More generally, not specific to the dear tech industry, there's been a fantastic discussion on metafilter titled "“Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor" [1]. If you are a person who has personal/professional relationships with other people, it's probably worth a read [2].
Anyhow, I'll quote an excerpt from one of the comments:
> A married man is considered (in the sociology findings) to bring "more than" one person to work with him, because it is assumed he has someoone feeding/dressing/cruise directing him. This frees up his brain space for ... work. On the other hand, a married woman is considered to bring less than a whole person to work. Because she is assumed to be feeding/dressing/cruise directing at least one other human. And possibly incubating another. This is taking up valuable brain space that could be devoted to work.
So, there's a conscious or unconscious bias against women in working life, due to the assumption that they'll be doing more than their fair share of unpaid, generally undervalued labor outside of the workplace. Oh so plausible. This would be a rational reason for a workplace to discriminate against women, given the existing context of structural unfairness and bias in the rest of society. "Hurray!"
[2] ...unless you are very uncomfortable with reading criticism of men, and you cannot stomach discomfort. in that case, it's probably best for everyone involved if you don't follow the link.
Also sounds like a bias against men. Men are perfectly capable of feeding and dressing themselves. And while I don't know what exactly "cruise directing" means in this context, there is no reason to believe that men aren't also capable of doing that either.
I just got out of a relationship where I handled all those responsibilities. I wasn't compensated for it, nor did I expect to be. Insofar as my own generation is concerned, I've encountered lots of men that cook. In fact, I have known more men that cook than women. I also know more men than women, but the relative frequency seems about equal between the sexes.
This sounds intriguing for a second until you realize it has no basis and some commenter just made it up. Seriously when is the last time you looked at a woman in the office and thought she must be too busy taking care of a man to work?
> 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.
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/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html are both worse from female faculty - with sale offered from men 30K -> 29K vs 27K -> 25K for female faculty, and male faculty scored women higher in all categories than the female faculty.
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 bias. It's naturally self-propagating as well, so it will take conscious effort (from everyone) over generations to overcome.
I highly recommend taking the Harvard Implicit Gender - Career Bias test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html). I found it extremely enlightening because I could actually FEEL my brain pulling me to answer incorrectly. It's timed, so there's mental pressure to make quick decisions - where the brain takes advantage of pattern matching that's been trained over a lifetime.
-1- Women have a lower salary, therefore their anchoring point is lower.
-2- There are few women in the department, therefore every woman feels threatened by every female applicant - they are fighting for a scarce resource.
-3- The push against sexism has resulted in men overvaluing women, while women themselves have no qualms about rating other women exactly what they think they are worth (which might still be less than they should, see 1).
-4- There may be a strong correlation in women who can succeed in a male-dominated environment for sociopathic psychological traits.
-5- There may very well be correlation (though no direct causation) between gender and expected performance, which combined with 3, results in women applying an unconscious bias.
Basically, you do not have an unbiased sample and can't make generalisations from just that article.
sexism is not something individual men perpetrate against individual women, it is a systemic set of biases built into the fabric of society. women are part of that fabric just as much as men are.
glib throwaway response: yeah, let's criticise women for being harsh to each other in an environment that is structurally biased against them! because they could use some extra criticism here!
(i mean, yeah, that might genuinely be an interesting question to look into, but surely that isn't at the top of our list of priorities, right?)
What does it mean to "leave the field"? Does that mean to no longer practice low-level work or to leave the industry entirely for another industry? If it is the former, does moving into management or another complementary area (like moving from engineering to product management) qualify as leaving the field?
So what I've always been curious about is what percentage of women leave other fields? It would be nice to have numbers to compare it to there.
Also, what percentage of men leave the field? If "leaving the field" is defined as no longer actively practicing software engineering and instead doing more human contact work (like managing), then I would expect a significant number of men to leave the field at all.
I'm not trying to dismiss the number out of hand, but merely demonstrate that it's a useless figure to bandy about with context or comparison.
* "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 625 women say they have no plans to return to tech
Which strongly implies "left the industry", not "moving to product management" or "managing". 2/3s of them aren't working at all, not "promoted to management"
There was article on HN some days ago maybe even weeks which was showing IT compared to other fields. It was about how many women work in field and for IT it was lot less than other. It was showing percentage in years so in 80's there was a lot more women in IT than now. Sorry but cannot find article, maybe someone will have link.
"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, some enterprising person should have found a way to tap all the amazing talent.
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've come to realise that, although a "market correction" is inevitable, markets can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent.
Change is inevitable and sooner or later a company will come along which will swoop up all of these people and apply them towards an audacious goal, but the time at which the stars align and such a company is born cannot be predicted and most people can't hold on until that time. Hence their desire to fix it through advocacy, which is quite understandable.
The article's very first example of unconscious gender bias suggests that ~2/3rds of investors prefer the same pitch delivered by a man than by a woman.
So there's one example of women following your proposed approach needing to overcome structural disadvantage in order to obtain investment. The article goes on to enumerate more examples of this disadvantage, etc.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that even if there is a pool of amazing talent (which I'm confident that there would be) then the playing field is NOT at all level.
edit: which was roughly the whole point of the article... ?
Again, if true, some enterprising person should have found a way to tap all the amazing talent.
Only if you actually believe the market is 100% efficient and everyone has perfect information. After a few bad experiences, someone isn't going to keep trying the same jobs, they are going to move industries.
Yes, there probably are companies out there that are good to work for as a woman in tech and they probably get some advantage from that. But it doesn't just magically solve the problem for everyone in tech and it isn't easy for everyone to find those companies that are actually good without significant investment in time and effort.
It takes time for attitudes to change, and in the meantime it's still bad for women in the industry.
Yes, all everyone talks about is making changes to create a more friendly and equal work environment. I never see any good ideas to achieve this.
Nobody is against this, but work is work, it can't be pleasant all the time. There is competition and money needs to be made. You can learn to compete or not play, that's your choice.
Assuming its easier for majorities already working in the field is frankly a bit insulting.
> 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?
One explaination is given in the article:
"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 "
Do VC funded female founders hire a disproportional percentage of tech women? The delta between women tech employees in male and female founded firms should tell us if a discriminatory environment is the cause.
If maternity leave policies are a major reason for retention, what are the figures for other industries? It's not like only women in tech want to have kids and are impacted by maternity leave policies.
What was the base of this drop? Do the vast majority on moms at google stay or leave? If 99.9% of moms before the change stayed then a 50% change in the 0.1% who left is not too informative, but if 80% previously left then it is very significant.
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 fights over programming languages, about being right vs. understanding each other). And the bro culture in some places.
4. It is a problem of women in general being more risk averse (so they gamble less with salaries or risk to push for promotion)
5. It is a problem of job ads (male focused, where males might say 'Ah I can do all those things' and women might say 'I don't know all the things they want') and the recruiting process in general.
I agree there is a problem, but is it ever frustrating having to tolerate completely fallacious statistics and bogus metrics every time someone talks about this. That sets the conversation back.
There is no such thing as equally qualified for a promotion. To pretend that performance is a simple formula with two inputs is being disingenuous.
It is a pipeline problem, because I have interviewed zero females and 100 males. I've never even received a woman's resume.
Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview.
VCs investing disproportionately in male CEOs is hardly surprising because even if they have no bias, they know their money is on the line for someone who will be up against the rest of the tech and business world, with all of its bias.
Diversity quotas are harmful. Great, now nobody takes you seriously not just because they're biased to begin with but also because you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota. That isn't helping anybody. A much better option is to get more women to apply.
I have actually taken bias training and yes, I'm biased as hell. I don't like this fact and try to correct it. I also point it out to my male peers. But it's really hard to overcome when nobody has non-junk data and nobody is showing up to interview.
And are we allowed to be open to the fact that maybe, on average, women are weaker performers in tech? It seems like that is not allowed to be an option. It should also be a possibility that they're actually stronger performers in tech (I bet you reached for the down arrow before getting to that sentence). Pretending everyone must have equal ability and 50% of executives and 50% of programmers should be women doesn't get us anywhere.
> Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview.
Yes, the resume gets you the interview, not the job. But without the interview, you definitly don't get the job. If changing the apparent gender of the resume gets you better odds of getting the interview, then the gender gets your more/better jobs!
This is science. Creationists are invested in believing the earth is 6,000 years old and don't like evidence that contradicts that. Antivaxxers don't like evidence that shows vaccines are safe. Homeopaths don't like evidence that shows that it's just as good as water. And here we have evidence that men get more interviews.
> you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota
To quote the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice". You (and I) have a bug in our brains. We are not actually able to correctly deduce with 100% accuracy whether someone is more qualified than other.
Yes a female quota might mean that there's a woman who's being hired when you would have given that job to a man, but how do you know the man is definitly more qualified? The function in your brain that calculates "qualified" has a bug and isn't always accurate about "most qualified".
>VCs investing disproportionately in male CEOs is hardly surprising because even if they have no bias, they know their money is on the line for someone who will be up against the rest of the tech and business world, with all of its bias.
This is an interesting concept. VC as a kind of Keynesian beauty contest. I'd imagine in a winner take all scenario, any asymmetry would feed back on itself and exaggerate. People must have studied this!
> 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 owned up to them and put effort into mitigating them.
"Don’t rely on self-nominations or self-evaluations"
I think this is the big thing that should be rallied around. This is prevalent, obvious, and hurts companies in more ways than just discrimination (not to marginalize that aspect).
Focusing on self-nominations means the most successful people aren't going to be your people best able to do the job, but people best able to 'play the game'. This is in fact not independent, but negatively correlated with skill. (Citation needed)
So I noticed that maternity leave is cited often, but that strikes me as a lesser problem in tech relative to the cost of housing. Raising a family in San Francisco is not a cheap proposition. Rent keeps rising in the Bay Area.
Let's do a thought experiment.
Lets say a man and a women in tech both moved here 5 years ago and each got small rent-controlled studio apartments for about $1000/month. Let's say they met and started dating two years ago. They decide they want to move in together. They can forego one dwelling and share a studio apartment, or they can look on the market. They look around for a one-bedroom. Two years ago, a one bedroom is probably going for $2500 a month. Fast forward to today and they decide to have a kid. Everything is great for the first 1-2 years, but by 2017, they feel like they need a 2-bedroom. They start looking around and see that the only options cost about $5000 to $6000 month. That's a huge cost of living increase before the cost of child-rearing and is far more likely to drive people (men and women) out of the industry than unfavorable maternity leave policies.
In the thought experiment above, both a man and a woman both leave tech in SF together once they are forced out of the area by the conflict between housing prices and raising a family. The different is that the age distribution for men is likely to much broader than for women because of the biological clock. A man marrying and having a kid could likely be anywhere from 27 or so to past 40, where the range for women is likely to have approximately the same lower bound, but a much lower higher bound. I suspect 33 or so. This would suggest that housing prices are more likely to prematurely end the careers of women in tech in San Francisco.
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 appreciated. :)
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.
frankly, 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.
Didn'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 the case for you. Also, although anecdotal, in my experience men are willing to risk more when they know they're worth more than what they're being paid.
all companies pay employees based on skills. it is just that skill is not the only variable and sometimes not the most important. but definitely skills play a major part.
I'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 know whether it was the same words, and they just changed the name, or if they actually composed different pitches?
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."
> 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 each other's solutions. Because we programmers cannot work if we don't understand anything in full. To grok it.
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 outright abusive. I tend to take similar arguments when people want to use curse word filters... tone is a hell of a lot more than specific verbiage.
I'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?
[+] [-] shoo|10 years ago|reply
Anyhow, I'll quote an excerpt from one of the comments:
> A married man is considered (in the sociology findings) to bring "more than" one person to work with him, because it is assumed he has someoone feeding/dressing/cruise directing him. This frees up his brain space for ... work. On the other hand, a married woman is considered to bring less than a whole person to work. Because she is assumed to be feeding/dressing/cruise directing at least one other human. And possibly incubating another. This is taking up valuable brain space that could be devoted to work.
So, there's a conscious or unconscious bias against women in working life, due to the assumption that they'll be doing more than their fair share of unpaid, generally undervalued labor outside of the workplace. Oh so plausible. This would be a rational reason for a workplace to discriminate against women, given the existing context of structural unfairness and bias in the rest of society. "Hurray!"
[1] http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emo...
[2] ...unless you are very uncomfortable with reading criticism of men, and you cannot stomach discomfort. in that case, it's probably best for everyone involved if you don't follow the link.
[+] [-] malandrew|10 years ago|reply
I just got out of a relationship where I handled all those responsibilities. I wasn't compensated for it, nor did I expect to be. Insofar as my own generation is concerned, I've encountered lots of men that cook. In fact, I have known more men that cook than women. I also know more men than women, but the relative frequency seems about equal between the sexes.
[+] [-] lawnchair_larry|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] T2_t2|10 years ago|reply
> 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/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html are both worse from female faculty - with sale offered from men 30K -> 29K vs 27K -> 25K for female faculty, and male faculty scored women higher in all categories than the female faculty.
[+] [-] platinum1|10 years ago|reply
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 bias. It's naturally self-propagating as well, so it will take conscious effort (from everyone) over generations to overcome.
I highly recommend taking the Harvard Implicit Gender - Career Bias test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html). I found it extremely enlightening because I could actually FEEL my brain pulling me to answer incorrectly. It's timed, so there's mental pressure to make quick decisions - where the brain takes advantage of pattern matching that's been trained over a lifetime.
[+] [-] anon4|10 years ago|reply
-1- Women have a lower salary, therefore their anchoring point is lower.
-2- There are few women in the department, therefore every woman feels threatened by every female applicant - they are fighting for a scarce resource.
-3- The push against sexism has resulted in men overvaluing women, while women themselves have no qualms about rating other women exactly what they think they are worth (which might still be less than they should, see 1).
-4- There may be a strong correlation in women who can succeed in a male-dominated environment for sociopathic psychological traits.
-5- There may very well be correlation (though no direct causation) between gender and expected performance, which combined with 3, results in women applying an unconscious bias.
Basically, you do not have an unbiased sample and can't make generalisations from just that article.
[+] [-] zem|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shoo|10 years ago|reply
(i mean, yeah, that might genuinely be an interesting question to look into, but surely that isn't at the top of our list of priorities, right?)
[+] [-] malandrew|10 years ago|reply
What does it mean to "leave the field"? Does that mean to no longer practice low-level work or to leave the industry entirely for another industry? If it is the former, does moving into management or another complementary area (like moving from engineering to product management) qualify as leaving the field?
So what I've always been curious about is what percentage of women leave other fields? It would be nice to have numbers to compare it to there.
Also, what percentage of men leave the field? If "leaving the field" is defined as no longer actively practicing software engineering and instead doing more human contact work (like managing), then I would expect a significant number of men to leave the field at all.
I'm not trying to dismiss the number out of hand, but merely demonstrate that it's a useless figure to bandy about with context or comparison.
[+] [-] rmc|10 years ago|reply
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 625 women say they have no plans to return to tech
Which strongly implies "left the industry", not "moving to product management" or "managing". 2/3s of them aren't working at all, not "promoted to management"
[+] [-] ozim|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owen_griffiths|10 years ago|reply
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, some enterprising person should have found a way to tap all the amazing talent.
[+] [-] todayiamme|10 years ago|reply
Change is inevitable and sooner or later a company will come along which will swoop up all of these people and apply them towards an audacious goal, but the time at which the stars align and such a company is born cannot be predicted and most people can't hold on until that time. Hence their desire to fix it through advocacy, which is quite understandable.
[+] [-] shoo|10 years ago|reply
The article's very first example of unconscious gender bias suggests that ~2/3rds of investors prefer the same pitch delivered by a man than by a woman.
So there's one example of women following your proposed approach needing to overcome structural disadvantage in order to obtain investment. The article goes on to enumerate more examples of this disadvantage, etc.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that even if there is a pool of amazing talent (which I'm confident that there would be) then the playing field is NOT at all level.
edit: which was roughly the whole point of the article... ?
[+] [-] mehwoot|10 years ago|reply
Only if you actually believe the market is 100% efficient and everyone has perfect information. After a few bad experiences, someone isn't going to keep trying the same jobs, they are going to move industries.
Yes, there probably are companies out there that are good to work for as a woman in tech and they probably get some advantage from that. But it doesn't just magically solve the problem for everyone in tech and it isn't easy for everyone to find those companies that are actually good without significant investment in time and effort.
It takes time for attitudes to change, and in the meantime it's still bad for women in the industry.
[+] [-] ulikunkel|10 years ago|reply
Nobody is against this, but work is work, it can't be pleasant all the time. There is competition and money needs to be made. You can learn to compete or not play, that's your choice. Assuming its easier for majorities already working in the field is frankly a bit insulting.
[+] [-] rmc|10 years ago|reply
One explaination is given in the article:
"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 "
[+] [-] danieltillett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanxiyn|10 years ago|reply
This seems to be such a spectacularly good result that I wonder why they haven't tried it sooner.
[+] [-] easytiger|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malandrew|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danieltillett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] troels|10 years ago|reply
But I would say that with such good results, they might want to increase it even further. 18 weeks is still rather short.
[+] [-] Banzaaaai|10 years ago|reply
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 fights over programming languages, about being right vs. understanding each other). And the bro culture in some places.
4. It is a problem of women in general being more risk averse (so they gamble less with salaries or risk to push for promotion)
5. It is a problem of job ads (male focused, where males might say 'Ah I can do all those things' and women might say 'I don't know all the things they want') and the recruiting process in general.
[+] [-] lawnchair_larry|10 years ago|reply
There is no such thing as equally qualified for a promotion. To pretend that performance is a simple formula with two inputs is being disingenuous.
It is a pipeline problem, because I have interviewed zero females and 100 males. I've never even received a woman's resume.
Any study related to people being more likely to hire, or pay more, involving names being switched on a resume, doesn't make sense. Nobody hires a resume, they call you in for an interview.
VCs investing disproportionately in male CEOs is hardly surprising because even if they have no bias, they know their money is on the line for someone who will be up against the rest of the tech and business world, with all of its bias.
Diversity quotas are harmful. Great, now nobody takes you seriously not just because they're biased to begin with but also because you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota. That isn't helping anybody. A much better option is to get more women to apply.
I have actually taken bias training and yes, I'm biased as hell. I don't like this fact and try to correct it. I also point it out to my male peers. But it's really hard to overcome when nobody has non-junk data and nobody is showing up to interview.
And are we allowed to be open to the fact that maybe, on average, women are weaker performers in tech? It seems like that is not allowed to be an option. It should also be a possibility that they're actually stronger performers in tech (I bet you reached for the down arrow before getting to that sentence). Pretending everyone must have equal ability and 50% of executives and 50% of programmers should be women doesn't get us anywhere.
[+] [-] rmc|10 years ago|reply
The study ( http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html ), asked interviewers to rank how "hireable" the candidate was, and what they would offer the candidate.
Yes, the resume gets you the interview, not the job. But without the interview, you definitly don't get the job. If changing the apparent gender of the resume gets you better odds of getting the interview, then the gender gets your more/better jobs!
This is science. Creationists are invested in believing the earth is 6,000 years old and don't like evidence that contradicts that. Antivaxxers don't like evidence that shows vaccines are safe. Homeopaths don't like evidence that shows that it's just as good as water. And here we have evidence that men get more interviews.
> you only got the job over more qualified applicants to fill a quota
To quote the article: "These biases occur unconsciously and without intention or malice". You (and I) have a bug in our brains. We are not actually able to correctly deduce with 100% accuracy whether someone is more qualified than other.
Yes a female quota might mean that there's a woman who's being hired when you would have given that job to a man, but how do you know the man is definitly more qualified? The function in your brain that calculates "qualified" has a bug and isn't always accurate about "most qualified".
[+] [-] imh|10 years ago|reply
This is an interesting concept. VC as a kind of Keynesian beauty contest. I'd imagine in a winner take all scenario, any asymmetry would feed back on itself and exaggerate. People must have studied this!
[+] [-] rchiba|10 years ago|reply
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 owned up to them and put effort into mitigating them.
[+] [-] danieltillett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ExpiredLink|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tracker1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natmaster|10 years ago|reply
I think this is the big thing that should be rallied around. This is prevalent, obvious, and hurts companies in more ways than just discrimination (not to marginalize that aspect).
Focusing on self-nominations means the most successful people aren't going to be your people best able to do the job, but people best able to 'play the game'. This is in fact not independent, but negatively correlated with skill. (Citation needed)
[+] [-] malandrew|10 years ago|reply
Let's do a thought experiment.
Lets say a man and a women in tech both moved here 5 years ago and each got small rent-controlled studio apartments for about $1000/month. Let's say they met and started dating two years ago. They decide they want to move in together. They can forego one dwelling and share a studio apartment, or they can look on the market. They look around for a one-bedroom. Two years ago, a one bedroom is probably going for $2500 a month. Fast forward to today and they decide to have a kid. Everything is great for the first 1-2 years, but by 2017, they feel like they need a 2-bedroom. They start looking around and see that the only options cost about $5000 to $6000 month. That's a huge cost of living increase before the cost of child-rearing and is far more likely to drive people (men and women) out of the industry than unfavorable maternity leave policies.
In the thought experiment above, both a man and a woman both leave tech in SF together once they are forced out of the area by the conflict between housing prices and raising a family. The different is that the age distribution for men is likely to much broader than for women because of the biological clock. A man marrying and having a kid could likely be anywhere from 27 or so to past 40, where the range for women is likely to have approximately the same lower bound, but a much lower higher bound. I suspect 33 or so. This would suggest that housing prices are more likely to prematurely end the careers of women in tech in San Francisco.
[+] [-] natmaster|10 years ago|reply
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 appreciated. :)
[+] [-] thsealienbstrds|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ousta|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] flipp3r|10 years ago|reply
"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 the case for you. Also, although anecdotal, in my experience men are willing to risk more when they know they're worth more than what they're being paid.
[+] [-] ousta|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmc|10 years ago|reply
How many companies claim to be a "meritocracy"? If it's a big lie, we should admit it.
[+] [-] natmaster|10 years ago|reply
They leave out all details on how the study was conducted. Does anyone know whether it was the same words, and they just changed the name, or if they actually composed different pitches?
[+] [-] jmiwhite|10 years ago|reply
"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."
[0]: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4427.full.pdf
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] venomsnake|10 years ago|reply
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 each other's solutions. Because we programmers cannot work if we don't understand anything in full. To grok it.
[+] [-] tracker1|10 years ago|reply
You can review, advise and even critique without being outright abusive. I tend to take similar arguments when people want to use curse word filters... tone is a hell of a lot more than specific verbiage.
[+] [-] natmaster|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imh|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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