> Compared to almost any other industry, women are underrepresented in technology. Except for the many industries where women dominate like: Preschool and kindergarten education Nursing Accounting Social Work Psychology
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A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
41–50 of 482 posts
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#42> Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. As an unattractive computer nerd, I've been regularly reminded my entire life that I am creepy. Skipping.
Dont give up, learn the basics of human interactions and get interested in people, your life will change.
Speaking from personal experience, this advice isn't as bad as the votes and replies are making it look.
I spent most of my time as a kid screwing around with computers and other whatsits, so I was really withdrawn and socially awkward after high school, and gave off the kind of accidental creeper aura that people here are talking about. (A mix of shyness, over-sharing, nonexistent small talk, and bad body language.)
Then I took a break from the tech industry for a while and ended up getting a job as a climbing instructor. It was an amazing change in a short period of time. I learned how to socialize quickly and easily with people I'd never met before, went out for beers, learned how to show people that they could trust me with their safety or their kid's safety really fast (because kids' birthday parties were a big revenue stream...).
Any kind of job or hobby that requires you to be social to do well at it should work just fine. (Retail and food service don't count.)
I'm sure there are people who are so naturally awkward that this is useless advice, but I suspect there are far more people who could benefit from spending more time around people than they do around electronics.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#43> In addition to these perceptions about people in tech, tech actually is less social for women than for men. It’s harder for women to make friends and fit in, both in university classes and at tech companies. Because it’s unnatural or might be taken the wrong way, young men are less likely to approach women and invite them to join a study group or happy hour, poker night, or whatever else they do with their male peers/coworkers. They don’t just sit next to women without a desk neighbor, ask them unsolicited questions, or offer to help. They’re less likely to joke with them, complement them, or even chat with them casually. The exclusion is unintentional, not malicious, but made worse by the fact that women are more socially aware than men at this age.
I wonder how much of that has to do with how young, male engineers are hammered with the social mores of creepy, harassing nerds pushed as one of the reasons for less women in tech. Maybe they're trying to take the safe route and just not interact.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#44Great article. Appreciate the point of view and I think all the advice is sound.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#45The first part of this had great citations to cite that women are more social. Where the data was lacking is that 1) software is perceived as anti-social and 2) that other anti-social careers face similar problems to software engineering. For example if socialization was such a critical decider, why are some many women maids or professional housekeepers? Most people in this career don't get much on-the-job socializat…
"why are so many women maids or professional housekeepers?"
Same reason so many men are janitors.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#46"women are more social" wait I thought conclusions about the capabilities of people by gender are verboten ??
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#47>Invest in social events: It can take a lot of time to set up opportunities for your team to hang out , but casual socializing is awesome for the extroverts on your team and crucial for retention... and go out of your way to include everyone.
Going through this at work. The extroverts took over my department and now our (mandatory) team meetings have (mandatory) fun events that give extroverts time to brag about what they have going outside of work and give the extroverts an audience who can't refuse (the introverts who do the work). And it's awful for people who dislike forced socialization at work. And these are like 11 am meetings on Tuesday so it's dry and interrupts concentration workers.
But this article didn't seem very interesting - these points have been discussed before and it struck me as the bleats of an attractive-enough women who's upset that she has to put in effort and other people aren't giving her the attention she feels entitled to.
Say what you will about traditional corporate cultures, but things seem to work better for everyone when the decorum is universal, clear/well-documented, and free from empathetic demands.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#48Is CS really “lauded as a haven for antisocial people?” Ouch. Some of the evidence in this article is anecdotal (female friend at a hackathon gets excluded by males, etc.).
Has no one else seen the plethora of “Women in Tech” meet ups, events and hiring fairs? Anecdotally, I have several female friends that have interviewed and been hired at companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon. I understand this isn’t statistically significant but does the cause have to be the fault of men (being less social, being perceived as weird, not welcoming women to the industry)?
Maybe there are less women in tech because women (generally) are less interested in the field?
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which also corresponded to home PCs and gaming consoles becoming common. So computers became more about a hobby with often limited social interaction as opposed to being solely about something that college students and adults pursuing computing as a profession did. Which arguably also led to this idea that if you haven’t been doing computing recreationally since you were a kid you obviously are not Passionate enough…
I have to admit if you only started programming after you went to University your going to struggle with the course and afterwards work. You would not expect to do a Degree in English lit and have done no reading of the cannon before getting to university.
The idea that, if you have no experience programming going into college, you’ll struggle, is strange to me. About a third of my graduating CS class had no prior experience. Did we take more time to finish the first semester projects? Sometimes. But after the first semester prior experience seemed to have very little effect on class performance.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#50Are the rest of the STEM career paths seen as more social than CS? Is mathematics more social than CS? Because CS is almost (not quite: physics is almost as bad) unique among STEM specializations for its gender disparity.
I talk regularly to academic math people (because cryptography) and the sense I have is that if anything, CS is far more social than the work they do --- to get anything significant done in technology, you have to coordinate and cooperate amongst teams of people. And yet if you go to a cryptography conference and then a technology convention, the difference will be starkly apparent: there are far more women in the former than the latter.
I don't think this is a persuasive explanation for the whole phenomenon.