I notice that software-related professions tend be named after traditionally male-dominated fields, such as "software engineer" or "software architect" or even the "rock star programmer".
Which is strange since the original "computers" were predominately women[0] and I find writing software has much in common with activities that were historically at least coed, such as creating recipes or sewing patterns.
Yet we never hear of "software chefs" or "software tailors". Given how little many titular heads of software companies understand their product, "software nanny" would also be applicable.
Maybe it's cultural or geographic, but both "chefs" and "tailors" is similarly male dominated here (Serbia in Europe). Out of all the professions you bring up, architects are actually pretty evenly split here.
Obviously, what matters is where the term was coined, but I'd certainly suspect it has nothing to do with any gender bias and is instead about parallels to civil construction: architects design, engineers make it work and possible for builders to build. If anything, with LLMs, software engineers more closely match up to construction (as engineers rarely lay a single brick).
RunSet · · focus · HN ↗
Which is strange since the original "computers" were predominately women[0] and I find writing software has much in common with activities that were historically at least coed, such as creating recipes or sewing patterns.
Yet we never hear of "software chefs" or "software tailors". Given how little many titular heads of software companies understand their product, "software nanny" would also be applicable.
[0] <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/history-human-computers-180972202/" rel="nofollow">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/history-human-...
necovek · · focus · HN ↗
Obviously, what matters is where the term was coined, but I'd certainly suspect it has nothing to do with any gender bias and is instead about parallels to civil construction: architects design, engineers make it work and possible for builders to build. If anything, with LLMs, software engineers more closely match up to construction (as engineers rarely lay a single brick).