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Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#3

Post by andy_ppp » 

    The biggest factor for me has been when an employer promises changes to how
    the tech team is managed and then doesn’t deliver on them. To a certain
    extent all teams struggle with the trade-offs between spending time
    developing good specs versus staying agile, and between addressing technical
    debt and building new features. But I’ve left companies after years of
    chaotically fighting fires while simultaneously needing to build new
    features, or after repeatedly getting disorganized braindumps or single line
    descriptions from stakeholders rather than the thoughtful, detailed specs
    they’ve promised.
This is everything and describes my current situation perfectly! It's so difficult to program as well as design specs and UI and manage time as well. It teaches you a lot but it's much easier if what you are being asked to build is clear in the first place!

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#5

Post by andy_ppp »

cbcowans wrote: post #2

Cadran here from YC's software team. This is the fifth installment of our Ask a Female Engineer series. Thanks for reading.

Here are the other articles:

https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-4/

https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-3/

https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-2/

https://blog.ycombinator.com/introducing-ask-a-female-engine...

;-)

Re: Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?

#8

Post by kevan »

andy_ppp wrote: post #3

The biggest factor for me has been when an employer promises changes to how the tech team is managed and then doesn’t deliver on them. To a certain extent all teams struggle with the trade-offs between spending time developing good specs versus staying agile, and between addressing technical debt and building new features. But I’ve left companies after years of chaotically fighting fires while simultaneously needing…

I don't think this issue is gender-specific, it's a problem for retaining everyone.
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