A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

Later that same woman described (to another woman) that the man had been "creeping on her calendar". If it weren't for society's deference to women's feelings, that would probably be read as a hostile comment.

While I totally agree with this advice, I think this is very difficult to get men to do in the tech industry. There is a real concern, and to be honest I don't totally think invalid, that many men don't want to be perceived in any way as doing something that could be construed (or misconstrued) as harassment. I think there may be an subconscious/unconscious evaluation going on where men think "Well, I might be socially awkward talking to this girl anyway, so I'll just avoid the complication."

I think one of the unfortunate unintended consequences of the #MeToo movement is that men don't want to even get close to the line of doing something that could be perceived as inappropriate, which unfortunately results in more isolation of women, not less.

I and many other programmers I've talked to got into the career they have because the craft is naturally compelling to them, with the lifestyle of programming being secondary or even tertiary. I don't think most male programmers do what they do because they particularly like each other, nor are they necessarily interested in an anti-social atmosphere. Sure, some are going to have contrary preferences, but if it wasn't generally true that male programmers are primarily interested in their craft, then I wouldn't expect the most horrendously competitive tech companies wouldn't still get plenty of male applicants and even fewer female applicants.

Put simply, I think tech companies could all be run like sweat shops, and you'd see nearly as many men working for them and probably fewer women.

Yet again, we have a woman who enters an arena that women don't want to enter(by her own account) and requests that it be changed to fit her and other women. These are the suggestions she makes for making tech more hospitable to women:

* Create communities (set people up with “buddies”, mentors, lunch groups)

* Emphasize tech’s potential to impact humans and community wellbeing

* Invest in social events

* Offer opportunities for engineers to do user- and team-facing work

* Confront unconscious bias

* Go befriend a girl in your class or company

As a man, these are all distractions from getting my work done. I am intellectually excited about software development but, when it comes down to it, I want to show up to the office, accomplish things, and go home. Being overly concerned with the wellbeing of others is not that interesting, and I don't have a job to make friends; if I make friends, that's through happenstance. I want to be the best at what I do, but I don't need communities/buddies, social events, unconscious bias training, or the opposite sex to do this.

> Go befriend a girl in your class or company

I wish someone would tell women the same thing of men.

Coming from someone who has more female friends than male, there's a lot that can go wrong in a man trying to befriend women, especially at work. On many occasions, simply being friendly has clearly lead to a woman perceiving that I was interested in her. If you're lucky, you're met with distance and radio silence, but most men are going to be treated as "creepy". As engineering is going to be made up of a lot of nerds who already have experience in being "creepy", there's little incentive for those nerds to willingly subject themselves to rejection when they weren't even looking to court these women in the first place.

Again, I have lots of female friends, including some from work, but that's because it took an incredible amount of effort to get to know them without setting off the "creepy" flag. For most guys, this effort isn't worth it.