[owen_griffiths]

"almost all of them said they liked the work itself, but cited discriminatory environments as their main reason for leaving"

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.

[todayiamme]

I try to usually stay away from such debates, but I've thought a lot about the point you're making: if people are being irrational with respect to hiring then clearly the solution is to start a company that isn't ageist, sexist, or any -ist by formalising the hiring logic and finding people who share something deep - like a passion for building things - in common. But after talking to people and many, many companies, I've come to realise that, although a "market correction" is inevitable, markets can stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent.

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.

[Jare]

I think this argument needs to be less black and white than what you present. There's no need for a company to "swoop all" of these people and go for an "audacious goal"; that's all too exaggerated. All that's needed are a few companies competing in a largely male-dominated space, staffed with "a larger presence" of women, and being reasonably successful in whatever goal they have, regardless of how trivial or lofty it is.

Advocacy is great, and necessary to get out of local maximas, but living proof is always going to be more effective.

Of course, there's always the question of how useful such a competitive advantage (access to a large pool of excellent staff) would be to drive success. It may not be, which is a different discussion and one that would make engineers of both genders nervous regarding their own value.

[malandrew]

Some companies actually are able to disproportionately hire many of the women available to be hired in the industry.

Company A has a hard time hiring women because Company B had a few more and better female engineers early on. Network effects take over as the company grows affording it the opportunity to hire far more women than other tech companies.

This infographic shows the ratios at a bunch of companies from those with gender ratios below the higher education pipeline ratio to those well above that ratio: http://do-better.studiometric.co/

Women earn 18% of computer science degrees: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp

That table shows the ratio at that sample of companies to be around 19% women. Assuming those companies are representative, that is a 1% different in favor of more women than men based on the pipeline feeding the industry.

[personjerry]

Sure, you may believe that to be the case, but in the meantime, others may believe that, exactly due to the lack of a company that has swooped up all these people, that there is no such opportunity.

[shoo]

I'll run with your thought experiment.

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... ?

[LoSboccacc]

now this will sound sexist. believe me I am not - I'm just a dev and I wish we had more women in the field for reason I won't articulate here - take this as 'seen from vc eyes':

on a big enterprise, the kind of which people work for more than ten years, maternity leave pay is just a fraction of the whole worker working life - say you work at a company ten years, it's just about 10% of productivity lost. less if you factor days instead of months and account for not giving out bonuses nor vacation in that period)

this of course should not justify a 10% pay reduction, however it is what it is, I'm not deciding it, I'm just telling it.

in the VC worlds, a company they invest on should have a return in three years or even less. in that context, a maternity leave is a 50% productivity loss - three years is too short to absorb a leave and too long for not being at risk of being impacted by it

is this sexist? of course it is. is it fair? of course it isn't.

are there any solutions to this? well, since VC is currently male dominated and they tend not to understand the potential of a woman energy, I can't see many.

[barsonme]

I had a similar conversation with some (female) coworkers a while back.

One, who's on her way to her JD, remarked how it upset her that she'd always have extra baggage because she's a woman -- that no matter what the people hiring her would always factor in the chance she could become pregnant once, twice, or even more times.

Before I get off on the wrong foot, I think that maternity leave is a small price to pay if you have a good employee and anybody who turns down a woman for a petty reason like that should rethink how they're running their company.

That said, is it really sexist or is it just life? By that I mean is factoring in all potential issues the same as a hiring manager who thinks women are, by default, worse at X than men?

I almost want to liken it to my car insurance, as weird as it sounds. I have to pay a fair amount more simply because I'm a male and in my 20s. Sure, it's a form of discrimination, but it's also just life. A high enough percentage of us do cost the companies more money, so they charge us more.

A job is more important than car insurance, but my point isn't to compare the two and say they're of the same importance or argue in favor of discrimination.

It's late and I don't think I'm making my point clearly enough, but I kind of wanted to get it down on paper.

Sometimes I feel there are parts of life that you can't really change or blame people for taking into consideration. Whether the fact that women produce babies is something that should be taken into consideration, that's (obviously) something we as a society need to figure out.

[DanBC]

Your post mentions women leaving for maternity leave, but makes no mention of men leaving for paternity leave. It's probably a problem for society that we assume men are not interested in childcare and won't take much time off.

> I almost want to liken it to my car insurance, as weird as it sounds.

It's a little bit weird because we have so much information telling us that young men are much more likely to be involved in an accident. I don't think you're saying that we have a lot of evidence to show that women are going to be terribly costly hires. And in some places (the EU) insurance companies can't use gender.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12608777

[barsonme]

> I don't think you're saying that we have a lot of evidence to show that women are going to be terribly costly hires.

No, you're right, I'm not. But biologically they are the only sex able to have babies, and paternity is still very far from catching on.

I should note I support paternity leave and hopefully will be taking it someday when I have children of my own.

[anon4]

Why do you assume that a female VC won't do the exact same calculation and still refuse funding? Women aren't some secret cabal that looks out for each other. They are literally normal people and just as nasty on average as everyone else.

[LoSboccacc]

I assume that male VC are worse at balancing the maternity calculation with the additional energy, motivation and intellectual skills a woman could bring to the team. Well that's a weak assumption and I have no data to back it, but I'm not at all naive enough to think they are in a secret cabal looking for each other.

[killface]

I bet we would be surprised that women are more vicious towards other women in this regard -- a bit of the "I did it (or didn't do it), and I'm fine -- what's your excuse?" kind of thinking.

[lawnchair_larry]

What if the man was Billy Mays and the woman was Roseanne Barr? What if we change it so the man is Jim Gaffigan and the woman is Ivanka Trump? I think your bias would be upside down. It's probably a true statement that the man's pitch is preferred, but that experiment Does nothing to demonstrate it.

[mehwoot]

Again, if true, some enterprising person should have found a way to tap all the amazing talent.

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.

[malandrew]

What industries do they typically move to and why did they choose those industries?

Do they choose work of similar nature but in industries without the same biases or do they move to industries where the nature of the labor involved is very different?

[ulikunkel]

Yes, all everyone talks about is making changes to create a more friendly and equal work environment. I never see any good ideas to achieve this.

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.

[rmc]

> 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?

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 "

[danieltillett]

Do VC funded female founders hire a disproportional percentage of tech women? The delta between women tech employees in male and female founded firms should tell us if a discriminatory environment is the cause.

[Someone]

No. You cannot rule out the possibility that women discriminate women, too, or that environmental influences from outside the work floor cause the effect.

[danieltillett]

If women discriminate then we should know this as it would be very helpful to know why.

If the cause is environmental influences outside the workplace then it is a bit hard for anyone to solve from within the workplace. It also makes any hypothesis of sexism untestable since there is no possible evidence that could be gathered that could ever disprove sexism as the cause.