Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

> You don’t even consider the option of father taking parental leave while the mother works.

Given what little we know of their situation, that would likely be a very stupid thing for them to do. Because most people do not make enough money to support a family on a single income, and he is fortunate enough to be making that much money now, it's unlikely that she would be able to do the same. It's also reasonable to assume that they discussed their options a long time ago, likely before a child was even involved. It's a good idea for couples to talk about that sort of thing before they start a family, and for those couples who could realistically have a parent at home with their child, whoever is making the most money is the natural choice for the one who continues working.

As it happens, I do consider stay at home fathers to be a perfectly valid option. Again, every choice is a sacrifice. The parent who goes to work for 40+ hours a week is making a sacrifice. The parent who stays home with their child is making a sacrifice. There is no difference. If people didn't need to work in order to support themselves and their loved ones, I doubt that many parents (mothers or fathers) would choose to abandon their kids for most of their waking hours during the most formative and remarkable time of their children's lives. At least not to the extent that most of are forced to currently.

It's very odd that you seem to consider only the parent who stays home to be "doing the sacrifices" without due consideration for what parents who are forced to work long hours give up. In most families, both parents have to make that sacrifice. It's a rare gift for there to be an opportunity for one parent to have the ability to be with their family.

You are correct that hiring someone to help keep up the home and care for children is not a solution for the entire population. That's alright though, because we're discussing just one person's family situation and that person's situation is exceptional. When it's an option, bringing in outside help is extremely efficient which is why most families resort to it at least some of the time, even if only by hiring a babysitter for a few hours occasionally, or by enlisting the help of a relative.

If I were looking for a solution that would apply to the entire population, I wouldn't be interested in solutions that specifically "empower women" either. I'd be looking for ones that empowered all parents, both men and women, because both should be equally afforded the opportunity to pursue their own interests and find work they feel is important, meaningful, and fulfilling. I'm really not sure what that solution would look like though. UBI perhaps? Maybe a requirement that every last job pay enough that a person could support themselves and a modest family on a single income? It'd take a massive departure from our current culture in any case.

It is even lower. You don't need to complete an undergrad in CS to get a tech job.

I have. In April 2019, when I worked at Dropbox, we instituted what we called "Opportunistic Hiring". 20 heads were reserved to hire "opportunistically". What this meant is that when a diverse candidate was hired, the headcount used for that hire didn't come from the team's headcount. It came from the pool of headcount for "opportunistic hires". Unless the "opportunistic hires" pool was already exhausted, then a diverse hire still counted against the team's headcount. The definition of a "diverse" candidate was a woman of any race, and URM men. If this sounds like an overly-complex way of saying "we're prohibiting Asian and white men from 20 headcount" it's because it is. I can provide the exact wording of the policy if you want.

It's not "freezing out" all white males. One, it's also freezing out Asian males. And two, it's only freezing them out of a specific chunk of our headcount. But it still deeply affected me to see a company outright deny employment on the basis of race and gender, even if it was only for part of the headcount.

That's not necessarily true at all.

Sometimes organizations simply wind up in impossible positions. Funding dries up for macroeconomic reasons that you have no control over, demand patterns change, etc.

There are plenty of failed orgs that would have failed even if they'd had true business geniuses leading them.

You could just as easily assert that paying someone $285K got the expertise that kept the organization going for an extra 3 years than it would have otherwise, because someone with less expertise would have made a bunch of worse choices that it would have run out of money 3 years earlier.

You seem to be demanding some kind of divine level of perfection here.

> Cullen White, AnitaB.org’s chief impact officer, said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, that some registrants had lied about their gender identity when signing up, and men were now taking up space and time with recruiters that should go to women. “All of those are limited resources to which you have no right,” White said. AnitaB.org did not respond to a request for comment.

Someone ought to fill Cullen in on employment laws in the US. Men have equal right to those resources as women. Anything less is illegal discrimination.