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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

This seems to be such a spectacularly good result that I wonder why they haven't tried it sooner.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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. :)

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.

"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.

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?

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.

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract

Corporate American needs a major reform. US society need a major reform. Our culture and community need major reforms. The way boys and girls are raised need to be changed, the way they are educated and develop social skills and people skills need to change as well.

As it is Corporate America and the Tech industry has developed a certain mindset based on the power elite of Silicon Valley that controls VC and who gets on the board of directors via shareholders. Everyone has to work 80+ hours a week, and it is hostile to trying to raise a family. Corporations favor the worker who is single over one that is married and has children. They don't like it when there is responsibilities other than work that an employees has. Which is why there is no good maternity leave, or even child care services. Heck in most cases you have to drop your religion and become non-practicing so you don't attend services so you can work more hours.

When I was a young boy in the 1970s it was different, people got the weekends off and spent it with the family with family picnics and they only worked 40+ hours a week, and took off for family matters. The 1980s and 1990s changed that and the Dotcom Boom made the Startups and marathon coding that required more time per week to work. People got less sleep, worked more hours, gave up relationships and family, and put everything into working a job.

For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. I took time off to pick up my son from a babysitter because child care was not offered and my wife worked a different shift, and I got made fun of because I was taking care of my son instead of my wife. I ended up on short term disability and when I returned I was fired for being sick. You see once you become mentally ill they don't want you, even if you were hurt in the line of duty. Which is why so many mentally ill people hide their illnesses and go untreated and then do a suicide later on. I ended up on disability in 2003.

I never made it back to work. But I know of all of the problems in the industry and can talk about them freely without worrying that I'll be fired for talking about them.

In order to make up diversity, many tech companies use the H1B Visa program to hire people from India because they are not white males and because they will work for less money. Being from India gives them a more diverse work force, and they are disposable employees. If they don't do what they are told, the Visa is canceled and they go back to their native country. Then the company hires someone else. It is a big racket.

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.

(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?)

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"

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... ?

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.

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.

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 "

To be honest, I no longer hold much of any value to a resume... I've seen too many people with higher degrees and years of experience that can't seem to do what it says they can on said resume. Me, I'm particularly bad at white board coding... but I understand the need. That said, I'd rather have a laptop connected to a projector.

I've probably sat in on a couple hundred interviews of other people over the years, and only a handful were of women... For the most part, I appreciate that women tend to be much more accurate on their resumes and in responses as to their skill level. I've never really liked excessive arrogance, and prefer someone more honest. This is just me though.

I also think that efforts to make language and interactions politically correct are a disservice to the goal of letting anyone that wants to work in IT do so. A few months back I witnessed someone pretty much accosted because he dared to ask, "...can any of you guys help me with this?". My extended family is over 80% female... my step father was an only child, but my mom was one of 4 sisters, her mom one of three, and half of the women in my family only had daughters (including my sister). hearing things like "I miss you guys." was said by women, to women, without any gender bias, as a generic phrasing.

There's a difference between being overtly sensitive and issues of bias/discrimination worth bringing up. We're at a point where awareness is increasing, but as a society we've also been heading down a path of so much excessive sensitivity that it's downright abusive towards people who aren't ill-meaning. I hope that a balance is found sooner than later.

I don't want that to change, I like it. Is that really something only dudes can like? It's an entire part of the IT field really, it's not gonna change. Like, ever.

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".

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!

People in the 70's thought work life was hellacious and going deeper into hell, just like today, and every decade since (and probably every prior decade). I recall people declaring they weren't going to have children and bring them into the rotten world. Of course, the politicians all campaigned on fixing everything, just like today, and nothing changed, just like today.

Source: I was working for a living in the 70's.

It's seriously a damn shame you worked yourself into a nervous breakdown. I can't possibly stress that enough.

I've spent about ten years working a couple of tech jobs. Over those years, I've probably put in a few hundred hours of OT (unpaid or otherwise). If we're pessimistic and call it an even 1k hours of OT, this means that I've spent an average of somewhere between 42 and 45 hours per week at work over my entire career so far.

I -and others in tech that I know- have never been required to work anywhere near point of burnout, let alone breakdown. Moreover, from what I understand of tech sector hiring practices during the Dot Com Era, anyone who could spell SQL and/or HTML could get a well-paying job in the industry.

Maybe those practices also included a near-universal culture of overwork, but -based on what I hear from a few folks who were working in The Valley at the time- I'm pretty certain that that's not true. If management was pressuring you to work those insane hours, you would have very probably found better treatment at another company. It seems like the lower hiring bar would have given a seasoned veteran quite some mobility during the boom. The situation after the bust is another story all together.

Since you stopped working in the industry in 2003 and claim over 25 years of industry experience, would you be so kind compare and contrast the work ethic and attitudes of tech company management during the Dot Com boom of the late 1990s to those of tech company management during the PC Boom of the 1980s and very early 1990s?

Thanks!