Lots of hackers think that good work wins, but it's good work marketed well wins, and it turns out that people are incredibly biased towards high-class men, and a name like "James Chartrand" is a prime example.
I challenge her to see the results when she chooses a name like "Tyrone Jackson".
On a similar line, since we don't know her real name then it could just very well be there's some other bias against her name besides the gender issue.
It's not unheard of for names that are associated with a specific ethnicity having an effect. I have a name that's almost impossible to pronounce for English speakers, and I've always noted the difference between when I use my real name or when I use the anglicized version.
Potential clients are going to go with the option that's easier, and yes that might even include things such as: the name that's easier to pronounce, the gender the client can identify with the easiest or the name that clicks subconsciously with them.
These aren't just interesting bits, they're part of the image we portray. Actors have known this for quite some time and it's common to pick stage names.
From what I got from the pseudonym's blog is that 'he' is a Canadian, and suggested French Canadian. If this is true for the real author then there's all the reason in the world for not hiring her.
I want English copy, I don't want it from someone I believe to be French whether my assumption is correct or not. I'm going to hire John Smith over Jean Lefevre at the drop of a hat, however Anglicize Jean Lefevre and you have the employable writers name of John Smith.
I have a very English surname, which has never given me a problem when applying for a writing gig.
As I said, contracting someone to write English copy, I would instinctively and likely purposely hire someone with an English sounding name based on name alone. A French name won't get you hired for writing in English, it might however get you hired to write in French even if your native tongue is English.
It seems the reverse experiment might work as well, for a well known writer to post with an unappealing (and perhaps even female) name and compare the revenue per post on each one. That does not seem overly difficult though the writer might by leaving money "on the table".
Funny you should mention that. I'm Irish and white but my name (Eddy Robinson) 'sounds black' to a lot of people, and I wasn't aware of this until someone I was doing business with expressed surprise on our first meeting. I did a quick straw poll of acquaintances who I'd had first contact via email or seeing my resume and they confirmed this assumption. I can't say it's ever affected me personally though I wonder sometimes if it's a factor when I bid on a job and don't get a reply.
Indeed, and Mrs Browl has suggested I use this form professionally for a little extra sizzle, or even the Irish version (Eamon Mac Robin) for an exotic flavor - I work in the entertainment industry and even behind the camera personal branding carries a little more weight than in some other fields.
Other readers might be interested in this census document on the demographics of common US surnames; turns out there's a 44% probability someone named Robinson is African-American, for example: http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/surnames.pdf
Jon Stuart Leibowitz decided that Jon Stewart was a better TV name. In America, we had had "Irish need not apply" signs in windows in the 1800s and early 1900s, but that prejudice is basically non-existent; if you think it'll give you a leg up, do it.
When I first visited the US, I was really surprised at the adverts in newspapers for realtors (estate agents). They all had photos of the realtors faces?! Do people choose realtors based on their photo? How would that make any sense at all. Perhaps it's just some custom that's been passed down, but it really freaked me out.
Could you use some other picture of a warm fuzzy respectable person and say "Oh yeah James Hilby-Smithe is currently unavailable, I'm his associate I can help you"? Would that be legal. I wonder if any of them do this already.
> Perhaps it's just some custom that's been passed down
I'm sure they have tested ads without photos, or with photos of something other than people, and found that photos of attractive smiling real estate agents work best.
If it surprises you that this works, I recommend reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. He is a psychologist who has spent years not just studying persuasion in laboratory settings, but "going undercover", taking courses and even doing jobs in all kinds of persuasion professions - door-to-door salespeople, fund-raisers, recruiters, advertisers, etc. He noted hundreds of techniques that he was taught, or that he learned or observed, and categorized them into six principles of persuasion, each forming a chapter of the book.
The book is useful to entrepreneurs who need to market their startups, and useful to humans, who need to understand the techniques that are being used by sales people and marketers of all kinds. I recommend it to everyone. (In case you're worried, Cialdini doesn't recommend unethical techniques, though he does describe some so that you know what to watch out for.)
> I'm sure they have tested ads without photos, or with photos of something other than people, and found that photos of attractive smiling real estate agents work best.
Describing real estate agents as people who use empirical study in their marketing efforts doesn't match with my experience. The industry is full of "do it because that's what we always do" attitudes regarding the marketing of homes. Zillow's research seems to back this up - agent headshot ads performed way worse than anything else (http://www.zillow.com/blog/the-top-and-bottom-performing-ads...).
Real estate isn't quite as simple as just the listing ads. There are tons of things a real estate agent can be good at that make their ad quality irrelevant.
There are probably things they could do that would have a bigger effect than the ad quality. But as long as those ads have some effect, and faces improve them, they'll keep doing it.
Doctors and lawyers often put their faces in ads, too. It looks like people want to see the person they're buying a service from.
I was surprised because if it was tried in the UK, I'm pretty sure it would not work at all. Estate agents show pictures of houses they're selling/sold. Never a picture of their face.
So there seems to be something different in our culture there.
Isn't is customary to put your photo on your CV in the UK? Why is it shocking to have the faces of your realtor when you have the faces of future employees?
(I am not sure if this is an out-dated tradition, but I remember applying for study abroad they wanted a photo with that application as well.)
I can only compare the UK and the US, but in the US realtors are more solo than in the UK. In the UK you'd typically go with a reputable firm of agents, and even then you'd not usually deal with the same agent all of the time. In the US, you would, so personal appeal stands for a lot more.
Ah interesting. I hadn't considered this. I wonder why there aren't realtor firms in the US. I'm much more comfortable dealing with a well known firm than a single individual. I wonder how the fees compare. UK it's typically 1-3% of sale price.
There are realtor firms in the US, like Century 21. However many of them still use pictures of the realtor, like "contact Jane Doe, your Century 21 representative".
I don't know much about this, but I believe most of these firms in the US and Canada are running franchise operations. There may be a nationally advertised logo, and some listing and referral services, but it still all depends on the realtor. They split the commission with the agency.
I can’t think of very many objective criteria that would help someone choose one Realtor®¹ over another. They all get paid the same commission and they all have access to the same database of listings. So it makes sense that they would differentiate themselves from each other by using their handsome faces; what else is there?
¹That HN link to information about third-level keys has changed my life. Possibly not in a good way. :-)
If you see an ad that says “I sold the house pictured here for $300,000”, then for all you know, the guy sitting at the next desk over could have sold it for $350,000.
That logic is quite odd. I'd rather have a data point saying "I sold a house like yours for $300k", than a smiley face. What does a smiley face tell me?
You can’t tell from the picture alone whether or not the house is “like yours” or not. In particular, you can’t compare how much purchasers can negotiate down the price when he or she finds stuff needing repair, or how much the agent can negotiate up the price by convincing purchasers that the floorplan is ideally suited for their special special needs.
I believe you're correct, however they pull this tactic in Canada however the majority of property sales are made through RE/MAX which IS a faceless corporate machine.
It's as if they're saying "Hi I'm an independent contractor, oh just ignore those 99,999 other independent contractors because I'm smiling!"
An empirical study concluded that "black" names had no effect; it was background. On the other hand, it's only people with a certain kind of background that name their kid "Shaniqua" (middle class blacks usually adopt generic North American naming standards). So I'm not sure if that contradicts your point.
I've recently given a lot of thought to shifting from "Joey" to "Joseph" as my day-to-day name. I'm reluctant, but if you're theory is right, it seems like it would command more respect.
Something about this strikes me as either shady, or engineered to make a point. I'm probably paranoid, of course.
Looking at the about page, "Men with Pens" was founded by the article's author. The sit is deliberately and heavily grounded in male stereotypes. Plus, looking at the bio for one of the other authors:
"Taylor Lindstrom, is a twenty-something copywriter and journalist from Boulder, CO. She’s the team’s rogue woman who wowed us until our desire for her talents exceeded our desire for a good ol’ boys club."
Maybe that's just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the founder's real gender. Perhaps the heavy masculinity of the Men With Pens site was designed to test/prove the theory. Not enough information to make a real decision.
It just seems that there's more to this than meets the eye. I'd love to see some statistics on the comparative success of her publishing names.
My assumption was that Men With Pens was founded well after she realized her male pen name was outperforming her real name. I didn't think she made Men With Pens hyper-masculine as a test, but just as an extension of using a male pen name.
>Maybe that's just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the founder's real gender. Perhaps the heavy masculinity of the Men With Pens site was designed to test/prove the theory.
It does seem to be a hyper-masculine design parody of men's magazines. I mean come on, the suede header background, hollow point bullet, chunky metalised writing, welder at the top of the page, "guns for hire" ... seriously? This is for real?
Presumably "Taylor Lindstrom" in their about us is a bloke.
Also, OT: design is completely broken with js off, right menu is broken with it on too (ff3.6, Kubuntu).
It's a nice story, but it's hard to extrapolate from just one anecdote.
First of all, she undoubtedly became more experienced at her job as she got older. She does claim that she kept looking for work as both names, but we know that there's a huge element of randomness to internet success. Often the same exact article gets posted to reddit several times before one of them takes off, for instance. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade
There are plenty of examples of successful female bloggers, so I'm not sure that her personal example really means anything. This really requires experimental data.
tl:dr The success of James could easily be attributed to an increase in experience and completely random elements.
The data comes from a source that needs to be double-blind but wasn't.
What would be interesting would be to do have one party write two separate emails talking about a different subject. Then randomly switch the name/gender of one of the emails.
Then have a second party "grade" the emails. With the "author's name" clearly marked on the email.
Gosh, the general point was quite interesting, but I have such a hard time reading the "Emotional Headline -> Witty hook -> Two more paragraphs -> emotional headline -> witty hook -> two more paragraphs" style of writing. Yeah, I know it makes people read your copy, but I like to the point writing more than the wandering around building a narrative that sucks you in, leaving you breathless with anticipation and excited for more of whatever they're selling...
Sales copy just adds so much noise to the points. I get why they do it, but it's really a fight to get through it for me even if I think there's going to be valuable points in there.
2nd, as someone who makes his dough with writing copy, let me tell you this: the really good writers do use those tricks of the trade without you noticing it. It is similiar to good typography: it doesn't get into the way.
You may want to check out the writings of Gary Halbert or John Carlton to see it in action.
This made me think of the "Libertarian Girl" hoax, in which an unsuccessful male libertarian blogger got a lot of traffic by claiming to be a pretty girl.
I guess the people who hired the writer of the article aren't libertarians.
This effect definitely works on IRC. Create a female-sounding Twitter account with some pretty girl in the picture, use that nick on IRC, get instant help. (You need to make sure the name is actually girlish sounding, of course. Otherwise nobody will bother to check you out.)
On the flip side, you have guys hitting on you just because your name is feminine, or worse, they assume you don't know anything. I'm 'jane' on freenode, and it happens a LOT, and I suspect it'd be worse if I used my twitter handle which also works for my website ('janeylicious' ;) ). On a sidenote, I also get guys named Jan with last names starting with E trying to use that nick..
That's also the story behind the name of "Blondie24", the AI checkers bot. They started with some handle like Jedi123, but no one would play them online...
Name has always made a difference. Do you know how many Indian programmers have American sounding pen names on freelance websites? They'll always get more work and higher per hour rates with an American sounding name than an Indian sounding name.
And yet apparently we haven’t gotten past those 19th century stigmas.
Bad assumption. She's got an interesting story, but doesn't go anywhere interesting and seems to just blame it all on the vague idea of antique male chauvinism.
Among orchestral musicians, which is not the same field but at least similar to writing as part of 'the arts', blind auditions, in which a curtain conceals the identity (and gender etc.) of an aspiring performer from judges, have made a ~30% contribution to improvements in gender equity among job seekers. Rigorous paper: http://www.faculty.diversity.ucla.edu/search/searchtoolkit/d...
Statistics isolate a clearly defined class of irrelevant biases. An excellent, targeted solution is implemented to address that specific problem, and doesn't waste any time blaming people for subconscious biases.
Saying "sexism" has with it the connotation that there is a fundamental wrong here which should be corrected for the betterment of our society. That it's a product of backwards thinking and known prejudices.
What you are seeing here though is much more than that. We're seeing that people conform to a pre-ordained bias. In this case, that all good writers are upper-crust white guys with distinguished names. This is a much deeper and subconscious display of human behaviour that all of us are bound to.
It is unlikely that all of this woman's readers feel women should be barefoot in the kitchen.
> there is a fundamental wrong here which should be corrected for the betterment of our society
Women not being rewarded equally for equal work is a fundamental wrong which should be corrected for the betterment of our society. It's possible I'm misreading you but one can be sexist without being a cave, um, person.
She was free to pick a male sounding name. Problem solved. Also, it is just her story, it is not clear if she did "equal work" with her female name. She picked the name for something she did not want to be associated with - perhaps it simply was a different kind of writing that tends to pay better?
Well, I'll start by saying that I'm assuming the story is accurate, there's no point discussing it otherwise. She specifically mentions that she applied for identical jobs as both personas.
What if she had to meet a client face-to-face? Or even by phone?
Well I wouldn't assume the story is accurate - obviously she wants to make a good story. So applying for "identical jobs" might have some poetic freedom in it.
In any case, if she went to see the client face-to-face or by phone, all sorts of other things might have happened. She might have fared better on average than a man. There is no way to tell from her story.
It really is just a story, all sorts of other parameters could have affected the outcome. What sort of thing is she writing? Some subjects might be more readily associated with men, other with women.
The choice of names could have an effect in all sorts of ways, not only by signaling a gender.
Really, there is no substance here at all, I am sorry. If people want to get worked up about that story, it is because they want to get worked up about it, not because there is real substance.
For a better experiment, take the one with randomized CVs with randomized names, where black sounding names fared a lot worse than white sounding names. That is a proper experiment, because all other things besides the names were equal. This story here is not science. She herself is drawing a conclusion from her experience, but her subjective explanation doesn't really explain anything.
She could also be a pathological liar, secretly a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man or the Emir of Groovefunkistan. Once we start discounting the facts presented as fact by a principal in the article we might as well just switch to floral teapots in low earth orbit.
This story doesn't pretend to be science, why are we comparing it to randomized double-blind studies?
Why ask for science: because the story author and among others I think also you have started drawing conclusions from it ("society is still sexist", "women get paid less for equal work"). Where is the point in erecting this building of accusations if the foundations aren't sound? Unless it is just politics, which is OT on HN.
Speaking personally I don't think either of those conclusions can be drawn from this article, but nor do I think they're terribly controversial as broad generalizations.
I would love to see more and better science on the topic but I think there is still value in anecdotes and the discussions they result in.
"nor do I think they're terribly controversial as broad generalizations."
I do think they are controversial, as the statistics are usually very shallow. Apart from the "dumb" statistics (basically "on average, men earn more than women"), there are also lots of papers on how certain laws that are supposed to be helping women actually have the opposite effect, and other causes for the difference.
The "uncontroversial" bit is exactly what is standing in the way of finding a solution.
Anecdotes are OK, but don't generalize from them, please.
>Women not being rewarded equally for equal work is a fundamental wrong
Unless you're proposing communism in the absolute, I'm not sure how you can enforce what an audience (including many women) likes or doesn't like. The fact that what they think they like or not is in some way based on unconscious arguments to authority is not something you can legislate.
Have you considered that it doesn't matter how honest the discussion is if we don't share the same assumptions. What if the real problem isn't the problem you see?
There is no obvious reason why a woman would be paid less for the same work, for example a rule saying "pay a woman $5 less than a man", or even an actual conspiracy that may be slightly less obvious but is still a clear problem. So therefore, "women getting paid less than man for the same work" is not really a description of the problem, it's just a symptom.
Yet it still happens. Before we can fix it, we need to know why, otherwise there's a good chance we'll be creating more problems.
I agree and I have explicitly not attempted to state a root cause (other than the tautological 'men and women are treated differently' of course) nor any suggested fixes.
I do not, however, agree that honest discussion can't benefit. Most of the problems I see in online conversations regarding sexism/gender/etc involve nearly everyone involved no matter their position flying straight through the actual words on screen into some higher dimension of rape culture vs the PC feminazis. It's insane, frustrating in the extreme and entirely counterproductive. There's a lot of baggage held by everyone and I think realizing that people can disagree and still converse on the subject would be an excellent first step both towards discerning a root cause and effecting a change.
That's behind my call for an honest discussion and I thank you wholeheartedly for participating.
involve nearly everyone involved no matter their position flying straight through the actual words on screen into some higher dimension...
Yes, I am frustrated by the same thing. That is exactly why I was disappointed by the article, because the comments about activism and 19th century stigmas lead directly down that path.
That was a fairly minor point in the article to me. I believe the concrete facts of the experience are far more valuable than the few lines devoted to an, as you say, simplistic description of the broader problem.
Maybe her name was just crap, and a cool female name would have worked as well. Also she said her male personae blog was limping along until it was listed somewhere as one of the top ten blogs to read. Who says it couldn't have happened with a female name?
I'm saying that labeling it sexism isn't a useful conclusion at this point. Saying as much basically ends the investigation with no solution, in favor of a broad and arbitrary feminist agenda that may do little to actually address her specific problem.
There are an infinite number of poor conclusions that can be drawn logically from that bad assumption. I only picked the most likely response for a typical reader[1]. Whether it's a broad feminist agenda is mostly beside the point.
The point is that the discussion cannot stop with the sexism label. It's impossible to make progress when you conclude by blaming vague 19th century ideas about gender. There's nowhere to go from there. That's my problem with the article.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. You assert that the discussion is immediately over once the word 'sexism' is mentioned, with no proof to back up this assertion.
Why does 'sexism' immediately and irrevocably equate to "vague 19th century ideas about gender"? What word would be more productive? Why?
> You assert that the discussion is immediately over once the word 'sexism' is mentioned, with no proof to back up this assertion.
Once people agree that sexism is the problem, useful discussion ends. You can still argue about whether it's sexism, or you can argue about solutions for solving sexism (see: Gender Studies). Neither one of those are likely to help you discover the real reasons why this particular woman found so much more success with a male pseudonym.
As for proof-- see most of this thread. Rather than discussing solutions or looking for explanations, it's mostly attempts to challenge the assumption I quoted.
> Why does 'sexism' immediately and irrevocably equate to "vague 19th century ideas about gender"? What word would be more productive? Why?
The article itself doesn't actually use the word. neilk used it as a fairly accurate summation of what was implied by the article.
She suggests that activism is the answer (and goes on to say she doesn't have the time for it). Activism against what? Apparently, according to the article, 19th century stigmas, which are defined circularly as whatever made people not hire her until she chose a male name.
I'm simply doing what most of the posters here did subconsciously and am challenging the assertion that "sexism is the problem," not because it's wrong, but because it's not meaningful.
Your points about the vagaries of activism and its targets are valid and I agree. However, you're still asserting that an entire line of conversation is impossible or without meaning due to the presence of, as far as I can tell, a single word.
I'd very much like to continue this thread but I'd ask you to please elaborate on your position or support it in some way or we'll descend into "does not!" "does too!" rather rapidly. Alternatively we can attempt to frame the discussion in another way that you find meaningful.
> Your points about the vagaries of activism and its targets are valid and I agree. However, you're still asserting that an entire line of conversation is impossible or without meaning due to the presence of, as far as I can tell, a single word.
Accepting generic sexism as the problem to solve is what ends useful discussion. It doesn't matter what specific words are used. James didn't use that word at all in the section I identified, but the point remains the same.
And to be more precise, when I say "end useful discussion" mean that until the bad assumption is retracted, progress towards real understanding and, consequently, good solutions, will be difficult.
Incidentally, the main point of the original article was to out the author as a woman. But the complaints about sexism are fairly obvious. My criticism was restricted to that and not intended to completely invalidate the entire post.
> Truth be told, if just a name and perception of gender creates such different levels of respect and income for a person, it says a lot more about the world than it does about me.
People who succeeded and think that they own it all to their skill, persistence and diligence should read this.
Being lucky on some trivial things like name or gender may have affected your success more than you think.
I wonder how Indian names are perceived in technology. There are a lot of examples of brilliant Indian computer scientists and entrepreneurs, but I suspect that Indian names are still viewed unfavorably in Silicon Valley. Everyone has experience with say, math profs with indecipherable accents, crappy Indian outsourcing firms, or the QA department that's entirely staffed with low-skill imports.
> I quickly learned not to mention I had kids. I quickly learned not to mention I worked from my kitchen table.
Maybe the false assumption was that she's a partnered dilettante (who might get bored and not deliver your work) rather than a professional (who takes your work seriously, in part because it's keeping the lights on), along with the assumption that mothers are more obsessed with parenting.
On that note, anyone else think it was weird that she only talked about supporting her kids, as if she herself didn't eat?
I have a friend who works as a copywriter, and I have to say that it sounds like a shitty job. My friend talks excitedly about the pinnacle of copywriting being "direct mailing", which we all know as pre-email spamming. I think the appeal is that they get royalties on a per mailing basis.
Although, Anne Rice is on that list and her real name is apparently Howard Allen O'Brien, despite actually being female: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice
It's possible the pen name helped on her side too--she may have started writing more to her expectations of a male writer (different style, sentence structure, etc), which in turn might have sold better.
Non-gendered handles are a standard trick for women in hacker forums or channels.
I was once publicly upbraided for revealing someone's gender -- all the regulars knew, but she wanted to be incognito for the legions of net-geeks, lest she receive zillions of come-ons every time she posted anything.
I was recently checking the stats on one of my youtube videos. 5,300+ views, and the demographics showed 100% male viewers. Admittedly, it was an OS demo, but I'm pretty sure at least a few women watched it. It's just that you'd be a fool to identify yourself as a woman on something like Youtube.
There are lots of people that identify themselves as female on YouTube and the don't all appear to be fools. Feigning womanhood in order to curry favour also works.
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
I don't know - I think it is interesting. I would have thought that it would be easier for a woman to be successful writing on the internet. I guess I based that on 'sex sells'. It does seem that profiles on social sites with photos of pretty girls get more attention...
This article has nothing to do with the general content of hacker news. This is an article about the social status of women and how they overcome it, more political than anything else.
I would rather see articles about successful women leading innovative companies, doing innovative research, or saying intelligent things that don't hide behind "male" pen names.
I think intelligent female hackers actually get a lot of respect from fellow male hackers and this would be more on-topic if it pertained to hacker culture.
This article gives women more reason to hide behind a facade then it does to actually inspire them!
I don't think this was about success of her blog, it was about getting writing contracts. Although she might have mixed up things a little in the story to make it a better read (like in the end, suddenly there is this mystery top blogger who recommends her blog as one of the top 10 reads - might have distorted the outcome of her names experiment a little).
The irony is that there are fewer females on HN than reddit and most other online communities. Maybe it's popular here because the female presence is notably lacking.
An extraordinarily good counterpoint to the case before us. I think the key here is that a particular viewpoint from a man can be apparently more revealing, eg "this guy is on the inside and he said ...". If the same ideas are presented from a woman as a speculation then they are less interesting, eg "this woman is guessing that this is what men talk about when they're with other men ...".
A painting is not just an image (as the curator in the link above claims) but is also an expression of the artist themselves (in most cases for non-professionals who actually paint their own work). A painting with the foot has a different quality to one painted by hand because one knows how the artist struggled against a physical adversity, etc..
Lots of hackers think that good work wins, but it's good work marketed well wins, and it turns out that people are incredibly biased towards high-class men, and a name like "James Chartrand" is a prime example.
I challenge her to see the results when she chooses a name like "Tyrone Jackson".