18 ms·

Women rise through the ranks of IT more rapidly than men

146 points by hrgeek 10y ago

colmvp 10y ago
It's interesting that there is a huge emphasis on the gender disparity, especially in tech, without also bringing race into the equation. When I first read the article and headline, I first thought to myself: "Are we talking about predominantly white women? Black women? Hispanic women? Asian women?" For example, I know that Asians are generally 'over-represented' in tech yet if you look stats which compare professionals by ethnicity (https://d.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline/2015/05/3045954-inline-i-fig-3-1ascendrptmanagement-pipeline-by-racegraph.jpg https://d.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline...), Asians (both male and female) get promoted at a lower rate than white men and women (https://c.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline/2015/05/3045954-inline-i-fig4ascendrptaggregate-execparityindexbar.jpg https://c.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline...). And we could look at specific company's like Intel, Yahoo, and LinkedIn to find similar patterns, namely white people have a much higher likelihood to achieve higher executive positions compared to Asians (even when controlling for difference in company demographic composition).
- JamesBarney 10y ago
  It would interesting to see that data broken up by age of immigration to the country. I've worked with a large number of incredibly intelligent Asians who immigrated here in theirs 20's-40's. And they are all too smart and hard working for their positions, and it seems like the primary reason they've been held back is because of things like visa issues, lack of fluency, lack of a college/highschool/family network to draw upon, and less cultural understanding which inhibits bonding. This has meant that many of them are 1-2 promotions behind where I think they would be if they had immigrated here in middle school.
tobyjsullivan 10y ago
This immediately made me think of Paul Graham's article "A Way to Detect Bias". He talks about how a hiring bias (against women in this case) results in those who are hired being above average in skill. Just one hypothesis on this data, but that would help explain why those women who are hired then get promoted faster - because they are actually outperforming their peers. http://www.paulgraham.com/bias.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bias.html
- smegel 10y ago
  I know the reason, because I have seen it in action. Simply put, few women work in technical IT, but end up in management, business analysis, etc. And management has a faster and higher career path to elevated positions, while techs will top out at "senior engineer/developer" after about 5 years, and will be still stuck there after 20 unless they basically give up their passion and become a manager. Of course, there are far fewer management positions than tech roles, as the are far fewer women working in tech generally.
- stale2002 10y ago
  Yeah, women get driven out of tech in droves. In order to even survive, the average woman has to be at the very top of their game, or else theyd be gone because it isn't worth it to put up with all the BS that they have to.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    This differs a lot: at the last company I worked with some men were awful. That doesn't seem to be the standard though. I do see one issue though: women are far more likely to be sick (at least around here statistics are quite clear IIRC).
    - scook 10y ago
      Men are more likely to place pride over medical care. They'll take fewer days they really need as a result.
      - danbolt 10y ago
        Seriously. Some days I think I put way too much irrational pressure on myself just to be "good enough" at my job.
      - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
        When toxic masculinity is literally toxic.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
As if getting into management was an universal desire.
- mhurron 10y ago
  Well climbing the corporate ladder is going to be the measure of corporate success.
  - ryanmarsh 10y ago
    And at the prison the measure of success is being the warden, but who wants that?
    - Shanea93 10y ago
      I imagine some of the inmates would kill to be the warden.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    More like used to by. Why climb ladders when you can change jobs going up every time?
- mc32 10y ago
  But still, it remains a measure of both success and opportunity (presence or absence of ceilings).
- romanovcode 10y ago
  Yep. Every woman developer I've talked to wants to be a manager someday. Some even go for junior manager (a lot lower pay) even thought they have the degree and skills to be mid developers without any problems.
  - nostrebored 10y ago
    This is ridiculous. Not every woman I know wants to be a manager, and despite their proficiencies, they are seen as "more personable" and implicitly, less technical. Women being pushed into management and out of technical lead roles is a very well known phenomenon in the field, and people here pretending like this is "success" seem to be very happy to ignore that this fits very nicely with the status quo of sexism.
danharaj 10y ago
> The study of more than 4,000 UK IT professionals, published to mark International Women’s Day, reveals women typically reach management level three years faster than men (in nine rather than 12 years) and they are appointed CTO/CIO two and a half years faster (in 13 versus 15.5 years for men). > However, the survey also reveals a colossal gap between the numbers of men and women working in top IT roles. Of the senior developers who responded to the survey, only 6% were women; with IT managers the figure was 8%, and of those heading up IT only 7% were female. These statistics are weird together. How can this be? Speculation: There is a bias against average/underperforming women relative to men entering and staying in tech. This means that the women who do stay in are from the upper end of the distribution. It's as if you took a normal distribution (as skill often is distributed) and truncated some segment of the lower half. This would explain why there are much fewer women reaching managerial positions but why the ones that do reach it do so very quickly. Is there any data on how qualified and performant female engineers are relative to male engineers who occupy the same position? A result that would support this hypothesis would be something like women in the same position as men in tech have beefier academic credentials or more awards.
- tajen 10y ago
  I've had 2 examples around me where the woman was incompetent in programming and she was promoted because she was better with Excel spreadsheets. Plus the prejudice that men are supposed to be worse at communication than women, so managers promote women. It's sad because it reinforces the mistake where women are allowed to be incompetent, whereas we should keep them in a programmer job until they gain skills, like young men do, instead of promoting them too quickly. As opposed to the article, I witnessed a mean-time-to-promotion to the job of Team Lead of 3 years for women instead of 7 years for males – but that could be because the article considers "management" as a higher job than Team Lead.
- CapitalistCartr 10y ago
  Maybe women are, on average, treated worse at university and entry-level, so the majority that continue aren't a random distribution but predominately represent those more determined and aggressive.
Dzugaru 10y ago
> despite still being heavily outnumbered Despite?
- kazinator 10y ago
  Yes, that's a word; http://www.dictionary.com/browse/despite http://www.dictionary.com/browse/despite Its use here means something like "contrary to the expectation that women face barriers in IT (as evidenced by lower numbers of women in the top positions in IT and in general), they rise through the ranks faster than men."
  - tomp 10y ago
    > contrary to the expectation that women face barriers in IT Hasn't this been debunked already? AFAIK the percentage of women in IT is about the same as the percentage of women graduating from CS.
    - kazinator 10y ago
      It could be; in any case, that is neither here nor there since the article seems to be taking that for granted as the basis of its "despite".
  - Dzugaru 10y ago
    Well, I meant that being outnumbered easily can be an advantage - (ex. you're unique, noticeable etc.), that's why "despite being outnumbered" sounds really strange. "Despite facing barriers" - ok. Not saying that those statistics can be heavily biased due to imbalanced classes - but other commenters already mentioned that multiple times.
- inanutshellus 10y ago
  No need to be defensive about it, it's basic math. If, say, 20% of CS grads are female, they're competing against 80% of CS grads for distinction. So it's surprising when, "despite the odds", they succeed faster. Perhaps more importantly the article does not mention confirmation bias, which is surely at play here. (e.g. "average" women are being discouraged from CS degrees before they even start, so only superstars stick it through, so of course they move faster through the ranks after graduation.)
tajen 10y ago
As a man, I've noticed the "women promotion difference" very importantly in companies I've been employed in: Since 2006, it's mostly women who are promoted, with configurations like my last job where both my team lead and the manager were women. On the other hand, I've left those companies because I could notice there was no career path for me, and created my own. I identify to a generation of men who've been sacrified for women equality. I'm all for equality, as long as everyone has equal chances, which we currently don't have. I'm very happy that we now start having studies supporting that men are less promoted than women today in some context (a minima in Luxembourg, France and Australia for what I'm concerned). It's now time we study across all countries the mean-time-to-promotion, and it's time we include talks in conferences about the difficulties of men. And it's time we stop having differentiated education and career paths for women. Today, women are equal in the mind if most men, and have a large swathes of explicit advantages granted by laws.
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  > I'm all for equality, as long as everyone has equal chances, which we currently don't have. But that will keep a status quo if one group is starting out as a serious minority. That's the whole point of equality movements: you have to adjust upwards for a bit, until it's actually equal. Then you can go back to being fair. EDIT: This thread is blowing up, so I want to clarify my comment: I'm talking about affirmative action, and I think it's a good idea in the case of women in tech, presently.
  - dom0 10y ago
    Woah. Just to clarify: That's absolutely not the "whole point of equality movements". This is a stance some people take on it. By far not all.
  - the8472 10y ago
    Equal chances would also mean an equal chance to get hired if you actually apply. So why do you need extra adjustment beyond that? Simple turnover should approach an equilibrium eventually.
moon_of_moon 10y ago
"The few female species who participate, do well in an industry dominated by male species with poor social skills, little free time, and general lack of success with female species" All hail uber hacker Meyer.
Shanea93 10y ago
As a sidenote, the USD to GBP currency figures shown in this article really show how much the pound has slumped over the last 6 months. Article: "£52,000 ($74,000)" Current day: "£52,000 ($63,020)"
stcredzero 10y ago
There's a common misconception, that technical excellence is a primary skill for managing a team of programmers. It's not the primary skill but a secondary one. The primary skill is managing people. One still needs to have technical competence -- far beyond just being able to code. However, the focus shouldn't be on dazzling displays of technical esoterica. The focus should be on balancing a tangle of conflicting cost/benefits and communication with the team -- logistics and tactics, not fisticuffs. You can be a great manager with solidly average technical skills, so long as you can find a resource to advise you. (Dunning-Krueger trap: You may not know enough to understand if you truly understand the advice.) A team managed by such will usually outperform an average manager with great technical skills. Alexander the Great would probably have conquered more of the world, if he had personally fought less.
- choicewords 10y ago
  Didn't Alexander die of poisoning, not combat wound?
  - philk10 10y ago
    I think the poster was implying that if Alexander hadn't used wars for all his gains he might have made more
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      Also true, but I was saying that he probably could have performed even better through war, if he hadn't been as injured as he was at the end of his campaigns.
  - Mz 10y ago
    Proposed causes of Alexander's death included alcoholic liver disease, fever, and strychnine poisoning, but little data support those versions.[15] According to the University of Maryland School of Medicine report of 1998, Alexander probably died of typhoid fever[16] (which, along with malaria, was common in ancient Babylon[17]). In the week before Alexander's death, historical accounts mention chills, sweats, exhaustion and high fever, typical symptoms of infectious diseases, including typhoid fever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_the_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_the_Great
nostrebored 10y ago
>"Today, women are equal in the mind if most men, and have a large swathes of explicit advantages granted by laws." Right, which is why fields that are predominantly women, like therapy, nursing, and pornography are so well paid and well treated. Oh wait, therapy is an extremely mentally and emotionally taxing field where years of unpaid work is the norm, nurses work insane hours to the point that many are addicted to amphetamines and seriously injured by middle age, and the ridiculously transparent OSHA violation that is every piece of hardcore pornography ever made is taken seriously right? Oh, but I'm glad people like you will set me straight by letting me know that women being pushed into the more social and less technical role of manager is the harbinger of the fempocalypse. The mean time to promotion is very well documented, as is the slump in promotion around the age of 30 for women regardless of if they have children.
- sctb 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12686697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12686697 and marked it off-topic.
- nostromo 10y ago
  Since you brought up injuries, it's worth noting that >90% of deaths at work are suffered by men. http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0013.pdf http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0013.pdf This is because men tend to outnumber women in dangerous jobs (construction, military, transportation).
  - pyre 10y ago
    - Working at a man in construction/military/transportation gets you more respect when telling others what you do for a living than women that work in pornography/sex work. - A number of injuries that happen as a result of pornography (e.g. rape) are not reported because they would negatively affect their further career in the industry. - I doubt any of those stats include the work-related injuries of sex workers. - Some of those industries have insulated themselves from women. E.g. the military hasn't really decided at it's core that they want to have women, even though they do a bunch of PR about it. - It's also possible that men are more likely to take work-related risks. E.g. give in to the boss that demands your construction worksite will not comply with OSHA because it's 'too costly.'
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
sexism is sexist
known 10y ago
It this specific to UK?
calex 10y ago
Reading the comments on articles like this on hacker news always make me deeply uncomfortable to be a woman in tech. I know it's hard to believe, but women don't usually get sent to coding summer camp as teenagers. Our parents don't usually encourage us to take AP computer science, and our best friends aren't in CS and don't refer us for sweet internships at Microsoft and Google. If you're a woman in this industry, it's GENERALLY because it is something that you very much care about and want to do. It's not some feminist conspiracy that women are being promoted, it's just that the women who go into tech are usually already pretty gritty people. You're comparing a very driven and passionate subset of women to a very general subset of men. Here's a really great article I read once -- "I need terrible female engineers": https://medium.com/@amyngyn/i-need-terrible-female-engineers-1023a2e973dd#.l85nr149d https://medium.com/@amyngyn/i-need-terrible-female-engineers...
- this2shallpaas 10y ago
  "I know it's hard to believe, but women don't usually get sent to coding summer camp as teenagers. Our parents don't usually encourage us to take AP computer science, and our best friends aren't in CS and don't refer us for sweet internships at Microsoft and Google." Is it hard to believe most men don't do those things, too? Some do, sure. And of people that do these things, historically more have probably been men than women (don't have the stats, but it sounds reasonable). But how many men do you think do those things, vs those that don't? Some anecdata: I didn't do any of those. Of all the engineers I can think of, male and female, very very few went to coding summer camps or took AP computer science. Few had best friends in CS in university, but sure, more did this than AP computer science or coding summer camp. And few had sweet internships at tech companies.
  - calex 10y ago
    Oh great, more anecdotes in this thread. There are the cold hard facts, you know: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/techs-gender-and-race-gap-starts-in-high-school/282966/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/techs-g... >"It's already too late," Paul Graham, founder of the tech entrepreneur boot camp Y Combinator, said last month in a controversial interview. "What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that." >Ericson's analysis of the data shows that in 2013, 18 percent of the students who took the [AP computer science] exam were women. Who makes high school students' schedules? Parents and teachers, at least in the US. So let's put aside anecdotes and reactionary attitudes and just look at the facts.
fatdog 10y ago
One explanation would be that women could be said to have a better instinct for power, and they recognize quickly that as a corporate survival strategy, power over people is more rewarding and sustainable than power over things. Feminism isn't about women becoming IT guys, it's about becoming bosses. Sort of breaks with the victim narrative, but provides a more plausible story.
fishtoaster 10y ago
This seems to be based this survey data: http://www.emolument.com/career_advice/women_in_it_career_evolution_best_paying_jobs http://www.emolument.com/career_advice/women_in_it_career_ev...
deleted 10y ago
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fishtoaster 10y ago
I suppose I could think of a number of explanations for this observed effect. 1. Selection- because so much of IT is hostile to women, the only ones who become senior in the field are the very good ones. 2. Affirmative action- companies promoting women regardless of merit to seem progressive. 3. Some sort of inate or socialized advantage– the "women are better at people stuff" philosophy. If this is the case, then you'd expect more women to be in management. 4. Methodological flaws in the survey. I can't find any detailed discussion of their process, but phrases like "Of the senior developers who responded to the survey" seem to imply there could easily be significant selection bias. Feel free to take your pick based on what you already believe. Personally, I'm going to wait for more data before forming any solid conclusions based on this.
- pc86 10y ago
  > Feel free to take your pick based on what you already believe Probably a good TLDR for any HN discussion around gender.
- FT_intern 10y ago
  >Selection- because so much of IT is hostile to women that's an unproven premise
  - fishtoaster 10y ago
    It's not a premise at all- I'm basing nothing on it. I'm not even claiming it's true. I'm just saying that it is one of several possible explanations for the available data.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    Have you tried actually talking to any women in tech?
- nostrebored 10y ago
  You can take a look at [1] and the data there to see that 1 is the culprit, but only a piece of it. Women are pushed into less technical roles throughout their careers. Women with the same technical qualifications are significantly more likely to be managers than in a senior technical position. [1] http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Technical-Women-A-Profile-of-Success.pdf http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Techni...
utternerd 10y ago
Please don't take this as flippant, it's a legitimate query. I keep seeing the call for "more women in technology", however I don't see a similar rally for say, "more men in early education". Most teachers in early to middle school tend to be females by a wide margin[0], men comprise less than 20%, yet I don't see people screaming there should be more men teaching in those roles? Why is that? [0] http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers
return0 10y ago
Following the logic of most mental gymnasts here, the best IT companies should be women-only companies by now. People seem automatically to turn off their brains when discussing anything that might oppose the orthodoxy of affirmative action. This is a case where a bias that first appeared in academia (http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-...) and is now bleeding to corporate life. If men or any other subgroup are not rising through the ranks as fast, that is a clear discrimination and it is a problem, not an 'achievement'. It's this kind of ill-logic that brings pro-women policies in a bad light.
- mcv 10y ago
  Because there are less women in tech, the best companies should be all women? That logic makes no sense. If only the best women are hired, while average men also get hired, that means there's discrimination against women, while the few women that do stay in the industry will tend to be of above average ability, and therefore rise faster. As long as the vast majority of programmers are men, it's ludicrous to complain that men are being discriminated against. There are dozens of studies showing that men have it way easier in a multitude of ways. But it's good that there are more visible women in tech, and hopefully that will lead to even out the balance in the future.
  - bluecalm 10y ago
    >>As long as the vast majority of programmers are men, it's ludicrous to complain that men are being discriminated against Let me stop you here. This is a flawed argument. It's very possible that men gravitate to a certain field more than women but there is discrimination against men in that field (for example if companies think it's good PR to have more women at top positions). I am not arguing if that actually happens or not here. I am just pointing out that your argument is logically flawed. I can even give you an example of discrimination against majority group: it's beneficial to be tall white man in many Asian countries. You get more respect and bring prestige to the company. Tall white men are not majority but still they are favored and their Asian counterparts are discriminated against.
  - 10y ago
turc1656 10y ago
I'm not too worried. I'm sure the feminists are going to condemn these companies and call for the resignations of the executives and stage protests over this blatant inequity. And the media will plaster this all over the news to spread awareness. And these companies will take heat from clients, end users, and advertisers, right?
bluetwo 10y ago
I'm totally OK with this. Am I the only person who dated a senior analyst and is now married to an IT Director?
LordHumungous 10y ago
This shouldn't be surprising to anyone given the stated goal by large companies of hiring more women, and the relatively small pool on which they are drawing from
deleted 10y ago
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mblack1968 10y ago
I've been reading HN for a few years now. The tone of the response to women in IT hasn't changed much. I kept believing that if I were good enough, smart enough, and if people liked me enough, I would get ahead. Turns out, there's a real ceiling on where I can go. Not because I lack talent. I am very good with people. My last manager believed I would be a VP at the company someday. I maxed out at that fake "architect" role made for people that require more money but can't be promoted to management. This was a large F-50 type organization. We found that the HR departments at very large companies definitely improve diversity up and down the ranks. But there is a blockade that eventually presents itself. This blockade can probably be summed up mathematically: The first females to go up stream will always be white. As the number of females up the ranks increases, the less obligation white males feel to grant other minorities the same privilege. Eventually, it works out to where there will be a multitude of white women paving the way at VP level, and until they die off or retire, the blockade prevents advancement for anyone else. I call it the "wall of white women" with a sub-wall of "white male architects" waiting for their chance. If the minority applicant is not blindingly obviously superior to the wall of white males just beneath the wall of white women, there's no chance. Unfortunate. I find it kind of hilarious and enjoy watching it form at every single major corporation.
- MollyR 10y ago
  I'm a first gen korean-american woman (I guess after 30 its weird to call yourself a girl). I've definitely seen this situation too, it was a little depressing. So I've been bouncing around startups,and even started contracting under my own c-corp to make connections and money. The respect difference has been unreal. I've had to toughen up significantly, you have to really learn to read bs and move on without emotion. That's another option you can take, I'm personally enjoying it right now.
  - mblack1968 10y ago
    Thank you for responding! I like hearing solutions. Listening to my own whining is tiresome. To your point, I left my large F-50 employer this summer and started at a smaller company. I am strongly considering contracting. Your response is encouraging.
NumberCruncher 10y ago
Only because women and men are equal as human beings and should be treated accordingly it does not mean they are identical. Not so long ago everybody said that we need more women in [paste a well paid white collar job]. You wanted positive discrimination. Now you have it. Ironically nobody wanted to have more women on construction sites, in the military service or as a surgeon...

146 points by hrgeek 10y ago

It's interesting that there is a huge emphasis on the gender disparity, especially in tech, without also bringing race into the equation. When I first read the article and headline, I first thought to myself: "Are we talking about predominantly white women? Black women? Hispanic women? Asian women?" For example, I know that Asians are generally 'over-represented' in tech yet if you look stats which compare professionals by ethnicity (https://d.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline/2015/05/3045954-inline-i-fig-3-1ascendrptmanagement-pipeline-by-racegraph.jpg https://d.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline...), Asians (both male and female) get promoted at a lower rate than white men and women (https://c.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline/2015/05/3045954-inline-i-fig4ascendrptaggregate-execparityindexbar.jpg https://c.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline...). And we could look at specific company's like Intel, Yahoo, and LinkedIn to find similar patterns, namely white people have a much higher likelihood to achieve higher executive positions compared to Asians (even when controlling for difference in company demographic composition).

JamesBarney 10y ago
It would interesting to see that data broken up by age of immigration to the country. I've worked with a large number of incredibly intelligent Asians who immigrated here in theirs 20's-40's. And they are all too smart and hard working for their positions, and it seems like the primary reason they've been held back is because of things like visa issues, lack of fluency, lack of a college/highschool/family network to draw upon, and less cultural understanding which inhibits bonding. This has meant that many of them are 1-2 promotions behind where I think they would be if they had immigrated here in middle school.

tobyjsullivan 10y ago

This immediately made me think of Paul Graham's article "A Way to Detect Bias". He talks about how a hiring bias (against women in this case) results in those who are hired being above average in skill. Just one hypothesis on this data, but that would help explain why those women who are hired then get promoted faster - because they are actually outperforming their peers. http://www.paulgraham.com/bias.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bias.html

smegel 10y ago
I know the reason, because I have seen it in action. Simply put, few women work in technical IT, but end up in management, business analysis, etc. And management has a faster and higher career path to elevated positions, while techs will top out at "senior engineer/developer" after about 5 years, and will be still stuck there after 20 unless they basically give up their passion and become a manager. Of course, there are far fewer management positions than tech roles, as the are far fewer women working in tech generally.
stale2002 10y ago
Yeah, women get driven out of tech in droves. In order to even survive, the average woman has to be at the very top of their game, or else theyd be gone because it isn't worth it to put up with all the BS that they have to.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  This differs a lot: at the last company I worked with some men were awful. That doesn't seem to be the standard though. I do see one issue though: women are far more likely to be sick (at least around here statistics are quite clear IIRC).
  - scook 10y ago
    Men are more likely to place pride over medical care. They'll take fewer days they really need as a result.
    - danbolt 10y ago
      Seriously. Some days I think I put way too much irrational pressure on myself just to be "good enough" at my job.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
      When toxic masculinity is literally toxic.

guard-of-terra 10y ago

As if getting into management was an universal desire.

mhurron 10y ago
Well climbing the corporate ladder is going to be the measure of corporate success.
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  And at the prison the measure of success is being the warden, but who wants that?
  - Shanea93 10y ago
    I imagine some of the inmates would kill to be the warden.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  More like used to by. Why climb ladders when you can change jobs going up every time?
mc32 10y ago
But still, it remains a measure of both success and opportunity (presence or absence of ceilings).
romanovcode 10y ago
Yep. Every woman developer I've talked to wants to be a manager someday. Some even go for junior manager (a lot lower pay) even thought they have the degree and skills to be mid developers without any problems.
- nostrebored 10y ago
  This is ridiculous. Not every woman I know wants to be a manager, and despite their proficiencies, they are seen as "more personable" and implicitly, less technical. Women being pushed into management and out of technical lead roles is a very well known phenomenon in the field, and people here pretending like this is "success" seem to be very happy to ignore that this fits very nicely with the status quo of sexism.

danharaj 10y ago

> The study of more than 4,000 UK IT professionals, published to mark International Women’s Day, reveals women typically reach management level three years faster than men (in nine rather than 12 years) and they are appointed CTO/CIO two and a half years faster (in 13 versus 15.5 years for men). > However, the survey also reveals a colossal gap between the numbers of men and women working in top IT roles. Of the senior developers who responded to the survey, only 6% were women; with IT managers the figure was 8%, and of those heading up IT only 7% were female. These statistics are weird together. How can this be? Speculation: There is a bias against average/underperforming women relative to men entering and staying in tech. This means that the women who do stay in are from the upper end of the distribution. It's as if you took a normal distribution (as skill often is distributed) and truncated some segment of the lower half. This would explain why there are much fewer women reaching managerial positions but why the ones that do reach it do so very quickly. Is there any data on how qualified and performant female engineers are relative to male engineers who occupy the same position? A result that would support this hypothesis would be something like women in the same position as men in tech have beefier academic credentials or more awards.

tajen 10y ago
I've had 2 examples around me where the woman was incompetent in programming and she was promoted because she was better with Excel spreadsheets. Plus the prejudice that men are supposed to be worse at communication than women, so managers promote women. It's sad because it reinforces the mistake where women are allowed to be incompetent, whereas we should keep them in a programmer job until they gain skills, like young men do, instead of promoting them too quickly. As opposed to the article, I witnessed a mean-time-to-promotion to the job of Team Lead of 3 years for women instead of 7 years for males – but that could be because the article considers "management" as a higher job than Team Lead.
CapitalistCartr 10y ago
Maybe women are, on average, treated worse at university and entry-level, so the majority that continue aren't a random distribution but predominately represent those more determined and aggressive.

Dzugaru 10y ago

> despite still being heavily outnumbered Despite?

kazinator 10y ago
Yes, that's a word; http://www.dictionary.com/browse/despite http://www.dictionary.com/browse/despite Its use here means something like "contrary to the expectation that women face barriers in IT (as evidenced by lower numbers of women in the top positions in IT and in general), they rise through the ranks faster than men."
- tomp 10y ago
  > contrary to the expectation that women face barriers in IT Hasn't this been debunked already? AFAIK the percentage of women in IT is about the same as the percentage of women graduating from CS.
  - kazinator 10y ago
    It could be; in any case, that is neither here nor there since the article seems to be taking that for granted as the basis of its "despite".
- Dzugaru 10y ago
  Well, I meant that being outnumbered easily can be an advantage - (ex. you're unique, noticeable etc.), that's why "despite being outnumbered" sounds really strange. "Despite facing barriers" - ok. Not saying that those statistics can be heavily biased due to imbalanced classes - but other commenters already mentioned that multiple times.
inanutshellus 10y ago
No need to be defensive about it, it's basic math. If, say, 20% of CS grads are female, they're competing against 80% of CS grads for distinction. So it's surprising when, "despite the odds", they succeed faster. Perhaps more importantly the article does not mention confirmation bias, which is surely at play here. (e.g. "average" women are being discouraged from CS degrees before they even start, so only superstars stick it through, so of course they move faster through the ranks after graduation.)

tajen 10y ago

As a man, I've noticed the "women promotion difference" very importantly in companies I've been employed in: Since 2006, it's mostly women who are promoted, with configurations like my last job where both my team lead and the manager were women. On the other hand, I've left those companies because I could notice there was no career path for me, and created my own. I identify to a generation of men who've been sacrified for women equality. I'm all for equality, as long as everyone has equal chances, which we currently don't have. I'm very happy that we now start having studies supporting that men are less promoted than women today in some context (a minima in Luxembourg, France and Australia for what I'm concerned). It's now time we study across all countries the mean-time-to-promotion, and it's time we include talks in conferences about the difficulties of men. And it's time we stop having differentiated education and career paths for women. Today, women are equal in the mind if most men, and have a large swathes of explicit advantages granted by laws.

nothrabannosir 10y ago
> I'm all for equality, as long as everyone has equal chances, which we currently don't have. But that will keep a status quo if one group is starting out as a serious minority. That's the whole point of equality movements: you have to adjust upwards for a bit, until it's actually equal. Then you can go back to being fair. EDIT: This thread is blowing up, so I want to clarify my comment: I'm talking about affirmative action, and I think it's a good idea in the case of women in tech, presently.
- dom0 10y ago
  Woah. Just to clarify: That's absolutely not the "whole point of equality movements". This is a stance some people take on it. By far not all.
- the8472 10y ago
  Equal chances would also mean an equal chance to get hired if you actually apply. So why do you need extra adjustment beyond that? Simple turnover should approach an equilibrium eventually.

moon_of_moon 10y ago

"The few female species who participate, do well in an industry dominated by male species with poor social skills, little free time, and general lack of success with female species" All hail uber hacker Meyer.

Shanea93 10y ago

As a sidenote, the USD to GBP currency figures shown in this article really show how much the pound has slumped over the last 6 months. Article: "£52,000 ($74,000)" Current day: "£52,000 ($63,020)"

stcredzero 10y ago

There's a common misconception, that technical excellence is a primary skill for managing a team of programmers. It's not the primary skill but a secondary one. The primary skill is managing people. One still needs to have technical competence -- far beyond just being able to code. However, the focus shouldn't be on dazzling displays of technical esoterica. The focus should be on balancing a tangle of conflicting cost/benefits and communication with the team -- logistics and tactics, not fisticuffs. You can be a great manager with solidly average technical skills, so long as you can find a resource to advise you. (Dunning-Krueger trap: You may not know enough to understand if you truly understand the advice.) A team managed by such will usually outperform an average manager with great technical skills. Alexander the Great would probably have conquered more of the world, if he had personally fought less.

choicewords 10y ago
Didn't Alexander die of poisoning, not combat wound?
- philk10 10y ago
  I think the poster was implying that if Alexander hadn't used wars for all his gains he might have made more
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Also true, but I was saying that he probably could have performed even better through war, if he hadn't been as injured as he was at the end of his campaigns.
- Mz 10y ago
  Proposed causes of Alexander's death included alcoholic liver disease, fever, and strychnine poisoning, but little data support those versions.[15] According to the University of Maryland School of Medicine report of 1998, Alexander probably died of typhoid fever[16] (which, along with malaria, was common in ancient Babylon[17]). In the week before Alexander's death, historical accounts mention chills, sweats, exhaustion and high fever, typical symptoms of infectious diseases, including typhoid fever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_the_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_the_Great

nostrebored 10y ago

>"Today, women are equal in the mind if most men, and have a large swathes of explicit advantages granted by laws." Right, which is why fields that are predominantly women, like therapy, nursing, and pornography are so well paid and well treated. Oh wait, therapy is an extremely mentally and emotionally taxing field where years of unpaid work is the norm, nurses work insane hours to the point that many are addicted to amphetamines and seriously injured by middle age, and the ridiculously transparent OSHA violation that is every piece of hardcore pornography ever made is taken seriously right? Oh, but I'm glad people like you will set me straight by letting me know that women being pushed into the more social and less technical role of manager is the harbinger of the fempocalypse. The mean time to promotion is very well documented, as is the slump in promotion around the age of 30 for women regardless of if they have children.

sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12686697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12686697 and marked it off-topic.
nostromo 10y ago
Since you brought up injuries, it's worth noting that >90% of deaths at work are suffered by men. http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0013.pdf http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0013.pdf This is because men tend to outnumber women in dangerous jobs (construction, military, transportation).
- pyre 10y ago
  - Working at a man in construction/military/transportation gets you more respect when telling others what you do for a living than women that work in pornography/sex work. - A number of injuries that happen as a result of pornography (e.g. rape) are not reported because they would negatively affect their further career in the industry. - I doubt any of those stats include the work-related injuries of sex workers. - Some of those industries have insulated themselves from women. E.g. the military hasn't really decided at it's core that they want to have women, even though they do a bunch of PR about it. - It's also possible that men are more likely to take work-related risks. E.g. give in to the boss that demands your construction worksite will not comply with OSHA because it's 'too costly.'

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

sexism is sexist

known 10y ago

It this specific to UK?

calex 10y ago

Reading the comments on articles like this on hacker news always make me deeply uncomfortable to be a woman in tech. I know it's hard to believe, but women don't usually get sent to coding summer camp as teenagers. Our parents don't usually encourage us to take AP computer science, and our best friends aren't in CS and don't refer us for sweet internships at Microsoft and Google. If you're a woman in this industry, it's GENERALLY because it is something that you very much care about and want to do. It's not some feminist conspiracy that women are being promoted, it's just that the women who go into tech are usually already pretty gritty people. You're comparing a very driven and passionate subset of women to a very general subset of men. Here's a really great article I read once -- "I need terrible female engineers": https://medium.com/@amyngyn/i-need-terrible-female-engineers-1023a2e973dd#.l85nr149d https://medium.com/@amyngyn/i-need-terrible-female-engineers...

this2shallpaas 10y ago
"I know it's hard to believe, but women don't usually get sent to coding summer camp as teenagers. Our parents don't usually encourage us to take AP computer science, and our best friends aren't in CS and don't refer us for sweet internships at Microsoft and Google." Is it hard to believe most men don't do those things, too? Some do, sure. And of people that do these things, historically more have probably been men than women (don't have the stats, but it sounds reasonable). But how many men do you think do those things, vs those that don't? Some anecdata: I didn't do any of those. Of all the engineers I can think of, male and female, very very few went to coding summer camps or took AP computer science. Few had best friends in CS in university, but sure, more did this than AP computer science or coding summer camp. And few had sweet internships at tech companies.
- calex 10y ago
  Oh great, more anecdotes in this thread. There are the cold hard facts, you know: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/techs-gender-and-race-gap-starts-in-high-school/282966/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/techs-g... >"It's already too late," Paul Graham, founder of the tech entrepreneur boot camp Y Combinator, said last month in a controversial interview. "What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that." >Ericson's analysis of the data shows that in 2013, 18 percent of the students who took the [AP computer science] exam were women. Who makes high school students' schedules? Parents and teachers, at least in the US. So let's put aside anecdotes and reactionary attitudes and just look at the facts.

fatdog 10y ago

One explanation would be that women could be said to have a better instinct for power, and they recognize quickly that as a corporate survival strategy, power over people is more rewarding and sustainable than power over things. Feminism isn't about women becoming IT guys, it's about becoming bosses. Sort of breaks with the victim narrative, but provides a more plausible story.

fishtoaster 10y ago

This seems to be based this survey data: http://www.emolument.com/career_advice/women_in_it_career_evolution_best_paying_jobs http://www.emolument.com/career_advice/women_in_it_career_ev...

deleted 10y ago

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fishtoaster 10y ago

I suppose I could think of a number of explanations for this observed effect. 1. Selection- because so much of IT is hostile to women, the only ones who become senior in the field are the very good ones. 2. Affirmative action- companies promoting women regardless of merit to seem progressive. 3. Some sort of inate or socialized advantage– the "women are better at people stuff" philosophy. If this is the case, then you'd expect more women to be in management. 4. Methodological flaws in the survey. I can't find any detailed discussion of their process, but phrases like "Of the senior developers who responded to the survey" seem to imply there could easily be significant selection bias. Feel free to take your pick based on what you already believe. Personally, I'm going to wait for more data before forming any solid conclusions based on this.

pc86 10y ago
> Feel free to take your pick based on what you already believe Probably a good TLDR for any HN discussion around gender.
FT_intern 10y ago
>Selection- because so much of IT is hostile to women that's an unproven premise
- fishtoaster 10y ago
  It's not a premise at all- I'm basing nothing on it. I'm not even claiming it's true. I'm just saying that it is one of several possible explanations for the available data.
- stale2002 10y ago
  Have you tried actually talking to any women in tech?
nostrebored 10y ago
You can take a look at [1] and the data there to see that 1 is the culprit, but only a piece of it. Women are pushed into less technical roles throughout their careers. Women with the same technical qualifications are significantly more likely to be managers than in a senior technical position. [1] http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Technical-Women-A-Profile-of-Success.pdf http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Techni...

utternerd 10y ago

Please don't take this as flippant, it's a legitimate query. I keep seeing the call for "more women in technology", however I don't see a similar rally for say, "more men in early education". Most teachers in early to middle school tend to be females by a wide margin[0], men comprise less than 20%, yet I don't see people screaming there should be more men teaching in those roles? Why is that? [0] http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers

return0 10y ago

Following the logic of most mental gymnasts here, the best IT companies should be women-only companies by now. People seem automatically to turn off their brains when discussing anything that might oppose the orthodoxy of affirmative action. This is a case where a bias that first appeared in academia (http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-...) and is now bleeding to corporate life. If men or any other subgroup are not rising through the ranks as fast, that is a clear discrimination and it is a problem, not an 'achievement'. It's this kind of ill-logic that brings pro-women policies in a bad light.

mcv 10y ago
Because there are less women in tech, the best companies should be all women? That logic makes no sense. If only the best women are hired, while average men also get hired, that means there's discrimination against women, while the few women that do stay in the industry will tend to be of above average ability, and therefore rise faster. As long as the vast majority of programmers are men, it's ludicrous to complain that men are being discriminated against. There are dozens of studies showing that men have it way easier in a multitude of ways. But it's good that there are more visible women in tech, and hopefully that will lead to even out the balance in the future.
- bluecalm 10y ago
  >>As long as the vast majority of programmers are men, it's ludicrous to complain that men are being discriminated against Let me stop you here. This is a flawed argument. It's very possible that men gravitate to a certain field more than women but there is discrimination against men in that field (for example if companies think it's good PR to have more women at top positions). I am not arguing if that actually happens or not here. I am just pointing out that your argument is logically flawed. I can even give you an example of discrimination against majority group: it's beneficial to be tall white man in many Asian countries. You get more respect and bring prestige to the company. Tall white men are not majority but still they are favored and their Asian counterparts are discriminated against.
- 10y ago

turc1656 10y ago

I'm not too worried. I'm sure the feminists are going to condemn these companies and call for the resignations of the executives and stage protests over this blatant inequity. And the media will plaster this all over the news to spread awareness. And these companies will take heat from clients, end users, and advertisers, right?

bluetwo 10y ago

I'm totally OK with this. Am I the only person who dated a senior analyst and is now married to an IT Director?

LordHumungous 10y ago

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone given the stated goal by large companies of hiring more women, and the relatively small pool on which they are drawing from

deleted 10y ago

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mblack1968 10y ago

I've been reading HN for a few years now. The tone of the response to women in IT hasn't changed much. I kept believing that if I were good enough, smart enough, and if people liked me enough, I would get ahead. Turns out, there's a real ceiling on where I can go. Not because I lack talent. I am very good with people. My last manager believed I would be a VP at the company someday. I maxed out at that fake "architect" role made for people that require more money but can't be promoted to management. This was a large F-50 type organization. We found that the HR departments at very large companies definitely improve diversity up and down the ranks. But there is a blockade that eventually presents itself. This blockade can probably be summed up mathematically: The first females to go up stream will always be white. As the number of females up the ranks increases, the less obligation white males feel to grant other minorities the same privilege. Eventually, it works out to where there will be a multitude of white women paving the way at VP level, and until they die off or retire, the blockade prevents advancement for anyone else. I call it the "wall of white women" with a sub-wall of "white male architects" waiting for their chance. If the minority applicant is not blindingly obviously superior to the wall of white males just beneath the wall of white women, there's no chance. Unfortunate. I find it kind of hilarious and enjoy watching it form at every single major corporation.

MollyR 10y ago
I'm a first gen korean-american woman (I guess after 30 its weird to call yourself a girl). I've definitely seen this situation too, it was a little depressing. So I've been bouncing around startups,and even started contracting under my own c-corp to make connections and money. The respect difference has been unreal. I've had to toughen up significantly, you have to really learn to read bs and move on without emotion. That's another option you can take, I'm personally enjoying it right now.
- mblack1968 10y ago
  Thank you for responding! I like hearing solutions. Listening to my own whining is tiresome. To your point, I left my large F-50 employer this summer and started at a smaller company. I am strongly considering contracting. Your response is encouraging.

NumberCruncher 10y ago

Only because women and men are equal as human beings and should be treated accordingly it does not mean they are identical. Not so long ago everybody said that we need more women in [paste a well paid white collar job]. You wanted positive discrimination. Now you have it. Ironically nobody wanted to have more women on construction sites, in the military service or as a surgeon...