Where does the 50% obsession stem from? Serious question. Why must all fields be equally staffed by men and women?
Where's the staffing drive to bring more men into nursing?
Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
51–60 of 113 posts
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#52I'm curious why only one of the studies about gender-bias has anything to do with tech. Are there just not enough studies being done in that field? Are there conclusions we should be making about the world at large? Why has the author chosen to focus on tech in the title, and yet diverge once getting to evidence?
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#53> These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice. As someone who has faced situations where a gender microagression has caused workplace conflict, the above quote cannot be stressed enough. Just because you didn't have the intention to be biased or discriminate does not mean it did not happen. For some reason this concept eludes even the sharpest people. We all have our biases. It's about time we ow…
What is "gender microagression”?
Believe me: you don't want to know.
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#54I'm curious about this quote, "Investors preferred entrepreneurial ventures pitched by a man than an identical pitch from a woman by a rate of 68% to 32% in a study conducted jointly by HBS, Wharton, and MIT Sloan. “Male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based than were the same pitches narrated by a female voice.”" They leave out all details on how the study was conducted. Does anyone…
This is addressed in the study[0] on the third page (4429):
"The pitch videos showed images related to the ventures, but they did not show the entrepreneurs themselves. Participants heard the entrepreneur’s voice-over narration while they watched each video. This video pitch format allowed us to dub in a male voice and a female voice (randomly assigned), holding the narration script constant. After watching the videos, participants chose which company to fund."
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#55frankly, the IT industry has to be the fairest industry in the world. the problem with statistics when one side has few data and the other side a lot (women in IT vs men in IT) is that you can "choose" datasets that speak for what we look for. it is easy to pick the bottom male engineers and compare them to women and im pretty sure women will be better paid at "similar" jobs (haven't seen one similar job in 10 years in the it industry but ok).
I am myself married to a woman who codes and as long as she has shown to her managers that her productivity and quality of work was excellent she never got discriminated. people assume everything should come to them because it came to others. a company is not some socialist everland where everyone gets paid same. people get paid what their are worth (minus/plus negotiation skills)
as for women leaving the field. knowing that most engineers in big companies or services companies are leaving the field to become PM or manager of something I see this as a sign that women are more passionate about their carreer than about IT.
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#56Didn't read the whole article but this stood out to me; "Confirm that men and women with the same qualifications are earning the same amount and that they are receiving promotions and raises at similar rates (and if not, explore why)." Yeah, no. I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill, it's all in salary negotiations. If you work for a company where salaries aren't public, then this is t…
> I have never worked for a company which pays employees based on skill How many companies claim to be a "meritocracy"? If it's a big lie, we should admit it.
Negotiating is also a skill. Most companies are negotiation meritocracies.
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
now this will sound sexist. believe me I am not - I'm just a dev and I wish we had more women in the field for reason I won't articulate here - take this as 'seen from vc eyes': on a big enterprise, the kind of which people work for more than ten years, maternity leave pay is just a fraction of the whole worker working life - say you work at a company ten years, it's just about 10% of productivity lost. less if you f…
I had a similar conversation with some (female) coworkers a while back. One, who's on her way to her JD, remarked how it upset her that she'd always have extra baggage because she's a woman -- that no matter what the people hiring her would always factor in the chance she could become pregnant once, twice, or even more times. Before I get off on the wrong foot, I think that maternity leave is a small price to pay if…
Your post mentions women leaving for maternity leave, but makes no mention of men leaving for paternity leave. It's probably a problem for society that we assume men are not interested in childcare and won't take much time off.
> I almost want to liken it to my car insurance, as weird as it sounds.
It's a little bit weird because we have so much information telling us that young men are much more likely to be involved in an accident. I don't think you're saying that we have a lot of evidence to show that women are going to be terribly costly hires. And in some places (the EU) insurance companies can't use gender.
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#58I'm curious about this quote, "Investors preferred entrepreneurial ventures pitched by a man than an identical pitch from a woman by a rate of 68% to 32% in a study conducted jointly by HBS, Wharton, and MIT Sloan. “Male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based than were the same pitches narrated by a female voice.”" They leave out all details on how the study was conducted. Does anyone…
[deleted]
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#59"almost all of them said they liked the work itself, but cited discriminatory environments as their main reason for leaving" If the work environment is not to women' liking and has no bearing on outcome, where are all the successful companies formed by women who want a more friendly environment? "This is a huge, unnecessary, and expensive loss of talent in a field facing a supposed talent shortage." Again, if true, s…
I try to usually stay away from such debates, but I've thought a lot about the point you're making: if people are being irrational with respect to hiring then clearly the solution is to start a company that isn't ageist, sexist, or any -ist by formalising the hiring logic and finding people who share something deep - like a passion for building things - in common. But after talking to people and many, many companies,…
I think this argument needs to be less black and white than what you present. There's no need for a company to "swoop all" of these people and go for an "audacious goal"; that's all too exaggerated. All that's needed are a few companies competing in a largely male-dominated space, staffed with "a larger presence" of women, and being reasonably successful in whatever goal they have, regardless of how trivial or lofty it is.
Advocacy is great, and necessary to get out of local maximas, but living proof is always going to be more effective.
Of course, there's always the question of how useful such a competitive advantage (access to a large pool of excellent staff) would be to drive success. It may not be, which is a different discussion and one that would make engineers of both genders nervous regarding their own value.
Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?
#60From my experience: 1. It is a pipeline problem (I never got as much women applications as I wanted, even with targeting a women audience) 2. It is a problem of not enough role models for women (so women do not see themselves in tech and do not aspire for tech careers or for becoming CTOs - women CTOs go a long way here). 3. It is a problem of the vile and toxicity of the tech community in general (just see all the f…
Wrt the pipeline, I have to agree to a large extent. I admit it, I'm biased on a lot of levels, not really against gender, but I will admit I prefer to work with men. That said, doing pre-screening of applications at a job a few years ago opened my eyes a lot. To be honest, I no longer hold much of any value to a resume... I've seen too many people with higher degrees and years of experience that can't seem to do wha…
I also do not hold much of an resume. Around 30% of developers I've questioned could not code a bit even when their resume said years of developer experience. I currently do only 10sec screening of resumes to find interesting things.
"[..] that it's downright abusive towards people who aren't ill-meaning. I hope that a balance is found sooner than later."
I'm totally against any (slightly) sexist words, and have always stopped people from using them - inside or outside of my teams/departments. That said:
Sometimes gender activists focus on the 'easy' things, like language, where it is easy to call someone out, and where it is an easy to understand world view with evil sexists on one side blocking female progress and good gender activists on the other side.
That way of living is easier than accept that there are many things women must do themselves (push for higher salaries, aspire for careers, fight for promotions, help other women with role models) and what activists could do: hire more women, become a tech (manager) role model, ...