231–240 of 520 posts
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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.
What do you mean by this?
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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…
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…
But there's some truth to what you're saying. I do think women tend to be the "babysitters" on the team. I've noticed this often on teams I've been on. They're usually the ones that are the "cultural heart" of the team and organize all the events. Sometimes I've been their manager so I've asked and I'd say it's about 66/33 they legitimately enjoy doing it vs they felt pidgeon-holed into it because they volunteered once.
As for the transitions into other roles, I think it's impossible to tell if it's bias and or a natural inclination. There's no way to look at the data empirically and determine this. In my experience though, I think women are often encouraged to take these roles not because there's a bias towards "women are good at soft skills" but that these are generally the roles that provide better career advancement and visibility. It has always seemed to be a somewhat mis-guided outcome of allyship.
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…
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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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/affirmative-action-law...
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Perhaps we should stop concentrating so many opportunities in areas with exhausted resources that are needed to host an economic sector.
Buyers are free to choose to buy from the company in Poducksville instead, but I suspect that, in the typical case, they'll never learn about said company because it takes strong network effects to get things off the ground.
The SV/NorCal area is reaching that capacity. There are only so many dollars customers are willing to pay to get a quality product, service, or charitable act before the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and those dollars are what funds the compensation packages of both profits and non-profits. There is no infinite well of value (no matter what capitalism says), which means that there is a ceiling on things like salary and the things (namely residential real estate) that said salary can buy.
If you pay a person $300k to do a job because that's what the local job market dictates in SV, are you really getting the surplus value to cover that salary? Can you keep charging customers that amount? Will you do increasingly alienating things that causes negative externalities (read: regulation) to be passed that impact your business model's ability to pay that much?
You could very well be better off to hire someone at the $150k rate in a place like Kansas City or Minneapolis. Those aren't "Poducksville" but that's the competition the valley will begin to see.
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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…
Engineers viewing design as a 'less prestigious' role is laughable. The compensation for these tracks is pretty much equal. I would love to hear you spell out why exactly you perceive design as less prestigious.
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.
Like "every engineering role I've ever had, I was condescended to by some other engineer who though he knew more than me because he was a man, maybe the culture is different around 'designer'". Likewise for "technologist".
More broadly, it seems to me that a lot of engineers' perception of inequity within their field basically devolves to "well, there's nothing about the material that's sexist, I don't understand why more women don't want to do it". It reveals a staggering lack of imagination and empathy, especially within a group that stereotypically was subject to a lot of bullying as young people.
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> 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.
1) Recruitment
2) Retention
3) Sponsorship
Retention improvements are generally a net positive for industry wide diversity. If someone leaves your company for harrasment reasons, they are more likely to leave the industry all together.
Sponsorship is generally net positive as well.
The funnelling I am talking about is entirely in the "recruitment" bucket. If you hire a woman software developer, they were already looking for a job. They already made a significant personal investment in getting the job. The industry is still enough if an employees market that they were probably going to get a job. You did nothing to bring that women into the industry. All you did is increase the chances that they end up working for you in particular. On the margins, this is still probably a net positive for industry wide diversity, but that is a much smaller effect then the chair shuffling effect.
Of these three buckets, the most effective way of increasing your diversity numbers is in recruitment (unless you have horrid retention). In the current environment, there is no way for a large company to get anywhere near 50/50 without a significant investment in the recruitment bucket.