Ask HN: How to avoid working in all-male work environments as a programmer? My last three jobs have been all-male work environments, give or take minor contacts with women from time to time. But I'm getting tired of it. Any suggestions on how to find a programming gig where there is at least a possibility of encountering a person of the opposite gender from time to time? |
Much larger companies also have other departments (sales, etc), which probably have women.
and it seems that somewhere on campus they are always looking for devs.
It makes sense, considering the article on VentureBeat today that suggests that women play more social games than men: http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/22/do-women-play-more-games-t...
Perhaps a place like Zynga or Playdom would be a good fit for you?
A good first-glance indicator is whether the management titles of the organisation are given based on tenure (older people and/or long term employees), domain expertise (e.g. the most experiences developers have management titles) or leadership skills. Try to find companies with the last type of promotion system and you are very likely going to have more gender diversity as well.
The obvious answer, I suppose, is to get involved with projects that increase diversity in CS and the tech industry, and also to encourage your HR department to find places to advertise their programming jobs that will be seen by women. (Perhaps a women-in-CS group at the local university, or a more formal group such as LinuxChix.)
There's a negative feedback loop here, though, where women will probably be less interested in a team/company that's so far totally failed to hire technical women. :/
The ratio I observed in Israel was much better than most Western countries too.
If freelancing isn't an option I'd suggest getting a job at a company whose primary business is in the medical, entertainment, legal, or real estate industries. You'll probably be doing internal development at said companies and working with mostly male engineers but at least you'll get a break from that at lunchtime.