hintomint

Hi Marissa, thanks for doing this AMA. I just read your linked article on women in STEM and was curious about the viewpoint you presented. I wanted to see it as a call to acknowledge the fields that women are more dominant in and celebrate those areas, but I found it a bit dismissive of the social phenomenon that you mention Katie Couric has spoken about.

As a woman that studied psychology, I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I actually switched majors from a “harder” science. While I love my degree and enjoyed my studies, I know that as a confused and impressionable college student I felt passively discouraged from studying in a field where I would be a gender minority, and was encouraged to pursue areas that were more female-centric.

Obviously, I’m a sample size of one and you could certainly point to my own maturity at the time as a factor in not fighting the stereotypes, or whatever you might call that pressure. But I’m sure I’m not the only one that has had that experience, or seen my male cohorts in school be actively encouraged to “fall back” on more lucrative majors.

When I read your article about the wage gap being more attributed to the different careers and business sectors between genders, not necessarily from sexism in the payroll department, I found the 2 articles somewhat conflicting. It seems the STEM article is asking us to celebrate the areas that women choose(?) to dominate (although in my personal experience, it might not be completely a choice), and those areas can be equally but differently important than male-dominated fields; while the Wage Gap article seems to be saying that the wage gap is because of this choice to work in those fields, or take time off for family, etc. and is therefore understandable that women are paid less/men are paid more overall. The latter article also states that men would be paid less if they took the same flexibility in work as women do.

My question is: How do we overcome the societal pressure for women like myself to study a softer, more flexible industry, and therefore make less in the long run? Or, how do we encourage more men to not (perhaps) default to STEM or banking while women default to social sciences and nursing? (Excuse the gross exaggeration, but you get the idea).

Bonus question: if all of the above fields and careers paid exactly the same, do you think we would have a more equal distribution between genders across them?

I look forward to reading your book!

She posted another comment here about that

Hi Roy! I used to live in LA and would see you at your restaurants quite frequently (POT, Alibi Room) just hanging out and seeing how things were going. I really loved that you would actually be there checking things out on a regular basis.

2 questions: - do you go to your restaurants on a specific schedule each week, or just as issues arise? What’s your day-to-day? - what’s the craziest/funniest/weirdest thing that happened at one of your restaurants when you dropped by to observe one night?

As someone with no computer training but an interest in computers, programming, and a big fan of your simulations, what do you think a good jumping off point is to learn programming? What did you start with/what kick-started your eventual career in computers?

We read your piece aloud yesterday and laughed non stop! Then we tried to find you and could only come up with your Asian wiki page. When will it be presented as a US version? We want to "claim" you as ours!