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Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

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Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#101
post #80

I think whenever you are a "minority" in anything you run the risk of being felt left out. If your group comprises only 20% of something, then it is always going to be an issue. The problem with the gender gap is that it will never go away. Prejudice against a race, ethic group, or religion is a mistake. People are generally people and we have more in common than we don't. And as time goes on, I think you will see th…

http://i.imgur.com/reUNxYu.png Other engineering fields are not having this much trouble with it.

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Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#103

I think whenever you are a "minority" in anything you run the risk of being felt left out. If your group comprises only 20% of something, then it is always going to be an issue. The problem with the gender gap is that it will never go away. Prejudice against a race, ethic group, or religion is a mistake. People are generally people and we have more in common than we don't. And as time goes on, I think you will see th…

I see a big issue is that you were encouraging STEM activity at the high school level, there was likely a multitude of years where those same girls were pushed in other directions. I believe it has to start earlier and not as a forced thing but as an acceptable and encouraged and praised choice.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#104

I think whenever you are a "minority" in anything you run the risk of being felt left out. If your group comprises only 20% of something, then it is always going to be an issue. The problem with the gender gap is that it will never go away. Prejudice against a race, ethic group, or religion is a mistake. People are generally people and we have more in common than we don't. And as time goes on, I think you will see th…

Even if it were true that women just aren't interested in math and science, that's a different issue. Even if somehow our DNA mandated the situation that only 13% of engineers were women, there's no reason for those 13% to put up with the bullshit they're subjected to. So if you start with 13% women through some natural process, then a lot of those women have to put up with the issues the article mentions, wouldn't a lot of the them leave the industry and lower the percentage further? I think that's a big part of what's happening.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#105
Sounds like a problem with leadership.

Failure should result out of poor leadership in the end. On my team I don't care for your gender, your race, your culture or your social image. I only care that you can get the job done. If I know you can, then I'll give it to you. If I think it allows for time to learn, then I'll give it to the ones who need to grow. If you think you aren't given a chance, then speak up and I'll give you a shot at something. Poor leaders will deny those opportunities.

But I believe that there is more good leadership as opposed to poor leadership in our industry, and that articles like this create misguided issues.

Also, it is too easy for anyone to go and find another job; especially if they have talent. A full on exit means something else, something these articles haven't shown yet. For example, my last experience with this type of issue was with a coworker, a gay black male, who decided to quit in the middle of a project he was leading. He was falling way behind and presenting demos with bugs & poor functionality. All would've been fine and understandable if it weren't for the developer misleading the boss and stating that the project was on track and doing well. After continuous failure our boss eventually gave him extensions but was obviously was not happy about it. The boss began to put pressure on and keep a watchful eye over new commits. The senior ultimately chose not to continue and quit. On his way out he complained of bullying and not being appreciated. He declared that he was a senoir and should've been included in more decision making and that other senior developers were treated with higher favoritism because they got "cooler projects" and he did not. He was partly right, but only because he had not shown that he could get the work done, and rather shown quite the opposite. He had never proven his skills when given the chance. He faltered at all chances and yet still had some type of delusional self-entitlement. He left and his project was delivered 2 months late even after his poor code-base was heavily refactored by the next lead. I recently chatted him to ask how he was doing and he stated that his experience on our team and with our boss was so negative that he hasn't looked for a new job yet, and is even considering a career change. I agreed that he should do what is good for him, but only because I consciously knew he is in no place to be a senior developer in this industry (but he will never tell you that, and neither will any journalist trying to make a story out of it).

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#106

I think whenever you are a "minority" in anything you run the risk of being felt left out. If your group comprises only 20% of something, then it is always going to be an issue. The problem with the gender gap is that it will never go away. Prejudice against a race, ethic group, or religion is a mistake. People are generally people and we have more in common than we don't. And as time goes on, I think you will see th…

I see a big issue is that you were encouraging STEM activity at the high school level, there was likely a multitude of years where those same girls were pushed in other directions. I believe it has to start earlier and not as a forced thing but as an acceptable and encouraged and praised choice.

That goes against the intent of the parents though. If a parent wants a child to go into some other non-STEM field, I don't see how anyone has the right to go against that by brainwashing kids into doing something else.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Partly it's because corporate environments prefer bluster to quieter expertise but the answer shouldn't be to tell women to be bigger blowhards than the men in order to get to do interesting stuff. This often seems like a better dimension on which to analyze these "gender in the workplace" issues. That is, these issues arise more often due to the typical characteristics and behaviors that members of each gender dis…

It also affects quieter, sometimes more effective men. "Speak up!" It not infrequently reduces to physical posturing. And volume escalation. I kid you not. (Not to mention, that these loud and aggressive types often make particularly open-space workplaces much greater challenges to the concentration of... this quiet, effective type (me), for one.) Why does engineering increasingly suck in the U.S. (excluding some of…

> Next up: Do they succeed on the international scene?

Ha... is there yet a "Godwin/Poe/Betteridge/etc's Law" equivalent for how quickly HN threads converge towards Trump?

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#108
post #94
post #39

Or it could be that tons of girls get sold into taking up the tech field at a young and impressionable age by presidential speeches, books telling them to "lean in", and articles like this that hint there is some conspiracy of men out there actively working to damage women and they are needed to right the wrong. Then, after spending 4+ years in college studying surface friction losses or CRDT applications without tom…

Then, after spending 4+ years in college studying surface friction losses or CRDT applications without tombstones, and n+ years in industry trying to debug someone else's too-clever binary-flag-in-ruby code, a large number of them ... realize they really don't enjoy this work So... on average you believe men just like engineering more than women? Because of... what... genetics or something?

Seems to me that genetics is a perfectly acceptable answer.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#109

My company has desperately tried to hire female candidates into our engineering team, which is currently all male. From the dozens of applications that we got for the position, only about 5% were female. After interviewing them, they either declined the position, or weren't able to complete our take home challenge (nothing against these women, we have lots of guys fail it too!) So, yeah, I'd love to have some females…

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Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#110

I think whenever you are a "minority" in anything you run the risk of being felt left out. If your group comprises only 20% of something, then it is always going to be an issue. The problem with the gender gap is that it will never go away. Prejudice against a race, ethic group, or religion is a mistake. People are generally people and we have more in common than we don't. And as time goes on, I think you will see th…

What is interesting about this hypothesis is that it does not require men to be especially sexist or treat women poorly. Men only have to be a bit more assertive, or better able to build coalitions among their colleagues, for this effect to occur. These factors, plus the general observation that women tend to score significantly higher than men on the Big 5 trait of Agreeableness, make this thesis plausible. I look forward to seeing it tested further. This study appears to focus on female engineers who have already passed at least some filters for aptitude/interest in engineering, so one would expect any possible effects of biological sex differences/average population differences to be less important to the results.
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