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Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

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Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#1

Post by z_shell »

The JS job market in STL just isn't cutting it for me so I'm thinking of moving to CA and jumping into the tech scene there. Women, non-binary, people of color, how do you vet companies for not having horribly toxic work environments? I feel like I keep getting the same canned PR response of how great the culture is (for assumedly white dudes), but ping pong tables and free beer doesn't mean shit to me if I'm going to be underpaid, harassed, or viewed as not-technical enough on the regular.

What kind of interview questions have you found useful in weeding out unsupportive environments? What factors attract you to one company over the other? What other tips can you provide for reassuring me that I'm not just multiplying my potential abuse factor by jumping into a sea of ego-inflated tech bros?

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#2

Post by maerF0x0 »

If you feel you're underpaid, I encourage you to negotiate aggressively for what you feel you're worth. Amazon is full of resources to help you with that.

As for culture, I'd say just ask. Ask what the team does for fun. That will more or less tell you if you will fit in or not.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#4

Post by alansmitheebk »

I'm not a woman but I have a few ideas that might help:

* Check glassdoor.com to see what current and former employees have said about the company and how they rate it. While the feedback may not be specific to gender / diversity concerns, you can probably get a good feel for whether or not it's a happy place or a disgruntled place.

* Ask how many women work there in developer roles.

* Try to find a publicly traded company to work at verses a startup. A publicly traded company has a real HR department and potentially a lot to lose if they get sued. In a startup, there typically is no HR department. There might be one person who is in charge of some HR-related things like benefit administration, but that person is not equipped to deal with things like handling sexual harassment allegations. That person is also likely be friends with the founders.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#5

Post by emmab »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #2

If you feel you're underpaid, I encourage you to negotiate aggressively for what you feel you're worth. Amazon is full of resources to help you with that. As for culture, I'd say just ask. Ask what the team does for fun. That will more or less tell you if you will fit in or not.

> As for culture, I'd say just ask. Ask what the team does for fun. That will more or less tell you if you will fit in or not.

How will that tell you if they are accepting of e.g. non-binary people?

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#7

Post by galkk »

I do think that you should change your attitude first, and try to expect best from people, not the worst.

I worked in 3 of big4 (Google/Microsoft/Amazon) and you need to try hard to find any harassing environment. Usually, if it's bad, it's bad for everyone, due to project/managerial conditions. All companies have trainings that teach you to prevent harrasment and give ways to report it.

Especially now, when woman can tweet picture of 2 dudes with remark on a convefence and they will have hard time, even if they're guilty in nothing.

After further thought, I think that you're just troll. At least in the places/teams where I've worked, white dudes aren't majority. Wast majority were chinese/indian folks. Also, don't expect to hear anything on non-work related stuff from interviewers - their goal is to evaluate your skills, not your sexual orientation, that doesn't matter in workplace.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#10

Post by fwefwwfe »

This would help white guys, too. It's not like we're immune to toxicity. IME it's usually one bad manager and/or one genius on the team that makes things so bad for everyone else. Maybe it's just been blind luck that I haven't worked on a whole team of sexist people. Here's what I would ask to mitigate these problems (keeping in mind I haven't necessarily asked these myself):

  In what ways does your manager make your life easier?
  How blame oriented is the team?
  How big are the egos on the team?
  What things about the culture or technical processes will surprise me here?
  How would you compare your team, manager, and coworkers to the others?  
    Are they more fun or experienced or do they have team events more?
  How many people have left in the past year and why do you think they really left?
> but ping pong tables and free beer doesn't mean shit to me if I'm going to be underpaid

It's not like you can't tell if you're going to be underpaid before you agree to a salary, is it?

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