[kamaal]

Its not about programming. Or anything to do with the profession. Its has much to do with the culture.

In my first project near impossible work conditions and deadlines were placed on us. Most of us had to make extreme sacrifices(health wise, socially and in many aspects)- The other option was being out of the job. The problem is you need a supporting family. Here in India, its difficult for women at least socially and even in your own family to justify working whole nights, weekends and late hours consistently. You can try to fight that when you are single, it gets near impossible to do that after marriage and kids. Plus women have to take breaks in their 20's and 30's for maternity reasons.

At the other end, super success in software depends on all this start up culture which is very hard on most women.

[aortega]

It's very simple for me: From 20s to 30s most women are having babies, because it's the only time on their lives when they can do it safely. They can go startuping later.

Male coders on their 20s are mostly coding and brofounding because they don't have a better thing to do. IMHO It's even not such a good idea to go having babies at this age for a male because you are mostly broke all the time and you are still a teenager.

When people talk about Female founders or coders I think they mean young pretty female founders. There are few, and for good reasons.

I see no shortage of older females in software managament or software arch. positions and many moms are just fine doing startups on their 50s.

[kamaal]

Please note there are age related discrimination problems in our area of work. And frankly speaking when you talk of management you are talking of glorified desk supervisors and when you talk of architects you are talking of UML-drawing clueless people in semi-managerial roles.

Almost anything that requires solving hard engineering problems like scalability, quality you will again get back long hour working engineering culture.

The competition is fierce from younger people. Also the level of learning you are required to do to just 'catch-up' with existing trends in technology in simply too much.

In all the problems look very similar to that in other branches of engineering too. Mechanical engineering for that matter sees too little enrollment from girls, same with civil engineering.

[aortega]

>And frankly speaking when you talk of management you are talking of glorified desk supervisors

No, I think you should fire your manager :)

[mdisraeli]

It is worth noting that it is very common for women to be 'promoted' out of technical roles into managerial or administrative positions, often before they have been able to develop true competencies or career plans.

[pjmlp]

I would say it depends a lot on the country as well.

In many European countries those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer.

[kamaal]

>>those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer.

What good would that do?

If you pass laws that make it difficult to start and sustain a competitive company, next time around you will see such companies would be starting up in some other country.

Now the whole ecosystem suffers.

[shaan7]

you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees? I know a lot of companies that are the best in their business and never have to.

It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.

[kamaal]

>>you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees?

Not at all, but to be a "competitive company" you have to be "competitive" which is essentially doing better than your competition. The issue is someone is always willing to put more effort than you/your company. This is where it all breaks down.

This is exactly what makes our profession so much sought after. Because at some point you can make money non linear to your effort, and if you compress that effort into a small period of time you can make a fortune.

For every person that is happy to go back working 4 hours a day, there are people to put in 16 hours a day.

>>It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.

IT professionals in India are not cheap. Compare it with any other profession in India, even engineers. We come out easily as better paid people here.

And even a cursory look at the start up industry across the world, not just in India will tell you what kind of a fierce competition it is.

[hibbelig]

I don't agree that abusing employees helps. Software development is a creative activity, and you've got to get enough rest to be creative.

Disclosure: European here.

[girvo]

Yknow, a lot of the world doesn't run their economy through some zero-sum fuck-your-employees-the-bottom-line-is-what-matters crap...

[pjmlp]

I work in the enterprise world with a few major Indian consulting companies.

Their European sites always have problems trying to force the Indian work style on the European workers.

Somehow their managers keep forgetting our work laws.

[nerfhammer]

Perfectly legal in the US, as long as you're salaried.

[pyrocat]

> "Plus women have to take breaks in their 20's and 30's for maternity reasons."

Women aren't required to have kids?

[DanBC]

A better reply would have been "we'd like mean to take paternity leave too".

I sometimes wonder if HN commentors ever think that maybe their comments might leave them open to legal liability in some future case.

[BWStearns]

>> I sometimes wonder if HN commentors ever think that maybe their comments might leave them open to legal liability in some future case

While I agree with advising caution, and disagree with the gp sentiment, I don't think that mild gender insensitivity and poor communication skills are as of yet civil or criminal offenses on comment sections.

[DanBC]

Bob says "hiring women is risky because they all have babies".

Bob sets up a startup and gets to the point of hiring.

Does Bob wonder whether his earlier public comments have left him open to discrimination claims?

[BWStearns]

Fair, but unless he is actually discriminating he should be able to get by with relatively few issues.

[pyrocat]

I think you misunderstood my tone, which in hindsight I should have phrased differently. I was saying

"Women aren't required to have kids... but this quote implies that all women have kids, which annoys me"

[ZenPro]

"Women aren't required to have kids..."

^^ Double edged sentence you have there ;-)

I am pretty sure they are; unless there are some serious medical advances and questionable ethical boundaries.

[ZenPro]

Downvoted? For saying women are necessary in the birth of children?

HN is weird.