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For the rank and file of tech the problem can't be eliminated until more than 20% of the STEM pipeline is comprised of women. This means fighting sexism at the

by arkh 9y ago

For the rank and file of tech the problem can't be eliminated until more than 20% of the STEM pipeline is comprised of women. This means fighting sexism at the startup level is useless, you better encourage young people to get into science by making it sexy and not for social outcasts. If there is sexism to fight against it is in education with how maths and physics are painted as "for dorks" instead of showing how you do some crazy awesome things. For the management level you have two problems: - people tend to prefer people with technical baggage to handle technical teams. So you're back to the pipeline problem - for the exec level you usually get older people for established companies. So it is a question of time for things to get better: current execs are from 1 or 2 generations past. Once those generations are replaced they'll mechanically have more women, those who are currently in their late 30s and working on their career. You don't have a lot of 20ish men at those positions. For the startup founders you just need an idea, some seed money and time.

ben_w 9y ago
Disagree. Fight the problem at every level you encounter it. If startups are begging for more women, universities won’t be able to tolerate students or staff who discourage women from applying and/or finish their degrees.
- Klockan 9y ago
  > If startups are begging for more women Why would they start doing that? Eliminating sexism just means that you don't have any bias, not that you suddenly see them as the next coming.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    Because they provide a valuable insight that is currently being systematically ignored, which can allow businesses to meaningful engage with and provide useful services to a currently poorly serviced market segment.
    - Klockan 9y ago
      I haven't worked at a single team without at least one woman, why wouldn't people just ask them instead of going out of their way to get more? I mean, if we reduced the amount of sexism then the voices which are already in the field would suddenly be heard and we would no longer have the problem you are describing.
      - jacalata 9y ago
        Wow, really? That seems unusual - how are you defining "team"? I use it to describe a group of about 7-10 people and I have definitely seen many of them with no women.
        Klockan 9y ago
        20% are women in the places I have worked so you would expect there to be around 2 on average then. The probability then that a team of 10 has zero women would be around 10% so not that common.
        jacalata 9y ago
        20% is definitely higher than average, and higher than any company I've worked at. And you're assuming a completely random distribution, which is not the case in my experience, for whatever reason.
      - ben_w 9y ago
        All of my teams, at at least one point during my time there, had zero women in them. One of the teams eventually had two women, but at that point six of the men shared a name with another team member.
- arkh 9y ago
  If a company gets to 50% women in STEM jobs it means 2 other companies of the same size can't have any. Or you'd have to recruit from other kind of degrees. But realistically most companies are already begging for women in tech teams. Not being in the US, I've had some jobs where I've been told if they had just one female applicant the job woul be for them if they can type an Hello World program. But when you have 6 women in a class of 80, half of which are students from another country going back there once they have their degree it's hard to imagine a 50/50 team. I think the biggest wall is not sexism, but the media using some cases to create the illusion of rampant sexism. Exactly like how people think violence is on the rise while stats show it is down due to coverage.
WalterSear 9y ago
Worse than useless: it can become spiteful and counterproductive.
stale2002 9y ago
You misinterpret what is causing the problem. It is not just a pipeline problem at the elementary school level where women aren't being given enough Legos to play with or something. It is a pipeline problem at the company level as well. As in, women in tech are very often driven out of the industry because of all the BS that they have to put up with. Fix the sexism problem at the company level and the industry stops losing good workers who were being driven out. Also something to think about, why would women want to join an industry when they know that they will have to put up with a lot of sexism? That would be a pretty big deterrent from them getting a CS degree in the first place.
- arkh 9y ago
  If they don't want to join, then what is the problem? Their life, their choice. Do we see as many article about the lack of women in waste management? I think that's because seem like easy well-payed jobs. The reality is stupid hours, stupid management and no life. Only people who value money more than their time would choose to stay there. But hey! A possible solution would be to force women to learn to code then work there for decades. We could start with those who chose to become journalist or some other humanities major. Women are too stupid to choose the right path for them, am I right? /s
  - stale2002 9y ago
    No, a better solution would be to fix the rampant problems of sexism in tech so that women aren't driven out of it. Problem should be fixed. They should be fixed because they are problems that make lots of people unhappy and keep them out of high paying jobs. Women aren't stupid for choosing to not subject themselves to rampant sexism. That's actually smart. But fixing a huge problem that effects lots and lots of people is objectively a good thing. Your argument is equivalent to saying "hey, black people don't want to report things to the police, because they are afraid of the police (do to them being shot at a much higher rate), but that's THEIR problem because it is their life and their choice to not have access to the police system whenever a crime accures to them and they choice to not report it". That argument would be a bad argument, because even though they are "choosing" to not report things to the police (and therefore have to way to not get justice for crimes committed against them), we should still work to fix the problem of them being RATIONALLY afraid of the police (perhaps by trying to convince police to shoot them less). Look, if you really don't care about a major problem that is effecting lots of people, we could at least look at this from a purely selfish perspective for the company. When women leave an industry the company loses lots of money, because they have lost a high skilled worker. Therefore it is an objectively good thing for the tech industry to solve this major problem that is causing the industry to lose so many highly skilled workers. Because that cost money. The reason there are more articles about this than simply bad management is because a hostile work environment for lots of people is a much worse problem that effects people in worse ways. How do I "know" that it is a worse problem? Well that's because women are being driven out in droves. Obviously it is a worse problem, as evidenced by the sheer number of people for whom it causes to leave their very high paying jobs.

by arkh 9y ago

ben_w 9y ago

Disagree. Fight the problem at every level you encounter it. If startups are begging for more women, universities won’t be able to tolerate students or staff who discourage women from applying and/or finish their degrees.

Klockan 9y ago
> If startups are begging for more women Why would they start doing that? Eliminating sexism just means that you don't have any bias, not that you suddenly see them as the next coming.
- ben_w 9y ago
  Because they provide a valuable insight that is currently being systematically ignored, which can allow businesses to meaningful engage with and provide useful services to a currently poorly serviced market segment.
  - Klockan 9y ago
    I haven't worked at a single team without at least one woman, why wouldn't people just ask them instead of going out of their way to get more? I mean, if we reduced the amount of sexism then the voices which are already in the field would suddenly be heard and we would no longer have the problem you are describing.
    - jacalata 9y ago
      Wow, really? That seems unusual - how are you defining "team"? I use it to describe a group of about 7-10 people and I have definitely seen many of them with no women.
      - Klockan 9y ago
        20% are women in the places I have worked so you would expect there to be around 2 on average then. The probability then that a team of 10 has zero women would be around 10% so not that common.
        jacalata 9y ago
        20% is definitely higher than average, and higher than any company I've worked at. And you're assuming a completely random distribution, which is not the case in my experience, for whatever reason.
    - ben_w 9y ago
      All of my teams, at at least one point during my time there, had zero women in them. One of the teams eventually had two women, but at that point six of the men shared a name with another team member.
arkh 9y ago
If a company gets to 50% women in STEM jobs it means 2 other companies of the same size can't have any. Or you'd have to recruit from other kind of degrees. But realistically most companies are already begging for women in tech teams. Not being in the US, I've had some jobs where I've been told if they had just one female applicant the job woul be for them if they can type an Hello World program. But when you have 6 women in a class of 80, half of which are students from another country going back there once they have their degree it's hard to imagine a 50/50 team. I think the biggest wall is not sexism, but the media using some cases to create the illusion of rampant sexism. Exactly like how people think violence is on the rise while stats show it is down due to coverage.

WalterSear 9y ago

Worse than useless: it can become spiteful and counterproductive.

stale2002 9y ago

You misinterpret what is causing the problem. It is not just a pipeline problem at the elementary school level where women aren't being given enough Legos to play with or something. It is a pipeline problem at the company level as well. As in, women in tech are very often driven out of the industry because of all the BS that they have to put up with. Fix the sexism problem at the company level and the industry stops losing good workers who were being driven out. Also something to think about, why would women want to join an industry when they know that they will have to put up with a lot of sexism? That would be a pretty big deterrent from them getting a CS degree in the first place.

arkh 9y ago
If they don't want to join, then what is the problem? Their life, their choice. Do we see as many article about the lack of women in waste management? I think that's because seem like easy well-payed jobs. The reality is stupid hours, stupid management and no life. Only people who value money more than their time would choose to stay there. But hey! A possible solution would be to force women to learn to code then work there for decades. We could start with those who chose to become journalist or some other humanities major. Women are too stupid to choose the right path for them, am I right? /s
- stale2002 9y ago
  No, a better solution would be to fix the rampant problems of sexism in tech so that women aren't driven out of it. Problem should be fixed. They should be fixed because they are problems that make lots of people unhappy and keep them out of high paying jobs. Women aren't stupid for choosing to not subject themselves to rampant sexism. That's actually smart. But fixing a huge problem that effects lots and lots of people is objectively a good thing. Your argument is equivalent to saying "hey, black people don't want to report things to the police, because they are afraid of the police (do to them being shot at a much higher rate), but that's THEIR problem because it is their life and their choice to not have access to the police system whenever a crime accures to them and they choice to not report it". That argument would be a bad argument, because even though they are "choosing" to not report things to the police (and therefore have to way to not get justice for crimes committed against them), we should still work to fix the problem of them being RATIONALLY afraid of the police (perhaps by trying to convince police to shoot them less). Look, if you really don't care about a major problem that is effecting lots of people, we could at least look at this from a purely selfish perspective for the company. When women leave an industry the company loses lots of money, because they have lost a high skilled worker. Therefore it is an objectively good thing for the tech industry to solve this major problem that is causing the industry to lose so many highly skilled workers. Because that cost money. The reason there are more articles about this than simply bad management is because a hostile work environment for lots of people is a much worse problem that effects people in worse ways. How do I "know" that it is a worse problem? Well that's because women are being driven out in droves. Obviously it is a worse problem, as evidenced by the sheer number of people for whom it causes to leave their very high paying jobs.