
Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem? - mystique
https://medium.com/@racheltho/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996
======
shoo
More generally, not specific to the dear tech industry, there's been a
fantastic discussion on metafilter titled "“Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid
Emotional Labor" [1]. If you are a person who has personal/professional
relationships with other people, it's probably worth a read [2].

Anyhow, I'll quote an excerpt from one of the comments:

> A married man is considered (in the sociology findings) to bring "more than"
> one person to work with him, because it is assumed he has someoone
> feeding/dressing/cruise directing him. This frees up his brain space for ...
> work. On the other hand, a married woman is considered to bring less than a
> whole person to work. Because she is assumed to be feeding/dressing/cruise
> directing at least one other human. And possibly incubating another. This is
> taking up valuable brain space that could be devoted to work.

So, there's a conscious or unconscious bias against women in working life, due
to the assumption that they'll be doing more than their fair share of unpaid,
generally undervalued labor outside of the workplace. Oh so plausible. This
would be a _rational_ reason for a workplace to discriminate against women,
given the existing context of structural unfairness and bias in the rest of
society. "Hurray!"

[1] [http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-
Emo...](http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-
Labor)

[2] ...unless you are very uncomfortable with reading criticism of men, and
you cannot stomach discomfort. in that case, it's probably best for everyone
involved if you don't follow the link.

~~~
malandrew
Also sounds like a bias against men. Men are perfectly capable of feeding and
dressing themselves. And while I don't know what exactly "cruise directing"
means in this context, there is no reason to believe that men aren't also
capable of doing that either.

I just got out of a relationship where I handled all those responsibilities. I
wasn't compensated for it, nor did I expect to be. Insofar as my own
generation is concerned, I've encountered lots of men that cook. In fact, I
have known more men that cook than women. I also know more men than women, but
the relative frequency seems about equal between the sexes.

~~~
shoo
Sure. I agree, and certaintly cannot argue with you about facts of your own
life.

It's more subtle: I don't think anyone is making sweeping uniform
generalisations. i.e. "ALL MEN DO a" "ALL WOMEN DO b". I'm not claiming
anything about specific individuals. but I _am_ indeed claiming there is a
general bias, at least in a statistical sense. For example, here's an
arbitrary statistic from the UK in 2012 [1]:

> Just over one in 10 women – 13% – say their husbands do more housework than
> they do, while only 3% of married women do fewer than three hours a week,
> with almost half doing 13 hours or more.

So, given no further information about particular circumstances, if I were a
betting man, I know which way I'd bet about this kind of thing.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-
gen...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/10/housework-gender-
equality-women)

~~~
malandrew
I'd take that bet if we're talking about the SF Bay Area.

I honestly have a hard time with any such figures since they take entire
heterogenous regions and distill them down to a single figure that isn't going
to hold true for all places. Single figures suggest homogeneity and that
couldn't be further from the truth.

The UK is not the US. There are totally different cultural forces at play. I'm
half British and all my aunts do most of the housework. My female and male
cousins are one generation younger and share homemaking responsibilities with
their male/female counterparts. The effect is stronger for those that live in
larger cities. I've also live in China and Brazil. The homemaking habits of
either country are not in the least bit applicable to the US.

Even within the US, there are big differences between California (where I live
now) and North Carolina (where I went to school and college). Many of my
classmates that stayed in Raleigh-Durham area have lifestyles where women are
likely to handle homemaking responsibilities relative to those that left the
region to live in places like SF, NYC and LA.

Here in the Bay Area, it's even more extreme. I wouldn't assume that any of
the women I encounter does any more or less housework than any of the men I
encounter.

Since all this talk is about the SF Bay Area and regions that aren't the least
bit comparable in terms of homemaking activities. I don't even know many tech
couples that live together. If they live together, they both handle homemaking
activities.

You can't take a bias from somewhere else and blindly apply it to the SF Bay
Area.

Furthermore, the modern house is sufficiently automated or simplified that
handling home chores is hardly the full time or even part time job it once
was. Laundry you can do once a week to every two weeks. You can get a roomba.
You have services like homejoy to take care of the heavy duty chores like
cleaning the bathrooms, mopping floors and cleaning the kitchen. I'm one of
the few people I know that actually handles such chores themselves instead of
hiring help to do it. It's not that hard and it's not that time consuming,
especially considering that most people can hardly afford more than 300 to 600
square feet of living space per dwelling inhabitant in this city.

At the end of the day, these figures just aren't compelling as a way to
describe the housekeeping chores division between men and women that work in
tech in Silicon Valley.

------
tzs
> A culture that rewards facetime and encourages people to regularly stay late
> or eat dinner at the office puts employees with families at a disadvantage
> (particularly mothers), and research shows that working excess hours does
> not actually improve productivity in the long-term since workers begin to
> experience burn out after just a few weeks

I suspect excessive hours also contributes to unintentional harassment [1],
mostly against single women.

Most people are heterosexual. Most of them want to find partners to have
relationships with ranging from casual flings to long term romantic
relationships.

If people are expected to work long and hard hours they will be left without
the time and/or energy for activities outside of work where they can seek out
sexual and romantic partners. Since people are _not_ going to give up on
seeking out sexual and romantic partners inevitably some of that activity will
shift to the office. If that office has significantly more single men than
single women it is going to get particularly annoying for the women.

[1] By "unintentional harassment" I mean actions that are takes as harassment
by the person they are directed to, but are not intended as harassment by the
person taking the action.

------
T2_t2
Serious question: why are women so harsh to EACH OTHER? From the article:

> both men and women were significantly more likely to hire a male applicant
> than a female applicant with an identical record.

And from the linked studies: "Men only penalized female candidates for
attempting to negotiate whereas women penalized both male and female
candidates."

And the pay rates, and drops, from here
[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html)
are both worse from female faculty - with sale offered from men 30K -> 29K vs
27K -> 25K for female faculty, and male faculty scored women higher in all
categories than the female faculty.

~~~
platinum1
Also from the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention
or malice."

In my opinion, the origin of these biases is in the early, formative years:
When children see mom stay at home and dad go to work, they learn that that's
the way things are - without any conscious negative judgement and regardless
of gender. It's the society they grew up in, so seeing something deviate from
that can create a bias. It's naturally self-propagating as well, so it will
take conscious effort (from everyone) over generations to overcome.

I highly recommend taking the Harvard Implicit Gender - Career Bias test
([https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html)).
I found it extremely enlightening because I could actually FEEL my brain
pulling me to answer incorrectly. It's timed, so there's mental pressure to
make quick decisions - where the brain takes advantage of pattern matching
that's been trained over a lifetime.

~~~
shakadak
"Your data suggest a strong association of Female with Career and Male with
Family compared to Male with Career and Female with Family."

I didn't expect that result at all. My family is balanced in term of gender
composition, and my parents both work the same amount. But my mother still has
a tendency to do more of the housework. I'm curious whether having to pass the
test in my native language would have significantly influenced the outcome.

Side note: rereading a bit the descriptions of the tests, it seems these are
targeted toward an American audience. Could it have an influence in the tests
too ?

------
malandrew
A few questions:

What does it mean to "leave the field"? Does that mean to no longer practice
low-level work or to leave the industry entirely for another industry? If it
is the former, does moving into management or another complementary area (like
moving from engineering to product management) qualify as leaving the field?

So what I've always been curious about is what percentage of women leave other
fields? It would be nice to have numbers to compare it to there.

Also, what percentage of men leave the field? If "leaving the field" is
defined as no longer actively practicing software engineering and instead
doing more human contact work (like managing), then I would expect a
significant number of men to leave the field at all.

I'm not trying to dismiss the number out of hand, but merely demonstrate that
it's a useless figure to bandy about with context or comparison.

~~~
rmc
> What does it mean to "leave the field"?

You can read it in the linked article: [http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women-
leave-tech-culture/](http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women-leave-tech-culture/)

* "716 women who left tech"

* "I have collected stories from 716 other women who have left the tech industry"

* "Of the 716 women surveyed, 465 are not working today."

* "Two-hundred-fifty-one are employed in non-tech jobs, and 45 of those are running their own companies. A whopping 625 women say they have no plans to return to tech

Which strongly implies "left the industry", not "moving to product management"
or "managing". 2/3s of them aren't working at all, not "promoted to
management"

~~~
malandrew
How do they make a living if they aren't working at all?

That seems like a shockingly high figure of people who have the means to avoid
any sort of labor productivity. I can only conclude that "are not working
today" is loosely defined or that these people were unfit for working at all,
since someone that has the means to quit work and not have to look for other
work elsewhere probably hasn't lead a very rigorous labor existence.

Also, this appears to be study of only the ones that left. I'm certain I could
find 716 men that left the tech industry too, and come up with a set of
reasons why they left. Looks like a classic case of selection bias. There
doesn't appear to be one women who stayed in the industry in that study. Does
that mean I should conclude from this study that 100% of women leave tech?
Simply put, you need to survey more than just those that left.

That study comes across as far more biased than the biases it's trying to
combat.

It's far more interesting to discuss base rates. Start with a sample of women
in tech, follow them over n-years (you can get a good representative sample by
choosing different cohorts like those that are recent grads to those with 5-10
years industry experience) and do the same with men. After 2-3 years check out
how many from from each gender from that sample have left the industry.
Interview them to find out why.

My ex was a documentary filmmaker interested in social causes and whatnot and
I've seen how the sausage is made firsthand and know how data and statistics
are twisted to support an agenda. Good statistics that strive to be impartial
almost never produces numbers as "story-worthy" as the ones from that study,
which means you need to question the numbers presented and also ask which
figures were conveniently omitted.

~~~
atrophying
> How do they make a living if they aren't working at all?

I'm one of those women who left the field after a 10 year career, and then
returned several years late. The answer is, our quality of life drops. We end
up in alternate careers that usually don't pay as well as tech, but come
without the headaches. I worked as a private chef after I left tech. Some of
the women I know have become academics in other fields, some pursue completely
different careers in non-technical fields, some drop out completely to embrace
a SAHM role or some other traditional gender role.

I'm not going to argue about whether this study is right or that one is wrong;
but I can tell you from my own anecdotal experience that every year I see less
and less women my age in tech. I rejoined IT after that hiatus and there's not
a single woman I work with who has the kind of technical expertise I do. The
women who have that expertise have all left for greener pastures; for most of
them, tech is an uphill battle against ignorance and bias that just gets to be
too stressful to deal with.

~~~
malandrew
Thank you for participating in the discussion. I have a bunch questions if you
don't mind me asking.

When you left after 10 years in the field and were working as a professional
chef, how long did you work as a chef before returning and during that time
what did you do to remain current on how tech evolved during those years?

When you returned, did you join a company working with a relatively "fresh"
tech stack (read: currently popular) or did you return to a company that
worked largely with the technologies with which you had worked before leaving?

When you returned, how do you feel about your own technical skills upon
returning? Were they as good as before? Were they worse? Were they other
softer skills you learned as a chef that you found useful upon returning? (my
older brother was a professional chef d'cuisine and it's remarkable career
that teaches you how to lead like few other industries do).

The feelings you had as a women in tech after returning, did you feel the same
way prior to leaving to become a chef? If so, how was the experience similar?
If not, how did your experience after returning differ from your experience
before?

What were the primary motivators that originally lead you to pursue a career
in cooking? Was it a love for cooking? Were you already cooking a lot and
decided you wanted to go to school for that and then pursued it as a career?
I'm particularly interested in this question because I've known people who
have taken a similar path and also wouldn't mind getting into cooking after
tech. A friend of mine was a senior engineer at one of the "unicorns" and is
now pursuing a career in baking and plans to open a bakery.

I totally understand the desire to avoid the headaches in tech, and one might
choose a different career without those headaches. I'm curious to get your
opinion on the women with whom you worked on in tech that chose to become a
SAHM and traditional gender roles instead of choosing an alternate career
without the headaches you tried to avoid. My instinct suggests that women like
you truly left due to the headaches, but I find it harder to reconcile someone
leaving due to sexism in tech and then adopting traditional gender roles. That
strikes me as a contradictory path to take if their motivation for leaving
were the headaches you describe. What do you think about their motivations and
do you think many of them probably would have ended up as SAHM and in
traditional gender roles even if tech had not had the headaches you endured?

For the women who pursued careers in other field, it seems to me that moving
into academia is likely to stimulate people in similar ways as software
engineering. They are both similar in that they involve lots of reading,
research, learning, problem solving, hypothesizing, and then application and
observation. In other words a career in academia is a different way of
enjoying the scientific process. For the women with whom you worked that
didn't follow a path towards another career that is similarly rewarding in its
daily application of the scientific process, what kinds of careers did they
gravitate to? Were they strikingly different careers like moving from working
with computers and technology to working with people, or something else
entirely? What do you think the level of satisfaction is for these women in
their new career relative to their career in engineering, once you discount or
attempt to control for the headaches women encounter?

Lastly, regarding women your age in tech: when you see fewer women your age in
tech, do you also see fewer men your age in tech? How much of the effect of
seeing fewer women your age is due to age and how much gender? Which do you
believe to be a greater problem? If you worked and returned to work in tech in
the SF Bay Area, do you think that housing prices and starting a familiar may
account for some of the reason why you see fewer women your age in tech (per
the thought experiment I put forth as a hypothesis here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960338)
)

(Sorry for the barrage of questions. I know it's overwhelming and can be
especially so when there aren't many women in tech who can also help address
these questions leaving you as one of the few voices that can offer firsthand
perspective. Answer only what you feel like answering)

------
owen_griffiths
"almost all of them said they liked the work itself, but cited discriminatory
environments as their main reason for leaving"

If the work environment is not to women' liking and has no bearing on outcome,
where are all the successful companies formed by women who want a more
friendly environment?

"This is a huge, unnecessary, and expensive loss of talent in a field facing a
supposed talent shortage."

Again, if true, some enterprising person should have found a way to tap all
the amazing talent.

~~~
todayiamme
I try to usually stay away from such debates, but I've thought a lot about the
point you're making: if people are being irrational with respect to hiring
then clearly the solution is to start a company that isn't ageist, sexist, or
any -ist by formalising the hiring logic and finding people who share
something deep - like a passion for building things - in common. But after
talking to people and many, many companies, I've come to realise that,
although a "market correction" is inevitable, markets can stay irrational
longer than most people can stay solvent.

Change is inevitable and sooner or later a company will come along which will
swoop up all of these people and apply them towards an audacious goal, but the
time at which the stars align and such a company is born cannot be predicted
and most people can't hold on until that time. Hence their desire to fix it
through advocacy, which is quite understandable.

~~~
Jare
I think this argument needs to be less black and white than what you present.
There's no need for a company to "swoop all" of these people and go for an
"audacious goal"; that's all too exaggerated. All that's needed are a few
companies competing in a largely male-dominated space, staffed with "a larger
presence" of women, and being reasonably successful in whatever goal they
have, regardless of how trivial or lofty it is.

Advocacy is great, and necessary to get out of local maximas, but living proof
is always going to be more effective.

Of course, there's always the question of how useful such a competitive
advantage (access to a large pool of excellent staff) would be to drive
success. It may not be, which is a different discussion and one that would
make engineers of both genders nervous regarding their own value.

~~~
malandrew
Some companies actually are able to disproportionately hire many of the women
available to be hired in the industry.

Company A has a hard time hiring women because Company B had a few more and
better female engineers early on. Network effects take over as the company
grows affording it the opportunity to hire far more women than other tech
companies.

This infographic shows the ratios at a bunch of companies from those with
gender ratios below the higher education pipeline ratio to those well above
that ratio: [http://do-better.studiometric.co/](http://do-
better.studiometric.co/)

Women earn 18% of computer science degrees:
[http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp)

That table shows the ratio at that sample of companies to be around 19% women.
Assuming those companies are representative, that is a 1% different in favor
of more women than men based on the pipeline feeding the industry.

------
sanxiyn
"When Google increased paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks, the
number of new moms who quit Google dropped by 50%."

This seems to be such a spectacularly good result that I wonder why they
haven't tried it sooner.

~~~
troels
Well, they didn't know, did they.

But I would say that with such good results, they might want to increase it
even further. 18 weeks is still rather short.

~~~
tracker1
I'm sorry, but paying someone to take off for more than 1/3 of the year? Is
this based on how long they are with the company before said leave? 4.5 months
of maternity leave is very generous, and honestly enough for a physical
recovery and to spend time with the baby. I'd even be in favor of 4-8 weeks
maternity leave for new dads.

I'm all for maternity leave, I think it's important, and there are too many
companies that don't offer any, or enough. That said, there's a point where
you really aren't an employee anymore. I'm not saying they should shorten
their leave, but making it longer probably isn't a great idea.

~~~
nasalgoat
Here in Canada, maternity leave is a Federally-mandated full year. Before
having a baby I thought that seemed excessive, but after having one, I see the
value it brings at a critical time in a child's life.

Now the idea that the US only allows for 2 weeks seems cruel and unusual.

~~~
tracker1
I agree that two weeks is insane... and I understand why many would leave a
job to stay at home for the first few years of a baby's life. I'm not sure I
entirely understand having paid leave for that long though.

It would be easier to handle if the U.S. adopted a basic wage, and eliminated
most of the welfare and subsidy programs.

~~~
nasalgoat
Well, the Canadian method involves the parent going on Unemployment for the
duration of the leave, so it's not 100% salary. Still, a better option than a
child missing out on key parental bonding time.

------
Banzaaaai
From my experience:

1\. It is a pipeline problem (I never got as much women applications as I
wanted, even with targeting a women audience)

2\. It is a problem of not enough role models for women (so women do not see
themselves in tech and do not aspire for tech careers or for becoming CTOs -
women CTOs go a long way here).

3\. It is a problem of the vile and toxicity of the tech community in general
(just see all the fights over programming languages, about being right vs.
understanding each other). And the bro culture in some places.

4\. It is a problem of women in general being more risk averse (so they gamble
less with salaries or risk to push for promotion)

5\. It is a problem of job ads (male focused, where males might say 'Ah I can
do all those things' and women might say 'I don't know all the things they
want') and the recruiting process in general.

~~~
tracker1
Wrt the pipeline, I have to agree to a large extent. I admit it, I'm biased on
a lot of levels, not really against gender, but I will admit I prefer to work
with men. That said, doing pre-screening of applications at a job a few years
ago opened my eyes a lot.

To be honest, I no longer hold much of any value to a resume... I've seen too
many people with higher degrees and years of experience that can't seem to do
what it says they can on said resume. Me, I'm particularly bad at white board
coding... but I understand the need. That said, I'd rather have a laptop
connected to a projector.

I've probably sat in on a couple hundred interviews of other people over the
years, and only a handful were of women... For the most part, I appreciate
that women tend to be much more accurate on their resumes and in responses as
to their skill level. I've never really liked excessive arrogance, and prefer
someone more honest. This is just me though.

I also think that efforts to make language and interactions politically
correct are a disservice to the goal of letting anyone that wants to work in
IT do so. A few months back I witnessed someone pretty much accosted because
he dared to ask, "...can any of you guys help me with this?". My extended
family is over 80% female... my step father was an only child, but my mom was
one of 4 sisters, her mom one of three, and half of the women in my family
only had daughters (including my sister). hearing things like "I miss you
guys." was said by women, to women, without any gender bias, as a generic
phrasing.

There's a difference between being overtly sensitive and issues of
bias/discrimination worth bringing up. We're at a point where awareness is
increasing, but as a society we've also been heading down a path of so much
excessive sensitivity that it's downright abusive towards people who aren't
ill-meaning. I hope that a balance is found sooner than later.

~~~
DanBC
> I admit it, I'm biased on a lot of levels,

> not really against gender,

> but I will admit I prefer to work with men.

You don't see the contradictions here?

~~~
tracker1
Not really... When I was younger I worked in several offices where I was the
only man there... I'd rather not have that experience again. A workplace is a
_very_ different environment when the majority of people are of a single
gender. I don't think that this is inherently a bad thing though.

When I work with women, I find I have to edit myself more in general
conversation, which I don't like doing and would simply rather not.

My preference has nothing to do with a negative opinion on women, their skill
or ability to do a job. I also don't have a problem interacting with them in
the workplace on a regular basis (one of the best project experiences I've
ever had was with a woman who was the PM on a project). I just prefer to work
on a team where the people I interact with the most are men.

TBH I actually prefer when I can do an Army of One project where at least the
piece I am working on can go for days without having to interact with others
except for lunch. I tend to make it a point to get away from the desk and be
more social during lunch break.

------
lawnchair_larry
I agree there is a problem, but is it ever frustrating having to tolerate
completely fallacious statistics and bogus metrics every time someone talks
about this. That sets the conversation back.

There is no such thing as equally qualified for a promotion. To pretend that
performance is a simple formula with two inputs is being disingenuous.

It is a pipeline problem, because I have interviewed zero females and 100
males. I've never even received a woman's resume.

Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving
names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume,
they call you in for an interview.

VCs investing disproportionately in male CEOs is hardly surprising because
even if they have no bias, they know their money is on the line for someone
who will be up against the rest of the tech and business world, with all of
its bias.

Diversity quotas are harmful. Great, now nobody takes you seriously not just
because they're biased to begin with but also because you only got the job
over more qualified applicants to fill a quota. That isn't helping anybody. A
much better option is to get more women to apply.

I have actually taken bias training and yes, I'm biased as hell. I don't like
this fact and try to correct it. I also point it out to my male peers. But
it's really hard to overcome when nobody has non-junk data and nobody is
showing up to interview.

And are we allowed to be open to the fact that maybe, on average, women are
weaker performers in tech? It seems like that is not allowed to be an option.
It should also be a possibility that they're actually stronger performers in
tech (I bet you reached for the down arrow before getting to that sentence).
Pretending everyone must have equal ability and 50% of executives and 50% of
programmers should be women doesn't get us anywhere.

~~~
rmc
> _Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more,
> involving names being switched on a resume, doesn 't make sense. Nobody
> hires a resume, they call you in for an interview._

The study (
[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html)
), asked interviewers to rank how "hireable" the candidate was, and what they
would offer the candidate.

Yes, the resume gets you the interview, not the job. But without the
interview, you definitly don't get the job. If changing the apparent gender of
the resume gets you better odds of getting the interview, then the gender gets
your more/better jobs!

This is science. Creationists are invested in believing the earth is 6,000
years old and don't like evidence that contradicts that. Antivaxxers don't
like evidence that shows vaccines are safe. Homeopaths don't like evidence
that shows that it's just as good as water. And here we have evidence that men
get more interviews.

> _you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota_

To quote the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention
or malice". You (and I) have a bug in our brains. We are not actually able to
correctly deduce with 100% accuracy whether someone is more qualified than
other.

Yes a female quota might mean that there's a woman who's being hired when you
would have given that job to a man, but how do you know the man is definitly
more qualified? The function in your brain that calculates "qualified" has a
bug and isn't always accurate about "most qualified".

------
rchiba
> These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice.

As someone who has faced situations where a gender microagression has caused
workplace conflict, the above quote cannot be stressed enough. Just because
you didn't have the intention to be biased or discriminate does not mean it
did not happen. For some reason this concept eludes even the sharpest people.

We all have our biases. It's about time we owned up to them and put effort
into mitigating them.

~~~
danieltillett
What is "gender microagression”?

~~~
rchiba
It's when a guy from another department walks into a room and asks for a
developer, unconsciously ignores the female developer closest to him and
starts addressing the male developer.

It's when a guy kindly asks a woman to stop debating a technical spec because
she wouldn't understand the details (even though she's more technical than he
is).

It's when a sales guy makes a joke with his female colleague that her eye
makeup is what is closing deals that day.

~~~
malandrew
I don't know about other departments coming in to ask for an engineer, but
when it's an engineer looking for another engineer on a different team, it
usually takes the form of asking openly in that teams hipchat/slack/irc room
(as gender neutral as it gets) or specifically addressing one particular
engineer (usually because that engineer is known for being great at providing
advice or technical details on the issue at hand)

I've never once witnessed that second one and would be shocked if I did
witness that. I've been around long enough that if that were still a problem,
I would expect to have witnessed it firsthand.

I know the third happens (my sister is in sales and has been subjected to it).

------
ExpiredLink
Where does the 50% obsession stem from? Serious question. Why _must_ all
fields be equally staffed by men and women?

~~~
tracker1
Where's the staffing drive to bring more men into nursing?

~~~
sanxiyn
There is. I suggest Google search, for example "bring more men into nursing".

~~~
ExpiredLink
But why?

------
natmaster
"Don’t rely on self-nominations or self-evaluations"

I think this is the big thing that should be rallied around. This is
prevalent, obvious, and hurts companies in more ways than just discrimination
(not to marginalize that aspect).

Focusing on self-nominations means the most successful people aren't going to
be your people best able to do the job, but people best able to 'play the
game'. This is in fact not independent, but negatively correlated with skill.
(Citation needed)

------
malandrew
So I noticed that maternity leave is cited often, but that strikes me as a
lesser problem in tech relative to the cost of housing. Raising a family in
San Francisco is not a cheap proposition. Rent keeps rising in the Bay Area.

Let's do a thought experiment.

Lets say a man and a women in tech both moved here 5 years ago and each got
small rent-controlled studio apartments for about $1000/month. Let's say they
met and started dating two years ago. They decide they want to move in
together. They can forego one dwelling and share a studio apartment, or they
can look on the market. They look around for a one-bedroom. Two years ago, a
one bedroom is probably going for $2500 a month. Fast forward to today and
they decide to have a kid. Everything is great for the first 1-2 years, but by
2017, they feel like they need a 2-bedroom. They start looking around and see
that the only options cost about $5000 to $6000 month. That's a huge cost of
living increase before the cost of child-rearing and is far more likely to
drive people (men and women) out of the industry than unfavorable maternity
leave policies.

In the thought experiment above, both a man and a woman both leave tech in SF
together once they are forced out of the area by the conflict between housing
prices and raising a family. The different is that the age distribution for
men is likely to much broader than for women because of the biological clock.
A man marrying and having a kid could likely be anywhere from 27 or so to past
40, where the range for women is likely to have approximately the same lower
bound, but a much lower higher bound. I suspect 33 or so. This would suggest
that housing prices are more likely to prematurely end the careers of women in
tech in San Francisco.

------
natmaster
Earlier in the article the author states that both men and women have bias.
Then we get this quote, "If tech culture is going to change, everyone needs to
change, especially men and most especially leaders."

It would be nice to know why "especially men," with no foundation for this
statement it makes it hard to believe as a scientist, and even harder to act
upon.

Any revisions with this included would be greatly appreciated. :)

~~~
thsealienbstrds
This article is heavily biased. Consider that the case of the other 59%(!) is
not explored in the article even a little bit... You'd think a position paper
that is proposing solutions would at least cover potentially existing
solutions before concluding that the system needs an overhaul.

------
ousta
frankly, the IT industry has to be the fairest industry in the world. the
problem with statistics when one side has few data and the other side a lot
(women in IT vs men in IT) is that you can "choose" datasets that speak for
what we look for. it is easy to pick the bottom male engineers and compare
them to women and im pretty sure women will be better paid at "similar" jobs
(haven't seen one similar job in 10 years in the it industry but ok).

I am myself married to a woman who codes and as long as she has shown to her
managers that her productivity and quality of work was excellent she never got
discriminated. people assume everything should come to them because it came to
others. a company is not some socialist everland where everyone gets paid
same. people get paid what their are worth (minus/plus negotiation skills)

as for women leaving the field. knowing that most engineers in big companies
or services companies are leaving the field to become PM or manager of
something I see this as a sign that women are more passionate about their
carreer than about IT.

------
flipp3r
Didn't read the whole article but this stood out to me;

"Confirm that men and women with the same qualifications are earning the same
amount and that they are receiving promotions and raises at similar rates (and
if not, explore why)."

Yeah, no. I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on
skill, it's all in salary negotiations. If you work for a company where
salaries aren't public, then this is the case for you. Also, although
anecdotal, in my experience men are willing to risk more when they know
they're worth more than what they're being paid.

~~~
rmc
> I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill

How many companies claim to be a "meritocracy"? If it's a big lie, we should
admit it.

~~~
warkdarrior
Negotiating is also a skill. Most companies are negotiation meritocracies.

~~~
rmc
They claim to be technical skill/programming meritocracies.

------
natmaster
I'm curious about this quote, "Investors preferred entrepreneurial ventures
pitched by a man than an identical pitch from a woman by a rate of 68% to 32%
in a study conducted jointly by HBS, Wharton, and MIT Sloan. “Male-narrated
pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based than were the
same pitches narrated by a female voice.”"

They leave out all details on how the study was conducted. Does anyone know
whether it was the same words, and they just changed the name, or if they
actually composed different pitches?

~~~
jmiwhite
This is addressed in the study[0] on the third page (4429):

"The pitch videos showed images related to the ventures, but they did not show
the entrepreneurs themselves. Participants heard the entrepreneur’s voice-over
narration while they watched each video. This video pitch format allowed us to
dub in a male voice and a female voice (randomly assigned), holding the
narration script constant. After watching the videos, participants chose which
company to fund."

[0]:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf](http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf)

~~~
danieltillett
This is such garbage science I can't believe it was published in PNAS outside
of an old direct submission. Using only one narrator for each sex just tests
the narrator and tells us nothing about the role of gender.

------
venomsnake
> Create a collaborative environment Stanford research studies document that
> women are more likely to dislike competitive environments compared to men
> and are more likely to select out of them

That is not how it works. Tech is as pure marketplace of ideas as possible. So
while we should all collaborate after the decisions are made, the process
before them is by definition adversarial. We must nitpick and deconstruct each
other's solutions. Because we programmers cannot work if we don't understand
anything in full. To grok it.

~~~
tracker1
There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I understand where you are
coming from." and "You are a god damned idiot, what the hell are you
thinking." ... I have to admit, I've thought the latter on more than one
occasion having to fix a bug, or do a feature enhancement in a piece of
software. I try to be more sensitive in my actual interactions though.

You can review, advise and even critique without being outright abusive. I
tend to take similar arguments when people want to use curse word filters...
tone is a hell of a lot more than specific verbiage.

~~~
malandrew

       There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I 
       understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god     
       damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking."
    

True, but I don't see how this is a gender issue, but an issue with how
specific individuals handle competitive and potentially abrasive environments.
Women are as capable of handling competitive and abrasive environments as men
and I've met plenty of men that can't handle competitive or abrasive
environments and end up opting out.

------
natmaster
I'm curious why only one of the studies about gender-bias has anything to do
with tech. Are there just not enough studies being done in that field? Are
there conclusions we should be making about the world at large? Why has the
author chosen to focus on tech in the title, and yet diverge once getting to
evidence?

------
imh
Surprised not to see this [1] cited next to the Yale study for the sake of
completeness.

[1]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract)

------
orionblastar
Most likely this submission will be flagged as most sexism or racism articles
get flagged.

Corporate American needs a major reform. US society need a major reform. Our
culture and community need major reforms. The way boys and girls are raised
need to be changed, the way they are educated and develop social skills and
people skills need to change as well.

As it is Corporate America and the Tech industry has developed a certain
mindset based on the power elite of Silicon Valley that controls VC and who
gets on the board of directors via shareholders. Everyone has to work 80+
hours a week, and it is hostile to trying to raise a family. Corporations
favor the worker who is single over one that is married and has children. They
don't like it when there is responsibilities other than work that an employees
has. Which is why there is no good maternity leave, or even child care
services. Heck in most cases you have to drop your religion and become non-
practicing so you don't attend services so you can work more hours.

When I was a young boy in the 1970s it was different, people got the weekends
off and spent it with the family with family picnics and they only worked 40+
hours a week, and took off for family matters. The 1980s and 1990s changed
that and the Dotcom Boom made the Startups and marathon coding that required
more time per week to work. People got less sleep, worked more hours, gave up
relationships and family, and put everything into working a job.

For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from
all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. I took time
off to pick up my son from a babysitter because child care was not offered and
my wife worked a different shift, and I got made fun of because I was taking
care of my son instead of my wife. I ended up on short term disability and
when I returned I was fired for being sick. You see once you become mentally
ill they don't want you, even if you were hurt in the line of duty. Which is
why so many mentally ill people hide their illnesses and go untreated and then
do a suicide later on. I ended up on disability in 2003.

I never made it back to work. But I know of all of the problems in the
industry and can talk about them freely without worrying that I'll be fired
for talking about them.

In order to make up diversity, many tech companies use the H1B Visa program to
hire people from India because they are not white males and because they will
work for less money. Being from India gives them a more diverse work force,
and they are disposable employees. If they don't do what they are told, the
Visa is canceled and they go back to their native country. Then the company
hires someone else. It is a big racket.

~~~
WalterBright
> When I was a young boy in the 1970s it was different

People in the 70's thought work life was hellacious and going deeper into
hell, just like today, and every decade since (and probably every prior
decade). I recall people declaring they weren't going to have children and
bring them into the rotten world. Of course, the politicians all campaigned on
fixing everything, just like today, and nothing changed, just like today.

Source: I was working for a living in the 70's.

~~~
orionblastar
As I grew up in the 1970s we knew it wasn't a perfect world. My father's
generation wanted to fix things and make it better for our generation.

We had family picnics on the weekends because back then hardly anyone worked
on the weekends.

Around the 1980s that had changed and the family picnics had stopped. It was
the Me decade, Reagan was in charge, everything had changed and the PC Era had
just started with the IBM PC and DOS dominating business.

I got an Amiga 1000 with the 1020 5.25" floppy drive and PC-Transformer
software to emulate DOS on it. That way I had all the features of the Amiga
and could still run DOS programs like Turbo Pascal for my college on it. Later
on I got the Amax dongle and Mac 128 ROM chip to run Mac software on the
Amiga. The fact that it ran DOS and Mac software didn't matter as the PCs had
dominated the Amiga when VGA and Sound Blaster cards became standard.

I think since the 1970s that the world did get better because we got easier to
use software and easier to use computers to make things easier for a lot of
people. The Internet made buying things easier and web sites automated things
to cut down on costs.

What got worse is that our advanced technology needs carbon burning power
sources that contribute to global warming aka climate change. The world is
still hell to some people and they might not want to raise children, but some
people still raise children anyway.

The truth is most of the people do the hard work to make the elite 1% richer
who profit from their labor. The only exception to this is doing your own
startup and then building something worth value and then IPOing for millions
to make yourself rich. The trick is having a business plan that works, and not
just another Dotcom cookie cutter business plan ripped off from another
company.

