8 ms·
Am I wrong or all the issues seem to be not gender related but about management and they apply to both sexes?
by 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 agoI 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 agoInfantilizing much?
- Zikes 10y agoGeneralizing, 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 agoCan 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.
- Zikes 10y agoI don't know of any studies, anecdotes aren't data, and I don't know of any particular issues listed in the article that might affect women more than men. The only point I'm trying to make is the obvious one: men and women are different. It's a stupid point, taken at face value, but it's one that seems to get lost every time someone says "but men face those same issues" or "that doesn't seem like a gendered issue to me".
- StargazyPi 10y agoYeah, I agree that on aggregate, men and women have subtly different tendencies. The reason I bring it up though, is that I don't see or experience any particular bias around most of the the issues in the article. Most of the points raised really don't seem like gendered issues.
- Zikes 10y agoWe need to find a way to figure out which of those differences are important, then. YC seems to be trying via this Ask a Female Engineer series, but if we ask those female engineers which issues are most important to them in regards to what would drive them away and the answers they give aren't satisfactory, then what conclusions can be drawn? If the issues listed are largely the same issues faced by men, and if the issues have an equivalent impact on male engineer retention, then the answers are incomplete or we're asking the wrong women. Maybe we should ask female former engineers why they left the industry?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- BadassFractal 10y agoOld school feminists have been cringing at this trend for a couple of decades at this point. It's unfortunate the newer generations haven't been exposed to where we came from and how we're now regressing back, undoing much of the work they did.
- sgustard 10y agoI think there are valid examples, e.g.: 90% of my coworkers are male. Men: don't notice. Women: might notice.
- scandox 10y agoUm hope I'm not being humourless but obviously if the percentage was reversed then the Men would notice and a majority would be somewhat bothered by it. Especially if they perceived a difference in how they were treated as part of that smaller group... Isn't this kind of the point? Am I missing summat?
- kfrzcode 10y agoDo you have any supporting evidence to help build this case? I don't buy it.
- mtreis86 10y agoAccording to Dr. Elaine Aron, http://hsperson.com http://hsperson.com there is a similar percentage sensitivity in both genders, 15-20%.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zer00eyz 10y agoYour being down voted because no one wants to hear it, but there is some truth to it. It isn't so much a biological difference (there may be some of that) but one that is likely a byproduct of how we socialize children [1]. Fixing this issue in adults is a hell of a lot harder to fix than it is in kids. It doesn't help that software engineering as a whole, is to varying degrees, broken. From how we interview to how we manage projects [2]. We simply have no idea how to build something effective and repeatable within the constraints of the current system. [1] I could put a million different links here, lets just use this one and you can do your own research after that: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-girls-boys-brilliant-20170126-story.html http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-girls-bo... [2] Again illustrative example, pick your own poison here as well: https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-experience-trap https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-experience-trap
- emodendroket 10y agoIt's probably true that, for the most part, men are less likely to mind, say, crude sexual remarks about women, but I don't think it follows that we should just tell women to suck it up.
- hn_throwaway_99 10y agoI had the exact same reaction. Common themes were along the lines of not having confidence in your direct manager, especially in cases where technical folks have been promoted into management positions. I hear this all the time.
- danielneri 10y agoAgreed - all of the comments or reasons given are not specific to a particular sex, and I've heard the same laments from men as well.
- mratzloff 10y agoIt's not like women are aliens with concerns that are completely divorced from male employees. They just have a superset of concerns that also includes the potential for gender discrimination from coworkers and managers.
- mrtron 10y agoThere are likely a similar set of male specific issues as well, so it seems presumptuous to call it a superset.
- jetsnoc 10y agoI would hazard a guess that a weak manager, manages all employees poorly. However, I would bet a lot of money that, like so many things in life, when you are bad in all quadrants on one thing, you'll likely be bad at other things like managing women. Realistically, they are the nearly the same to manage, but you can do some dumb things to make them feel excluded or make them feel like there is a boys club (probably because there is.) Susan Fowler's team, for example, a bad manager thought it was a good idea to save costs by not purchasing leather jackets for women on the Uber DevOps team. Spare the few hundred or thousand dollars (even if it were in the thousands) and make your employees feel equal and like they are a part of the same tribe. It's common sense. Pocket change to Uber and it makes people feel comfortable around their coworkers, and they will enjoy being part of a team and being passionate about their work-unit, co-workers and take pride in their company. Here's some anecdotal evidence. I had a product manager last week tell me she thought it was great that our company bought women's jackets for the team instead of making them wear bulky men's sizes like so many companies she has worked for in the past. That cost me less than $150 for them to set up the plates/screens/whatever with the printer but it bought me thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in good-will. Great investment. For me, this was a small gesture on my part and the companies behalf. But, it went a long way. The ladies on my teams are strong contributors, and it's table stakes for me to make sure they feel included and part of the team. Even if I have to tailor to them. Pun intended. My direct management of every employee is a little bit different based on who they are, their communication style, how they receive feedback and their work-style. I assume that gender goes a little bit into how I interact with each person on my team and I am willing to admit I probably have some biases but overall if you're already managing your team with a high eq, you'll fare well and create an inclusive team.
- jrubinovitz 10y agoIf these are your issues as well, you can join in and help fix them. No one is trying to invalidate your problems; this is a call to action for better engineering management practices.
- readams 10y agoExcept when you interview only women about reasons they leave companies, what you hope to discover is why more women than men might be leaving. This article offers no insight on that question.
- jrubinovitz 10y agoI guess we disagree there.
- lostapathy 10y agoAgreed - I am not female, and these are the same reasons I'd be unhappy with a job or leave.
- logicallee 10y agoWell, due to the outrageous skew in gender, I think you have to read these things more deeply. There are offices with 18 or 20 men and 0 women or 1 woman. That doesn't happen statistically - certainly not with the incentives of exceedingly high salaries and a field that is open to all (by means of a computer science undergraduate program.) Look at something that is much harder than becoming a software engineer: becoming an MD in the United States. It has far higher mental and educational requirements; it's simply harder. An MD can learn C++ (to code their medical application) much faster than a C++ engineer can learn even a tiny part of the MD's domain expertise. Here is the gender breakdown of MD's: http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gender/ http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gender/ Women comprise 34% of MD's to 66% men. That is a statistical skew, but nowhere near the 93% male that programmers face. In essence when you reply to a comment here on HN you could carelessly say "he" referring to an OP without referring to their first name, whereas if this were a forum for physicians you would not make that assumption because it's not skewed enough for you to do so. (Here on HN there are lots of female engineers but they don't usually announce themselves explicitly.) So software engineering has a gender problem. Now we're getting an interview about what some people cite for leaving an industry in which they can make six figures within their first five years, with nothing more than an undergraduate education or the equivalent self-learning of 25% of one. So it is important to read the interviews extremely carefully and with a very open mind. For example, what are some of the worst things about being a software engineer: insane hours; intense mental focus (it is impossible not to take your work home with you and I am sure many programmers routinely dream of the tasks they are working on); coupled with bull-pen open space offices: However, open office plans[1] were not cited by the women in this interview. Zero mentions as far as I can see (I re-skimmed and also searched inline for "open'). The word hour or hours does not occur a single time. So even though it appears that the issues cited are independent of gender, it is imperative to read these interviews very deeply. There could be more to them than meets the eye. I don't know what it is, but it has to be in these interviews, lurking beneath the surface. Read more deeply. [1] such as the monstrosity pictured here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan
- yourapostasy 10y agoDoes software engineering have a gender problem, or a social validation problem? It is no secret that women in nations where software engineering is likely to be a significant source of employment are far more socially attuned than men are; whether this is by nurture or nature is grist for another mill at another time. It is also no secret that software engineers rank lower on social validation than doctors. Empirically, look at a sampling of org charts, and statistically, pure software engineers (not counting Fellow-type positions, for example) rarely call the shots. Not that they should as a rule: I'm pointing out the reality. Regardless of the US reality for doctors, with the constraints imposed upon them by the dysfunctionally-broken US healthcare policies, the social perception of doctors is "doctors call the shots". The phrase "doctor's orders" carries enormous cultural weight behind it. To empirically test a weak form of this hypothesis, compare the number of women managers who were originally trained as programmers to women software engineers. If there is a statistically significant deviation, then some Maxwell's Demon-like mechanism at work performs a sorting function that emerges this deviation, gradually exerting an inexorable pull upon women programmers into management. A stronger experimental confirmation of this hypothesis would require someone with far more training in such psycho-social factors discrimination to devise an experiment to empirically test. I'm not discounting the very real challenges women software engineers face. Personally, I have not witnessed first-hand any of the workplace vibe-killers described, and I've been in a lot of different workplaces by dint of my wandering consulting career, but I can believe it happens because I've also seen some really bad behavior in the species, and generally I tend to attract clients with pretty solid corporate cultures. But women tend as a statistical aggregate to pay attention to the nuances of social rankings far more than most men realize, and especially men in software engineering realize.
- emodendroket 10y ago> Especially as a woman, I worry about being labeled hyper-sensitive, or that my gender will influence a person’s reaction to my feedback (e.g. the perception that women are hysterical). [...] > The final straw has typically been something like my manager making an off-hand remark that is thoughtless and rude, or perhaps a project I care about deeply is axed, or I’m denied a raise, or someone I care about at work is sexually harassed or gets fired. To me these sound like issues that women are more likely to encounter.
- ck425 10y agoI'd say they're issues that are harder for woman to navigate. Not because they're less capable I should add, but because what's considered acceptable behaviour is different.
- emodendroket 10y agoYeah, sure. Either way it is a difficult position.
- ruleabidinguser 10y agoTo me the ones that sound more likely to be encountered by a woman are sexual harrassment, being labeled hyper-sensitive, or worrying that gender would have an effect on communication.
- emodendroket 10y agoYes. I agree, which is why I cited those excerpts.
- ruleabidinguser 10y agoI just thought you included some things there that aren't really gendered.
- 10y ago
- spcelzrd 10y agoYou're wrong. Every industry has management problems. Women leave tech at a rate much higher than they leave other industries. The only conclusion is that tech is a hostile environment for women, or that women are intrinsically unable to perform in tech.
- jetsnoc 10y agoIMHO, tech is a hostile environment with a lot of poor managers. I think the Peter principle applies to a lot of managers in tech. Promoted past their skill set. Just because someone is a good engineer does not mean they will be a good engineering manager. Managing humans with needs, concerns, ideals and life goals is so very different than managing a code-base. Executive leadership needs to consider this when building teams and figure out how to make and/or recruit good managers.
- cookiecaper 10y agoI wouldn't scope this down to tech. Incompetence and professional disinterest is by far the norm across all industries. Career meritocracy is, more or less, a myth. In technical fields, there is a merit baseline that has to be cleared, but after that, any further relationship between merit and position evaporates. That is inescapable. People sometimes think they've escaped it and found the promised land of meritocracy, but they haven't. That usually just means they have a politically-skilled manager who is good at keeping their belief in the fairy tale alive. I agree that a good engineer is not necessarily a good engineering manager, but I don't believe there are good engineering managers who are not also good engineers.
- jetsnoc 10y agoI agree, this ain't just tech's problem.
- ruleabidinguser 10y ago>or that women are intrinsically unable to perform in tech. The more accurate version of this is "women find less value in tech." It deserves more consideration than it gets. There are differences that aren't just cultural between genders, and its something that should be taken into account when forming a judgement on these issues.
- Yizahi 10y agoYou are correct. And hiring is also management responsibility (not a job maybe but they are responsible in the end). So bad hires are also management fault.
- fwefwwfe 10y agoThat was my impression as well. Managers get shifted around to cover up problems and are protected by their superiors. And look at how a lot of low level managers come to be - there's no real training or requirements that are specific to management, they just want to go from dev the management. And there's also next to no oversight for the managers, just, "Did your team hit its goals?" They are the modern equivalent of medieval royalty. I think they person who talked about women leaving the company for better opportunities is probably right.