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Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

132 points by stvnchn 10y ago

zassmin 10y ago
It's an honor to be a part of YC S16! As an organization, we've been committed to making sure our members stay in tech and excel in the industry. We are excited to work with our Partners at YC and further enhance the Women Who Code experience. :)
- jdp23 10y ago
  Congrats Zassmin and Alaina, what you've accomplished so far is very impressive and looking forward to seeing how things scale!
- davidjnelson 10y ago
  Hey Zassmin, congratulations and your organization sounds awesome! Would this help a woman with an h1b visa and a masters in cs get hired as a software engineer? If so, what's involved to make that happen? Thank you!
- H0n3sty 10y ago
  Do you agree with the recent diversity and inclusion effort at github which noted that (6) some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women? http://www.businessinsider.com/diversity-guru-discusses-white-women-2016-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/diversity-guru-discusses-whit...
  - douche 10y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with it, but there may be a point there that upper and middle class white women playing the victim card discredits it for those who have had more serious barriers to entry.
asimuvPR 10y ago
If anyone from WWC is reading: Is there a cutoff age (age > n) for participants or members?
- alainapercival 10y ago
  The average age across our entire community is 30, but people of all age are welcome. We've had people from kids and teens to people with more than 30 years of experience join.
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
sexism is sexist. go send the blacks off to their own faucet, ladies. you're all ignorant hypocrites.
dimino 10y ago
How does VC funding for a non-profit work? How does YC exit or recoup their investment?
- nepstein 10y ago
  It's a charitable donation - https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/ https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/
larrik 10y ago
Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably discover that you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare per kid, and at 2+ you might as well just stay home. I'm going to go out and a limb here and say that solid support for working moms would be one of the more effective strategies for long-term careers for women. I also can't imagine that it's that easy getting back into a tech career after 8 years of being a state-at-home mom (which is about 2-3 kids, with the youngest finally in kindergarten), looking for to work for a specific 6 hours per day on school days. Maybe SF is different, though. I'm not there.
- droope 10y ago
  It is undeniable that women in technology face greater challenges than men and it becomes hard for them go get through certain hoops that men get through effortlessly. Congrats YC! This seems like a good move.
  - tsmffh 10y ago
    Undeniable without hard evidence?
- dudifordMann 10y ago
  I am not sure if that is the right mind set: "So around the time a lot of people have kids? ...you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare ... you might as well just stay home." The "you" can be the other partner. Ensuring fair pay and opportunities for all qualified workers would encourage only a brief departure from a woman's career for maternity leave, allowing either partner to be the home support (as needed), instead of making the choice based on poor future earning opportunities vs their male peers.
  - busterarm 10y ago
alainapercival 10y ago
Hey @Alaina from Women Who Code here. We are thrilled to be joining the YC community and I'm happy to answer questions.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  > Women Who Code is an international 501c3 non-profit organization that works to empower career-aged women to excel in their technology careers. Is there any relationship with the Girls Who Code organization? Because of the similarity of names it sounds as if it's a similar concept targeted at an older female audience.
  - zassmin 10y ago
    Great question. We focus on making sure our members stay in their engineering careers and excel in them! Girls Who Code focuses on getting high school girls interested in STEM. Our members often mentor Girls Who Code members.
jfe 10y ago
i have trouble accepting the idea that fewer women in tech is a problem. it's not that i want to discourage women -- or anyone -- from going into tech. i just don't believe in encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, except what they enjoy. i'd appreciate it if someone can persuade me that the hype is true so i no longer need to feel like a black sheep. but.. for one, the fact that there are fewer women than men in any field, computing or otherwise, is neither good nor bad. the disproportionate number of women in nursing is not seen as a problem, but somehow it has become one in tech. two, as we flood more people into professional computing, the good pay -- one of the reasons given on the wwcode website for encouraging women to enter the field -- will decrease, due to the increased supply of workers. tech is reduced to Yet Another Job, and Women Who Bgurp becomes the next YC startup. three, the wwcode website argues that diverse teams perform better by increasing collective intelligence -- measured in what units? and when it claims that organizations with the largest representation of women leadership have a higher return on investment, how is that measured? this seems super hand-wavy to me. lastly, the website's statement about women investing 90% of their income in their communities "when [they] make more" is not only unlikely, but is predicated on the long-term availability of good pay in professional computing, which, as i mentioned earlier, will decline at a rate proportional to the frequency with which we encourage people to enter the field.
- busterarm 10y ago
  Also, should we really be pushing anyone into a field known for social isolation, long hours, depression and suicide without making a seriously strong effort to resolve those problems as well?
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    It might be harder to solve either problem in isolation than it is to solve both at the same time.
  - morgante 10y ago
    Introducing a higher percentage of women to the field would likely directly improve several of those problems due to statistics alone.
bastijn 10y ago
I wonder how much of the balance difference is due to boys liking tech more than girls. I'd say that if you ask 10-15 year olds, who hardly think about their future, about what they do in their free time you will find equal balance on the reply "gaming/stuff on my PC". Most girls don't like it, that translates to later stages in life I guess. Never see the reports for other fields where females excel in acceptance rates. Teachers, daycare, psychology, there are plenty really. Mind you, I'm not saying women are treated equally once they _have_ the job, I'm just not sold on this whole "only x% of tech is women!" Thing. We can probably learn a thing or two on how to treat our female colleagues, but please stop trying to fight for 50% should be women kind of causes. There are other fields where it is completely the other way around and I don't see people fighting there for equal rights.
- Swizec 10y ago
  > and I don't see people fighting there for equal rights. Perhaps because you're not in those fields? It's also a symptom of systemic sexism. Men don't dare fight for their right to be stay-at-home dads or to be nurses or whatever else is traditionally seen as female. It makes them look too much like ... you know ... not men. If you look at the broader internet, you'll see there's been a lot of fighting happening for that too. Men asking for paternity leave without harming their careers, for instance. But I digress. The most likely reason you haven't seen people fighting for equal rights in other fields is that you're not in those other fields and aren't exposed to their echo chamber.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > I don't see people fighting there for equal rights. every time the gender imbalance comes up on HN someone makes the same comment you have. Did you try Google? Because those programmes are trivially easy to find. People will often make a similar comment about the lack of programmes to get women into construction or mining. But those programmes are really easy to find too.
  - HarshTruth 10y ago
    Well clearly they aren't as common as ones for tech, or else OP would have seen them. If both types of programmes have the same presence it is vanishingly unlikely that OP would not be aware of them. So either he is a liar or your overestimate their presence..
lifeisstillgood 10y ago
I would be interested in the number of men or women who leave tech because the next promotion effectively is a promotion out of tech and into management. What is the record like with tech companies with engineer tracks vs normal up or out? How big is the male female divide in those cases - and is the diff significant?
- nostrebored 10y ago
  Half of the women who leave (so roughly 25%) leave tech fields altogether. The numbers are fudged such that women in management are still considered as in tech. Most "women in tech" numbers that you see include PMs, POs, IT workers, Support Engineers, etc. The male female divide is actually quite large in management. Women are promoted to management disproportionately (hypotheses include "better people skills" and a distrust of their technical ability). "We find that senior technical women are significantly more likely to be in a manager position (36.9%) than are men (19%); conversely, men at the high level are significantly more likely to be in an individual contributor position (80.6%) than are women (63.1%)." [0] "45 percent of women technologists felt like women were being “pushed” into execution roles, and 42 percent of women reported that women do not have equal access to technology creation roles." [0] [0] http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Technical-Women-A-Profile-of-Success.pdf http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Techni...
  - lifeisstillgood 10y ago
    Thanks.
ones_and_zeros 10y ago
I spend a lot of my time and personal money to encourage high school students to pursue a field in STEM (specifically robotics), however, lately I've been having trouble convincing myself to continue due to the long term prospects of a career in STEM. As a professional software engineer at a well known software company, I can only see it as a dead end job with low status and a small shelf life due to age discrimination. I'd be interested to hear from others who are interested in inclusion how they feel about potentially painting too rosey of a picture.
- bazqux2 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat. I switched to data science / ml.
- Retric 10y ago
  It's a solid starting off point for a range of other roles. Basically the Upwind section of this: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html I find a lot of professionals used to be programmers.
- tomsaffell 10y ago
  Interesting and worrying. Could you give more details on the "low status" and the "small shelf life"? Especially as it relates to gender (if indeed it does - forgive my ignorance).
- hpagey 10y ago
  I share your feeling. I am actively seeking of moving away from the tech field. I am still trying to figure out how to do that (maybe PT MBA will help not sure). My wife who is a software engineer will also exit the tech field in few years, so will my sister.
saiya-jin 10y ago
is it really true that women don't get promoted in engineering as much? that's a honest question, the only few I've met did not aspire for higher and higher positions intensively, rather enjoyed what they were doing (that could be said about most of the guys too). I am all for equal situations for both genders, but my assumption was that we already +-have it in western societies, thus such a move would make guys actually in a disadvantage and thus be unfair. IT is not a very cool job to non/tech people outside few top companies like facebook or google, somewhere along accountants maybe. naturally, more ambitious ones will go for jobs like lawyers (if they have no heart :)) or medicine as my fiancee did. IT is just not that sexi. another point - if you are in your 40s, it's hard to be just developer. people move up to architecture or management, which I consider both boring as hell - endless conf calls, producing never-ending stream of powerpoints etc. not exactly why creative people came into IT in first place. I admit other branches of engineering might look differently, no clue about it.
- sp332 10y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/reUNxYu.png http://i.imgur.com/reUNxYu.png Definitely something odd going on in computer science.
  - douche 10y ago
    The inflection point is right about when consumer PCs (personal computers in general, not wintel specifically) became a thing. What are consumer PCs used for, when they aren't being used productively? Gaming, and kids who like games trying to learn how to make their own games (particularly in the pre-web 2.0 era... Web 2.0, remember that?). And ultimately, who was the main consumer of PC gaming? 12-25 year old boys and men. Then you've got a decline in the wake of the Dot-Com bust. One has to wonder if the gains in the other fields of study cannibalized high-aptitude women who might have gone into CS.
- bigger_cheese 10y ago
  >I admit other branches of engineering might look differently, no clue about it. I'm a materials engineer I work at a large scale industrial plant (1000+ employees). Our diversity statistics are probably even bleaker than amongst software/IT type engineers. There are woman in engineering management positions at my work. Not a lot -the number probably reflects the overall workforce makeup. I'd estimate my workplace is greater than 95% male. Some areas of the company are much more diverse than engineering, notably HR, Accounting/Finance and relevant to this topic our IT department. My Sister is a mechanical engineer she works in government planning. Previous to this role she worked at a power plant. According to her the public sector much more diverse than private.
hsubi 10y ago
Is it just me or does anyone find these type of groups too career oriented? Don't get me wrong, I am a female dev and I'm all for equal opportunity and working towards supportive environment for any gender or non-gendered, sexual orientation or no orientation. I don't really find these organisations really that helpful in bringing everyone together. I'm a nerd by nature before I knew computers existed and becoming a coder just came naturally to me. Obviously it's not because I'm unique and amazing. I just grew up in an environment with a lot of freedom as a child so I wasn't limited to think or act in a certain way. Anyway I wouldn't be comfortable in a group like wwcode because looking at the blurbs on the site it's just too career oriented. I wouldn't fit in at all but that doesn't mean I don't have the same problems these women have. Just because my sex is female I get treated differently even though I don't necessarily feel either female or male inside and I'm a pure thoroughbred nerd. I don't feel like climbing the career ladder because I enjoy being the lowly dev as long as there's a bit of freedom in how I solve problems and problems are not too terribly boring. All this, yeah you're a woman, yeah you deserve to get promoted etc kinda puts me off a little bit. I'm sure it's all with good intentions but if I'm feeling like this (a woman) imagine all those males who feel threatened by us. That's why I think these type of organisations, even though they have good intentions sometimes fall short at bringing everybody together. Because in the end we all need to come to an understanding and accept our differences to have a truly harmonious society. Also a side point about people comparing computing jobs with nursing or bin lorry operators. You are comparing apples and oranges. There are factors such as money, status, education levels to consider and are different. No one is blocked from becoming a bin lorry man/woman and as a kid no one dreamt of becoming one. They add a lot of value to the society though maybe even more than some developers but that's another discussion. Ok rant's over. :)
- beepboop2045 10y ago
  I feel like what they're doing is good in general but at the same time not my scene for a lot of the same reasons that you mentioned. I suspect that women-oriented tech organizations lean that way because a large number of people who are women in tech AND who show up to meetups are women who don't have programming jobs and want them. I also think there's a culture that pushes women into lead positions/managment because that will have a very obvious benefit to women who work in tech that work under them. There's been a couple of initiatives that are more about the passion-side of tech that are oriented towards women. Double Union was a pretty good group for that when I was in SF.
NTDF9 10y ago
I don't understand this constant fight to have 50%. There are capable women who climb ladders successfully. The other women who couldn't, simply couldn't, just like many men who couldn't. Also, pregnancy and breastfeeding cannot be done by a man. A woman who aspires to be a mother will have to compromise on other things to be a mother, which probably will include a compromise in career. A man who aspires to be a father will have to compromise on other things to be a father, which probably will include a compromise in EVERY OTHER FACET of his life ensuring he has a job to pay the bills for the woman and children. Why is motherhood such a stigma? Why is career the all-important thing that EVERY woman has to pursue? Let the woman choose herself what she wants to do.
- nostrebored 10y ago
  So you think that there are more incapable women than men in the world? Women are capable of working in fields like tech through pregnancy. We have breast pumps and formula. If you're going to complain about maternity leave, why is the man not taking paternity leave to help his partner and bond with his child? Why does it have to be the man making all of these decisions? Why can't both partners work together ot support a child? Why is motherhood viewed in the ridiculous, rigid way that we see it today a given? The thing is, given attitudes like yours (which are emblematic of societies) you're presented a false dichotomy of "career-woman" or the martyrdom of modern motherhood.
  - NTDF9 10y ago
    >> So you think that there are more incapable women than men in the world? Incapable of what? Never once did I say women are incapable of either career or motherhood. Women can efficiently do what they choose to. Juggling many roles on the other hand is hard for any human being (regardless of gender) >> Women are capable of working in fields like tech through pregnancy. We have breast pumps and formula. If you're going to complain about maternity leave, why is the man not taking paternity leave to help his partner and bond with his child? Who said that man doesn't want to take a paternity leave? Every single recent father I know wants to take time off to bond with the kid. Unfortunately, he can't without a cut in pay (in the US). Get this law in and you'll see so many fathers doing it. >> Why does it have to be the man making all of these decisions? Why can't both partners work together ot support a child? It is always a partnership. Only a partnership works. More often than not, partnership == compromise from all parties involved to WIN. If you were a basketball watcher, you'd know that not everyone can play point guard even if they want to. Only one person plays that role and the remaining support that person. Why? So that the team wins. In a baby-making situation, WIN = produce a healthy baby and have enough resources for its upbringing and the mother's safety. With this definition of WIN, a man/woman who only wants selfish desires and doesn't care for the partner or the kid is a subhuman being. Sorry. You both need to be less selfish here for the sake of the kid. >> Why is motherhood in the ridiculous, rigid way that we see it today a given? The thing is, given attitudes like yours (which are emblematic of societies) you're presented a false dichotomy of "career-woman" or the martyrdom of modern motherhood. Fine. Do both jobs half-heartedly. Anybody who has been a successful mother knows that it is HARD. If you think it just "happens" you're badly mistaken.
H0n3sty 10y ago
What would people think if the genders were reversed and this institution was discriminating against women and only helping men? Women have a far larger presence in other fields like biology and education, but you don't see new organizations popping up every other month to change that in favor of men. Discrimination like this should be illegal.
- wpietri 10y ago
  The reason women dominate in certain fields is that those fields were generally seen as less important, so women were pushed into them. E.g., doctors were men, women were nurses, and there was an enormous pay and prestige difference between the two. (Hint: it did not favor the nurses.) If you're interested in learning more, researching "pink ghetto" will get you started.
  - reednj 10y ago
    80% of people working in PR are women. Is that a pink ghetto as well?
    - dopamean 10y ago
      Definitely.
    - gaylemcd 10y ago
      And PR is not very well paid.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - brighteyes 10y ago
    That is a theory that can explain some fields. However, so many exceptions exist that it can't be the whole story. For example, women dominate * Clinical psychology * Veterinary medicine * Biology All of which are important, fulfilling, well-paying fields. In all of them it's hard to say women were "pushed" there, rather women were very interested in them, and arrived in larger numbers than men.
falsestprophet 10y ago
The two sexes are not identical. Boy are you going to be surprised about what pants are hiding.
- nostrebored 10y ago
  You know exactly what I mean. Arguing for the idea of "brain sex" is essentialist and ridiculous. There's nothing that makes my wife or the average woman a less capable programmer than anyone else in the field other than a consistent problem with socialization.
  - H0n3sty 10y ago
    Men and women have been subject to different pressures throughout the evolution of our species. Its seems unlikely that this would not lead to some differences either on average or across the populations.
    - nostrebored 10y ago
      If you can provide me with any well-done research showing that evopsych is anything besides the modern phrenology I'd be surprised.
      - H0n3sty 10y ago
        Wow, that's a really good question. I'm fairly certain you've done a great deal more research on this than me. I had to start by finding the definition of two of the words you used. For the benefit of others who might not be as well versed... evopsych - psychological traits are evolved adaptations phrenology - the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities My previous post was based on information from a recent study on Y-DNA which indicates a high differential in reproductive rate between men and women, with men reproducing at a much lower rate. This of course means that reproductive competition is much higher amongst men (at least in terms of successful reproduction) and might have lead to the aggressive pruning that we see in the y-chromosome. I'm also aware that competition has a heavy influence on evolution and that the sex chromosomes are not really isolated to gender specific anatomy. Here's that study: http://genome.cshlp.org/content/25/4/459.full http://genome.cshlp.org/content/25/4/459.full I found another study (link below) on differences in personality traits across genders and culture. The authors found gender differences to be most pronounced in cultures that minimize traditional sex roles. Does this study fit your criteria? http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~ssj/Genderdifferences%20in%20personality%20traits%20across%20cultures%20Robust%20andsurprising%20findings.pdf http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~ssj/Genderdifferences%20in%20persona... With respect to phrenology, I'm aware of studies linking brain size to intelligence. The meta-analysis (linked below) confirms this and actually notes a higher correlation among women. http://www.govrel.vcu.edu//news/Releases/2005/june/McDaniel-Big%20Brain.pdf http://www.govrel.vcu.edu//news/Releases/2005/june/McDaniel-... From your previous post, I'm guessing you might have reason to discard this type of study. Could you please elaborate and share your thoughts?
jboggan 10y ago
Congratulations Alaina!
carrja99 10y ago
This is likely going to be 100% ignored since I'm late to the party on this but my wife's experiences have been that true discrimination and difficulty doesn't rise until a female engineer tries to enter management. When she was "just an engineer" things were great and nothing went wrong. When she tried to level up into management, she faced these difficulties: - competition from other female managers who had transitioned into the role from product management. They often times felt immensely threatened by her technical acumen and played politics to stop her. - Lots of pretending from engineers (never the ones she's led, oddly enough) that she "doesn't know anything" - Her current manager recently demoted her on his second day and told her "she should do engineering because he believes she'll do great at it and, if she can prove herself, she might be put in charge of a project and have a chance at leadership in the future." The last one still has me pretty irked since it's recent.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  isn't this a challenge for every software engineer? it is practically a stereotype for other engineers to criticize someone else's code it is practically a stereotype for senior software engineers to face a career plateau and you think this was uniquely sexual discrimination? so lets give you the benefit of the doubt, of the things you described, these are issues all software engineers face.
  - brianlweiner 10y ago
    The reality is that women face presumptions about their technical incompetence at a much higher rate than men. This is well documented and researched. [1] Obviously male developers also get undermined by their coworkers and face career plateaus. That is reality, but it is not a binary action - simply because some men face similar problems does not imply that it is an equal problem for both genders. [1] http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopardy-report.pdf http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopa...
    - cloudjacker 10y ago
      Yeah I'm going to stick to what I said earlier, the way you phrased it almost tries to put a shield around any rebuttal. He could have completely not mentioned the idea of gender being a crutch and it would have sounded like a gender neutral problem known to engineers.
womanwhocodes 10y ago
how exactly are they helping women? I am on their mailing list and it is not particularly useful. Once got interested in a "free" scholarship, contacted them, and the person tried to sell me a course for almost $10K. It's impossible for a woman after 35 to get back in tech

132 points by stvnchn 10y ago

It's an honor to be a part of YC S16! As an organization, we've been committed to making sure our members stay in tech and excel in the industry. We are excited to work with our Partners at YC and further enhance the Women Who Code experience. :)

jdp23 10y ago
Congrats Zassmin and Alaina, what you've accomplished so far is very impressive and looking forward to seeing how things scale!
davidjnelson 10y ago
Hey Zassmin, congratulations and your organization sounds awesome! Would this help a woman with an h1b visa and a masters in cs get hired as a software engineer? If so, what's involved to make that happen? Thank you!
H0n3sty 10y ago
Do you agree with the recent diversity and inclusion effort at github which noted that (6) some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women? http://www.businessinsider.com/diversity-guru-discusses-white-women-2016-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/diversity-guru-discusses-whit...
- douche 10y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with it, but there may be a point there that upper and middle class white women playing the victim card discredits it for those who have had more serious barriers to entry.

asimuvPR 10y ago

If anyone from WWC is reading: Is there a cutoff age (age > n) for participants or members?

alainapercival 10y ago
The average age across our entire community is 30, but people of all age are welcome. We've had people from kids and teens to people with more than 30 years of experience join.

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

sexism is sexist. go send the blacks off to their own faucet, ladies. you're all ignorant hypocrites.

dimino 10y ago

How does VC funding for a non-profit work? How does YC exit or recoup their investment?

nepstein 10y ago
It's a charitable donation - https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/ https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/

larrik 10y ago

Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably discover that you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare per kid, and at 2+ you might as well just stay home. I'm going to go out and a limb here and say that solid support for working moms would be one of the more effective strategies for long-term careers for women. I also can't imagine that it's that easy getting back into a tech career after 8 years of being a state-at-home mom (which is about 2-3 kids, with the youngest finally in kindergarten), looking for to work for a specific 6 hours per day on school days. Maybe SF is different, though. I'm not there.

droope 10y ago
It is undeniable that women in technology face greater challenges than men and it becomes hard for them go get through certain hoops that men get through effortlessly. Congrats YC! This seems like a good move.
- tsmffh 10y ago
  Undeniable without hard evidence?
dudifordMann 10y ago
I am not sure if that is the right mind set: "So around the time a lot of people have kids? ...you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare ... you might as well just stay home." The "you" can be the other partner. Ensuring fair pay and opportunities for all qualified workers would encourage only a brief departure from a woman's career for maternity leave, allowing either partner to be the home support (as needed), instead of making the choice based on poor future earning opportunities vs their male peers.
- busterarm 10y ago

alainapercival 10y ago

Hey @Alaina from Women Who Code here. We are thrilled to be joining the YC community and I'm happy to answer questions.

wyldfire 10y ago
> Women Who Code is an international 501c3 non-profit organization that works to empower career-aged women to excel in their technology careers. Is there any relationship with the Girls Who Code organization? Because of the similarity of names it sounds as if it's a similar concept targeted at an older female audience.
- zassmin 10y ago
  Great question. We focus on making sure our members stay in their engineering careers and excel in them! Girls Who Code focuses on getting high school girls interested in STEM. Our members often mentor Girls Who Code members.

jfe 10y ago

i have trouble accepting the idea that fewer women in tech is a problem. it's not that i want to discourage women -- or anyone -- from going into tech. i just don't believe in encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, except what they enjoy. i'd appreciate it if someone can persuade me that the hype is true so i no longer need to feel like a black sheep. but.. for one, the fact that there are fewer women than men in any field, computing or otherwise, is neither good nor bad. the disproportionate number of women in nursing is not seen as a problem, but somehow it has become one in tech. two, as we flood more people into professional computing, the good pay -- one of the reasons given on the wwcode website for encouraging women to enter the field -- will decrease, due to the increased supply of workers. tech is reduced to Yet Another Job, and Women Who Bgurp becomes the next YC startup. three, the wwcode website argues that diverse teams perform better by increasing collective intelligence -- measured in what units? and when it claims that organizations with the largest representation of women leadership have a higher return on investment, how is that measured? this seems super hand-wavy to me. lastly, the website's statement about women investing 90% of their income in their communities "when [they] make more" is not only unlikely, but is predicated on the long-term availability of good pay in professional computing, which, as i mentioned earlier, will decline at a rate proportional to the frequency with which we encourage people to enter the field.

busterarm 10y ago
Also, should we really be pushing anyone into a field known for social isolation, long hours, depression and suicide without making a seriously strong effort to resolve those problems as well?
- lukeschlather 10y ago
  It might be harder to solve either problem in isolation than it is to solve both at the same time.
- morgante 10y ago
  Introducing a higher percentage of women to the field would likely directly improve several of those problems due to statistics alone.

bastijn 10y ago

I wonder how much of the balance difference is due to boys liking tech more than girls. I'd say that if you ask 10-15 year olds, who hardly think about their future, about what they do in their free time you will find equal balance on the reply "gaming/stuff on my PC". Most girls don't like it, that translates to later stages in life I guess. Never see the reports for other fields where females excel in acceptance rates. Teachers, daycare, psychology, there are plenty really. Mind you, I'm not saying women are treated equally once they _have_ the job, I'm just not sold on this whole "only x% of tech is women!" Thing. We can probably learn a thing or two on how to treat our female colleagues, but please stop trying to fight for 50% should be women kind of causes. There are other fields where it is completely the other way around and I don't see people fighting there for equal rights.

Swizec 10y ago
> and I don't see people fighting there for equal rights. Perhaps because you're not in those fields? It's also a symptom of systemic sexism. Men don't dare fight for their right to be stay-at-home dads or to be nurses or whatever else is traditionally seen as female. It makes them look too much like ... you know ... not men. If you look at the broader internet, you'll see there's been a lot of fighting happening for that too. Men asking for paternity leave without harming their careers, for instance. But I digress. The most likely reason you haven't seen people fighting for equal rights in other fields is that you're not in those other fields and aren't exposed to their echo chamber.
DanBC 10y ago
> I don't see people fighting there for equal rights. every time the gender imbalance comes up on HN someone makes the same comment you have. Did you try Google? Because those programmes are trivially easy to find. People will often make a similar comment about the lack of programmes to get women into construction or mining. But those programmes are really easy to find too.
- HarshTruth 10y ago
  Well clearly they aren't as common as ones for tech, or else OP would have seen them. If both types of programmes have the same presence it is vanishingly unlikely that OP would not be aware of them. So either he is a liar or your overestimate their presence..

lifeisstillgood 10y ago

I would be interested in the number of men or women who leave tech because the next promotion effectively is a promotion out of tech and into management. What is the record like with tech companies with engineer tracks vs normal up or out? How big is the male female divide in those cases - and is the diff significant?

nostrebored 10y ago
Half of the women who leave (so roughly 25%) leave tech fields altogether. The numbers are fudged such that women in management are still considered as in tech. Most "women in tech" numbers that you see include PMs, POs, IT workers, Support Engineers, etc. The male female divide is actually quite large in management. Women are promoted to management disproportionately (hypotheses include "better people skills" and a distrust of their technical ability). "We find that senior technical women are significantly more likely to be in a manager position (36.9%) than are men (19%); conversely, men at the high level are significantly more likely to be in an individual contributor position (80.6%) than are women (63.1%)." [0] "45 percent of women technologists felt like women were being “pushed” into execution roles, and 42 percent of women reported that women do not have equal access to technology creation roles." [0] [0] http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Technical-Women-A-Profile-of-Success.pdf http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Techni...
- lifeisstillgood 10y ago
  Thanks.

ones_and_zeros 10y ago

I spend a lot of my time and personal money to encourage high school students to pursue a field in STEM (specifically robotics), however, lately I've been having trouble convincing myself to continue due to the long term prospects of a career in STEM. As a professional software engineer at a well known software company, I can only see it as a dead end job with low status and a small shelf life due to age discrimination. I'd be interested to hear from others who are interested in inclusion how they feel about potentially painting too rosey of a picture.

bazqux2 10y ago
I'm in the same boat. I switched to data science / ml.
Retric 10y ago
It's a solid starting off point for a range of other roles. Basically the Upwind section of this: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html I find a lot of professionals used to be programmers.
tomsaffell 10y ago
Interesting and worrying. Could you give more details on the "low status" and the "small shelf life"? Especially as it relates to gender (if indeed it does - forgive my ignorance).
hpagey 10y ago
I share your feeling. I am actively seeking of moving away from the tech field. I am still trying to figure out how to do that (maybe PT MBA will help not sure). My wife who is a software engineer will also exit the tech field in few years, so will my sister.

saiya-jin 10y ago

is it really true that women don't get promoted in engineering as much? that's a honest question, the only few I've met did not aspire for higher and higher positions intensively, rather enjoyed what they were doing (that could be said about most of the guys too). I am all for equal situations for both genders, but my assumption was that we already +-have it in western societies, thus such a move would make guys actually in a disadvantage and thus be unfair. IT is not a very cool job to non/tech people outside few top companies like facebook or google, somewhere along accountants maybe. naturally, more ambitious ones will go for jobs like lawyers (if they have no heart :)) or medicine as my fiancee did. IT is just not that sexi. another point - if you are in your 40s, it's hard to be just developer. people move up to architecture or management, which I consider both boring as hell - endless conf calls, producing never-ending stream of powerpoints etc. not exactly why creative people came into IT in first place. I admit other branches of engineering might look differently, no clue about it.

sp332 10y ago
http://i.imgur.com/reUNxYu.png http://i.imgur.com/reUNxYu.png Definitely something odd going on in computer science.
- douche 10y ago
  The inflection point is right about when consumer PCs (personal computers in general, not wintel specifically) became a thing. What are consumer PCs used for, when they aren't being used productively? Gaming, and kids who like games trying to learn how to make their own games (particularly in the pre-web 2.0 era... Web 2.0, remember that?). And ultimately, who was the main consumer of PC gaming? 12-25 year old boys and men. Then you've got a decline in the wake of the Dot-Com bust. One has to wonder if the gains in the other fields of study cannibalized high-aptitude women who might have gone into CS.
bigger_cheese 10y ago
>I admit other branches of engineering might look differently, no clue about it. I'm a materials engineer I work at a large scale industrial plant (1000+ employees). Our diversity statistics are probably even bleaker than amongst software/IT type engineers. There are woman in engineering management positions at my work. Not a lot -the number probably reflects the overall workforce makeup. I'd estimate my workplace is greater than 95% male. Some areas of the company are much more diverse than engineering, notably HR, Accounting/Finance and relevant to this topic our IT department. My Sister is a mechanical engineer she works in government planning. Previous to this role she worked at a power plant. According to her the public sector much more diverse than private.

hsubi 10y ago

Is it just me or does anyone find these type of groups too career oriented? Don't get me wrong, I am a female dev and I'm all for equal opportunity and working towards supportive environment for any gender or non-gendered, sexual orientation or no orientation. I don't really find these organisations really that helpful in bringing everyone together. I'm a nerd by nature before I knew computers existed and becoming a coder just came naturally to me. Obviously it's not because I'm unique and amazing. I just grew up in an environment with a lot of freedom as a child so I wasn't limited to think or act in a certain way. Anyway I wouldn't be comfortable in a group like wwcode because looking at the blurbs on the site it's just too career oriented. I wouldn't fit in at all but that doesn't mean I don't have the same problems these women have. Just because my sex is female I get treated differently even though I don't necessarily feel either female or male inside and I'm a pure thoroughbred nerd. I don't feel like climbing the career ladder because I enjoy being the lowly dev as long as there's a bit of freedom in how I solve problems and problems are not too terribly boring. All this, yeah you're a woman, yeah you deserve to get promoted etc kinda puts me off a little bit. I'm sure it's all with good intentions but if I'm feeling like this (a woman) imagine all those males who feel threatened by us. That's why I think these type of organisations, even though they have good intentions sometimes fall short at bringing everybody together. Because in the end we all need to come to an understanding and accept our differences to have a truly harmonious society. Also a side point about people comparing computing jobs with nursing or bin lorry operators. You are comparing apples and oranges. There are factors such as money, status, education levels to consider and are different. No one is blocked from becoming a bin lorry man/woman and as a kid no one dreamt of becoming one. They add a lot of value to the society though maybe even more than some developers but that's another discussion. Ok rant's over. :)

beepboop2045 10y ago
I feel like what they're doing is good in general but at the same time not my scene for a lot of the same reasons that you mentioned. I suspect that women-oriented tech organizations lean that way because a large number of people who are women in tech AND who show up to meetups are women who don't have programming jobs and want them. I also think there's a culture that pushes women into lead positions/managment because that will have a very obvious benefit to women who work in tech that work under them. There's been a couple of initiatives that are more about the passion-side of tech that are oriented towards women. Double Union was a pretty good group for that when I was in SF.

NTDF9 10y ago

I don't understand this constant fight to have 50%. There are capable women who climb ladders successfully. The other women who couldn't, simply couldn't, just like many men who couldn't. Also, pregnancy and breastfeeding cannot be done by a man. A woman who aspires to be a mother will have to compromise on other things to be a mother, which probably will include a compromise in career. A man who aspires to be a father will have to compromise on other things to be a father, which probably will include a compromise in EVERY OTHER FACET of his life ensuring he has a job to pay the bills for the woman and children. Why is motherhood such a stigma? Why is career the all-important thing that EVERY woman has to pursue? Let the woman choose herself what she wants to do.

nostrebored 10y ago
So you think that there are more incapable women than men in the world? Women are capable of working in fields like tech through pregnancy. We have breast pumps and formula. If you're going to complain about maternity leave, why is the man not taking paternity leave to help his partner and bond with his child? Why does it have to be the man making all of these decisions? Why can't both partners work together ot support a child? Why is motherhood viewed in the ridiculous, rigid way that we see it today a given? The thing is, given attitudes like yours (which are emblematic of societies) you're presented a false dichotomy of "career-woman" or the martyrdom of modern motherhood.
- NTDF9 10y ago
  >> So you think that there are more incapable women than men in the world? Incapable of what? Never once did I say women are incapable of either career or motherhood. Women can efficiently do what they choose to. Juggling many roles on the other hand is hard for any human being (regardless of gender) >> Women are capable of working in fields like tech through pregnancy. We have breast pumps and formula. If you're going to complain about maternity leave, why is the man not taking paternity leave to help his partner and bond with his child? Who said that man doesn't want to take a paternity leave? Every single recent father I know wants to take time off to bond with the kid. Unfortunately, he can't without a cut in pay (in the US). Get this law in and you'll see so many fathers doing it. >> Why does it have to be the man making all of these decisions? Why can't both partners work together ot support a child? It is always a partnership. Only a partnership works. More often than not, partnership == compromise from all parties involved to WIN. If you were a basketball watcher, you'd know that not everyone can play point guard even if they want to. Only one person plays that role and the remaining support that person. Why? So that the team wins. In a baby-making situation, WIN = produce a healthy baby and have enough resources for its upbringing and the mother's safety. With this definition of WIN, a man/woman who only wants selfish desires and doesn't care for the partner or the kid is a subhuman being. Sorry. You both need to be less selfish here for the sake of the kid. >> Why is motherhood in the ridiculous, rigid way that we see it today a given? The thing is, given attitudes like yours (which are emblematic of societies) you're presented a false dichotomy of "career-woman" or the martyrdom of modern motherhood. Fine. Do both jobs half-heartedly. Anybody who has been a successful mother knows that it is HARD. If you think it just "happens" you're badly mistaken.

H0n3sty 10y ago

What would people think if the genders were reversed and this institution was discriminating against women and only helping men? Women have a far larger presence in other fields like biology and education, but you don't see new organizations popping up every other month to change that in favor of men. Discrimination like this should be illegal.

wpietri 10y ago
The reason women dominate in certain fields is that those fields were generally seen as less important, so women were pushed into them. E.g., doctors were men, women were nurses, and there was an enormous pay and prestige difference between the two. (Hint: it did not favor the nurses.) If you're interested in learning more, researching "pink ghetto" will get you started.
- reednj 10y ago
  80% of people working in PR are women. Is that a pink ghetto as well?
  - dopamean 10y ago
    Definitely.
  - gaylemcd 10y ago
    And PR is not very well paid.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- brighteyes 10y ago
  That is a theory that can explain some fields. However, so many exceptions exist that it can't be the whole story. For example, women dominate * Clinical psychology * Veterinary medicine * Biology All of which are important, fulfilling, well-paying fields. In all of them it's hard to say women were "pushed" there, rather women were very interested in them, and arrived in larger numbers than men.

falsestprophet 10y ago

The two sexes are not identical. Boy are you going to be surprised about what pants are hiding.

nostrebored 10y ago
You know exactly what I mean. Arguing for the idea of "brain sex" is essentialist and ridiculous. There's nothing that makes my wife or the average woman a less capable programmer than anyone else in the field other than a consistent problem with socialization.
- H0n3sty 10y ago
  Men and women have been subject to different pressures throughout the evolution of our species. Its seems unlikely that this would not lead to some differences either on average or across the populations.
  - nostrebored 10y ago
    If you can provide me with any well-done research showing that evopsych is anything besides the modern phrenology I'd be surprised.
    - H0n3sty 10y ago
      Wow, that's a really good question. I'm fairly certain you've done a great deal more research on this than me. I had to start by finding the definition of two of the words you used. For the benefit of others who might not be as well versed... evopsych - psychological traits are evolved adaptations phrenology - the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities My previous post was based on information from a recent study on Y-DNA which indicates a high differential in reproductive rate between men and women, with men reproducing at a much lower rate. This of course means that reproductive competition is much higher amongst men (at least in terms of successful reproduction) and might have lead to the aggressive pruning that we see in the y-chromosome. I'm also aware that competition has a heavy influence on evolution and that the sex chromosomes are not really isolated to gender specific anatomy. Here's that study: http://genome.cshlp.org/content/25/4/459.full http://genome.cshlp.org/content/25/4/459.full I found another study (link below) on differences in personality traits across genders and culture. The authors found gender differences to be most pronounced in cultures that minimize traditional sex roles. Does this study fit your criteria? http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~ssj/Genderdifferences%20in%20personality%20traits%20across%20cultures%20Robust%20andsurprising%20findings.pdf http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~ssj/Genderdifferences%20in%20persona... With respect to phrenology, I'm aware of studies linking brain size to intelligence. The meta-analysis (linked below) confirms this and actually notes a higher correlation among women. http://www.govrel.vcu.edu//news/Releases/2005/june/McDaniel-Big%20Brain.pdf http://www.govrel.vcu.edu//news/Releases/2005/june/McDaniel-... From your previous post, I'm guessing you might have reason to discard this type of study. Could you please elaborate and share your thoughts?

jboggan 10y ago

Congratulations Alaina!

carrja99 10y ago

This is likely going to be 100% ignored since I'm late to the party on this but my wife's experiences have been that true discrimination and difficulty doesn't rise until a female engineer tries to enter management. When she was "just an engineer" things were great and nothing went wrong. When she tried to level up into management, she faced these difficulties: - competition from other female managers who had transitioned into the role from product management. They often times felt immensely threatened by her technical acumen and played politics to stop her. - Lots of pretending from engineers (never the ones she's led, oddly enough) that she "doesn't know anything" - Her current manager recently demoted her on his second day and told her "she should do engineering because he believes she'll do great at it and, if she can prove herself, she might be put in charge of a project and have a chance at leadership in the future." The last one still has me pretty irked since it's recent.

cloudjacker 10y ago
isn't this a challenge for every software engineer? it is practically a stereotype for other engineers to criticize someone else's code it is practically a stereotype for senior software engineers to face a career plateau and you think this was uniquely sexual discrimination? so lets give you the benefit of the doubt, of the things you described, these are issues all software engineers face.
- brianlweiner 10y ago
  The reality is that women face presumptions about their technical incompetence at a much higher rate than men. This is well documented and researched. [1] Obviously male developers also get undermined by their coworkers and face career plateaus. That is reality, but it is not a binary action - simply because some men face similar problems does not imply that it is an equal problem for both genders. [1] http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopardy-report.pdf http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopa...
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
    Yeah I'm going to stick to what I said earlier, the way you phrased it almost tries to put a shield around any rebuttal. He could have completely not mentioned the idea of gender being a crutch and it would have sounded like a gender neutral problem known to engineers.

womanwhocodes 10y ago

how exactly are they helping women? I am on their mailing list and it is not particularly useful. Once got interested in a "free" scholarship, contacted them, and the person tried to sell me a course for almost $10K. It's impossible for a woman after 35 to get back in tech