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

blog.ycombinator.com

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

#321

Post by FT_intern »

emodendroket wrote: post #307
FT_intern wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's for the benefit of everyone including you.

I find that in these topics, people jump to the problem solving step before problem formulation.

In the best case, there might be a response of "because sexism/racism" to "why this problem".

We have a limited amount of "diversity funds". If the appeal is emotional and one of righteousness, we should use the funds to aid the category of people with the most disadvantages.

That would be foreign immigrants because their native language is not English (almost all documentation, code and communication is in English) and they do not have a good understanding of American culture which cripples them in politics and communication.

Comparatively, the upper middle class white girl or african american is privileged.

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

#322

Post by anothercomment »

shawn-furyan wrote: post #316
peterwwillis wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a 14 day old troll account. I would recommend against expending much effort to persuade a troll, or taking it seriously at all. That being said, you're correct, but the troll is offering ridiculous arguments because it is trying to spread FUD, not because it is genuinely trying to elucidate the issues.

You are the one throwing accusations and ad hominems against somebody you don't know, but I am the troll? Nice...

https://i.imgur.com/SjQclIQ.jpg

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

#323

Post by emodendroket »

mantas wrote: post #314
emodendroket wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

HN doesn't allow to go that deep in comment thread, thus replying there... > How do you figure? If they're able to pass whatever company's interview and negotiation is no longer a factor it seems more likely that salaries will become more equitable. I'd guess the correlation between negotiating skill and technical skill is small at best. In 2-tier (technical + negotiation) interview, candidates have to show they're g…

The way the system is set up now puts the candidate at a disadvantage because he or she has no idea what the company is willing to pay or what their criteria are. In a situation where the cards are laid on the table -- here is the position or positions and here is the salary or salaries -- both parties have the same information and are free to focus entirely on the question of competence. A lot of the negotiation process now involves irrelevant crap like finding out your current salary -- so that then the candidate has set the lowest acceptable offer and the company can negotiate from there.

Besides penalizing candidates for lacking knowledge that isn't really relevant to work performance (like how to dance around offering a current salary, for instance), the current system also tends to perpetuate whatever disparity already exists by tending to base offers at least in part on current salaries, and also will reflect the gender disparity shown in responses to salary negotiations which I mentioned above.

I don't guarantee such a system would make things better but I do think there are some reasons to think it might.

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

#324

Post by Arizhel »

buckbova wrote: post #35
songzme wrote: post #25

The most important for me is directing social conversations. Most people think that social event is a time for everybody to talk freely about whatever topics, but no. The point of social event is inclusiveness. I see this scenario happening over and over again: Social event starts off friendly. Gradually, the conversation starts turning very technical or very sci-fi, then women turned away and formed their own social…

> The most important for me is directing social conversations. You want the manager to micro-manage a happy hour? Sounds like torture.

Why would a work group be going to a happy hour in the first place? That's bad because it assumes everyone is OK with drinking alcohol. Now you're alienating Mormons, ex-alcoholics, people who choose not to drink, and people who get physically ill from drinking alcohol. How about keeping workplace socialization at the workplace instead? Or perhaps at a decent sit-down restaurant where people can order food instead of getting liquored up and potentially saying or doing something embarrassing or harassing?

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

#325

Post by cmdrfred »

anothercomment wrote: post #315
peterwwillis wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you think women don't go into plumbing because of cultural norms? Really? Ok, I wish somebody would study that and find the reasons. The baby argument doesn't hold, though, because it makes a huge difference if it is your own baby. Better comparison would perhaps be care of the elderly, which involves cleaning up shit but also has a social component.

If the argument there is so few women coders why isn't it also why are there so many male garbage collectors (I could list a great many undesirable jobs here), prisoners, homeless and combat fatalities? Is the goal to balance those out as well?

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

#326

Post by emodendroket »

FT_intern wrote: post #321
emodendroket wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. You can investigate that one for yourself.

It's for the benefit of everyone including you. I find that in these topics, people jump to the problem solving step before problem formulation. In the best case, there might be a response of "because sexism/racism" to "why this problem". We have a limited amount of "diversity funds". If the appeal is emotional and one of righteousness, we should use the funds to aid the category of people with the most disadvantages…

No, I don't think so. Understanding English is germane to the job; your gender is not. Besides that, why exactly are you talking about "foreign immigrants" as a distinct category from women?

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

#327

Post by emodendroket »

mantas wrote: post #317
emodendroket wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I suggested a handful of measures that don't involve "implicit bias training," which I agree is unlikely to work, but I question your claim that there isn't any evidence for implicit bias. If you want to conclude that either women are just inherently inferior or else that they aren't but it's ok to systematically underpay them then I guess that's your prerogative but I'm not really interested in going down such…

> Because it is inherently unjust to discriminate against people because of characteristics that have no bearing on the job, such as their race and their gender. If you don't accept this premise I don't think we can have a productive discussion because it's the basic principle I'm basing my argument on. Is it ok to discriminate based on one's personal characteristics? I'm pretty sure woman who is technically good as…

On what basis are you "pretty sure" of that? http://fortune.com/2016/05/02/woman-negotiation-success/

If you want to reply to a comment further downthread you can click on the timestamp. I do not know why it works that way but replying to a common parent is confusing.

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

#328

Post by FT_intern »

shawn-furyan wrote: post #278

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 is a continual frustration to me that the male-dominated tech community is so bad with these issues

Is it? The implication is that tech is worse than other professions in this regard. But it has never been compared to other industries full of young people.

Color me skeptical but I don't believe that a field full of introverted immigrants with language barriers would have a bigger harassment issue than the business/sales/administration fields that are full of extroverted Americans and frat boys.

My experience is that the diversity in nationality in the tech field has made it difficult for in-groups to form. Whereas in-groups form more rapidly in fields where people come from more similar backgrounds (fields with higher American %). When not part of an in-group, people engage in less risky behavior.

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

#329

Post by cbsmith »

shawn-furyan wrote: post #278

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…

I will say, a lot of the feedback in the article does come across as, "don't manage people poorly".

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

#330

Post by shawn-furyan »

jknoepfler wrote: post #313
shawn-furyan wrote: post #278

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…

I share your frustration, but I've found the landscape to be more complex than most people are willing to give it credit for. For example, my partner and I disagree on the value of things like "Girls who Code" or "Women in Computer Science" groups. I (male) tend to think "can't hurt seems like a decent idea, I'm sure there are unique challenges faced by people with two X-chromosomes in computer science that I'm not a…

I don't want to speak for my wife, but she has been actively involved in Girls Who Code, and seems to have thought that it was worthwhile. As I understand it, it's more about letting girls know that programming is an option, rather than being about segregating female engineers. I think this is necessary because I have personally seen the assumption that men are engineers and women are support people limit the careers of women who were more accomplished and competent than men in more prestigious engineering roles. From my perspective, there's a lot of bullshit mythmaking in programming that plausibly dissuades many, IMO disproportionately women, from approaching the field, and which seems to have a tendency to funnel women to less prestigious/respected roles tangential to engineering.

Response to parent's edit:

> we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals

I can see why you would draw that conclusion, but your assumption is pretty wide of the mark in my case. I grew up very poor in the deep South.

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