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Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

• cbcowans 10y ago
  Cadran here from YC's software team. This is the fifth installment of our Ask a Female Engineer series. Thanks for reading.
  • andy_ppp 10y ago
    Here are the other articles: https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-4/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-4/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-3/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-3/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-2/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-2/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/introducing-ask-a-female-engineer/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/introducing-ask-a-female-engine... ;-)
• andy_ppp 10y ago
  The biggest factor for me has been when an employer promises changes to how the tech team is managed and then doesn’t deliver on them. To a certain extent all teams struggle with the trade-offs between spending time developing good specs versus staying agile, and between addressing technical debt and building new features. But I’ve left companies after years of chaotically fighting fires while simultaneously needing to build new features, or after repeatedly getting disorganized braindumps or single line descriptions from stakeholders rather than the thoughtful, detailed specs they’ve promised. This is everything and describes my current situation perfectly! It's so difficult to program as well as design specs and UI and manage time as well. It teaches you a lot but it's much easier if what you are being asked to build is clear in the first place!
  • kevan 10y ago
    I don't think this issue is gender-specific, it's a problem for retaining everyone.
  • ayuvar 10y ago
    I have to wonder how anything gets built in any _other_ industry than software, if this is the caliber of management we get on these projects.
    • andy_ppp 10y ago
      They don't tell builders "give me a house, I want turrets and a fence and 23 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and I want it done to a really high finish by next week". Instead they get a detailed, industry standard, multi-stage plan that has everything they need to start, as well as access to an architect that can check on their work and when things go wrong a process for change management is included. And no-one expects a house to be built well over a weekend.
      • HillaryBriss 10y ago
        And then change their minds the day before delivery ...
  • pitaj 10y ago
    Please don't quote with code blocks. Use greater-than (>) symbols instead.
    • cookiecaper 10y ago
      Why not? I've actually adopted this habit lately because I think it makes it easier to read, especially if the quote is lengthy.
      • pitaj 10y ago
        It messes up formatting on smaller screen sizes and larger screen sizes.
      • kazinator 10y ago
        That makes no sense. The original text doesn't use preformatted line breaks and is wrapped to the screen width, quite readably. You're not fixing or improving anything in the quoted version of it by code-blocking it. You're just making work for yourself by sticking in manual line breaks and indenting, and making work for the reader who may have to scroll horizontally if their screen width is narrow, plus triggering a switch to a monospaced font. You can quote a long paragraph that is represented as one big line very simply like this: > That makes no sense. The original text doesn't use preformatted line breaks and is wrapped to the screen width, quite readably. You're not fixing or improving anything in the quoted version of it by code-blocking it. You're just making work for yourself by sticking in manual line breaks and indenting ... I cut and pasted my own paragraph above. I typed a single > character in front, a space, and a pair of asterisks around it.
        • cookiecaper 10y ago
          Is the code block format not explicitly designed for quoting lengthy snippets of text in a non-disruptive way? >You're just making work for yourself by sticking in manual line breaks and indenting Not much work, just a handful of keystrokes with the right software, and that's without optimizing the flow much. Could get it down more by making a macro. >making work for the reader who may have to scroll horizontally if their screen width is narrow While true, if the quote is indeed lengthy, wouldn't this serve the reader better than a line of text that wraps many times? Those are hard to follow. >plus triggering a switch to a monospaced font. Yes, this improves readability by making the barrier between quotation and response more readily visible. The only downside seems to be that the block may clamp down to a horizontal scrollbox before some reader wants it to do so. For the record, on my computer (3440x1440 raw, some HiDPI settings make effective resolution significantly smaller), I never run across such blocks that require manual scrolling. On my phone, I do need to scroll horizontally, but I think that's nice. I have not yet seen it actually break a page or make it unusable. I don't think it's a good technique for short line snippets, but yes, I do think it improves readability for long (paragraph-length or longer) quotes.
• DeusExMachina 10y ago
  Am I wrong or all the issues seem to be not gender related but about management and they apply to both sexes?
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • Zikes 10y ago
    I think there's a case to be made that, in general, women may be more sensitive to some universal tech industry issues which men tend to shrug off or otherwise deal with differently.
    • striking 10y ago
      Infantilizing much?
      • Zikes 10y ago
        Generalizing, actually. But I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing. Taken individually, you'll find folks all over any given spectrum, but if we're going to address "Women in Tech" vs the implicit "Men in Tech" then we can't just say "well the two are exactly the same and therefore there's no discussion to be had." Of course there's differences between men and women. Different values, different priorities, different sensitivities. Maybe there are issues in nursing and education which men are more sensitive towards, and that's why there's such a larger opposing gender disparity in those fields? That doesn't mean that either gender is necessarily "weaker", just "different". If we want to help technical managers retain women, then it would be helpful to determine which issues women are generally more sensitive to, even if they're the same issues men have faced for however long but which have not driven them away from the industry.
        • StargazyPi 10y ago
          Can you pick out any problems in particular pointed out in this article, that are more frequently picked up on by women? Most of the common ones seem to be a company or manager's words not matching their actions. The sample sizes I've experienced may be fairly small so far (very few female colleagues, as ever), but I've seen men and women leave in equal measure for that type of transgression.
• helloothere 10y ago
  is there a plan for Ask a Male Engineer series?
  • ry_ry 10y ago
    Isn't that just HN? ;)
    • jlengrand 10y ago
      Or is it not?
  • jackweirdy 10y ago
    It's called Ask HN
    • TheGirondin 10y ago
      I wasn't aware HN had a policy of discouraging women from answering questions that are asked in those threads. Seems like a terrible thing that needs to change.
      • jackweirdy 10y ago
        Doesn't need to be a policy to be an emergent property
        • TheGirondin 10y ago
          Do you have anything to support that claim?
  • warcher 10y ago
    I believe you'll find that here in the comments section.
  • cmdrfred 10y ago
    Clearly it would be sexist to include men.
• warcher 10y ago
  I am (perhaps naively) encouraged at the familiarity of these engineers' daily gripes. That's progress, haha.
  • StargazyPi 10y ago
    Ain't it great? It's always alarming to read stories such as Susan Fowler's, that remind you sexism is still out there in force, in places. But it's great to read things like this, which implies at least a good chunk of fellow female devs are having the freedom to leave because their company doesn't care about software quality. As you said, progress!
  • ck425 10y ago
    Hmm my takeaway from the familiarity was that it's harder for woman to manage up, which sucks. :(
    • warcher 10y ago
      I'm curious if you have a piece of the article that highlights that for you. I admit to skimming through it and thinking "Yeah, that's pretty much the gig." Engineering is a hard job, there's no two ways about it. Tech managers have a doubly hard job, having to navigate a tech stack well enough to lead their team and the people skills to manage all their special snowflake devs on one hand (nothing gender or age related, I love all my lil babies, even the ones with gandalf beards and strong opinions on Richard Stallman) and some very difficult strategic objectives on the other. People who can be effective in that role are hard to find.
      • ec109685 10y ago
        > If a company’s leadership feels too tightly knit – where all the managers and founders are friends that aren’t open to critical feedback from employees – I won’t even try to work out the issue before leaving While not completely gender specific, I think that speaks to difficulty managing up.
• gedy 10y ago
  1) Discourage your work 'culture' from being built around aggressive tech code reviews/debates/arguments/chat where young males love to beat their chest 2) Some flexibility on hours/location when children come. Women have a harder 'stop' than men do on their child bearing age, which frequently coincides with moving into senior development roles.
  • matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    It doesn't even need to be "young males beating their chest". I've been in plenty of hostile reviews with completely harmless, introverted, soft spoken INTJ-types who simply can't get past some nitpick because it doesn't fit into their perfect, logical world view and refuse to budge an inch. Our industry has a personality problem as much or more as it has a sex problem.
    • gedy 10y ago
      I agree, maybe I should have said passive-aggressive. It's certainly also an issue from the physically 'meek and mild' types.
    • paulddraper 10y ago
      You nailed it. Unreasonable people come in all shapes and personalities.
    • cmdkeen 10y ago
      Oi - I resemble that remark! I've also been on the reviewing end of plenty of types who think all small things are inconsequential nitpicks which excuses them from having to change anything. Then people moan about a lack of standards and consistency between teams... I've also died in a ditch over naming conventions for unit tests - whilst not my proudest moment - it drives home one of the key points in the article, that good managers work with all their people to make a cohesive team. Everyone has things to improve on and can benefit from constructive criticism. Management is far harder than technical work as humans always have state, there's no such thing as a pure function for humans. Knowing how to coach, mentor, advocate for, protect, encourage etc is not something you are born with, and you can't really spin up an AWS instance of a team of humans to practice on.
• tabeth 10y ago
  Interesting article. I think one thing to also consider is that women can also be toxic, so the question isn't really how to retain technical women or men, but rather, how can you promote leadership practices to women (and men) that retain women (and men).
• songzme 10y ago
  The most important for me is directing social conversations. Most people think that social event is a time for everybody to talk freely about whatever topics, but no. The point of social event is inclusiveness. I see this scenario happening over and over again: Social event starts off friendly. Gradually, the conversation starts turning very technical or very sci-fi, then women turned away and formed their own social group. Worse, the only woman engineer on the team spends the night sipping on her drink quietly wishing she found these topics more interesting or wishing she took more CS classes so she could appreciate the intensity of the conversation. (Note, I'm using women as an example because of the posted question. But this applies just as much to the minority race, age group, etc.) I think it is important for the manager (or any teammate in general) to make social inclusivity their top priority in a social environment. Look around, if you see that someone in the group is not engaged, steer the group conversation towards the interests of that person. Its a hard skill do develop, but its a skill managers should be actively working to improve.
  • buckbova 10y ago
    > The most important for me is directing social conversations. You want the manager to micro-manage a happy hour? Sounds like torture.
    • songzme 10y ago
      Yes, but how else would you build empathy and diversity amongst your team? Say you hired a minority who has different interest with the majority on the team. If left unchecked, the minority will always feel excluded (unless they have a strong personality).
      • panoptispeech 10y ago
        If I were on a team where management tried to micro-manage conversion toward some ideal of "diversity", then believe me, "empathy" would not be the emotion I would be feeling. Okay, make me unhappy. I'm just another toxic male. I can go, right? My leaving will just make the rest of the team more vibrant or whatever. Well, I produce 10x more code than the rest of the team put together, so good luck.
• deleted 10y ago
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• autotune 10y ago
  The pay factor is definitely something that should be looked at more. I should not have find out, after talking to any woman in tech who has a passion for it, that they're basically just barely able to make it when others with the same duties at the same or other companies make a livable wage.
  • SloughFeg 10y ago
    Young women in software get paid 7% more than young men. http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/12/pf/gender-pay-gap/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/12/pf/gender-pay-gap/ Where does this pay gap start to come into play?
    • GrinningFool 10y ago
      While the salary trend in new hires out of school is an encouraging sign, your comment seems rather selective: the rest of the article you linked points out that in every situation other than "just out of college with no experience" the pay gap is real: > Overall, women hired for jobs in technology, sales and marking were offered > salaries that were 3% less than what men were offered, but at some companies the > gender pay gap was as high as 30%, the study showed. > Men received higher salary offers for the same job title at the same company 69% > of the time
      • maerF0x0 10y ago
        Another article: http://qa.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/genevieve-wood/what-pay-gap-young-women-out-earn-men-cities-gop-p/ http://qa.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/g... it seems the pay gap is more an age thing. When we say give women equal pay, we should be saying "give older women equal pay" . This makes me think its a lagging metric that will be solved as todays 20 somethings become 40 and 60 year olds. If we want to accelerate the solution its not to give young womena a raise, but older women. Its also hard because depending on how the numbers are calculated it maybe fair to pay older women less once you account for a lifetime of choosing lifestyle over earning potential as many note women vs men typically do.
• deleted 10y ago
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• lalos 10y ago
  Here is a podcast that had some insights in this topic [0]. Found it interesting yet I believe its hard to encompass something that works gender wide. [0] https://thewomenintechshow.com/2016/08/23/retaining-women-in-tech-with-rosario-robinson-from-the-anita-borg-institute/ https://thewomenintechshow.com/2016/08/23/retaining-women-in...
• panoptispeech 10y ago
  Wow. So in the name of getting women women into tech, we need to abandon * Code reviews, design documents, and anything else that might provide a forum for "chest thumping" * Opportunities to express one's love of traditionally geeky things * Organic conversation during happy hour * Meritocracy (since diversity pushes end up being affirmative action in practice) Maybe women in tech are less common than men in tech not because of some fundamental unfairness, but because fewer women want to be in tech. Maybe that's okay, and people like you are doing significant damage trying to create an unnatural situation of exact equity that nobody really wants.
  • st3v3r 10y ago
    No. Your post is completely off base. No one said anything about removing code reviews. They said remove the culture of aggressive and mean code reviews. No one said to remove the opportunity to express one's love of geeky things or organic conversation during happy hour. They said to tone that down, and be more inclusive, so other members of the team can express their love of things they like. Meritocracy is a red herring. We do not have objective measurements for what is good work and what is not good work, or what work is better than others. At the end of the day, a person, with all their biases, is going to be choosing who is better. And quite often, that doesn't have much to do with the work at all. "Maybe women in tech are less common than men in tech not because of some fundamental unfairness, but because fewer women want to be in tech." And likely, fewer women want to be in tech because of the sexist attitudes, and this attitude of dismissal and "it's not a problem; if you were really 'passionate', you'd get over it".
    • panoptispeech 10y ago
      > No one said anything about removing code reviews. They said remove the culture of aggressive and mean code reviews. In practice, that means making code review comments unclear and extremely passive aggressive. I'd rather have plain, clear statements than statements that on the surface are pleasant and helpful but that are actually meant to be emotional and professional shivs. I've been both. > No one said to remove the opportunity to express one's love of geeky things or organic conversation during happy hour. They said to tone that down, and be more inclusive, so other members of the team can express their love of things they like. The proposal is to prevent conversations flowing naturally according to the normal implicit rules of conversation and instead steer the conversation to "inclusive" topics. You know what I'd do in that situation? Grab a bunch of my coworkers and head off to the nearest pub to have the conversation we want to have. Congratulations, you've tried to help and made things worse. > Meritocracy is a red herring. This idea is both trendy and dangerous. Some ideas are better than others. I don't want to be around people who think that asbestos and plastic are both perfectly good materials for medical devices and that we should reach a compromise position to ensure that everyone is heard. If person A consistently proposes ideas that work and person B is genial, but constantly proposes ideas that don't work, A has more merit. > And likely, fewer women want to be in tech because of the sexist attitudes This argument is circular. You're defining literally anything that might make women choose to not come to "tech" as being sexist. Never mind that women get all sorts of preferences; never mind that women are paid more these days. It's all about how there are more men than women, therefore we have a "problem" that we need to "fix".
• amorphid 10y ago
  Get everyone focused on thinking about the team's mission, role, and what it takes to get the job done. Drill that into everyone's head and stick to it. Let everything else go. A mentor once told me that business fundamentally revolves around making money, saving money, saving time, and making customers happier. I like thinking about work that way, as it has nothing to do with religion, sex, gender, age, height, phase of the moon (maybe you employ werewolves), etc. Focusing on work can be hard though, because it might mean you will encounter a conflict when it comes to supporting a cause with good intentions. Say the MinorityCodingClub wants to host an event in your office. Personally, I think promoting diversity is generally a healthy thing. But what if MinorityCodingClub doesn't allow people not in that minority to participate in the event? You may find part of your staff wants to allow it, and part of your staff opposes it (perhaps silently). Staying focused on making money, saving money, saving time, and making customers happier. It's hard enough to get people to come together on doing that, so don't tolerate a culture that gets in the way of making that happen.
  • scandox 10y ago
    This is a wonderful message for those for whom the Status Quo works. It's what we'd like to hear and allows us to ignore tiresome issues. Eventually it's Versailles time and everybody has to have their heads cut off. So you need to balance this "focused" (i.e. ignore the problem) approach with a longer term plan. Or rather someone needs to. Or maybe we should just accept getting our heads cut off.
  • travisjungroth 10y ago
    Wait, how does your advice answer your question about the event? Are you saying that you shouldn't host a diversity event because it doesn't explicitly match the four things you listed? Because someone might not like the event? I don't get it.
    • emodendroket 10y ago
      It seems like what he's saying is that you shouldn't allow it to happen because it's not strictly work-related but I find it hard to agree with that thinking.
• ExactActuation 10y ago
  These are both ridiculous. (1) can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Women should be just as passionate about the work. (2) There's such a thing as a stay-at-home-dads and men that take care of their children. What ever happened to the chant of 'equality'?
  • oconnor663 10y ago
    > can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen If you feel like being controversial, at least do everyone the courtesy of responding to the most obvious counter arguments ahead of time. We all know what they are, and no one wants to rehash the same stuff over and over, unless we're going to hear something new.
    • ExactActuation 10y ago
      Oh, sorry to have offended you, I guess you run HackerNews and make all of the rules here. /sarc I see the White Knights have already started the down-voting process.
      • dang 10y ago
        Posting inflammatory or snarky comments on divisive topics ends up turning threads into flamewars. That's effectively trolling even if you don't intend it to be, so please don't comment this way on HN. Comments should become more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Then we avoid the downward spiral into internet hell.
  • strictfp 10y ago
    1) zzzzz
  • dang 10y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13969262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13969262 and marked it off-topic.
  • Merad 10y ago
• latenightcoding 10y ago
  Sexual harassment and payment inequality came up a lot in the last women in computer science event I went to.
  • mantas 10y ago
    > payment inequality Perceived or real? I'm yet to hear about a company that has policy to pay women less. Most have personally-discussed salaries though. If some ladies are paid less, they probably don't haggle as well. What should we do? Deny custom salaries and personal raises?
    • webvictim 10y ago
      There are no companies which have such a policy, because it's illegal.
      • thaumasiotes 10y ago
        Speeding is also illegal. True, there are no companies that speed, but I think that's just because they can't drive.
    • emodendroket 10y ago
      Yeah, no kidding, nobody has a policy to do that. But there are several factors, including: 1. Women tend to negotiate less aggressively 2. Women who negotiate aggressively tend to be perceived worse than men doing the exact same thing 3. Implicit bias affects the amount of money an employer sees fit to offer in the first place As to what to do, here some ideas: * Massachusetts' law barring employers from asking about previous salaries as part of negotiations seems like a good idea * More transparency about salaries would help * Maybe a "Costco auto club" model, where the price is set up-front with no haggling, would be a good idea. Reddit tried to do this but it was kind of tied up with all the other issues they had. Not 100% sure on this one.
      • RHSeeger 10y ago
        > Maybe a "Costco auto club" model, where the price is set up-front with no haggling, would be a good idea. Reddit tried to do this but it was kind of tied up with all the other issues they had. Not 100% sure on this one. The negative to that is (unless every company plays by those same rules) you're limiting yourself in who you can hire. The more expensive (and, presumably, more skilled) developers will go work somewhere that will pay them more (based on that skill), while the cheapest (and, presumably, lowest skilled) developers will come work for you because they know you'll pay them more than others will. There are benefits to being able to pay people what you feel they are worth to your company. Is it worth losing those benefits.
• JimboOmega 10y ago
  At its most basic: Is a voice that isn't shouting heard and valued? Is someone who seeks consensus from the team before moving forward rewarded? Or is someone who just goes out and does something rewarded more? You have to see what kind of styles are promoted within the organization, and if there's a place for the less aggressive/assertive within it. For those that may struggle with impostor syndrome, and not just assume they know everything. It also really helps to see women on the team, especially in more senior positions, doing code reviews, etc. If there's a layer of men who are subtly sexist, the organization really as a whole won't retain, ever. A double standard is incredibly demoralizing. But seriously, look at who gets listened to in meetings. Who takes up the time, is it just people who are loud and willing to argue about things, while those unwilling to interrupt never get acknowledged?
• Mythanar 10y ago
  Why are we talking about women here? Anything particularly special about them? Managers should focus on retaining top talent that allows organization to move forward. Interacting with others productively is one facet of top talent - regardless of what personal traits (love of geeky things, particular choice of hobbies or whatever else) ultimately allows for team fusion. The moment management starts socially engineering the team on any other metric than team's ability to contribute to company cause, they are harming their organization. Commercial entities are not avenues of social justice. They are instruments of making money.
• metaphorm 10y ago
  the perspective of women is really valuable and we should be thankful to hear from this group of women, speaking honestly about their experience. HOWEVER... it was remarkable how little of the issues they discussed had anything whatever to do with their gender. I think this is really important and should be a good clue for followups. How about YC opens up the question series to engineers from all backgrounds? I expect to see a remarkable similarity in answers about what constitutes a good (or bad) work environment.
• UK-AL 10y ago
  Most of these issues are something that EVERY engineer has issues with. Male and female. I don't think a lot of these are female specific.
  • sudosteph 10y ago
    Absolutely! But I think that's actually a point worth making. I hear all the time that higher-ups think that the key to retaining women is hosting diversity events, adding parental leave / mother's rooms, or other stuff specifically catered to women. Not saying those aren't good things to have, but for the most part, if you listen to your employees and treat all of your engineers well, you will see gains to retaining everyone, including women. Women being so "in demand" for tech companies looking to improve diversity numbers also gives some of us the opportunity to be pickier with what kind of work environments we'll accept.
• hasenj 10y ago
  It's not like the industry figured out how to retain men to begin with. Almost every tech company I've been in, I've seen people of both genders move in and out constantly. Programmers have been complaining about management since forever. Is there any evidence that women in particular are facing different issues from men when it comes to job satisfaction?
• balozi 10y ago
  I will hazard a guess that the popular answer in these parts will industry gentrification.
• usmeteora 10y ago
  To answer some questions regarding the comments about how these things are different from men to women. They may not be. The reported answers may be the same and related to issues both men and women struggle with. However, I think theres been some more chatter in the industry trying to get to the bottom of some issues that have come up recently with gender in tech one not so recent and more general. Here's what I mean 1. In the 1980s, for reasons everyone can quantify but noone can understand why, is why women stopped going into computer science in the 1980s: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... Particularly data scientists and computer scientists and economists who are skilled at teasing out data in large and seemingly choatic data sets cannot figure this out, which is ironic considering they are the group in which this gender disparity occurred which such a dramatic and relatively sudden dropoff. 2. On top of the dramatic drop of women in computer science, 41% of the women who do go into tech leave compared to 17% of men: https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996#.cuwsh66wd https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-i... 3. A number of studies have shown that identical job applications, resumes AND VC pitches are evaluated differently based on whether they are labeled with a male or female name. https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996#.cuwsh66wd https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-i... 4. High acheiving women, and particular women in tech show a. more negative feedback in reviews compared to men b. the word abrasive is used positively with men, negatively with women in reviews http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias/ http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias... 5. Alot of women get into entry level tech jobs, but far fewer climb the ladder/wages stagnate https://qz.com/645587/a-mckinsey-report-on-female-leaders-finds-women-are-unable-to-enter-the-tech-industry/ https://qz.com/645587/a-mckinsey-report-on-female-leaders-fi... 6. Female leaders: Founders, CEOs, CTOs receive far more public criticism AND HOSTILITY than male CEOs and CTOs ie.e Ellen Pao as leader of reddit, Marissa Meyer, Sheryl Sandberg * The things that have been said about these women and their bodies and how evil they are I have never ever heard with male CEOs no matter how evil, nor have I seen criticism as harsh, unrelated to the business issue, cruel and emotionally punishing as these women have faced. Dear god, how could any women aspire to be a leader when the women who aspire to are bombarded with a nonstop barage of sexual and emotional humiliation 24/7 on the internet male CEOs never face. It's ridiculous. * I am not saying these things happen (the disparities by gender noted above) because men are sexist and evil. I don't think anyone knows why this is happening, which is why more women who are in tech are being asked to open up and speak out to get their personal perspective since all the data and studies in the world don't seem to be providing these answers * My personal opinion for what its worth: I have to say as a woman in tech, an Electrical Engineer with a minor in Computer Science who now does graphics engineering and GPU software layer dev, I don't think it is fair that large corporations are being blamed for the gender disparity in STEM fields. The gender disparity is documented in highschool starting with the number of women in advanced STEM related classes like Calc and Physics all the way through college majors to then the workplace, and yet Microsoft and Google need to fabricate highly skilled and experienced technical women out of thin air or take on the effort to create fund and integrate their own ideas for education in highly unskilled and complexly funded school systems. I think its great they are doing these things, but I think the expectation society has suddenly placed on them since they decided to be angry about it this year is unreasonably punishing and creates more anger and blaming than it does objective awareness and productive conversations, of which I think this convo was an attempt to counteract on YCombos part so thank you ( and to go back to my mid-sentence point, as far as people being angry about big tech corps and the lack of women...ummm yeh Ive been a women in tech for almost a decade now so thanks for suddenly caring out of thin air but how about asking women in tech about it instead of just finding the biggest tech corporation around and blaming them for everything, which is why Q&As like the above listed are nice) Lets address the gender disparity in STEM at age 8 and work our way up. Need help start with Toys R us and just do a study noting toys based on level of difficulty/problem solving/building creating and colour versus child care, clothing and social itneraction based toys...and start there. DONT start at google and blame everything on them. Start with YOU and how YOU raise, dress, spend time, talk with your own duaghters as mothers fathers sisters teachers etc before you assume everything is googles fault. There is no "bad guy" guy we get to blame for this as much as mass media these days loves bad guys to blame for everything. This is a very complex cultural issue for which atleast in my experience my parents, teachers, school, cultural demographic of the area I grew up in, politics, media, men in college, magazines for women, AND THEN on top of all of that and all the warped ideas I had about myself and my capabilities due to that yes also there were cultural clashes between me and men at my tech university and also at work. I have also on top of all of this faced blatant sexual harrassment cases which were quickly resolved just because, there was no debate about whether they were harrassment or not. They were. Even though these issues were resolved, they were horrrible experiences, emotionally traumatizing, and embarassing and annoying because other employees always find out, not to mention distracting me away from that thing called my job that I came to work for. *The amount of times men have shockingly stated to me after getting to know me that they now realize I'm not in the industry to husband shop...is too damn high.....
• err4nt 10y ago
  The common thread running through all of this was that what seemed to drive these women from their own roles in tech were the incompetence or inexperience of management. I'm young enough (born in the late 1980's) that during my entire time in the work force, I feel like I've only ever met ONE "real" manager. I've known many people in management roles, but I think we've definitely lost sight of what good management even looks like. If you're under a certain age, I wonder if you've even met a real manager before. From today forward, many of the people in management roles may never have met a real manager before too - how are they supposed to fill a role they've never seen before. I think we need some good management role models, and we need to find a way to encourage people in management roles to grow to fill this. I don't have any studies or hard facts to cite, but consider this - I feel like part of the role of a manager is to bear responsibility and deadlines, manage the workers and give them the access and tools they need to succeed. But what I see most often is managers (not doing the work) acting like slave drivers, pushing all of the responsibility and pressure of meeting the deadlines on the workers to stress about. I see lower level workers staying late after work, taking 'ownership' of their manager's responsibilities out of fear they will get fired. That's not what it's supposed to look like but unfortunately for most millennials it seems to be the common experience.
  • mtreis86 10y ago
    I found the same, but consider it to be bias. Once you have had a really good manager, you compare everyone else to them, and of course the rest fall short.
  • HillaryBriss 10y ago
    I agree. I've seen this same thing too many times. My conclusion is that maybe the whole concept of "software manager" is deeply flawed. Upper management likes to have a single person they can pressure and blame. But the reality is that making good software on a schedule is incredibly difficult. Upper management doesn't seem to recognize that you can't just "bolt on" a good manager and just "force it to work." Making good software in a way that's responsive to market pressures is not like running a lemonade stand. It's almost impossible to get right, even with a big budget, because upper management puts too many idiotic constraints on it.
• throwaway_45 10y ago
  Why do we need to try to attract women to technical role?There are plenty of other people to fill the role. This is America they are free to go to another job if they want. I think discrimination should be harshly punished, but trying to get a certain person (color, ethnicity) into a certain role just seems anti SV.
  • ivraatiems 10y ago
    The interview is about retaining, not attracting. But even if it were about attracting them, your question is a non-starter, because this isn't about hiring women over and above hiring men, it's about hiring women at all and those women then staying on and not quitting due to culture issues. "This is America," so, what, we shouldn't bother picking the best candidates and retaining them? Or do you not believe there's ever cases where a woman was the best choice for a job, but she chose not to take it?
  • magic_beans 10y ago
    This article isn't about attracting women to technical roles. It's about KEEPING the female programmers you already have.
• throwaway5492 10y ago
  Why does this article prompt me to trust it for using WebGL? There's not a single graphic anywhere on the page! Is this some sort of browser fingerprinting or something? Just bringing it up in case it's a misconfiguration on their server.
• togoshigekata 10y ago
  How can Hospitals help retain Male Nurses? (male nurses: ~8%) How can Schools help retain Male Teachers? (male teachers: ~20%) How can we help Males dying on the job? (male on the job deaths: ~90%+)
  • skrebbel 10y ago
    I wonder what your point is.
  • throwaway729 10y ago
    Naturally, these questions do get asked in each industry. Nursing [1-3]; K-5 teaching [4-6]. There are entire federal and state agencies with copious regulation dedicated to workplace safety. As a society, we spend millions upon millions each year making inherently dangerous workplaces (mostly occupied by men, as you note) a bit less dangerous. And I don't even know anything about those cultures; I'm literally "just fucking googling it". A mere investment of a few minutes would've easily dispossessed you of the misapprehension that men aren't explicitly recruited and retained in female-dominant fields. Hopefully it's blatantly obvious why we're discussing gender disparities in software engineering on HN -- a message board primarily frequented by people in the software startup industry -- instead of gender disparities in these other professions. [1] http://minoritynurse.com/men-in-nursing/ http://minoritynurse.com/men-in-nursing/ [2] https://www.corexcel.com/courses/men-nursing-handout.pdf https://www.corexcel.com/courses/men-nursing-handout.pdf [3] http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing/374-men-in-nursing.html http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing/374-men-in-nursing.html [4] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.659.9141&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.659... [5] http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:73946 http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:73946 [6] http://www.menteach.org/ http://www.menteach.org/
    • hajile 10y ago
      You sidestepped the workplace death question. Why are we so worried about forcing women into STEM no matter what, but we don't care about forcing them into the jobs that cause all those workplace deaths? As a corollary, why do people without STEM jobs constantly complain about other people not having STEM jobs instead of leading by example? After all, as we're constantly told, we need every able-bodied STEM grad we can get our hands on. Lip service doesn't matter; change matters. If you look at nursing stats, men leave at a much higher rate than women. Sexual harassment, liability when caring for women and children, getting saddled with the harder jobs (because he's a man), pay sucks, and a general every day attitude from everyone about being a male nurse (with the added bonus that generally speaking, old nurses really hate new nurses and the more different you are, the worse it is). Generally speaking, you'll tend to see male nurses gravitate toward specialties or travel nursing where most of these issues are less prevalent. What about teachers? The split used to slightly favor men over women once upon a time. If there were ever a profession where male/female diversity were important, it would be in the education system. Instead, we see the huge male pedophile scare of the 70-80s followed by a large drop in the number of male teachers in general and in younger grades in particular. Most male elementary school teachers are there for PE. Factor that out and it's extremely easy for your child to go through almost a decade of schooling without meeting a male teacher. To tie that particular idea back to software engineering, are the majority of female elementary teachers self-loathing, backward individuals who believe in the inherent inferiority of women? If not, then why do they work so hard to keep their female students out of certain parts of STEM?
• jredwards 10y ago
  My dev organization had, at one point, a fairly respectable gender ratio (relative to other orgs, which isn't saying much). Over time, the women in our dev org have had a much higher attrition rate, because they've moved on to other opportunities. I've never heard a complaint from any of them that women were treated differently here. I have a suspicion that women who get into tech tend to be more self-assured than the average individual (by virtue of the fact that they're willing to fight what looks like an uphill battle to get into the field). And that those people are also more likely to look around for a better opportunity and not be afraid to grab it. Which would make them inherently difficult to retain. (I also have a feeling that talking about women in tech in any kind of generality is a good way to get pitchforked and set on fire, so I hope I haven't said anything out of line.)
  • karlkatzke 10y ago
    I disagree with your generality. I think women who work in startups and thrive/survive in that environment are probably more resilient than the average woman, but I also think that imposter syndrome is rampant in all women in the tech field, and that's usually not a sign of self-assurance. As with everyone, there's things that you as an individual can let slide and be OK with, and there's things that another person can let slide and be OK with. My wife's an engineer (PE) in a very traditional male-dominated field, and she's good enough at what she does that she gets put on the big projects as the lead. When she deals with prejudice and outright insults from older men, it's like water off a duck's back, because she's dealt with that situation for her entire education and career. Other women or younger men who treat her as an inferior really get under her skin.
  • probablybanned 10y ago
    It's very likely to be down to differences in temperament, although I don't think it's self-assurance precisely. Typically, men are more driven to compete for status and place their career at the center of their lives, while women evaluate their situation more holistically. This means they're less likely to put up with bullshit, and are more likely to be lured away to places that are less prestigious/competitive but allow them to actually have a life. Generally speaking! I enjoy being pitchforked and set on fire, pseudonymously at least.
• SEJeff 10y ago
  Let me reframe the question to be my thoughts on how to solve the "problem". Q: How can managers help retain technical engineers A: Treat them fair and pay them what they are worth regardless of how many of which chromosomes they have. When people treat them unfairly or discriminate, stand up for them and show them that you care. Don't penalize them for their genetic ability to make more humans if they so choose to. Other than the obvious of more money, most employees will feel loyalty towards those are loyal to them. I didn't read TFA as I think the question is a bit wrong even if it is meant to be well received.
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    OK, so, in concrete terms, how do you propose people treat their employees equally regardless of sex? Empirically that is not currently what happens, and probably not because someone twirling his mustache said "let's deliberately discriminate against women."
    • SEJeff 10y ago
      Excellent question! Here is my imperfect idea that is much easier said than done. FWIW, I do work as a software engineer at a very technical firm that I think does a stellar job getting this right. The biggest thing is the pay gap. Fixing the pay gap does make employees more equal as an employer trades money for an employees time. We have a long way to go to fix the current pay gap in tech at least. Also I have heard of managers who don't promote women as tech / team leads for fear they'll get pregnant and be on leave for 2-6 months taking care of their child. I literally told a guy at my last job that was not cool when he said that. Even though it might shake things up in the business if a valued employee is off work for a few months that is not the employees fault. Punishing them for what "might or might not happen" in the future is discrimination plain and simple. Discrimination of any form results in a hostile work environment and ultimately a less effective team. Another common one is someone making unwanted advances or propositions. The only correct response on this from management is swift and firm rejection up to and including firing the unwanted initiator. Look at the recent mess with that female Uber engineer who was harassed so badly she finally gave up and left. She did the absolutely right thing and told the person not cool and then spoke with HR. Because the initiator was a "valued employee" they let it slide, further alienating the now victimized engineer. I'm a dude in tech who knows what it is like to be treated poorly. We must be the voice for those without one (my wife calls me more of a feminist than she says she is amusingly). To do anything less is to be complicit in this injustice. See the "first they came for..." poem about the Nazis.
• neurotech1 10y ago
  Perhaps some of these "managers" should study Crew Resource Management [0] (CRM) for some lessons that were "paid for in blood". For Airline operations, crew includes cabin crew. There was a notorious case, British Midlands Flight 92 [1], where the pilots shut down the wrong engine. At least one flight attendant (& several passengers) noticed the left engine was producing flames and sparks. The Captain said he shut down the right engine, which was working properly. The aircraft crashed, causing 47 fatalities, 74 serious injuries and 5 minor injuries. Compare that to Qantas Flight 32 [2], with 5 pilots in the cockpit, and 24 cabin crew, along with maintenance, ATC and rescue crew on the ground, landed a seriously damaged A380 without injury or further damage. Capt. Richard De Crispigny was later quoted: "We sucked the brains from all pilots in cockpit to make one massive brain and we used that intelligence to resolve problems on the fly because they were unexpected events, unthinkable events". This is CRM at its finest. Another successful application of CRM was in Aloha Flight 243 [3]. After loosing a section of the roof, Captain Robert Schornstheimer & First Officer (& later Captain) Mini Tomkins landed the damaged 737 with all passengers surviving. One flight attendant, CB Lansing, was blown out of the aircraft. Effective CRM (management) is what allowed QF32 and Aloha 243 to land safely. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
• scaleout1 10y ago
  Few things that comes to my mind - Have clarity around what time people are expected to arrive/leave. If your company offers free food, dont schedule breakfast super early and dinner super late. - Dont schedule meetings at 5:00 pm - Dont change product direction/design based on meetings you had at an after work party Basically acknowledge that people in general and women in particular have responsibilities outside work. Strive to have work life balance for everyone in your team and not just fresh out of college kids who can afford to sit at house till 9 pm.
  • briandear 10y ago
    "women in particular have responsibilities outside work" Yeah? And men don't?
    • TheCoelacanth 10y ago
      They do, but it is treated as much more socially acceptable for men to shirk those responsibilities than for women.
• oxryly1 10y ago
  How were the interviewees recruited?
• ergothus 10y ago
  This is a topic of great interest to me. In part because I love coding and think that anyone else that does should have the same opportunities. In part because though I'm a cis straight male, I've generally gotten along with women better as friends and colleagues. And in part because I'm generally socially liberal, so something like this where the TREND line is going in the wrong direction is particularly bothersome. (Racism, on the other hand, is something that is definitely wrong and definitely exists, but it's easier (though not "good") to be blase about it because the trend line is in the right direction.) I've had two relatively recent discoveries on the topic (these may or may not be known to everyone else): * One workplace I was at had an annual summer internship for high school women that had taken AP Comp Sci. Overwhelming the interns had a good experience, and a thing they commonly said was that they didn't expect coding to be so social. Given how U.S. women (at least) are socialized to be social and being judged by their success at being social, I can see that impression subconsciously turning away potential CS grads from ever entering the field. * I've attended and read talks on the problem for the last decade or two, and I've seen a change in the messaging. Originally it was "women need to stand up, get mentors, and push harder". More recently, the messaging has been "Common male behaviors tend to push women away. Those places that are more diverse have been more successful. Let's reduce how much we push women to socialize like men, and perhaps teach men some of the positive ways women socialize". That is, teach behaviors like: * Don't shut down discussion, promote it * Don't insult ideas * Don't talk over people * Make suggestions, not declarations Now, I'm not saying that the behaviors women are taught are all good or positive, but within the realm of building consensus and being open to new ideas, these specific behaviors have been shown to work better. Also, this change in messaging has been more useful to me: Originally, if I wanted to promote women in the field the advice was "Don't be a sexist jerk, and provide mentoring for junior coders that are women". Now the advice is "look to your own behaviors and improve them, and both men and women will benefit". It's way too early to say if this messaging is really an answer, but I feel like I've made positive changes based on it. [ Side note: I've noticed that comments like these tend to inevitably kick off comments about how backstabbing and bitter the socialization between women is, a position often vigorously promoted by women themselves. I really can't say, other than the specific qualities I list above are positive ]
  • 10y ago
• Allower 10y ago
  so basically its all the same shit men have to deal with too, just in a slightly different flavor
• ozpri 10y ago
  Stop Focusing on Gender and focus on the work. Strike a balance where necessary, but focusing on the things that make people different creates a division by virtue of the differences being consciously observed.
• dgudkov 10y ago
  It's striking how many women in this article mention bad relationship with bosses as the main reason to leave. No question, this is a very legitimate reason. I'm just surprised that it looks like it happened quite often through their careers. I did have terrible bosses maybe couple times through my almost 20-year work experience, but it never was so much a problem -- low pay, or boring job were the main reasons I switched employers. I would assume from this article that women are more sensitive to relationships with their bosses than men. Which might require special training for the both parties to overcome. I'm pretty much sure that if several men were asked what made them leave, bosses would not be such a major issue.
  • Kroniker 10y ago
    Might be a selection bias issue- the type of women that would participate in this might also be the type to cite relationships a causal factor.
  • zem 10y ago
    i'm pretty sure i read a study a few years ago that said bad bosses were the #1 reason for people leaving jobs, across all demographics.
  • anothercomment 10y ago
    Anecdotal, my impression is that women tend to have much lower tolerance for people they dislike. Seem to remember reading the theory that for men it was important to work well in random groups (like war or hunting parties), whereas the sphere of the women was usually more tightly knit, so perhaps it was more important to weed out unpleasant individuals in the tightly knit sphere. Might have read that in the infamous "Is there anything good about men" essay, but not sure. As an example for my experience: in the student hall, there were sometimes people who smelled bad or didn't integrate. The men would usually just ignore them (after all, most people only live in student halls for a limited time, so the problem would resolve itself), whereas the women would start banding together and mobbing against them. They would become more and more preoccupied with plans to get rid of the unwanted person. To a lesser degree, I saw this kind of thing play out at companies or shared housing situations, too.
• ar15saveslives 10y ago
  I've never heard a question from women: "What can WE do to be more suitable for modern IT?" All I hear is that I, /u/ar15saveslives, personally, should act differently, look differently, speak differently to make those vulnerable sensitive shy females enjoy working with me. Why nobody asks "what women have to do to be more comfortable in IT" question? Learn more, participate in OSS/SO, start your own projects - why doesn't it work for "female engineers"?
• huherto 10y ago
  I think women perceive technical work as a low status. Many men do too. It just that may be men get more intrinsic value from it.
• oppositelock 10y ago
  It's not up to the managers alone to retain technical women, it's up to everyone. I've worked in this industry since the 1990's, which is enough time to see quite a bit, and I've definitely seen behavior hostile to women during this time, and also ham-fisted attempts to fix the problem which also breed resentment towards women, causing even more of the behavior. This whole "situation" simply boggles my mind. What could possess a guy to send a dick-pic to a coworker, or a manager to demand sex in exchange for promotion? These people are clearly messed up human beings, and need to be fired. Most of the time they are, and it takes an exceptional bro-culture for them not to be fired. However, these obnoxious pigs aren't really the core of the problem, they're just the ones we think of first. What I've seen over time is that most people have a double standard when comparing technical men and women. These are good people who respect their co-workers, and would never do something like mentioned above, but they still make it harder for women through either unconscious biases, different expectations, or different treatment. For example, I worked at one pre-eminent bay area company where there I saw a lot of policies meant to help female engineers and managers succeed. They were very strict on any sort of harassment policies, and usually took action against inappropriate behavior. Yet, my female co-workers were frustrated. There was a double standard in engineering. Say you go to a design review meeting for a big feature. If a man was presenting, he had the benefit of the doubt of his colleagues, presented his idea, got critiqued it, job done. A woman giving the same sort of presentation doesn't get that benefit of the doubt as frequently, and her ideas are scrutinized more, sometimes in a condescending way. I've seen this play out myself, it's disgusting! It's also not just men, women are harsher towards technical women as well. Women who noticed such problems and tried to point them out were either treated either as whiners, or management heard and over-reacted in a way which made the men feel threatened, which made the problem worse. I really don't know what the fix is here, but I can't see how managers can fix a cultural problem. The culture of tech needs to change to be fair to women. Perhaps this comes from having too high a concentration of one gender, since male elementary school teachers share the plight of technical women, but that's just my speculation based on people that I know. What I am happy to see is that the ratio of women to men in technical degree programs is much greater than when I was in college in the early 90's. I do college recruiting events for computer science grads, and if I was to wager a guess, the ratio is about 1/3, and approaching half at some schools. When women are more present in the tech workforce, and their peers have always experienced working with women, perhaps then things will change.
• shawn-furyan 10y ago
  It is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues. Predictably, the top comment on this post that tries to move forward on a very real problem that has been empirically established is an appeal to stick with the status quo. I'm sorry, but companies have always focused on making money. Saying that the way to handle this very specific problem is to focus on making money is an appeal to brush the problem aside completely. The top comment, for good measure, even obliquely swipes at active events taken by small local groups to tackle the issue, such as Girls Who Code, because men might be silently stewing over their existence...[1] I am opting for a top level comment here because my frustration is less with the comment itself than that the community as a whole has voted this comment to the top. [1] Before I get kneejerk responses that the comment didn't specify the group, let me belabor the point that the context of this discussion is SPECIFICALLY women's difficulties working within the masculine tech culture, so MinorityCodingClub trivially translates to WomenCodingClub, which sounds an awful lot like Girls Who Code, which has been gaining prominence of late. It is a cowardly oblique swipe at these sort of organizations. It's a cop out not to name the organization that you have a problem with explicitly, an attempt to lash out at such organizations while maintaining the comfortable position of plausible deniability. Everyone gets it though. So I won't countenance "shocked and appalled" denials that organizations like Girls Who Code were the target of the swipe.
  • draw_down 10y ago
    Yeah. These issues get talked about so much in our industry, but I don't understand how they're supposed to change if the way we're expecting to fix it is just "business as usual, but uh, don't do discrimination". Obviously there is something wrong with how we got here.
    • anothercomment 10y ago
      There is not "obviously" something wrong. Would you say there is obviously something wrong with the plumbing industry that keeps women away? Or is it just that the smell of shit is too unpleasant? Likewise, some aspects of tech could simply be unpleasant to women, and there are reasons why men are more likely to put up with unpleasant work (like the need to feed a family). I have personally experienced a lot of unpleasant aspects of the tech industry (let's just say the movie "Office Space" is not far off the mark), unrelated to gender. Mind you, I am not claiming nothing is wrong (although personally I consider it unlikely), just that it is not obvious, because there are other explanations for the gender ratio that don't involve "wrongness".
• Arizhel 10y ago
  >Female leaders: Founders, CEOs, CTOs receive far more public criticism AND HOSTILITY than male CEOs and CTOs ie.e Ellen Pao as leader of reddit, Marissa Meyer, Sheryl Sandberg * The things that have been said about these women and their bodies and how evil they are I have never ever heard with male CEOs no matter how evil, nor have I seen criticism as harsh, unrelated to the business issue, cruel and emotionally punishing as these women have faced. Oh please, there's no shortage of horrible male CEOs out there. Jack Welsh, Bob Nardelli, Travis Kalanick (Uber), Steve Ballmer, etc. The female tech CEOs who run companies into the ground might get more attention because they're female, but running a high-profile company like HP straight into the ground (right after ruining another one like Lucent) really should earn you infamy, as it has for Carly Fiorina. Marissa Meyer didn't exactly run Yahoo into the ground (it was already on that trajectory), but she certainly didn't help, and probably made it worse with her lavish parties. The Pao/Gamergate case is somewhat special though; that whole thing was just a mess. Anyway, I don't hear that many complaints about Ebay's ex-CEO Meg Whitman (now current CEO of HP Enterprise). Maybe nothing great, but that's normal for most CEOs, who seem to be a bunch of crappy sociopaths anyway, but you can't claim she ran Ebay into the ground, and HPE seems to be doing OK. >Dear god, how could any women aspire to be a leader when the women who aspire to Why would anyone who isn't a sociopath aspire to be a CEO of a large company? They're all sociopaths. I'm not sure why I should really care about people who aspire to this position, or to any position in politics. You want me to care about why women aren't going into rank-and-file engineering positions? Great, this sounds like a valid problem to me. You want me to worry about sociopathic women getting into positions where they can get golden parachutes worth tens of millions or more after running companies into the ground? Sorry, I have no sympathy at all. Finally, as to your opinion about who to blame for the gender disparity, I do agree: the problem starts far earlier than college, and I think it's endemic to our culture and how we raise kids. However, I do have to point out that even in the US, women used to go into tech fields much more in the 80s and earlier, so what changed?
  • usmeteora 10y ago
    Wow...I mean 1. I never claimed Marissa Meyer ran yahoo into the ground. It was a mess when she started, and from what I know of her shes no a sociopath, a computer scientist from Stanford who was one of the originals at google so...I don't know even know how to respond to that, except that I would ask you calibrate the cost of her so called lavish parties to that of any other multi billion dollar or hell, a first round wannabe startup who is way into their ego. The assumption that you assumed the fact I mentioned she was criticized means Im accusing her of running it into the ground is far from the truth. Women like her, Sheryl Sandberg and Fiorna, Ellen Pao are WOMEN, who are brought into lead companies AFTER they are falling apart, and noone else knows what to do, THEN they call in a woman to fix it. In literally every case of every woman above, those were the circumstances in which companies bring in female CEOs, when their company is falling apart, so yeh the criticism they receive is even more unfounded because they take so much personal criticism about their bodies and emotions instead of the root causes of why they were even asked to come and help save the company in the first place. Hmmm would be interesting to see more women starting their own tech firms instead of running the the rescue of drowning ones. And give me a break about male CEOs. Men do not go out on the internet and make degrading sexual comments about male CEOs en masse by the millions the day they step into their role. All of these women above however, had entire websites dedicated to things like that. For you to not acknowledge that is just bigotry. As far as Sociopaths as CEOs, while that personality does seem to overlap as a fit, I know people who are CEOs and founders of multiple forbes top 30 under 30, and in fact had brunch at ones house on Sunday where we talked about the book good to great and quiet (about introverts as good leaders and some of the best CEOs, just the least self advertising) soooo I really find your comment assuming anyone who is a CEO a sociopath offensive. My best friend founded a multimillion dollar biotech company as a senior in biomedical engineering in college to solve a problem her dying grandmother experienced in the hospital, and now her technology is used in countries all around the world including ambulances fighting wars right now. She's one of the best people I know, advocates for her employees to produce life saving products and happens to be a very great friend and good person all around. And please, the stories I hear from her about the truly sociopathic men that fit the stereotypic you are sweeping across all CEos, including good people trying to do great things, she has stories about them too. Dear god, you are out of your mind if you think the world could not benefit from some more younger ambitious female techs with good intentions and good work ethics in the field. There are tons of stories like these, and some of the best tech firms out there were started by "rank and file" engineers just like her so... I just don't even know what else to say about your presumptuous attitude about all CEOs being sociopaths. I can imagine they must become disenchanted with people like you who never turn down an opportunity to judge them as a person despite not knowing them as a person at all but farther than yet, you are making absolutely baseless claims in that regard. You are just plain wrong dude. In regards to your last point, that is the million dollar question, why the precipitous dropoff of women in computer science in the 80s? Lots of people are still trying to understand that.
• nradov 10y ago
  Most of this is good input for managers but the first answer from Adele complaining about "getting disorganized braindumps or single line descriptions from stakeholders rather than the thoughtful, detailed specs they’ve promised" seems misguided and counterproductive. It's simply unrealistic to expect customers and customer proxies (product owners / business analysts) to supply detailed specs. Their minds don't work that way and complaining about it just leads to frustration on both sides. Instead take the disorganized braindump as a starting point for the real requirements analysis process. If the stakeholders were capable of writing thoughtful, detailed specs on their own then they wouldn't need you and could just outsource the engineering work to the lowest offshore bidder.
  • HillaryBriss 10y ago
    in my experience, the "disorganized brain dump" is all too often considered to be a valid spec by the people who delivered it. then you code it. and then they change their minds.
    • nradov 10y ago
      As a developer you have a professional obligation to engage with your colleagues and educate them about the process. Sometimes this means building a mock up or throw-away prototype just as a tool to facilitate further discussion. But complaining about it won't get you anywhere.
• knerd1 10y ago
  Promote them.
• jabda 10y ago
  as a mother with young children, i value time flexibility and work life balance over everything else. I don't have to put every hour or half day taken due to family or school events into PTO. everything else is negotiable.
• ccc111 10y ago
  Please read all the way it does sound pretty blunt, kinda a rant. I'm a guy. Not a very liberal response. Men make money. Women look good. As terrible as that sounds. It is true. We are different species and have different advantages as the other. A pretty girl can literally take pics of themselves and marry in to wealth. We see this all the time. A actress is now dating Prince Harry, she is not a programmer or engineer. Bieber "finds" Instagram models and you know... he doesn't look in a cubicle of his agents company. A pretty guy gets no same benefits. There are girls on Instagram with literally millions of followers, even pretty male models barley crack a million. A smart girl who is not pretty gets no real benefits unless she works like a dog and turns her personality in to a man. Look at CEOs, almost +90% male. Leadership trait of males? A smart guy who is ugly has no problems being a star in the work force. These are the way things are. Should they be changed? Absolutely. But let me tell you how... but first a side note -- I do not approve of women in the military. Unless they can do their job as good or better then their male cohorts. I do not approve of slower lap times or lighter weights just because of gender. The enemy doesn't care about your gender, they will not go easy on you or slower. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/22/letter-to-the-editor-dempsey-rule-for-marine-women/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/22/letter-to-th... Using this same liberal premise, in high school we had 2 girls on the football team, because they wanted to be equal. one was actually bigger than some guys, but still not as skilled, the other was a "pretty girl". How do you expect a 200lb guy to treat the girls the same? As you know they quit in a couple months and practice was back to "normal". We lost a game because the coach had to put one of them in because their parents we upset.... -- So lets take this in to corporate america. If woman are as equal or better than a male candidate no problem they are good for the job. it is in the companies interest to hire them. But im sure in a extremely male dominated field it makes it very hard. I would assume, and from my own experience, guys get along with guys more than guys and girls. This is just fact. It is the same for women too. They feel more comfortable. So now we have a male dominated industry where many more men are hired than women and this further makes it harder for women to be in the industry. It seems pretty f tough. A short fix, a near sighted fix, is to start your own company, make your own "club" your rules, hire who you want. You can now be biased and shape things to your whim. Sorry if this is a let down but big companies are "club" and then the labor. big difference. So why dont we ask another question, this will be extremely unpopular but the truth. Why dont we each do what we are good at? Why dont we do what we have the best advantage in? Woman outnumber men in many industries. http://www.businessinsider.com/pink-collar-jobs-dominated-by-women-2015-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/pink-collar-jobs-dominated-by... Now your question will be, but i dont want to be a nurse i want to be a programmer! I dont want to be x i want to be y! Then you shouldn't complain when it is difficult because you are swimming upstream. I really wanted to be a basketball player when i was young you have no idea. Well guess what? im not above 6 ft, let alone a proper 6,6 so you know what i did? I accepted that i could be a basket ball player and moved on with my life. To be quite honest with you there are many more things i would rather be that a programmer. I would love to be an actor. but i dont think im 9/10 pretty, nor tall. I would love to be a doctor, but i couldn't think of doing surgery I would love to be a race car driver, but im not rich enough to start. I would love to be an entrepreneur, im working on that one. I would love to be a better developer, im working on that one. I would love to be free of debt, closer by the day. what i do now is merely what i believe to be the easiest and most enjoyable path to what i deem a better future for myself. if i had a million dollars i would not be doing much of what im doing now. TLDR; kinda hard to do without sounding like an a$$, but do what you are good at and what is realistic. If you are good technically you will get the job but realize it is an extremely upward battle compared to numerous other "paths". Understand that, don't push for unrealistic compensations for it. Would love to hear everyone's opinions. Sorry if blunt but sometimes i believe the truth gets shot down that only similar comments ever get read on grounds of "approval bias".
• lafytahoe 10y ago
  'Homogametic engineers' is probably a better term.
• dlwj 10y ago
  Using Kim Malone's radical candor framework http://www.kimmalonescott.com/ http://www.kimmalonescott.com/ The preferred quadrants are: Radical Candor > Obnoxious Aggression > Ruinous Empathy > Manipulative Insincerity The "defaults" are men being obnoxiously aggressive and women being in the ruinous empathy quadrant. Mean become radically candid by caring more, and women by challenging directly. The defaults however give men the advantage with women in a more harmonizing role. This is because the typical metaphors company act by are aggressive. The most obvious one is war or sports, but even a less aggressive one like trade requires a sort of aggression in haggling. The defaults favor an affinity for competition and aggression because we primarily live in a world of scarce resources and requires drawing a line in the sand and watching over it with spears. Our 1st world cushy lifestyles are basically subsidized by people in poorer countries being willing to work more for less. (as indirectly as possible to assuage guilt as much as possible) In a purely equal world, China and India become leaders of the world (again) and everyone gets 30K. Is that something people in the U.S. really want? A person with high empathy might feel guilt and be compelled to enact this situation. What mostly happens though is that these decisions are delegated to more aggressive and competitive people. Assuaging personal guilt while still reaping the benefits of disparity. If companies start ingesting more empathy, their actions naturally tend to become more harmonizing, creating fairer conditions. But this ONLY is desired if the total wealth is enough for each person. As larger companies act at a global scale, the global wealth isn't enough for this empathy to be acceptable. Smaller companies which act in a smaller sphere DO benefit from empathy though. They have to be indirectly subsidized by excess wealth from the environment they are embedded in. Knowing your hipster barista's name is only possible if the business of selling high priced artisanal coffee is viable.
• taysic 10y ago
  As a female engineer, I haven't actually experienced any sexism or gender related issues in any company I've worked in. I've worked in a good number from small startups to large companies. I've always felt really comfortable - but I am a really straightforward person and know how to decline offers after a company interview if the culture fit doesn't feel right. What do I look for that's related to gender? Usually a college-y or informal atmosphere. If it doesn't feel professional, I'm not too interested. This stems from my experience in HS and college (I went to MIT). Most of my peers were fine but there were some gender-related jokes in informal settings that I don't care to experience in a work environment. That's pretty much it for me, but maybe I've been lucky!
  • hocuspocus 10y ago
    Thanks. I've only worked at companies where the median age is well over 30, and when I read horror stories it often sounds like the problem mostly stems from overall immaturity, in both age and management experience. I'm sure age is no magic cure for all the assholery in this world, but the correlation between "family dad" and "decent, professional coworker" seems to fare nicely. Since this is the only advice to women I can come up with, I'm glad to read that it worked out for one person at least.
    • aianus 10y ago
      > "family dad" and "decent, professional coworker" seems to fare nicely I'm not a woman but I've had girlfriends who've complained about being sexually harassed at work and it's always been a "creepy, old married guy". Of course, maybe they personally didn't perceive similar attention from younger guys as harassment, I don't know.
      • sudosteph 10y ago
        My experience lines more up with the poster above. I've only been harassed by a creepy, young, single guy. So I guess the pattern is really creepy guys? That said, the "Dads" I've worked with (men with children, who I know have children because they talk about them or bring them in sometimes) have always been very easy to get along with. Also, I sometimes overhear them comparing notes on stuff they do with their daughters to teach them tech and science, which makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Kudos to all you out there raising the next generation right.
• HillaryBriss 10y ago
  > I’ve left companies after years of chaotically fighting fires while simultaneously needing to build new features, or after repeatedly getting disorganized braindumps or single line descriptions from stakeholders rather than the thoughtful, detailed specs they’ve promised. I've had this same basic experience working for female managers. Chaotic, bad processes are not unique to male management. It's just fd up companies and dev environments in general. Screwing up the process is an equal opportunity situation.