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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?

#301

Post by anothercomment »

shawn-furyan wrote: post #294
anothercomment wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the title and the interview didn't mention "women's difficulties with the masculine tech culture", and none of the women who were interviewed brought it up, either. 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 t…

14 day old anonymous troll account intentionally distorting several claims I made.

you wrote: "the context of this discussion is SPECIFICALLY women's difficulties working within the masculine tech culture"

In what way did I misrepresent that? It is the only one of your claims that I referred to.

Btw just because an account is young it is not automatically a troll account. Watch your ageism.

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

#302

Post by emodendroket »

ruleabidinguser wrote: post #239
emodendroket wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't care then it seems like allowing people who do care to hold their women in technology groups or whatever would be fine.

except when its disruptive, which is when i do care.

For instance?

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

#303

Post by ori_b »

michaelchisari wrote: post #190
true_religion wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a part of "don't tolerate a culture that gets in the way of making that [making money] happen" is not tolerating sexism, juvenile behaviour, harassment, or bullying in the workplace. All of those factors make some of your employees less productive.

You would think so, but people are very often willing to damage their own financial self-interest in favor of prejudices, especially when the former is long-term and the latter short-term.

That would fall under "tolerating a culture that gets in the way of making money".

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

#304

Post by emodendroket »

bermanoid wrote: post #272
SEJeff wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think what emodendroket is getting at is not that this stuff is unimportant, but that the vast majority of us have no occasion to address the egregious problems with any regularity, so we should also focus on the things we can affect on a day-to-day basis. While bad things do happen every day across the industry, at any given workplace (or more specifically, within an individual working group) they are fairly infre…

Thanks; you've done better justice to my position than I did.

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

#305

Post by nickstefan12 »

neurotech1 wrote: post #277
yourapostasy wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does software engineering have a gender problem, or a social validation problem? It is no secret that women in nations where software engineering is likely to be a significant source of employment are far more socially attuned than men are; whether this is by nurture or nature is grist for another mill at another time. It is also no secret that software engineers rank lower on social validation than doctors. Empirica…

Quite a few hospitals have women in executive roles, some who are trained nurses, and basically "call the shots" in that role. At San Francisco General Hospital, At least 50% of the Administrator(s)-On-Duty are women. It's a mixture of MDs, and nurses. In fact, I've only personally met one AOD who is male (nurse). The AOD calls the shots on a daily basis. BTW one recent CEO, Susan Currin is a nurse & the current CEO…

Respectfully, I think you missed the point of the parent comment.

Parent comment says: if `(former programmer) turned manager` is more equal in gender than `programmer`, that might mean there is a sorting function that is pulling women out of engineering and into management.

His/her hypothesis is that being a "regular dev" is not very socially respected, and thus, pushes women to want out at a higher rate than other professions, like say, Doctor.

The fact that Doctor gender ratio is similar to Manager Doctor gender ratio, actually fits his hypothesis.

Not saying I disagree with either of you, just re stating.

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

#306

Post by [deleted] »

briandear wrote: post #296
xienze wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Each of those professions have considerable effort to increase the numbers of men working in them. And yet the number never budges, and we don't hear the president and the media blasting said industries over their shameful employment ratios day after day. Instead it's just "hmm yes, that's curious. Well we're working on the problem. Carry on..." Whereas in tech if the ratio isn't 50/50 there's hell to pay. In compa…

The American Counseling Association membership is 80% women. Only 10% of all social workers under the age of 34 are men. 70% of all psychology PhDs go to women. Minority representation is also very tiny. The vast, vast majority of mental health practitioners are white women. Yet those are professions where sex-diversity has a real impact on society. It's far more serious than the sex of the person writing the code fo…

[deleted]

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

#307

Post by emodendroket »

FT_intern wrote: post #270
emodendroket wrote: post #125

Earlier 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…

> As to what to do, here some ideas: This is jumping ahead of ourselves. The first step is problem formulation. Is this a problem in the first place? Why? How do we quantify the problem? How do we quantify a resolution?

Ok. You can investigate that one for yourself.

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

#308

Post by briandear »

scaleout1 wrote: post #195

Few things that comes to my mind - Have clarity around what time people are expected to arrive/leave. If your company offers free food, dont schedule breakfast super early and dinner super late. - Dont schedule meetings at 5:00 pm - Dont change product direction/design based on meetings you had at an after work party Basically acknowledge that people in general and women in particular have responsibilities outside wo…

"women in particular have responsibilities outside work"

Yeah? And men don't?

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

#309

Post by peterwwillis »

anothercomment wrote: post #292
draw_down wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. These issues get talked about so much in our industry, but I don't understand how they're supposed to change if the way we're expecting to fix it is just "business as usual, but uh, don't do discrimination". Obviously there is something wrong with how we got here.

There is not "obviously" something wrong. Would you say there is obviously something wrong with the plumbing industry that keeps women away? Or is it just that the smell of shit is too unpleasant? Likewise, some aspects of tech could simply be unpleasant to women, and there are reasons why men are more likely to put up with unpleasant work (like the need to feed a family). I have personally experienced a lot of unple…

For any given job where biology is not a factor (which is all of them except weight lifting and highly athletic sports), cultural norms are.

Women take care of children, typically, and their shit does not smell like roses. So you need a new hypothesis.

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

#310

Post by Arizhel »

xienze wrote: post #264
Arizhel wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't women also enter tech at a much lower rate than men? Because of said hostility issues.

You have a point there, it can be argued that there's a link. However I do think it's important to compare apples to apples, and not to apple trees. So we should be looking at why men and women leave the industry, and also why they enter.
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