12 ms·

Women Who Code Closing

142 points by imnot404 3y ago

okay1276 3y ago
[flagged]
- jan3024-2r 3y ago
  [flagged]
Waterluvian 3y ago
This is pretty sad. I can never quite parse these kinds of corporate texts that sometimes speak vaguely. They mention a lack of funding and then “insurmountable challenges.” Were there other core issues or was it pretty much due to a lack of funding?
- ctrw 3y ago
  From what I've seen of orgs run by the current generation of activists they always spread themselves too thin trying to do everything. This has been an issue in all well funded ngos I've seen from local hacker spaces to Mozilla. When you inevitably fail because you can't fix everything the activists leave and you're left with a ruin where there used to be a useful civic organization.
  - Nifty3929 3y ago
    This also causes an issue of coherence for your funder/donors: If I donate to an organization that is focused on X that I support, but then later that organization starts spending 10% of it's time on Y which I don't support - then what? It's like when I buy stock in Acme which produces widgets, I don't want them starting up or acquiring a doodad business. If I wanted to invest in a doodad business I would do that directly. No idea if that's the case with Women Who Code though.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - catbacon 2y ago
    The activists didn't leave. There are 343,000 of us still here, wondering where to go next. Seems like the board didn't think of that.
  - nicbou 2y ago
    Perhaps the Unix philosophy applies here: do one thing well.
- swayvil 3y ago
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- Nifty3929 3y ago
  And if lack of funding, that raises the question of why a lack of funding now. Did a regular large donor pull out? Did they decide to stop fundraising, or fail at it? And what are the insurmountable challenges?
- underlogic 3y ago
  It's not at all sad the movement was clearly sexist. I specifically remember rejecting a funding request from them on the basis that one day I might have a son and he would be unwelcome to learn with the group.
  - rjgonza 3y ago
    [flagged]
- irjustin 3y ago
  There are very few instances when "lack of funding" is not a root cause/symptom/result - it's the most common hard stop anyway. When they openly state that they could not raise money, it's okay to take it at face value. The macro environment is not lending itself well to organizations that are not profitable or have a lot of cash on hand (for non-profits). With the overall trend in layoffs in tech combined with the difficulty in hiring - I can 100% see this being a major problem to their overall numbers leading to hard truths about fundraising.
- yourapostasy 3y ago
  That's how I read it. Should be unsurprising in this tech economic environment and if some Fed watchers are correct, within the next 4-6 quarters, when the tech malaise extends to the general economic environment. When the cycle comes back in 6-10 years (unless generative AI sparks another dotcom burst sooner) and if there is demand for developers across the spectrum of experience again like the past cycle, expect these organizations to appear again.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  It's also entirely possible that they are victims of their own success. It's no longer that unusual to see highly-technical women in very senior positions. I've been coding since 1983, and have watched the demographics of our industry change from almost exclusively white male, to a pretty diverse lot. Some of my favorite "go to" blogs and whatnot, are run by women. Their gender doesn't matter a whit to me. They are good nerds. Broadening the base is always an advantage. You have a larger pool of talent, from which to draw, but it's also a lagging indicator. It takes a while for the culture to establish, and the educational system to start delivering qualified candidates.
- yourapostasy 2y ago
  Having sat on a board of a 501(c)(3) organization before, it does indeed sound like a collapse of funding for their operating model, which is unfortunate for such a worthy mission. I've always wondered how well US-based donation-funded organizations placed in such a situation would fare with the following pitch to their donors, and would like others who have sat on more such boards for most of their lives to help me understand why funding models are so aggressively donation-driven year-to-year such that it exposes them so much to economic headline risk: everyone is cognizant of the economic precarity facing us all, how about we ask for one last donation until the Federal Reserve declares we're out of the (next) recession, we'll go into hibernation if necessary (only filing paperwork to keep the organization alive on paper, with a static web presence, and responding to inquiries with unpaid volunteers), but we'll dollar cost average the donation funds into a broad market index fund as we go into this economic slowdown on a timetable you agree to, only perform a 2% Safe Withdrawal Rate, we'll survive through this together, and once we're officially out of the recession and a year past that, only then we'll go around shaking the tin can for donations again.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  AI? ChatGPT has seriously raised the baseline for what someone can achieve in coding without formal education, plus the software tooling has gotten easier. I remember when people would take classes to set up web backend/frontend boilerplate.
jmull 3y ago
That's too bad. I was a minor supporter, in honor of my mother, who got started with coding around 1950. It's weird... when I was growing up, the only coders I knew were women -- my mother and a friend of mine whose mother was also some kind of programmer/data analyst. Later in life I was a little surprised to find the field was overwhelmingly dominated by men. I guess it's not surprising I found this wrong at an intuitive level.
- Nifty3929 3y ago
  "Computer" was a job, not a thing, mostly women. My mom got me into computers at a young age as well. Showed me how to plug DIP chips into a motherboard very carefully, and install an extended memory manager so we could access them. 640k baby, yeah!
- irjustin 3y ago
  Hidden Figures is probably the most well known glimpse into why women knew how to code at the start. It was considered menial and pure task oriented to actually execute out the equation.
  - RheingoldRiver 3y ago
    I read a book called Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing, thought it was very good
- vector_spaces 3y ago
  I was surprised after meeting an analytics team (consisting of software engineers, data engineers, analysts) in my local state-run health system that all of them were women -- then I learned that so were most of the engineers throughout the organization and similar organizations in the area -- overwhelmingly women, older too. Not 20 or even 30 somethings, but people who graduated decades ago. I did some more poking around LinkedIn, looking at other state run services, like our local utility companies -- where again, most of the analysts and software engineers were older women. I knew already that there was a huge divide in salary and culture between the highly paid software engineers at coastal startups + FAANG companies and all the folks that run critical infrastructure for state and local governments, health systems, and boring enterprise companies, but I wonder if the people in those roles tend to skew older and female too. As an aside, I've heard coworkers at my previous coastal tech jobs express sentiments to the effect that the people described above who mostly work on Windows stacks aren't real engineers, or that there are good reasons for the vast pay disparities between these critical infrastructure folks and people working on Uber-but-for-clowns or whatever, and I think it's really silly.
throwaway74432 3y ago
Were there any warning signs of this decision? I quick look at their blog[1] doesn't raise any red flags. Who knew about this? I'm sure the community would have kept them going if they had known. Is there more to the story? 1. https://womenwhocode.com/blog https://womenwhocode.com/blog
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  The local chapter organizers I know were totally surprised. There was apparently no indication that this was coming.
  - datadrivenangel 2y ago
    Update: apparently there had been some notice that funding was tight, and local organizers had been asked to donate, but the degree of criticality was not made explicit.
datadrivenangel 3y ago
"This decision has not been made lightly. It only comes after careful consideration of all options and is due to factors that have materially impacted our funding sources - funds that were critical to continuing our programming and delivering on our mission. " Resources are important, but this is a mission that so many people are so passionate about, that I'm very confused about this, especially with how sudden it appears. The WWC chapter organizers I know were blindsided by this.
- travem 3y ago
  I'm not sure how much funding they were getting from their partners, but one of the most tech focused on the list* was VMware who were recently acquired by Broadcom and have been going through a lot of cost cutting, perhaps this was one of the impacted areas? * https://womenwhocode.com/about https://womenwhocode.com/about shows VMware, The Home Depot, DraftKings, Boeing, SiriusXM currently. Of those VMware is the biggest pure tech/coding company on that list (IMO).
jncfhnb 3y ago
Was Women Who Code particularly important to women coding?
- swayvil 3y ago
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  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Men dominate most full-time roles. They never needed help, even when most programming was done by women. In that early era men didn't face harassment, lower pay, or isolation when they took on the job. Yet today many women still report such trouble trying to break into coding.
    - swayvil 3y ago
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    - roenxi 2y ago
      > In that early era men didn't face harassment, lower pay, or isolation when they took on the job. At least 2/3 of those are not blockers to female representation: * Women getting paid less than men isn't something that stands up well to scrutiny [0]. I'd say for most jobs I've applied to the plan by the company was to pay women as much or more than me for equivalent work. And when people bring up statistics in online debates any gap favouring men is typically a statistical artefact. * Isolation would barely be a factor if men saw a high-paid industry they could break in to. It'd be a very secure man who turned down a $10-20k pay raise because they wouldn't have enough community. In fact, judging by the HN vibe, most male programmers are unhappy that their job involves too much community and want more WFH jobs and isolated offices. Harassment would be an issue though; it is a constant problem. Although I'm not really sure how to compare it to other industries, a good looking woman faces harassment risk pretty much everywhere. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-pay-gap.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...
apsurd 3y ago
This seems like a sensitive topic - but taking gender out of it - I do think the "teach people to code" movement has shown to be riddled with issues of premise. Coding is a trade. We don't have plumbing bootcamps. I understand the tech literacy angle, but placing people in $200k developer jobs is very far away from tech literacy.
- atleastoptimal 3y ago
  > We don't have plumbing bootcamps There are apprenticeships and accredited training programs. Just because they're not called "bootcamps" doesn't mean they aren't the same thing.
  - apsurd 3y ago
    That's just it; the "bootcamp" label is marketing. Sibling comment touches on this: the industry intentionally sells more-or-less get-rich-quick schemes. Learn coding in 10-weeks and get hired into a six-figure job. Maybe plumbing just has the advantage of time. Its lost any sexiness it once had, if ever. And plumbers make good money!
  - strix_varius 3y ago
    But they aren't even vaguely the same thing. Apprentice plumbers (1) get paid and (2) typically spend years as an apprentice, not weeks or months. This is for a career averaging $60-80k. Contrast that with tech bootcamps that often approximate the cost of computer science degrees and promise (or intimate) that students will jump into six figure salaries. It's not the same at all.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      >Apprentice plumbers (1) get paid and (2) typically spend years as an apprentice, not weeks or months. This is for a career averaging $60-80k. Also important to note that if you get paid (a proper wage) while apprenticing, you're quite lucky already. There are plenty of occupations with apprenticeships where you do not get paid until you've got your foot firmly in the hallway past the door. For example, anything related to becoming a chef: You're going to start by washing dishes for months if not years and no you will not get paid beyond maybe minimum wage.
Aeolun 3y ago
Well, I’m not invested in it, but if I were, I would think that was a very poor explanation of why they’re closing the thing.
- deleted 3y ago
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__lbracket__ 3y ago
I never quite got the point of WWC. In my observation, most women who're encouraging girls to get into coding are themselves into softer roles like product or project management, despite having the environment and ability to code.
- whoomp12341 3y ago
  its about inspiration, resources, and most of all community
  - pixelatedindex 3y ago
    In this day and age, are resources really that scarce? You can find literally anything on the web. Inspiration has to come from within you, just like discipline and motivation. As for the community, even though Women Who Code is closing, there are plenty of others.
    - brigandish 3y ago
      > Inspiration has to come from within you, just like discipline and motivation. My experience tells me that this is quite a male way of looking at things. How many times have you heard "we need representation" from women, whether it be in films or board rooms or elsewhere. They're telling us something, role models matter more to them, for whatever reason. (In general, of course.) If we could find out why some people need role models more then perhaps they could be helped to find that inspiration regardless of there being a role model available or not.
      - willsmith72 2y ago
        maybe because men already have representation in films, board rooms, etc?
        brigandish 2y ago
        Where men do not have representation, do you hear men saying that boys need to see it in order to inspire them to try for that?
mithrilskeleton 3y ago
Who were their funders and why did they stop?
- whoomp12341 3y ago
  started funding "Girls who AI"
- mathgorges 3y ago
  As noted elsewhere in this thread, one of their large supporters was VMware[0], which was aquired by Broadcom at the end of last year. Although I'm skeptical that the loss of a single 'community partner' would cause the whole organization to fold. There are teirs above community which presumably donate more to enjoy title[1] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=40082114&goto=item?id=40081761#40082114 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=40082114&goto=item?id=... [1]: https://womenwhocode.com/partners https://womenwhocode.com/partners
  - nunez 2y ago
    VMware donated A LOT of money to causes like this and they not only made it really easy to match employee contributions, but they also had "pledge drive" style events to raise as much money as possible. This is a part of our culture that I'm really sad to see going away.
    - mathgorges 2y ago
      Not sure why I'm being downvoted. I'm aware that VMware used to donate to a lot of causes and now Broadcom doesn't (source: I also work there :)). My point is that I'm surprised that the loss of a single sponsor would make-or-break an organization like this. I say this as someone that supports their mission, formerly helped run an affiliated club (shoutout EMich WiCS!) and donates annually, or used to anyway.
aiden1 3y ago
so much drama... the article does not even care enough to explain why they are closing
- throwaway74432 3y ago
  "insurmountable challenges." That rules out funding and community engagement, since both of those can be improved. The problem must have been systemic...
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Usually "insurmountable challenges" means that the Board wants to do X, and the funding isn't there for it, and they shut down. Even if they could continue doing Y which was what they did years ago before they started doing more things. But sometimes the organization has gotten too big to reliably downsize again.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    That doesn’t rule out funding. A lack of funding that the board does not see a viable avenue to correct in a timeframe relevant to continuing operations is an insurmountable challenge.
    - throwaway74432 3y ago
      You fire people until you can afford the people who are left. It's far from insurmountable. Instead, they chose to fire everyone all at once.
- paxys 3y ago
  They do, but it is buried in between multiple pages of PR speak. They ran out of money.
- swayvil 3y ago
  [flagged]
- jimbokun 2y ago
metaphor 3y ago
Data closing 2022[1] shows expenses exceeding revenue, where executive compensation of just 5 individuals accounted for ~20%. Given the implied trend, and companies that the org highlights as partners[2], this outcome doesn't seem very surprising. [1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/464218859 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/464... [2] https://womenwhocode.com/about#lc-heading-5 https://womenwhocode.com/about#lc-heading-5
- sevagh 3y ago
  Can you be more clear about what you're hinting at here? Is it that the companies listed (SiriusXM, Boeing, Home Depot, VMWare, Draft Kings) don't have money to waste anymore because they're not doing well financially?
- scotty79 3y ago
  So they basically killed the org because it doesn't earn enough for their salaries anymore?
- azrazalea 3y ago
  The interesting part as far as the salaries they are not obscene. Many of the people who started learning at women who code could easily be making more than the CEO by now.
  - codekisser 3y ago
    Individually, they're not obscene - but they are leaders of many, many organizations at the same time. If they make an income from each of these positions, I think it would add up pretty fast. For example, according to her linkedin, the CEO of WWC is also the Strategic Advisor of a banking company, an Advisory Board Member of 3 organizations including a university, and a Principal (?) of some LLC. Simultaneously.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      That seems ridiculous. All while ICs are getting fired for having 2 jobs and making squat at either. I find it hard to believe that someone can hold so many positions and actually provide meaningful value to any of them.
very_good_man 3y ago
The whole “break up software by race and gender” thing has been enormously destructive. I welcome this news.
- bnxts21 2y ago
  Why do you think this? And by chance are you sort of any minority groups in tech or your workplace?
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    Being white made me minority in our university's CS program, Middle Eastern if that counts was minority within that, I didn't care.
dv35z 3y ago
Have you heard of Django girls? https://djangogirls.org/ https://djangogirls.org/ I've been jamming on Python & Django, and found that Django Girls has such excellent guides & tutorials - not just about web applications, but computer systems and programming in general. Browse the site & check them out. Has anyone experienced their events & workshops (example: "Install parties"). Sounds fun!
shrimp_emoji 2y ago
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- catbacon 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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142 points by imnot404 3y ago

okay1276 3y ago

[flagged]

jan3024-2r 3y ago
[flagged]

Waterluvian 3y ago

This is pretty sad. I can never quite parse these kinds of corporate texts that sometimes speak vaguely. They mention a lack of funding and then “insurmountable challenges.” Were there other core issues or was it pretty much due to a lack of funding?

ctrw 3y ago
From what I've seen of orgs run by the current generation of activists they always spread themselves too thin trying to do everything. This has been an issue in all well funded ngos I've seen from local hacker spaces to Mozilla. When you inevitably fail because you can't fix everything the activists leave and you're left with a ruin where there used to be a useful civic organization.
- Nifty3929 3y ago
  This also causes an issue of coherence for your funder/donors: If I donate to an organization that is focused on X that I support, but then later that organization starts spending 10% of it's time on Y which I don't support - then what? It's like when I buy stock in Acme which produces widgets, I don't want them starting up or acquiring a doodad business. If I wanted to invest in a doodad business I would do that directly. No idea if that's the case with Women Who Code though.
- deleted 3y ago
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- catbacon 2y ago
  The activists didn't leave. There are 343,000 of us still here, wondering where to go next. Seems like the board didn't think of that.
- nicbou 2y ago
  Perhaps the Unix philosophy applies here: do one thing well.
swayvil 3y ago
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Nifty3929 3y ago
And if lack of funding, that raises the question of why a lack of funding now. Did a regular large donor pull out? Did they decide to stop fundraising, or fail at it? And what are the insurmountable challenges?
underlogic 3y ago
It's not at all sad the movement was clearly sexist. I specifically remember rejecting a funding request from them on the basis that one day I might have a son and he would be unwelcome to learn with the group.
- rjgonza 3y ago
  [flagged]
irjustin 3y ago
There are very few instances when "lack of funding" is not a root cause/symptom/result - it's the most common hard stop anyway. When they openly state that they could not raise money, it's okay to take it at face value. The macro environment is not lending itself well to organizations that are not profitable or have a lot of cash on hand (for non-profits). With the overall trend in layoffs in tech combined with the difficulty in hiring - I can 100% see this being a major problem to their overall numbers leading to hard truths about fundraising.
yourapostasy 3y ago
That's how I read it. Should be unsurprising in this tech economic environment and if some Fed watchers are correct, within the next 4-6 quarters, when the tech malaise extends to the general economic environment. When the cycle comes back in 6-10 years (unless generative AI sparks another dotcom burst sooner) and if there is demand for developers across the spectrum of experience again like the past cycle, expect these organizations to appear again.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
It's also entirely possible that they are victims of their own success. It's no longer that unusual to see highly-technical women in very senior positions. I've been coding since 1983, and have watched the demographics of our industry change from almost exclusively white male, to a pretty diverse lot. Some of my favorite "go to" blogs and whatnot, are run by women. Their gender doesn't matter a whit to me. They are good nerds. Broadening the base is always an advantage. You have a larger pool of talent, from which to draw, but it's also a lagging indicator. It takes a while for the culture to establish, and the educational system to start delivering qualified candidates.
yourapostasy 2y ago
Having sat on a board of a 501(c)(3) organization before, it does indeed sound like a collapse of funding for their operating model, which is unfortunate for such a worthy mission. I've always wondered how well US-based donation-funded organizations placed in such a situation would fare with the following pitch to their donors, and would like others who have sat on more such boards for most of their lives to help me understand why funding models are so aggressively donation-driven year-to-year such that it exposes them so much to economic headline risk: everyone is cognizant of the economic precarity facing us all, how about we ask for one last donation until the Federal Reserve declares we're out of the (next) recession, we'll go into hibernation if necessary (only filing paperwork to keep the organization alive on paper, with a static web presence, and responding to inquiries with unpaid volunteers), but we'll dollar cost average the donation funds into a broad market index fund as we go into this economic slowdown on a timetable you agree to, only perform a 2% Safe Withdrawal Rate, we'll survive through this together, and once we're officially out of the recession and a year past that, only then we'll go around shaking the tin can for donations again.
hot_gril 2y ago
AI? ChatGPT has seriously raised the baseline for what someone can achieve in coding without formal education, plus the software tooling has gotten easier. I remember when people would take classes to set up web backend/frontend boilerplate.

jmull 3y ago

That's too bad. I was a minor supporter, in honor of my mother, who got started with coding around 1950. It's weird... when I was growing up, the only coders I knew were women -- my mother and a friend of mine whose mother was also some kind of programmer/data analyst. Later in life I was a little surprised to find the field was overwhelmingly dominated by men. I guess it's not surprising I found this wrong at an intuitive level.

Nifty3929 3y ago
"Computer" was a job, not a thing, mostly women. My mom got me into computers at a young age as well. Showed me how to plug DIP chips into a motherboard very carefully, and install an extended memory manager so we could access them. 640k baby, yeah!
irjustin 3y ago
Hidden Figures is probably the most well known glimpse into why women knew how to code at the start. It was considered menial and pure task oriented to actually execute out the equation.
- RheingoldRiver 3y ago
  I read a book called Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing, thought it was very good
vector_spaces 3y ago
I was surprised after meeting an analytics team (consisting of software engineers, data engineers, analysts) in my local state-run health system that all of them were women -- then I learned that so were most of the engineers throughout the organization and similar organizations in the area -- overwhelmingly women, older too. Not 20 or even 30 somethings, but people who graduated decades ago. I did some more poking around LinkedIn, looking at other state run services, like our local utility companies -- where again, most of the analysts and software engineers were older women. I knew already that there was a huge divide in salary and culture between the highly paid software engineers at coastal startups + FAANG companies and all the folks that run critical infrastructure for state and local governments, health systems, and boring enterprise companies, but I wonder if the people in those roles tend to skew older and female too. As an aside, I've heard coworkers at my previous coastal tech jobs express sentiments to the effect that the people described above who mostly work on Windows stacks aren't real engineers, or that there are good reasons for the vast pay disparities between these critical infrastructure folks and people working on Uber-but-for-clowns or whatever, and I think it's really silly.

throwaway74432 3y ago

Were there any warning signs of this decision? I quick look at their blog[1] doesn't raise any red flags. Who knew about this? I'm sure the community would have kept them going if they had known. Is there more to the story? 1. https://womenwhocode.com/blog https://womenwhocode.com/blog

datadrivenangel 3y ago
The local chapter organizers I know were totally surprised. There was apparently no indication that this was coming.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  Update: apparently there had been some notice that funding was tight, and local organizers had been asked to donate, but the degree of criticality was not made explicit.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

"This decision has not been made lightly. It only comes after careful consideration of all options and is due to factors that have materially impacted our funding sources - funds that were critical to continuing our programming and delivering on our mission. " Resources are important, but this is a mission that so many people are so passionate about, that I'm very confused about this, especially with how sudden it appears. The WWC chapter organizers I know were blindsided by this.

travem 3y ago
I'm not sure how much funding they were getting from their partners, but one of the most tech focused on the list* was VMware who were recently acquired by Broadcom and have been going through a lot of cost cutting, perhaps this was one of the impacted areas? * https://womenwhocode.com/about https://womenwhocode.com/about shows VMware, The Home Depot, DraftKings, Boeing, SiriusXM currently. Of those VMware is the biggest pure tech/coding company on that list (IMO).

jncfhnb 3y ago

Was Women Who Code particularly important to women coding?

swayvil 3y ago
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- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Men dominate most full-time roles. They never needed help, even when most programming was done by women. In that early era men didn't face harassment, lower pay, or isolation when they took on the job. Yet today many women still report such trouble trying to break into coding.
  - swayvil 3y ago
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  - roenxi 2y ago
    > In that early era men didn't face harassment, lower pay, or isolation when they took on the job. At least 2/3 of those are not blockers to female representation: * Women getting paid less than men isn't something that stands up well to scrutiny [0]. I'd say for most jobs I've applied to the plan by the company was to pay women as much or more than me for equivalent work. And when people bring up statistics in online debates any gap favouring men is typically a statistical artefact. * Isolation would barely be a factor if men saw a high-paid industry they could break in to. It'd be a very secure man who turned down a $10-20k pay raise because they wouldn't have enough community. In fact, judging by the HN vibe, most male programmers are unhappy that their job involves too much community and want more WFH jobs and isolated offices. Harassment would be an issue though; it is a constant problem. Although I'm not really sure how to compare it to other industries, a good looking woman faces harassment risk pretty much everywhere. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-pay-gap.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...

apsurd 3y ago

This seems like a sensitive topic - but taking gender out of it - I do think the "teach people to code" movement has shown to be riddled with issues of premise. Coding is a trade. We don't have plumbing bootcamps. I understand the tech literacy angle, but placing people in $200k developer jobs is very far away from tech literacy.

atleastoptimal 3y ago
> We don't have plumbing bootcamps There are apprenticeships and accredited training programs. Just because they're not called "bootcamps" doesn't mean they aren't the same thing.
- apsurd 3y ago
  That's just it; the "bootcamp" label is marketing. Sibling comment touches on this: the industry intentionally sells more-or-less get-rich-quick schemes. Learn coding in 10-weeks and get hired into a six-figure job. Maybe plumbing just has the advantage of time. Its lost any sexiness it once had, if ever. And plumbers make good money!
- strix_varius 3y ago
  But they aren't even vaguely the same thing. Apprentice plumbers (1) get paid and (2) typically spend years as an apprentice, not weeks or months. This is for a career averaging $60-80k. Contrast that with tech bootcamps that often approximate the cost of computer science degrees and promise (or intimate) that students will jump into six figure salaries. It's not the same at all.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    >Apprentice plumbers (1) get paid and (2) typically spend years as an apprentice, not weeks or months. This is for a career averaging $60-80k. Also important to note that if you get paid (a proper wage) while apprenticing, you're quite lucky already. There are plenty of occupations with apprenticeships where you do not get paid until you've got your foot firmly in the hallway past the door. For example, anything related to becoming a chef: You're going to start by washing dishes for months if not years and no you will not get paid beyond maybe minimum wage.

Aeolun 3y ago

Well, I’m not invested in it, but if I were, I would think that was a very poor explanation of why they’re closing the thing.

deleted 3y ago
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__lbracket__ 3y ago

I never quite got the point of WWC. In my observation, most women who're encouraging girls to get into coding are themselves into softer roles like product or project management, despite having the environment and ability to code.

whoomp12341 3y ago
its about inspiration, resources, and most of all community
- pixelatedindex 3y ago
  In this day and age, are resources really that scarce? You can find literally anything on the web. Inspiration has to come from within you, just like discipline and motivation. As for the community, even though Women Who Code is closing, there are plenty of others.
  - brigandish 3y ago
    > Inspiration has to come from within you, just like discipline and motivation. My experience tells me that this is quite a male way of looking at things. How many times have you heard "we need representation" from women, whether it be in films or board rooms or elsewhere. They're telling us something, role models matter more to them, for whatever reason. (In general, of course.) If we could find out why some people need role models more then perhaps they could be helped to find that inspiration regardless of there being a role model available or not.
    - willsmith72 2y ago
      maybe because men already have representation in films, board rooms, etc?
      - brigandish 2y ago
        Where men do not have representation, do you hear men saying that boys need to see it in order to inspire them to try for that?

mithrilskeleton 3y ago

Who were their funders and why did they stop?

whoomp12341 3y ago
started funding "Girls who AI"
mathgorges 3y ago
As noted elsewhere in this thread, one of their large supporters was VMware[0], which was aquired by Broadcom at the end of last year. Although I'm skeptical that the loss of a single 'community partner' would cause the whole organization to fold. There are teirs above community which presumably donate more to enjoy title[1] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=40082114&goto=item?id=40081761#40082114 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=40082114&goto=item?id=... [1]: https://womenwhocode.com/partners https://womenwhocode.com/partners
- nunez 2y ago
  VMware donated A LOT of money to causes like this and they not only made it really easy to match employee contributions, but they also had "pledge drive" style events to raise as much money as possible. This is a part of our culture that I'm really sad to see going away.
  - mathgorges 2y ago
    Not sure why I'm being downvoted. I'm aware that VMware used to donate to a lot of causes and now Broadcom doesn't (source: I also work there :)). My point is that I'm surprised that the loss of a single sponsor would make-or-break an organization like this. I say this as someone that supports their mission, formerly helped run an affiliated club (shoutout EMich WiCS!) and donates annually, or used to anyway.

aiden1 3y ago

so much drama... the article does not even care enough to explain why they are closing

throwaway74432 3y ago
"insurmountable challenges." That rules out funding and community engagement, since both of those can be improved. The problem must have been systemic...
- bombcar 3y ago
  Usually "insurmountable challenges" means that the Board wants to do X, and the funding isn't there for it, and they shut down. Even if they could continue doing Y which was what they did years ago before they started doing more things. But sometimes the organization has gotten too big to reliably downsize again.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  That doesn’t rule out funding. A lack of funding that the board does not see a viable avenue to correct in a timeframe relevant to continuing operations is an insurmountable challenge.
  - throwaway74432 3y ago
    You fire people until you can afford the people who are left. It's far from insurmountable. Instead, they chose to fire everyone all at once.
paxys 3y ago
They do, but it is buried in between multiple pages of PR speak. They ran out of money.
swayvil 3y ago
[flagged]
jimbokun 2y ago

metaphor 3y ago

Data closing 2022[1] shows expenses exceeding revenue, where executive compensation of just 5 individuals accounted for ~20%. Given the implied trend, and companies that the org highlights as partners[2], this outcome doesn't seem very surprising. [1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/464218859 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/464... [2] https://womenwhocode.com/about#lc-heading-5 https://womenwhocode.com/about#lc-heading-5

sevagh 3y ago
Can you be more clear about what you're hinting at here? Is it that the companies listed (SiriusXM, Boeing, Home Depot, VMWare, Draft Kings) don't have money to waste anymore because they're not doing well financially?
scotty79 3y ago
So they basically killed the org because it doesn't earn enough for their salaries anymore?
azrazalea 3y ago
The interesting part as far as the salaries they are not obscene. Many of the people who started learning at women who code could easily be making more than the CEO by now.
- codekisser 3y ago
  Individually, they're not obscene - but they are leaders of many, many organizations at the same time. If they make an income from each of these positions, I think it would add up pretty fast. For example, according to her linkedin, the CEO of WWC is also the Strategic Advisor of a banking company, an Advisory Board Member of 3 organizations including a university, and a Principal (?) of some LLC. Simultaneously.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    That seems ridiculous. All while ICs are getting fired for having 2 jobs and making squat at either. I find it hard to believe that someone can hold so many positions and actually provide meaningful value to any of them.

very_good_man 3y ago

The whole “break up software by race and gender” thing has been enormously destructive. I welcome this news.

bnxts21 2y ago
Why do you think this? And by chance are you sort of any minority groups in tech or your workplace?
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Being white made me minority in our university's CS program, Middle Eastern if that counts was minority within that, I didn't care.

dv35z 3y ago

Have you heard of Django girls? https://djangogirls.org/ https://djangogirls.org/ I've been jamming on Python & Django, and found that Django Girls has such excellent guides & tutorials - not just about web applications, but computer systems and programming in general. Browse the site & check them out. Has anyone experienced their events & workshops (example: "Install parties"). Sounds fun!

shrimp_emoji 2y ago

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catbacon 2y ago
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