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

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

#51

Post by paulddraper »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #31
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.

You nailed it.

Unreasonable people come in all shapes and personalities.

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

#52

Post by openasocket »

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 only woman engineer on the team spends the night sipping on her drink quietly wishing she found these topics more interesting or wishing she took more CS classes so she could appreciate the intensity of the conversation

Women might have different interests than men, but why do you think they might be stymied by technical conversation? She's an engineer the same as the rest, unless she was hired because of tokenism she should absolutely be able to hold her own in a technical conversation.

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

#53

Post by amorphid »

Get everyone focused on thinking about the team's mission, role, and what it takes to get the job done. Drill that into everyone's head and stick to it. Let everything else go.

A mentor once told me that business fundamentally revolves around making money, saving money, saving time, and making customers happier. I like thinking about work that way, as it has nothing to do with religion, sex, gender, age, height, phase of the moon (maybe you employ werewolves), etc.

Focusing on work can be hard though, because it might mean you will encounter a conflict when it comes to supporting a cause with good intentions. Say the MinorityCodingClub wants to host an event in your office. Personally, I think promoting diversity is generally a healthy thing. But what if MinorityCodingClub doesn't allow people not in that minority to participate in the event? You may find part of your staff wants to allow it, and part of your staff opposes it (perhaps silently).

Staying focused on making money, saving money, saving time, and making customers happier. It's hard enough to get people to come together on doing that, so don't tolerate a culture that gets in the way of making that happen.

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

#54

Post by pdpi »

latenightcoding wrote: post #34
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

I didn't read that as suggesting that you shouldn't do code reviews.

The issue is when code reviews become a competitive sport, and more about technical oneupmanship than they are about improving code quality and team knowledge.

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

#55

Post by Humdeee »

latenightcoding wrote: post #34
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

Can you point me to the part of the sentence where OP says not to review code entirely? You sound like you're just making his point.

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

#56

Post by ExactActuation »

These are both ridiculous. (1) can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Women should be just as passionate about the work. (2) There's such a thing as a stay-at-home-dads and men that take care of their children. What ever happened to the chant of 'equality'?

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

#57

Post by zer00eyz »

Zikes wrote: post #11
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?

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.

Your being down voted because no one wants to hear it, but there is some truth to it.

It isn't so much a biological difference (there may be some of that) but one that is likely a byproduct of how we socialize children [1].

Fixing this issue in adults is a hell of a lot harder to fix than it is in kids.

It doesn't help that software engineering as a whole, is to varying degrees, broken. From how we interview to how we manage projects [2]. We simply have no idea how to build something effective and repeatable within the constraints of the current system.

[1] I could put a million different links here, lets just use this one and you can do your own research after that: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-girls-bo...

[2] Again illustrative example, pick your own poison here as well: https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-experience-trap

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

#58

Post by Zikes »

StargazyPi wrote: post #36
Zikes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know of any studies, anecdotes aren't data, and I don't know of any particular issues listed in the article that might affect women more than men.

The only point I'm trying to make is the obvious one: men and women are different. It's a stupid point, taken at face value, but it's one that seems to get lost every time someone says "but men face those same issues" or "that doesn't seem like a gendered issue to me".

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

kfrzcode wrote: post #22
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.

Do you have any supporting evidence to help build this case? I don't buy it.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by StargazyPi »

warcher wrote: post #16

I am (perhaps naively) encouraged at the familiarity of these engineers' daily gripes. That's progress, haha.

Ain't it great?

It's always alarming to read stories such as Susan Fowler's, that remind you sexism is still out there in force, in places. But it's great to read things like this, which implies at least a good chunk of fellow female devs are having the freedom to leave because their company doesn't care about software quality.

As you said, progress!

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