Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

Yes, but online games are a collective. Consider the case of open spaces where you have one team per aisle. Team 1 can be as noisy as they wish - there is no penalty most of the time from the unrelated Team 2. I was in such a predicament at a large e-commerce company - I was seated the aisle over from a very noisy team that ran in debug mode. They and their manager thought this was the way a good team works so my complaints were discarded with extreme prejudice. Two aisles over was a relatively quiet team with a very loud chewer/scraper - the person was very careful with his food and spent 5 minutes every work day scraping his plastic container right there at the desk.

I used to have to listen to white noise just to get away from the drip-drip torture of the endless prattle - my productivity at home used to be 5x compared to working in this open Hades.

I guess you are right - a lot of interaction will never come about if it isn't fostered organically by the environment. I am saying that in my case, what was fostered organically by the environment was people that first speak what they are about to type before typing it and utter every exclamation point associated with a failed `ls` or etc. It was Hades. I have ringing in my ears from listening to loud music and noise to drown out this aural rubbish and I can assure you that this ringing is a quintillion orders of magnitude more pleasant than the cacophony foisted on to me by the fine co-workers at this establishment, courtesy of the cage free office plan. I left as soon as I could and while I miss the money/benefits, I don't miss the noise - not one little bit.

I am a woman of color. Unfortunately I do think location does matter quite a bit as I've heard of all these horror stories from tech scene in the U.S. but so far I have encountered nothing but respectful working environments, and some really good ones where I feel highly valued and have a lot of room for growth.

I think some things good to look out for during the interview are: - when you ask about their culture, what's their response? Beer and ping pong are not culture, they're at best fun stuff that young, hip bros like to do. If beer and ping pong is all they give you as an answer there might be a redflag there, it's possible that they'd discriminate against people who are not like them (people who don't drink etc.) Good answers to hear are how they want their people to succeed, what's their plan on taking their product and company up a level, what do they value and how do they carry out those values on a day to day basis? Do they provide any opportunities for employees to learn? - look at your to-be direct manager, from talking to him do you feel a sense of huge ego? do they think they know everything and is better than you at everything? or do they show a sign of humility and genuinely want to learn about your background and what you can bring to the table? - everybody else that interview you, are they behaving appropriately throughout the interview? ask them what they like and dislike about their job, that usually tells a lot. Again, if answer is "I love the free beer and pizza" something's wrong. They should be telling you what kind of opportunities they're getting at this company. Ask about work-life balance, during one of my interviews someone actually told me "the work life balance here is pretty good, some people have young children, it's not really fair to ask them to stay late everyday", and that's how I got a feel that the employer does encourage life outside of work. - I'd also watch out for companies that hire women for the sake of filling the quota, they're hiring you based on your gender, not your skills. Can you really expect that they'd value your skills enough to be supportive in your career development when you actually work there? Someone that hired you based on gender, would they really want you to get promotions in the future?

I wish I could explain better, but I think if someone is ego inflated it's fairly easy to tell just from some simple conversations, and I tend to avoid those people (I think even if I were not a woman, I'd still avoid those people).

If I want to talk to someone I feel very comfortable going over to their office and having a conversation. At most I'm interrupting 1 person. In an open office or cubicle farm if I walk up to someone and strike up a conversation I'm interrupting 10 people.

Maybe it's "grass is always greener syndrome" but as someone who grew up in the Denver area I'd rather head to Washington or California than stay in CO. As with any city, Boulder works for some but not all; I'd caution that the Denver area has its own challenges for minorities and vulnerable populations. Racism, sexism, any other type of bigotry: I've seen it while growing up here.

Where does one work in SW in SF if one wants an office with a door? Does it even exist?