

I am tech – Real stories from women in technology - suhail
https://mixpanel.com/i-am-tech/

======
ryanobjc
One thing I have learned from my wonderful partner is stories like this can be
incredibly alienating to women who don't fit into them.

For example, the "all women get catcalled" \- my partner notes that since she
never gets catcalled, she must be too ugly.

So what about the women who have an entirely different kind of experience?
This article is a classic: [https://medium.com/@maradydd/okay-feminism-its-
time-we-had-a...](https://medium.com/@maradydd/okay-feminism-its-time-we-had-
a-talk-about-empathy-bd6321c66b37)

~~~
untog
Is the implication here that we shouldn't let women tell any stories unless
their experience is an utterly universal one experienced by every woman?

Just seems like a way to derail a worthwhile project like this. It is clearly
collecting a wide variety of stories, and IMO that's worthwhile. After all,
minorities - by definition - don't have universal experiences, but surely
they're still worth telling?

~~~
crindy
I thought the poster just wanted people to avoid generalizing. "All women get
catcalled" isn't okay, but "I often get catcalled" is fine.

~~~
nostrebored
I think this would be fine, if more people were talking about it. My fiancee
phrasing things in a way like "I often get catcalled" frequently gets derailed
by people saying what the OP here mentioned. And at that point the discussion
does get shut down, because if she does mention that most of her friends have
the same experience, the implication does come up.

Depending on where you live, and what you do in your day, attractive women do
get cat called. A lot. An upsetting amount, and just because it's not a
universal doesn't make the derailing okay either. I'm sure that people saying
this don't mean to derail, just as people mentioning the catcalling don't
intend it as an insult, but it does shut down conversation.

------
MikeKusold
Since the page renders terribly for me, here are all the videos the page links
to:

I am Tech: Challenges -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_ECYhptDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_ECYhptDo)

I am Tech: Love -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5EzYG-2fss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5EzYG-2fss)

I am Tech: Advice -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3NqI-0u9sA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3NqI-0u9sA)

Hilary Stone @ Mixpanel -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_STckadkcVQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_STckadkcVQ)

Jenny Finkel @ Mixpanel -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2YaP4UfHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2YaP4UfHY)

Liz Clinkenbeard @ Github -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_tVT0dhEMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_tVT0dhEMU)

------
thelastguy
Really hard to hire women in tech. Whenever I interviewed them, turned out
they only studied Liberal Arts in college. That is very unqualified. And for
the few ones that studied Physics, Engineering, or Computer Science in
College, Google and other major compnies alredy hired to them all. So again,
no luck there either.

In the end, you really can't force women to study something they don't like,
like Calculus and Physics, the requirements for Computer Science. Afterall,
they're independent, and they will study whatever they want in college, which
is usally Liberal Arts, Teaching, Psychology, or Biology. But never math, or
physics.

~~~
echlebek
There's plenty of women that study math and physics. I know this because they
were in my classes in CS, math and physics, and beside me on graduation day.

Your assumption that women don't like these topics is wrong. I'd encourage you
to seek an alternative explanation for why you are having trouble hiring
women.

~~~
thelastguy
Although there were women in my math and physics classes to, there were
definately way more men than women. And not only that, some of women eneded up
doing something different after graduation.

Just because you have a degree in something doesn't mean you're will go into
that field. A lot graduates ended up with a career different from their
degree. Most of the time, the degree is used just as a 'certificate that i
finished college' to get a job.

The problem is, women are not entering STEM careers. They don't want to. And
certain people are trying to force STEM down their throat, without their
consent.

You can't hire women if they're not in STEM, you can't hire them if they've
decided to work in some other field instead.

~~~
runamok
The argument is:

a. Since there are not many women in these professions, young girls and women
don't aspire to them. b. A decent amount of women enter the STEM fields but
fall out of them because they feel unwelcome, discriminated against, etc. c.
The discouragement starts early too. Our culture is very gendered and girls
get pushed towards pink and fashion and boys towards soldiers and tech _in
general_.

Here are some examples of things that make women feel unwelcome. It's pretty
depressing.
[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents)

I don't disagree with you re: the current STEM ratios and I do think it's a
hot button issue because tech fields are _lucrative_ (and of course because
articles that piss people off get more clicks). You don't see women
complaining about the construction, trucker, fisherperson, etc. jobs that are
predominantly male nor do they ask for more men in nursing and education to
have more gender balance there.

So tl;dr: fix the STEM pipeline starting at age 6 or so and treat the women
that _are_ here with some common decency.

------
Noelkd
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_tVT0dhEMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_tVT0dhEMU)

Is this a positive story? Is it supposed to be? Is this a story from GitHub?
I'm confused about this.

~~~
cpeterso
Whether the events happened at GitHub or elsewhere doesn't matter for the
story. She is describing her personal experience so that other people may be
find the courage to ask for what they feel is equitable.

------
Animats
The page won't render properly because Ghostery blocks some Adobe feature as a
tracker.

~~~
Joeboy
I have the Adobe one whitelisted and it doesn't work for me either. Can't be
arsed to work out why.

Edit: I guess these are the videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCogU9fanQxHuSDcKXunHOgg/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCogU9fanQxHuSDcKXunHOgg/videos)

------
eonw
i am still struggling to understand how this is important, and why we should
care. men have struggles just the same, this is like reverse sexism.

~~~
pdabbadabba
The reason others are concerned about this while you are not is that many
people regard this proposition as wildly incorrect:

> men have struggles just the same

Yes, men and women both have struggles. But many believe (including myself)
that women face many more challenges by virtue of being women, than men do by
virtue of being men. Women are more likely to be sexualized in work (and any
other) environments, their reactions to events are more likely to be described
as "emotional" or "irrational," they are widely considered (without evidence)
to be inferior to men in fields like math and science, etc.

Don't forget: until relatively recently, women were widely regarded (in both
law and society) as the _property_ or either their father or, once married,
husband. This is still the prevailing view in much of the world. And debates
like this still go on: [http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-women-the-property-
of-the...](http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-women-the-property-of-their-
husbands)

Under these conditions, it seems natural to _expect_ that women face a lot of
unique challenges, to put it mildly--and that expectation is indeed born out
by the actual experiences of many women.

Discussing these issues is important because it is a crucial part of our
shared efforts to eliminate these phenomenon.

~~~
eonw
that's all fine and dandy, but no one is bitching about the fact we have very
very very few men working in the child care industry, for instance... better
start subsidizing their jobs too?

men and women were both given the same choice of universities and classes in
high school. the tech sector did not turn its back on women or minorities,
they turned their back on it. now that its profitable they want a piece of
that pie.

~~~
pdabbadabba
Yes, I am all for greater male participation in the child-care industry. (I
really am!) So say we all. Are you satisfied? Will you now please join us on
in constructively discussing the exclusion of women from tech, law, science,
politics, accounting, carpentry, the military... and how to fix it?

If the child care industry were representative of men's exclusion from most
high paying, socially powerful fields, then I would expect the 'bitching' to
begin. But, as it is, the child-care field is not a field that a lot of men
would like to get into, it pays fairly poorly, (unfortunately) confers little
power or respect, and is largely an anomaly in an economy where most jobs,
especially powerful ones are dominated by men.

The "confers little power and respect" bit, by the way, seems to be true of
_most_ woman-dominated fields (child care, teaching, nursing...). Do you
suppose this is a coincidence?

~~~
dragonwriter
> But, as it is, the child-care field is not a field that a lot of men would
> like to get into, it pays fairly poorly, (unfortunately) confers little
> power or respect, and is largely an anomaly in an economy where most jobs,
> especially powerful ones are dominated by men.

Its actually not really an anomaly for jobs that pay fairly poorly and confer
little power or respect to be dominated by women and/or persistently
disadvantaged minorities. (It's really part of the same effect as jobs that
pay well and confer power and respect being dominated by white men.)

~~~
eonw
oh this is a copout! there are many low wage job categories dominated by
men... garbage collection, construction(low level), shipping, commercial
kitchens, yard work, i could go on and on.

none of which get neither money nor respect.

------
jkot
Hm, company behind such project could be a bit more diverse.

Here is picture of their team:
[https://mixpanel.com/jobs/](https://mixpanel.com/jobs/)

~~~
kefka
Great idea... So they should start hiring women who don't have the skills over
others (who happen to be male) that do. Wonderful suggestion. But I'm sure
they can fake-make a few Social Media fluff positions for women to fill. It's
what GitHub did.

~~~
jkot
Why so angry? If company in Bengalore can have 70% women engineers, it should
not be a problem for well funded startup in US.

~~~
michaelmrose
Men make up 75% of the IT workforce and 82% of computer science graduates. If
women aren't even studying the field it makes it a tad harder to hire them
don't you think?

People should aspire to hire the best people in their field not the "right"
gender, color, sexual orientation etc. Anything else is bigotry under the flag
of diversity.

Also if you can do a little basic math you should be able to see that the
average company will be no more diverse than the labor pool. For every company
that is 50/50 other companies will have even less than the average.

~~~
sosuke
I may be stepping on a landmine, but your numbers make me curious. Is the goal
of gender diversity 50/50 female/male, or is it 20/80 female/male based off
the compsci graduates? What does it mean to have a diverse development team,
and how did those numbers happen?

