Ahhh the article says 60k programmers in the Seattle metro area—still a grim statistic, but slightly less. What's even crazier is that more must be needed or their wages would be declining.

Young people of Seattle: If college isn't your thing, try carpentry and start working toward a contractors license. You'll make a killing if conditions like these continue.

You heard it from Doug, kids! Skip your education and play with balsa wood! It's a sure thing!

@2 Do you live or work in a building with walls and floors? Do you know who built those things?

The Times glossed over the most impactful angle of this data set: low-wage, low-skill jobs are all but dead (we’ve known gender pay is a thing for s long time). Nice dystopian editorializing here where the Times left off, Charles.

@3 Do I ask if you missed a few words or are you just THAT GUY?

Shit, I meant @2. Sorry @3!

“Seattle is now a city full of male computer programmers.”

As opposed to the past century of female Boeing engineers?

Why do do many of them seem to be unacquainted with the concepts of showering or deodorant? The bus out of SLU in the afternoons is BRUTAL!!!

So Seattle is now mainly a Brotown?
@7 tensor: I share your curiosity. Charles?

@7:

During WW II, some 70-odd years ago, when all the men were sent to the front, who do you think took over their jobs? Rosie The Riveter was more than just a slogan. Of course the men who survived came back and took their jobs back from the women, and even today it's not evenly split, but women still represent about one-quarter of Boeing's workforce.

I’ve been a carpenter for over 25 years and I can count the women carpenters I’ve run across in that time on one hand. Women carpenters who were worth a fuck on one finger. Women just don’t care about the mechanics and logistics of building things. They just want it to be pleasing to look at...how it gets built is not a concern. There are quite a few more great women in architecture, but that’s a more creative and design venture.

@10: The United States was involved in WWII for just under four years, which is somewhat less than a century. Boeing engineers (of which I was one for many years) are still overwhelmingly male.

Even during WWII, most of the engineers at Boeing were men. As you noted, women took over rank-and-file production jobs (which they promptly lost the moment the war ended).

On a somewhat related note (not really) today is the 154th anniversary of he arrival of The Mercer Girls to. Seattle.

The women ran as far away from you as they could, muffy, because you never stop talking and you say stupid shit like that all day long.

Clearly, a masterful writer at the top of his game.

Allow me to summarize:

We start with Gene Balk’s actual reporting, seasoned with some unjustifiable snark about “second- and third-rate code talent.” (You devil!!)

From there, we move on the Italian post-operaismo school, because heaven forbid Charles write an article without ostentatiousness.

Hey, “speaking of making things,” carpenters!

Finally, “speaking of wood,” Netlix has TV shows now! Closing sentence — the cymbal-crash of the author’s logical argument — “One scene has a kimono-clad man caught in the middle of an orgy with robots.”

This article is an ayahuasca journey of tedium.

Mudede is an ignorant sexist dolt.

Medicine and health care nationwide are becoming dominated by women, with ever more women clinicians in practice from nurse practitioners to highly specialized surgeons. This is also true in hospital/clinic/medical center administration, where women now dominate, as well as on the payer side, both public and private sector, where many decision-makers are women.

The majority of these women don't empty bed pans or change sheets (although I'd bet my life that's how Mudede sees them - being highly emotive and affective and wearing big smiles while doing so - God he's an asshole, an asshole with cling-ons).

Tech isn't the only substantive work there is to do in America or even in Seattle. But most Seattlites, such as Mudede, have become blind to almost everything that isn't about Amazon or Big Tech.

Mudede is a sexist dolt.

Medicine and health care nationwide are now dominated by women, with ever more women clinicians in practice from nurse practitioners to highly specialized surgeons. This is also true in hospital/clinic/medical center administration, where women are growing numbers, as well as on the payer side, both public and private sector, where many decision-makers are women.

The majority of these women don't empty bed pans or change sheets (although I'd bet my life that's how Mudede sees them - doing so while being highly emotive and affective and wearing big smiles).

Tech isn't the only substantive work there is to do in America or even in Seattle. But most Seattlites, such as Mudede, have become blind to almost everything that isn't about Amazon or technology.

@2: You know, nothing is forcing you to make comments that prove you have no inkling of the world around you. Liberal arts majors are less than a dime a dozen and mostly useless. People who actually have real skills are in high demand and paid very well.

@18: Mudede's rampant and unabashed misogyny has been ignored for years now, I doubt anyone is going to start caring now.

Well someone has to do the job while the gals are juggling a job, and sick kids, and soccer practice, and music lessons, and planned parenthood visits, and lets forget planning Kendra’s Birthday Party and Barb’s baby shower. “Oh no...I’m feeling like I’m coming down with something - oh yeah, I AM DEFINITELY coming down with that bug thats going around, I better go home before the snow hits. I should have listened to my mother and gone into nursing making $75.00 and hour in an industry 85% female. WHY DIDNT I LISTEN TO YA MA! ITS ALL DADS FAULT”!

@15.My example is anctdotal I admit, but I would wager that women carpenters are less than 1% of that workforce.

What would you know about it? Youre above knowing anyone that would ever stoop so low as to work with their hands for a living.

Gender preferences exist. Little boys tend to like vehicles and action figures, little girls tend to like like dolls and dress-up. We can keep pretending that 50/50 parity doesn't exist because of society vs biology, it's just going to continue to not reflect reality. It's possible to live in an open yet gender-unbalanced society where most carpenters are men but any woman that wants to join is welcome to as well, or where most nurses are women but any man can work in that field equally. The total distributions aren't important, the access is. We have to stop expecting 50/50 levels of interest.

@24: Nursing was an exclusively male profession for quite a long time. The sword-fighting men of Louis XIV’s court wore extravagant pink outfits. Most of our gender norms are culture-specific and arbitrary.

@25: You’re overthinking it. Simple jealousy suffices to explain a column like this one.

@26 I think you nailed it, this reeks of jealousy

I don't know anything about you, muffy. I don't pretend to.

Except your words. I know what you say. You are a blowhard. You have diarrhea of the mouth. You spew shit nonstop all day long. No filter. I have no access to any facts about you at all, but I know what you say. And I know what you say is guaranteed to drive people far, far away.

Ever think that if women couldn't build things with their hands, all those airplanes and tanks and ships and everything else they MADE WITH THEIR HANDS in WWII would have been "pleasing to look at" but fallen apart due to their mechanical ineptitude? Design? You know all that war material was designed by men, right? And put together by women. With their hands.

I can believe women continue to be driven out of plenty of fields, carpentry, software engineering, film directing. Lots of fields. It has nothing to do with whether it's creative or manual or high class or low class or technical or artistic. There's no logic to it because there's no justification for sexual discrimination. They are driven out by too many asshole men and not enough adult supervision. Some fields have cleaned up their act, others not so much.

Exhibit A: you.