I am (perhaps naively) encouraged at the familiarity of these engineers' daily gripes. That's progress, haha.
Hmm my takeaway from the familiarity was that it's harder for woman to manage up, which sucks. :(
Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
81–90 of 510 posts
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#82These 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'?
1) zzzzz
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#83Get 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, phas…
Wait, how does your advice answer your question about the event? Are you saying that you shouldn't host a diversity event because it doesn't explicitly match the four things you listed? Because someone might not like the event? I don't get it.
It seems like what he's saying is that you shouldn't allow it to happen because it's not strictly work-related but I find it hard to agree with that thinking.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#84the perspective of women is really valuable and we should be thankful to hear from this group of women, speaking honestly about their experience.
HOWEVER...
it was remarkable how little of the issues they discussed had anything whatever to do with their gender. I think this is really important and should be a good clue for followups. How about YC opens up the question series to engineers from all backgrounds? I expect to see a remarkable similarity in answers about what constitutes a good (or bad) work environment.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#85Am I wrong or all the issues seem to be not gender related but about management and they apply to both sexes?
> Especially as a woman, I worry about being labeled hyper-sensitive, or that my gender will influence a person’s reaction to my feedback (e.g. the perception that women are hysterical).
[...]
> The final straw has typically been something like my manager making an off-hand remark that is thoughtless and rude, or perhaps a project I care about deeply is axed, or I’m denied a raise, or someone I care about at work is sexually harassed or gets fired.
To me these sound like issues that women are more likely to encounter.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#86Sexual harassment and payment inequality came up a lot in the last women in computer science event I went to.
> payment inequality
Perceived or real? I'm yet to hear about a company that has policy to pay women less. Most have personally-discussed salaries though. If some ladies are paid less, they probably don't haggle as well. What should we do? Deny custom salaries and personal raises?
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#87Get 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, phas…
This is the mentality that leads to drama explosions like at Uber. They were all focused on making money and building a big company. Because of this, they ignored the "little things" like building a HR department that could support women when they were put in bad situations.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, how does your advice answer your question about the event? Are you saying that you shouldn't host a diversity event because it doesn't explicitly match the four things you listed? Because someone might not like the event? I don't get it.
It seems like what he's saying is that you shouldn't allow it to happen because it's not strictly work-related but I find it hard to agree with that thinking.
The whole position is summed up as "Be a corporate drone." I think a lot of us would disagree with it.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#89Am 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.
It's probably true that, for the most part, men are less likely to mind, say, crude sexual remarks about women, but I don't think it follows that we should just tell women to suck it up.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#90These 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'?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13969262 and marked it off-topic.