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

I went to Georgia Tech for Mechanical Engineering, I think generic engineering has approximately the same set of sexism problems as CS. I wouldn't try to use it as a way to say that CS doesn't have a problem

Correct, apologies for the ambiguous pronoun.

As a female engineer, I haven't actually experienced any sexism or gender related issues in any company I've worked in. I've worked in a good number from small startups to large companies. I've always felt really comfortable - but I am a really straightforward person and know how to decline offers after a company interview if the culture fit doesn't feel right.

What do I look for that's related to gender? Usually a college-y or informal atmosphere. If it doesn't feel professional, I'm not too interested. This stems from my experience in HS and college (I went to MIT). Most of my peers were fine but there were some gender-related jokes in informal settings that I don't care to experience in a work environment. That's pretty much it for me, but maybe I've been lucky!

yeh well my friend is the CEO of a company and its evaluated at millions of dollars but shes salaried less than an entry level engineer and has a tight budget. She had student loans and $300 in her bank account when she started her company. Her dad was a carpenter in Brooklyn and her mom a school teacher. She gave up her personal paycheck for 2 months to keep from laying off her best employees when she was in between funding rounds. An evaluation is way different than an individuals salary.

Maybe a primer on how funding works will help, not all multilmillion dollar companies mean the ceos are millionaries, most of them gave up everything and risked everything and some dropped out of college to pursue something they wanted to do.

yes there are a bunch of pompous CEOs out there and I deal with them too as a women working in a tech male dominated environment. Believe, I'm not any more stoked about this than you are and it is certainly damaging to the idea that other personalities could contribute positively in the same realm of influence and level of decision making.

I understand you have observations but the top 5 CEOs advertised on tech crunch everyday are not neessarily reflective of the literally hundreds of thousands of CEOs in this country.

I know 3 CEOs, two of them their companies are evaluated at 10million, and one at over 100million, and they both are salaried and the higher paid one rents an apartment, and hise wife took his house, sued him for all his money, takes her boyfriends on vacations with his salaries while he works 20+ hour days and rearranges all of his work travel so he can spend 3 days with his daughters no matter who it is that wants to meet him, he doesnt sacrifice time with his daughters.

He hasnt had a vacation in 5 years because he works so much and buying a house isn't an option for him right now. He still has to go before boards of investors to ask for a raise and the market in tech is super competitive, even with the evaluation it could all go under and the pressure is high. From what I see being good friends with these people they are not spending their friday nights at lavish parties, they are sleeping or working late or every now and then binge drinking the stress away, which is not a life i envy to be honest, but I don't consider them sociopaths.

I think your idea that all CEOs are sociopaths who run companies into the ground with lavish parties and that there is no relationship between the standards and engineering ideas they founded and the companies and the culture they set for all the rank and file engineers are all unfounded. I absolutely believe CEOs who are non sociopathic females who dont bring bikini models to launch parties might actually result in a more culturally inviting environment for female engineers, though I can't really tell form the data is that is the root cause of why women are lacking so I don't know if that would solve it.

I do know that Sheryl Sandberg wrote a pretty great book about women in business called Lean In, and it is positive and focuses on what women can do to improve themselves working in business and tech instead of waiting for men to fix all the problems, and overall it is is a very positive attitude about taking ownership of your own destiny instead of waiting for a man to give it to you and I think if you read the book the word "sociopath" would not exactly be the term that comes to your mind in regards to her, os Marissa Meyer for that matter if youve ever heard her speak or interact with people or teach on her operable business standards and principles...

I'm not really offended I guess. Youre definitely not even close to the top of the list of people who have said remarkably offensive things to me, I just think youre wrong.

I think CEOs are the easy bad guys. Everyone needs someone to point to and say hey its all your fault.

Thats what modern media has done to us. We just bully humiliate make assumptions and criticise everyone in leadership positions. I don't think what the trending instagram hashtag is or CNN headline is necessarily an accurate representation of these hardworking brilliant people, but thats just my opinion. You are obviously welcome to your own.

I'm not saying we should pity CEOs, I'm just saying as a whole in society we quickly jump to blame people, and female CEOs DO objectively (google analytics man) get it worse than men and gets far more personal jabs about their bodies and sexual comments I've never seen male CEOs publicly endure.

If this was not a pass, the manager should have explicitly invited the employee's S.O. and indicated a venue that has no beds in it (bar or restaurant).

Too much vague-ry here, which, on a sensitive topic, is asking for trouble.