> b. Especially problematic as writing off management, HR and other "soft" fields as not as important as engineering is a common way to sideline the women who do make it into tech companies, as they are somewhat more common in those areas.

This is a blatant twisting of his words. Women are even less represented in tech management than they are in other tech roles, and throwing in a few roles that he didn't mention at all doesn't change the fact that the one role he _was_ talking about (management) contradicts your narrative 100%.

Higher level management, yes, they are. But it's fairly common to track women into middle management roles because they're "good with people" - and then write them off as not being engineers. There have been posts about that on HN not all that infrequently.

And hell, even if you don't want to consider that, it's not a blatant twisting of his words. She's the CEO of Yahoo. That's not a "waste of a good brain".

It is very much twisting his words. There's no argument that he seems rather anti-management, but your claim is that an anti-management bias is an insidious proxy for minimizing fields favored by women . I'm familiar with this argument and it's not invalid per se (usually you see it targeting things like literature majors in college or whatever), but claiming that he's using management as a proxy for "soft skills more associated with women" is ludicrous. He's saying mayer's position is a waste of a good brain because she's a manager, not because she's a woman.

> She's the CEO of Yahoo. That's not a "waste of a good brain".

How can you be sure? What a CEO of Yahoo can do? Hire some people, fire some people? Pick some project to develop and some to abandon? You could say that this has some value but you can't predict which project will turn out worthwhile. "Predictions are hard especially about the future." What's sure that there is one smart person less actually working on those projects.

This logic is also applicable to engineers. Everything an engineer could potentially do has value, but you can't predict which project will turn out to be worthwhile. And without someone smart managing them, I'd assert there's a higher probability of that, which wastes everyone's potential.

It's the waste of a good engineering/programming brain on management. That's what he said.

You are twisting his words because you have no legitimate argument.

> An attempt at a more useful response than logfromblammo's "because feminism" answer.

Thank you.

> This honestly is kind of a weird stance to take.

Not so much of a stance. I'm just describing the way I feel.

> You don't think about anyone in any way other than aesthetics (look and voice) if their life experience doesn't completely match your own?

When I look at people and hear them say something that does not convey information relevant to me that's exactly what I'm thinking. How they look and sound. I never heard any of the mentioned actors saying anything relevant to me although in more private conversation I don't doubt they say things that would make me also think about what they said.

I'm just saying that I don't think of people as accomplished or brilliant in disciplines I have no idea of. I know they are by proxy of recognition of their peers. For example I know Brian Cranston is accomplished because Antony Hopkins sent him a congratulatory letter by his own initiative. But knowing something and thinking/feeling/believing in something is not exactly the same.

> - "I'm also sad that I see a geek that transitioned to management which is always a loss of a good brain." > This is: > a. Pretty insulting to anyone who has gone into management, which is, believe it or not, sometimes something that does involve your brain.

Please note I didn't say "waste of a good brain". I don't think that management is brainless activity. I just think that best thing a men can do is to develop technology. Because it triggers advances in all the other aspects, most importantly in science, but also medicine, social interactions, wealth and everything worthwhile. So if you take a bright person who has a chance to push technology further and give him/her the task of dealing with politics instead then it's a loss in my book.

> Especially problematic as writing off management, HR and other "soft" fields as not as important as engineering is a common way to sideline the women who do make it into tech companies, as they are somewhat more common in those areas.

Bright engineer such as for example Bram Cohen can singlehandedly push technology further. I value very highly awesome project managers as they can join engineers together and direct the technological effort but anyone above this level is just not doing anything that counts for me as advancement of civilization. Similarly sideshows as HR, Legal, Accounting, Sales and such. You don't make progress but shoveling what you already have back and forth and consuming a little bit every time you do it.

If women tend to keep away from engineering that's just bad and I don't really want to comfort myself with the 'at least they are close to engineering'. I'd rather see them hack on technology because in my opinion that's the best use of any persons time.