I helped a friend carry out a business trip today. One of the joys of using a light aircraft for business travel is that you get to fly in conditions that test a crew’s piloting skills. The winds were gusting around 30 knots upon our return to Hanscom Field, with horrific turbulence from 10,000′ down to the surface.
On the trip home, my friend mentioned that he’d met a pair of software developers who were distracted by their respective divorces. I responded “The real question isn’t ‘Why do women divorce computer programmers?’ but ‘Why do women marry computer programmers in the first place?'”
They often have excellent genes and make excellent fathers. In most job markets, they can easily support a spouse and family comfortably with admirable stability for the private sector. (They can’t compete with unionized government jobs, of course, but men with the connections to be a typical $200-500k cop or firefighter are far too few to satisfy the women who want to marry them.)
The problem, of course, with marrying a computer programmer is that they are not attractive to women. Practicality cannot overcome sex appeal for preserving a loving relationship.
Just hearsay but all my geek friends are married, mostly with kids and no divorces that I know. Even at work the only woman developer is the only single one. I am no expert on male attractiveness but I think most of them clean up quite nicely when they make the effort albeit it tends to be a rare sight. And here is what google suggested:
http://www.helium.com/items/805591-ten-reasons-you-should-marry-a-geek
Most of the early computer programmers WERE women. There’s Ada Lovelace of course. During World War II the profession of modern computer programming was invented, and with most of the young men in the service, women were brought in and trained to program ENIAC and COLOSSUS. And don’t forget Grace Murray Hopper and Jean Sammet.
Oh, hardy har har!
Seriously, though, isn’t the “geeks can’t get chicks” joke a little out of date? It was never true even when it was a fun stereotype to make fun of, but as far as I know, nobody even believes the stereotype anymore.
Geeks make great boyfriends and great husbands, and always have. Let me know when you get out of 1992, Phil. It’s great here in 2011; I think you’ll enjoy it.
Never saw any software engineer in Silicon Valley who was married. The exceptions were: wealthy entrepreneurs, foreigners who brought their wives from overseas. A lot of dating coaches prowl the valley, ripping software engineers off with $1000 courses that supposedly teach them how to overcome the odds, in a area with 5 men per woman & a lot of baby boomers driving Porsches. It probably can be done, but you need to settle for a pretty miserable relationship, that undoubtedly leads to a quick divorce.
Tekumse: Thanks for the link. I think the article, written by an Australian and perhaps not readily applicable to the Northern Hemisphere, applies more to an experimental physicist than to a typical programmer. The typical programmer isn’t going to be able to talk about the climate; he will be too busy trying to figure out why his Ruby on Rails application is running 50,000 times slower than it should.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/17/AR2008051700979_pf.html ranks “computer software engineer” #1 among “best jobs for introverts”.
We have a problem here. Looking at the names of the people who leave comments on this blog, it appears that we have an online community that is about 99% male. In other words, we’re lacking the kind of people who could best answer this question.
I think hans reiser killed any notion that computer programmers make great husbands.
Also, if life mimics art, why are there no computer programmers in movies or tv shown as great partners? I might have seen a programmer on jeopardy once or twice.
There are more examples showing programmers in a negative light: Jurassic Park, Girl Who Played with Fire, most of the recent James Bond movies, etc. I haven’t seen Social Network yet.
Is there really any point in Americans learning technical areas like these since they lead to such imbalances in their personal lives? Or is it just the people themselves that cause these problems and Americans would really not have a problem working in these areas?
Philip,
Most of the programmers I know who want to be, are married. I can’t find divorce statistics detailed finely enough to show programmers but I would guess we are pretty much like other engineers, who have very low divorce rates. Maybe we aren’t as stable as podiatrists, but is that a bad thing? Particularly bad marriage bets are police, dancers, choreographers, bar tenders and massage therapists. Divorce rates seem to correlate inversely with educational level, so maybe all that time in graduate school wasn’t a complete waste.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091607509.html
Phillip and heroineworshipe, both of you have the crazy idea that most developers are young, work in a web company and live in the Silicon Valley. I bet the average one is middle aged, works in either the government or a large Fortune 500 company and deals with decades old systems and crap like moving Access 95 database to Access 2000. Example: I work in one of the biggest company in the world and every employee still required to use IE6.
For the record I know only one developer in the Valley(working for Yahoo) and he is married. Just recently he took a couple of weeks off for his buddy’s wedding in South America so that kind of makes two.
Even Linus is married with with two kids.
As far as media portrayal – recently there have been many geeks portrayed very positively – hit shows like CSI, Numb3rs, Dexter, The Big Bang Theory are full of nerds. And wasn’t Chandler in Friends some kind of IT person? Funny how he and the other nerd, the paleontologist, were the one who got married and had kids with the sexy actor jealously watching from the sidelines.
Tekumse: The fact that many programmers are married does not answer the question “Why did the women agree to marry them?”, which is what I originally posed. A typical computer programmer has very few of the characteristics that most women say they want in a companion. How many women, for example, would say that they want a man to come home and tell them about his experience debugging some Java code? Or relate the one conversation that he had that day? (the rest of his time having been spend in solitary contemplation at his desk)
Mine married me to get away from her parents.
It so much better to talk about the 300lbs fat moron who needs a 5th bypass because he can’t stop guzzling fast fast food and how gross is to try to cut trough his 5 layers of fat. Or the disgusting rash he had between two skin folds. My mom is a surgeon and nobody likes to talk to her or any of her colleagues – they are all somewhere between morose and morbid.
The programmer probably spent a couple in meeting and is full of us vs them stories of upper management stupidity. And another 2 browsing the web while “compiling” so he is up date on news and anecdotes. He has thoroughly researched the best crib, baby monitor, dishwasher, etc so his wife can rely getting the best for their kids. When they are buying a house he can read all fine print and catch any problems, leaving her to choose the color of the dining room and sign the dotted line. He has also found a web deal on the thing she loves and she is happy that he remembered and they are saving so much.
I might have seen a programmer on jeopardy once or twice.
Ken Jennings is Comp Sci.
Of all the boy nerds I knew at MIT of whom I know their fate, they are either married if they want to be. It might have taken a few years for the women in their dating pools to mature enough to want them, but they are doing okay. (The boys may also have needed some time to mature enough, as well.)
A typical computer programmer has very few of the characteristics that most women say they want in a companion.
What do you think these characteristics are? Also, note that what women (and men) say they want may be much different from what they actually want.
How many women, for example, would say that they want a man to come home and tell them about his experience debugging some Java code? Or relate the one conversation that he had that day?
Lots of people don’t care, at all, about hearing what their spouse did at work. If they did, people who work on classified or top secret data would never mate.
That said, my wife feigns enough interest when I tell her about how I’m helping customers.
What’s the ratio of male/female introverts? I’m just wondering — I once dated a woman who was extremely introverted.
In Silicon Valley there are 83 females per 100 males between ages 20 and 40 in the main part of Silicon Valley (Santa Clara county and some of the surrounding area) — this was according to a local newspaper, sorry I don’t have a web link.
For an amusing but informative discuss of what attracts women to men (and vice versa) in general, read “It’s Not You, It’s Biology.” Two large components of attractiveness for women in picking a marital partner (not a sex partner) is ability to provide, and intelligence.
So, there you have it.
My daughter works in management for a software company. Her undergraduate (and only) degree was in Classical Civilization! I asked my daughter why women marry programmers and she replied:
Because they work at a software company and spend most of their waking hours with these people and have no life outside of the people they work with?
There are varying brands of computer programmers. There are the the stereotypical super-geek introverts – WoW geeks who are only up to date on the latest technology or Star Wars random trivia or which version of Star Trek is best. But there’s also a more social geek like my husband and others that I’ve met in the industry. He definitely has an introverted side which meshes well with my AMAZING extroversion. Perhaps it’s also because those who have invested in learning and applying emerging technology (something that’s a bit outside of my skills, but at the same time something I can conceptually grasp) are those who aren’t limiting themselves to how things have always been done. Certainly less dangerous than a firefighter or police officer or the like. The money ain’t shabby and the good ones are usually able to always keep working – you can find a job most anywhere.
I’m sure there are women out to marry someone with a specific career. But that seems to be a limiting proposition – I mean, how long would I have been waiting to find an unmarried, male doctorate in Classical Civilization?
Or
I didn’t marry a software engineer. I married a man who happened to be a software engineer. 🙂
Alex: If women are seeking “intelligence” then surely they would want to be with a man smart enough to have chosen medicine or lobbying as a career, no?
Career choice is generally not a singularly accurate measure of intelligence. Women will use a variety of indicators to make the assessment. Also, a man’s intelligence may actually lead him to choosing a career based on factors besides maximal compensation.
EddyH: I’m not sure that being a programmer is less dangerous than being a police officer. The risk of obesity from sitting in a chair 60 hours/week is probably greater than the risk of being shot. Also remember that the police officer retires at age 50 and can spend the rest of his life keeping physically fit; the private industry programmer will be working that desk job until age 70+ if present trends continue. (http://www.theagitator.com/2007/12/28/how-dangerous-is-police-work/ gives some stats on police fatalities; the job is safer than being a farmer, trash collector, or truck driver).
Alex: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos303.htm says that “Median annual wages of wage-and-salary computer programmers were $69,620 in May 2008”. This compares to a median for primary care physicians of $186,044 and for physicians with a specialty of $339,738 (see http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos074.htm#earnings ). So you’re telling me that the programmers decided to give up the prestige of being a physician and all of the social contact and the 5X higher salary because they are so much more intelligent than a typical doctor?
“The private industry programmer will be working that desk job until age 70+ if present trends continue” — Most hiring managers I’ve talked to want to hire young programmers and consider about 35 to be the upper limit. Programmers in their 20’s can learn new technologies more quickly. They can also usually work longer hours because they don’t have children and family commitments.
Smart programmers work at companies like Google and Facebook and become millionaires from their stock options, or they start their own companies and get acquired by companies like Google and Facebook.
Wayne: I don’t think you’re arguing very effectively for the average programmer. If he earns the BLS median of $70,000 per year from age 24 (master’s) through 35 and then is pushed aside, he is not going to be retiring very comfortably. Of the 1.3 million computer programmers identified by the BLS, only a statistically insignificant number will be able to “work at companies like Google and Facebook”.
I’d argue that a person who makes a career choice solely on the goal of what will make him the most money is not the most intelligent person.
You cannot reduce intelligence down to a singular metric like IQ, or salary.
Programming is generally a very well paid craftsman/engineering type job, while being a doctor is a specialized service job. So if you are an intelligent person who likes to help people, being a doctor is rewarding. If you are an intelligent person who like to solve problem and make things, programming would be rewarding.
Alex: So you think that a computer programmer who sits in a cube all day, not talking to anyone, and earning the median salary for a programmer, would be just as attractive to the average woman as a cardiologist earning the median salary for a cardiologist? The woman would say “That computer nerd, though sitting for 60 hours/week has made him morbidly obese, and though he earns 1/5th as much, has a kind of intelligence that is not readily measured but that he demonstrated by not choosing a highly paid career, and therefore I prefer him to the cardiologist”?
Where is the cultural evidence for this? Are there heartthrob characters in TV shows and movies who introduce themselves by saying “I am a computer programmer”? And the girls then swoon? When we were in graduate school in Computer Science at MIT, for example, there were not crowds of women waiting outside the lab hoping to make our acquaintance. And that was during the Internet boom years of the 1990s. When we had a party, there were no eligible girls trying to get invitations, as was common for parties at law schools, business schools, and medical schools.
As an extroverted programmer and entrepreneur, I did not have a problem attracting interested and interesting women in my 20s in Boston. In fact, you could say that my social life was something of a distraction for a while. I am a much better developer now that I am not swilling martinis, planning parties and juggling multiple dates.
That said, I’m outside the US now and married, living somewhere programmers seem to have more status. The younger devs here all have hot girlfriends if they have enough personality to smile at a woman. And, yes, by 35 you ought to own your own company, go freelance, or find yourself comfortably ensconced in an institution. At 37, I may never be “employed” again but I could not care less. (though I am reassured by the steady stream of recruiters contacting me) Am not rich yet, but I have learned to sell my services. Also, being in the developing world, I know just how relative a word is “rich”. I hunt and bring home the kill. Some days more than others. And my chops are still improving. That said, I’m buying livestock and eyeing farm land just in case.
I enjoy dating programmers. They seem to drink less, do less drugs, have less vices, not watch sports, know a lot, are good at math, appreciate simple things. I almost date them exclusively. They like and appreciate attention, friendship and sex.