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Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

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Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#51

Post by nostrebored »

busterarm wrote: post #12
dudifordMann wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if that is the right mind set: "So around the time a lot of people have kids? ...you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare ... you might as well just stay home." The "you" can be the other partner. Ensuring fair pay and opportunities for all qualified workers would encourage only a brief departure from a woman's career for maternity leave, allowing either partner to be the home support (as need…

Do we know that that's the reason that more women are deciding to stay home? This looks like a big conclusion to draw when the data only _may_ correlate. Where's the survey of double-income family moms working in tech where they specified the reason why they chose to stay at home? There are a lot of reports coming out that look at numbers and say what may be the reason, but I've yet to see anyone go ask women the rea…

Oh, I've done this, let me tell you why:

1) People in tech are assholes to women. I don't think most of them realize they're doing it. Sending images of swimsuit models over slack or otherwise sexualizing your work environment is an awful idea, and you shouldn't do it even if you don't have women on your team. My partner gets asked out by coworkers regularly, even while pregnant.

2) No really, people in tech are assholes to women. I've heard women give presentations where people talk over them the whole time, and then critique them for not being prepared afterwords. Nah pal, you literally stopped her from presenting information. People do not take suggestions of women as seriously wrt technical problems.

3) Kids. State of paternity leave in the U.S...

4) Being pushed into management. Women are pushed into management at a disproportional rate -- while some see this as a success metric, it can also be seen as an extension of point 2.

5) HR problems. Using HR sucks when you're the only woman on the team. Having someone else call HR sucks when you're the only woman on the team because everyone assumes it was you.

6) Culture, combination of all of the above, lack of a critical mass of women to make actual change, etc.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#52

Post by ankey1 »

larrik wrote: post #33
throwaway293810 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you might as well just stay home But why does it have to be the woman who stays home? Why is this just the tacit assumption? I'd love to see not just solid support for moms at work, but solid support / encouragement for dads at home: paternity leave up-to-par with maternity leave, a normalization and acceptance of stay-at-home dads where desired, etc. It's kind of amazing how prevalent the assumption is that childr…

As someone who has taken the kids out and about during the day, I have to say that it's awkward . You end up being the only man in a group of dozens of women with their kids, or you are the guy at the playground sitting by himself while his kids play on it (which looks a ton like you don't have any kids to an outsider). Society, at least in most of the U.S. is frankly a bit hostile to males as the caregivers. I can't…

And now you know how it feels to be the only woman engineer on a team of 20 engineers. It's awkward and sometimes hard for women engineers like me to focus on our jobs because of the awkwardness contributing to hostile work environments. And this is why it's awesome that YC is supporting Women Who Code.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#53

Post by Retric »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #45

I spend a lot of my time and personal money to encourage high school students to pursue a field in STEM (specifically robotics), however, lately I've been having trouble convincing myself to continue due to the long term prospects of a career in STEM. As a professional software engineer at a well known software company, I can only see it as a dead end job with low status and a small shelf life due to age discriminati…

It's a solid starting off point for a range of other roles. Basically the Upwind section of this: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

I find a lot of professionals used to be programmers.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#54

Post by tomsaffell »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #45

I spend a lot of my time and personal money to encourage high school students to pursue a field in STEM (specifically robotics), however, lately I've been having trouble convincing myself to continue due to the long term prospects of a career in STEM. As a professional software engineer at a well known software company, I can only see it as a dead end job with low status and a small shelf life due to age discriminati…

Interesting and worrying. Could you give more details on the "low status" and the "small shelf life"? Especially as it relates to gender (if indeed it does - forgive my ignorance).

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#55

Post by vonmoltke »

ksenzee wrote: post #34
larrik wrote: post #7

Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably…

> you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare per kid That's true. But as it happens, engineers do make a lot of money. Many of us even make enough to support one-income families. You can't just assume senior engineers leave tech because of childcare costs, when most of us make well over the amount where you "might as well just stay home."

We do, but we also get pushed to move to places where making a six-figure salary in USD still means you need to have a roommate. Where I am (Dallas) that isn't true. Not coincidentally, the gender ratios in this industry are much better here than they are in the Valley.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#56

Post by yummyfajitas »

larrik wrote: post #7

Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably…

There are a variety of studies suggesting that "solid support for working moms" - in the form of paid leave, subsidized day care and the general Nordic experience - do not actually help much.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/05/the...

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

In fact, paid leave encourages women to be less attached to the workforce - as paid leave goes up, women leave the workforce for more time.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2348505

the country in the OECD which is most successful at getting women into tech is Saudi Arabia. (Next up are Ireland and Mexico.) Are they known for solid support for working moms? They do a lot better than countries you'd expect to support working moms, like Sweden and Finland.

https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/percentageoftertiaryqualifi...

(Outside the OECD Iran does quite well also, as does India.)

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#57

Post by nostrebored »

sandworm101 wrote: post #19
throwaway293810 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you might as well just stay home But why does it have to be the woman who stays home? Why is this just the tacit assumption? I'd love to see not just solid support for moms at work, but solid support / encouragement for dads at home: paternity leave up-to-par with maternity leave, a normalization and acceptance of stay-at-home dads where desired, etc. It's kind of amazing how prevalent the assumption is that childr…

We should do all we can to support mothers and parents. They should be free to make their own choices. But nobody should be surprised if mothers make different choices than fathers. Nor should we force the matter. There is some biology here. Equality doesn't create interchangeability.

We especially shouldn't be surprised if mothers make different decisions with fathers when society judges them, parenting books fearmonger, and parental leave is extremely disparate.

Why don't we set aside the biological differences (all of which we have the means to offset) and tackle the most obvious problems first.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#58

Post by gshulegaard »

ksenzee wrote: post #34
larrik wrote: post #7

Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably…

> you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare per kid That's true. But as it happens, engineers do make a lot of money. Many of us even make enough to support one-income families. You can't just assume senior engineers leave tech because of childcare costs, when most of us make well over the amount where you "might as well just stay home."

I don't think that the parent comment is assuming one way or another, just offering a plausible explanation given the very limited perspective of the metrics being quoted.

For example, how does this compare to other trends for female jobs in other sectors? How do the figures compare when you separate the population between those with children and those without?

When someone wants to make a claim like: "These numbers reflect two problems: 1) the percentage of women who work in tech is low, and 2) women are leaving tech jobs in droves."

I would expect more analysis than simply: "In 2014, 26% of computing jobs were held by women – and that’s down from 36% in 1991"

I think there are a lot of bogus statistics/conclusions being drawn when it comes to many social issues, female equality being one of them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc).

I am a libertarian so ultimately I believe that everyone should be free to make their own decisions even if there are gender preferences at play. Not saying there aren't issues, but simply saying, "X is anti-women, because only Y% are female," is academically dishonest.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#59

Post by busterarm »

nostrebored wrote: post #51
busterarm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know that that's the reason that more women are deciding to stay home? This looks like a big conclusion to draw when the data only _may_ correlate. Where's the survey of double-income family moms working in tech where they specified the reason why they chose to stay at home? There are a lot of reports coming out that look at numbers and say what may be the reason, but I've yet to see anyone go ask women the rea…

Oh, I've done this, let me tell you why: 1) People in tech are assholes to women. I don't think most of them realize they're doing it. Sending images of swimsuit models over slack or otherwise sexualizing your work environment is an awful idea, and you shouldn't do it even if you don't have women on your team. My partner gets asked out by coworkers regularly, even while pregnant. 2) No really, people in tech are assh…

I'm not at all saying that I don't believe you, but we're at the point where we need to leave anecdotes out of this and start gathering good data. As much as I've seen your examples, I've also seen all of the counter examples (except to point 3 because that's just how it is in the States).

I spent the first few years of my working-life in female-dominated industries/workplaces and almost the entirety of my tech career in female-dominated or equal workplaces. I've yet to work somewhere without pay-parity (actually the hedge fund I worked for paid women more). From my anecdotal perspective, the world out there is wonderful.

But I know that's not true. I have a strong filter against toxic work environments - I simply would never end up at a company like that.

I'm just asking for good data that can speak for itself. This is what our industry does.

Aside: frequent surveys/studies show that more than 50% of participants have engaged in an office romance, equally across genders. I've never done this, but it's a big stretch to say that asking out a coworker is asshole behavior at this point. It's much more about the how.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#60

Post by _1qd4 »

belorn wrote: post #20
larrik wrote: post #7

Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably…

I find it quite interesting that a similar number of 50% of men who enter the teacher profession also leaves while the number for women is about half. In stark contrast however, the quote text, the theory on why men drops out of female dominated professions share nothing in common with the theories on why women leave male dominated. In a 2009 report by the Swedish national agency, they argue that the reason why peopl…

In Ontario, male teachers are not allowed to take children to the washroom, even if the child is a boy. This is a problem because if a child with a disability needs to use the washroom, he needs to wait until a female staff member is available.

I understand why men would drop out of the school system. Before you even start, you're already considered a predator.

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