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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?

#461

Post by DanBC »

AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #351
dang wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This breaks the HN guideline against going full flamewar with nothing new to say. The vector here is predictable and therefore uninteresting; most of us have been through it a zillion times and live in hope of being spared another. Therefore, please just don't. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13968549 and marked it off-topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have to say, I appreciate the explanations in this thread. It's a nice show of transparency that I didn't see in the past with removed comments.

dang and sctb have been giving explanations for years now.

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

#462

Post by anothercomment »

bilch wrote: post #454
FT_intern wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by the time they have to pick a university program, they feel so far behind the computer nerds that they don't feel they can compete or succeed in tech At the college level, I think that the social gap gets even worse. Women can get into frat parties where they don't know anyone, though they don't even have to because they are much more likely to be invited in the first place. Bouncers at bars/clubs will let them s…

By this line of reasoning, shouldn't there be a lot of unattractive women flocking to tech?

Historically, the few women in tech were often not the most attractive ones. It seems to have gotten better. Likewise, the male nerds were often not the most attractive ones.

Perhaps there are not that many unattractive young women, so their number is not sufficient to increase female participation in tech by a significant amount.

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

#463

Post by fiter »

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…

Food restrictions can cause alienation as well, unfortunately. I agree that that the expectation that socializing=drinking is a problem.

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

#464

Post by Nadya »

Arizhel wrote: post #448
Chris2048 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A "chip"? So what's your answer to people who get physically ill when consuming alcohol? Don't get a job? Because in American drinking culture, they're going to look bad if they don't drink with everyone else at one of these stupid happy hours. Sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder about people who don't participate in American drinking culture and binge drinking.

I become ill at the smell of alcohol.

I sit out the usual Friday bar nights and have to turn down the occasional offers of alcohol from coworkers that don't interact with me frequently (and thus either don't know or have forgotten that I don't drink)

They get to go get wasted at the local bar. I get to enjoy my Friday night playing video games alone. Win-win. If they do something like GoKarting I get dragged into something I'd rather not be doing since I feel obliged to attend since I sit out of the many alcohol-related events.

I'm agreeing with Chris2048 here. Sounds like a chip. They can enjoy their alcohol without me being a downer about it or forcing the majority of the company to comply with my wishes of non-alcoholic expenditures.

If they have fun drinking, let them have fun I say. I'll go home and play some video games.

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

#465

Post by emodendroket »

Chris2048 wrote: post #429
emodendroket wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Big assumption then..

I don't think the presence of the man's partner is enough to make the invitation not seem sexual in nature, is what I'm getting at.

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

#466

Post by emodendroket »

mantas wrote: post #449
emodendroket wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That skill has little to do with salary negotiation. And you keep on asserting that salary negotiation has nothing to do with gender, which seems to me to be skipping most of the work of refuting my arguments, based as they are on the premise that one's gender affects one's success in salary negotiation. Also, I think that these changes would likely benefit male workers too, but not to the same degree as women.

Yes, you're correct, I think we shouldn't discuss this as a gender issue. IMO you're mistaking correlation for causation. As you say yourself, changing current salary setup would affect both women and men. This is not gender issue and this should be discussed on other points than gender. Making it about gender is counter productive. Looking at this form economical perspective, as long as we don't have objective way t…

Right, so we've identified our chief difference. Would you like to provide any proof for your assertions?

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

#467

Post by emodendroket »

ruleabidinguser wrote: post #422
emodendroket wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Demonstration"? I've never met anyone who opposes any kind of workplace activity (say, charitable giving or birthday parties) whatsoever.

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

#468

Post by anothercomment »

rejschaap wrote: post #452
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.

I would say weight lifting is not an exception at all. The cultural norm is that women should not be too muscular.

It is not just cultural norms, the strongest female athletes are about as strong as average men: http://media.townhall.com/_townhall/uploads/2015/11/13/8.jpg (linking to this chart without context because I don't have a lot of time to Google - but if you google, you will find lots of information on the differences in strength).

Or specifically for weight lifting, consider this recent case of a transgender woman winning an international weight lifting title by a significant margin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/03/22...

I doubt that the women/girls who choose to compete in weight lifting hold back because of cultural norms. That would be a silly sport - basically it would be a competition about who cares the least about cultural norms. In any case, there should be several women who don't care about cultural norms (what about the raging feminists who reject the norms, for example).

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

#469

Post by rejschaap »

anothercomment wrote: post #468
rejschaap wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say weight lifting is not an exception at all. The cultural norm is that women should not be too muscular.

It is not just cultural norms, the strongest female athletes are about as strong as average men: http://media.townhall.com/_townhall/uploads/2015/11/13/8.jpg (linking to this chart without context because I don't have a lot of time to Google - but if you google, you will find lots of information on the differences in strength). Or specifically for weight lifting, consider this recent case of a transgender woman winni…

"women/girls who choose to compete in weight lifting"

That is where the problem lies. When a 6 year old girl tells her parents she wants to become a weight lifter, her parents will say "how about ballet instead?". When a 12 year old girl tells her class mates she is a weight lifter all her friends will laugh at her.

The cultural norms prevent girls to participate. If they are strong-willed and decide to pursue weight lifting despite all of this, they would have a good chance to become very good because of their determination.

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

#470

Post by AnkhMorporkian »

DanBC wrote: post #461
AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say, I appreciate the explanations in this thread. It's a nice show of transparency that I didn't see in the past with removed comments.

dang and sctb have been giving explanations for years now.

Strange, first time I noticed it! Maybe it's just because of the overwhelming amount of removed comments in this thread.
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