
Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women? - cbcowans
https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-how-can-managers-help-retain-technical-women-on-their-team/
======
shawn-furyan
It is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is
so bad with these issues. Predictably, the top comment on this post that tries
to move forward on a very real problem that has been empirically established
is an appeal to stick with the status quo.

I'm sorry, but companies have always focused on making money. Saying that the
way to handle this very specific problem is to focus on making money is an
appeal to brush the problem aside completely.

The top comment, for good measure, even obliquely swipes at active events
taken by small local groups to tackle the issue, such as Girls Who Code,
because men might be silently stewing over their existence...[1]

I am opting for a top level comment here because my frustration is less with
the comment itself than that the community as a whole has voted this comment
to the top.

[1] Before I get kneejerk responses that the comment didn't specify the group,
let me belabor the point that the context of this discussion is SPECIFICALLY
women's difficulties working within the masculine tech culture, so
MinorityCodingClub trivially translates to WomenCodingClub, which sounds an
awful lot like Girls Who Code, which has been gaining prominence of late. It
is a cowardly oblique swipe at these sort of organizations. It's a cop out not
to name the organization that you have a problem with explicitly, an attempt
to lash out at such organizations while maintaining the comfortable position
of plausible deniability. Everyone gets it though. So I won't countenance
"shocked and appalled" denials that organizations like Girls Who Code were the
target of the swipe.

~~~
jknoepfler
I share your frustration, but I've found the landscape to be more complex than
most people are willing to give it credit for.

For example, my partner and I disagree on the value of things like "Girls who
Code" or "Women in Computer Science" groups. I (male) tend to think "can't
hurt seems like a decent idea, I'm sure there are unique challenges faced by
people with two X-chromosomes in computer science that I'm not aware of, I'll
take people's claims that it's valuable on face value - if smart people are
doing it in reasonably large numbers, and I can't see obvious harm, then I'm
certainly not going to go out of my way to disparage it."

She, on the other hand, despises those groups. She hates being singled out for
her sex, and thinks sex shouldn't even be on the table for discussion. She
just wants to work and be respected as an engineer, has never had any problem
being respected as an engineer by her peers, and feels insulted every time
she's invited to do something "on behalf of people with vaginas," (her words).

Interestingly, she also despises overtly feminine genderization and tends to
think people who call themselves "girls" and dress/perform in an overtly
feminine way are stupid (and acknowledges that this is unfair)... so I don't
know. Is the whole thing targeted at the gendering of engineering rather than
the physical sex of programmers? I don't really know. I don't think the people
participating in it have a very clear view of that either, judging from the
conversations I have with people.

At the end of the day I just try to take encourage everyone to blind
themselves as much as possible when evaluating applications, reviewing code
(impossible, generally), or assigning grades.

edit:

after thinking about this a little more I should specify that we're both
pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals, and acknowledge
that our personal views/experience on sex in computer science might miss a
whole chunk of the spectrum of women's experience in communities where gender
and sex are a bigger deal. My community expects women to be good at math and
science every bit as much as men; that's not everyone's situation.

~~~
shawn-furyan
I don't want to speak for my wife, but she has been actively involved in Girls
Who Code, and seems to have thought that it was worthwhile. As I understand
it, it's more about letting girls know that programming is an option, rather
than being about segregating female engineers. I think this is necessary
because I have personally seen the assumption that men are engineers and women
are support people limit the careers of women who were more accomplished and
competent than men in more prestigious engineering roles. From my perspective,
there's a lot of bullshit mythmaking in programming that plausibly dissuades
many, IMO disproportionately women, from approaching the field, and which
seems to have a tendency to funnel women to less prestigious/respected roles
tangential to engineering.

Response to parent's edit:

> we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals

I can see why you would draw that conclusion, but your assumption is pretty
wide of the mark in my case. I grew up very poor in the deep South.

~~~
cookiecaper
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "bullshit mythmaking"? I'm not familiar
with that turn of phrase.

~~~
shawn-furyan
It was my own off the cuff phrase. It's hard to relay the subtleties that I am
trying to get across. I think that a lot of career programmers overstate the
difficulty of their jobs, and how impossible it would be for people who don't
closely hew to the archetype of the genius iconoclast hacker to contribute at
all, even when they've demonstrated relevant aptitude and competence. These
biases strike me as damaging to the motivations of people who don't look like,
or particularly relate to anyone held up as a paragon of that archetype. Also,
looking like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, or even Woz, doesn't actually
strike me as being relevant to someone's potential as a programmer. That's why
I call it bullshit. Because the tech industry selects for people who outwardly
present as stereotypical hackers without even doing much to verify ability in
many cases, while constantly relitigating the bona fides of people who don't
outwardly present those superficial qualities.

Put another way, why have I seen many very good female programmers trapped in
lower paying positions like QA and X-Analyst (but doing legit programming as
their job) when there are men who are shitty programmers making 50% more and
in a social position that gives them license to condescend to these women?

~~~
ethbro
Or to put it the other way, are Gates, Zuckerberg, etc even their own
archetypes, or where those labels foisted upon them by the zeitgeist's
expectations of their role? And they went along because it was simpler,
easier, or more financially beneficial?

In either case, agreed that changing the popular mythos is absolutely a
prerequisite to resolving the inequity.

------
amorphid
Get everyone focused on thinking about the team's mission, role, and what it
takes to get the job done. Drill that into everyone's head and stick to it.
Let everything else go.

A mentor once told me that business fundamentally revolves around making
money, saving money, saving time, and making customers happier. I like
thinking about work that way, as it has nothing to do with religion, sex,
gender, age, height, phase of the moon (maybe you employ werewolves), etc.

Focusing on work can be hard though, because it might mean you will encounter
a conflict when it comes to supporting a cause with good intentions. Say the
MinorityCodingClub wants to host an event in your office. Personally, I think
promoting diversity is generally a healthy thing. But what if
MinorityCodingClub doesn't allow people not in that minority to participate in
the event? You may find part of your staff wants to allow it, and part of your
staff opposes it (perhaps silently).

Staying focused on making money, saving money, saving time, and making
customers happier. It's hard enough to get people to come together on doing
that, so don't tolerate a culture that gets in the way of making that happen.

~~~
jmcgough
This is the mentality that leads to drama explosions like at Uber. They were
all focused on making money and building a big company. Because of this, they
ignored the "little things" like building a HR department that could support
women when they were put in bad situations.

~~~
amorphid
My comment was a comment, not an employee handbook.

Boss: "Hey, my partner​ and I would love it if you'd like to join us for
drinks at my place on Saturday night."

Employee (replies & CC's boss's boss): "I'm here to work, and this is making
me extremely​ uncomfortable."

^^^ strive for that.

~~~
Chris2048
CC's boss's boss?

A bit passive-aggressive for a friendly gesture isn't it?

~~~
emodendroket
Do you think a male boss inviting a female employee over for "drinks" on a
Saturday night at his home is nothing more than a "friendly gesture"?

~~~
prolly_a_moron
Way more often than not, yes.

Is your default position to assume there's an agenda behind every invitation?

~~~
throwanem
You don't need to see an agenda behind every invitation to recognize the
agenda behind this one.

For those genuinely unclear, it's a combination of things - the individual
nature of the invitation, the private nature of the venue, the timing and
explicit involvement of libations whose effects often include the lowering of
inhibitions - all in all it's just a super sketchy thing to all of a sudden
pop up in a previously professional relationship. Any one of those would be
fine; any two would be a little questionable but probably okay; all three at
once constitute a great big flashing neon sign that spells out "YOUR BOSS IS
TRYING TO LAY YOU".

~~~
webkike
I mean that's the thing, I don't deny that if this a purely professional
relationship then this comment is incredibly out of place. But often times
professional relationships become less professional and more friendly. I don't
deny that it is creepy from your perspective.

~~~
throwanem
I mean sure, but if that's the nature of the relationship, nobody's going to
be made uncomfortable by the invitation - that's probably why the context in
which it was mentioned makes clear that's not the case in this hypothetical.
My comments are addressed more toward the "what could possibly be wrong with
that?" kind of response it seems to have elicited, and intend to supply that
question an answer.

~~~
webkike
I see

------
DeusExMachina
Am I wrong or all the issues seem to be not gender related but about
management and they apply to both sexes?

~~~
Zikes
I think there's a case to be made that, in general, women may be more
sensitive to some universal tech industry issues which men tend to shrug off
or otherwise deal with differently.

~~~
kfrzcode
Do you have any supporting evidence to help build this case? I don't buy it.

~~~
mtreis86
According to Dr. Elaine Aron, [http://hsperson.com](http://hsperson.com) there
is a similar percentage sensitivity in both genders, 15-20%.

------
taysic
As a female engineer, I haven't actually experienced any sexism or gender
related issues in any company I've worked in. I've worked in a good number
from small startups to large companies. I've always felt really comfortable -
but I am a really straightforward person and know how to decline offers after
a company interview if the culture fit doesn't feel right.

What do I look for that's related to gender? Usually a college-y or informal
atmosphere. If it doesn't feel professional, I'm not too interested. This
stems from my experience in HS and college (I went to MIT). Most of my peers
were fine but there were some gender-related jokes in informal settings that I
don't care to experience in a work environment. That's pretty much it for me,
but maybe I've been lucky!

~~~
hocuspocus
Thanks. I've only worked at companies where the median age is well over 30,
and when I read horror stories it often sounds like the problem mostly stems
from overall immaturity, in both age and management experience. I'm sure age
is no magic cure for all the assholery in this world, but the correlation
between "family dad" and "decent, professional coworker" seems to fare nicely.

Since this is the only advice to women I can come up with, I'm glad to read
that it worked out for one person at least.

~~~
aianus
> "family dad" and "decent, professional coworker" seems to fare nicely

I'm not a woman but I've had girlfriends who've complained about being
sexually harassed at work and it's always been a "creepy, old married guy".

Of course, maybe they personally didn't perceive similar attention from
younger guys as harassment, I don't know.

~~~
sudosteph
My experience lines more up with the poster above. I've only been harassed by
a creepy, young, single guy.

So I guess the pattern is really creepy guys?

That said, the "Dads" I've worked with (men with children, who I know have
children because they talk about them or bring them in sometimes) have always
been very easy to get along with. Also, I sometimes overhear them comparing
notes on stuff they do with their daughters to teach them tech and science,
which makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Kudos to all you out there raising
the next generation right.

------
jredwards
My dev organization had, at one point, a fairly respectable gender ratio
(relative to other orgs, which isn't saying much). Over time, the women in our
dev org have had a much higher attrition rate, because they've moved on to
other opportunities. I've never heard a complaint from any of them that women
were treated differently here.

I have a suspicion that women who get into tech tend to be more self-assured
than the average individual (by virtue of the fact that they're willing to
fight what looks like an uphill battle to get into the field). And that those
people are also more likely to look around for a better opportunity and not be
afraid to grab it. Which would make them inherently difficult to retain.

(I also have a feeling that talking about women in tech in any kind of
generality is a good way to get pitchforked and set on fire, so I hope I
haven't said anything out of line.)

~~~
probablybanned
It's very likely to be down to differences in temperament, although I don't
think it's self-assurance precisely. Typically, men are more driven to compete
for status and place their career at the center of their lives, while women
evaluate their situation more holistically.

This means they're less likely to put up with bullshit, and are more likely to
be lured away to places that are less prestigious/competitive but allow them
to actually have a life.

Generally speaking! I enjoy being pitchforked and set on fire, pseudonymously
at least.

~~~
rarec
It's also those who are willing to put up with the bullshit and play the
political game that tend to rise to the top in a business, tech or otherwise.
True, optimising a career for a healthier work-life balance is a valid
strategy and arguably the best one, but the fact of the business world today
is that those who deal with the dog and pony show tend to get further than
those who don't.

------
err4nt
The common thread running through all of this was that what seemed to drive
these women from their own roles in tech were the incompetence or inexperience
of management.

I'm young enough (born in the late 1980's) that during my entire time in the
work force, I feel like I've only ever met ONE "real" manager. I've known many
people in management roles, but I think we've definitely lost sight of what
good management even looks like. If you're under a certain age, I wonder if
you've even met a real manager before. From today forward, many of the people
in management roles may never have met a real manager before too - how are
they supposed to fill a role they've never seen before.

I think we need some good management role models, and we need to find a way to
encourage people in management roles to grow to fill this.

I don't have any studies or hard facts to cite, but consider this - I feel
like part of the role of a manager is to bear responsibility and deadlines,
manage the workers and give them the access and tools they need to succeed.
But what I see most often is managers (not doing the work) acting like slave
drivers, pushing all of the responsibility and pressure of meeting the
deadlines on the workers to stress about. I see lower level workers staying
late after work, taking 'ownership' of their manager's responsibilities out of
fear they will get fired. That's not what it's supposed to look like but
unfortunately for most millennials it seems to be the common experience.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I agree. I've seen this same thing too many times.

My conclusion is that _maybe_ the whole concept of "software manager" is
deeply flawed. Upper management likes to have a single person they can
pressure and blame. But the reality is that making good software on a schedule
is incredibly difficult. Upper management doesn't seem to recognize that you
can't just "bolt on" a good manager and just "force it to work."

Making good software in a way that's responsive to market pressures is not
like running a lemonade stand. It's almost impossible to get right, even with
a big budget, because upper management puts too many idiotic constraints on
it.

------
JimboOmega
At its most basic: Is a voice that isn't shouting heard and valued?

Is someone who seeks consensus from the team before moving forward rewarded?
Or is someone who just goes out and does something rewarded more? You have to
see what kind of styles are promoted within the organization, and if there's a
place for the less aggressive/assertive within it. For those that may struggle
with impostor syndrome, and not just assume they know everything.

It also really helps to see women on the team, especially in more senior
positions, doing code reviews, etc. If there's a layer of men who are subtly
sexist, the organization really as a whole won't retain, ever. A double
standard is incredibly demoralizing.

But seriously, look at who gets listened to in meetings. Who takes up the
time, is it just people who are loud and willing to argue about things, while
those unwilling to interrupt never get acknowledged?

------
andy_ppp

        The biggest factor for me has been when an employer promises changes to how
        the tech team is managed and then doesn’t deliver on them. To a certain
        extent all teams struggle with the trade-offs between spending time
        developing good specs versus staying agile, and between addressing technical
        debt and building new features. But I’ve left companies after years of
        chaotically fighting fires while simultaneously needing to build new
        features, or after repeatedly getting disorganized braindumps or single line
        descriptions from stakeholders rather than the thoughtful, detailed specs
        they’ve promised.
    

This is everything and describes my current situation perfectly! It's so
difficult to program as well as design specs and UI and manage time as well.
It teaches you a lot but it's much easier if what you are being asked to build
is clear in the first place!

~~~
ayuvar
I have to wonder how anything gets built in any _other_ industry than
software, if this is the caliber of management we get on these projects.

~~~
andy_ppp
They don't tell builders "give me a house, I want turrets and a fence and 23
bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and I want it done to a really high finish by next
week".

Instead they get a detailed, industry standard, multi-stage plan that has
everything they need to start, as well as access to an architect that can
check on their work and when things go wrong a process for change management
is included. And no-one expects a house to be built well over a weekend.

~~~
HillaryBriss
And then change their minds the day before delivery ...

------
nradov
Most of this is good input for managers but the first answer from Adele
complaining about "getting disorganized braindumps or single line descriptions
from stakeholders rather than the thoughtful, detailed specs they’ve promised"
seems misguided and counterproductive. It's simply unrealistic to expect
customers and customer proxies (product owners / business analysts) to supply
detailed specs. Their minds don't work that way and complaining about it just
leads to frustration on both sides. Instead take the disorganized braindump as
a starting point for the real requirements analysis process. If the
stakeholders were capable of writing thoughtful, detailed specs on their own
then they wouldn't need you and could just outsource the engineering work to
the lowest offshore bidder.

~~~
HillaryBriss
in my experience, the "disorganized brain dump" is all too often considered to
be a valid spec by the people who delivered it. then you code it. and then
they change their minds.

~~~
nradov
As a developer you have a professional obligation to engage with your
colleagues and educate them about the process. Sometimes this means building a
mock up or throw-away prototype just as a tool to facilitate further
discussion. But complaining about it won't get you anywhere.

------
SEJeff
Let me reframe the question to be my thoughts on how to solve the "problem".

Q: How can managers help retain technical engineers

A: Treat them fair and pay them what they are worth regardless of how many of
which chromosomes they have. When people treat them unfairly or discriminate,
stand up for them and show them that you care. Don't penalize them for their
genetic ability to make more humans if they so choose to.

Other than the obvious of more money, most employees will feel loyalty towards
those are loyal to them.

I didn't read TFA as I think the question is a bit wrong even if it is meant
to be well received.

~~~
emodendroket
OK, so, in concrete terms, how do you propose people treat their employees
equally regardless of sex? Empirically that is not currently what happens, and
probably not because someone twirling his mustache said "let's deliberately
discriminate against women."

~~~
SEJeff
Excellent question! Here is my imperfect idea that is much easier said than
done. FWIW, I do work as a software engineer at a very technical firm that I
think does a stellar job getting this right.

The biggest thing is the pay gap. Fixing the pay gap does make employees more
equal as an employer trades money for an employees time. We have a long way to
go to fix the current pay gap in tech at least.

Also I have heard of managers who don't promote women as tech / team leads for
fear they'll get pregnant and be on leave for 2-6 months taking care of their
child. I literally told a guy at my last job that was not cool when he said
that. Even though it might shake things up in the business if a valued
employee is off work for a few months that is not the employees fault.
Punishing them for what "might or might not happen" in the future is
discrimination plain and simple. Discrimination of any form results in a
hostile work environment and ultimately a less effective team.

Another common one is someone making unwanted advances or propositions. The
only correct response on this from management is swift and firm rejection up
to and including firing the unwanted initiator. Look at the recent mess with
that female Uber engineer who was harassed so badly she finally gave up and
left. She did the absolutely right thing and told the person not cool and then
spoke with HR. Because the initiator was a "valued employee" they let it
slide, further alienating the now victimized engineer.

I'm a dude in tech who knows what it is like to be treated poorly. We must be
the voice for those without one (my wife calls me more of a feminist than she
says she is amusingly). To do anything less is to be complicit in this
injustice. See the "first they came for..." poem about the Nazis.

~~~
emodendroket
My issue with your post is this: obviously those things are very serious
problems. But they are only the most egregious ones. I feel like any company
not run by dolts can manage not to allow punishing women with the rationale
that they might get pregnant and to stop blatant sexual harassment -- after
all, these things are completely illegal. But even if we solve them there are
still lots of more subtle ways that companies can be made less welcoming
places for women than for men and addressing those probably requires much more
conscious consideration.

~~~
SEJeff
And my problem with your response is that it still happens every single day
legal or not. Let's fix the egregious problems for good, then we can focus on
the subtle ones.

Take a solid engineer like Valerie Aurora or Sarah Sharp or even say Jessie
Frazelle (in addition to the previously mentioned Uber engineer). This happens
to other human beings, it is awful, it should stop. I would LOVE to work in a
team with any of them solely to learn from them and grow my own skills. All of
them have publically written about how they've been wrongfully discriminated
against.

Yoire welcome to believe this isn't a problem and that it is common sense to
not do these things and yet we still here the same story over and over and
over. If my daughter wants to be an engineer I want her to be graded on the
only thing that really matters, which is her intellect and ability to sell her
solution as the best given the business requirements. Nothing more or less.

~~~
bermanoid
I think what emodendroket is getting at is not that this stuff is unimportant,
but that the vast majority of us have no occasion to address the egregious
problems with any regularity, so we should also focus on the things we _can_
affect on a day-to-day basis. While bad things do happen every day across the
industry, at any given workplace (or more specifically, within an individual
working group) they are fairly infrequent, and only a small number of people
actually witness them or are otherwise in a position to take action.

In contrast, we _do_ have opportunities every day to address the more subtle
issues - talking over people, expecting women to take notes, paying more
attention to ideas that come from men, etc. Even at a company where no woman
is harassed or underpaid or refused a promotion, there are almost always
things that can be done to make the environment less uncomfortable for women,
and these are things that _everyone_ can and should pay attention to all the
time.

~~~
emodendroket
Thanks; you've done better justice to my position than I did.

------
cbcowans
Cadran here from YC's software team. This is the fifth installment of our Ask
a Female Engineer series. Thanks for reading.

~~~
andy_ppp
Here are the other articles:

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-
engineer-4/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-4/)

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-
engineer-3/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-3/)

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-
engineer-2/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-2/)

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/introducing-ask-a-female-
engine...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/introducing-ask-a-female-engineer/)

;-)

------
neurotech1
Perhaps some of these "managers" should study Crew Resource Management [0]
(CRM) for some lessons that were "paid for in blood". For Airline operations,
crew includes cabin crew.

There was a notorious case, British Midlands Flight 92 [1], where the pilots
shut down the wrong engine. At least one flight attendant (& several
passengers) noticed the left engine was producing flames and sparks. The
Captain said he shut down the right engine, which was working properly. The
aircraft crashed, causing 47 fatalities, 74 serious injuries and 5 minor
injuries.

Compare that to Qantas Flight 32 [2], with 5 pilots in the cockpit, and 24
cabin crew, along with maintenance, ATC and rescue crew on the ground, landed
a seriously damaged A380 without injury or further damage.

Capt. Richard De Crispigny was later quoted: "We sucked the brains from all
pilots in cockpit to make one massive brain and we used that intelligence to
resolve problems on the fly because they were unexpected events, unthinkable
events". This is CRM at its finest.

Another successful application of CRM was in Aloha Flight 243 [3]. After
loosing a section of the roof, Captain Robert Schornstheimer & First Officer
(& later Captain) Mini Tomkins landed the damaged 737 with all passengers
surviving. One flight attendant, CB Lansing, was blown out of the aircraft.

Effective CRM (management) is what allowed QF32 and Aloha 243 to land safely.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243)

------
dlwj
Using Kim Malone's radical candor framework
[http://www.kimmalonescott.com/](http://www.kimmalonescott.com/)

The preferred quadrants are:

Radical Candor > Obnoxious Aggression > Ruinous Empathy > Manipulative
Insincerity

The "defaults" are men being obnoxiously aggressive and women being in the
ruinous empathy quadrant. Mean become radically candid by caring more, and
women by challenging directly.

The defaults however give men the advantage with women in a more harmonizing
role.

This is because the typical metaphors company act by are aggressive. The most
obvious one is war or sports, but even a less aggressive one like trade
requires a sort of aggression in haggling.

The defaults favor an affinity for competition and aggression because we
primarily live in a world of scarce resources and requires drawing a line in
the sand and watching over it with spears. Our 1st world cushy lifestyles are
basically subsidized by people in poorer countries being willing to work more
for less. (as indirectly as possible to assuage guilt as much as possible) In
a purely equal world, China and India become leaders of the world (again) and
everyone gets 30K. Is that something people in the U.S. really want?

A person with high empathy might feel guilt and be compelled to enact this
situation. What mostly happens though is that these decisions are delegated to
more aggressive and competitive people. Assuaging personal guilt while still
reaping the benefits of disparity.

If companies start ingesting more empathy, their actions naturally tend to
become more harmonizing, creating fairer conditions. But this ONLY is desired
if the total wealth is enough for each person. As larger companies act at a
global scale, the global wealth isn't enough for this empathy to be
acceptable.

Smaller companies which act in a smaller sphere DO benefit from empathy
though. They have to be indirectly subsidized by excess wealth from the
environment they are embedded in. Knowing your hipster barista's name is only
possible if the business of selling high priced artisanal coffee is viable.

------
UK-AL
Most of these issues are something that EVERY engineer has issues with. Male
and female. I don't think a lot of these are female specific.

~~~
sudosteph
Absolutely! But I think that's actually a point worth making.

I hear all the time that higher-ups think that the key to retaining women is
hosting diversity events, adding parental leave / mother's rooms, or other
stuff specifically catered to women. Not saying those aren't good things to
have, but for the most part, if you listen to your employees and treat all of
your engineers well, you will see gains to retaining everyone, including
women.

Women being so "in demand" for tech companies looking to improve diversity
numbers also gives some of us the opportunity to be pickier with what kind of
work environments we'll accept.

------
metaphorm
the perspective of women is really valuable and we should be thankful to hear
from this group of women, speaking honestly about their experience.

HOWEVER...

it was remarkable how little of the issues they discussed had anything
whatever to do with their gender. I think this is really important and should
be a good clue for followups. How about YC opens up the question series to
engineers from all backgrounds? I expect to see a remarkable similarity in
answers about what constitutes a good (or bad) work environment.

------
scaleout1
Few things that comes to my mind

\- Have clarity around what time people are expected to arrive/leave. If your
company offers free food, dont schedule breakfast super early and dinner super
late.

\- Dont schedule meetings at 5:00 pm

\- Dont change product direction/design based on meetings you had at an after
work party

Basically acknowledge that people in general and women in particular have
responsibilities outside work. Strive to have work life balance for everyone
in your team and not just fresh out of college kids who can afford to sit at
house till 9 pm.

~~~
briandear
"women in particular have responsibilities outside work"

Yeah? And men don't?

~~~
TheCoelacanth
They do, but it is treated as much more socially acceptable for men to shirk
those responsibilities than for women.

------
tabeth
Interesting article. I think one thing to also consider is that women can also
be toxic, so the question isn't really how to retain technical women or men,
but rather, how can you promote leadership practices to women (and men) that
retain women (and men).

------
huherto
I think women perceive technical work as a low status. Many men do too. It
just that may be men get more intrinsic value from it.

------
warcher
I am (perhaps naively) encouraged at the familiarity of these engineers' daily
gripes. That's progress, haha.

~~~
ck425
Hmm my takeaway from the familiarity was that it's harder for woman to manage
up, which sucks. :(

~~~
warcher
I'm curious if you have a piece of the article that highlights that for you. I
admit to skimming through it and thinking "Yeah, that's pretty much the gig."

Engineering is a hard job, there's no two ways about it. Tech managers have a
doubly hard job, having to navigate a tech stack well enough to lead their
team and the people skills to manage all their special snowflake devs on one
hand (nothing gender or age related, I love all my lil babies, even the ones
with gandalf beards and strong opinions on Richard Stallman) and some _very_
difficult strategic objectives on the other. People who can be effective in
that role are hard to find.

~~~
ec109685
> If a company’s leadership feels too tightly knit – where all the managers
> and founders are friends that aren’t open to critical feedback from
> employees – I won’t even try to work out the issue before leaving

While not completely gender specific, I think that speaks to difficulty
managing up.

------
lalos
Here is a podcast that had some insights in this topic [0]. Found it
interesting yet I believe its hard to encompass something that works gender
wide.

[0] [https://thewomenintechshow.com/2016/08/23/retaining-women-
in...](https://thewomenintechshow.com/2016/08/23/retaining-women-in-tech-with-
rosario-robinson-from-the-anita-borg-institute/)

------
dgudkov
It's striking how many women in this article mention bad relationship with
bosses as the main reason to leave. No question, this is a very legitimate
reason. I'm just surprised that it looks like it happened quite often through
their careers. I did have terrible bosses maybe couple times through my almost
20-year work experience, but it never was so much a problem -- low pay, or
boring job were the main reasons I switched employers. I would assume from
this article that women are more sensitive to relationships with their bosses
than men. Which might require special training for the both parties to
overcome. I'm pretty much sure that if several men were asked what made them
leave, bosses would not be such a major issue.

~~~
anothercomment
Anecdotal, my impression is that women tend to have much lower tolerance for
people they dislike. Seem to remember reading the theory that for men it was
important to work well in random groups (like war or hunting parties), whereas
the sphere of the women was usually more tightly knit, so perhaps it was more
important to weed out unpleasant individuals in the tightly knit sphere.

Might have read that in the infamous "Is there anything good about men" essay,
but not sure.

As an example for my experience: in the student hall, there were sometimes
people who smelled bad or didn't integrate. The men would usually just ignore
them (after all, most people only live in student halls for a limited time, so
the problem would resolve itself), whereas the women would start banding
together and mobbing against them. They would become more and more preoccupied
with plans to get rid of the unwanted person.

To a lesser degree, I saw this kind of thing play out at companies or shared
housing situations, too.

------
throwaway5492
Why does this article prompt me to trust it for using WebGL? There's not a
single graphic anywhere on the page! Is this some sort of browser
fingerprinting or something? Just bringing it up in case it's a
misconfiguration on their server.

------
HillaryBriss
> _I’ve left companies after years of chaotically fighting fires while
> simultaneously needing to build new features, or after repeatedly getting
> disorganized braindumps or single line descriptions from stakeholders rather
> than the thoughtful, detailed specs they’ve promised._

I've had this same basic experience working for female managers. Chaotic, bad
processes are not unique to male management. It's just f __ __d up companies
and dev environments _in general_.

Screwing up the process is an equal opportunity situation.

------
autotune
The pay factor is definitely something that should be looked at more. I should
not have find out, after talking to any woman in tech who has a passion for
it, that they're basically just barely able to make it when others with the
same duties at the same or other companies make a livable wage.

~~~
SloughFeg
Young women in software get paid 7% more than young men.
[http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/12/pf/gender-pay-
gap/](http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/12/pf/gender-pay-gap/)

Where does this pay gap start to come into play?

~~~
GrinningFool
While the salary trend in new hires out of school is an encouraging sign, your
comment seems rather selective: the rest of the article you linked points out
that in every situation other than "just out of college with no experience"
the pay gap is real:

    
    
        > Overall, women hired for jobs in technology, sales and marking were offered 
        > salaries that were 3% less than what men were offered, but at some companies the           
        > gender pay gap was as high as 30%, the study showed.
    
         > Men received higher salary offers for the same job title at the same company 69% 
         > of the time

~~~
maerF0x0
Another article:
[http://qa.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/g...](http://qa.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/genevieve-
wood/what-pay-gap-young-women-out-earn-men-cities-gop-p/)

it seems the pay gap is more an age thing. When we say give women equal pay,
we should be saying "give older women equal pay" . This makes me think its a
lagging metric that will be solved as todays 20 somethings become 40 and 60
year olds. If we want to accelerate the solution its not to give young womena
a raise, but older women.

Its also hard because depending on how the numbers are calculated it maybe
fair to pay older women less once you account for a lifetime of choosing
lifestyle over earning potential as many note women vs men typically do.

------
latenightcoding
Sexual harassment and payment inequality came up a lot in the last women in
computer science event I went to.

~~~
mantas
> payment inequality

Perceived or real? I'm yet to hear about a company that has policy to pay
women less. Most have personally-discussed salaries though. If some ladies are
paid less, they probably don't haggle as well. What should we do? Deny custom
salaries and personal raises?

~~~
emodendroket
Yeah, no kidding, nobody has a _policy_ to do that. But there are several
factors, including:

1\. Women tend to negotiate less aggressively

2\. Women who negotiate aggressively tend to be perceived worse than men doing
the exact same thing

3\. Implicit bias affects the amount of money an employer sees fit to offer in
the first place

As to what to do, here some ideas:

* Massachusetts' law barring employers from asking about previous salaries as part of negotiations seems like a good idea

* More transparency about salaries would help

* Maybe a "Costco auto club" model, where the price is set up-front with no haggling, would be a good idea. Reddit tried to do this but it was kind of tied up with all the other issues they had. Not 100% sure on this one.

~~~
RHSeeger
> Maybe a "Costco auto club" model, where the price is set up-front with no
> haggling, would be a good idea. Reddit tried to do this but it was kind of
> tied up with all the other issues they had. Not 100% sure on this one.

The negative to that is (unless every company plays by those same rules)
you're limiting yourself in who you can hire. The more expensive (and,
presumably, more skilled) developers will go work somewhere that will pay them
more (based on that skill), while the cheapest (and, presumably, lowest
skilled) developers will come work for you because they know you'll pay them
more than others will.

There are benefits to being able to pay people what you feel they are worth to
your company. Is it worth losing those benefits.

~~~
emodendroket
I don't know. Maybe you just offer competitive salaries for everyone and
everyone wants to work for you. Maybe your superstars actually get a different
title and responsibilities and you're just more upfront about how you decide.
I think there are plenty of companies out there with a pretty narrow band for
any given position and this way of doing things eliminates the anxiety about
whether you negotiated well or not.

Also, I think most companies can't really hope to attract the world's very
best programmers anyway. If everyone says they're hiring the best they can't
all be right.

~~~
mantas
HN doesn't allow to go that deep in comment thread, thus replying there...

> How do you figure? If they're able to pass whatever company's interview and
> negotiation is no longer a factor it seems more likely that salaries will
> become more equitable. I'd guess the correlation between negotiating skill
> and technical skill is small at best.

In 2-tier (technical + negotiation) interview, candidates have to show they're
good enough technically first. Then they negotiate their worth. In what you
propose, they'd have to negotiate their worth right away. If company isn't
willing to pay, why would they hire said person for higher wage?

Even purely technical job interview is sort of haggling. Well, aside from
bullshit whiteboard tests which suck left and right.

~~~
emodendroket
The way the system is set up now puts the candidate at a disadvantage because
he or she has no idea what the company is willing to pay or what their
criteria are. In a situation where the cards are laid on the table -- here is
the position or positions and here is the salary or salaries -- both parties
have the same information and are free to focus entirely on the question of
competence. A lot of the negotiation process now involves irrelevant crap like
finding out your current salary -- so that then the candidate has set the
lowest acceptable offer and the company can negotiate from there.

Besides penalizing candidates for lacking knowledge that isn't really relevant
to work performance (like how to dance around offering a current salary, for
instance), the current system also tends to perpetuate whatever disparity
already exists by tending to base offers at least in part on current salaries,
and also will reflect the gender disparity shown in responses to salary
negotiations which I mentioned above.

I don't guarantee such a system would make things better but I do think there
are some reasons to think it might.

~~~
mantas
Which is neither gender, nor tech issue.

IMO negotiating is part of relevant skillset. Especially for more senior (=
better paid) positions. One has to know not only how to write code, but back
up his decisions as well. Or prevent others from causing issues.

~~~
emodendroket
That skill has little to do with salary negotiation. And you keep on asserting
that salary negotiation has nothing to do with gender, which seems to me to be
skipping most of the work of refuting my arguments, based as they are on the
premise that one's gender affects one's success in salary negotiation.

Also, I think that these changes would likely benefit male workers too, but
not to the same degree as women.

~~~
mantas
Yes, you're correct, I think we shouldn't discuss this as a gender issue.

IMO you're mistaking correlation for causation. As you say yourself, changing
current salary setup would affect both women and men. This is not gender issue
and this should be discussed on other points than gender. Making it about
gender is counter productive.

Looking at this form economical perspective, as long as we don't have
objective way to measure programmer's productivity, I don't think we can get
away from salary negotiations.

~~~
emodendroket
Right, so we've identified our chief difference. Would you like to provide any
proof for your assertions?

------
oppositelock
It's not up to the managers alone to retain technical women, it's up to
everyone.

I've worked in this industry since the 1990's, which is enough time to see
quite a bit, and I've definitely seen behavior hostile to women during this
time, and also ham-fisted attempts to fix the problem which also breed
resentment towards women, causing even more of the behavior.

This whole "situation" simply boggles my mind. What could possess a guy to
send a dick-pic to a coworker, or a manager to demand sex in exchange for
promotion? These people are clearly messed up human beings, and need to be
fired. Most of the time they are, and it takes an exceptional bro-culture for
them not to be fired. However, these obnoxious pigs aren't really the core of
the problem, they're just the ones we think of first.

What I've seen over time is that most people have a double standard when
comparing technical men and women. These are good people who respect their co-
workers, and would never do something like mentioned above, but they still
make it harder for women through either unconscious biases, different
expectations, or different treatment.

For example, I worked at one pre-eminent bay area company where there I saw a
lot of policies meant to help female engineers and managers succeed. They were
very strict on any sort of harassment policies, and usually took action
against inappropriate behavior. Yet, my female co-workers were frustrated.
There was a double standard in engineering. Say you go to a design review
meeting for a big feature. If a man was presenting, he had the benefit of the
doubt of his colleagues, presented his idea, got critiqued it, job done. A
woman giving the same sort of presentation doesn't get that benefit of the
doubt as frequently, and her ideas are scrutinized more, sometimes in a
condescending way. I've seen this play out myself, it's disgusting! It's also
not just men, women are harsher towards technical women as well.

Women who noticed such problems and tried to point them out were either
treated either as whiners, or management heard and over-reacted in a way which
made the men feel threatened, which made the problem worse.

I really don't know what the fix is here, but I can't see how managers can fix
a cultural problem. The culture of tech needs to change to be fair to women.
Perhaps this comes from having too high a concentration of one gender, since
male elementary school teachers share the plight of technical women, but
that's just my speculation based on people that I know.

What I am happy to see is that the ratio of women to men in technical degree
programs is much greater than when I was in college in the early 90's. I do
college recruiting events for computer science grads, and if I was to wager a
guess, the ratio is about 1/3, and approaching half at some schools. When
women are more present in the tech workforce, and their peers have always
experienced working with women, perhaps then things will change.

------
usmeteora
To answer some questions regarding the comments about how these things are
different from men to women. They may not be. The reported answers may be the
same and related to issues both men and women struggle with.

However, I think theres been some more chatter in the industry trying to get
to the bottom of some issues that have come up recently with gender in tech
one not so recent and more general. Here's what I mean

1\. In the 1980s, for reasons everyone can quantify but noone can understand
why, is why women stopped going into computer science in the 1980s:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
women-stopped-coding)

Particularly data scientists and computer scientists and economists who are
skilled at teasing out data in large and seemingly choatic data sets cannot
figure this out, which is ironic considering they are the group in which this
gender disparity occurred which such a dramatic and relatively sudden dropoff.

2\. On top of the dramatic drop of women in computer science, 41% of the women
who do go into tech leave compared to 17% of men: [https://medium.com/tech-
diversity-files/if-you-think-women-i...](https://medium.com/tech-diversity-
files/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-
paying-attention-cb7a2073b996#.cuwsh66wd)

3\. A number of studies have shown that identical job applications, resumes
AND VC pitches are evaluated differently based on whether they are labeled
with a male or female name. [https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-
think-women-i...](https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-
in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-
cb7a2073b996#.cuwsh66wd)

4\. High acheiving women, and particular women in tech show

    
    
       a. more negative feedback in reviews compared to men
    
       b. the word  abrasive is used positively with men, negatively with women in reviews
    

[http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-
bias...](http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias/)

5\. Alot of women get into entry level tech jobs, but far fewer climb the
ladder/wages stagnate

[https://qz.com/645587/a-mckinsey-report-on-female-leaders-
fi...](https://qz.com/645587/a-mckinsey-report-on-female-leaders-finds-women-
are-unable-to-enter-the-tech-industry/)

6\. Female leaders: Founders, CEOs, CTOs receive far more public criticism AND
HOSTILITY than male CEOs and CTOs ie.e Ellen Pao as leader of reddit, Marissa
Meyer, Sheryl Sandberg * The things that have been said about these women and
their bodies and how evil they are I have never ever heard with male CEOs no
matter how evil, nor have I seen criticism as harsh, unrelated to the business
issue, cruel and emotionally punishing as these women have faced. Dear god,
how could any women aspire to be a leader when the women who aspire to are
bombarded with a nonstop barage of sexual and emotional humiliation 24/7 on
the internet male CEOs never face. It's ridiculous.

* I am not saying these things happen (the disparities by gender noted above) because men are sexist and evil. I don't think anyone knows why this is happening, which is why more women who are in tech are being asked to open up and speak out to get their personal perspective since all the data and studies in the world don't seem to be providing these answers

* My personal opinion for what its worth: I have to say as a woman in tech, an Electrical Engineer with a minor in Computer Science who now does graphics engineering and GPU software layer dev, I don't think it is fair that large corporations are being blamed for the gender disparity in STEM fields. The gender disparity is documented in highschool starting with the number of women in advanced STEM related classes like Calc and Physics all the way through college majors to then the workplace, and yet Microsoft and Google need to fabricate highly skilled and experienced technical women out of thin air or take on the effort to create fund and integrate their own ideas for education in highly unskilled and complexly funded school systems. I think its great they are doing these things, but I think the expectation society has suddenly placed on them since they decided to be angry about it this year is unreasonably punishing and creates more anger and blaming than it does objective awareness and productive conversations, of which I think this convo was an attempt to counteract on YCombos part so thank you

( and to go back to my mid-sentence point, as far as people being angry about
big tech corps and the lack of women...ummm yeh Ive been a women in tech for
almost a decade now so thanks for suddenly caring out of thin air but how
about asking women in tech about it instead of just finding the biggest tech
corporation around and blaming them for everything, which is why Q&As like the
above listed are nice)

Lets address the gender disparity in STEM at age 8 and work our way up. Need
help start with Toys R us and just do a study noting toys based on level of
difficulty/problem solving/building creating and colour versus child care,
clothing and social itneraction based toys...and start there. DONT start at
google and blame everything on them. Start with YOU and how YOU raise, dress,
spend time, talk with your own duaghters as mothers fathers sisters teachers
etc before you assume everything is googles fault.

 _There is no "bad guy" guy we get to blame for this as much as mass media
these days loves bad guys to blame for everything. This is a very complex
cultural issue for which atleast in my experience my parents, teachers,
school, cultural demographic of the area I grew up in, politics, media, men in
college, magazines for women, AND THEN on top of all of that and all the
warped ideas I had about myself and my capabilities due to that yes also there
were cultural clashes between me and men at my tech university and also at
work.

_I have also on top of all of this faced blatant sexual harrassment cases
which were quickly resolved just because, there was no debate about whether
they were harrassment or not. They were. Even though these issues were
resolved, they were horrrible experiences, emotionally traumatizing, and
embarassing and annoying because other employees always find out, not to
mention distracting me away from that thing called my job that I came to work
for.

*The amount of times men have shockingly stated to me after getting to know me that they now realize I'm not in the industry to husband shop...is too damn high.....

------
ergothus
This is a topic of great interest to me. In part because I love coding and
think that anyone else that does should have the same opportunities. In part
because though I'm a cis straight male, I've generally gotten along with women
better as friends and colleagues. And in part because I'm generally socially
liberal, so something like this where the TREND line is going in the wrong
direction is particularly bothersome. (Racism, on the other hand, is something
that is definitely wrong and definitely exists, but it's easier (though not
"good") to be blase about it because the trend line is in the right
direction.)

I've had two relatively recent discoveries on the topic (these may or may not
be known to everyone else):

* One workplace I was at had an annual summer internship for high school women that had taken AP Comp Sci. Overwhelming the interns had a good experience, and a thing they commonly said was that they didn't expect coding to be so social. Given how U.S. women (at least) are socialized to be social and being judged by their success at being social, I can see that impression subconsciously turning away potential CS grads from ever entering the field.

* I've attended and read talks on the problem for the last decade or two, and I've seen a change in the messaging. Originally it was "women need to stand up, get mentors, and push harder". More recently, the messaging has been "Common male behaviors tend to push women away. Those places that are more diverse have been more successful. Let's reduce how much we push women to socialize like men, and perhaps teach men some of the positive ways women socialize".

That is, teach behaviors like:

* Don't shut down discussion, promote it

* Don't insult ideas

* Don't talk over people

* Make suggestions, not declarations

Now, I'm not saying that the behaviors women are taught are all good or
positive, but within the realm of building consensus and being open to new
ideas, these specific behaviors have been shown to work better.

Also, this change in messaging has been more useful to me: Originally, if I
wanted to promote women in the field the advice was "Don't be a sexist jerk,
and provide mentoring for junior coders that are women". Now the advice is
"look to your own behaviors and improve them, and both men and women will
benefit". It's way too early to say if this messaging is really an answer, but
I feel like I've made positive changes based on it.

[ Side note: I've noticed that comments like these tend to inevitably kick off
comments about how backstabbing and bitter the socialization between women is,
a position often vigorously promoted by women themselves. I really can't say,
other than the specific qualities I list above are positive ]

~~~
Arizhel
>Side note: I've noticed that comments like these tend to inevitably kick off
comments about how backstabbing and bitter the socialization between women is,
a position often vigorously promoted by women themselves. I really can't say,
other than the specific qualities I list above are positive

Yep, my ex-wife could easily go on a tirade about that, and that was her #1
complaint about working in the legal field: other women. But it wasn't all
women, it was just a certain, small minority of women, and also the HR
department for refusing to do anything about it, or somehow blaming her for
these women's crazy behavior.

------
jabda
as a mother with young children, i value time flexibility and work life
balance over everything else. I don't have to put every hour or half day taken
due to family or school events into PTO. everything else is negotiable.

------
ozpri
Stop Focusing on Gender and focus on the work. Strike a balance where
necessary, but focusing on the things that make people different creates a
division by virtue of the differences being consciously observed.

------
oxryly1
How were the interviewees recruited?

------
knerd1
Promote them.

------
balozi
I will hazard a guess that the popular answer in these parts will industry
gentrification.

------
ccc111
Please read all the way it does sound pretty blunt, kinda a rant. I'm a guy.
Not a very liberal response.

Men make money.

Women look good.

As terrible as that sounds. It is true. We are different species and have
different advantages as the other.

A pretty girl can literally take pics of themselves and marry in to wealth. We
see this all the time. A actress is now dating Prince Harry, she is not a
programmer or engineer. Bieber "finds" Instagram models and you know... he
doesn't look in a cubicle of his agents company.

A pretty guy gets no same benefits. There are girls on Instagram with
literally millions of followers, even pretty male models barley crack a
million.

A smart girl who is not pretty gets no real benefits unless she works like a
dog and turns her personality in to a man. Look at CEOs, almost +90% male.
Leadership trait of males?

A smart guy who is ugly has no problems being a star in the work force.

These are the way things are. Should they be changed? Absolutely. But let me
tell you how...

but first a side note \-- I do not approve of women in the military. Unless
they can do their job as good or better then their male cohorts. I do not
approve of slower lap times or lighter weights just because of gender. The
enemy doesn't care about your gender, they will not go easy on you or slower.
[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/22/letter-to-
th...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/22/letter-to-the-editor-
dempsey-rule-for-marine-women/)

Using this same liberal premise, in high school we had 2 girls on the football
team, because they wanted to be equal. one was actually bigger than some guys,
but still not as skilled, the other was a "pretty girl". How do you expect a
200lb guy to treat the girls the same? As you know they quit in a couple
months and practice was back to "normal". We lost a game because the coach had
to put one of them in because their parents we upset.... \--

So lets take this in to corporate america. If woman are as equal or better
than a male candidate no problem they are good for the job. it is in the
companies interest to hire them. But im sure in a extremely male dominated
field it makes it very hard. I would assume, and from my own experience, guys
get along with guys more than guys and girls. This is just fact. It is the
same for women too. They feel more comfortable.

So now we have a male dominated industry where many more men are hired than
women and this further makes it harder for women to be in the industry. It
seems pretty f tough.

A short fix, a near sighted fix, is to start your own company, make your own
"club" your rules, hire who you want. You can now be biased and shape things
to your whim. Sorry if this is a let down but big companies are "club" and
then the labor. big difference.

So why dont we ask another question, this will be extremely unpopular but the
truth.

Why dont we each do what we are good at? Why dont we do what we have the best
advantage in?

Woman outnumber men in many industries.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/pink-collar-jobs-dominated-
by...](http://www.businessinsider.com/pink-collar-jobs-dominated-by-
women-2015-2)

Now your question will be, but i dont want to be a nurse i want to be a
programmer! I dont want to be x i want to be y!

Then you shouldn't complain when it is difficult because you are swimming
upstream.

I really wanted to be a basketball player when i was young you have no idea.
Well guess what? im not above 6 ft, let alone a proper 6,6 so you know what i
did?

I accepted that i could be a basket ball player and moved on with my life.

To be quite honest with you there are many more things i would rather be that
a programmer.

I would love to be an actor. but i dont think im 9/10 pretty, nor tall.

I would love to be a doctor, but i couldn't think of doing surgery

I would love to be a race car driver, but im not rich enough to start.

I would love to be an entrepreneur, im working on that one.

I would love to be a better developer, im working on that one.

I would love to be free of debt, closer by the day.

what i do now is merely what i believe to be the easiest and most enjoyable
path to what i deem a better future for myself.

if i had a million dollars i would not be doing much of what im doing now.

TLDR; kinda hard to do without sounding like an a$$, but do what you are good
at and what is realistic. If you are good technically you will get the job but
realize it is an extremely upward battle compared to numerous other "paths".
Understand that, don't push for unrealistic compensations for it.

Would love to hear everyone's opinions. Sorry if blunt but sometimes i believe
the truth gets shot down that only similar comments ever get read on grounds
of "approval bias".

~~~
throwaway729
_> Please read all the way it does sound pretty blunt, kinda a rant. I'm a
guy. Not a very liberal response._

I approach this sort of writing with a stern charity.

Asking questions is never wrong. And I even entertain discriminatory
assertions that have a compelling basis in reality. This is the charity.

But you damn well better be right, or at least not obviously wrong. If you
have no compelling reason to believe what you preach -- if even the most
cursory investigation would disposes you of a controversial and harmful if
incorrect belief -- then you're just a bigot. This is the sternness.

So, let us evaluate your claims. Namely, that "you [women] shouldn't complain
when it is difficult because you [they] are swimming upstream". I.e., that
women are somehow naturally predisposed to poor software engineering.

Engineering requires a combination of technical aptitude and clear
communication.

Let us first consider technical aptitude. It is instructive to consider other
fields that over-lap with Computer Science and Software Engineering --
Mathematics (obviously important in CS and SE), medicine (requires systems-
oriented thinking), and other sciences (requiring general technical skills).

Mathematics is more gender balanced than Computer Science. The most
technically difficult aspects of Computer Science are basically applied
mathematics. So technical competence cannot explain the CS gender disparity.

Medical Doctors are, on average, smarter, better credentialed, harder workers,
and even better compensated than software engineers. And yet, the gender
disparity among MD's is much lower than among software engineers.

Women outnumber men in several sciences, none of which you could reasonably
call "pink-collar" fields without completely ignoring a good 20 years of
history (let alone 100 years).

So, is it possible that women are somehow innately impoverished in the
technical aptitude required in Software Engineering? I don't think so. But
even if they are, this alone does not explain the gender gap in Computer
Science.

Technical aptitude does not provide a compelling justification for your
viewpoint.

That leaves us with communication. A technical genius who cannot communicate
-- in code, in documentation, and in conversation -- makes for a dreadful
engineer.

Perhaps innate communication ability explains the gap between men and women in
software engineering? But all the women I know write much more clearly than
you have in this post! And surely you are an excellent engineer.

So it seems I've run out of charity.

~~~
ccc111
Hello and thank you for your response :)

Actually i am quite an average programmer at best but thanks for thinking
highly of me for your response.

To be quite frank, and ill add another point to this discussion, i got the job
i currently have because i believe i just have more personality than most, me
and my higher ups get along quite well.

I find this friendship to be almost impossible from a woman's point of view.
There are so many hints of sexuality it make a genuine friendship from an
older man to a younger girl so to speak almost taboo? really? no sex or
favors?

My second point which i might not of elaborated as much in the first is that,
perhaps we have reached "critical MA(n)SS", where the tech industry is so
populated by men, hiring more men that it makes these friendships from a
woman's standpoint increasingly hard to get. Let alone the reasons mentioned
previous.

Men hiring men because they get along with them better? Sexism they cry!

Promotions are made in the bar and the golf course. I like to think of
companies as 2 separate populations groups, the management and the help.i
believe to cross the line would be extremely hard in late stage companies ,
without being quite the star.

Thoughts?

~~~
throwaway729
So now women don't belong in tech not because they're under qualified, because
you can't imagine not wanting to have sex with them?

At least we are all clear on what the actual problem is.

~~~
ccc111
You are ignoring the fact that i said males like to hang around other males,
and it makes it exponentially hard for a woman to enter the "club".

I assume you are a woman. Is your best friend a man or girl?

~~~
sudosteph
I'm a woman, and my best friend is a man. I have many more male friends than
female ones in general, just due to my interests.

I've never once had the faintest idea of sex cross my mind when making
relationships with co-workers or other male friends (I've been in a steady
relationship for 7 years though, so it's not like I'm looking). Never once.
And all my male friends I've made have never once conveyed anything sexual to
me because they either don't feel that way, or if they ever did, they respect
me enough to not make me feel uncomfortable (with the exception of one former
coworker who I refer to as a harasser for his continual flirting +
uncomfortable advances. I cut off all contact with him)

You're projecting tbh, many women are perfectly capable of creating strong
platonic relationships with men. Usually it's the man who has an issue there,
but that's not really my problem is it? If you think of sex any time a female
befriends you and you let it get to you and damage your friendship, that's
something you need to work on personally.

Also, do you think Gay dudes are unable to make friendships with straight guys
for this reason too?

~~~
ccc111
somewhat yes.

I really dont believe your best friend is a guy.

------
gedy
1) Discourage your work 'culture' from being built around aggressive tech code
reviews/debates/arguments/chat where young males love to beat their chest

2) Some flexibility on hours/location when children come. Women have a harder
'stop' than men do on their child bearing age, which frequently coincides with
moving into senior development roles.

~~~
latenightcoding
Point number 1 is ridiculous and sexist. Oh yeah let's ship code that hasn't
been reviewed because the young males in our company will act like
chimpanzees, and those pesky technical debates let's scratch those too. Let's
just use whatever piece of technology is trending today on HN

~~~
ck425
No one's saying we shouldn't have code reviews or technical debates, just that
we need to avoid being overly aggressive. A lot of young males (including
myself previously, and sometimes currently) can be very aggressive in
presenting their views. This disenfranchises less outspoken people in our
teams, particularly woman who generally can't be as aggressive without
negative social ramifications.

------
hasenj
It's not like the industry figured out how to retain men to begin with.

Almost every tech company I've been in, I've seen people of both genders move
in and out constantly.

Programmers have been complaining about management since forever.

Is there any evidence that women in particular are facing different issues
from men when it comes to job satisfaction?

------
ar15saveslives
I've never heard a question from women: "What can WE do to be more suitable
for modern IT?" All I hear is that I, /u/ar15saveslives, personally, should
act differently, look differently, speak differently to make those vulnerable
sensitive shy females enjoy working with me.

Why nobody asks "what women have to do to be more comfortable in IT" question?
Learn more, participate in OSS/SO, start your own projects - why doesn't it
work for "female engineers"?

------
togoshigekata
How can Hospitals help retain Male Nurses? (male nurses: ~8%)

How can Schools help retain Male Teachers? (male teachers: ~20%)

How can we help Males dying on the job? (male on the job deaths: ~90%+)

~~~
throwaway729
Naturally, these questions do get asked in each industry. Nursing [1-3]; K-5
teaching [4-6]. There are entire federal and state agencies with copious
regulation dedicated to workplace safety. As a society, we spend millions upon
millions each year making inherently dangerous workplaces (mostly occupied by
men, as you note) a bit less dangerous.

And I don't even know anything about those cultures; I'm literally "just
fucking googling it". A mere investment of a few minutes would've easily
dispossessed you of the misapprehension that men aren't explicitly recruited
and retained in female-dominant fields.

Hopefully it's blatantly obvious why we're discussing gender disparities in
_software engineering_ on HN -- a message board primarily frequented by people
in the _software_ startup industry -- instead of gender disparities in these
other professions.

[1] [http://minoritynurse.com/men-in-nursing/](http://minoritynurse.com/men-
in-nursing/)

[2] [https://www.corexcel.com/courses/men-nursing-
handout.pdf](https://www.corexcel.com/courses/men-nursing-handout.pdf)

[3] [http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing/374-men-in-
nursing.html](http://www.asrn.org/journal-nursing/374-men-in-nursing.html)

[4]
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.659...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.659.9141&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

[5]
[http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:73946](http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:73946)

[6] [http://www.menteach.org/](http://www.menteach.org/)

~~~
hajile
You sidestepped the workplace death question. Why are we so worried about
forcing women into STEM no matter what, but we don't care about forcing them
into the jobs that cause all those workplace deaths? As a corollary, why do
people without STEM jobs constantly complain about _other_ people not having
STEM jobs instead of leading by example? After all, as we're constantly told,
we need every able-bodied STEM grad we can get our hands on.

Lip service doesn't matter; change matters.

If you look at nursing stats, men leave at a much higher rate than women.
Sexual harassment, liability when caring for women and children, getting
saddled with the harder jobs (because he's a man), pay sucks, and a general
every day attitude from everyone about being a male nurse (with the added
bonus that generally speaking, old nurses really hate new nurses and the more
different you are, the worse it is). Generally speaking, you'll tend to see
male nurses gravitate toward specialties or travel nursing where most of these
issues are less prevalent.

What about teachers? The split used to slightly favor men over women once upon
a time. If there were ever a profession where male/female diversity were
important, it would be in the education system. Instead, we see the huge male
pedophile scare of the 70-80s followed by a large drop in the number of male
teachers in general and in younger grades in particular. Most male elementary
school teachers are there for PE. Factor that out and it's extremely easy for
your child to go through almost a decade of schooling without meeting a male
teacher.

To tie that particular idea back to software engineering, are the majority of
female elementary teachers self-loathing, backward individuals who believe in
the inherent inferiority of women? If not, then why do they work so hard to
keep their female students out of certain parts of STEM?

~~~
throwaway729
_> You sidestepped the workplace death question_

No, I didn't.

We have an entire legal and regulatory bureaucracy dedicated to improving
working conditions in dangerous work places.

I'm pretty willing to bet that the cost of that bureaucracy -- per year -- is
easily several orders of magnitude more than all the money spent to date on
encouraging women to take STEM jobs.

I could Google it for you, but this is apparently an issue dear to your heart,
so I'm sure you're well aware.

Are these protections perfect? No. We should strengthen them! Also, we should
have less gender disparity in STEM. I'm _really_ still missing the zero-sum
relationship between these two things... could you help me out?

 _> Why are we so worried about forcing women into STEM no matter what, but we
don't care about forcing them into the jobs that cause all those workplace
deaths_

1\. Who said anything about "forcing"?

2\. HUGE elephant in the room: because this is a _tech_ -focused message
board. Again, why is it so surprising that we're discussing the _tech_
industry as opposed to the healthcare or education industries?

 _> nursing... teachers_

Great. Someone should do something about that.

Still not sure why you think any of this is a reason for _software engineers_
to refrain from discussing and addressing similar culture problems within
_software engineering_ firms.

Discussing gender disparities between different fields is not, in fact, a
zero-sum game.

~~~
Chris2048
> Great. Someone should do something about that.

The institutions pushing for change in IT are often not IT specific. The
question is why do _they_ focus on IT. They are the "someone" who should be
doing something.

~~~
throwaway729
This is all starting to sound extraordinarily conspiratorial.

Who is this "they"?

To re-iterate, I'm still not sure why you think any of this is a reason for
software engineers to refrain from discussing and addressing culture problems
within software engineering firms.

~~~
Chris2048
> This is all starting to sound

I believe this is my first comment in this thread. Want to substantiate that?

> refrain from discussing and addressing culture problems within software
> engineering firms

That's not the issue, the issue is the unusual pressure and increased scrutiny
tech receives relative to other industries. The various forms of tokenism, and
HR risk-avoidance has nothing to do with a "discussion", it is very much one-
sided.

------
songzme
The most important for me is directing social conversations. Most people think
that social event is a time for everybody to talk freely about whatever
topics, but no. The point of social event is inclusiveness. I see this
scenario happening over and over again:

Social event starts off friendly. Gradually, the conversation starts turning
very technical or very sci-fi, then women turned away and formed their own
social group. Worse, the only woman engineer on the team spends the night
sipping on her drink quietly wishing she found these topics more interesting
or wishing she took more CS classes so she could appreciate the intensity of
the conversation. (Note, I'm using women as an example because of the posted
question. But this applies just as much to the minority race, age group, etc.)

I think it is important for the manager (or any teammate in general) to make
social inclusivity their top priority in a social environment. Look around, if
you see that someone in the group is not engaged, steer the group conversation
towards the interests of that person. Its a hard skill do develop, but its a
skill managers should be actively working to improve.

~~~
buckbova
> The most important for me is directing social conversations.

You want the manager to micro-manage a happy hour? Sounds like torture.

~~~
Arizhel
Why would a work group be going to a happy hour in the first place? That's bad
because it assumes everyone is OK with drinking alcohol. Now you're alienating
Mormons, ex-alcoholics, people who choose not to drink, and people who get
physically ill from drinking alcohol. How about keeping workplace
socialization _at the workplace_ instead? Or perhaps at a decent sit-down
restaurant where people can order _food_ instead of getting liquored up and
potentially saying or doing something embarrassing or harassing?

~~~
Chris2048
> Or perhaps at a decent sit-down restaurant

And what about people who choose not to go to restaurants?

Seems like you have a chip on your shoulder about drinking.

~~~
Arizhel
A "chip"? So what's your answer to people who get physically ill when
consuming alcohol? Don't get a job? Because in American drinking culture,
they're going to look bad if they don't drink with everyone else at one of
these stupid happy hours.

Sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder about people who don't
participate in American drinking culture and binge drinking.

~~~
Nadya
I become ill at the _smell_ of alcohol.

I sit out the usual Friday bar nights and have to turn down the occasional
offers of alcohol from coworkers that don't interact with me frequently (and
thus either don't know or have forgotten that I don't drink)

They get to go get wasted at the local bar. I get to enjoy my Friday night
playing video games alone. Win-win. If they do something like GoKarting I get
dragged into something I'd rather not be doing since I feel obliged to attend
since I sit out of the many alcohol-related events.

I'm agreeing with Chris2048 here. Sounds like a chip. They can enjoy their
alcohol without me being a downer about it or forcing the _majority_ of the
company to comply with my wishes of non-alcoholic expenditures.

If they have fun drinking, let them have fun I say. I'll go home and play some
video games.

~~~
Arizhel
Right, and then you miss out on important work dealings and decision-making,
you're seen as "not a team player", you're passed over for promotions, etc.
Staying out of all work "team-building" events eventually looks really bad for
you and will work against you.

~~~
Nadya
Maybe I've been extremely fortunate - but that just hasn't the case at where I
work. I'm very clear about why I don't attend these things and people are very
understanding.

Perhaps it is because I have a very visible impact on my department or maybe
because all decision making is done during office hours. The bar is for play
and karaoke - not to talk about work. The company culture treats _any_ work
discussion during team outings as taboo. You won't be punished for it but
you'll be told kindly to shut up and have fun - work will be back again next
Monday. Talk about it then. :)

If I had to guess, that probably plays a huge part into why the company
doesn't have those sort of problems.

~~~
Arizhel
>The company culture treats any work discussion during team outings as taboo.
You won't be punished for it but you'll be told kindly to shut up and have fun
- work will be back again next Monday.

Many places are not like this.

