More to this point, what was the person applying for? Was it in the job posting you were looking for someone with cryptology knowledge and/or experience? A lot of developers let slide the stuff that's not entirely useful for them in the market. It's not like in college where you learn everything because some of it might be useful. Once you get in the market, you learn only the stuff that's useful and they other stuff starts to drift for most developers I have worked with. I would rather have a guy who knew which join to use when if I was building a database, then a guy who could tell me how private/public asymetric keys work. If it's a job where you stated or implied that you should know something about encryption then shame on them for not knowing. To a different end, if I am interviewing someone with 20 years of experience, I want to know more about their team/management skills and what they can bring to the table as a senior (--being the operative word) developer, but that may just be me.

There *is* a problem with misogyny in American/A lot of world cultures.

"... Is it the typical male nerd we see in media who is driven by inadequate social skills and female rejection..." Its an entire stereotype/mythology (although maybe the shoe fits for some). I never said it was factual.

So this creates an interesting discussion. Does the work simply attract/harbor the culture, or is it actively feeding the culture? Do men who fit the misogynistic stereotype feel drawn to the STEM because it fits into their line of thinking? Is it the typical male nerd we see in media who is driven by inadequate social skills and female rejection to seek solace in a computer or devote vasts amounts of time to a specialized skill like required in most STEM fields? I've been working in software engineering for a long time and I don't find management/employees to be anymore harboring of misogynistic temperament than they are in any other business or field. I think we are dealing with the a culture that has for whatever reason been drawn to a field, and not a field that breeds misogyny.

All this does is raise more questions and more debate? Why do people want to fly? Is it that they equate air travel with faster travel? Is it because they imagine easier access with less infrastructure? Is it simply for the fun of it? Ps. The science fiction convention is the perfect place to ask these questions. It's a panel for fun.