[ifokiedoke]

My own personal experience as a female software developer is that there is pressure from all sides to go into management, and this pressure can come from both ill and good intent.

Others have mentioned that it might be because of perceived superior communication skills (good?), or perceived lack of "good-enough" technical skills (bad?)... both of these add to the problem, but I've also experienced that diversity-aware companies tend to explicitly want females in management/leadership positions because it sends a stronger message re: caring about diversity than e.g. having a female senior software engineer (As unfortunate as it is, I think most perceive "manager/team lead" as higher up the ladder than "senior software engineer").

A specific example: I worked at a startup where D/I was a huge topic and where we spoke about it during Town Hall all the time. Complaints (mostly from females from within the company, not necessarily from the Engineering department) were always about not having females as team leads, as managers, as directors, on out executive board, etc. So every quarter, each and every competent female engineer would be encouraged to try taking a team lead or management role if there was one open. Of course, a bunch of us (myself included) had 0 interest but the prodding was there.

EDIT: Also, just in case someone is going to take this as proof that "women have it easy" at "woke" companies because the bar is lowered for going into management or something... I feel the need to explicitly state that the bar wasn't lowered. When I say "competent" I actually mean the dictionary definition of "having requisite or adequate ability or qualities". I worked with some badass female engineers, who were certainly skilled enough technically and socially to lead a team.

[Swizec]

> there is pressure from all sides to go into management, and this pressure can come from both ill and good intent

As a guy, I keep fighting this pressure a lot too. I think it comes from organizations who don’t have enough technical challenges and they’re afraid top talent will leave out of boredom.

There’s always managerial challenges.

[Cthulhu_]

Said managerial challenges are often self-imposed though; I think a lot of people will know of companies with too many managers, who don't do a lot of work (that we're aware of) and spend a lot of effort looking important and busy (and rich).

Mind you, for my previous employer (consultancy) I felt like there was too little management and hierarchy; every department had a management team consisting of one or two managers and one or two sales, with other non-core-business tasks (admin) handled by the parent company. But said managers had to do everything; sales, account management, hiring, personnel management & reviews, conflict resolution, and oftentimes they came "from the trenches" so there was often an attempt to help out directly in projects as well. I think they should've spread out the roles a bit more.

Mind you, by default both sales + management there would ALWAYS earn more than the developers; what they could have done is hire junior managers that took some of the work without the exorbitant pay check.

[afarrell]

> the bar is lowered for going into management

For someone who cares about their work and cares about the impact their work and exercise-of-power has on others... How do you even possibly "lower the bar" of difficulty for being in tech management?

Sure, you can throw someone into it unprepared... but that sounds about as bewildering and miserable as when I was hired as a Senior Engineer a year after graduating from uni.

[jmchuster]

I would have thought that this was an attempt to balance out males being more likely to ask for such promotions (and thus be granted them).