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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?

#401

Post by bigger_cheese »

nialo wrote: post #381
mpweiher wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...."

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

My sister and I(male) are both engineers, she is a mechanical engineer and has related to me a lot of the difficulties she has faced with this career.

I think engineering is probably worse than CS because there is discrimination from technical as well as non technical peers.

Among non technical peers (Operators, fitters, boilermakers etc) side of things there is a tendency for people to assume female engineers lack physical capabilities I see it out on mine/construction sites etc workers will refuse to let female engineers carry tool bags etc. They won't look twice when I heft a bag full of Stillson wrenches around yet I've seen on occasions they'll almost snatch the bags out of female colleague's hands.

As a male I'm pretty much left to my own devices when I'm out on site the workers assume I'm competent. For females there is a tendency for workers to "hover" they won't trust her ability until she demonstrates it. The culture out on construction sites etc is not really all that female friendly in general. I mentioned it to my sister once and she was pretty dismissive her response was something along the lines of "That's just the way things are they assume I'm just a clueless girl until I prove to them I know what I'm doing".

On the technical side I see it a lot with external clients when they visit the office sometimes they'll do things like assume a female engineer is a secretary.

Most of the diversity efforts are focused on technical side of things around inclusive office culture and things like that. There are not a lot of initiatives targeted towards non technical peers other than very token stuff like "Don't put up pornography in site sheds and crib rooms".

My sister ended up quitting her job at a power plant and works in government now she seems much happier there.

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

#402

Post by Terr_ »

cookiecaper wrote: post #400
shawn-furyan wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "bullshit mythmaking"? I'm not familiar with that turn of phrase.

I'm not sure, but my guess would be stuff like "10x engineers", lionizing certain celebrities, and generally downplaying how much of everything is actually incremental work that is the shared success of a great many different people.

I don't think software-development is unique in that respect though, humans tend to want to take a messy reality and make simpler stories with fewer and simpler characters.

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

#403

Post by cthalupa »

FT_intern wrote: post #328
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 busine…

I only have experience in a few fields, and none of them are sales/administration, but my experience is that tech has been far worse.

Introversion is no guard against sexism, and I'd argue, it might actually make some facets of it worse. I don't think introversion in specific is bad, but the way it manifests in tech in this male-dominated industry often results in a lack of experience and understanding in how to work with women, and sets them up as very heavily other-ed.

Only in tech have I seen such a need for inclusiveness to be so stressed and pushed for - education, smaller businesses, and similar, it has been a much more natural thing.

There's a hell of a lot more challenges that women face in tech than outright harassment. Unintentional sidelining, the bar for proof being much higher, general unwarranted skepticism in their abilities, etc.

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

#404

Post by aaron695 »

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 cowardly oblique swipe at these sort of organizations

How is it cowardly? They have publically stated business shouldn't support "MinorityCodingClub".

It's brave in this environment to go against this status quo.

Cowardice is using words like cowardice because you disagree, it's a weasel word use to undermine people, not arguments.

> which sounds an awful lot like Girls Who Code,

This is a classic kara collecting, stating the obvious like it's not obvious.

We all know what they mean because that's exactly they are implying.

This comment is why this issue will never more forward, it's all emotive fud.

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

#405

Post by emodendroket »

amyjess wrote: post #362
briandear wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that these are "progressive" companies.

I'd say that the reason why sexual harassment is such a problem at SV unicorns is because of the SV startup culture, not despite it. SV encourages people to move fast, be aggressive, don't be afraid to break things, ignore regulations, disrupt all the things, etc. There are substantial similarities to the way a VC-funded startup operates and the way a pick-up artist operates. You'll notice that Susan Fowler's blog po…

Surely part of it has to be how many people in these companies are fresh out of college.

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

#406

Post by greenhatman »

simplyluke wrote: post #262
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…

Except all of this fallout is because Uber HR determined employee x with a harassment issue is valuable enough to making money that the potential to lose employees y and z is an acceptable risk. Ethics do not logically fall into place magically because the ultimate goal is making money. It's easy to say "ignore those factors in favor of making money" but the reality of the world isn't that simple. Uber didn't tolerat…

As long as the demand for engineers stay higher than supply, everything should fall magically into place, actually, according to economic theory.

Developer turnover is very costly.

What I got from these womens' answers is that their motivations are pretty much exactly the same as men's. Maybe with the exception of serial harassment cases.

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

#407

Post by cthalupa »

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…

Women are just as interested in STEM fields until about the middle school/high school level. What changes around that age? All sorts of external peer pressures.

I work with a lot of women. They're not anything near a majority, but the org I'm in is big enough that there are plenty to speak with. They almost universally have many bad experiences and stories to tell that are specifically due to their gender.

By no means am I saying this is unique to tech, but I do believe it's worse. Even if it isn't, acting as if we've reached gender equality and it isn't common for women to face issues specifically due to their gender in tech, is so off base I recommend you take the time to actual speak with women and listen to them. Over the more than decade I've been in the industry, the amount of women I've spoken to who have said they haven't experienced sexism is easily a single digit percentage.

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

#408

Post by Terr_ »

emodendroket wrote: post #85
DeusExMachina wrote: post #4

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…

I am reminded of this quote from a fantasy book about the gender-dynamics of displaying emotion:

> "If she wept, wasn't it too extravagant; if she laughed, how odd that she should do so at her brother's funeral; if she spoke, he whispered that she was frenetic; if she fell silent, wasn't she grown strangely gloomy? And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not. Toward the end of his visit there, he even said such things in her hearing, to see if he could frighten and enrage her, and then accuse her of becoming an unbalanced virago."

(The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold.)

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

#409

Post by micahbright »

throwaway729 wrote: post #371
ccc111 wrote: post #346

Please read all the way it does sound pretty blunt, kinda a rant. I'm a guy. Not a very liberal response. Men make money. Women look good. As terrible as that sounds. It is true. We are different species and have different advantages as the other. A pretty girl can literally take pics of themselves and marry in to wealth. We see this all the time. A actress is now dating Prince Harry, she is not a programmer or engin…

> Please read all the way it does sound pretty blunt, kinda a rant. I'm a guy. Not a very liberal response. I approach this sort of writing with a stern charity. Asking questions is never wrong. And I even entertain discriminatory assertions that have a compelling basis in reality. This is the charity. But you damn well better be right, or at least not obviously wrong. If you have no compelling reason to believe what…

Your whole objection is to his statement, "you [women] shouldn't complain when it is difficult because you [they] are swimming upstream", but you misunderstood what he was saying. "When it is difficult because you are swimming upstream", he is talking about a case...in the case that it is difficult. It may not be difficult for all women. For a stubborn woman who doesn't have the skills, she shouldn't complain. So his statement isn't bigoted. Not in the least.

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

#410

Post by FT_intern »

cthalupa wrote: post #403
FT_intern wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 busine…

I only have experience in a few fields, and none of them are sales/administration, but my experience is that tech has been far worse. Introversion is no guard against sexism, and I'd argue, it might actually make some facets of it worse. I don't think introversion in specific is bad, but the way it manifests in tech in this male-dominated industry often results in a lack of experience and understanding in how to work…

> often results in a lack of experience and understanding in how to work with women

> There's a hell of a lot more challenges that women face in tech than outright harassment. Unintentional sidelining, the bar for proof being much higher, general unwarranted skepticism in their abilities, etc.

These are very bold claims of sexism. No one can really comment until they're somewhat proven.

My comment was mainly about a "bro" environment and harassment which is more tangible.

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