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Welcome! I'm a dad of 3. My oldest, a girl, not technically inclined, is going to college in the fall. My other two, one girl, one boy, are technical, and for t

Welcome! I'm a dad of 3. My oldest, a girl, not technically inclined, is going to college in the fall. My other two, one girl, one boy, are technical, and for them I think about these issues a lot. FWIW, my strong advice for a parent, new to the industry, of a woman, is: do NOT get try to get caught up in the tech side of things, but instead attend to the human and culture side. There are great things about tech and so many more women doing well these days but the awful truth is also that the tech industry can be uniquely terrible- there aren't enough adjectives- for women. For men, too, of course but the industry continues to be dominated by misogynists. I follow (terrible term) hundreds of brave tech women on twitter...and hearing (virtually) their voices and stories has been the most important education of my life. Learn that side. And be there for your daughter to guide and support and provide human perspective when she encounters the dregs that this industry harbors. Best wishes.

jonahbenton 5y ago
Oh, the sweet, true, pure, unadulterated irony of this getting downvoted.
- jhgb 5y ago
  I can't make the claim about why you're getting downvoted, but personally, whenever I see a bold claim that one thing in particular out of hundreds is "uniquely terrible", and there's no reasoning provided for why and how this is actually the case, it definitely makes me pause.
password4321 5y ago
Agreed. Preparation to deal with discrimination and bias is essential. Finding mentors who have faced these situations before, and can provide relevant career guidance, should be priority #1.
ellen364 5y ago
I have thoughts about this and I’m not sure how to phrase them, so I’ll hope you forgive if I’m inelegant. The tech industry can be strange for women. I’ve often been the only woman in a meeting, for example. And as an interviewer at one company it was disheartening to see how few women applied for dev jobs. (That wasn’t a problem at my previous job, which was a startup with an education focus and attracted many female dev candidates.) Some women find being in that minority hard, I think. I’ve never particularly minded, though I still notice it sometimes. E.g. I was in a meeting where someone made a very mildly risqué joke about a sunbathing neighbour and was obviously embarrassed when he looked at me and thought through the fact a woman was in the room. But it was mildly risqué, quite funny, gentle humour and not bothersome at all. I have been careful when looking for jobs to emphasise that culture is important to me. I don’t want to work places where people play silly, back stabbing games. The closest I’ve come to a bad experience was working with a recruiter, who I liked a lot, who told me about a company and then hesitated. I prodded gently because he’d been excited about this company and thought I’d find the work interesting, but seemed reluctant to send me. After a while, he told me that he didn’t want to send me because the last two women he’d sent had a bad time and he didn’t want that to happen again. It was horrible to realise there was a local company treating female devs so badly, but it was also kind of the recruiter to have that awkward conversation with me. And, frankly, I’m happy to avoid the unpleasant bits of the industry. Overall, I find I have a lot in common with the men I work with and have rarely felt like I was treated differently because of being a woman. But I have also made an effort to work in smaller companies and prioritised things like a collaborative company culture. There are icky companies in the industry still and I’m glad that I haven’t ended up in one of them. I do think there’s value in thinking through (and discussing) strategies to use when facing discrimination or harassment. That’s something young women struggle with, because having your bum grabbed in public is just so bizarre. It’s hard to know what to do. But I would be sad if those discussions left young women feeling worried and reluctant to do things. I feel much the same about cautioning girls about the tech industry — we can spend too much time talking about the companies that are awful, when there are many welcoming companies that are wonderful places to work. Apologies for the wall of text. As the thread is about young women going into tech, it seemed worth presenting a different experience and perspective. Hopefully it will prove useful (or even encouraging) to someone. Best of luck to your children and to the OP’s daughter.
- jonahbenton 5y ago
  Thank you and thank you very much for sharing. I personally find it invaluable to hear narratives- good, bad, indifferent- from women and wish more of the storytelling in tech land was in a woman's voice/from that perspective. When the girls were little and I would get to spend time reading to them, when we were reading stories with a male protangonist I always changed the pronouns to female. It made it a different story (at least for me!). We are all human, but we are all uniquely human, and more stories from different voices and perspectives will create more opportunities and resonance for all. In terms of the specifics- agree completely that creating a psychic boogeyman serves no one's interest. My likely not-achieved goal was just to point the mom to areas where it seemed a mom's perspective could be usefully informed. Especially being able to coach with concrete examples around exactly the scenario you describe- interesting work but difficult/problematic culture. How to navigate? In any event, cheers and thank you again.
  - ellen364 5y ago
    You’re welcome. I think it’s wonderful that parents like you are thinking about the challenges their kids might face and having these conversations. I do worry about the “psychic bogeyman” (great phrase), but I also figure having these conversations is better than letting kids find out the hard way.

jonahbenton 5y ago

Oh, the sweet, true, pure, unadulterated irony of this getting downvoted.

jhgb 5y ago
I can't make the claim about why you're getting downvoted, but personally, whenever I see a bold claim that one thing in particular out of hundreds is "uniquely terrible", and there's no reasoning provided for why and how this is actually the case, it definitely makes me pause.

password4321 5y ago

Agreed. Preparation to deal with discrimination and bias is essential. Finding mentors who have faced these situations before, and can provide relevant career guidance, should be priority #1.

ellen364 5y ago

I have thoughts about this and I’m not sure how to phrase them, so I’ll hope you forgive if I’m inelegant. The tech industry can be strange for women. I’ve often been the only woman in a meeting, for example. And as an interviewer at one company it was disheartening to see how few women applied for dev jobs. (That wasn’t a problem at my previous job, which was a startup with an education focus and attracted many female dev candidates.) Some women find being in that minority hard, I think. I’ve never particularly minded, though I still notice it sometimes. E.g. I was in a meeting where someone made a very mildly risqué joke about a sunbathing neighbour and was obviously embarrassed when he looked at me and thought through the fact a woman was in the room. But it was mildly risqué, quite funny, gentle humour and not bothersome at all. I have been careful when looking for jobs to emphasise that culture is important to me. I don’t want to work places where people play silly, back stabbing games. The closest I’ve come to a bad experience was working with a recruiter, who I liked a lot, who told me about a company and then hesitated. I prodded gently because he’d been excited about this company and thought I’d find the work interesting, but seemed reluctant to send me. After a while, he told me that he didn’t want to send me because the last two women he’d sent had a bad time and he didn’t want that to happen again. It was horrible to realise there was a local company treating female devs so badly, but it was also kind of the recruiter to have that awkward conversation with me. And, frankly, I’m happy to avoid the unpleasant bits of the industry. Overall, I find I have a lot in common with the men I work with and have rarely felt like I was treated differently because of being a woman. But I have also made an effort to work in smaller companies and prioritised things like a collaborative company culture. There are icky companies in the industry still and I’m glad that I haven’t ended up in one of them. I do think there’s value in thinking through (and discussing) strategies to use when facing discrimination or harassment. That’s something young women struggle with, because having your bum grabbed in public is just so bizarre. It’s hard to know what to do. But I would be sad if those discussions left young women feeling worried and reluctant to do things. I feel much the same about cautioning girls about the tech industry — we can spend too much time talking about the companies that are awful, when there are many welcoming companies that are wonderful places to work. Apologies for the wall of text. As the thread is about young women going into tech, it seemed worth presenting a different experience and perspective. Hopefully it will prove useful (or even encouraging) to someone. Best of luck to your children and to the OP’s daughter.

jonahbenton 5y ago
Thank you and thank you very much for sharing. I personally find it invaluable to hear narratives- good, bad, indifferent- from women and wish more of the storytelling in tech land was in a woman's voice/from that perspective. When the girls were little and I would get to spend time reading to them, when we were reading stories with a male protangonist I always changed the pronouns to female. It made it a different story (at least for me!). We are all human, but we are all uniquely human, and more stories from different voices and perspectives will create more opportunities and resonance for all. In terms of the specifics- agree completely that creating a psychic boogeyman serves no one's interest. My likely not-achieved goal was just to point the mom to areas where it seemed a mom's perspective could be usefully informed. Especially being able to coach with concrete examples around exactly the scenario you describe- interesting work but difficult/problematic culture. How to navigate? In any event, cheers and thank you again.
- ellen364 5y ago
  You’re welcome. I think it’s wonderful that parents like you are thinking about the challenges their kids might face and having these conversations. I do worry about the “psychic bogeyman” (great phrase), but I also figure having these conversations is better than letting kids find out the hard way.