
The Real Reason Women Quit Tech (and How to Address It) (2016) - j_s
https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/the-real-reason-women-quit-tech-and-how-to-address-it-6dfb606929fd
======
JamesBarney
I think that diversity is an important goal that we should strive for in tech.
I also loved that the author included actionable advice we can all take to
improve the impact of our female colleagues.

But I didn't like how the article bounces around a lot citing different
studies without explaining why each study is relevant. For instance the first
citation about how the #1 reason women leave their jobs is lack of career
advancement opportunities. Well from that study(a linked in survey) the #1
reason men left their jobs was the same reason. The big difference between the
2 was men were much less likely to cite culture as a reason for switching
jobs.

Then later cites a study showing how Latina women are paid less than white
men. Which seems like a weird comparison, maybe the author had a good reason,
but she doesn't explain why Latina women vs white men is the appropriate
comparison and not all men vs women, or Latina women vs Latino men.(I suspect
was this was the way to find the greatest discrepancy because Latino men were
the most underpaid of anyone except Latina women.)

These strange comparisons and citations are pretty common in the article and
set off my alarm bells that the author is using studies more for support than
illumination.

And while most of us agree we need to get more women into tech (not just for
women's sake but because I think it would benefit tech greatly). And precisely
because it's important we need to be careful that we spend time, money and
effort in the right places on the right things, and don't jump to conclusions
blowing it on interventions that aren't impactful.

~~~
watwut
"The big difference between the 2 was men were much less likely to cite
culture as a reason for switching jobs."

That makes sense to me. Bad culture is more damaging to people who have bias
against them - or just those who "think" there might be bias against them so
they leave proactively (even when there is no bias).

As in, most workplaces are not sexist, but the workplaces who are sexist will
have more women then men leaving because of culture. Bias in tech is against
women, not against men (I would assume it to be opposite in traditionally
female fields.)

~~~
eizaiGh0
Yes. Women leaving the teaching profession is also less likely to cite culture
as a reason for switching jobs, which is commonly the case for work places
which is dominated >60% of a single gender. Work culture in such places
incorporate parts of gender identity and those of a different gender either
has to assimilate to that culture or be forced to leave, a fact noted in a
report by Swedish institute for higher education, published a few years ago.

------
PaulHoule
"Lack of opportunities for advancement" is a problem for tech workers, Male or
Female.

Engineering graduates get high pay at the beginning of their careers, but what
the statistics don't tell you is that, unlike their peers, they don't get
raises.

If you are a programmer/IT person at many organizations, you might find that
your organization has advancement paths for (say) salespeople, geospatial
analysts, librarians, etc. but no paths for technical people.

~~~
pyvpx
Interesting. Now that I think about it, every single one of my networking
and/or sysadmin friends have realized significant upward mobility in the past
decade. any of my programming friends have either gone freelance or simply
changed employers for pay increases.

Are there any public statistics on this?

~~~
mason240
Being a programmer is a lot more like skilled blue collar job such being a
plumber or an electrician than we like to admit.

What kind of career advancement do those fields have? Pretty close to what we
have. Maybe you supervise/manage a group less experienced tradesmen. Maybe you
open your own small business or go freelance. The result is the same ceiling
where real, continual advancement is on the business management side.

~~~
buckbova
Exactly. When I read that in the article I was stunned. It used to be pretty
standard it'd take 5+ years to make a senior engineer role, another 1 or 2 for
a lead, and even more for architect which can be a slightly different path.

> A study by the Center for Talent Innovation found that 27% of women in tech
> feel stalled in their careers and 32% are likely to quit within one year;
> 48% of Black women in tech feel stalled.

One year?! I've been out of school for over 15 years and most of the time
moving sideways. You've got to put in the time and effort. For most a senior
role is all they'll achieve (or want).

------
jlos
Whats frustrating about these analysis is they ignore the reality of children
and family life. The bias' mentioned, which are appear real and well
evidenced, are secondary and complicating factors to the general problem of
adapting family life to an urban, specialized economies.

Prior to the 1900's the largest companies in the world were only a few hundred
employees and over 50% of the population farmed. That meant a significant
amount of the economic activity occurred in family run farms and business
where all family members worked together. The trend towards men working
outside the home and women staying at home was a somewhat unique phenomena in
the 20th century and in some ways-not all-a natural progression since manual
labor jobs favor men.

While bias are real and need to be dealt with, I think attributing everything
to them does little to solve the real challenge of how to harmonize
specialized technical work, which at the current scale is unique to our time
period, for large corporations, which did not exist prior to the 20th century,
with the demands and realities of family life.

Having kids below the age of schooling is a unique time and one that many very
competent women are not willing to sacrifice for career advancement. And since
there is almost no part-time work for STEM careers, this has the effect of
limiting career advancement for those women who choose to prioritize family
life and may also account for the perceptions that create the types of bias'
listed in the article.

I don't think theres an easy solution, and maybe not one at all, but without
considering the very real component of family these types of accounts fall
short.

~~~
sharemywin
except a lot of women are delaying families.

~~~
xyzzyz
Sure, and there's also a lot of data suggesting that young women are paid as
much if not more than young men, see e.g.
[https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-
in-20s-e...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-earn-
more-men-same-age-study-finds)

------
devnull42
Wow this has been the opposite of my experience. I have seen many cases where
women are fast tracked or given more opportunities as engineers because of
diversity programs. There was one case where a female engineer got her salary
adjusted to median position salary because she was a woman and they didn’t
want the appearance of underpaying a female engineer, meanwhile I am 16% below
company median for my position.

~~~
buro9
Two things:

> got her salary adjusted to median position salary because she was a woman

Really?

Do you ever consider that when non-women who are given more opportunities it
is because they are men? White? Tall? Are not bald? Have good teeth?

If that doesn't run through your mind, please don't suggest that anyone not a
cis-male only gets there to meet the criteria of a diversity program.

> meanwhile I am below company median

The thing with medians is that half of the company will be below that point.

If everyone were on the median, then everyone is receiving precisely the same
salary.

~~~
edoceo
What is "cis-male"?

~~~
cholantesh
The cis- prefix denotes that the person's gender identification aligns with
their biological sex.

------
ameister14
I know this is a huge problem, but I really dislike how this article is built
on a house of cards, reference-wise. Almost none of the statements are backed
up by viewable primary sources.

~~~
waynecolvin
If they misrepresent their arguements there must be a motive.

------
tzs
> Some people dismiss the gender pay gap by arguing that women choose lower-
> paying fields; however, the causality is opposite: pay drops as women move
> into a previously male-dominated field. A study by Stanford and UPenn
> researchers analyzed 164 occupations using 50 years of US Census data
> (1950–2000) and found consistent evidence that pay drops as women move into
> a previously male-dominated field in areas as varied as recreation, ticket
> agent, designers, housekeepers, and biologists. When a job attracts more
> men, such as computer programming, which used to be predominately female,
> wages rise.

Those examples where women moved in on male-dominated fields all seem to have
been fields that were not undergoing rapid growth. Opening them up to women
would have expanded the size of the labor pool, and if the number of jobs was
not expanding at the same rate, would't we expect pay to drop?

Computer programming switched to male-dominated at a time of rapid rise in
demand for computer programmers. Rapid rise in demand tends to raise pay.

------
startupdiscuss
It would be interesting to know if these issues (lack of advancement
opportunity, voice not heard, poor assignment, personality perceptions) are
exclusive to technology or if they also occur in, for instance, finance and
medicine.

This would be informative because it would tell us if tech is doing something
uniquely discouraging, or if there is a wider problem.

~~~
moomin
Broadly, the answer is: they're not exclusive, but tech is particularly bad.
Probably because tech has mythologised itself in a very male-normative manner.

~~~
Bartweiss
This seems pretty oversimplified?

Especially when the point was comparison to finance and medicine, which have
similarly male-normative histories.

A few decades ago medicine was at least as male-normative as tech; culture
said nurses were female and doctors were male and that was that. But med
school matriculants are ~48% female at this point. Some specialties are way
more than half female, while others remain large-majority male.

Meanwhile, finance has hardly budged at all.

There's clearly _something_ to learn here, and I think we're losing insight by
just saying "tech is particularly bad" without actually trying to investigate.

~~~
clay_to_n
Tech has been getting consistently worse in the last 20 years. As far as I
know, that is _not_ true of finance or medicine. So we have a unique problem.

------
edoceo
Please also read the Part 1 of her article about "bullshit diversity
programs". Startup CEOs should read both, twice

------
msimpson
> A study of 4,000 women who had recently changed jobs found that the #1
> reason women leave companies is because of “a concern for the lack of
> advancement opportunity.”

The same study which found that men leave companies for the exact same reason?
Meaning there is no inequality in the lack of advancement opportunities ...

------
rogerdickey
Why does HN love click bait so much?

------
Mz
I think trust and effective communication are the root cause of a lot of these
problems. Articles like this one rarely address that piece at all. I talk
about it on my blog, * but my writing isn't exactly getting millions of page
views. I find it frustrating.

* Such as: [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-gray-zon...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-gray-zone.html)

~~~
j_s
Shortcut to HN discussion of Mz's "The Gray Zone":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7407280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7407280)
(3 years ago)

Yowzers! Not really sure what else to say, I can see why HN avoids these types
of discussions.

~~~
Mz
That was three years ago. I was actually pretty pleased at the time.

I believe discussions on such topics generally go better these days than they
used to.

------
sharemywin
I've seen many women(programmers) go into project management and fly up the
ranks. To get an architect or other higher level senior technical title male
or female requires a devotion to pedantic study that few people desire to
pursue(usually with marginal monetary value).

------
jpeg_hero
> Listen closely at meetings, and repeat unacknowledged good ideas, giving the
> person who first had the idea credit.

yeah? is this really a good thing? getting idea credit in meetings?

~~~
bobwaycott
Yes, it really is a generally good thing for all humans. Everyone responds
generally positively for being recognized for whatever their contributions
are. Even if the ideas aren't particularly amazing, there's something pretty
powerful in general human interactions that happens when you make a point of
noting people's ideas, and making correct attribution. This may be somewhat of
a learned skill. In practical terms, it's as easy as a summation of ideas
thrown out--e.g., "Bob has suggested we take a better look at X. Sue's
thinking we ought to consider Y."

Some time later, when another person offers up an idea, there's a different
relational outcome between saying, "Oh, nice idea, John"\--while Sue is
thinking, _That 's an awfully lot like my idea from a couple weeks ago_\--and
saying, "Oh, hey, that sounds a lot like Sue's idea from a couple weeks ago,
but with a little twist." Sue's going to respond positively because you're
acknowledging her idea. John's going to respond positively because you're
doing the same for her. Now both of them may be encouraged to work together on
it.

There's also a funny thing about us humans in that the same ideas and thoughts
can hit us differently at different times. Making a point of tracking
(mentally or otherwise) people's contributions to an organization isn't
something that is likely to ever be a _bad_ idea.

