81–90 of 520 posts
Better article with more information: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-... > In an email Monday, founder and CEO Adriana Gascoigne said “Girls in Tech will be closing its doors due to a lack of funding in 2023 and 2024.”
There is an expression which I think is fitting, in a weird way - a successful marriage does not have to last forever. For some reason, we always tend to imagine that, once a company or organization is created, it must last forever. That for it to ‘close its doors’ or ‘wind down’ is somehow a failure. And that’s just not true; a professional athletes career does not last forever, and neither does the lifespan of most…
At the risk of posting a reflexive comment, what should we be doing here? It seems like everything has unintended consequences (not on a cost-benefit basis): - Minority affinity groups pull people from majority groups and decrease integration. - Anti-discrimination/sexism/etc. movements often add social barriers to interactions (e.g. things I do within my identity group would be misperceived if done across) - Affirma…
Better article with more information: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/07/08/girls-... > In an email Monday, founder and CEO Adriana Gascoigne said “Girls in Tech will be closing its doors due to a lack of funding in 2023 and 2024.”
https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2024/06/06/girls-...
> Nashville-based Girls in Tech Inc. may be forced to shut down by the end of summer. [...] needs to raise $100,000 or it faces imminent closure. [...] Girls in Tech has a membership of 130,000 "women and allies" across 50 cities and 38 countries.
Was the membership base already tapped out, or the org didn't reach out to the membership on this, or the org had larger near-term funding needs than the immediate $100K?
Also, is it possible that funding isn't the only consideration? For example, even if the org could be saved with heroics, there's opportunity cost to leadership (personal, professional)?
There is an expression which I think is fitting, in a weird way - a successful marriage does not have to last forever. For some reason, we always tend to imagine that, once a company or organization is created, it must last forever. That for it to ‘close its doors’ or ‘wind down’ is somehow a failure. And that’s just not true; a professional athletes career does not last forever, and neither does the lifespan of most…
In fact, we consider a marriage successful if it ends in the death of one of the partners.
And there are of course marriages that make it until death, but the partners and everyone around them spend the whole time miserable; that's hardly a success either.
The reasons for closing haven't really been elaborated on, just commented on as sad and devastating; I haven't managed to glean anything more from the rest of the article. However, it's incredible to me to keep an organization like this going for 17 years. The landscape is constantly shifting and looking back at the world and technology from 2007, and even 2014, they've survived a lot. Going down now just shows how b…
This is pure speculation but I would imagine that they reasons for closing are likely resource related (most likely financial) as organisers and managers can be replaced
At the risk of posting a reflexive comment, what should we be doing here? It seems like everything has unintended consequences (not on a cost-benefit basis): - Minority affinity groups pull people from majority groups and decrease integration. - Anti-discrimination/sexism/etc. movements often add social barriers to interactions (e.g. things I do within my identity group would be misperceived if done across) - Affirma…
I have seen data presented multiple times showing the relation between a country’s wealth and/or economic freedom and women’s participation in stem fields. It’s a negative correlation. I often wonder if we should just be focused on maximizing individual freedom and let the chips fall where they may. This will result in some professions with extreme sex imbalance, and we should accept that outcome.
Non-profits closing means there is a financial reason; were there grants monies that ran out? Did another "women in STEM" non-profit get corporate sponsorship instead? The article doesn't say.
The (economic) purpose of Girls in Tech is to create more workers in software so that prices for labor will go down. Given the layoffs of 2022-ongoing, labor costs in tech are dropping enough that interested parties aren't incentivized to increase the supply of labor further.
I don't think that's the reason (it is a side effect though). What makes you think that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're conflating entrepreneur with engineer. Different skills entirely, which is why Jobs was never famous for his code and Wozniak isn't famous for his reality distortion field.
Is there a distinction between them as far as "women in tech" goes? The ratio of both compared to men is pretty much the same.
One involves being good at software engineering, the other involves being good at running a business.
Getting good at either involves very different experiences, schools, colleges, and mentors.
The stereotype* for software engineers when I went through my degree was introverted nerds with undeveloped social skills. The stereotype* for business people is cocaine orgies.
* to complain that the stereotype is inaccurate is to miss the impact of the stereotype on what choices people make when deciding which subject to do a degree in and hence where they go after graduation
> The ratio of both compared to men is pretty much the same.
The percentage of software developers who are women varies from 8-22% depending on my source.
Even if they were identical, correlation doesn't mean causation — this range of "% of x who are women" also overlapps with the percentage of furries who are women, and it should hopefully be obvious you can't answer that by asking anything about how many women are entrepreneurs.
At the risk of posting a reflexive comment, what should we be doing here? It seems like everything has unintended consequences (not on a cost-benefit basis): - Minority affinity groups pull people from majority groups and decrease integration. - Anti-discrimination/sexism/etc. movements often add social barriers to interactions (e.g. things I do within my identity group would be misperceived if done across) - Affirma…
I have seen data presented multiple times showing the relation between a country’s wealth and/or economic freedom and women’s participation in stem fields. It’s a negative correlation. I often wonder if we should just be focused on maximizing individual freedom and let the chips fall where they may. This will result in some professions with extreme sex imbalance, and we should accept that outcome.
This lines up with my experiences as well. I know plenty of eastern european women, asians and latinas working as programmers. on top of that I've talked to many that didn't know how to code but would ask me to teach them as soon as they heard I was a programmer. yet I have met only a small handful of white women from america that are software engineers. furthermore, the ones that aren't engineers (in general) seem more dismissive of my line of work as if its somehow beneath them.