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Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

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Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#91

Post by kalleboo »

tracker1 wrote: post #50
troels wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they didn't know, did they. But I would say that with such good results, they might want to increase it even further. 18 weeks is still rather short.

I'm sorry, but paying someone to take off for more than 1/3 of the year? Is this based on how long they are with the company before said leave? 4.5 months of maternity leave is very generous, and honestly enough for a physical recovery and to spend time with the baby. I'd even be in favor of 4-8 weeks maternity leave for new dads. I'm all for maternity leave, I think it's important, and there are too many companies t…

I'm from Sweden where parental leave (at 80% of pay) is 14 weeks for the mother, 2 weeks for her partner, and then an additional 65 weeks that can be distributed between the partners as they wish. 4 months seems short - I wouldn't want to have to leave my 4 month old baby with child care.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#92

Post by shakadak »

platinum1 wrote: post #40
T2_t2 wrote: post #14

Serious question: why are women so harsh to EACH OTHER? From the article: > both men and women were significantly more likely to hire a male applicant than a female applicant with an identical record. And from the linked studies: "Men only penalized female candidates for attempting to negotiate whereas women penalized both male and female candidates." And the pay rates, and drops, from here http://www.pnas.org/conten…

Also from the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice." In my opinion, the origin of these biases is in the early, formative years: When children see mom stay at home and dad go to work, they learn that that's the way things are - without any conscious negative judgement and regardless of gender. It's the society they grew up in, so seeing something deviate from that can create a bi…

"Your data suggest a strong association of Female with Career and Male with Family compared to Male with Career and Female with Family."

I didn't expect that result at all. My family is balanced in term of gender composition, and my parents both work the same amount. But my mother still has a tendency to do more of the housework. I'm curious whether having to pass the test in my native language would have significantly influenced the outcome.

Side note: rereading a bit the descriptions of the tests, it seems these are targeted toward an American audience. Could it have an influence in the tests too ?

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#93

Post by sanxiyn »

tracker1 wrote: post #51
ExpiredLink wrote: post #49

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?

There is. I suggest Google search, for example "bring more men into nursing".

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#95

Post by atrophying »

malandrew wrote: post #73
rmc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does it mean to "leave the field"? You can read it in the linked article: http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/women-leave-tech-culture/ * "716 women who left tech" * "I have collected stories from 716 other women who have left the tech industry" * "Of the 716 women surveyed, 465 are not working today." * "Two-hundred-fifty-one are employed in non-tech jobs, and 45 of those are running their own companies. A whopping…

How do they make a living if they aren't working at all? That seems like a shockingly high figure of people who have the means to avoid any sort of labor productivity. I can only conclude that "are not working today" is loosely defined or that these people were unfit for working at all, since someone that has the means to quit work and not have to look for other work elsewhere probably hasn't lead a very rigorous lab…

> How do they make a living if they aren't working at all?

I'm one of those women who left the field after a 10 year career, and then returned several years late. The answer is, our quality of life drops. We end up in alternate careers that usually don't pay as well as tech, but come without the headaches. I worked as a private chef after I left tech. Some of the women I know have become academics in other fields, some pursue completely different careers in non-technical fields, some drop out completely to embrace a SAHM role or some other traditional gender role.

I'm not going to argue about whether this study is right or that one is wrong; but I can tell you from my own anecdotal experience that every year I see less and less women my age in tech. I rejoined IT after that hiatus and there's not a single woman I work with who has the kind of technical expertise I do. The women who have that expertise have all left for greener pastures; for most of them, tech is an uphill battle against ignorance and bias that just gets to be too stressful to deal with.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#96

Post by malandrew »

rmc wrote: post #90
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of asking only the ones who left? That's about the worst sampling method I can think of.

It can tell you why people left. Which might tell you the problems in it. Update: Imagine a company has many people leaving, and they ask why. If everyone says "Got paid better elsewhere" it means you have a problem with salary. If "Sick of commuting out to the sticks", maybe look at relocation. If "Tech is old fashioned and boring", maybe look at what your employees are working on. If "Manager is an asshole", maybe…

So for the 716 people who left, every single one of them only had sexist reasons for leaving? None of them found out the work wasn't that appealing? None had family issues that forced them to leave to care for a sick or ailing parent? None had a medical issue of their own that meant they could no longer work? None simply found something else they were more passionate about? None simply earned their FU money at a successful company and decided maybe they want to dedicate themselves to philanthropic pursuits or just lounging around? None decided that they prefer a job with more social interaction over one where you spend many hours at a desk solving problems quietly?

All the above are reasons that I've heard as reasons for people leaving our industry and other industries. They apply to both men and women. Where are these other reasons in the conclusions of this study?

Where are the opinions of women like Susan Sons and Meredith Patterson who quite like nerd culture and feel it's misunderstood by many of those writing about what's wrong with tech culture? [0]. This study is so incredibly one-sided in its conclusions that I can only conclude that it went out of its way to cherry-pick the study participants. Or its possible that it was subject to an unconscious bias of its own. Perhaps the author is so thoroughly in her own echo chamber with regard to these issues that when she reached out through her network to find people willing to talk to her about why they left, she ended up recruiting largely from a population that is biased towards confirming the conclusions she wanted to demonstrate because that's what her social network experiences disproportionately. When examining the biases of others, it's important to examine your own and not commit the same mistakes as those you are are trying to correct. Any "study" without a discussion of sampling methodology to control for biases and identifying those biases is typically not constructive.

[0] https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#97

Post by malandrew »

atrophying wrote: post #95
malandrew wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they make a living if they aren't working at all? That seems like a shockingly high figure of people who have the means to avoid any sort of labor productivity. I can only conclude that "are not working today" is loosely defined or that these people were unfit for working at all, since someone that has the means to quit work and not have to look for other work elsewhere probably hasn't lead a very rigorous lab…

> How do they make a living if they aren't working at all? I'm one of those women who left the field after a 10 year career, and then returned several years late. The answer is, our quality of life drops. We end up in alternate careers that usually don't pay as well as tech, but come without the headaches. I worked as a private chef after I left tech. Some of the women I know have become academics in other fields, so…

Thank you for participating in the discussion. I have a bunch questions if you don't mind me asking.

When you left after 10 years in the field and were working as a professional chef, how long did you work as a chef before returning and during that time what did you do to remain current on how tech evolved during those years?

When you returned, did you join a company working with a relatively "fresh" tech stack (read: currently popular) or did you return to a company that worked largely with the technologies with which you had worked before leaving?

When you returned, how do you feel about your own technical skills upon returning? Were they as good as before? Were they worse? Were they other softer skills you learned as a chef that you found useful upon returning? (my older brother was a professional chef d'cuisine and it's remarkable career that teaches you how to lead like few other industries do).

The feelings you had as a women in tech after returning, did you feel the same way prior to leaving to become a chef? If so, how was the experience similar? If not, how did your experience after returning differ from your experience before?

What were the primary motivators that originally lead you to pursue a career in cooking? Was it a love for cooking? Were you already cooking a lot and decided you wanted to go to school for that and then pursued it as a career? I'm particularly interested in this question because I've known people who have taken a similar path and also wouldn't mind getting into cooking after tech. A friend of mine was a senior engineer at one of the "unicorns" and is now pursuing a career in baking and plans to open a bakery.

I totally understand the desire to avoid the headaches in tech, and one might choose a different career without those headaches. I'm curious to get your opinion on the women with whom you worked on in tech that chose to become a SAHM and traditional gender roles instead of choosing an alternate career without the headaches you tried to avoid. My instinct suggests that women like you truly left due to the headaches, but I find it harder to reconcile someone leaving due to sexism in tech and then adopting traditional gender roles. That strikes me as a contradictory path to take if their motivation for leaving were the headaches you describe. What do you think about their motivations and do you think many of them probably would have ended up as SAHM and in traditional gender roles even if tech had not had the headaches you endured?

For the women who pursued careers in other field, it seems to me that moving into academia is likely to stimulate people in similar ways as software engineering. They are both similar in that they involve lots of reading, research, learning, problem solving, hypothesizing, and then application and observation. In other words a career in academia is a different way of enjoying the scientific process. For the women with whom you worked that didn't follow a path towards another career that is similarly rewarding in its daily application of the scientific process, what kinds of careers did they gravitate to? Were they strikingly different careers like moving from working with computers and technology to working with people, or something else entirely? What do you think the level of satisfaction is for these women in their new career relative to their career in engineering, once you discount or attempt to control for the headaches women encounter?

Lastly, regarding women your age in tech: when you see fewer women your age in tech, do you also see fewer men your age in tech? How much of the effect of seeing fewer women your age is due to age and how much gender? Which do you believe to be a greater problem? If you worked and returned to work in tech in the SF Bay Area, do you think that housing prices and starting a familiar may account for some of the reason why you see fewer women your age in tech (per the thought experiment I put forth as a hypothesis here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960338 )

(Sorry for the barrage of questions. I know it's overwhelming and can be especially so when there aren't many women in tech who can also help address these questions leaving you as one of the few voices that can offer firsthand perspective. Answer only what you feel like answering)

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#98

Post by tzs »

> A culture that rewards facetime and encourages people to regularly stay late or eat dinner at the office puts employees with families at a disadvantage (particularly mothers), and research shows that working excess hours does not actually improve productivity in the long-term since workers begin to experience burn out after just a few weeks

I suspect excessive hours also contributes to unintentional harassment [1], mostly against single women.

Most people are heterosexual. Most of them want to find partners to have relationships with ranging from casual flings to long term romantic relationships.

If people are expected to work long and hard hours they will be left without the time and/or energy for activities outside of work where they can seek out sexual and romantic partners. Since people are not going to give up on seeking out sexual and romantic partners inevitably some of that activity will shift to the office. If that office has significantly more single men than single women it is going to get particularly annoying for the women.

[1] By "unintentional harassment" I mean actions that are takes as harassment by the person they are directed to, but are not intended as harassment by the person taking the action.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#99

Post by thsealienbstrds »

natmaster wrote: post #63

Earlier in the article the author states that both men and women have bias. Then we get this quote, "If tech culture is going to change, everyone needs to change, especially men and most especially leaders." It would be nice to know why "especially men," with no foundation for this statement it makes it hard to believe as a scientist, and even harder to act upon. Any revisions with this included would be greatly appr…

This article is heavily biased. Consider that the case of the other 59%(!) is not explored in the article even a little bit... You'd think a position paper that is proposing solutions would at least cover potentially existing solutions before concluding that the system needs an overhaul.

Re: Think women in tech is just a pipeline problem?

#100

Post by malandrew »

tracker1 wrote: post #61
venomsnake wrote: post #35

> Create a collaborative environment Stanford research studies document that women are more likely to dislike competitive environments compared to men and are more likely to select out of them That is not how it works. Tech is as pure marketplace of ideas as possible. So while we should all collaborate after the decisions are made, the process before them is by definition adversarial. We must nitpick and deconstruct…

There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking." ... I have to admit, I've thought the latter on more than one occasion having to fix a bug, or do a feature enhancement in a piece of software. I try to be more sensitive in my actual interactions though. You can review, advise and even critique without being outr…

   There's a huge difference between, "I'm not sure I 
   understand where you are coming from." and "You are a god     
   damned idiot, what the hell are you thinking."
True, but I don't see how this is a gender issue, but an issue with how specific individuals handle competitive and potentially abrasive environments. Women are as capable of handling competitive and abrasive environments as men and I've met plenty of men that can't handle competitive or abrasive environments and end up opting out.
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