Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#211

Post by sangnoir » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:39 PM UTC

micah94 wrote: post #184

IncreasePosts wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Borrowing money becomes more expensive so companies will focus on their own needs (or surviving) rather than giving or outreach programs. Unlike Apple or NVIDIA most companies need to borrow money to stay in business.

> Borrowing money becomes more expensive so companies will focus on their own needs (or surviving) rather than giving or outreach programs.

All the (Big tech) companies - not just Apple and Nvidia - have higher revenues and profits now than they did during the Zero-interest regime. They are not hurting for money to fund outreach programs that meet their strategic goals.

What has changed is their hiring outlook. Online services saw unprecedented growth when everyone was cooped up in their homes due to Covid lockdowns, and the tech companies thought the growth would be permanent, rather than a temporary bump, and couldn't hire engineers fast enough to meet the anticipated growth: hence the outreach to non-traditional hiring-pipelines. After the layoffs, they stopped hiring aggressively and the labor market is now a buyers market

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#212

Post by ygjb » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:42 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #204

burutthrow1234 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> and encouraged to move into less prestigious roles like product, design, etc Women tend to seek out such roles all on their own, there is no encouragement needed. Just adding "design" to a job title massively increases how many women applies, even if the job itself is unchanged. Just rebrand software engineers to software designers and suddenly you get many women, even though they do the same thing.

That's a pretty bold claim to make without data to back it up.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#213

Post by specialist » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:42 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #84

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.”

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…

Like many orgs, probably, their funding model was working, and then got hammered by COVID-19, and were stuck holding on, hoping for return to "normalcy".

It's very hard to pivot. Fund raising costs money. Some one needs an idea, a plan, a strategy. Everyone needs to agree to it. Meanwhile, an org's (remaining) execs and board members are doing triage. To execute a new plan means even more work.

And so on.

I've met and worked with terrific fund raisers. For me, personally, fund raising is just the worst. I've done enough to know a) it's very hard and b) I suck at it.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#214

Post by ivan_gammel » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:42 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #97

ivan_gammel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The countries with the most female empowerment and equality in the nordics have some of the smallest percentage of women in STEM in the world.

And? Have you looked at any research why this is happening? Out of context this can tell anything.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#215

Post by travisb » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

IncreasePosts wrote: post #173

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can read "politically correct" as "politically fashionable".

When money is cheap it's easy to spend a bit of money on political signalling. However when money is no longer cheap that pure cost centre is the first on the list for cuts.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#216

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

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

The only place I see/hear a lot of female devs is in India. In Japan the ratio might as well be zero.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#217

Post by j45 » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

I wish sustainability planning that was more a part of community initiative.

While it's absolutely the right of the organizers putting in their time to decide their participation - where regret is expressed about something ending - it would be interesting to know any coulda/shoulda/wouldas for others to learn from.

Baking it into the bread, early, of "why we do it this way" and learning it together, helps create a culture of ensuring things can be entrusted a little easier to the next group "who gets it" and then can grow it.

The job of equality isn't done yet. Where equally capable and competent people both in potential and actualized to the table that normally aren't there is critical.

It would be nice if something could take it's place, or continue it's work, and not start from scratch, or maybe someone can step forward to continue some of the work under the brand.

Quite often new things end up re-learning the lessons of the past to get to a point of effectiveness again.

Clay Shirky has a great essay about a group being it's own worst enemy, and I wonder if some of those themes in that essay were present at one point or in hindsight.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#218

Post by ivan_gammel » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #146

ivan_gammel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

i don't know the real reasons, but i have the impression that in those countries STEM careers give women more freedom, and that would be why they pursue them. the added freedom makes it worth the potential downsides. in the west they already have more freedom, and so the downside of having to endure sexism does not make it worth the effort. not sure if that is true, but it makes sense to me

It depends. In some countries (eg Iran) this is probably true from what I remember, in others there are other reasons.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#219

Post by Jensson » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

ygjb wrote: post #212

Jensson wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and encouraged to move into less prestigious roles like product, design, etc Women tend to seek out such roles all on their own, there is no encouragement needed. Just adding "design" to a job title massively increases how many women applies, even if the job itself is unchanged. Just rebrand software engineers to software designers and suddenly you get many women, even though they do the same thing.

That's a pretty bold claim to make without data to back it up.

The comment I responded to didn't have any data either, not sure why I'd need data for a similar kind of comment while they don't?

The university I went to did that and they said it was to get more women, and easily got over 50% women into engineering fields just by adding design to the name of the degree. It is a well known trick, names matters.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#220

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

RIMR wrote: post #169

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could read it as either way. It could be a sadness to see it come to and end, but still having full agreement the time has come. It could also be a sadness because financial hurdles or other operation hurdles are making it near impossible. It's hard, but I get it either way.

You could read it that way, but she said "with sadness and devastation". You are taking some extreme liberties with your interpretation of what she's saying. The sentiment she's sharing is clearly quite negative. I don't think she's happily wrapping up her mission, I think she's going out of business and has no ability to continue her mission as she would like to.

We can still view operating for 17 years to be a success. We can still view helping women in tech for 17 years to have improved the world, even if it cannot continue.