Earlier quoted context omitted.
Supersets are not exclusive.
What do you mean?
Maybe each gender could have a set that's the superset of their common needs. Or maybe it was meant that the superset can equal the original set.
Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
211–220 of 510 posts
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
Yeah, no kidding, nobody has a policy to do that. But there are several factors, including: 1. Women tend to negotiate less aggressively 2. Women who negotiate aggressively tend to be perceived worse than men doing the exact same thing 3. Implicit bias affects the amount of money an employer sees fit to offer in the first place As to what to do, here some ideas: * Massachusetts' law barring employers from asking abou…
> Maybe a "Costco auto club" model, where the price is set up-front with no haggling, would be a good idea. Reddit tried to do this but it was kind of tied up with all the other issues they had. Not 100% sure on this one.
The negative to that is (unless every company plays by those same rules) you're limiting yourself in who you can hire. The more expensive (and, presumably, more skilled) developers will go work somewhere that will pay them more (based on that skill), while the cheapest (and, presumably, lowest skilled) developers will come work for you because they know you'll pay them more than others will.
There are benefits to being able to pay people what you feel they are worth to your company. Is it worth losing those benefits.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of us don't want it to be anything more than that. That's what the rest of our life is for.
That's completely fair. But my proposition was not about your preferences. I conjectured that a shift to a more whole view of employers (rather than just machines) would be beneficial for most people.
The purpose of my life outside of work right now is dating women so I think you are treading dangerous waters by asking people to bring a more "whole" view of themselves into the workplace when that is perceived to be the problem in the first place.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#214Get 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 either ignoring the problem, or circular reasoning. "Oh well of course don't allow that kind of behaviour; it makes employees uncomfortable and that doesn't help make money." Ok, but how do you define that?
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
My issue with your post is this: obviously those things are very serious problems. But they are only the most egregious ones. I feel like any company not run by dolts can manage not to allow punishing women with the rationale that they might get pregnant and to stop blatant sexual harassment -- after all, these things are completely illegal. But even if we solve them there are still lots of more subtle ways that comp…
And my problem with your response is that it still happens every single day legal or not. Let's fix the egregious problems for good, then we can focus on the subtle ones. Take a solid engineer like Valerie Aurora or Sarah Sharp or even say Jessie Frazelle (in addition to the previously mentioned Uber engineer). This happens to other human beings, it is awful, it should stop. I would LOVE to work in a team with any of…
I don't think addressing one precludes addressing the other.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
CC's boss's boss? A bit passive-aggressive for a friendly gesture isn't it?
Do you think a male boss inviting a female employee over for "drinks" on a Saturday night at his home is nothing more than a "friendly gesture"?
It could be. There's no context here. In this constructed example sure, it's not a friendly gesture. But it is a poor example.
Here's the one I'd use:
"Hey employee #333 want to sex"
See? No context necessary
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, due to the outrageous skew in gender, I think you have to read these things more deeply. There are offices with 18 or 20 men and 0 women or 1 woman. That doesn't happen statistically - certainly not with the incentives of exceedingly high salaries and a field that is open to all (by means of a computer science undergraduate program.) Look at something that is much harder than becoming a software engineer: becom…
> There are offices with 18 or 20 men and 0 women or 1 woman. That doesn't happen statistically - certainly not with the incentives of exceedingly high salaries [...] It's entirely possible that I am extrapolating from my own naivety, but do young men really get into software development for the money? I don't think any of my friends were thinking about our future salaries when we started programming after school. It…
Yes, it is an uncontroversial fact that the number of computer science degrees achieved correlates to the social perception of CS as a path to wealth, and the implication is that some people enrol in CS because they think there is money in it - http://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-sci...
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, no kidding, nobody has a policy to do that. But there are several factors, including: 1. Women tend to negotiate less aggressively 2. Women who negotiate aggressively tend to be perceived worse than men doing the exact same thing 3. Implicit bias affects the amount of money an employer sees fit to offer in the first place As to what to do, here some ideas: * Massachusetts' law barring employers from asking abou…
> Maybe a "Costco auto club" model, where the price is set up-front with no haggling, would be a good idea. Reddit tried to do this but it was kind of tied up with all the other issues they had. Not 100% sure on this one. The negative to that is (unless every company plays by those same rules) you're limiting yourself in who you can hire. The more expensive (and, presumably, more skilled) developers will go work some…
I don't know. Maybe you just offer competitive salaries for everyone and everyone wants to work for you. Maybe your superstars actually get a different title and responsibilities and you're just more upfront about how you decide. I think there are plenty of companies out there with a pretty narrow band for any given position and this way of doing things eliminates the anxiety about whether you negotiated well or not.
Also, I think most companies can't really hope to attract the world's very best programmers anyway. If everyone says they're hiring the best they can't all be right.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#219My dev organization had, at one point, a fairly respectable gender ratio (relative to other orgs, which isn't saying much). Over time, the women in our dev org have had a much higher attrition rate, because they've moved on to other opportunities. I've never heard a complaint from any of them that women were treated differently here. I have a suspicion that women who get into tech tend to be more self-assured than th…
I disagree with your generality. I think women who work in startups and thrive/survive in that environment are probably more resilient than the average woman, but I also think that imposter syndrome is rampant in all women in the tech field, and that's usually not a sign of self-assurance.
As with everyone, there's things that you as an individual can let slide and be OK with, and there's things that another person can let slide and be OK with. My wife's an engineer (PE) in a very traditional male-dominated field, and she's good enough at what she does that she gets put on the big projects as the lead. When she deals with prejudice and outright insults from older men, it's like water off a duck's back, because she's dealt with that situation for her entire education and career. Other women or younger men who treat her as an inferior really get under her skin.
Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Way more often than not, yes. Is your default position to assume there's an agenda behind every invitation?
You don't need to see an agenda behind every invitation to recognize the agenda behind this one. For those genuinely unclear, it's a combination of things - the individual nature of the invitation, the private nature of the venue, the timing and explicit involvement of libations whose effects often include the lowering of inhibitions - all in all it's just a super sketchy thing to all of a sudden pop up in a previous…
I mean that's the thing, I don't deny that if this a purely professional relationship then this comment is incredibly out of place. But often times professional relationships become less professional and more friendly. I don't deny that it is creepy from your perspective.