I learned to program at 16 and now I'm in my 30s. I got my PhD Mathematical Sciences at Duke University . I still remember my pride in the knight's move algorithm , written in C ++ in high school; a terrific puzzle - a self-interpreting interpreter (Scheme from my first semester in college); my fascination with various types of matrix decomposition in C in graduate school ; and my inspiration from relational databases and web scrapers at my first job.
Ten years after I learned to program, I still loved algorithms, but I felt lonely and depressed in the IT culture. While working for a particularly ill-suited company, I was so unhappy that I hired a career consultant to discuss alternative career paths. Leaving IT would have been deadly, but staying was not easy either.
I'm not the stereotypical male programmer in my early 20s who wants to "work hard, go hard." I work a lot, but I would rather get up earlier than leave later, and I already planned ahead how my husband and I would coordinate our schedules with the kindergarten. Beer taps and pin-pong tables don't appeal to me. I'm not aggressive enough to thrive in a competitive environment. And speaking with other women in the industry, I realized that I was not alone in my disappointment.
When researcher Kieran Snyder interviewed 716 women who left IT after an average of 7 years, almost all of them said they liked the job, but were unhappy in the work environment. In a study for the National Science Foundation, Nadia Fuad interviewed 5,300 women over the past 50 yearswith engineering degrees, and 38% of them no longer work as engineers. Fuad summarized her findings on why they left with the phrase "This is the climate, you idiots!"
This is a huge, unnecessary and expensive waste of talent in a supposedly understaffed industry. Given that IT is now one of the main driving forces of the US economy, it affects everyone. Any technology company struggling to recruit and retain a sufficient number of employees should be particularly concerned about solving this problem.
Your company is NOT a meritocracy and you are NOT “gender neutral”
Nobody wants to think of themselves as sexist. However, several studies show that the same resumes are treated differently depending on whether they are labeled as male or female. When a man and a woman read the same text of a business pitch or request for a salary increase, they are evaluated differently. Both men and women are prone to this bias. Bias arises subconsciously without malice.
Here are just a few studies on subconscious gender bias:
Most alarmingly, a Yale University study shows that people who perceive themselves to be impartial are more biased . The mere desire to be impartial can not overcome decades of cultural treatment, and may even lead to more easy justification [deeds] after the fact. Accepting that you have biases that conflict with your values does not make you a bad person. They are a common consequence of our culture. It is important to find ways to root them out. Blindly believing that your company is a meritocracy will not only make it so, but it will also make it harder to combat subconscious bias.
The bias is usually justified after the fact. Our initial unconscious impression of a woman is negative, and then we find logical reasons to justify it. For example, in a Yale study , if a male police chief candidate had more “street” experience and a woman had better education, the evaluators decided that real-world experience was more important, and if the names were changed, she decided that education Is the most important characteristic.
Good news and bad news
Bad news…
Due to the high percentage of women lost in IT, teaching girls to program is not enough to solve the problem. Because of the well-known aforementioned differences in the way men and women are perceived, training women in negotiation technique and more assertiveness is not enough to solve the problem. Women's voices are perceived as less logical and persuasive than men's . Women are perceived negatively for more pressure. If the IT culture is going to change, everyone must change, especially men and especially leaders.
The professional and emotional pay for speaking out about discrimination for women can be significant (in terms of retaliation, being perceived as less suitable for the job and uncooperative, or being portrayed by the company as bad workers). I know several female engineers who privately told stories of sexism to friends but were reluctant to tell them publicly because of the risk. Therefore, it is important to proactively address the problem. There are more than enough published studies and personal stories of those who dared to openly tell and confirm a widespread problem in IT.
... and good news
Changes are possible. Educational institutions, not tech companies Harvey Mudd and Harvard Business School provide inspiring examples. Strong leaders in both schools have taken decisive action to change the previously male-oriented culture. Harvey Mudd raised the percentage of female graduates to 40% (national average 18%). Among the top 5% of Harvard Business School graduates, the proportion of girls rose from about 20% to 40% and the gap between the average grades of men and women narrowed, all in one year of applying complex structural change.
What can we do about it?
These recommendations for what companies can improve in their culture are based on a mixture of research and personal experience. My goal is to focus on positive things, and I’ll be glad if you take with you at least one specific goal for constructive change in your company.
Train managers
It is common in tech startups to promote talented engineers to managers without providing them with any kind of management training and oversight, especially in fast-growing companies where the existing leadership is overwhelmed. These new managers are out of touch with research on motivation, psychology, or bias. Untrained, unsupervised managers do more harm to women than men, but regardless, all employees will be better off having their bosses receive training, mentoring, and supervision.
Formalize recruitment and promotion criteria
In the aforementioned Yale Survey on Police Chief Hiring, asking participants to formulate requirements before viewing applications (that is, decide whether education or experience is more important) reduced bias. I once worked in a team where the criteria for hiring were amorphous and managers often redefined the team's vote based on "flair." It seems that subconscious biases played a big role in decision making, but due to the disorganized hiring process, it was probably impossible to know for sure.
Leaders, start talking and acting in concrete ways
Leadership sets the values and culture of the company, and therefore has the onus to convey that they value diversity [orig. diversity] . Young engineers and managers will follow the example of what leaders value. In the case of positive change at Harvey Mudd and the Harvard Business School , management extended the initiative from the top. Intel is going to tie management bonuses to whether they have achieved diversification results in their teams. As Kelly Shaster, director of the Denver branch of Women Who Program , noted , management should get rid of employees who exhibit sexist or racist behavior.otherwise the company risks the loss of talented employees, “sends a message” to its employees that discrimination is normal.
Don't rely on self-promotion and self-esteem
There is a well-documented gap in self-confidence between men and women. Don't rely on self-nominated people for promotion, or getting the most interesting projects, because women are unlikely to push themselves. Google relies on self-promotion for promotions and data shows that women are less likely to do so (hence less likely to get promoted). When an older woman began to arrange training sessions to encourage women to nominate themselves, the number of women on Google who got promoted increased . Groups are more likely to choose a man as a leader because of his greater self-confidence , compared to a more qualified but less confident woman. Women rate themselves worse than they are, whilemen overestimate their abilities .
Conduct a formal audit of employee information
Make sure men and women with the same qualifications receive promotions and bonuses equally (if not, find out why). Make sure gender criticism ( like calling a woman grumpy ) is not used in performance reviews. The trend in IT companies to publish statistics on diversity is good, but given the percentage of women leaving the industry, they should start publishing gender-disaggregated employee retention data. I'd like to see company statistics on the rate at which women get promoted compared to men, and the difference in performance scores between men and women. By publishing such data, companies can hold themselves accountable and track changes over time.
Don't emphasize personal communication
A culture that encourages, socializes, and encourages people to regularly stay up late or eat dinner in the office puts employees and families at a disadvantage (especially mothers), and research has shown that working overtime does not lead to increased productivity in the long run , as workers start to burn out after several weeks. What's more, when an employee burns out and leaves, the cost of finding and hiring a new one is typically 20% of their annual salary .
Create an atmosphere of cooperation
Stanford research indicates that women are more likely to dislike the competitive environment than men and are more likely to choose another job regardless of ability. Given that women are perceived as more assertive, it is more difficult for them to succeed in an aggressive environment. Men who talk more than their peers get 10% higher ratings, while women who talk more get 14% lower ratings . Creating a competitive culture where people have to fight for their ideas makes success much more difficult for women.
Offer maternity leave
More than 10% of the 716 women who left IT in the Kieran Snyder study quit due to inadequate maternity leave conditions. Some were required to return to work too early or be on calls during maternity leave. These women did not want to become home-stay parents, they just needed time to recover from childbirth. You would not require someone to go to work after a major operation without giving them time to recover, just as women need time to heal after childbirth. When Google increased maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks, the number of new mothers leaving Google dropped by 50% .
Final thoughts ...
About racial discrimination
There is a wealth of research on subconscious racial bias , and tech companies need to address this issue. As Nicole Sanchez, vice president of social influence at GitHub, describes, calls for diversity often end up exclusively with white women , which is deeply problematic. Racial stereotypes add a new intersecting dimension to the discrimination experienced by non-white women. In an interview with 60 non-white women in science and IT, 100% experienced discrimination, and specific negative stereotypes differed according to their race. A resume with a traditional African American name is less likely to result in an interview than a resume with a traditional "white" name. I don't have personal experience to talk about this topic, instead I suggest you read articles and blogs from and about non-white IT workers regarding the problems they faced: Erica Joy (engineer at Slack, formerly Google), Justin Edmund ( designer at Pinterest, 7th employee), Aston Moats (engineer at Dropbox, first employee), and Angelica Coleman (developer-attorney at Zendask, formerly Dropbox).
Now
I am currently teaching software engineering at the Hackbright Academy for Women , a job that I love and that is perfect for me. I want all women to have the opportunity (and I mean a real opportunity, without explicit or implicit discrimination) to learn to program: the ability to program opens up many career and financial opportunities, and it is very pleasant to create something. And while I know many women with frustrating experiences of sexism, I also know women who have started companies where they thrive. I am glad for the attention that the issue of diversity in IT has received, and look forward to future changes.
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This is a translation of an article by Rachel Thomas , fast.ai co-founder and professor atUniversity of San Francisco , Rachel's other articles with additional research on the topic can be found at links: 1 , 2 , 3 .