29 ms·

Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

207 points by ushakov 2y ago

aristofun 2y ago
I don’t see any problem with that. Doors into tech are (and has always been) open to women. If there is no real problem to solve — how did anyone expect an organization to last long?
dang 2y ago
[stub for offtopicness]
- newsbinator 2y ago
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  - weard_beard 2y ago
    Well, computing is a profession where historically women were not only good at it, they were nearly exclusively occupying the industry. When pay went up it inverted and that is really the problem. Men colonized computing and pushed women out only when it became a source of good income and respected as a profession.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Sad to see you downvoted for a comment that's true to history. The pre personal computer days had an army of women in computing. The UK had “Steve” Shirley, she built a billionaire dollar tech company in the 1960s https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/research/dame-stephanie-steve-shirley-computer-pioneer https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/research/dam... Growing up it was largely women that taught me how to fly and maintain aircraft, how to set the timing on shot holes to take apart square kilmetres of iron band mesa, to build robots (long before Boston Dynamics), to write exploration geophysics software, serious combinatorics, etc.
      - ta1635547 2y ago
        Everything else aside, sounds like a cool history/life.
        defrost 2y ago
        Started with being raised by a few former-WAAF pilots out of Australia who returned with heavy bombers to Truscott|Mungalalu airbase to take out Japanese oil supplies in WWII and stayed on. Learnt a bit about shock waves from C Morawetz, some combinatorics from C Praeger, robotics from R Owens, etc. https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/women-of-the-air-force/womens-auxiliary-air-force-waaf-1939-1949/ https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/wom... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathleen_Synge_Morawetz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathleen_Synge_Morawetz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Praeger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Praeger https://www.researchweek.uwa.edu.au/speakers/robyn-owens/ https://www.researchweek.uwa.edu.au/speakers/robyn-owens/
    - jordanb 2y ago
      I've heard this before but I read a book called "Computing in the Middle Ages" which was a memoir of a man who worked on the SAGE, LINC and Xerox Parc projects. According to him, programming especially in the batch era was a highly social and manpower intensive activity with a large community of support staff and operators around the computer. People who wrote the actual instructions did so on coding sheets, which they would hand over to punchcard operators who would punch them out, and then they would be given to computer operators who would feed them to the computer. The majority of the operations staff in these computing centers were female, but the majority of the people writing the instructions on the coding sheets were male. The rapid decline of women in computing pretty much corresponds to when a lot of these support roles were going away with the rise of interactive computing. That being said I've personally met a lot of really excellent female programmers. I do think there is a tendency to steer women out of the industry or into product or planning roles. Based on that book though I think the narrative of "computing used to be mostly female before they were pushed out by spergy males" misunderstands the structure of the early computer industry and how it changed with evolving technology.
      - bena 2y ago
        Also, I believe they’ve flipped cause and effect. They claim that pay went up then men moved in, but they’ve actually found the opposite. When men begin to dominate an industry, pay overall rises. When women begin to equal the number of men in a field, pay overall falls. So there’s not a single issue, but really a whole host of interconnected issues that are hard to untangle.
    - imiric 2y ago
      > When pay went up it inverted and that is really the problem. Men colonized computing and pushed women out only when it became a source of good income and respected as a profession. You're using some loaded terms there. How exactly did men "push" women out of computing? Women were just as free as men to create their own tech startups. Yet in the past 50 years most tech startups and today's tech giants were created by men. Some women are tech entrepreneurs today, but the field is highly male dominated. We see the same ratio in engineering education, and in most companies not actively discriminating against male candidates. The idea that there is some systemic discrimination against women in tech is ridiculous. There are specific cases of wage gap some companies need to address (which is a general problem not exclusive to tech), but most companies would hire capable women if they applied. Yet they rarely do.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        You're conflating entrepreneur with engineer. Different skills entirely, which is why Jobs was never famous for his code and Wozniak isn't famous for his reality distortion field.
        imiric 2y ago
        Is there a distinction between them as far as "women in tech" goes? The ratio of both compared to men is pretty much the same.
        ben_w 2y ago
        > Is there a distinction between them as far as "women in tech" goes? One involves being good at software engineering, the other involves being good at running a business. Getting good at either involves very different experiences, schools, colleges, and mentors. The stereotype* for software engineers when I went through my degree was introverted nerds with undeveloped social skills. The stereotype* for business people is cocaine orgies. * to complain that the stereotype is inaccurate is to miss the impact of the stereotype on what choices people make when deciding which subject to do a degree in and hence where they go after graduation > The ratio of both compared to men is pretty much the same. The percentage of software developers who are women varies from 8-22% depending on my source. Even if they were identical, correlation doesn't mean causation — this range of "% of x who are women" also overlapps with the percentage of furries who are women, and it should hopefully be obvious you can't answer that by asking anything about how many women are entrepreneurs.
    - SideQuark 2y ago
      > they were nearly exclusively occupying the industry That was true when computing was running tabulating machines. That led to the early ENIAC programmers (all 6 of them) being women since they had traditionally run the tabulating machines. However men had been programming before this (e.g., Zuse, others developing hardware and testing it). Once "computing" became what modern people think of as programming, men dominated, not because of sudden sex discrimination or exclusion in computing, but because the input pipeline of what a programmer did changed to people coming from academia instead. The first computer science degree in the world (Cambridge 1953) drew students of math and engineering. The first in the US (Purdue, 1962, first MS degrees 1964, first PhDs 1966) did the same. So it's likely as the field expanded women were not pushed out as much as more men joined in.
  - b3ing 2y ago
    They don't want the dirty or manual jobs, only the high paying ones. I've seen studies on this before and women tend to go for more social jobs, maybe its upbringing, but I think part of it just there nature.
    - strikelaserclaw 2y ago
      i don't think women should be discriminated against in whatever profession they want to go to if they have the ability but i also believe men and women are different in terms of interests and women and men will never reach 50-50 parity in engineering type professions.
      - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
        I actually think - there should be. There are tons of woman who study to become a vet, for small pets. Nobody wants to be a vet for large animals. So, the good grade woman outcompete the boys who want to become vets, thus no vets for cows and other farm animals. The market should not have to put up with your preferences and if it has to it should lower your wage, due to oversupply.
        didgeoridoo 2y ago
        Most large animal vets make substantially less money — I’d guess because ultimately most farm animals are disposable, while some people will pay tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars to keep their pet alive. I bet the large animal vets who work on champion race horses are well-paid, though.
        InDubioProRubio 2y ago
        They do. And still its a job that needs to be done and the markets demand for people willing to do the work, should not be hampered by the basically hobbyist luxury choice of the individual making the education necessary for that demand a rare ressource.
        2y ago
  - strikelaserclaw 2y ago
    every group tries to fight for equality and once thats achieved or close to achieved, they try to fight for an advantage, it is unfortunately rooted in the selfishness of human beings. Women seem to be attending college in greater numbers than men, soon we'll need programs to help men get a boost.
    - worthless-trash 2y ago
      Removed.
      - n4r9 2y ago
        "another-dave" posted some in an adjacent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926228 Or did you mean something different?
        worthless-trash 2y ago
        I must have .. posted oddly.. i thought it was inline.. thanks. I did mean something else, i'm not sure how that ended up in the state it is in.. now the whole thread is gone.
  - another-dave 2y ago
    > There's a gender gap in waste disposal and kindergarten teaching, but there's no "Girls in waste disposal" or "Boys in Kindergarten teaching". * Building a Gender-Balanced Workforce: Supporting Male Teachers — https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/sept2019/building-gender-balanced-workforce-supporting-male-teachers https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/sept2019/building-ge... * NYC Men Teach — https://nycmenteach.org/ https://nycmenteach.org/ * Men in the Early Years — https://miteyuk.org/ https://miteyuk.org/ * Women of Waste — https://www.iswa.org/women-of-waste-new/?v=79cba1185463 https://www.iswa.org/women-of-waste-new/?v=79cba1185463 * Biffa (UK waste management company) outreach to women — https://www.biffa.co.uk/biffa-insights/iwd-biffa-women-waste-industry-careers https://www.biffa.co.uk/biffa-insights/iwd-biffa-women-waste...
  - subjectsigma 2y ago
    A better example is nursing. Growing industry, decent pay depending on where you work, very beneficial to society. Also highly gendered, in some cases there’s even a stigma against men in the field, and people largely don’t care about correcting the gender imbalance.
  - dang 2y ago
    "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes." (This comment is all 3, and in fact is the ultimate cliché of this topic, and has been for many years. We're trying to avoid repetition here, and especially ultrarepetition and indignirepetition.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - newsbinator 2y ago
      I accept the removal of my comment. Perhaps it is highly repetitive, and worthy of removal even on those grounds alone.
  - ellisv 2y ago
    Just because a gender gap exists in Y, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also try to minimize it in X.
    - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
      We shouldn't try to do anything. Social engineering doesn't work, and you're being racist/sexist/etc. while you're at it, making everyone rightfully resent you.
    - knorker 2y ago
      You skipped a step, though. Why is the assumption 50/50? Yes, there's the null hypothesis, but the null hypothesis shouldn't survive too much contradicting evidence.
  - grugagag 2y ago
    Closing the age gap feels like an artificial goal. It’s like forcing 50-50 on a group. Id much rather see incentives that change behavior and whoever the heck is inclined to be in the group feels welcome and isn’t spooked.
- arunharidas 2y ago
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  - dang 2y ago
    Please keep flamebait like this off HN. It leads to tedious internet tedium that inevitably turns nasty [1]. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=mind%20amuse%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
    - blueflow 2y ago
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      - dang 2y ago
        It can be both, no? But the issue here is the predictable effect that certain kinds of comments have on internet threads.
- ecmascript 2y ago
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- throw092309 2y ago
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  - dang 2y ago
    We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926353 and banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological/political/national battle. Not what this site is for, regardless of which ideology/politics/nation you have issues with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nytesky 2y ago
  Since it's founding, we've seen Gamergate, the rise of Brogrammers (https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.ht...), and Changs book on Brotopia. I could see it if stakeholders feel they are engaged in a quiotic endeavor... As a father of 3 daughters, I still see a push for women in stem, but anecdotally my youngest is often the only girl in such activities.
- surume 2y ago
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- hi_dang_ 2y ago
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  - Unbefleckt 2y ago
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- lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
  Very interesting. At my company (tech) I've noticed that for the past 2-3 years grads are almost 50% women. Now, I have absolutely nothing against this outcome. But I do wonder - instead of optimizing for a specific distribution of employee features shouldn't we be optimizing for hiring the best? And you could say "they are the best, 50% of the best are women". That's a possible explanation! However.... 5+ years ago when grad were roughly 100% men, weren't we hiring the best then? Surely back then they also thought they were hiring the best. Surely 5 years ago if you'd told the hiring manager "hey from those 20 people you hired, 10 aren't the best, 10 the best are these other people and they happen to be women", the hiring manager would've said "no way, we don't look at gender when hiring, we just hire the best". My point is that we didn't understand why back then we were ending up with 100% men despite the fact that 50% of the population are women. We just mandated that 50% should be women. This is like you believe you have a bug and so you tweak something at random. Now it's different and you think it's fixed. Anyway, they don't pay me enough, so I don't care :-)
  - busterarm 2y ago
    At least in the US, men dropped out of college during COVID in record numbers. Many have not returned.
  - toastercat 2y ago
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dang 2y ago
All: if you're going to post on a topic like this please make sure you're not just commenting out of reflexive activation. That's not what HN is for, as the site guidelines try to make clear: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. On HN, we want comments that are thoughtful—i.e. that come from reflection, not reflex [1]; and specific—i.e. that have to do with what's different about a story, not what's generic. This is not particular to any topic; it's an optimization problem: we're trying to optimize the site for intellectual curiosity [2]. The trouble with reflexive comments is that they repeat responses that have already happened many times—rather as if they're being served from cache [3]. The trouble with generic comments is that the generic level is too abstract to say anything new or interesting. Put those together and you get repetition, the arch-enemy of curiosity [4]. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [3] This, btw, is why such comments always show up quickly: cached responses are the fastest to arise. The kind of thoughtful comments we're looking for take longer to "compute". [4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
shrubble 2y ago
Non-profits closing means there is a financial reason; were there grants monies that ran out? Did another "women in STEM" non-profit get corporate sponsorship instead? The article doesn't say.
- Hasu 2y ago
  The (economic) purpose of Girls in Tech is to create more workers in software so that prices for labor will go down. Given the layoffs of 2022-ongoing, labor costs in tech are dropping enough that interested parties aren't incentivized to increase the supply of labor further.
  - nsonha 2y ago
    > so that prices for labor will go down wut? Any one creating anything is DELIBERATELY driving price of that thing down for you I guess.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      Yes, anyone who deliberately increases the supply of something does so in an effort to diminish the price of something.
      - AmericanChopper 2y ago
        > After all, that's why the opposite situation: Collusion – where actors try to deliberately limit the supply of something, thereby causing price to rise – is illegal. Unless they’re a union.
      - muglug 2y ago
        The creation of computer science degree courses did not push down the price of software engineers.
        flyingfences 2y ago
        The popularization of computer science degrees absolutely did push down the price of software engineers on average. The Big Names in SV are outliers; the rest of the industry employs us at wages far closer to other professions than they could a generation ago.
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Molitor5901 2y ago
Just skimming the 2022 990, executive compensation was $285,170. Total expenses $1,904,475 on $2,005,994 in revenue.
- asah 2y ago
  Unfortunately this is normal, because running a non-profit is hard enough that suitable candidates command high salaries. I was on an NPO board with a similar ratio and we couldn't get it down.
  - bitcurious 2y ago
    That comp $ is very reasonable in the abstract, what's not reasonable is comp:revenue. You can't be paying 15% of your revenue to a single individual, because almost by definition they aren't performing well enough to justify that salary.
    - pbronez 2y ago
      Even when that person is the founder? Who created the thing and keeps it going through personal force of will? Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. You want high quality people to be able to focus full time on stuff like this.
      - Workaccount2 2y ago
        Especially when that person is the founder lol
      - jrockway 2y ago
        I mean, she would make 3x more than that just being a software engineering cog in the machine. To me, a salary of $200k for this position looks like donating $400k a year to it. Plus your time. That seems pretty generous to me.
        kelipso 2y ago
myth_drannon 2y ago
Tech industry is imploding, there is no need whatsoever to push women (or men) into a career in tech that has very limited opportunities at the moment.
- imglorp 2y ago
  It sure feels like it, yeah. But is there an objective time series measure somewhere?
  - imglorp 2y ago
    Answering my own question, one source is https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi where there are some time domain data.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  More like easy tech careers that pay big from the get-go after a bootcamp are imploding. Those workers with a lot of experience and those with the skills, passion and patience, willing to push through the rough tides will be rewarded in the end. However, SW dev is still a tough career, requiring constantly learning the new things in your free time if you want to stay employable, that's not to be understated, especially considering the ageism in this racket, and how quickly things become obsolete compared to other credentialed professions where you're basically set for life once you get that piece of paper and not have to go through rounds of hazing interviews and take homes every time you want to switch jobs. It's not for everyone.
  - taylodl 2y ago
    I've been developing software for a living for 40 years now (even longer if you include when I wasn't developing software for a living) and I feel that the pace of change has dramatically slowed down in the past 10 years: - We've stabilized web front ends - Mobile application development has stabilized - Architecture patterns are well-known and there are plenty of (now legacy) products with which to implement them - Ditto with integration patterns and APIs - We finally have security figured out (OAuth) and I now have the means to identify and authenticate a person who's not even in my own repo - We have tools such as Copilot taking the grunt work out of coding - leaving developers to work only with the most interesting bits - I could go on with lots of stuff that has now matured I feel like it's easier than ever to develop software, and like I said, the pace of change is rapidly diminishing. I think software development has finally become a mature practice. Admittedly, that takes some of the fun out of it, but we knew that day was coming anyway, right?
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dpoljak 2y ago
The reasons for closing haven't really been elaborated on, just commented on as sad and devastating; I haven't managed to glean anything more from the rest of the article. However, it's incredible to me to keep an organization like this going for 17 years. The landscape is constantly shifting and looking back at the world and technology from 2007, and even 2014, they've survived a lot. Going down now just shows how bad the market is in reality.
- netdevnet 2y ago
  How is them going down related to the market? They are a non-profit. This is pure speculation but I would imagine that they reasons for closing are likely resource related (most likely financial) as organisers and managers can be replaced
  - jmull 2y ago
    I would guess they get most of their funding from tech companies who support and participate in their programs.
    - netdevnet 2y ago
      That makes sense
- bell-cot 2y ago
  > However, it's incredible to me to keep... THIS. In feel-good daydreams, every nice-sounding thing lasts forever. (Generally with Imagined Good People Somewhere(tm) paying the bills.) Vs. in the real world? - I'd guess that they outlasted >99% of tiny tech non-profits founded in 2007. And >95% of all non-profits founded then.
  - tristor 2y ago
    They outlasted most of the tech companies founded in 2007, not just the non-profits. The average life span of a tech startup is 5 years.
grobbyy 2y ago
At the risk of posting a reflexive comment, what should we be doing here? It seems like everything has unintended consequences (not on a cost-benefit basis): - Minority affinity groups pull people from majority groups and decrease integration. - Anti-discrimination/sexism/etc. movements often add social barriers to interactions (e.g. things I do within my identity group would be misperceived if done across) - Affirmative action makes minorities feel like they don't deserve to be there (and often leads to resentment and other consequences) Progress in the past few decades has been limited, so it seems like we're taking the wrong approach, but I'm don't have a better approach to propose. Green fields, blue sky, what should we be doing to resolve the historical issues we have around sex, race, socioeconomic status, etc.? I think looking to countries which made better progress might be helpful....
- deleted 2y ago
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- next_xibalba 2y ago
  I have seen data presented multiple times showing the relation between a country’s wealth and/or economic freedom and women’s participation in stem fields. It’s a negative correlation. I often wonder if we should just be focused on maximizing individual freedom and let the chips fall where they may. This will result in some professions with extreme sex imbalance, and we should accept that outcome.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    It is important to understand the reasons for that negative correlation. If you do, your conclusions would be quite the opposite - sex imbalance is not something to accept, but rather to fix. Many authoritarian regimes are expanding their economic base by enabling women to pursue professional careers. In some developed countries there’s no such pressure, so they are simply stuck in the past. They are not doing better because women are enslaved in the kitchen or take only stereotypical jobs. It’s just ideological and/or religious trap.
    - 2y ago
mikhael28 2y ago
There is an expression which I think is fitting, in a weird way - a successful marriage does not have to last forever. For some reason, we always tend to imagine that, once a company or organization is created, it must last forever. That for it to ‘close its doors’ or ‘wind down’ is somehow a failure. And that’s just not true; a professional athletes career does not last forever, and neither does the lifespan of most corporations or non-profits. The organization accomplished what it set out to do; make the tech industry more inclusive and accessible to women. To a large extent, though it wasn’t a primary factor, it aided that journey nicely with its thousands of events that it organized over the years, according to this announcement. It didn’t last forever, but it was never meant to - that would mean the presence of women in tech would never become truly equal to the presence of men. While its goal wasn’t ‘achieved’, this organization did what it could to move things in that direction and now, with its energy spent, it leaves the door open for new contributors to take the next step. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. Thank you to everyone who helped organize the events this organization hosted in the last seventeen years.
- muglug 2y ago
  This was my attitude when I stopped maintaining a large open-source project that I had created. None of us last forever, in life or even just in this industry. To have brought about some sort of positive change is more than good enough.
- gramie 2y ago
  In fact, we consider a marriage successful if it ends in the death of one of the partners.
  - microtherion 2y ago
    That's certainly a theory that Bluebeard would subscribe to.
    - mikhael28 2y ago
      I learned something new thanks to your comment - never heard the story of Bluebeard before.
TrueGeek 2y ago
Better article with more information: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-in-tech-shut-down-adriana-gascoigne.html https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-... > In an email Monday, founder and CEO Adriana Gascoigne said “Girls in Tech will be closing its doors due to a lack of funding in 2023 and 2024.”
- glitchc 2y ago
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- igor47 2y ago
  Huh. You'd think all the organizations that attribute their challenges in hiring non-male engineers to a "pipeline problem" would've spent a small fraction of their recruiting budgets helping to fund Girls in Tech...
  - bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
    If the problem is solved, the funding disappears.
    - digging 2y ago
      That would be a complete success, since the funding disappeared anyway
    - tardy_one 2y ago
      Except in the real world, where the infrastructure to raise money for a previous problem can out compete new infrastructure.
  - csande17 2y ago
    For what it's worth, Girls Who Code -- an organization more directly focused on improving the "pipeline" through training programs aimed at K-12 and college students -- seems to be thriving, with over $20M in donations from a variety of tech organizations in 2023: https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/ https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/
glitchc 2y ago
Running out of money is a common cause of business failure, non-profit or otherwise. Seems like their donations dried up with the economic slowdown. I'm sure they'll be back up and running once things pick up. Orgs such as these are easy to restart.
- netdevnet 2y ago
  Easy is relative. And just because it might be feasible to do it in 5-8 years, it does not mean that the founders will be in a position to start it
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  What/which economic slowdown?
  - glitchc 2y ago
    COVID of course. And then once the economy recovered circa 2022 given all of the stimulus pumped into it, markets became soft again due to escalating interest rates in an effort to curb inflation. Just have to look at the long term trend for DoW Jones, NASDAQ and S&P. You can see the patterns reflected in the curves. If I could attach annotated screenshots to the message, it would become very clear. In lieu of, if you look at the 5 YR S&P value [1], you'll see the drop in Mar 2020, followed by a recovery until Jan 2022, and then a cooling effect as interest rates start ratcheting up. 2024 is looking better, but that ~2 year soft period from Jan 2022 to Nov 2023 is enough to tank any business operating at margin. [1] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/.INX:INDEXSP?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ2uHK_pyHAxXShYkEHZJQCv8Q3ecFegQIKBAX&window=5Y https://www.google.com/finance/quote/.INX:INDEXSP?sa=X&ved=2...
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bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
> Without explanation, Gascoigne said in closing, “Though Girls in Tech is closing its doors, the movement we started must and will continue.
cat_plus_plus 2y ago
Judging by current distribution of interns, coding is becoming a female dominated field. I think this has more to do with pragmatic mindset of asian parents and less with any DEI efforts. How many other fields: - Are not dangerous or unreasonably physically strenuous - Pay good money - Keep you surrounded by respectable, educated people - Can be mastered in 4-6 years rather than running risk of getting old while still in college Not saying it's a negative, those are rational factors. We do need to make sure that young men are also able to become successful and equals of female SWEs.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Where? The experience of being the only woman in your math/cs class doesn't seem to have changed among the women we interview. Is it the non-uni "bootcamp" path? We don't get very many of them for whatever reason around here. I imagine because our in-state college is both good and affordable but obviously can't prove that.
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- footy 2y ago
  This is interesting to me, because it runs so counter to my own experience with young/early career developers. I run into more female devs close to my own age than younger (relative to male developers specifically).
- rsanek 2y ago
  latest data still only has them at 21% of cs graduates https://ngcproject.org/resources/stem-statistics-higher-education https://ngcproject.org/resources/stem-statistics-higher-educ...
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
newsclues 2y ago
Good, less gender division! Hopefully in the future programs to encourage the future generation of tech workers won’t be prejudicial and will help anyone with interest and talent regardless of their gender.
- thrownaway561 2y ago
  Although you'll probably be flagged for such a statement on HN, you're absolutely right. If there was an organization such as "Men in Tech", it would be criticized and shutdown in a week. the fact that even such organizations like "Girls in Tech exist" is biased.
callalex 2y ago
From my Bay Area perspective, Girls who Code is still going strong and doing great work. Any reports that all diversity initiatives have died are greatly exaggerated.
j45 2y ago
I wish sustainability planning that was more a part of community initiative. While it's absolutely the right of the organizers putting in their time to decide their participation - where regret is expressed about something ending - it would be interesting to know any coulda/shoulda/wouldas for others to learn from. Baking it into the bread, early, of "why we do it this way" and learning it together, helps create a culture of ensuring things can be entrusted a little easier to the next group "who gets it" and then can grow it. The job of equality isn't done yet. Where equally capable and competent people both in potential and actualized to the table that normally aren't there is critical. It would be nice if something could take it's place, or continue it's work, and not start from scratch, or maybe someone can step forward to continue some of the work under the brand. Quite often new things end up re-learning the lessons of the past to get to a point of effectiveness again. Clay Shirky has a great essay about a group being it's own worst enemy, and I wonder if some of those themes in that essay were present at one point or in hindsight.
ManitobaForMe 2y ago
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matrix87 2y ago
Just fyi, Supreme Court has an upcoming case on affirmative action https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/affirmative-action-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/affirmative-action-law...
wetpaws 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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elric 2y ago
This is such a difficult topic. When I started my undergraduate in CompSci, the department of 300 students had exactly 3 women. The faculty had way more female instructors than it did students. The Commucation Sciences department, which was on the same campus, had the inverse student population. I'm all in favour for letting students making their own study (and career) choices, but when the imbalance is this great, I can't but help think that valuable perspectives are lost. And that's just looking at the sexes, that doesn't even take into account what could be gained from interacting with folks with different socio-economic backgrounds, who were equally underrepresented. Trying to keep barriers for entry low seems worth while. Organizations which help people break into non-traditional fields (for their background/sex/whatever) also seem to be worth while. Funding them seems like a no brainer. This isn't limited to girls in tech. Also boys in nursing, poor kids in law school, brown kids in politics, whatever.
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  > Trying to keep barriers for entry low But the barrier is already low - you need to complete an undergraduate degree in a related field. That's it.
  - elric 2y ago
    That might be technically true, but it's definitely not the whole story. Things like socioeconomic background can definitely be a high barrier. I can easily imagine kids (and especially girls) in poor families being severely restricted in their study choices.
  - givemeethekeys 2y ago
    It is even lower. You don't need to complete an undergrad in CS to get a tech job.
- ZoomerCretin 2y ago
  > Trying to keep barriers for entry low seems worth while. With Section 174 (increasing business taxes on SWE salaries) + high interest rates, this is a big ask for US employers who loath hiring at the entry level in the best times. To me, the real problem seems to be solving US employers' unwillingness to hire anyone without experience, after which the rest (hiring underrepresented groups) will follow. But why would they do this when they have all the experienced and senior engineers they want? Is this not the exact problem DEI was created to solve, and is now being dismantled?
cchi_co 2y ago
[dead]
sciencesama 2y ago
Ai took software out so no more need for more software engineers so the funding for such programs from companies dry up !! Corporate want cheap labour that's all !!
theyknowitsxmas 2y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzmQVejR6a8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzmQVejR6a8
Neonlicht 2y ago
The idea of spending all day with tech bros was enough to make me suicidal so I went into the healthcare industry. I am from a culture were people don't just work for money or status.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  I thought there would be lot more in healthcare that are in it for money or status? Or is that just doctors?
givemeethekeys 2y ago
Maybe this was the reason: https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-fair-men/ https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-...
- lupire 2y ago
  Enforcing gender discrimination is too hard these days.
  - bufferoverflow 2y ago
    Because it's illegal.
    - Ferret7446 2y ago
      But it's so widely tolerated in society, it may as well be de facto legal.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  > Cullen White, AnitaB.org’s chief impact officer, said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, that some registrants had lied about their gender identity when signing up, and men were now taking up space and time with recruiters that should go to women. “All of those are limited resources to which you have no right,” White said. AnitaB.org did not respond to a request for comment. Someone ought to fill Cullen in on employment laws in the US. Men have equal right to those resources as women. Anything less is illegal discrimination.
diebeforei485 2y ago
Why are they in Nashville?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

207 points by ushakov 2y ago

I don’t see any problem with that. Doors into tech are (and has always been) open to women. If there is no real problem to solve — how did anyone expect an organization to last long?

dang 2y ago

[stub for offtopicness]

newsbinator 2y ago
[flagged]
- weard_beard 2y ago
  Well, computing is a profession where historically women were not only good at it, they were nearly exclusively occupying the industry. When pay went up it inverted and that is really the problem. Men colonized computing and pushed women out only when it became a source of good income and respected as a profession.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Sad to see you downvoted for a comment that's true to history. The pre personal computer days had an army of women in computing. The UK had “Steve” Shirley, she built a billionaire dollar tech company in the 1960s https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/research/dame-stephanie-steve-shirley-computer-pioneer https://www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/research/dam... Growing up it was largely women that taught me how to fly and maintain aircraft, how to set the timing on shot holes to take apart square kilmetres of iron band mesa, to build robots (long before Boston Dynamics), to write exploration geophysics software, serious combinatorics, etc.
    - ta1635547 2y ago
      Everything else aside, sounds like a cool history/life.
      - defrost 2y ago
        Started with being raised by a few former-WAAF pilots out of Australia who returned with heavy bombers to Truscott|Mungalalu airbase to take out Japanese oil supplies in WWII and stayed on. Learnt a bit about shock waves from C Morawetz, some combinatorics from C Praeger, robotics from R Owens, etc. https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/women-of-the-air-force/womens-auxiliary-air-force-waaf-1939-1949/ https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/wom... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathleen_Synge_Morawetz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathleen_Synge_Morawetz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Praeger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Praeger https://www.researchweek.uwa.edu.au/speakers/robyn-owens/ https://www.researchweek.uwa.edu.au/speakers/robyn-owens/
  - jordanb 2y ago
    I've heard this before but I read a book called "Computing in the Middle Ages" which was a memoir of a man who worked on the SAGE, LINC and Xerox Parc projects. According to him, programming especially in the batch era was a highly social and manpower intensive activity with a large community of support staff and operators around the computer. People who wrote the actual instructions did so on coding sheets, which they would hand over to punchcard operators who would punch them out, and then they would be given to computer operators who would feed them to the computer. The majority of the operations staff in these computing centers were female, but the majority of the people writing the instructions on the coding sheets were male. The rapid decline of women in computing pretty much corresponds to when a lot of these support roles were going away with the rise of interactive computing. That being said I've personally met a lot of really excellent female programmers. I do think there is a tendency to steer women out of the industry or into product or planning roles. Based on that book though I think the narrative of "computing used to be mostly female before they were pushed out by spergy males" misunderstands the structure of the early computer industry and how it changed with evolving technology.
    - bena 2y ago
      Also, I believe they’ve flipped cause and effect. They claim that pay went up then men moved in, but they’ve actually found the opposite. When men begin to dominate an industry, pay overall rises. When women begin to equal the number of men in a field, pay overall falls. So there’s not a single issue, but really a whole host of interconnected issues that are hard to untangle.
  - imiric 2y ago
    > When pay went up it inverted and that is really the problem. Men colonized computing and pushed women out only when it became a source of good income and respected as a profession. You're using some loaded terms there. How exactly did men "push" women out of computing? Women were just as free as men to create their own tech startups. Yet in the past 50 years most tech startups and today's tech giants were created by men. Some women are tech entrepreneurs today, but the field is highly male dominated. We see the same ratio in engineering education, and in most companies not actively discriminating against male candidates. The idea that there is some systemic discrimination against women in tech is ridiculous. There are specific cases of wage gap some companies need to address (which is a general problem not exclusive to tech), but most companies would hire capable women if they applied. Yet they rarely do.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      You're conflating entrepreneur with engineer. Different skills entirely, which is why Jobs was never famous for his code and Wozniak isn't famous for his reality distortion field.
      - imiric 2y ago
        Is there a distinction between them as far as "women in tech" goes? The ratio of both compared to men is pretty much the same.
        ben_w 2y ago
        > Is there a distinction between them as far as "women in tech" goes? One involves being good at software engineering, the other involves being good at running a business. Getting good at either involves very different experiences, schools, colleges, and mentors. The stereotype* for software engineers when I went through my degree was introverted nerds with undeveloped social skills. The stereotype* for business people is cocaine orgies. * to complain that the stereotype is inaccurate is to miss the impact of the stereotype on what choices people make when deciding which subject to do a degree in and hence where they go after graduation > The ratio of both compared to men is pretty much the same. The percentage of software developers who are women varies from 8-22% depending on my source. Even if they were identical, correlation doesn't mean causation — this range of "% of x who are women" also overlapps with the percentage of furries who are women, and it should hopefully be obvious you can't answer that by asking anything about how many women are entrepreneurs.
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    > they were nearly exclusively occupying the industry That was true when computing was running tabulating machines. That led to the early ENIAC programmers (all 6 of them) being women since they had traditionally run the tabulating machines. However men had been programming before this (e.g., Zuse, others developing hardware and testing it). Once "computing" became what modern people think of as programming, men dominated, not because of sudden sex discrimination or exclusion in computing, but because the input pipeline of what a programmer did changed to people coming from academia instead. The first computer science degree in the world (Cambridge 1953) drew students of math and engineering. The first in the US (Purdue, 1962, first MS degrees 1964, first PhDs 1966) did the same. So it's likely as the field expanded women were not pushed out as much as more men joined in.
- b3ing 2y ago
  They don't want the dirty or manual jobs, only the high paying ones. I've seen studies on this before and women tend to go for more social jobs, maybe its upbringing, but I think part of it just there nature.
  - strikelaserclaw 2y ago
    i don't think women should be discriminated against in whatever profession they want to go to if they have the ability but i also believe men and women are different in terms of interests and women and men will never reach 50-50 parity in engineering type professions.
    - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
      I actually think - there should be. There are tons of woman who study to become a vet, for small pets. Nobody wants to be a vet for large animals. So, the good grade woman outcompete the boys who want to become vets, thus no vets for cows and other farm animals. The market should not have to put up with your preferences and if it has to it should lower your wage, due to oversupply.
      - didgeoridoo 2y ago
        Most large animal vets make substantially less money — I’d guess because ultimately most farm animals are disposable, while some people will pay tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars to keep their pet alive. I bet the large animal vets who work on champion race horses are well-paid, though.
        InDubioProRubio 2y ago
        They do. And still its a job that needs to be done and the markets demand for people willing to do the work, should not be hampered by the basically hobbyist luxury choice of the individual making the education necessary for that demand a rare ressource.
        2y ago
- strikelaserclaw 2y ago
  every group tries to fight for equality and once thats achieved or close to achieved, they try to fight for an advantage, it is unfortunately rooted in the selfishness of human beings. Women seem to be attending college in greater numbers than men, soon we'll need programs to help men get a boost.
  - worthless-trash 2y ago
    Removed.
    - n4r9 2y ago
      "another-dave" posted some in an adjacent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926228 Or did you mean something different?
      - worthless-trash 2y ago
        I must have .. posted oddly.. i thought it was inline.. thanks. I did mean something else, i'm not sure how that ended up in the state it is in.. now the whole thread is gone.
- another-dave 2y ago
  > There's a gender gap in waste disposal and kindergarten teaching, but there's no "Girls in waste disposal" or "Boys in Kindergarten teaching". * Building a Gender-Balanced Workforce: Supporting Male Teachers — https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/sept2019/building-gender-balanced-workforce-supporting-male-teachers https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/sept2019/building-ge... * NYC Men Teach — https://nycmenteach.org/ https://nycmenteach.org/ * Men in the Early Years — https://miteyuk.org/ https://miteyuk.org/ * Women of Waste — https://www.iswa.org/women-of-waste-new/?v=79cba1185463 https://www.iswa.org/women-of-waste-new/?v=79cba1185463 * Biffa (UK waste management company) outreach to women — https://www.biffa.co.uk/biffa-insights/iwd-biffa-women-waste-industry-careers https://www.biffa.co.uk/biffa-insights/iwd-biffa-women-waste...
- subjectsigma 2y ago
  A better example is nursing. Growing industry, decent pay depending on where you work, very beneficial to society. Also highly gendered, in some cases there’s even a stigma against men in the field, and people largely don’t care about correcting the gender imbalance.
- dang 2y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes." (This comment is all 3, and in fact is the ultimate cliché of this topic, and has been for many years. We're trying to avoid repetition here, and especially ultrarepetition and indignirepetition.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - newsbinator 2y ago
    I accept the removal of my comment. Perhaps it is highly repetitive, and worthy of removal even on those grounds alone.
- ellisv 2y ago
  Just because a gender gap exists in Y, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also try to minimize it in X.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    We shouldn't try to do anything. Social engineering doesn't work, and you're being racist/sexist/etc. while you're at it, making everyone rightfully resent you.
  - knorker 2y ago
    You skipped a step, though. Why is the assumption 50/50? Yes, there's the null hypothesis, but the null hypothesis shouldn't survive too much contradicting evidence.
- grugagag 2y ago
  Closing the age gap feels like an artificial goal. It’s like forcing 50-50 on a group. Id much rather see incentives that change behavior and whoever the heck is inclined to be in the group feels welcome and isn’t spooked.
arunharidas 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Please keep flamebait like this off HN. It leads to tedious internet tedium that inevitably turns nasty [1]. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=mind%20amuse%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
  - blueflow 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 2y ago
      It can be both, no? But the issue here is the predictable effect that certain kinds of comments have on internet threads.
ecmascript 2y ago
[flagged]
throw092309 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40926353 and banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological/political/national battle. Not what this site is for, regardless of which ideology/politics/nation you have issues with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
nytesky 2y ago
Since it's founding, we've seen Gamergate, the rise of Brogrammers (https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.ht...), and Changs book on Brotopia. I could see it if stakeholders feel they are engaged in a quiotic endeavor... As a father of 3 daughters, I still see a push for women in stem, but anecdotally my youngest is often the only girl in such activities.
surume 2y ago
[flagged]
hi_dang_ 2y ago
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- Unbefleckt 2y ago
  [flagged]
lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
Very interesting. At my company (tech) I've noticed that for the past 2-3 years grads are almost 50% women. Now, I have absolutely nothing against this outcome. But I do wonder - instead of optimizing for a specific distribution of employee features shouldn't we be optimizing for hiring the best? And you could say "they are the best, 50% of the best are women". That's a possible explanation! However.... 5+ years ago when grad were roughly 100% men, weren't we hiring the best then? Surely back then they also thought they were hiring the best. Surely 5 years ago if you'd told the hiring manager "hey from those 20 people you hired, 10 aren't the best, 10 the best are these other people and they happen to be women", the hiring manager would've said "no way, we don't look at gender when hiring, we just hire the best". My point is that we didn't understand why back then we were ending up with 100% men despite the fact that 50% of the population are women. We just mandated that 50% should be women. This is like you believe you have a bug and so you tweak something at random. Now it's different and you think it's fixed. Anyway, they don't pay me enough, so I don't care :-)
- busterarm 2y ago
  At least in the US, men dropped out of college during COVID in record numbers. Many have not returned.
- toastercat 2y ago
  [flagged]

dang 2y ago

All: if you're going to post on a topic like this please make sure you're not just commenting out of reflexive activation. That's not what HN is for, as the site guidelines try to make clear: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. On HN, we want comments that are thoughtful—i.e. that come from reflection, not reflex [1]; and specific—i.e. that have to do with what's different about a story, not what's generic. This is not particular to any topic; it's an optimization problem: we're trying to optimize the site for intellectual curiosity [2]. The trouble with reflexive comments is that they repeat responses that have already happened many times—rather as if they're being served from cache [3]. The trouble with generic comments is that the generic level is too abstract to say anything new or interesting. Put those together and you get repetition, the arch-enemy of curiosity [4]. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [3] This, btw, is why such comments always show up quickly: cached responses are the fastest to arise. The kind of thoughtful comments we're looking for take longer to "compute". [4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

shrubble 2y ago

Non-profits closing means there is a financial reason; were there grants monies that ran out? Did another "women in STEM" non-profit get corporate sponsorship instead? The article doesn't say.

Hasu 2y ago
The (economic) purpose of Girls in Tech is to create more workers in software so that prices for labor will go down. Given the layoffs of 2022-ongoing, labor costs in tech are dropping enough that interested parties aren't incentivized to increase the supply of labor further.
- nsonha 2y ago
  > so that prices for labor will go down wut? Any one creating anything is DELIBERATELY driving price of that thing down for you I guess.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Yes, anyone who deliberately increases the supply of something does so in an effort to diminish the price of something.
    - AmericanChopper 2y ago
      > After all, that's why the opposite situation: Collusion – where actors try to deliberately limit the supply of something, thereby causing price to rise – is illegal. Unless they’re a union.
    - muglug 2y ago
      The creation of computer science degree courses did not push down the price of software engineers.
      - flyingfences 2y ago
        The popularization of computer science degrees absolutely did push down the price of software engineers on average. The Big Names in SV are outliers; the rest of the industry employs us at wages far closer to other professions than they could a generation ago.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Molitor5901 2y ago

Just skimming the 2022 990, executive compensation was $285,170. Total expenses $1,904,475 on $2,005,994 in revenue.

asah 2y ago
Unfortunately this is normal, because running a non-profit is hard enough that suitable candidates command high salaries. I was on an NPO board with a similar ratio and we couldn't get it down.
- bitcurious 2y ago
  That comp $ is very reasonable in the abstract, what's not reasonable is comp:revenue. You can't be paying 15% of your revenue to a single individual, because almost by definition they aren't performing well enough to justify that salary.
  - pbronez 2y ago
    Even when that person is the founder? Who created the thing and keeps it going through personal force of will? Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. You want high quality people to be able to focus full time on stuff like this.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      Especially when that person is the founder lol
    - jrockway 2y ago
      I mean, she would make 3x more than that just being a software engineering cog in the machine. To me, a salary of $200k for this position looks like donating $400k a year to it. Plus your time. That seems pretty generous to me.
      - kelipso 2y ago

myth_drannon 2y ago

Tech industry is imploding, there is no need whatsoever to push women (or men) into a career in tech that has very limited opportunities at the moment.

imglorp 2y ago
It sure feels like it, yeah. But is there an objective time series measure somewhere?
- imglorp 2y ago
  Answering my own question, one source is https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi where there are some time domain data.
Rinzler89 2y ago
More like easy tech careers that pay big from the get-go after a bootcamp are imploding. Those workers with a lot of experience and those with the skills, passion and patience, willing to push through the rough tides will be rewarded in the end. However, SW dev is still a tough career, requiring constantly learning the new things in your free time if you want to stay employable, that's not to be understated, especially considering the ageism in this racket, and how quickly things become obsolete compared to other credentialed professions where you're basically set for life once you get that piece of paper and not have to go through rounds of hazing interviews and take homes every time you want to switch jobs. It's not for everyone.
- taylodl 2y ago
  I've been developing software for a living for 40 years now (even longer if you include when I wasn't developing software for a living) and I feel that the pace of change has dramatically slowed down in the past 10 years: - We've stabilized web front ends - Mobile application development has stabilized - Architecture patterns are well-known and there are plenty of (now legacy) products with which to implement them - Ditto with integration patterns and APIs - We finally have security figured out (OAuth) and I now have the means to identify and authenticate a person who's not even in my own repo - We have tools such as Copilot taking the grunt work out of coding - leaving developers to work only with the most interesting bits - I could go on with lots of stuff that has now matured I feel like it's easier than ever to develop software, and like I said, the pace of change is rapidly diminishing. I think software development has finally become a mature practice. Admittedly, that takes some of the fun out of it, but we knew that day was coming anyway, right?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dpoljak 2y ago

The reasons for closing haven't really been elaborated on, just commented on as sad and devastating; I haven't managed to glean anything more from the rest of the article. However, it's incredible to me to keep an organization like this going for 17 years. The landscape is constantly shifting and looking back at the world and technology from 2007, and even 2014, they've survived a lot. Going down now just shows how bad the market is in reality.

netdevnet 2y ago
How is them going down related to the market? They are a non-profit. This is pure speculation but I would imagine that they reasons for closing are likely resource related (most likely financial) as organisers and managers can be replaced
- jmull 2y ago
  I would guess they get most of their funding from tech companies who support and participate in their programs.
  - netdevnet 2y ago
    That makes sense
bell-cot 2y ago
> However, it's incredible to me to keep... THIS. In feel-good daydreams, every nice-sounding thing lasts forever. (Generally with Imagined Good People Somewhere(tm) paying the bills.) Vs. in the real world? - I'd guess that they outlasted >99% of tiny tech non-profits founded in 2007. And >95% of all non-profits founded then.
- tristor 2y ago
  They outlasted most of the tech companies founded in 2007, not just the non-profits. The average life span of a tech startup is 5 years.

grobbyy 2y ago

At the risk of posting a reflexive comment, what should we be doing here? It seems like everything has unintended consequences (not on a cost-benefit basis): - Minority affinity groups pull people from majority groups and decrease integration. - Anti-discrimination/sexism/etc. movements often add social barriers to interactions (e.g. things I do within my identity group would be misperceived if done across) - Affirmative action makes minorities feel like they don't deserve to be there (and often leads to resentment and other consequences) Progress in the past few decades has been limited, so it seems like we're taking the wrong approach, but I'm don't have a better approach to propose. Green fields, blue sky, what should we be doing to resolve the historical issues we have around sex, race, socioeconomic status, etc.? I think looking to countries which made better progress might be helpful....

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
next_xibalba 2y ago
I have seen data presented multiple times showing the relation between a country’s wealth and/or economic freedom and women’s participation in stem fields. It’s a negative correlation. I often wonder if we should just be focused on maximizing individual freedom and let the chips fall where they may. This will result in some professions with extreme sex imbalance, and we should accept that outcome.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  It is important to understand the reasons for that negative correlation. If you do, your conclusions would be quite the opposite - sex imbalance is not something to accept, but rather to fix. Many authoritarian regimes are expanding their economic base by enabling women to pursue professional careers. In some developed countries there’s no such pressure, so they are simply stuck in the past. They are not doing better because women are enslaved in the kitchen or take only stereotypical jobs. It’s just ideological and/or religious trap.
  - 2y ago

mikhael28 2y ago

There is an expression which I think is fitting, in a weird way - a successful marriage does not have to last forever. For some reason, we always tend to imagine that, once a company or organization is created, it must last forever. That for it to ‘close its doors’ or ‘wind down’ is somehow a failure. And that’s just not true; a professional athletes career does not last forever, and neither does the lifespan of most corporations or non-profits. The organization accomplished what it set out to do; make the tech industry more inclusive and accessible to women. To a large extent, though it wasn’t a primary factor, it aided that journey nicely with its thousands of events that it organized over the years, according to this announcement. It didn’t last forever, but it was never meant to - that would mean the presence of women in tech would never become truly equal to the presence of men. While its goal wasn’t ‘achieved’, this organization did what it could to move things in that direction and now, with its energy spent, it leaves the door open for new contributors to take the next step. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. Thank you to everyone who helped organize the events this organization hosted in the last seventeen years.

muglug 2y ago
This was my attitude when I stopped maintaining a large open-source project that I had created. None of us last forever, in life or even just in this industry. To have brought about some sort of positive change is more than good enough.
gramie 2y ago
In fact, we consider a marriage successful if it ends in the death of one of the partners.
- microtherion 2y ago
  That's certainly a theory that Bluebeard would subscribe to.
  - mikhael28 2y ago
    I learned something new thanks to your comment - never heard the story of Bluebeard before.

TrueGeek 2y ago

Better article with more information: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-in-tech-shut-down-adriana-gascoigne.html https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-... > In an email Monday, founder and CEO Adriana Gascoigne said “Girls in Tech will be closing its doors due to a lack of funding in 2023 and 2024.”

glitchc 2y ago
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igor47 2y ago
Huh. You'd think all the organizations that attribute their challenges in hiring non-male engineers to a "pipeline problem" would've spent a small fraction of their recruiting budgets helping to fund Girls in Tech...
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  If the problem is solved, the funding disappears.
  - digging 2y ago
    That would be a complete success, since the funding disappeared anyway
  - tardy_one 2y ago
    Except in the real world, where the infrastructure to raise money for a previous problem can out compete new infrastructure.
- csande17 2y ago
  For what it's worth, Girls Who Code -- an organization more directly focused on improving the "pipeline" through training programs aimed at K-12 and college students -- seems to be thriving, with over $20M in donations from a variety of tech organizations in 2023: https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/ https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/

glitchc 2y ago

Running out of money is a common cause of business failure, non-profit or otherwise. Seems like their donations dried up with the economic slowdown. I'm sure they'll be back up and running once things pick up. Orgs such as these are easy to restart.

netdevnet 2y ago
Easy is relative. And just because it might be feasible to do it in 5-8 years, it does not mean that the founders will be in a position to start it
knowaveragejoe 2y ago
What/which economic slowdown?
- glitchc 2y ago
  COVID of course. And then once the economy recovered circa 2022 given all of the stimulus pumped into it, markets became soft again due to escalating interest rates in an effort to curb inflation. Just have to look at the long term trend for DoW Jones, NASDAQ and S&P. You can see the patterns reflected in the curves. If I could attach annotated screenshots to the message, it would become very clear. In lieu of, if you look at the 5 YR S&P value [1], you'll see the drop in Mar 2020, followed by a recovery until Jan 2022, and then a cooling effect as interest rates start ratcheting up. 2024 is looking better, but that ~2 year soft period from Jan 2022 to Nov 2023 is enough to tank any business operating at margin. [1] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/.INX:INDEXSP?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ2uHK_pyHAxXShYkEHZJQCv8Q3ecFegQIKBAX&window=5Y https://www.google.com/finance/quote/.INX:INDEXSP?sa=X&ved=2...

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bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago

> Without explanation, Gascoigne said in closing, “Though Girls in Tech is closing its doors, the movement we started must and will continue.

cat_plus_plus 2y ago

Judging by current distribution of interns, coding is becoming a female dominated field. I think this has more to do with pragmatic mindset of asian parents and less with any DEI efforts. How many other fields: - Are not dangerous or unreasonably physically strenuous - Pay good money - Keep you surrounded by respectable, educated people - Can be mastered in 4-6 years rather than running risk of getting old while still in college Not saying it's a negative, those are rational factors. We do need to make sure that young men are also able to become successful and equals of female SWEs.

Spivak 2y ago
Where? The experience of being the only woman in your math/cs class doesn't seem to have changed among the women we interview. Is it the non-uni "bootcamp" path? We don't get very many of them for whatever reason around here. I imagine because our in-state college is both good and affordable but obviously can't prove that.
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footy 2y ago
This is interesting to me, because it runs so counter to my own experience with young/early career developers. I run into more female devs close to my own age than younger (relative to male developers specifically).
rsanek 2y ago
latest data still only has them at 21% of cs graduates https://ngcproject.org/resources/stem-statistics-higher-education https://ngcproject.org/resources/stem-statistics-higher-educ...
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago

newsclues 2y ago

Good, less gender division! Hopefully in the future programs to encourage the future generation of tech workers won’t be prejudicial and will help anyone with interest and talent regardless of their gender.

thrownaway561 2y ago
Although you'll probably be flagged for such a statement on HN, you're absolutely right. If there was an organization such as "Men in Tech", it would be criticized and shutdown in a week. the fact that even such organizations like "Girls in Tech exist" is biased.

callalex 2y ago

From my Bay Area perspective, Girls who Code is still going strong and doing great work. Any reports that all diversity initiatives have died are greatly exaggerated.

j45 2y ago

I wish sustainability planning that was more a part of community initiative. While it's absolutely the right of the organizers putting in their time to decide their participation - where regret is expressed about something ending - it would be interesting to know any coulda/shoulda/wouldas for others to learn from. Baking it into the bread, early, of "why we do it this way" and learning it together, helps create a culture of ensuring things can be entrusted a little easier to the next group "who gets it" and then can grow it. The job of equality isn't done yet. Where equally capable and competent people both in potential and actualized to the table that normally aren't there is critical. It would be nice if something could take it's place, or continue it's work, and not start from scratch, or maybe someone can step forward to continue some of the work under the brand. Quite often new things end up re-learning the lessons of the past to get to a point of effectiveness again. Clay Shirky has a great essay about a group being it's own worst enemy, and I wonder if some of those themes in that essay were present at one point or in hindsight.

ManitobaForMe 2y ago

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matrix87 2y ago

Just fyi, Supreme Court has an upcoming case on affirmative action https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/affirmative-action-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/affirmative-action-law...

wetpaws 2y ago

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elric 2y ago

This is such a difficult topic. When I started my undergraduate in CompSci, the department of 300 students had exactly 3 women. The faculty had way more female instructors than it did students. The Commucation Sciences department, which was on the same campus, had the inverse student population. I'm all in favour for letting students making their own study (and career) choices, but when the imbalance is this great, I can't but help think that valuable perspectives are lost. And that's just looking at the sexes, that doesn't even take into account what could be gained from interacting with folks with different socio-economic backgrounds, who were equally underrepresented. Trying to keep barriers for entry low seems worth while. Organizations which help people break into non-traditional fields (for their background/sex/whatever) also seem to be worth while. Funding them seems like a no brainer. This isn't limited to girls in tech. Also boys in nursing, poor kids in law school, brown kids in politics, whatever.

commandlinefan 2y ago
> Trying to keep barriers for entry low But the barrier is already low - you need to complete an undergraduate degree in a related field. That's it.
- elric 2y ago
  That might be technically true, but it's definitely not the whole story. Things like socioeconomic background can definitely be a high barrier. I can easily imagine kids (and especially girls) in poor families being severely restricted in their study choices.
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  It is even lower. You don't need to complete an undergrad in CS to get a tech job.
ZoomerCretin 2y ago
> Trying to keep barriers for entry low seems worth while. With Section 174 (increasing business taxes on SWE salaries) + high interest rates, this is a big ask for US employers who loath hiring at the entry level in the best times. To me, the real problem seems to be solving US employers' unwillingness to hire anyone without experience, after which the rest (hiring underrepresented groups) will follow. But why would they do this when they have all the experienced and senior engineers they want? Is this not the exact problem DEI was created to solve, and is now being dismantled?

cchi_co 2y ago

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sciencesama 2y ago

Ai took software out so no more need for more software engineers so the funding for such programs from companies dry up !! Corporate want cheap labour that's all !!

theyknowitsxmas 2y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzmQVejR6a8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzmQVejR6a8

Neonlicht 2y ago

The idea of spending all day with tech bros was enough to make me suicidal so I went into the healthcare industry. I am from a culture were people don't just work for money or status.

Ekaros 2y ago
I thought there would be lot more in healthcare that are in it for money or status? Or is that just doctors?

givemeethekeys 2y ago

Maybe this was the reason: https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-fair-men/ https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-...

lupire 2y ago
Enforcing gender discrimination is too hard these days.
- bufferoverflow 2y ago
  Because it's illegal.
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    But it's so widely tolerated in society, it may as well be de facto legal.
Manuel_D 2y ago
> Cullen White, AnitaB.org’s chief impact officer, said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, that some registrants had lied about their gender identity when signing up, and men were now taking up space and time with recruiters that should go to women. “All of those are limited resources to which you have no right,” White said. AnitaB.org did not respond to a request for comment. Someone ought to fill Cullen in on employment laws in the US. Men have equal right to those resources as women. Anything less is illegal discrimination.

diebeforei485 2y ago

Why are they in Nashville?

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