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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

#221

Post by leetcrew »

gizmo686 wrote: post #205
ilickpoolalgae wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> they are probably in a better position to do DEI at scale. Slight tangent, but most large tech companies DEI programs were never really great at doing DEI at scale. They were mostly funnelling the existing pool of diverse candidates into them. The result is that companies without an active DEI program end up less diverse through no fault of their own.

what is the mechanism for that "funneling" though? intentional programs to make diverse candidates feel more welcome? more money? if big tech is actively working to attract diverse candidates and other companies aren't keeping up, it doesn't sound like it's through no fault of their own that they can't retain those people.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#222

Post by tristor »

bell-cot wrote: post #104
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.

They outlasted most of the tech companies founded in 2007, not just the non-profits. The average life span of a tech startup is 5 years.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#223

Post by hiatus »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #166
hiatus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you assume that? If you are company over a certain size (even a non-profit) you are obligated by federal law to offer health insurance.

Are they large? I've not heard of them. It has 130 thousand members, but that doesn't mean they're all employees?

The law requires only 50 employees. I am not sure of their number of employees though.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#224

Post by simplicio »

itsoktocry wrote: post #130
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.

> This will result in some professions with extreme sex imbalance, and we should accept that outcome. We do accept it, for the most part. I don't see many Men-as-Teachers or Men-in-Nursing advocacy groups.

There's a lot of Men-in-Teaching advocacy, in part because its thought having male teachers tends to be beneficial for male students[1].

I think stuff like that is the main reason to be worried about gender imbalances. A 40-60 imbalance probably isn't a big deal, but once you get to like, 90-10 or worse, as is the case with early education, you start to get a bunch of secondary social problems. Kids who associate learning as a woman only thing, or the culture around engineering or software becoming "boys clubs" that become uncomfortable for the women who do want to work in those fields

https://www.cuny.edu/academics/academic-programs/teacher-edu...

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#225

Post by vundercind »

burutthrow1234 wrote: post #193
ilickpoolalgae wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Product is a lot more prestigious at most companies. Design is too, at quite a few, in that it’s often a better stepping stone to product, though that depends on the org.

In general, programming jobs are low-status. High pay, but low status.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#226

Post by Jensson »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #206
rsanek wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That would be an improvement over my anecdata of my final project class for my CS degree in 2014 having ~30 men and exactly two women.

Then your class had lower than average women for the time. The overall numbers hasn't changed since then.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#227

Post by lins1909 »

Jensson wrote: post #203
digging wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't imposter syndrome just... pretty common in any STEM field? Maybe especially in anyone who isn't a neurotypical cishet white man.

You don't think affirmative action has anything to do with that? Affirmative action means you and everyone else there knows you had to pass a lower bar, of course that makes impostor syndrome worse.

> Affirmative action means you and everyone else there knows you had to pass a lower bar, of course that makes impostor syndrome worse.

No, it doesn't. But if that makes you feel better, I hope you continue telling yourself that.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#228

Post by ilickpoolalgae »

gizmo686 wrote: post #205
ilickpoolalgae wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> they are probably in a better position to do DEI at scale. Slight tangent, but most large tech companies DEI programs were never really great at doing DEI at scale. They were mostly funnelling the existing pool of diverse candidates into them. The result is that companies without an active DEI program end up less diverse through no fault of their own.

This may be true. As I noted, I've only worked at very "desirable" companies so my views are potentially skewed. That being said, I can't imagine that DEI has gotten significantly worse across the industry while vastly improving at the top end but I have no data to back that up.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#230

Post by Jensson »

dangus wrote: post #199
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

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 te…

> What I’ve noticed is that there are companies that care to be inclusive. It’s an active undertaking, not a passive one.

That is a failure, you don't need to actively be inclusive if the problem is solved. See doctors for example, in my country kids ask if men can be doctors since they see them so rarely, the "women aren't doctors" thing has been solved, there is no need to do anything at that point except try to ensure it doesn't tip to the other side.

> Statistically there should be at least one or two.

That isn't how statistics works, statistically there would be 2-3, 0 is perfectly normal just by random chance. If you intentionally try to only join teams with more than average women then of course you see more and more women, even though the field as a whole hasn't changed.

Edit: And given that SRE often have lots of on-call I'd bet there are much less women there than regular SWE roles. Men tend to be over represented in roles that sacrifices free time.

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