New York City for dates. But, if you're a straight male thinking of moving to Seattle to work in technology, think again. Seattle's gender ratio is even more imbalanced and it's about to get much worse for men. Amazon is building out enough space to employ 5% of the city population and its workforce is 75 percent male. By the end of 2014, Seattle will have 130 single men for every 100 single women."
Relationship-quality male ratio sorely lacking (Score:2, Insightful)
Ever date one of those guys at Amazon? All work and no play.
We need to fix the root cause (Score:4, Insightful)
Queue the legion of people who will insist that Seattle companies be forced to hire less-qualified people who happen to be women.
If this bothers you: stop telling little girls that they're pretty, and instead tell them that they're smart. Don't ask them their favorite princess, ask them what they want to be when they grow up.
Re:Presumption (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the presumption that Amazon's new hires will be 75% male?
Well, about 85% of CS grads today are male. But if it makes you feel better, they could hire more women for the packing floor.
Re:you've got male (Score:2, Insightful)
Like, say, men who make random generalizations about women?
Re:you've got male (Score:1, Insightful)
It is 2014. It is not 1974. The whole tabula rasa myth is a proven lie. The whole "politically correct protected class is a social construct and is oppressed due to evil white men" is a lie. We have vast genetic studies across the world that disprove all of this.
Women are not interested in technology, period. As with any natural law, there are exceptions. In this case, they are very few. The reason is simple: the intelligence and creative drive that lends itself to technology and art evolved in humans as male display of genetic fitness. Just as the peacock has feathers, and songbirds sing their songs, it is our raw intelligence that is the best predictor of deleterious genetic load. Yes, the evil geneticists can predict the deleterious genetic load of animals based upon their mating displays. Human females, like virtually all female animals, have evolved to judge genetic fitness based upon whatever is the characteristic of a particular species or subspecies. Technology is such a display that simply does not interest the vast majority of females.
This is old news now. The first book to delve into it, before the human genome was decoded, came out in 2001 [amazon.com]. Behavioral genetics and evolutionary pscyhology have become such important fields, the former editor of the Science section of the New York Times just released a whole book on the subject last week [amazon.com].
Strangely, slashdot type geeks appear to be the least amenable to evolutionary theory. Sure, they like Dawkins. They think people who believe in God are stupid. They believe apes evolved into humans, but THEN. evolution stopped. And, all people became equal. Especially nerdy white guys with aspergers.
In my experience, this is due to the very naive hope that belief in this strange geek religion of human equality will get said geeks laid. It doesn't. It never has. It never will.
Re:We need to fix the root cause (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't praise kids for being smart, it becomes a major part of their identity and whenever some situation comes along that they fail to resolve it can mess them up and they will avoid even attempting things that can result in them feeling not smart. Praise them for working hard, etc.
nothing wrong with that (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a Marketing opportunity ladies! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's more like work long hours with your partner to create a dual income family and still be unable to afford a decent house close to work. Occasionally you will meet someone who has a friend who knows someone who made enough money to retire early.
Re:We need to fix the root cause (Score:3, Insightful)
Alright, but that means no more privilege for women either:
1. No more chattel, alimony, maternity leave, her body/right/choice is his responsibility etc. Women have to live without the privilege men are currently compelled to give them in order for men to truly see them as equals.
2. No more subjecting men to coquettish behavior in order to get them to clean up after her mess (I've seen this one go down a lot at work, especially when she knows she's attractive). Don't tell me that women are toothless victims in the work place. It's sexual manipulation all the same. Conversely, we could let up on the draconian 'anti harrassment' policies and let both sexes feel more comfortable acting like human beings at work. The latter is my preference, but it requires that women quit playing the crocodile tear victim act when propositioned by a man they don't like/find 'creepy', and expecting society (mainly other men) to white knight for her (get him fired, kick the crap out of him etc).
3. No more male space vs female space. No more 'invade-male-space-and-make-it-female-for-great-social-justice' either. If most of the employees are male, deal with it instead of calling it out as 'oppression', just as you expect men to accept female space. They are different and, in many ways, incompatible. If a women is going into a male dominated field, she should expect not to find female space all that often.. Same thing if a man goes into nursing. Both sexes need to make their choices and live with the positive and negative outcomes. Neither one should be obligated to shield the other from this.
4. No more hair trigger, life ruining, over the top responses to mere accusations of misconduct. No more 'dear colleague' letters from politicians pushing this. In fact, it's time for the state to stop passing legislation that picks the winners and losers solely on the attributes that aren't supposed to matter.
Once that's in place, I'd be more open to viewing the sexes as equal, and feel more comfortable treating women's work output and interaction as that of a human being instead of a goddess just to avoid getting fired. I don't know if you're reasonable or not, but a lot of the women I have run across at work do think of themselves as above reproach, and play the victim card when they're challenged. Society's hypocritical status quo encourages it en masse.
Re:you've got male (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny you should say that, as the rate of female computer science graduates was apparently higher back then.
Whatever biology says, we see that the gender ratio varies greatly with time and place. Our biology hasn't changed much since the 70s, so we can at the very least get the gender ratio back to what it was then. Probably, our biology is flexible enough to support pretty much any gender ratio.
This means we can probably change things, if we really go for it. The question is should we? The issue is that a society can score high on gender egalitarianism, and high on opportunities for everyone, and yet that seems only to make people make more traditional choices when it comes to education. What does that mean?
I haven't got an answer. But this is a "should" question - so no naturalistic fallacy, please.
and so the stereotypes abide... (Score:3, Insightful)
not against women...the stereotypes about how "tech" work has to be autism-inducing, basement dewelling, spaghetti coding, geek competition
1. Culturally: Tech jobs, even coding, involves directly working with the people in your workplace. Even if you telecommute you still do tons of human interaction...furthermore, all tech is ultimately for the *human user*
2. Geeky Culture: "geek culture" has never been more popular among women, especially smart younger women who would be the logical next cadre of tech new hires. The problem is stereotypes and systemic dead weight...not 'geek culture' or women's access to it...also: more women gamers now than ever
3. Catch 22: Men who tend to make assumptions will tend to assume the wrong causes for women's behavior...especially men in tech who don't usually work with women
4. Peer pressure: Everything in our media tells women that if they want to get married they have to **look like a pornstar** and be permiscous but not "slutty" and find the right man before they turn 30...when a woman says she thinks she can have a career, party, look good AND have a family their friends will try to dissuade them.
get a clue...everyone...all techies....everywhere....talk to women about this...not just the opinionated ones...ask them how they feel and you'll seem I'm right
tech alienates women...it's a dorky version of a Country Club mentality
Re:We need to fix the root cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Invent a DNA-manipulating machine, jump in the (original) Way Back Machine *with* the DNA-manipulating machine. Travel back to the origin of class Mammalia, and fiddle with all the bits of DNA that cause males to be on average relatively bigger and relatively more aggressive, while females are on average relatively smaller and relatively more nurturing.
Of course, then we wouldn't exist (the changes would be so great and so ancient that Mammalia would be *radically* different), but that's ok, because we're evil planet-rapers anyway.
Seriously, though: find me a culture, any culture, where the males are feminized, and I'll show you a not very successful culture.
Re:We need to fix the root cause (Score:2, Insightful)
So instead of addressing my points, you resort to ad hominem. gotcha.
Re:you've got male (Score:3, Insightful)
Cross Cultural Sex Differences put men as more introverted. [wikipedia.org] The sex differences are larger in more egalitarian societies. Probably because men and women are freer to do what they like.
Perhaps do a split second of research before jumping to conclusions? Your subtle shaming of the introverted is equally as retarding as the phobia you're projecting.
Re:you've got male (Score:4, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with a "strange geek religion of human equality". What it has to do with is that most evolutionary psychology is non-falsifiable. You can't use it to make predictions. Here's an example:
Observation: Women go for geek guys.
Reason: Humans evolved intelligence, because intelligence confers many advantages, so displays of intelligence attract mates.
Observation: Women don't go for geek guys.
Reason: Geek guys tend to work out less, because they're so obsessed with technology, and physical fitness is a good predictor of health, which is a good predictor of good genes, so women tend to prefer people who work out more. Also, intelligence has only recently become important to human success, so women haven't had enough time to evolve attraction based on intelligence.
Do you get it? Evolutionary psychology "sounds nice", but it's so soft that it very often (perhaps not always, but very often) falls on the "bullshit" side of the science/bullshit line. Many smart people on Slashdot can see that, so we don't buy into it.
It's not all bullshit. I remember reading one study in AP Psychology in high school where they actually did a bona fide scientific experiment related to evolutionary psychology, using it to make a hypothesis that they didn't know the truth of, and then testing it. I don't remember at all what it was, unfortunately, but I remember being impressed.
One other aspect that turns us off about evolutionary psychology is that a lot of (typically amateur ) proponents of it seem to promote the naturalistic fallacy: even if you're a dick because evolution made you that way, it doesn't mean you're not a dick.
Also, fuck beta.