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

Post by briandear » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:16 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #77

amorphid wrote: post #53

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, phas…

I mean these Silicon Valley firms keep getting caught in blatant sexual harassment cases. I think a lot of them need, like, basic remedial education.

Post by mememachine » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:16 PM UTC

madsbuch wrote: post #75

amorphid wrote: post #53

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, phas…

I think this thinking is discouraging. Bot to men but even more to women and it might be the reason why there are so few women in STEM fields. I think generally work places should be much more well rounded. We spend a considerable amount of time there, so why not allow it to be a place where we expand our lives instead of a place where we only "make money, save money, save time, and make customers happier"?

Post by emodendroket » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:17 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.

Post by hasenj » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:17 PM UTC

Post by jbmorgado » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

ck425 wrote: post #70

latenightcoding wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No one's saying we shouldn't have code reviews or technical debates, just that we need to avoid being overly aggressive. A lot of young males (including myself previously, and sometimes currently) can be very aggressive in presenting their views. This disenfranchises less outspoken people in our teams, particularly woman who generally can't be as aggressive without negative social ramifications.