Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#31

Post by matt_wulfeck » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #20

1) Discourage your work 'culture' from being built around aggressive tech code reviews/debates/arguments/chat where young males love to beat their chest 2) Some flexibility on hours/location when children come. Women have a harder 'stop' than men do on their child bearing age, which frequently coincides with moving into senior development roles.

It doesn't even need to be "young males beating their chest".

I've been in plenty of hostile reviews with completely harmless, introverted, soft spoken INTJ-types who simply can't get past some nitpick because it doesn't fit into their perfect, logical world view and refuse to budge an inch.

Our industry has a personality problem as much or more as it has a sex problem.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#32

Post by sebcat » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #20

1) Discourage your work 'culture' from being built around aggressive tech code reviews/debates/arguments/chat where young males love to beat their chest 2) Some flexibility on hours/location when children come. Women have a harder 'stop' than men do on their child bearing age, which frequently coincides with moving into senior development roles.

> 2) Some flexibility on hours/location when children come. Women have a harder 'stop' than men do on their child bearing age, which frequently coincides with moving into senior development roles.

Also paid maternity leave, funded by taxes.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#33

Post by jrubinovitz » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

DeusExMachina wrote: post #4

Am I wrong or all the issues seem to be not gender related but about management and they apply to both sexes?

If these are your issues as well, you can join in and help fix them. No one is trying to invalidate your problems; this is a call to action for better engineering management practices.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#34

Post by latenightcoding » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #20

1) Discourage your work 'culture' from being built around aggressive tech code reviews/debates/arguments/chat where young males love to beat their chest 2) Some flexibility on hours/location when children come. Women have a harder 'stop' than men do on their child bearing age, which frequently coincides with moving into senior development roles.

Point number 1 is ridiculous and sexist. Oh yeah let's ship code that hasn't been reviewed because the young males in our company will act like chimpanzees, and those pesky technical debates let's scratch those too. Let's just use whatever piece of technology is trending today on HN

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#35

Post by buckbova » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

songzme wrote: post #25

The most important for me is directing social conversations. Most people think that social event is a time for everybody to talk freely about whatever topics, but no. The point of social event is inclusiveness. I see this scenario happening over and over again: Social event starts off friendly. Gradually, the conversation starts turning very technical or very sci-fi, then women turned away and formed their own social…

> The most important for me is directing social conversations.

You want the manager to micro-manage a happy hour? Sounds like torture.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#36

Post by StargazyPi » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #27

striking wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infantilizing much?

Generalizing, actually. But I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing. Taken individually, you'll find folks all over any given spectrum, but if we're going to address "Women in Tech" vs the implicit "Men in Tech" then we can't just say "well the two are exactly the same and therefore there's no discussion to be had." Of course there's differences between men and women. Different values, different priorities, d…

Can you pick out any problems in particular pointed out in this article, that are more frequently picked up on by women?

Most of the common ones seem to be a company or manager's words not matching their actions. The sample sizes I've experienced may be fairly small so far (very few female colleagues, as ever), but I've seen men and women leave in equal measure for that type of transgression.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#37

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #27

striking wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infantilizing much?

Generalizing, actually. But I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing. Taken individually, you'll find folks all over any given spectrum, but if we're going to address "Women in Tech" vs the implicit "Men in Tech" then we can't just say "well the two are exactly the same and therefore there's no discussion to be had." Of course there's differences between men and women. Different values, different priorities, d…

[deleted]

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#38

Post by scandox » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

sgustard wrote: post #21

Zikes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a case to be made that, in general, women may be more sensitive to some universal tech industry issues which men tend to shrug off or otherwise deal with differently.

I think there are valid examples, e.g.: 90% of my coworkers are male. Men: don't notice. Women: might notice.

Um hope I'm not being humourless but obviously if the percentage was reversed then the Men would notice and a majority would be somewhat bothered by it. Especially if they perceived a difference in how they were treated as part of that smaller group...

Isn't this kind of the point? Am I missing summat?

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#39

Post by autotune » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

The pay factor is definitely something that should be looked at more. I should not have find out, after talking to any woman in tech who has a passion for it, that they're basically just barely able to make it when others with the same duties at the same or other companies make a livable wage.

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#40

Post by jackhack » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

songzme wrote: post #25

The most important for me is directing social conversations. Most people think that social event is a time for everybody to talk freely about whatever topics, but no. The point of social event is inclusiveness. I see this scenario happening over and over again: Social event starts off friendly. Gradually, the conversation starts turning very technical or very sci-fi, then women turned away and formed their own social…

And if someone in tech isn't interested in tech and doesn't like conversations about tech and feels excluded when others talk about tech... remind me again why they are in tech?