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Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

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Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#181

Disclaimer: not a woman, but this exact question just recently came up among several of my female friends in another forum I follow. I'm not sure I like or agree with their conclusions, but I'll pass them on in the hopes they'll be useful. They came up with two big questions that have surprising predictive power: 1.) Do you have daughters? 2.) Does your wife work outside the home? (Probably couched in more neutral la…

Such line of questions would pretty much disqualify you in my eyes, regardless if I'm the interviewer or the candidate. Not just because of the improperly personal nature, but also they require a lot of assumptions and random chances in order to be remotely considered useful. Note that I'm not challenging the statistical correlation with certain outcomes, but I'm questioning the mindset of someone who would use them to make a decision.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#182

A reasoned response is a red flag?

If you have a workplace where women and minorities cannot discuss their issues without a white man butting in to whine "but what about meee?" then yes, that is a toxic work environment.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant it (well, they did...I'm just passing along conclusions) the other way around - having a boss where the wife has a career equal to his is a positive indication, while having one with a stay-at-home wife is a negative indication. The idea is that someone who has chosen to marry and stay married to a career woman is quite literally putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to women's equality: he's mak…

Is there any actual evidence of this?

It was anecdotal, and I'm not going to reveal the identities or experiences of the women involved. The OP asked for experiences & advice, and so I passed along as much of the experience & advice as I could. If you (or any reader) finds it helpful, great; if you don't, well, ultimately you are the only one responsible for deciding whose advice you act on.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#184
post #138
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part about ping pong and beer vs a more formal workplace is really interesting. I've been reading more about this lately. One story that struck me was about a journalist whose newspaper was purchased by a tech company, and the culture changed. She went from having a private office to working in a huge, open office environment. I'm putting this together from memory, but I remember her talking about how strange it…

> [...] and having to take it with her to the bathroom (feeling somewhat self conscious about how her more frequent trips appeared to her younger, generally male coworkers) Get one of these kitchen timers [1]. Set it to about 25 minutes. When it goes off get up from your desk and spend a few minutes walking around the office. Return to your desk, reset the timer, and go to prior step. When you wish to visit the bathr…

> When you wish to visit the bathroom do so on one of your strolls around the office.

But then they will notice that your break did not coincide with the timer, and (depending on the floor plan of the open office), that you did not head for a walk, but straight for the toilets.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#185
post #168

This really should have been the #2 spot on HN right now by votes. For an Ask HN that is this important could the flags please be discounted?

We turned off flags on this submission hours ago.

Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#186
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> company has to really push for women-friendly policies to be a great place for women to work, which I happen to completely disagree with. Could you elaborate a little bit more please, beyond the cringey paper-scissor activities?

Thanks, I shot off my comment kind of quickly so should clarify that I definitely think that many policies touted as "women-friendly" are incredibly important but I think of them more as family/age-group-friendly or human-friendly (maternity & paternity leave, flexible hours, etc). My comment was basically just referring to diversity groups (as I've experienced them) and women-only events.

Ah ok, I was curious to know your opinion since for me, "women-friendly policies" mean consideration for pregnancy, childcare and so on!

Regarding diversity events, I slightly disagree with you. Ironically I became an advocate only after my engineering education, when I suddenly experienced 'different' treatment. Welcome to the real world, they say, but it affected me quite badly. I suddenly found those women support groups comforting. None of the meetups I went was ever "Down with the opposite sex!" although yes, I find myself wishing that there's more rad startups than just fashion and makeup. But there is something refreshing about just listening to leaders, entrepreneurs and hopefuls, all driven and comfortable with their identities, including being female. I mean, if they can do it, I can do it too, right??

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#187

Silicon valley culture used to be that way, and is still that way. The cube farms was the prevailing best practice. Then the pendulum swung to the other side with the new kids entering the workforce and wanted open office, work families, and all that. Which then created the cargo culting from others entering the process. Now we're on the bubble of the pendulum swinging back. So it goes.

The only people who want the open office are the people who either don't want to pay for cubicles, or want to cram more people into a space (worker density) than a cube farm will allow.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#188
Minority woman here.

1.) If it's really a huge concern to you, the best thing to do is probably go to a women's coding group in your local area (try looking on Meetup.com) and talking to the women there. You can ask them pretty candidly how it is at their companies. Only downside is you might miss out on a totally fine company that doesn't have any females yet.

To those saying check if there's a woman on the team already as a metric---eh, if there is that's nice but if there isn't that's not necessarily bad. There are far more men in our field than women. I wouldn't write a company off for just that provided it's a smallish team. I was the first woman and minority on our team. It's fine.

2.) Google the company and maybe also your close team mates. Glassdoor is a good place to check. A bad review or two isn't the end of the world, but if you see a lot stay away. Again downside, a lot of smaller companies don't have many reviews.

3.) You're gonna know if they're lowballing your salary right off the bat when you discuss it during interviews. Make sure you get offers from multiple companies.

4.) You generally can tell a lot from the interview and sometimes you'll have lunch with the team too. Seriously if it's that bad they'll probably show their true colors pretty early on with snide remarks, talking down to you, flirting, etc. I know on a day-to-day basis we women have to brush this off a lot because the world has a lot of creeps. This is not the time to brush it off. Go somewhere else.

5.) No matter how much you try to research ahead of time, sometimes the work environment is just bad. Just as most jobs will have you under a probationary period, you need to do the same to them. Be prepared to leave if it just isn't right. I've seen some people (men and women) just get really wrapped up in the "ideal" of a certain job. Don't fall into that trap.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#189
post #138
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part about ping pong and beer vs a more formal workplace is really interesting. I've been reading more about this lately. One story that struck me was about a journalist whose newspaper was purchased by a tech company, and the culture changed. She went from having a private office to working in a huge, open office environment. I'm putting this together from memory, but I remember her talking about how strange it…

> [...] and having to take it with her to the bathroom (feeling somewhat self conscious about how her more frequent trips appeared to her younger, generally male coworkers) Get one of these kitchen timers [1]. Set it to about 25 minutes. When it goes off get up from your desk and spend a few minutes walking around the office. Return to your desk, reset the timer, and go to prior step. When you wish to visit the bathr…

When you are self-conscious doing a silly show of yourself for rationalization will only give you something more to be self-conscious about. Merely taking a walk once in a while would pass and is a good idea for other reasons, but this clock thing definitely crosses the line.

I also don't believe that everybody would jump on this bandwagon and totally share the sentiment expressed in sibling comment by maccard.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#190

Silicon valley culture used to be that way, and is still that way. The cube farms was the prevailing best practice. Then the pendulum swung to the other side with the new kids entering the workforce and wanted open office, work families, and all that. Which then created the cargo culting from others entering the process. Now we're on the bubble of the pendulum swinging back. So it goes.

Bullshit. nobody wanted open floor plans, or if they did, they had immediate buyers remorse. Open floor plans became a fad that turned into a way for cheap ass companies to slash costs and brag about it on linkedin about how trendy they were being.
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