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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

#271

Post by commandlinefan »

elric wrote: post #269

This is such a difficult topic. When I started my undergraduate in CompSci, the department of 300 students had exactly 3 women. The faculty had way more female instructors than it did students. The Commucation Sciences department, which was on the same campus, had the inverse student population. I'm all in favour for letting students making their own study (and career) choices, but when the imbalance is this great, I…

> Trying to keep barriers for entry low

But the barrier is already low - you need to complete an undergraduate degree in a related field. That's it.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#272

Post by bookaway »

Aeolun wrote: post #216
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

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

The reasons for the numbers in the global south are different. It's not necessarily a preferred choice through empowerment, more so a profession taken up to propel oneself from poverty.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#273

Post by commandlinefan »

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

> not a lot has changed in the last 10 years

Then maybe what we've been doing for the last 10 years wasn't the right thing?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#274

Post by Aperocky »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #255
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…

There is a great book (written by a female engineer, Tanya Riley) called "The Staff Engineer's Path". I've learned a lot from the book, but one part of Tanya's experience that I could not relate to was having mentors who would encourage me and provide "you can do this" kind of pep talks. For a male engineer the usual experience is the opposite: we are expected to be competitive, and if we display any doubts then the…

Maybe better compensated, but not sure about more prestigious.

I have no interest seeing the day to day of that job.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#275

Post by Jensson »

runako wrote: post #145
em-bee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

monetary investment into DEI, which has become a negative investor signal for many large companies can you please explain that or point to some articles about it?

https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-dive... https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity etc. There is a backlash underway against any effort to expand workplace diversity beyond the representative fractions circa 1990.

Women were a much higher percentage in the field 1990. Women abandoned the field after the IT-bubble and it never recovered.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#276

Post by ZoomerCretin »

elric wrote: post #269

This is such a difficult topic. When I started my undergraduate in CompSci, the department of 300 students had exactly 3 women. The faculty had way more female instructors than it did students. The Commucation Sciences department, which was on the same campus, had the inverse student population. I'm all in favour for letting students making their own study (and career) choices, but when the imbalance is this great, I…

> Trying to keep barriers for entry low seems worth while.

With Section 174 (increasing business taxes on SWE salaries) + high interest rates, this is a big ask for US employers who loath hiring at the entry level in the best times.

To me, the real problem seems to be solving US employers' unwillingness to hire anyone without experience, after which the rest (hiring underrepresented groups) will follow. But why would they do this when they have all the experienced and senior engineers they want?

Is this not the exact problem DEI was created to solve, and is now being dismantled?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#277

Post by jimbokun »

elric wrote: post #269

This is such a difficult topic. When I started my undergraduate in CompSci, the department of 300 students had exactly 3 women. The faculty had way more female instructors than it did students. The Commucation Sciences department, which was on the same campus, had the inverse student population. I'm all in favour for letting students making their own study (and career) choices, but when the imbalance is this great, I…

[flagged]

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#278

Post by gadflyinyoureye »

runako wrote: post #145
em-bee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

monetary investment into DEI, which has become a negative investor signal for many large companies can you please explain that or point to some articles about it?

https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/inclusion-equity-dive... https://www.axios.com/2024/04/02/dei-backlash-diversity etc. There is a backlash underway against any effort to expand workplace diversity beyond the representative fractions circa 1990.

There is a backlash to the heavy handedness of DEI. You can’t freeze out white males simple because they are white males. You need to remove barriers to entry based on sexism and such, but you can’t exclude a whole large class of people because that class had it good in the past. That gets you South Africa.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#279

Post by bookofjoe »

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…

130,000 members x $1/member = $130,000

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#280

Post by autoexec »

spookie wrote: post #209
ndriscoll wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife spends around an hour a day in the kitchen. I spend close to eight chained to my computer. If one of us is a slave, it's not her. She's not attending daily stand-ups to report how teaching our daughter the alphabet is going; she chooses how to spend each day with no external pressures at all. Her work taking care of the kids is still more exhausting than mine, but it's also obviously more fulfilling and engag…

Hey, I know you know best (talking plural here), but make sure that your wife feels accomplished in her own line of work and/or getting her dream job. Raising kids is great, but as age goes by, she might feel sad about not accomplishing other things. This is coming from someone with a dysfunctional family, I don't have much context about your life nor do I want to sound as if I'm assuming things. I'm just trying to w…

> make sure that your wife feels accomplished in her own line of work

"make sure that your wife feels accomplished" sounds very strange to me. Ultimately it should be his wife's responsibility to make sure that she feels accomplished right? I get that it's not a bad idea to talk with your spouse about what the two of you want in life and to consider other options from time to time though.

> Raising kids is great, but as age goes by, she might feel sad about not accomplishing other things.

I think this happens to almost all people no matter what they spent the majority of their life doing. Everyone thinks about how things might have worked out if they'd done something different. As long as people are free to make their own choices, and they have the opportunities to pursue what they want in life, then people are entitled to their own regrets down the road. We each only get one chance at life. It's very rare for someone to look back and not feel sad about not accomplishing other things.

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