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A couple of observations: 1) The discrepancy starts at an early age. When I was in college, there were very few women in my CS classes, and nearly all of them
by amyjess 9y ago
A couple of observations:
1) The discrepancy starts at an early age. When I was in college, there were very few women in my CS classes, and nearly all of them were international students. This SMBC comes to mind more than anything else: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883
2) Looking at my own employer, I noticed some interesting things. First off, we're a mid-size B2B telecom with a very corporate culture, which is antithetical to the "tech bro" startups that are often discussed on HN. Different departments have strikingly different gender ratios. Only sales and technology are really male dominated, and even then they're not exclusively male. All departments outside of sales and technology are either gender-diverse or female-dominated. In sales: our sales operations and client experience teams are diverse, and we have a few female executives. In technology, our business intelligence/data warehousing people and our business analysts are all women, the QA lead is female, and we have a couple of female software engineers and a female IT tech. I am the only woman in the network engineering department, though. We're still above the curve compared to SV tech bro startups, though, and I have never once felt discriminated against for my gender.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- calvinbhai 9y agoI noticed to same (2) in all the startups I have worked at! about (1), to make matters worse, most of those international students are kicked out of US because their luck didn't favor them with the H1b lottery. A few years ago, as an international student myself, I found it weird to see hardly (compared to other courses) any American women (of any color/race) in CS/EE/CE/IT courses. Some of the international students (including women) who graduated also had to leave US because no H1b. Easy way to flood US tech companies with techie women is to give unconditional Green Cards to International students (stapled to women graduates' degrees). That way there wont be anyone pointing fingers at the pipeline. (the article also doesn't mention a solution to this problem) Once there's close to 50% parity in tech work places, in a few years, girls in US will have enough "women in tech" role models to look up to. Until then, they can feel comfortable in the techy bro culture only if they love Star Wars, Marvel and DC comics, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and console games, which is not a lot of women (and men) out there.
- warrshrike 9y agoAre you saying we should have H1B quotas exclusively for women (as you say "stapled to women graduates' degrees")? How is that not discrimination?
- calvinbhai 9y agoNot specifically H1b. H1b visa by itself gives unfair leverage to the employer, combine that with work place bias against women, especially in tech companies, I'd be surprised if any non male employee on a H1b visa dares to speak up against any kind of sexual harassment. w.r.t "Staple to graduate degrees", I meant green cards(gc). Similar to how canada does based on points. And sure, not just for women, anyone who is eligible based on points, should get a GC stapled