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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?

#421

Post by flamedoge »

cmdkeen wrote: post #68
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't even need to be "young males beating their chest". I've been in plenty of hostile reviews with completely harmless, introverted, soft spoken INTJ-types who simply can't get past some nitpick because it doesn't fit into their perfect, logical world view and refuse to budge an inch. Our industry has a personality problem as much or more as it has a sex problem.

Oi - I resemble that remark! I've also been on the reviewing end of plenty of types who think all small things are inconsequential nitpicks which excuses them from having to change anything. Then people moan about a lack of standards and consistency between teams... I've also died in a ditch over naming conventions for unit tests - whilst not my proudest moment - it drives home one of the key points in the article, t…

As long as it's idiomatic... I'm sorta fine with it.

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

#422

Post by ruleabidinguser »

emodendroket wrote: post #396
ruleabidinguser wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its happening at work no? what does it have to do with work otherwise?

Ok, it's happening at the office. So how is it interfering with anyone's work?

Just like any in-office demonstration interferes. Its not special in any way you know.

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

#423

Post by HillaryBriss »

> I’ve left companies after years of chaotically fighting fires while simultaneously needing to build new features, or after repeatedly getting disorganized braindumps or single line descriptions from stakeholders rather than the thoughtful, detailed specs they’ve promised.

I've had this same basic experience working for female managers. Chaotic, bad processes are not unique to male management. It's just fd up companies and dev environments in general.

Screwing up the process is an equal opportunity situation.

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

#424

Post by ccc111 »

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…

Hello and thank you for your response :)

Actually i am quite an average programmer at best but thanks for thinking highly of me for your response.

To be quite frank, and ill add another point to this discussion, i got the job i currently have because i believe i just have more personality than most, me and my higher ups get along quite well.

I find this friendship to be almost impossible from a woman's point of view. There are so many hints of sexuality it make a genuine friendship from an older man to a younger girl so to speak almost taboo? really? no sex or favors?

My second point which i might not of elaborated as much in the first is that, perhaps we have reached "critical MA(n)SS", where the tech industry is so populated by men, hiring more men that it makes these friendships from a woman's standpoint increasingly hard to get. Let alone the reasons mentioned previous.

Men hiring men because they get along with them better? Sexism they cry!

Promotions are made in the bar and the golf course. I like to think of companies as 2 separate populations groups, the management and the help.i believe to cross the line would be extremely hard in late stage companies , without being quite the star.

Thoughts?

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

#425

Post by lutorm »

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…

Perhaps you are not aware of this, but there are numerous studies that show bias, for example random shuffling of names on resumes and resumes with female names are rated lower than those with male names. Whether this bias is conscious or unconscious is of course hard to establish, but I think it's beyond dispute that it exists.

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

#426

Post by Chris2048 »

Arizhel wrote: post #324
buckbova wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Or perhaps at a decent sit-down restaurant

And what about people who choose not to go to restaurants?

Seems like you have a chip on your shoulder about drinking.

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

#427

Post by HillaryBriss »

err4nt wrote: post #141

The common thread running through all of this was that what seemed to drive these women from their own roles in tech were the incompetence or inexperience of management. I'm young enough (born in the late 1980's) that during my entire time in the work force, I feel like I've only ever met ONE "real" manager. I've known many people in management roles, but I think we've definitely lost sight of what good management ev…

I agree. I've seen this same thing too many times.

My conclusion is that maybe the whole concept of "software manager" is deeply flawed. Upper management likes to have a single person they can pressure and blame. But the reality is that making good software on a schedule is incredibly difficult. Upper management doesn't seem to recognize that you can't just "bolt on" a good manager and just "force it to work."

Making good software in a way that's responsive to market pressures is not like running a lemonade stand. It's almost impossible to get right, even with a big budget, because upper management puts too many idiotic constraints on it.

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

#428

Post by Chris2048 »

throwaway729 wrote: post #388
Chris2048 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great. Someone should do something about that. The institutions pushing for change in IT are often not IT specific. The question is why do they focus on IT. They are the "someone" who should be doing something.

This is all starting to sound extraordinarily conspiratorial. Who is this "they"? To re-iterate, I'm still not sure why you think any of this is a reason for software engineers to refrain from discussing and addressing culture problems within software engineering firms.

> This is all starting to sound

I believe this is my first comment in this thread. Want to substantiate that?

> refrain from discussing and addressing culture problems within software engineering firms

That's not the issue, the issue is the unusual pressure and increased scrutiny tech receives relative to other industries. The various forms of tokenism, and HR risk-avoidance has nothing to do with a "discussion", it is very much one-sided.

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

#429

Post by Chris2048 »

emodendroket wrote: post #395
Chris2048 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP says: > Boss: "Hey, my partner​ and I would love it if.. So, you think the partner being there is just a premise?

I don't know. The Uber post involved a manager talking about swinging.

Big assumption then..

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

#430

Post by HillaryBriss »

andy_ppp wrote: post #273
ayuvar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder how anything gets built in any _other_ industry than software, if this is the caliber of management we get on these projects.

They don't tell builders "give me a house, I want turrets and a fence and 23 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and I want it done to a really high finish by next week". Instead they get a detailed, industry standard, multi-stage plan that has everything they need to start, as well as access to an architect that can check on their work and when things go wrong a process for change management is included. And no-one expects a hous…

And then change their minds the day before delivery ...
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