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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?

#251

Post by dcole2929 »

xienze wrote: post #157
spcelzrd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong. Every industry has management problems. Women leave tech at a rate much higher than they leave other industries. The only conclusion is that tech is a hostile environment for women, or that women are intrinsically unable to perform in tech.

> Women leave tech at a rate much higher than they leave other industries. The only conclusion is that tech is a hostile environment for women, or that women are intrinsically unable to perform in tech. "Men fail to enter [teaching|nursing|child care] at a rate much higher than other industries. The only conclusion is that [teaching|nursing|child care] is a hostile environment for men, or that men are intrinsically u…

Seems like the most logical explanation is that [teaching|nursing|child care] are inherently hostile industries for men. Gender norms in America make it so that men aren't generally trusted around children, and face difficulties in navigating woman dominated fields like nursing.

Are you arguing that tech hasn't developed into a somewhat hostile environment for woman because men face difficulties in some industries as well? Because if so that's a poor argument. It's completely possible for both to be true for the same reason while have different underlying causes

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

#252

Post by dgudkov »

It's striking how many women in this article mention bad relationship with bosses as the main reason to leave. No question, this is a very legitimate reason. I'm just surprised that it looks like it happened quite often through their careers. I did have terrible bosses maybe couple times through my almost 20-year work experience, but it never was so much a problem -- low pay, or boring job were the main reasons I switched employers. I would assume from this article that women are more sensitive to relationships with their bosses than men. Which might require special training for the both parties to overcome. I'm pretty much sure that if several men were asked what made them leave, bosses would not be such a major issue.

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

#253

Post by Jach »

emodendroket wrote: post #110
briandear wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that these are "progressive" companies.

Well, that's a whole different rant but, really, you read about grown men texting their female coworkers incessantly with crude sexual propositions and you have to wonder how they ever came to believe this was acceptable behavior.

Presumably it's like spam, it works some percentage of the time and the consequences for it not working aren't severe.

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

#254

Post by ar15saveslives »

I've never heard a question from women: "What can WE do to be more suitable for modern IT?" All I hear is that I, /u/ar15saveslives, personally, should act differently, look differently, speak differently to make those vulnerable sensitive shy females enjoy working with me.

Why nobody asks "what women have to do to be more comfortable in IT" question? Learn more, participate in OSS/SO, start your own projects - why doesn't it work for "female engineers"?

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

#255

Post by Kroniker »

dgudkov wrote: post #252

It's striking how many women in this article mention bad relationship with bosses as the main reason to leave. No question, this is a very legitimate reason. I'm just surprised that it looks like it happened quite often through their careers. I did have terrible bosses maybe couple times through my almost 20-year work experience, but it never was so much a problem -- low pay, or boring job were the main reasons I swi…

Might be a selection bias issue- the type of women that would participate in this might also be the type to cite relationships a causal factor.

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

#256

Post by zem »

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…

no, that's how you get status quo bias. the current system makes money, so if that's all you focus on, you'll never address the fact that it treats some demographics worse than others.

also, this sort of "extrapolate to the absurd" list ("religion, sex, gender, age, height, phase of the moon (maybe you employ werewolves), etc.") is a classic red flag for someone not caring about the very real inequalities in the system - the most common variant is "i don't care if you're white, black, green or purple...", but what it really works out to is "i think we can just brush any black-person-specific problems under the carpet and everything will be fine".

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

#257

Post by lazyasciiart »

openasocket wrote: post #207
songzme wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend graduated from a bootcamp and she loves coding. But sometimes there are conversations that goes deep into SSDs vs HDDs, bitcoin mining, and other topics unrelated to work that alienated her and she couldn't participate. I was trying to share what I learned from speaking with a few of my friends. Put yourself in the shoes of a woman who wanted a career change and joined a bootcamp. You learned the necessary s…

OK, that makes sense, I thought you were talking in the general, not discussing a particular subset. But I'd argue the issue is more due to not having a 4 year degree than being a woman in a male-dominated field, though that certainly doesn't help. I don't know the statistics, are women in tech more likely to be from bootcamps than men? However, this does remind me of a phenomenon in child psychology, where girls in…

The percentage of bootcamp grads that are female is much higher than the average across tech (~30% for bootcamps v ~15% across industry/university). I don't think bootcamps make up a large enough group for that to make it 'likely' that any given woman is from a bootcamp, but it probably means there's a few pockets where all the women at a company went through a bootcamp.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3050171/where-are-the-women-in-t...

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

#258

Post by Humdeee »

panoptispeech wrote: post #106
Humdeee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The entire purpose of a code review is to highlight things that are wrong. You can't point out things that are wrong without someone being able to spin your comments as some kind of toxic masculine impulse to show basal-primate technical dominance through demonstration of superior shamanistic technical knowledge. Pointing out a buffer overflow isn't sexism. It's pointing out a buffer overflow.

> You can't point out things that are wrong without someone being able to spin your comments as some kind of toxic masculine impulse to show basal-primate technical dominance through demonstration of superior shamanistic technical knowledge.

Who hurt you? I suggest you find greener pastures if you truly believe that.

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

#259

Post by tnecniv »

tptacek wrote: post #132
madsbuch wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Careful. Plenty of STEM fields have much better gender parity than tech. Tech is singularly bad among the STEM fields; only physics is competitively bad. Mathematics, molecular biology, stat --- all have strong female participation. Worth noting: all these other STEM fields are also heavily dependent on software and computer technology, and women do fine in them.

Are you sure math is doing much better than tech? The others I know are much more balanced but I thought that women were underrepresented in math as well.

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

#260

Post by Arizhel »

xienze wrote: post #157
spcelzrd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong. Every industry has management problems. Women leave tech at a rate much higher than they leave other industries. The only conclusion is that tech is a hostile environment for women, or that women are intrinsically unable to perform in tech.

> Women leave tech at a rate much higher than they leave other industries. The only conclusion is that tech is a hostile environment for women, or that women are intrinsically unable to perform in tech. "Men fail to enter [teaching|nursing|child care] at a rate much higher than other industries. The only conclusion is that [teaching|nursing|child care] is a hostile environment for men, or that men are intrinsically u…

You're changing the argument. The OP said that women leave tech at a much higher rate than other industries. You claim that men enter certain professions at a much lower rate. This is apples and oranges.
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