281–290 of 510 posts
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 have read that in the infamous "Is there anything good about men" essay, but not sure.
As an example for my experience: in the student hall, there were sometimes people who smelled bad or didn't integrate. The men would usually just ignore them (after all, most people only live in student halls for a limited time, so the problem would resolve itself), whereas the women would start banding together and mobbing against them. They would become more and more preoccupied with plans to get rid of the unwanted person.
To a lesser degree, I saw this kind of thing play out at companies or shared housing situations, too.
Sexual 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?
A big takeaway for me was that the data showed men and women being largely equal in pay for the earlier parts of their careers when you control for various things. When families start entering the equation, women often prioritize different things in their job, or consider changing jobs that offer these things. One of the big new priorities is...surprise...flexibility. When you have a family, flexibility because worth its weight in gold. If women are still predominantly the primary caretaker at home, it makes sense that they would need to optimize for whatever gives them the best balance there.
However the dark side of this, as discussed int he podcast, is that it can often lead to things like bosses not giving out choice assignments with lots of travel for example, because they don't think the employee would want that or be able to manage it. That sort of thing compounds over time and leads to slower progression, less leverage when asking for raises, etc.
The episode was a real eye opener for me because it brought some interesting data to the table.
[1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender...
This is a topic of great interest to me. In part because I love coding and think that anyone else that does should have the same opportunities. In part because though I'm a cis straight male, I've generally gotten along with women better as friends and colleagues. And in part because I'm generally socially liberal, so something like this where the TREND line is going in the wrong direction is particularly bothersome.…
Yep, my ex-wife could easily go on a tirade about that, and that was her #1 complaint about working in the legal field: other women. But it wasn't all women, it was just a certain, small minority of women, and also the HR department for refusing to do anything about it, or somehow blaming her for these women's crazy behavior.
Am 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…
Women more likely to encounter this? This stuff happens all the time to everyone. I'm not sure how this is something a woman is more likely to encounter.
It is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues. Predictably, the top comment on this post that tries to move forward on a very real problem that has been empirically established is an appeal to stick with the status quo. I'm sorry, but companies have always focused on making money. Saying that the way to handle this very specific problem is to focus on making mo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Interestingly, I've heard women working in those fields lament the lack of male representation. In teaching and child care, some kids just respond better to men. In nursing, it's because men are generally going to have an easier time providing care for patients who are overweight.
It is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues. Predictably, the top comment on this post that tries to move forward on a very real problem that has been empirically established is an appeal to stick with the status quo. I'm sorry, but companies have always focused on making money. Saying that the way to handle this very specific problem is to focus on making mo…
It seems to be kind of implied by the approach (why ask only women), which is exactly what annoys people because it is such a sweeping accusation.
I wonder in discussions like this, how many people who bemoan the masculine tech culture consider themselves to be part of the problem? Do you consider yourself part of the problem and too masculine? Or do you think it is only the other men who are to blame?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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. Get a fucking grip. Pointing out a buffer overflow isn't sexism. It's pointing out a fucking buffer overf…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Actually, that's not true. Generic "Engineering" is just as bad as CS. In fact, CS is slowly approaching the Engineering level (from the top). What's interesting is that the graph that's often bandied about left off engineering, to show CS as the sole outlier. Things that make you go "hmmm...."