One of the smartest people I know almost quit software her first year out of school, because her all-male team spent an afternoon teasing her about how they were going to start a strip poker game and they think she'd be "a natural", or some nonsense like that. Do you think such dynamics introduce barriers to female participation in tech? Do you think focusing solely at the "bottom of the funnel" could still result in a lack of diversity if the "top of the funnel" isn't pleasant for certain demographics to work? Do you think such an event would've occurred without pushback on a team with more than 1 woman? Do you think what you consider to be "common sense" is shaped very much by your personal experience, and that you'd have no "common sense" intuition for how frequently things like this happen because it doesn't personally impact you?

I’m 35 now, at no point in my career have I ever been in an environment that would have tolerated that, school- college or workplace.

And I haven’t been trying exceptionally hard to avoid it.

If such jibes had happened those people would not have a job, point blank.

Given the average seniority for a full stack engineer is 10 years, I should have encountered at least one, or worked with someone who had been in such an environment.

I think chud behaviour is an excuse, because it’s not tolerated for at least my lifetime.

Even if it's very uncommon, unfortunately even one incident like the one in GP's comment is enough to convince someone that they're unwelcome and abandon working in the field. In fact, an argument for workplace diversity initiatives is that it can re-assure people that they are welcome, and that kind behavior of is fireable. Personally the kind of "DEI" I most strongly support are the initiatives that lay out clear rules and expectations for what kind of employee behavior is allowed, and tell people who to go to if they see it occurring.

if everyone openly has your back, consistently, and for years yet you’re so fragile that a single dickhead (who will be fired) derails your entire career then honestly you were too fragile to do the job anyway..

I don’t know a single engineer who doesn’t get imposter syndrome.

As a man, I have been openly derided for doing something stupid, if I were a woman I might internalise that as if it was sexism- so how do you deal with that? When people are so convinced that if anything critical could be based on gender?

At some point you're treating people like children.

Again I’ll say it: every single educational institution and workplace I have ever been in has intentionally mentioned that anything that could be perceived as misogyny or sexual harassment have a zero tolerance policy.

Am I really the outlier? I’ve worked so many places and across so many countries and industries…

> Again I’ll say it: every single educational institution and workplace I have ever been in has intentionally mentioned that anything that could be perceived as misogyny or sexual harassment have a zero tolerance policy.

Just because they say that doesn't mean they'll do that. People lie, they systematically sexually harass for years, and only if its made public will they actually do anything about it.

https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/uber-pay-44-million-resolve-ee...

https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/activision-blizzard-gender-...

In US companies and universities that I have been at throughout my 30-year career: a group of men harassing a woman with strip poker jokes would be dealt with very swiftly and decisively. My 2c.

One thing to pay attention to is how you influence those around you. I'm guessing, doesn't put up with that kind of shit. People who act like that probably don't act like that when you're around. Because of that, you get a sanitized view of the world.

That sort of chud behavior is very much tolerated in many places: https://www.romerolaw.com/blog/2021/11/complaint-alleges-ram...

YMMV, but during my time studying the course coordinators of the first year CS courses had to put out a notice to the male students that the female students (greatly outnumbered) were there to learn and didn't want to be hit on during labs and tutorials. They did that because it had become a problem, especially as these courses consisted of a lot of students who perhaps didn't have much experience interacting graciously (or at all) with the opposite gender.

I hear stories like this, but now after 25 years in the industry, no place I've worked at would have ever tolerated this, nor have I seen or heard this happen from colleagues. Granted I've worked mostly in California, but still seems so foreign to me.

I have a first-hand experience once or twice a year that make me stop and think -- if I were a woman in this situation I'd probably be doubting my career path. The example I cited is particularly egregious, but I have seen several other examples from a variety of companies: - two guys on a zoom call joking that someone's camera was off because they were doing "weird stuff" - manager from another team drunkenly telling a 24 year old at a holiday party that he would leave his wife for her - software system named "naggy_wife" - coworker telling younger coworker to "not get married because you will never have sex again"

I am passing along these anecdotes because they're more easy to empathize with than some of the more general arguments of why it can be hard to succeed in tech as a woman (but they really only tell part of the story). Some of my other anecdotes might also sound closer to things you've seen or heard at the work place, or perhaps it's easier to see how some of these things might have happened without you being aware of them, given their (relative) infrequency and the contexts in which they arise. All of them happened without an HR incident (like, really, should a guy who wrote a system called "naggy-wife" get in trouble? a choice was made like 20 years ago... and maybe the guy doesn't even work there anymore). But you can also see how negative experiences like this can build up and contribute to the relatively common feeling among female engineers that they "don't belong".

This won’t be a popular sentiment among the woke mafia that puruses HN but I’ve seen far more women drop out of tech roles due to the general work environment than due to some sexist commentary. In fact, I don’t know any who left due to some sexist commentary. I know many who left due to how toxic the work environment is for everyone.

Tech workers are one of the least sexist groups out of any. If you think techies are sexist, you’d never last a day in medicine, law, or finance. Yet, women sign up for those in far higher percentages. Genuinely, it is actually hard to find a more left/progressive leaning professional field. It is not sexism that is the one thing keeping women out of tech. It is that it’s not an attractive or high status field to women. The people working in it are not seen as socially competent, it is highly outsourced, and depending on role has relatively little socializing. It’s also insanely competitive and you have to fight to keep your job from an army of H1B workers invading the country due to CEOs looking for slave labor. There are so many reasons to not be in tech and sexism should be one of the lowest reasons out there.

I don’t know any women complaining about sexism in comparison to the level of “holy fuck, when will I ever get a break?” It is an unrelenting field that constantly has you worried you’ll lose your job next month. On top of requiring you study at least 500 leetcode problems before you do any interviews. Go figure, most women don’t enjoy that.

My ex-partner was a consultant at a FANG. It was her first engagement at a customer site after six months of very successful work internally.

She was placed in a group overseen by another consultant. He was from the same firm. In fact he was a principle in the firm.

He immediately started undermining her. He gave her advice that she followed, and then he criticized her for following his advice. He was extremely helpful to women employees from the client, but a complete dick to her. There were many other things he did. She documented what was happening, and complained to the skip-level but he denied it, and they didn't believe her. It looked like she was going to be out.

Then there was a reorganization and several other women from the same consulting company were moved onto her team. They had much more history with the company. They were all high performers. He started doing the same shit to them. When they started reporting the same treatments and complaints management finally listened, and recalled him to the central office.

The story has a great ending though. Once back in the main office, said horrible man then made a wonderful mistake. He started sexually harassing the new corporate council. That ended very badly for him.

So, yeah, sexual harassment happens.

> He immediately started undermining her. He gave her advice that she followed, and then he criticized her for following his advice. He was extremely helpful to women employees from the client, but a complete dick to her. There were many other things he did. She documented what was happening, and complained to the skip-level but he denied it, and they didn't believe her. It looked like she was going to be out.

This sounds like what happens to other males too? I'm not sure if that's related to sexual harassment though.

Yeah, exactly. This is the difference. People in tech assume that when this happens to women that it’s sexually motivated. No. It’s motivated by knowing you’re stack ranked and the best way to get ahead is by tearing others down. The industry is insanely toxic and most men just deal with it silently.

How much of this opinion has been shaped by actually talking to the women whose experience you are summarizing? And specifically in a context where they'd give you an honest and candid answer, which probably wouldn't involve you saying stuff like "woke mafia" out loud (as it would put regular people on guard and they'd feel less comfortable being honest with you). I don't want you to answer question that literally, because it's the internet and you can just say "I've talked to 1000 women in tech and have summarized their tabulated their experiences in a spreadsheet on my computer." Just honestly take a quiet minute or so and think about it. If the answer is somewhere close to zero, ask yourself why you felt such a high degree of confidence in the assessment you gave above.

>But you can also see how negative experiences like this can build up

Not really, TBH. I especially can't see why a woman experiencing these (to my mind, rather mild) interactions would think that things would be better in some other career path.

Let's say I, a man, went to work in a traditionally female-dominated field like nursing, and found that the other nurses there had named their cafeteria dishwasher "Hubby" as a joke because it took forever to work.

Would I, a grown man, consider changing my career because of this? No, I wouldn't.

OTOH, if the other nurses seemed to view me with disrespect or suspicion and I found I wasn't able to shift that perception through my actions, then I'd reconsider.

> Let's say I, a man, went to work in a traditionally female-dominated field like nursing, and found that the other nurses there had named their cafeteria dishwasher "Hubby" as a joke because it took forever to work.

Actually, this issue is in nursing. If you talk to male nurse organizations they do actually have issues of e.g. constantly being saddled with the heaviest patients or most physical labor because they're assumed to be strong, not having sexual harassment taken seriously from patients, and to be expected to take one for the team in handling the patients that were sexually inappropriate with female nurses. It does grate over time!

Those sound to me like genuine issues that need to be fixed. (To give an example of something I do think would need to be fixed in a gender-flipped scenario: Expecting only female employees to bring food to office parties, or clean up afterwards.)

Even in Chicago 30 years ago I cannot imagine that happening where I worked. Women were pretty well represented in tech there, incidentally. My immediate supervisor was a woman and I was the only male on my team. This was in IT in financial services. I would guess the whole department was 60:40 male:female.

Seriously, every instance I'm aware of men having done something like that where I worked (and it's happened more than once), they've been fired either the next day or the same week.

The solution there has nothing to do with hiring more women, and everything to do with zero tolerance for a sexist environment.

I mean, that happening is just insane. This isn't the 1950's.

Your suggestion that bad behavior by all-male teams would be improved by the addition of women rests on a couple of assumptions that are not true: that women are inherently better behaved than men, and that women naturally see each other as being on the same team.

I have been through some really awful experiences in the workplace in the last few years, and some of the most egregiously abusive behavior came from another woman. Women can be incredibly cruel to each other, and this woman in particular seemed to have it out for other women. Women are not inherently saints, and they are not inherently kind to other women.

On the other hand, I have often, often worked on teams that were (except for me) all men, but by and large they were men who had mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters that they loved, and who therefore had no trouble relating to me with respect and affection. While it is true that some men treat women specifically badly, and that some men treat people generally badly, it is not true that men in general treat women badly. Quite the opposite.

It does take a moment, as a woman, to find your feet socially in an all male space. But does it not always take a moment to find your feet in any new space? I have generally found that what makes it go smoothly is the fact that we are all hackers. If anything, it is all the walking on eggshells about sexism that makes social integration awkward at first. People are trying to figure out how they are "supposed" to behave around me, worried that I will be aggressive socially and legally. When we focus on the work we do together and the love we have in common for the field, we become friends naturally and get along well.

I myself think all the hand-wringing over demographics has been a waste of time at best and counterproductive at worst. I think it makes more sense to focus on developing virtue, civility, and good leadership among the people who find themselves here.

It is always so refreshing to read this kind of thing.

For a number of years I had the sense that I might be going crazy, because it seemed that throughout my whole working life I'd encountered good and bad people of both sexes, but never witnessed the kind of systematic targeting of women that both mainstream and alternative media sources told me was rife. How could it be that I couldn't see what was apparently right under my nose? So it's reassuring to know that there are also women who have had a similar experience.

I don't think women are inherently better behaved than men, or that they naturally see themselves as being on the same team. It's that the dynamic where it feels fun or funny to tell a joke that makes a minority in a group feel bad is less likely to arise when there are multiple people who wouldn't be laughing, or perhaps even telling them to give it a rest. Nothing to do with comradery, just the natural tendency of people to not like when their personal identity is threatened in some way.

FWIW, I do think most men with wives and/or daughters are generally thoughtful coworkers, but I'm not sure that's a majority in most tech workplaces, especially the ones that skew young. Thinking back to my own experience, I think, I was blind to a lot of the things I'm speaking about (or perhaps even resistant to the idea of calling it out) until I had a long-term partner.

> I have been through some really awful experiences in the workplace in the last few years, and some of the most egregiously abusive behavior came from another woman. Women can be incredibly cruel to each other, and this woman in particular seemed to have it out for other women. Women are not inherently saints, and they are not inherently kind to other women.

In my teens my mom tried to reenter the workforce and got an office job, and she absolutely hated working with other women because of this. She wanted to work with men because in her experience, women were so much worse.

Extreme examples like this provide a nice attention-grabbing narrative, but they're not responsible for driving the central 99.5% of the workforce distribution

> Do you think such an event would've occurred without pushback on a team with more than 1 woman?

Sure. One of the women I dated detailed a story about how a man at a conference she attended suggested it'd be more fun if she was roofies. To her face, in front of her co-workers (many of them women). She was in a majority female industry (healthcare).

Why do we just assume that men stop doing cringe stuff just because women are around?

Except fields often aren’t open to people in different demographics. Sexism and racism are both very real and objectively quantified.

> Sexism and racism are both very real and objectively quantified

Outcome differences are real and quantified. Your preferred explanations for the differences are not. Racism and sexism are not the most parsimonious explanations for the majority of outcome variance. We know this because there are shallower nodes in the causal graph you can condition on and race/sex disappears as an outcome predictor.

The problem is that when you quantify sexism in tech objectively, the results aren't what most people expect.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484

The problem I've heard from friends in education is that it's just very difficult to affect these in the US education system because of how underfunded the system is as a whole. Most of these issues, at least when we talk about cisgendered folks, come from how parents push their values onto their kids. I have plenty of friends whose parents discouraged daughters from exploring technically or mechanically involved interests because of ideas they had about masculinity and femininity.

My parents softly discouraged my sister from playing with Legos as a kid because "girls like pretty things."

I'm not sure that's entirely what's to blame when the countries with the least gender discrimination (Scandinavia) tend to be about 20% female in tech. I think that when people are free to choose their fields based purely on personal inclination, without major financial incentive, tech lands at about 20% female and early childhood education ends up being the opposite.

Now of course, a lot of software in the US is below 20% female and we easily end up with spirals where departments end up lower than that and develop a toxic environment that pushes each new woman out. I personally ended up majoring in math instead of cs because of that process at my college.

Yeah I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the answers. You might be right.

I guess the interesting point of discussion here is "personal inclination". A lot of my female friends have stories about how their parents encouraged their brothers to fix things around the house, get their hands dirty, read manuals, and set up new appliances. They tell me how they were, conversely, encouraged to make friends, maintain relationships, and steered toward more aesthetic pursuits like art, drama, or music.

My sister, at an age when she had no strong interests of her own, was given paintbrushes and nice paper as gifts by our parents but not Legos because they felt like girls were more likely to enjoy aesthetic things than mechanical things. Funny enough, as an adult she has neither mechanical nor aesthetic interests. The question I guess is how much of "personal inclination" is driven by these small decisions of what options we give to kids.

I will say my experiences are colored by the fact that my family is a low-income immigrant family in the US from a culture with definite gender discrimination and so they hold stronger gender prejudices than probably a high-income Scandinavian family. My guess is also that younger generations have grown up with a much better idea of gender equality and will raise their kids with less of this prejudice.

I also observed in my school that a lot of women felt more comfortable in the math department than CS (though CS had much less prestige compared to now), so thanks for your story and background.

I think I may also have somewhat of a blind spot here because I grew up with a mom who is a software engineer herself and I was bought a bunch of electronics/building toys by engineer relatives on both sides. When I was 13 or 14 I was given the parts for a computer under the instruction to put it together and make sure to dual boot linux. I knew a fair number of other girls my age whose parents really wanted them to be engineers/devs and did similar things, but a lot of them were uninterested and went on to happy careers in other fields.

The math vs CS dept thing is concerning because at the foundations they're very similar fields. It's such a strange phenomenon that my graph theory elective in the math dept was 30 or 40% female, yet algorithms was 5% female. Definitely at my institution there were structural issues in the CS dept that didn't exist in the math dept.

Lol our CS and math departments had the exact same thing. I remember our algebraists were 50/50 men and women but the algorithms folks were 5% women.

Or, just maybe, those stories about Scandinavia are a fig-leaf to justify discrimination. There's clear country-level differences in proportions of engineers(+scientists) in EU countries: https://www.trendingtopics.eu/bulgaria-with-the-2nd-largest-...

I would hesitate to advance any theories as to cause based on that data (e.g., Denmark - part of Scandinavia - is >50% and Finland - not part of Scandinavia but next to it - is <30%).

I'm basing this off departmental demographics for CS at Aarhus and Copenhagen Universities.

Scientists and engineers overall include a lot of disciplines that are not CS. Biology in particular is frequently majority female.

> the US education system because of how underfunded the system is as a whole.

The US spends more per student than any other country, by a lot. Money is very clearly not the problem.

BTW, if you condition PISA scores on racial groups, any racial group (black, white, asian, whatever) scores higher in the USA than in any other country, except Hong Kong.

> The US spends more per student than any other country, by a lot. Money is very clearly not the problem.

I've heard this, but will fully admit I don't know how real this is. For one, the US generally has the highest COL in the world, so it's bound to spend more per student than any other country. Moreover, the general concern I've seen is that badly funded school districts in the US are much worse off than well funded school districts. Moreover gender disparities are not as bad in well funded school districts.

I've seen that concern as well, but it's pretty clearly a zombie concern from the days when schools would be funded almost entirely by local property taxes. Most states now equalize funding between local districts.

I don’t know the picture in every state, but in CA schools still receive 31% of their funding from local taxes. That’s still quite a bit. Then there’s other sources of funding like the school PTA which does things like fund school supplies.

Again, the state equalizes. After the 2013 funding reforms, the state gives districts gives districts with high-need students more money to make up for local funding shortfalls. The statistics I've seen (e.g. https://www.ppic.org/publication/financing-californias-publi...) indicate that this more than closes the gap.

> What matters is that the fields are open to anyone with an interest

except that it's not, which is the problem that DEI initiatives tried to compensate for