I don't get why this isn't obvious. Software is seen as the wild west of engineering. Exciting, competitive, reckless, sometimes brutal. It's like Wall Street,

I don't get why this isn't obvious. Software is seen as the wild west of engineering. Exciting, competitive, reckless, sometimes brutal. It's like Wall Street, selling cars, working oilfields. The popular perception has been fuelled by megafounders who struck gold, becoming the richest people in the world by their mid 20's. SV is in a 40 gold rush for the next big thing and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. For all sorts of reasons that have been beaten to death, most women won't stick around in such a field. For gender balance to return in our lifetimes software engineering would need to lose much of the existing culture