7 ms·

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) Som

• 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.
    • flamedoge 10y ago
      As long as it's idiomatic... I'm sorta fine with it.
  • spcelzrd 10y ago
    > Our industry has a personality problem as much or more as it has a sex problem. The data suggests our industry has a massive sex problem. Refocusing the debate onto yourself is a blocking factor in solving this problem.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • mpweiher 10y ago
      Nope, the data does not suggest that.
• sebcat 10y ago
  > 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. Also paid maternity leave, funded by taxes.
  • ju-st 10y ago
    Include paternity leave while you're at it.
    • sebcat 10y ago
      If the question is "How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?" - how is paternity leave relevant (unless the father in the relationship works for the same company, I guess)?
      • ashark 10y ago
        If only women have legally mandated paid time off for new kids it'll provide even more reproduction-related disincentive to hire women, which is reason enough for it to be relevant, I'd say.
        • ju-st 10y ago
          Exactly! I have anecdata from German managers """jokingly complaining""" about how one can't hire young men any more because of their potential paternity leave. This is a good thing.
      • in_cahoots 10y ago
        As a woman, I'm much more likely to take the amount of maternity leave I desire if I think there's no professional penalty for it. Ensuring that men can take leave lowers the chance I'll be penalized for my decision since it's now a 'cost of doing business' and not a 'cost of hiring women'.
• latenightcoding 10y ago
  Point number 1 is ridiculous and sexist. Oh yeah let's ship code that hasn't been reviewed because the young males in our company will act like chimpanzees, and those pesky technical debates let's scratch those too. Let's just use whatever piece of technology is trending today on HN
  • tangue 10y ago
    It's not about women even introverts won't fit in this kind of situation. How many agile poker are played where only two chimps are arguing ?
    • emodendroket 10y ago
      Sure, but to a certain extent I think a woman who behaves in the same way is going to unfairly be perceived much more negatively.
  • pdpi 10y ago
    I didn't read that as suggesting that you shouldn't do code reviews. The issue is when code reviews become a competitive sport, and more about technical oneupmanship than they are about improving code quality and team knowledge.
  • Humdeee 10y ago
    Can you point me to the part of the sentence where OP says not to review code entirely? You sound like you're just making his point.
    • panoptispeech 10y ago
      The entire purpose of a code review is to highlight things that are wrong. You can't point out things that are wrong without someone being able to spin your comments as some kind of toxic masculine impulse to show basal-primate technical dominance through demonstration of superior shamanistic technical knowledge. Pointing out a buffer overflow isn't sexism. It's pointing out a buffer overflow.
• gooseyard 10y ago
  I'm male, barely progressive, of below average couth, and probably seem like a dinosaur to younger colleagues when it comes to gender issues, but I think your item #1 is without question the most endlessly frustrating and pointless source of tedium in the software business and its only gotten worse during the last 20 years. I've found myself finding more common ground with young women on my teams than with the young men for this reason, and for the reason that when I do have something constructive to offer during a review then young women generally respond to it in a way that I like (e.g. they make a value judgement about what advice was worth taking and what wasn't and do it). The kind of men you're describing seem to find a way to turn everything into a sport, and seem to be oblivious to the effect that they have on people whose attitudes toward competition don't match their own. It is frequently embarrassing to watch, and definitely my least favorite aspect of this work.
  • buckbova 10y ago
    Code reviews may have grown in importance due to scaled back formal design documents and formal qa staff and processes. > young women generally respond to it in a way that I like (e.g. they make a value judgement about what advice was worth taking and what wasn't and do it). In my only 10+ years experience, I noticed women seem more defensive about their code being reviewed and I have to write long formal arguments if I'm suggesting any more than a trivial change. Then there will be a discussion afterwards and based on that it's 50/50 whether it gets done. Now I pad reviews with positives about the work to soften it in some probably transparent attempt to placate the reviewee. With men, I review the code, make a suggestion, I usually get a note "sounds good, will do." That's not all men of course, there's always at least one guy who doesn't want his code reviewed at all, too good, doesn't see the point, etc.
    • drzaiusapelord 10y ago
      >I usually get a note "sounds good, will do." This is me, but not at first. I think it took me a while to realize most arguments aren't worth it and not rocking the boat has a lot of social value, especially from a "get on with my day and let bygones be bygones" perspective. I suck up some really questionable criticisms from my boss on the regular. Its not a big deal. I find women in the workplace seem to learn this lesson much later than their male peers. I think female social culture is often argument and verbal heavy and that translates poorly into the workplace. I feel this is the downside of being more socially aware earlier on than boys. Girls seem to become very sensitive to perceived slights and that hyper-sensitivity doesn't translate well into the workplace. I work with women in their 40s who will argue about the something trivial thing until they're blue in the face. I almost never see a man act like this, especially past age 30 or so. I think older men are just taught to take arguments and conflict more seriously and take on a certain level of stoicism, if not a strong level of emotional repression, at work. In the world of men a conflict could turn into violence quickly while women on women violence is much more rare and with much less serious consequences. A 110lbs girl isn't going to be able to murder me but a 200lbs guy could easily or accidentally do so. I think subconscious knowledge of that permeates our work life and affects how we develop. By the time we enter the workplace we've internalized certain attitudes, if your attitude is 'conflict is everywhere and needs to be constantly addressed' then you'll have a hard time at work, regardless of gender. I remember being the only man in a group of girls at my first professional job and the gossiping and negativity was extremely high with them, now I can't ever imagine socializing like that at work. It just seems crazy and a guaranteed way to ruin your day and hate your coworkers and bosses. Some of it was absolutely justified but dwelling on it was counter-productive (no one went to HR or went to resolve things, they just seethed endlessly). Nowadays, I've picked up the 'male stoicism' that always bewildered me about older guys when I was first starting to work a 'real job.' Now it makes perfect sense to me as it limits conflict, drama, and seething resentment. Meanwhile many of my female peers never made this advancement so we have to make special exemptions and treat them with kid gloves if they're even on the receiving end of anything they'll perceive as a slight. Its exhausting, frankly, and I wonder why women, with their ultra-refined social skills, don't see that this kind of behavior is ultimately self-defeating. That said, the above is a generalization, but its definitely an 80/20 kind of things. 80% of the women I've worked with are like this, with 20% being the exception.
• ashark 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 I'm sure whatever you'd like to replace these processes could be described in equally sweeping sexist terms going the opposite direction, you know.
  • FreedomToCreate 10y ago
    Good to see someone can see the irony.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    Seems difficult given how few tech companies are female-dominated, actually.
• emodendroket 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 Frankly this is something I'd welcome too.
• jfernandez 10y ago
  >Discourage your work 'culture' from being built around aggressive tech code reviews/debates/arguments/chat where young males love to beat their chest I get what you're saying but at the same time... code reviews and conversations not debates/arguments are important regardless of gender. You're saying you want to built a tech org without that being a central idea to the way men and women on the team should work?
  • gedy 10y ago
    The key word is 'aggressive' - yes it benefits all, but the topic here is about 'retaining females'.
• senior_james 10y ago
  "aggressive tech code reviews/debates/arguments/chat where young males love to beat their chest" You mean passionate engineers and developers discussing ways of getting the job done most efficiently? It's a little crazy to ban this rather than encourage women to get into the discussion. If they aren't as passionate, then maybe they should be in a different career. I find it funny that many were trying to say men and women were the same. Now it seems those same people are saying not only are men and women different..but the men are doing it the wrong way. I guess we are different after all. Many people get into the tech industry because of the money..and end up leaving because they don't realize it's many times time consuming, humiliating, and mind-numbing labor. You really have to love it to stick with it. I've been in the industry for 20+ years and I almost never get bored. "Some flexibility on hours/location when children come." As long as men can also work remotely and have flexible hours. Nobody wants to live at work. You also have to realize that when you are in the office less, you will be passed up for promotions. This isn't sexism, it's just how things work, regardless of your race or gender.