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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?

#391

Post by odonnellryan »

usmeteora wrote: post #389

The biggest issue is when guys use new incoming female employees as dating prospects because they don't meet females elsewhere. They may be nice and friendly but I don't want to have to shake off and turn down 6 guys who are fighting to get at me first everywhere I work, its really not ok. It happens at every place I've ever worked and watch the same guys do it to new girls. They are here for a job, not to supply you…

Huh! Probably blind to this somewhat because I'm a guy, but I haven't seen this at the tech jobs I'm at in NJ.

Realistically, you speak to different genders differently without realizing it, but I have always worked in highly-diverse environments (I wouldn't want to ever work somewhere where I saw all XYZ gender or race working there) and it has been fine.

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

#392

Post by exelius »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #276
watwut wrote: post #56

Disclaimer: I am women, but never stepped the foot in CA. Geography matters. I see ping pong tables and free beer as a red flag of sorts and seek workplace that is more formal. The idea is that the less it attempts to be personal/cool/cultural the less personal things (e.g. gender or peoples attitudes/biases or who-likes-who) matters and the more actual work matters. I have no stats to support this, just my guess and…

I am not a woman, a person of colour or of fluid sexuality or identity, so disregard my comment if it so pleases you, but the older I get the more I seem to want the exact things you are looking for. A little formality seems like it might be a wonderful thing and I won't have to pretend I care about the owner's bitching new Tesla. I work in tech currently and tend to dress in shorts and a Tshirt, which is comfortable…

Formality of environment need not extend to dress code. Remember, dress codes are used against women (by men telling the woman how she should be dressing) far more often than they are men.

You can have a formal office without a formal dress code. Yesterday I wore jeans, a t-shirt, chucks and a blazer to work at a formal company. I only wear the blazer because I am physically small and look young, so I feel it enhances my professional image. But it's my choice what to wear; not my employer's.

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

#393

Post by odonnellryan »

watwut wrote: post #56

Disclaimer: I am women, but never stepped the foot in CA. Geography matters. I see ping pong tables and free beer as a red flag of sorts and seek workplace that is more formal. The idea is that the less it attempts to be personal/cool/cultural the less personal things (e.g. gender or peoples attitudes/biases or who-likes-who) matters and the more actual work matters. I have no stats to support this, just my guess and…

> The idea is that the less it attempts to be personal/cool/cultural the less personal things (e.g. gender or peoples attitudes/biases or who-likes-who) matters and the more actual work matters.

Really? I've always worked in casual environments (not free beer casual lol) and have never experienced this.

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

#394

Post by DanBC »

victorhooi wrote: post #390
wpietri wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have generated quite a bit of opinion given that you start out admitting you don't even understand the discussion and are not part of the group being asked for opinions. There are good reasons to be suspicious of companies who push hard on the "we're so fun!" angle. It can be a warning sign of any or all of: chaotic management, chaotic development practices, a work-all-the-time culture, a culture that's not famil…

My first point was that this isn't gender specific. My example was - I don't touch alcohol, I don't like ping pong, or consoles, or any of the things that people hold up as "bro" culture. But nor am I going to hold it against a workplace if they want to offer those things. It's not a negative - it's just a thing. For example - nursing rooms for mothers, or Muslim prayer rooms. I may not use them personally, but I don…

> I don't drink alcohol - but if somebody is drunk, whether they're a guy or a girl - or whether the gender ratio at my workplace is 60:40 or 80:20 is irrelevant. They are drunk. I'm certainly not going to say - "Oh you're a women but you're drunk...well, that's OK then". Although to be honest, if you're drunk and not causing me any harm, meh.

You might want to talk to women about their experiences of drunk men.

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

#395

Post by VLM »

bethly wrote: post #178
VLM wrote: post #141

In the military we work with all sorts of people, at least with respect to gender, race, religion, and to a lesser extent sexuality. At the same time, admittedly most were Republican and none of us did drugs. If you're willing work with Republicans and/or non-drug users (most tech people are super far left and absolutely will not) then working for an ex-mil manager or with ex-mil coworkers will likely be an extremely…

That was not my experience working at a defense contractor, and it was obviously not because I do drugs. I haven't found military service a relevant signal for levels of sexism, either positive or negative.

I find that last observation very interesting. Decades ago, my Reserves unit was extremely diverse compared to every IT environment I've ever worked in since then. I had a female sergeant, a black SFC platoon leader... In my civilian career I had exactly one female superior and I worked with exactly three black people, ever, so far, as numerous people have noted IT is super non-diverse.

The prevailing strategy in the civilian world to improve things, under the assumption that non-diversity is bad, seems to be to bring the diversity numbers up, surely achieving military support unit levels of diversity is numerically impossible but a little higher would be realistic, and pounding out bad behavior although surely not as effectively as the military pounds out bad behavior. Then things will magically be better. Apparently at least sometimes that strategy is unsuccessful as the military is obviously vastly far superior to civilian environments by both metrics yet the result is not superior.

Of course there might be sample size anecdotal issues, etc.

If the observed primary civilian strategy is measurably and comparatively a failure mode, then what strategies DO work?

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

#396

Post by Baeocystin »

chillacy wrote: post #361
Baeocystin wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you essentially making the argument that you are most comfortable working with people similar to yourself? Which is not a criticism. It's completely understandable. But how, then, do we get all of us (you, me, etc...) to feel comfortable working together, despite any particular differences? (I don't have any easy answers, and I may not even be someone whose opinion means much on this subject. I honestly got so…

I suspect that diversity as a virtue is itself a culture that can exist, or there's some other cultural factor that ties a team together that happens not to care about sexual orientation or race or etc, but my current thinking is that people seek out cliques.

I remember reading some of the current crop of pro-diversity research many years ago. The benefits of an ideologically diverse company were clear, and highly positive.

An important caveat, buried in the analysis, is that the researchers noted that at least some of this benefit was due to the fact that people from differing cliques were less concerned about insulting other groups, which resulted in freer speaking, and thus a wider range of ideas presented. This, I think, is a very important point that has been lost along the way in the current discussion of what, exactly diversity means.

This contrasts with a more monocultural corporate environment, where an institutional blind spot may stubbornly remain, as too many of the people involved are all locked in to similar thinking patterns.

The professionals involved kept things professional- they were able to work together effectively. But not worrying about walking on eggshells (or needing to) appears to be an important part of the formula, and, well... I think we're far from that at the moment.

I'm afraid my google skills are failing me, and I can't find the original paper I am thinking of. IIRC, it is a highly cited one, so it should be out there. Maybe someone else will be able to link it. I first read a summary of in in Harvard Business Review ~2011.

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

#397

Post by GoToRO »

jansho wrote: post #148

I've given up finding that great company culture. Bro cultures, and yes even female jealousy, but the dealbreaker for me is work inflexibility. I get utterly exhausted working in open office environments, and I swing from absolutely crap in small talk to excitable gushing about last night's TV (that nobody watches.) People apparently don't like randomised personalities! I figured that the life of a salaryperson may j…

It took me two years to really apreciate the flexibility and the new life. Either that or two years to undo the harm the salarymen life did to me. I'm not sure but it gets way better.

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

#398

Post by xapata »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #301
xapata wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-example to your expectation: as I've gotten older the separation of my work from the rest of life has been nearly eliminated. I run my own business, so I'm always on the clock. Or never on the clock, depending on how you look at it. At parties, I tell people I'm unemployed. My business is my hobby. It just happens to earn money.

So your savings or other passive income provide for your needs when you hobby happens to 'not' earn money? There are a lot of people in my circle of friends who have reached that point of not "needing" to work in the sense of putting food on the table or paying for things, but working on things they enjoy because they have things to do which are fun. 'unemployed' tends to get people who don't know you wondering if th…

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I work 40-60 hours most weeks on my business. Yesterday was a 14-hour day. Sometimes I take a week or month off. It's my only source of income, though I have been stashing away over the years.

It's just that, in the moment, it doesn't often feel like work.

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

#399

Post by Baeocystin »

FT_intern wrote: post #311
jmcgough wrote: post #52

Non-binary queer woman here. I can usually get a vibe at interviews about the company culture, from the people I talk to (my questions and their general personalities). The only team I've ever felt "normal" at was one where one of the interviewers was gay. My boss there had hired a bunch of really talented queer developers from his network, so half the team was queer. I guess I really liked the personalities of the p…

I don't think many people in tech feel "normal" at work because of high cultural diversity. Racial and gender lines are less significant compared to nationality and primary language. Tech has massive language and nationality diversity. I would guess that > 50% of software engineers in the USA are either immigrants or 2nd generation Americans (who grew up with immigrant parents). Because of this, many people don't fin…

You raise a salient point. And FWIW, I agree with you. I certainly have noticed how siloed many groups of programmers are from one another. Not out of any malicious intent, but rather the simple, subtle pressures of it being slightly easier to work with people you share more in common with, and software work being difficult under the best of circumstances.

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

#400

Post by ramblerman »

bethly wrote: post #114

I look for existing diversity, and of underrepresented minorities not just gender diversity (IME this is often a better signal.) Especially in upper levels: the % of Software Engineer 1s matters a lot less than the % of architects and tech leads. Second (and I kind of hate to give this one away), I ask "what do you sacrifice when recruiting to ensure diversity?" The answer should be either "it takes us longer to recr…

> Especially my boss: if my boss is going to be a white dude, he had better have publicly condemned sexism in a way that feels constructive and genuine to me.

Wtf. How is this not just becoming reverse racism. Guilty until proven innocent.

It's not what you said Bill, it's what you didn't say.

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