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Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

venturebeat.com

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Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#101

Post by netdevnet »

myth_drannon wrote: post #31

Tech industry is imploding, there is no need whatsoever to push women (or men) into a career in tech that has very limited opportunities at the moment.

I feel saying that the industry is imploding is an exaggeration. We are just having a room cleanup period.

- Crypto/ML startups built on promises

- Companies built on the latest buzzword (LLM startups will have their Judgement Day by 2027 latest)

- Companies giving crazy high salaries to inexperienced people straight out of bootcamps

- Companies spending crazy money on "perks" such as free food and in-office entertainment

- Companies paying big bonuses to all tech employees

- Companies overhiring so that the competition remains understaffed

Money is not free anymore. Everyone is looking where the pennies go. Companies have behaved like your average Amazon customer and have filled their companies with subscriptions they don't really need (see overhired employees, perks, high salaries). Belt tightening is the mood.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#102

Post by pbronez »

bitcurious wrote: post #45
asah wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is normal, because running a non-profit is hard enough that suitable candidates command high salaries. I was on an NPO board with a similar ratio and we couldn't get it down.

That comp $ is very reasonable in the abstract, what's not reasonable is comp:revenue. You can't be paying 15% of your revenue to a single individual, because almost by definition they aren't performing well enough to justify that salary.

Even when that person is the founder? Who created the thing and keeps it going through personal force of will?

Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. You want high quality people to be able to focus full time on stuff like this.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#104

Post by bell-cot »

dpoljak wrote: post #37

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…

> However, it's incredible to me to keep...

THIS. In feel-good daydreams, every nice-sounding thing lasts forever. (Generally with Imagined Good People Somewhere(tm) paying the bills.)

Vs. in the real world? - I'd guess that they outlasted >99% of tiny tech non-profits founded in 2007. And >95% of all non-profits founded then.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#105

Post by gspencley »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #87
next_xibalba wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is important to understand the reasons for that negative correlation. If you do, your conclusions would be quite the opposite - sex imbalance is not something to accept, but rather to fix. Many authoritarian regimes are expanding their economic base by enabling women to pursue professional careers. In some developed countries there’s no such pressure, so they are simply stuck in the past. They are not doing better…

> It is important to understand the reasons for that negative correlation.

Agreed 100%

> If you do, your conclusions would be quite the opposite

This is where you lose me. Your statement here suggests the following:

1. That you know, for a conclusive fact, what those reasons are

2. That the reasons suggest something ominous

Furthermore, you haven't explained what you consider to be the reasons, let alone offered explanation or citations that would support why you think those are the particular reasons. You implied that the reasons are sexism and discrimination, but you left that quite open for interpretation.

Moving on, you then suggest that minority groups that do not pursue careers in STEM are "stuck in the past."

I have two daughters who are in their early, going on mid twenties. My youngest daughter is one of the smartest and brightest people that I have ever met. Obviously I'm biased, but this is a kid that found ways to get herself into all sorts of trouble as a toddler by solving problems that I would have thought no toddler was capable of.

In her late teens she had no idea what she wanted to do, but she expressed some interest in learning to code. Being a software engineer myself, I gave her all of the support and resources that I could. I offered to teach her myself. I bought her Udemy courses and books. I invited her to sit with me at work to see what what life as a coder is like. I made it as accessible for her as possible.

What has she decided to do with her life? She works in a professional kitchen and is on the career path to becoming a chef and possibly a restauranteur.

People with your attitude would snub your nose at her life choices, look down at what she's passionate about and claim that she is a 'slave' living in the 'past' because she's currently working in a low-paid service industry. You would then blame sexism or classism despite the fact that she was raised in a progressive, well to do family that gave her every opportunity to succeed at whatever she chose to do.

Of course, one anectode does not refute statistics. But you have not offered statistics. You came out with assumptions, accusations and a snobbish attitude towards people who would make personal life choices that you don't understand or approve of. The beautiful thing about freedom, however, is that no one needs your approval or understanding.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#106

Post by ghaff »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #87
next_xibalba wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is important to understand the reasons for that negative correlation. If you do, your conclusions would be quite the opposite - sex imbalance is not something to accept, but rather to fix. Many authoritarian regimes are expanding their economic base by enabling women to pursue professional careers. In some developed countries there’s no such pressure, so they are simply stuck in the past. They are not doing better…

Of course, there are a variety of roles that are heavily female-weighted: nurses, K-12 teachers, executive assistants, etc. So there are at least some forces driving gender preferences for roles that probably can't/shouldn't just be wiped out in the West.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#108

Post by netdevnet »

busterarm wrote: post #99
netdevnet wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, we can all agree that this is not sustainable. Companies basically throwing money at people that might not have the skills you need is a massive waste of money from the companies point of view.

Nobody was talking about whether or not it was sustainable, we're just comparing salary potential now to a generation ago. To the managerial class, tech people used to be literal wizards conjuring the impossible and now we're regular commoditized office labor like any other.

Not sure if comparing salary potentials coming from two different socio-economic periods is useful or likely to mislead.

Tech and people versed in it were not common (to people outside tech) and so the high salaries would reflect that. Now is not the case. It was always going to be temporary. As people become acquainted with tech people, the magic vanishes, you see the code behind the pixels. At the same time, tech people themselves did cause this by making tech easier to understand and manipulate.

It's like a magician, the first few times, it is enticing and mysterious but after a while it becomes ordinary. Tech wizards are just like that.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#109

Post by netdevnet »

jmull wrote: post #96
netdevnet wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is them going down related to the market? They are a non-profit. 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

I would guess they get most of their funding from tech companies who support and participate in their programs.

That makes sense

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#110

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

igor47 wrote: post #81
TrueGeek wrote: post #66

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.”

Huh. You'd think all the organizations that attribute their challenges in hiring non-male engineers to a "pipeline problem" would've spent a small fraction of their recruiting budgets helping to fund Girls in Tech...

If the problem is solved, the funding disappears.
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