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Thanks for the link. There was one sidebar about "tech in finance" that was especially illuminating to me -- half my career was at a large financial institution

Thanks for the link. There was one sidebar about "tech in finance" that was especially illuminating to me -- half my career was at a large financial institution, and it did reflect the more positive attributes with respect to women technologists and managers described in the paper. Another factor that may warp my perception (or alternatively, maybe yours is warped if you're in Seattle or the Bay Area) is that my career has been entirely in the Midwest. There's not very much skew at all among tech workers from the culture at large, with respect to gender equality. If anything, a male tech worker's efforts and opinions skew toward equality, relative to the average worker's efforts and opinions. So I just see sexism problems as society problems; maybe tech companies in some tech hubs are way behind the curve of the regions where they are located? Or perhaps we shipped the most toxic programmers among us to the coasts? :)

wpietri 12y ago
Interesting. I've worked in both the Midwest and in the Bay Area, but I've been too long in SF to compare fairly. The stats are definitely worse than the general population here. Look at Google's diversity stats in their tech positions: http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html#tab=tech http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html#tab=tech Although now that I look, that's no worse than the CS graduate numbers, which have been sliding for 30 years: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom... So maybe it's more a function of Google hiring young than being male-biased. As to the culture, I think there is definitely a lot more humility in the midwest, which could help. I notice that people who think their evaluations are objective are more likely to display gender bias: https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uhlmann_et_2005.pdf https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uhlmann_et_2005.... And yes, I think there's definitely some shipping of toxic people going on. I was here for Bubble 1.0; a lot of opportunistic people turned up during the boom and then left when the bust came. I would not mind another bubble popping to cool things off and send the greedy back to Wall Street.

wpietri 12y ago

Interesting. I've worked in both the Midwest and in the Bay Area, but I've been too long in SF to compare fairly. The stats are definitely worse than the general population here. Look at Google's diversity stats in their tech positions: http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html#tab=tech http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html#tab=tech Although now that I look, that's no worse than the CS graduate numbers, which have been sliding for 30 years: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom... So maybe it's more a function of Google hiring young than being male-biased. As to the culture, I think there is definitely a lot more humility in the midwest, which could help. I notice that people who think their evaluations are objective are more likely to display gender bias: https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uhlmann_et_2005.pdf https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uhlmann_et_2005.... And yes, I think there's definitely some shipping of toxic people going on. I was here for Bubble 1.0; a lot of opportunistic people turned up during the boom and then left when the bust came. I would not mind another bubble popping to cool things off and send the greedy back to Wall Street.