13 ms·

What women in technology really think (150 of them at least)

141 points by p4bl0 12y ago

guard-of-terra 12y ago
It would be nice if the results got some UX love (at least sort answers by popularity). Correlation between the answers to "If you were to leave tech" question also wn't hurt. Finds: - The most frustrating thing is not seeing the career path. I guess it's for men too. - Around half of respondents need help in fighting imposter syndrome. This is weird. I mean, we all sometimes doubt ourself, but there's nobody better than us there. ",hbmnbvh" provided as an employer - any luck in decoding that? I thought this is cyrillic in the wrong keyboard layout but it resolves to garbage too.
- fishtoaster 12y ago
  Given the proximity of those letters on the keyboard, I assume ",hbmnbvh" was just someone mashing keys.
- marquis 12y ago
  Imposter syndrome is totally expected when you have no public role models doing what you do, and all of your teachers are "not like you" as are all the books and education materials. Speaking for myself, it gets easier as I grow older and in fact I find myself ticking the "I want my own company" box. But that took years, while my male colleagues founded companies of their own in their 20s.
  - guard-of-terra 12y ago
    Maybe I'm too anti-social but my role model were letters on the screen all along. Books and education materials belong to a "bit-gender", it's a piece of info and gender doesn't go in the play. I. e. in book written by Evi Nemeth and others I could not tell whether the respective part is written by she or he. Maybe I'm too geeky and other people actually need physical humans like themself to cling to? :) That's a weird idea.
    - marquis 12y ago
      It was the same for me while I was "just a programmer" but I've moved into executive positions and have to deal with people on a human level. I am really enjoying the change in challenges and often miss that I could spend days on end with the "bits". I consider myself extremely lucky to have a role model who is an incredible person. Without her I would feel lost, and hope I can repay the favour some day to some young women.
      - guard-of-terra 12y ago
        Surprisingly enough, executive positions usually have much more level gender ratio around me. It should be easier to find a role model there.
    - alukima 12y ago
      >Maybe I'm too geeky and other people actually need physical humans like themself to cling to? :) That's a weird idea. A huge issue is that many, many people don't recognize that not everyone has the same needs as them. It's actually very refreshing to see someone point this out, even if it's in a sarcastic way. Too often conversation take a turn into "Well I did X without help, why should anyone else need help to accomplish the same thing". It's counterproductive to learning in general.
  - imanaccount247 12y ago
    >Imposter syndrome is totally expected when you have no public role models doing what you do, and all of your teachers are "not like you" as are all the books and education materials Except that imposter syndrome is just as common in men.
    - scott_s 12y ago
      Have you seen studies on it? I know some men feel it (anecdotally, I have), but saying "just as common" implies having some actual data on it.
      - imanaccount247 12y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome#cite_note-Langford-9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome#cite_note-Lan... cites a few studies showing no difference between the sexes.
        tptacek 12y ago
        The paper you linked to does not say that men and women experience the thing we are haphazardly referring to as "impostor syndrome" in the same way. In fact, it reinforces the claims made on this thread by suggesting that males respond to the phenomenon by developing a higher tolerance for risk.
    - meowface 12y ago
      How do you know though? Obviously imposter syndrome is common in men, but how do you know if it's more or less common in men than women in tech jobs? Do you have something to back that up?
      - imanaccount247 12y ago
        Wikipedia articles often have sources, which makes them a good first place to check for stuff like this. "Clance & Imes (1978) postulated that the experience would be more prevalent among females because of societal stereotyping of women as less capable than men ... Studies of college students (Harvey, 1981; Bussotti, 1990; Langford, 1990), college professors (Topping, 1983), and successful professionals (Dingman, 1987) have all failed, however, to reveal any sex differences in impostor feelings"
  - aragot 12y ago
    Imposter syndrome was felt by 50% of my colleagues when I left an awesome startup who insisted on the programmer-hero culture. Not gender-related.
BadCookie 12y ago
The notion that ageism might hurt women more than men hadn't occurred to me. Those comments were by far the most worrying to me as a woman in tech. Perhaps some part of me hoped that, after a woman's childbearing years were over, she'd be seen as more desirable to an employer, not less. (Not that it would be fair either way.)
- exelius 12y ago
  I've definitely seen this. It's probably a consequence of how women are depicted in our society: women in movies/TV are either young and beautiful or matronly old crones. The period between 40 and 60 just doesn't exist (presumably women are busy raising children then?) Any actresses whose careers are fortunate enough to survive turning 40 are usually because they either naturally look younger or have a good plastic surgeon. Men, on the other hand, don't shed their "boyish good looks" until their late 30s and can be considered sex symbols well into their 60s. Thus how you get stupid romantic comedies with a 25 year old woman falling in love with a 50 year old man. But you're right, it's not fair. But I don't think this particular problem is isolated to tech.
  - pcthrowaway 12y ago
    There are several movies centering around couples in which the female is much older, the most recent one that comes to mind that does the trope justice is The Rebound. But you're right, the disparity in most of these movies tends to be more central to the plot than when it's an older man dating a younger woman.
    - jonny_eh 12y ago
      I thought Don Jon was pretty good too.
      - marvin 12y ago
        In case someone hasn't seen this but is interested, it can be warmly recommended. It's labeled a romantic comedy, but it's really a great social commentary on stereotypical gender expectations and the part of dating culture that's often "just there" and makes it hard to see the forest for the trees.
kaeluka 12y ago
"I’m tired of people asking when I’m going to leave the field as if it’s a given. I’m afraid that it is a given." :-(
trhway 12y ago
>Probably because that’s how it was in my family, I had no sisters, but 3 brothers early socialization is key, be it puppies or children. The fact of life is that tech is statistically male populated environment and by the college graduation time it is just too late (after 20 years of separate pink cuteness for girls and blue coolness for boys one can only wonder what synergy would get unleashed once a pink cutie venture into the blue pack territory). Girls should be exposed to sciences/tech and working together with their male peers on complex projects very early in the K-12 system. That would also naturally adjust males behavior too. And thus just 20 years down the road ...
- jolux 12y ago
  >Girls should be exposed to sciences/tech and working together with their male peers on complex projects very early in the K-12 system. I think most people here agree with that statement. The problem is realizing how difficult that is to accomplish when the field is almost in a paradox of male control. The key will always be early exposure to STEM and people that aren't like yourself, but currently this is difficult for women because they are forced into lower self esteem on average than men. Once women feel like they have the same amount of power in society as men, that's when we start to focus on social adjustment at an early age. Until then, it remains very hard for female-identified persons to "adjust themselves" when they lack adequate role models.
  - imanaccount247 12y ago
    >The problem is realizing how difficult that is to accomplish when the field is almost in a paradox of male control It isn't though. Being mostly male does not make it male controlled. There is no evil cabal of men trying to keep us out. The vast majority of men in the CS world are falling all over themselves trying to cater to women. >but currently this is difficult for women because they are forced into lower self esteem on average than men. What are you basing that on? >Once women feel like they have the same amount of power in society as men As long as we refuse to acknowledge reality, that will never happen. We have more power in society than men. We elect the government, we set the agenda, the laws are catered to us. Men still haven't even escaped from basic gender norms.
alukima 12y ago
Women in Tech aren't a hive mind. Like the author states out everyone is different. Heck, there even differences in companies, regions, industries, ect. The reason I point this out is because these threads sometimes devolve into users taking one comment and using it to derail conversations. Like claiming that X is invalid because it can also affect men, therefore Y and Z are also invalid. I am a woman and recently moved from San Francisco to Portland. The tech community feels totally different here. I've gone to a few meetups and haven't dealt with any of the small (but annoying, insulting and constant) issues I'd learned to try to ignore in San Francisco. It's really re-energized my love for the industry and what I do. If I had taken this survey before and after my move my answers would have been drastically different.
- marquis 12y ago
  San Francisco in particular has really visible "bro" culture it feels to me. It's probably just a reflection of the kinds of perks the industry provides, and of the "gold rush" itself. Smaller cities have a far more inclusive experience, for sure. Watch a Bay area bus drop all its people on an evening, it's a bunch of young men pouring back into the city. Friends of mine who commute say no-one speaks to anyone, ever. I find that really sad and can certainly say if there were at least 30% women on those buses nearly everyone would know each other a little.
  - Dewie 12y ago
    > I find that really sad and can certainly say if there were at least 30% women on those buses nearly everyone would know each other a little. Why?
    - alukima 12y ago
      Women are socialized to be more social. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=women%20are%20more%20social https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
      - 12y ago
icecreampain 12y ago
Another sexist article. Tech is completely gender neutral. Git doesn't care about you or you partner. If your job is not satisfactory - leave and start your own show. Why focus on "sexism" instead of technology? Oh, right. Sexism is easy to write about and brings clicks. Tech is boring and requires competence.
specialk 12y ago
There are responses in here that say they are in a healthy environment where they "feel great, valued, treated equally, competent and successful". What's the magic ingredient to a healthy working environment for everyone? Or is it just an environment where implicit/explicit bias towards minority groups in tech just doesn't exist? How do you make someone who is a minority on the team feel like a valued and vital member of the team?
- alukima 12y ago
  There are so many little things you can do to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable, a lot of companies do these things for women and minorities but everyone benefits. -regular checkins -coaches/mentors -make sure that everyone participates in meetings/dev huddles. Often toxic environments stem from just a few individuals who are louder than everyone else. No one else is ever heard and doesn't feel like part of the team. -make sure people feel empowered to do their job and more. get rid of micromanagers. -management should be open to feedback and act on it. Feedback is the key ingredient. Make sure employees have a channel to voice their opinions and that it is acted on.
  - dguaraglia 12y ago
    You know what the funny thing is? Those are characteristics of great management, independently of who is being managed. Some companies do it right and foster the right culture, some don't. I've myself been lucky, but I know enough people to realize there's plenty of bad management in the Silicon Valley.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mwetzler 12y ago
  I don't think it's realistic to strive for an environment where bias does not exist at all. Biases are implicit, part of human nature, and built into our subconsciousness. What makes me feel more comfortable is a place where people _admit_ their biases, where leaders say and act like they want the team to be more inclusive, and we all at least _try_ to make a more diverse workplace. An inclusive work place also points out and immediately acts when teammates do things that are NOT inclusive e.g. racist or sexist jokes. That's a way of showing that you care about your teammates and their work environment.
chuckcode 12y ago
Can we learn from other industries that are facing similar challenges? I'm certainly impressed with the medical and legal professions for dramatically improving the gender balance in the past 30 years[1]. Can we adopt some of the strategies learned there? Google's changes in maternity leave [2] dramatically increased their retention of new mothers but retention is different than attraction and promotion. The "sexual harassment" training at my old fortune 500 job certainly didn't have any helpful information about encouraging diversity aside from don't do anything that could you sued... [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/more-women-are-doctors-and-lawyers-than-ever-but-progress-is-stalling/266115/ http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/more-women-... [2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/08/28/google_maternity_leave_key_to_keeping_women_.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/08/28/google_mater...
- rayiner 12y ago
  The cold reality is that the way to increase the gender ratio is to hire more women. That's what happened in the legal profession: law schools made it a point to get gender-balanced classes, and law firms supported that by hiring gender-balanced classes of new associates. I think one of the hardest things for people in tech to admit is that an uneven gender ratio is by itself a deterrent to talented women considering the profession. You can say that people shouldn't care about same-gender mentors and co-workers, etc, but at the end of the day, people care about fitting in and they don't want to have to ride against the current their whole career. A bright young woman considering law school, where she'll be in a 50-50 environment, or engineering school, where she'll be in a 20-80 environment, has a natural disinclination to choose the latter.
  - apsec112 12y ago
    At almost every tech company, the applicant pool is mostly men. To get a 50/50 employee ratio, you'd have to vastly lower hiring standards for women. In most countries that's illegal (discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex), but even ignoring that, you'd be creating a work environment where the average woman was much less capable than the average man. Is that really what you want? (And likewise for universities.)
imaginenore 12y ago
Women discriminate against men. Example from today: http://imgur.com/YkHsCJY http://imgur.com/YkHsCJY
- marquis 12y ago
  I agree, this should clearly be illegal.
- Dewie 12y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if they did. But this comment seems a bit derailing in this context.
- wtracy 12y ago
  This is a job posting for at administrative assistant position, which is generally not considered a prestigious or high-paying role. While the attitude displayed in that discussion is very frustrating and disappointing, it's not really equivalent to women getting passed over for high-paying engineering or management roles.
  - imaginenore 12y ago
    What difference does it make if it's a low- or a high-paying position? Is there a cutoff salary where, in your strange opinion, these rules should apply? If so, please, name that salary, and explain where that number came from.
    - wtracy 12y ago
      You misunderstand me. If a woman is denied a $80k job oppportunity and forced to take a $30k job instead, she has suffered a direct $50k/year financial loss. If a man is pushed out of one $50k job into another $50k job, he has suffered no direct financial loss. They both absolutely do suffer a loss in esteem and quality of life, and neither one is okay. But equating a handful of "women only" entry level jobs to an industry-wide glass ceiling that puts an effective cap on certain people's salaries is missing the forest for the trees.
imanaccount247 12y ago
>EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT AND PEOPLE THINK LOTS OF DIFFERENT THINGS That's always the first thing to go out the window unfortunately. Everyone wants their opinion to be more than just their opinion, so they pretend it is the opinion.
qeorge 12y ago
Here's something easy you can do at your company, that will help everyone, but especially women: let everyone choose any username they want, and make it easy to change if needed. Personal example: I'm recently married, and you wouldn't believe the time my wife has had getting her username changed to reflect her new last name (an issue because her employer bases usernames/emails on their first + last names). This means she gets to explain every single time she gives out her email (internally) why its not the expected pattern, but rather a seemingly arbitrary string. Its not the end of the world of course, or even that big of a deal when you consider it individually. But its one more thing that's not accessibly designed, and its hard to get a male dominated culture to care. FWIW, I changed my last name too, but I own my company, and we use first names for our emails anyway, so I was lucky. If you own your company, make sure you're getting this right. If you let people choose their usernames, and change them easily, you can cover this case and many others. [1] [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
- e40 12y ago
  Allowing anything is a non-starter, since people will most certainly choose inappropriate names. And, once you make it a subset of anything, that means there's someone who arbitrates, and that will cause friction (why did so and so get their choice but I didn't get mine?).
  - jackweirdy 12y ago
    > since people will most certainly choose inappropriate names Really? I can't imagine that being the case in a workplace. Particularly considering that name is the one that'd be set on their email account.
    - vacri 12y ago
      I was tired of seeing job title inflation at my last job, so as a joke I changed my position title on my email sig from 'System Administrator' to 'Grand Duke of Information Infrastructure'. I didn't have customer contact - most of my emails were internal, with a couple of vendor contacts. Nevertheless, people liked it, to the point that they changed my job title on the website. I reverted it a few months later when I felt the joke was tired, but people can do pretty whimsical things with their company channels if you let them.
lsiebert 12y ago
Just remember, there is survivor bias. An interesting and complementary survey would be women who have left tech.

141 points by p4bl0 12y ago

It would be nice if the results got some UX love (at least sort answers by popularity). Correlation between the answers to "If you were to leave tech" question also wn't hurt. Finds: - The most frustrating thing is not seeing the career path. I guess it's for men too. - Around half of respondents need help in fighting imposter syndrome. This is weird. I mean, we all sometimes doubt ourself, but there's nobody better than us there. ",hbmnbvh" provided as an employer - any luck in decoding that? I thought this is cyrillic in the wrong keyboard layout but it resolves to garbage too.

fishtoaster 12y ago
Given the proximity of those letters on the keyboard, I assume ",hbmnbvh" was just someone mashing keys.
marquis 12y ago
Imposter syndrome is totally expected when you have no public role models doing what you do, and all of your teachers are "not like you" as are all the books and education materials. Speaking for myself, it gets easier as I grow older and in fact I find myself ticking the "I want my own company" box. But that took years, while my male colleagues founded companies of their own in their 20s.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  Maybe I'm too anti-social but my role model were letters on the screen all along. Books and education materials belong to a "bit-gender", it's a piece of info and gender doesn't go in the play. I. e. in book written by Evi Nemeth and others I could not tell whether the respective part is written by she or he. Maybe I'm too geeky and other people actually need physical humans like themself to cling to? :) That's a weird idea.
  - marquis 12y ago
    It was the same for me while I was "just a programmer" but I've moved into executive positions and have to deal with people on a human level. I am really enjoying the change in challenges and often miss that I could spend days on end with the "bits". I consider myself extremely lucky to have a role model who is an incredible person. Without her I would feel lost, and hope I can repay the favour some day to some young women.
    - guard-of-terra 12y ago
      Surprisingly enough, executive positions usually have much more level gender ratio around me. It should be easier to find a role model there.
  - alukima 12y ago
    >Maybe I'm too geeky and other people actually need physical humans like themself to cling to? :) That's a weird idea. A huge issue is that many, many people don't recognize that not everyone has the same needs as them. It's actually very refreshing to see someone point this out, even if it's in a sarcastic way. Too often conversation take a turn into "Well I did X without help, why should anyone else need help to accomplish the same thing". It's counterproductive to learning in general.
- imanaccount247 12y ago
  >Imposter syndrome is totally expected when you have no public role models doing what you do, and all of your teachers are "not like you" as are all the books and education materials Except that imposter syndrome is just as common in men.
  - scott_s 12y ago
    Have you seen studies on it? I know some men feel it (anecdotally, I have), but saying "just as common" implies having some actual data on it.
    - imanaccount247 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome#cite_note-Langford-9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome#cite_note-Lan... cites a few studies showing no difference between the sexes.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        The paper you linked to does not say that men and women experience the thing we are haphazardly referring to as "impostor syndrome" in the same way. In fact, it reinforces the claims made on this thread by suggesting that males respond to the phenomenon by developing a higher tolerance for risk.
  - meowface 12y ago
    How do you know though? Obviously imposter syndrome is common in men, but how do you know if it's more or less common in men than women in tech jobs? Do you have something to back that up?
    - imanaccount247 12y ago
      Wikipedia articles often have sources, which makes them a good first place to check for stuff like this. "Clance & Imes (1978) postulated that the experience would be more prevalent among females because of societal stereotyping of women as less capable than men ... Studies of college students (Harvey, 1981; Bussotti, 1990; Langford, 1990), college professors (Topping, 1983), and successful professionals (Dingman, 1987) have all failed, however, to reveal any sex differences in impostor feelings"
- aragot 12y ago
  Imposter syndrome was felt by 50% of my colleagues when I left an awesome startup who insisted on the programmer-hero culture. Not gender-related.

BadCookie 12y ago

The notion that ageism might hurt women more than men hadn't occurred to me. Those comments were by far the most worrying to me as a woman in tech. Perhaps some part of me hoped that, after a woman's childbearing years were over, she'd be seen as more desirable to an employer, not less. (Not that it would be fair either way.)

exelius 12y ago
I've definitely seen this. It's probably a consequence of how women are depicted in our society: women in movies/TV are either young and beautiful or matronly old crones. The period between 40 and 60 just doesn't exist (presumably women are busy raising children then?) Any actresses whose careers are fortunate enough to survive turning 40 are usually because they either naturally look younger or have a good plastic surgeon. Men, on the other hand, don't shed their "boyish good looks" until their late 30s and can be considered sex symbols well into their 60s. Thus how you get stupid romantic comedies with a 25 year old woman falling in love with a 50 year old man. But you're right, it's not fair. But I don't think this particular problem is isolated to tech.
- pcthrowaway 12y ago
  There are several movies centering around couples in which the female is much older, the most recent one that comes to mind that does the trope justice is The Rebound. But you're right, the disparity in most of these movies tends to be more central to the plot than when it's an older man dating a younger woman.
  - jonny_eh 12y ago
    I thought Don Jon was pretty good too.
    - marvin 12y ago
      In case someone hasn't seen this but is interested, it can be warmly recommended. It's labeled a romantic comedy, but it's really a great social commentary on stereotypical gender expectations and the part of dating culture that's often "just there" and makes it hard to see the forest for the trees.

kaeluka 12y ago

"I’m tired of people asking when I’m going to leave the field as if it’s a given. I’m afraid that it is a given." :-(

trhway 12y ago

>Probably because that’s how it was in my family, I had no sisters, but 3 brothers early socialization is key, be it puppies or children. The fact of life is that tech is statistically male populated environment and by the college graduation time it is just too late (after 20 years of separate pink cuteness for girls and blue coolness for boys one can only wonder what synergy would get unleashed once a pink cutie venture into the blue pack territory). Girls should be exposed to sciences/tech and working together with their male peers on complex projects very early in the K-12 system. That would also naturally adjust males behavior too. And thus just 20 years down the road ...

jolux 12y ago
>Girls should be exposed to sciences/tech and working together with their male peers on complex projects very early in the K-12 system. I think most people here agree with that statement. The problem is realizing how difficult that is to accomplish when the field is almost in a paradox of male control. The key will always be early exposure to STEM and people that aren't like yourself, but currently this is difficult for women because they are forced into lower self esteem on average than men. Once women feel like they have the same amount of power in society as men, that's when we start to focus on social adjustment at an early age. Until then, it remains very hard for female-identified persons to "adjust themselves" when they lack adequate role models.
- imanaccount247 12y ago
  >The problem is realizing how difficult that is to accomplish when the field is almost in a paradox of male control It isn't though. Being mostly male does not make it male controlled. There is no evil cabal of men trying to keep us out. The vast majority of men in the CS world are falling all over themselves trying to cater to women. >but currently this is difficult for women because they are forced into lower self esteem on average than men. What are you basing that on? >Once women feel like they have the same amount of power in society as men As long as we refuse to acknowledge reality, that will never happen. We have more power in society than men. We elect the government, we set the agenda, the laws are catered to us. Men still haven't even escaped from basic gender norms.

alukima 12y ago

Women in Tech aren't a hive mind. Like the author states out everyone is different. Heck, there even differences in companies, regions, industries, ect. The reason I point this out is because these threads sometimes devolve into users taking one comment and using it to derail conversations. Like claiming that X is invalid because it can also affect men, therefore Y and Z are also invalid. I am a woman and recently moved from San Francisco to Portland. The tech community feels totally different here. I've gone to a few meetups and haven't dealt with any of the small (but annoying, insulting and constant) issues I'd learned to try to ignore in San Francisco. It's really re-energized my love for the industry and what I do. If I had taken this survey before and after my move my answers would have been drastically different.

marquis 12y ago
San Francisco in particular has really visible "bro" culture it feels to me. It's probably just a reflection of the kinds of perks the industry provides, and of the "gold rush" itself. Smaller cities have a far more inclusive experience, for sure. Watch a Bay area bus drop all its people on an evening, it's a bunch of young men pouring back into the city. Friends of mine who commute say no-one speaks to anyone, ever. I find that really sad and can certainly say if there were at least 30% women on those buses nearly everyone would know each other a little.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > I find that really sad and can certainly say if there were at least 30% women on those buses nearly everyone would know each other a little. Why?
  - alukima 12y ago
    Women are socialized to be more social. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=women%20are%20more%20social https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
    - 12y ago

icecreampain 12y ago

Another sexist article. Tech is completely gender neutral. Git doesn't care about you or you partner. If your job is not satisfactory - leave and start your own show. Why focus on "sexism" instead of technology? Oh, right. Sexism is easy to write about and brings clicks. Tech is boring and requires competence.

specialk 12y ago

There are responses in here that say they are in a healthy environment where they "feel great, valued, treated equally, competent and successful". What's the magic ingredient to a healthy working environment for everyone? Or is it just an environment where implicit/explicit bias towards minority groups in tech just doesn't exist? How do you make someone who is a minority on the team feel like a valued and vital member of the team?

alukima 12y ago
There are so many little things you can do to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable, a lot of companies do these things for women and minorities but everyone benefits. -regular checkins -coaches/mentors -make sure that everyone participates in meetings/dev huddles. Often toxic environments stem from just a few individuals who are louder than everyone else. No one else is ever heard and doesn't feel like part of the team. -make sure people feel empowered to do their job and more. get rid of micromanagers. -management should be open to feedback and act on it. Feedback is the key ingredient. Make sure employees have a channel to voice their opinions and that it is acted on.
- dguaraglia 12y ago
  You know what the funny thing is? Those are characteristics of great management, independently of who is being managed. Some companies do it right and foster the right culture, some don't. I've myself been lucky, but I know enough people to realize there's plenty of bad management in the Silicon Valley.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mwetzler 12y ago
I don't think it's realistic to strive for an environment where bias does not exist at all. Biases are implicit, part of human nature, and built into our subconsciousness. What makes me feel more comfortable is a place where people _admit_ their biases, where leaders say and act like they want the team to be more inclusive, and we all at least _try_ to make a more diverse workplace. An inclusive work place also points out and immediately acts when teammates do things that are NOT inclusive e.g. racist or sexist jokes. That's a way of showing that you care about your teammates and their work environment.

chuckcode 12y ago

Can we learn from other industries that are facing similar challenges? I'm certainly impressed with the medical and legal professions for dramatically improving the gender balance in the past 30 years[1]. Can we adopt some of the strategies learned there? Google's changes in maternity leave [2] dramatically increased their retention of new mothers but retention is different than attraction and promotion. The "sexual harassment" training at my old fortune 500 job certainly didn't have any helpful information about encouraging diversity aside from don't do anything that could you sued... [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/more-women-are-doctors-and-lawyers-than-ever-but-progress-is-stalling/266115/ http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/more-women-... [2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/08/28/google_maternity_leave_key_to_keeping_women_.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/08/28/google_mater...

rayiner 12y ago
The cold reality is that the way to increase the gender ratio is to hire more women. That's what happened in the legal profession: law schools made it a point to get gender-balanced classes, and law firms supported that by hiring gender-balanced classes of new associates. I think one of the hardest things for people in tech to admit is that an uneven gender ratio is by itself a deterrent to talented women considering the profession. You can say that people shouldn't care about same-gender mentors and co-workers, etc, but at the end of the day, people care about fitting in and they don't want to have to ride against the current their whole career. A bright young woman considering law school, where she'll be in a 50-50 environment, or engineering school, where she'll be in a 20-80 environment, has a natural disinclination to choose the latter.
- apsec112 12y ago
  At almost every tech company, the applicant pool is mostly men. To get a 50/50 employee ratio, you'd have to vastly lower hiring standards for women. In most countries that's illegal (discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex), but even ignoring that, you'd be creating a work environment where the average woman was much less capable than the average man. Is that really what you want? (And likewise for universities.)

imaginenore 12y ago

Women discriminate against men. Example from today: http://imgur.com/YkHsCJY http://imgur.com/YkHsCJY

marquis 12y ago
I agree, this should clearly be illegal.
Dewie 12y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they did. But this comment seems a bit derailing in this context.
wtracy 12y ago
This is a job posting for at administrative assistant position, which is generally not considered a prestigious or high-paying role. While the attitude displayed in that discussion is very frustrating and disappointing, it's not really equivalent to women getting passed over for high-paying engineering or management roles.
- imaginenore 12y ago
  What difference does it make if it's a low- or a high-paying position? Is there a cutoff salary where, in your strange opinion, these rules should apply? If so, please, name that salary, and explain where that number came from.
  - wtracy 12y ago
    You misunderstand me. If a woman is denied a $80k job oppportunity and forced to take a $30k job instead, she has suffered a direct $50k/year financial loss. If a man is pushed out of one $50k job into another $50k job, he has suffered no direct financial loss. They both absolutely do suffer a loss in esteem and quality of life, and neither one is okay. But equating a handful of "women only" entry level jobs to an industry-wide glass ceiling that puts an effective cap on certain people's salaries is missing the forest for the trees.

imanaccount247 12y ago

>EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT AND PEOPLE THINK LOTS OF DIFFERENT THINGS That's always the first thing to go out the window unfortunately. Everyone wants their opinion to be more than just their opinion, so they pretend it is the opinion.

qeorge 12y ago

Here's something easy you can do at your company, that will help everyone, but especially women: let everyone choose any username they want, and make it easy to change if needed. Personal example: I'm recently married, and you wouldn't believe the time my wife has had getting her username changed to reflect her new last name (an issue because her employer bases usernames/emails on their first + last names). This means she gets to explain every single time she gives out her email (internally) why its not the expected pattern, but rather a seemingly arbitrary string. Its not the end of the world of course, or even that big of a deal when you consider it individually. But its one more thing that's not accessibly designed, and its hard to get a male dominated culture to care. FWIW, I changed my last name too, but I own my company, and we use first names for our emails anyway, so I was lucky. If you own your company, make sure you're getting this right. If you let people choose their usernames, and change them easily, you can cover this case and many others. [1] [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

e40 12y ago
Allowing anything is a non-starter, since people will most certainly choose inappropriate names. And, once you make it a subset of anything, that means there's someone who arbitrates, and that will cause friction (why did so and so get their choice but I didn't get mine?).
- jackweirdy 12y ago
  > since people will most certainly choose inappropriate names Really? I can't imagine that being the case in a workplace. Particularly considering that name is the one that'd be set on their email account.
  - vacri 12y ago
    I was tired of seeing job title inflation at my last job, so as a joke I changed my position title on my email sig from 'System Administrator' to 'Grand Duke of Information Infrastructure'. I didn't have customer contact - most of my emails were internal, with a couple of vendor contacts. Nevertheless, people liked it, to the point that they changed my job title on the website. I reverted it a few months later when I felt the joke was tired, but people can do pretty whimsical things with their company channels if you let them.

lsiebert 12y ago

Just remember, there is survivor bias. An interesting and complementary survey would be women who have left tech.