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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

#191

Post by jrockway »

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 think that companies think they can make $X with 10 engineers, but > $2X with 20 engineers. Thus, allowing more people to be comfortable as a software engineer increases the amount of money they can make.

Right now, with 6% interest rates? Nobody wants to make money that badly. But it won't be that way forever.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#192

Post by footy »

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…

This is interesting to me, because it runs so counter to my own experience with young/early career developers. I run into more female devs close to my own age than younger (relative to male developers specifically).

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#193

Post by burutthrow1234 »

ilickpoolalgae wrote: post #187
Melomololotolo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't feel the same. The last decade or so has seen an explosion of women show interest in joining the tech community. Ratio's on teams I've been on has greatly increased throughout my career. I've been on several teams now where women have outnumbered men. In my experience, the ratio is now flipped when you look at the team as a whole (XFN, etc). I may be biased though as I've only worked at "premier" large tech c…

It's been a change in the past 10 years but I would say women are still systemically under-compensated, under-levelled, and encouraged to move into less prestigious roles like product, design, etc. The perception that women are better at "soft skills" means that we get pushed out of technical tracks into coordinating work, managing people, and sometimes just straight up babysitting male devs. Those career paths lead to lower lifetime comp and less "impressive" titles.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#194

Post by vdqtp3 »

taylodl wrote: post #74
Rinzler89 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like easy tech careers that pay big from the get-go after a bootcamp are imploding. Those workers with a lot of experience and those with the skills, passion and patience, willing to push through the rough tides will be rewarded in the end. However, SW dev is still a tough career, requiring constantly learning the new things in your free time if you want to stay employable, that's not to be understated, especial…

I've been developing software for a living for 40 years now (even longer if you include when I wasn't developing software for a living) and I feel that the pace of change has dramatically slowed down in the past 10 years: - We've stabilized web front ends - Mobile application development has stabilized - Architecture patterns are well-known and there are plenty of (now legacy) products with which to implement them -…

> it's easier than ever to develop software

I agree that there are a lot more solved problems, but I find it much more complicated to develop software now than in the past. You used the example of web front ends, but how large is that toolchain? How many different steps and tools do you need to be familiar with to take a project from concept to end user?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#195

Post by neilv »

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…

I know almost nothing about non-profit fundraising, but this benefits tier membership model looks very familiar as a tech for-profit service, rather than a charitable non-profit for the benefit of all.

(Specifically, in a tech, like a SaaS, the free tier are sales leads and inflated "market share" numbers, and the premium tier are the real customers of the service value you're providing and is your whole reason for existing. In a charity, however, you don't measure out benefits based on how much that person is paying you. Though a charity will have special recognition for exceptional donations, like the donor's name listed on some page, or mentioned as a sponsor of an event.)

Given the dire runway situation they were in, I wonder whether they sent out a recent urgent appeal to their free-tier, as more like a charity, asking for donations? (And if so, was the obvious benefits tier model hurting any charitable goodwill they might've otherwise generated?) Or did they try to push their free-tier members an upsell to their premium tier, like a business? Or neither?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#196

Post by rsanek »

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…

latest data still only has them at 21% of cs graduates https://ngcproject.org/resources/stem-statistics-higher-educ...

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#197

Post by randomdata »

taylodl wrote: post #137
Rinzler89 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel like it's easier than ever to develop software, It's also inversely proportional more difficult to get hired nowadays in those fields though. Back then when (for example) mobile dev was just getting started you could get hired with absolutely zero experience since nobody had any experience, but now there's a laundry list of requirement even for junior positions which are few compared to senior positions and t…

Isn't that how all mature industries work? Now that things have settled down and have been standardized, there's a set of things that all developers are expected to know. It was easier to "wing it" back when that wasn't the case. People used to evaluate you based off your aptitude and ability to learn new things and stay abreast with the industry, nowadays those skills aren't so valuable as is someone who knows how t…

That's how it works when an industry is flush with candidates. Software development is the "in thing" right now, so software businesses have endless people to choose from, and thus get to be picky. All that goes out the window when you start having difficulty finding people to hire, though.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#199

Post by dangus »

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

Who are your peers and where do they work?

What I’m getting at here is, maybe they're at stagnant companies that aren’t making a positive change. What I’ve noticed is that there are companies that care to be inclusive. It’s an active undertaking, not a passive one.

I started my career working with all men in a toxic echo chamber, and now I’m on a team that is almost completely balanced.

It’s also on me to not join teams that have a curious lack of women. E.g., if I interview with a DevOps team that had 10 people and zero women, there might be something wrong with hiring. Statistically there should be at least one or two.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#200

Post by rsanek »

callalex wrote: post #188
Der_Einzige wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those folks from outside of the USA had been from economically prosperous backgrounds, they too would try to become nurses or caregivers instead of programmers. Gender parity in STEM is a sign of the economic desperation of a countries people. This is a sociological fact which ruffles feathers when it’s stated out loud.

Do you have any citations to back up this “fact”?

take a look at the gender breakdowns for employment in the Nordics. probably the best social support structures / 'equality' in the world, and yet the ratios are among the most extreme anywhere.

when you're taken care of, you do what you like. when you have an economic need, you'll take the job that pays and will pull you out of poverty, even if you don't care for it.

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