This is a good point-by-point discussion and worth a read. It isn't really about 'bro culture', more about underrepresentation of women in software development.
As with many such articles, this one talks a bit about the toxic reception women get in the video game industry. While the game world's treatment of women is particularly nasty, male developers don't exactly have an easy time there either. It's a nasty business. While game development is a good source of lurid examples of mistreatment, I feel like that particular industry is not a good proxy for tech in general. Happy to be shown to be wrong.
1) The discrepancy starts at an early age. When I was in college, there were very few women in my CS classes, and nearly all of them were international students. This SMBC comes to mind more than anything else: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883
2) Looking at my own employer, I noticed some interesting things. First off, we're a mid-size B2B telecom with a very corporate culture, which is antithetical to the "tech bro" startups that are often discussed on HN. Different departments have strikingly different gender ratios. Only sales and technology are really male dominated, and even then they're not exclusively male. All departments outside of sales and technology are either gender-diverse or female-dominated. In sales: our sales operations and client experience teams are diverse, and we have a few female executives. In technology, our business intelligence/data warehousing people and our business analysts are all women, the QA lead is female, and we have a couple of female software engineers and a female IT tech. I am the only woman in the network engineering department, though. We're still above the curve compared to SV tech bro startups, though, and I have never once felt discriminated against for my gender.
I noticed to same (2) in all the startups I have worked at!
about (1), to make matters worse, most of those international students are kicked out of US because their luck didn't favor them with the H1b lottery.
A few years ago, as an international student myself, I found it weird to see hardly (compared to other courses) any American women (of any color/race) in CS/EE/CE/IT courses.
Some of the international students (including women) who graduated also had to leave US because no H1b.
Easy way to flood US tech companies with techie women is to give unconditional Green Cards to International students (stapled to women graduates' degrees). That way there wont be anyone pointing fingers at the pipeline. (the article also doesn't mention a solution to this problem)
Once there's close to 50% parity in tech work places, in a few years, girls in US will have enough "women in tech" role models to look up to.
Until then, they can feel comfortable in the techy bro culture only if they love Star Wars, Marvel and DC comics, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and console games, which is not a lot of women (and men) out there.
Not specifically H1b. H1b visa by itself gives unfair leverage to the employer, combine that with work place bias against women, especially in tech companies, I'd be surprised if any non male employee on a H1b visa dares to speak up against any kind of sexual harassment.
w.r.t "Staple to graduate degrees", I meant green cards(gc). Similar to how canada does based on points. And sure, not just for women, anyone who is eligible based on points, should get a GC stapled
This word "Bro" is banded around a lot without a clear definition. I've taken it to mean some sort of combination of sports-team-like camaraderie, aggressive in-group socialization and ingrained misogyny.
In the case of tech, this couldn't be further from the truth. The vast majority of programmers are introverted, quiet and socially awkward.
I have a theory that part of the contention about the skewed gender ratios in tech is due to Millenial female entitlement. Imagine if your entire adult life you'd been pandered to at every step:
1) If you are remotely attractive, men will bend over backwards to ask you out on dates or be friends, the stories I hear from female friends are absolutely amazing - the insanely extreme lengths of tolerance men will go to. On a social level, you can be flakey, lacking in personality and never initiate anything and yet there'll always be some sexually-desperate guy trying to win you over. Sure, its not genuine interest, but its constantly there.
I've actually tried this before, creating the most boring possible profile on online dating sites, to see what will happen. Within minutes, decent-quality men send you reams upon reams of sweet messages ("Oh you're from the midwest too? Golly I miss it there" etc). You get endless validation without any effort.
2) In education, news and job-hunting there are endless women's groups, women's incubators, women-only nights here, free entry in places for being female. You're winning from stage 1. You can breeze into large companies because they're so desperate to fix that embarrassing gender skew.
All of this goes to your head until you finally join that coveted startup, or finally take those gender-blind exams and actually have to produce the goods. No one is giving you a leg up any more and suddenly you realize that things are really hard.
At risk of drifting a bit off topic, the Keith Rabois "if you're not bleeding from your eyes you're not really trying" attitude probably isn't helping either. Women are more sensitive to these things, for all sorts of reasons from shouldering a greater share of family burdens (not just child care BTW), to maintaining broader friend networks, to general attitudes about spending time in vs. outside the home. "This is your home now" can be unappealing to men, but IMX it's at least 2x more so for women.
Its time to accept the fact that some things are simply more fit for man and some for woman and that there is nothing to be done about it.
If we take gaming as an example, man are simply more devoted/involved, generally. Do they like to play more with things or they have better spatial ability or whatever else, its irrelevant - it is clear to anybody who actually does games what the situation is. Sure, I played with some woman that are better then most man, but that only strengthens the point.
There is no reason to be politically correct about it or ashamed to admit it or make a strategy about it. Just acceptance.
I have two sisters - one is an engineer and the other holds a degree in romance philology. From their accounts I can tell, that the sexism is real regardless of the type of industry, but its source is usually this one person in the team who either:
a) Is the owner of the company and also a pig.
b) Disregards any warnings directed to him which are toothless anyway, because the company cannot afford to fire him(Über much?).
I've found it interesting how my colleagues refer to the gender of hypothetical engineers. One principal engineer that I work with always uses "Suzie" in examples; "If Suzie is ..., she ...". Many others simply use the pronoun "he/him". ("When a manger..., he should ...").
I'm not sure if the principal engineer chooses "Suzie" deliberately because of her gender, but as a female engineer I really respect him for it and appreciate it anyway. Conversely, while I don't find it that big of a deal, I do lose a bit of respect for the speaker when I notice them only using "he/him".
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 41.2 ms ] threadAs with many such articles, this one talks a bit about the toxic reception women get in the video game industry. While the game world's treatment of women is particularly nasty, male developers don't exactly have an easy time there either. It's a nasty business. While game development is a good source of lurid examples of mistreatment, I feel like that particular industry is not a good proxy for tech in general. Happy to be shown to be wrong.
1) The discrepancy starts at an early age. When I was in college, there were very few women in my CS classes, and nearly all of them were international students. This SMBC comes to mind more than anything else: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883
2) Looking at my own employer, I noticed some interesting things. First off, we're a mid-size B2B telecom with a very corporate culture, which is antithetical to the "tech bro" startups that are often discussed on HN. Different departments have strikingly different gender ratios. Only sales and technology are really male dominated, and even then they're not exclusively male. All departments outside of sales and technology are either gender-diverse or female-dominated. In sales: our sales operations and client experience teams are diverse, and we have a few female executives. In technology, our business intelligence/data warehousing people and our business analysts are all women, the QA lead is female, and we have a couple of female software engineers and a female IT tech. I am the only woman in the network engineering department, though. We're still above the curve compared to SV tech bro startups, though, and I have never once felt discriminated against for my gender.
about (1), to make matters worse, most of those international students are kicked out of US because their luck didn't favor them with the H1b lottery.
A few years ago, as an international student myself, I found it weird to see hardly (compared to other courses) any American women (of any color/race) in CS/EE/CE/IT courses.
Some of the international students (including women) who graduated also had to leave US because no H1b.
Easy way to flood US tech companies with techie women is to give unconditional Green Cards to International students (stapled to women graduates' degrees). That way there wont be anyone pointing fingers at the pipeline. (the article also doesn't mention a solution to this problem)
Once there's close to 50% parity in tech work places, in a few years, girls in US will have enough "women in tech" role models to look up to.
Until then, they can feel comfortable in the techy bro culture only if they love Star Wars, Marvel and DC comics, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and console games, which is not a lot of women (and men) out there.
How is that not discrimination?
w.r.t "Staple to graduate degrees", I meant green cards(gc). Similar to how canada does based on points. And sure, not just for women, anyone who is eligible based on points, should get a GC stapled
In the case of tech, this couldn't be further from the truth. The vast majority of programmers are introverted, quiet and socially awkward.
I have a theory that part of the contention about the skewed gender ratios in tech is due to Millenial female entitlement. Imagine if your entire adult life you'd been pandered to at every step:
1) If you are remotely attractive, men will bend over backwards to ask you out on dates or be friends, the stories I hear from female friends are absolutely amazing - the insanely extreme lengths of tolerance men will go to. On a social level, you can be flakey, lacking in personality and never initiate anything and yet there'll always be some sexually-desperate guy trying to win you over. Sure, its not genuine interest, but its constantly there.
I've actually tried this before, creating the most boring possible profile on online dating sites, to see what will happen. Within minutes, decent-quality men send you reams upon reams of sweet messages ("Oh you're from the midwest too? Golly I miss it there" etc). You get endless validation without any effort.
2) In education, news and job-hunting there are endless women's groups, women's incubators, women-only nights here, free entry in places for being female. You're winning from stage 1. You can breeze into large companies because they're so desperate to fix that embarrassing gender skew.
All of this goes to your head until you finally join that coveted startup, or finally take those gender-blind exams and actually have to produce the goods. No one is giving you a leg up any more and suddenly you realize that things are really hard.
I'd be upset too.
Its time to accept the fact that some things are simply more fit for man and some for woman and that there is nothing to be done about it.
If we take gaming as an example, man are simply more devoted/involved, generally. Do they like to play more with things or they have better spatial ability or whatever else, its irrelevant - it is clear to anybody who actually does games what the situation is. Sure, I played with some woman that are better then most man, but that only strengthens the point.
There is no reason to be politically correct about it or ashamed to admit it or make a strategy about it. Just acceptance.
I'm not sure if the principal engineer chooses "Suzie" deliberately because of her gender, but as a female engineer I really respect him for it and appreciate it anyway. Conversely, while I don't find it that big of a deal, I do lose a bit of respect for the speaker when I notice them only using "he/him".
Something to consider.