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Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

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Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#171

Post by makeitdouble »

Melomololotolo wrote: post #143
mikhael28 wrote: post #57

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…

When I look around my peers, not a lot has changed in the last 10 years for woman in tech

FWIW remote work has opened the door to many women who would have left the field otherwise, so they might be less visible.

It's still not great in my opinion, but I think there's more senior engineers and managers and an overall better situation than a few decades ago.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#172

Post by shmatt »

csande17 wrote: post #121
igor47 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

For what it's worth, Girls Who Code -- an organization more directly focused on improving the "pipeline" through training programs aimed at K-12 and college students -- seems to be thriving, with over $20M in donations from a variety of tech organizations in 2023: https://girlswhocode.com/2023report/

this deserves to be much higher than a sub-sub-sub-sub comment

the fact one DEI organization failed doesn't mean DEI failed. They could be mis managed just like any other non profit

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#173

Post by IncreasePosts »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #123
igor47 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

once interests rate went up all DEI initiatives dried up - these companies don't really have integrity or beliefs beyond doing what is politically correct at the current time.

Why would rising interest rates affect what is considered politically correct?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#174

Post by RIMR »

randomdata wrote: post #154
netdevnet wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so that prices for labor will go down. I don't think that's the reason (it is a side effect though). What makes you think that?

Why else would a buyer invest heavily in increasing the supply?

I like that we're not beating around the bush and admitting that businesses only donate money to causes they think will financially benefit them. That there are no altruistic actions by a business entity, everything is either an operational expense or an investment.

This is 100% true in practice, so you're absolutely correct here. I just hope that we're in agreement that this is a bad state of affairs if businesses have completely written off doing the right thing in favor of profit 100% of the time.

As a community of entrepreneurs, we should aim higher. If this is the only reason that tech companies invest in gender equality, then we need to find better advocates, or at least come prepared to counter the exploitation the current advocates have in mind.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#175

Post by Spivak »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #160

Judging by current distribution of interns, coding is becoming a female dominated field. I think this has more to do with pragmatic mindset of asian parents and less with any DEI efforts. How many other fields: - Are not dangerous or unreasonably physically strenuous - Pay good money - Keep you surrounded by respectable, educated people - Can be mastered in 4-6 years rather than running risk of getting old while stil…

Where? The experience of being the only woman in your math/cs class doesn't seem to have changed among the women we interview. Is it the non-uni "bootcamp" path? We don't get very many of them for whatever reason around here. I imagine because our in-state college is both good and affordable but obviously can't prove that.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#176

Post by [deleted] »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #160

Judging by current distribution of interns, coding is becoming a female dominated field. I think this has more to do with pragmatic mindset of asian parents and less with any DEI efforts. How many other fields: - Are not dangerous or unreasonably physically strenuous - Pay good money - Keep you surrounded by respectable, educated people - Can be mastered in 4-6 years rather than running risk of getting old while stil…

[deleted]

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#177

Post by [deleted] »

michaelt wrote: post #162
neilv wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Following a link from there: 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…

Well, they seem to offer a "premium membership" for $9.99/month [1] and presumably that hasn't raised enough. If the aim of the charity is to get career resources in front of as many women as possible, they probably don't want to put their most impactful resources behind a paywall - that would be contrary to their goal. I suppose they could try an appeal to generosity instead? Depends if they've got a network of grat…

[deleted]

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#178

Post by nradov »

grobbyy wrote: post #51

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…

Before selecting an approach we would first have to agree on the goal. What would success look like in a few decades?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#180

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

Melomololotolo wrote: post #143
mikhael28 wrote: post #57

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…

When I look around my peers, not a lot has changed in the last 10 years for woman in tech

Even though I feel similar and don't have any large data to look at, an unfortunate thought is that their efforts helped keep status quo. Or to put it another way, without that organization's efforts, things could have gotten much worse maybe?
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