Tech bros' attitude to female colleagues stuck in dark ages
Tech bros' attitude to female colleagues stuck in dark ages
Research sheds light on attitudes holding industry back
Almost one in five men in IT explain why fewer females work in the profession by arguing that "women are naturally less well suited to tech roles than men."
Feel free to check the calendar. No, we have not set the DeLorean for 1985. It is still 2023, yet anyone familiar with the industry over the last 30 years may feel a sense of déjà vu when reading the findings of a report by The Fawcett Society charity and telecoms biz Virgin Media O2.
The survey of nearly 1,500 workers in tech, those who have just left the industry, and women qualified in sciences, technology, or math, also found that a "tech bro" work culture of sexism forced more than 40 percent of women in the sector to think about leaving their role at least once a week.
Additionally, the study found 72 percent of women in tech have experienced at least one form of sexism at work. This includes being paid less than male colleagues (22 percent) and having their skills and abilities questioned (20 percent). Almost a third of women in tech highlighted a gender bias in recruitment, and 14 percent said they were made to feel uncomfortable because of their gender during the application process.
In my ten years in the SWE industry I have never met anyone who thought or said that women were not capable, the fuck is this shit?? I have multiple women as part of my dev team and they are equally respected
One in five is mind blowing to me, who are these pathetic fucking bigots? I have no doubt there are many because people suck but in every job I’ve had I worked with women devs. Maybe it’s because I’m in the PNW
51So, this may be part of the answer, but I've had similar experiences to you, except for one startup where just about everyone was like that. Place was basically a frat house - its office was right on the water (which was awesome) and they literally had a bunch of binoculars for oggling women paddleboarding and shit (which was not awesome)
It might be that most of us don't experience this behavior because it's condensed into companies that encourage this behavior? I'm no sociologist, but that seems to jive with what I know about echo chambers and whatnot
43That’s partly it; the PNW does seem more open minded most times; but I bet the other part is you’re a guy.
This isn’t the sort of thing women tend to talk about with men, for obvious reasons. I bet those women on your dev team have some stories, if you could get them to open up about it.
17My experience with it as a male is there's cultural factors at certain workplaces which is why it's such a sensitive topic for the employer. Like I work with a lot of engineers first or 2nd generation immigrants, incredibly diverse workplace, and a lot of times it's cultural practices from "back home" where there were more strict traditional gender roles. A lot of them are self-aware of this and realize it's programming, it's not always some malicious thing, it can come out of the ways to show courtesy to women which in translation can be condescending. They've made it clear from leadership they don't put up with repeated behavior that makes people uncomfortable though, people have been let go for it. What happens is the more subtle stuff you might not notice unless someone is open about it.
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In my experience, most discrimination is subtle. For 18 months, as the only female sysadmin on a team, I was routinely left off of important email chains, "forgotten" to be invited to critical meetings, not given access to important tools to perform my job, and asked to perform secretarial duties for my male counterparts. Any suggestions I made were met with "thanks for the input, but we are going in a different direction". Weeks later, one of the males would be praised for coming up with the same idea i had proposed earlier.
We have multiple trainings telling us how not to be overtly sexist. What they don't cover, is the common micro aggressions that are easily overlooked. Were my coworkers overworked? Yes. Do things get overlooked? Yes. Can you forget one person on a team of 5 for 18 months straight? No.
45Weeks later, one of the males would be praised for coming up with the same idea i had proposed earlier.
I've even seen this happen within a single meeting, its the most common sexist behavior I notice. Newer female staff would suggest something, older male would say it later in the meeting and get the approval and action from it. We had a private channel with us younger-ish people on the team and she was very open about it there, and was comfortable with us overemphasizing when she had come up with ideas. Things like "yeah I agree with [her] idea" when it was appropriate and speaking up more in those cases. If she wouldn't have brought it up casually like that and discussed it openly we wouldn't have been as aggressive either, and this has happened with a few female colleagues.
19It sounds fairly similar to racism, tbh
8It sounds fairly similar to racism, tbh
I think a lot of the confusion in this thread comes from you saying this in a way that sounds like you don't know more and have for the first time made this connection. Down the thread, it's clear you know exactly what you're saying, and you seem annoyed that other users didn't recognize that in the first place.
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I'll bite. This sort of ultra-shallow analysis fails to explain why the sexism of software developers today is apparently harder to overcome than the sexism of medical doctors and lawyers was decades ago. Somehow women managed to break into those fields, so that in the present day almost 40% of doctors and lawyers (and more than half of medical and law students) are women. I don't see a consensus on what fraction of software developers are women (presumably because there's no official license to be a software developer) but the numbers appear to range from 10% to 20%. That's what the fraction of women lawyers was in the late 80's, and I think it's going to be hard to claim that today's software developers are better at excluding women than 80's lawyers were.
I believe that the claims about sexist treatment are real - even if software developers were much less sexist than average, one woman in a group with nine men would experience more sexism than she would in a less unbalanced environment. I don't believe that sexism is what keeps most women out of software development; if it could do that, it would have kept them out of medicine and law too.
29The question to me is what happened in the 1970s and 1980s that resulted in women no longer going into CS based fields?
Why is it that developers used to be 80-90% women, whereas computer engineers was the male dominated field and now IS and IT are all functionally male fields?
16Men realized it was high paying with low barriers to entry and did shit like this (Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech) repeatedly until women felt like it just wasn't worth the trouble anymore.
In order to keep barriers to entry for themselves low, they created barriers for others by being loud, forceful and unpleasant. It's very similar to how other minorities were and are kept out of various fields. It's not a new playbook. It's not that difficult to figure out.
Also, there has been a significant shift in the field since the 70's, 80's and 90's when uber "nerdy" personality types were prevalent to modern "tech bros" that is kind of the result of the same things and due to the same behavior.
15Tech had a lot of women early when lots of manual labor was needed. Women were making and organizing punch cards, collecting output, and monitoring computers while programs ran. As computers got better the need for these functions was reduced.
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I feel like part of the issue is cultural. Just like Nintendo putting video games in the boys section of the toy store, Hollywood has made tech out to be a field dominated by anti-social, awkward, and frankly gross, morbidly obese, barbaric dudes that shower once a year. From Jurassic Park to NCIS, tech people are not "sexy" and are typically quite unsavory.
Some of the newer shows have done better, as have the newer toy isles... and video games and tech do seem to be rebounding, at least somewhat (anecdotally of course).
7In my experience working in several countries in Europe it most definitelly is cultural, apparently starting by the proportion of women that get Software Engineering degrees (i say "apparently" because there I only know how it was in my homeland were I got my own degree, were women in the Software Engineering one were half the pupils).
As for the work culture, as I wrote in another post the worst place of all I worked in actually had several women, mostly in low-level management, who were there due to gender quotas, were treated mainly as eye-candy by their own managers and were all over the place in competence (from "competent" to "seriously incompetent"). Worse than the "bro" culture is the one were a certain kind of manager gets a huge budget and is told to "hire 10% women".
2
That sounds like an easy way to identify bottom performers.
28Except, unfortunately, in the business world, some of the most well-promoted people are those who do almost nothing and take all the credit for themselves, who tend to be the exact kind of people those articles describe.
We don't have as many safeguards against sociopathy in career-building, it seems, and the whole stupid fucking game seems rigged towards the interests of narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, especially with the frequency they are represented in the C-suites in the US.
So these misogynistic chucklefucks often rise to the top.
35Reminds me of the woman from Uber who wrote the book on microsystems. Had credit for her ideas stolen by some male supervisor like 90 times.
18
Frack you bitch!! 😎
😇
-2
An unfortunate amount of men in the tech industry need a swift punch to the dick. I've spent years in IT jobs and have seen many deserving women passed up for promotions after being promised the job, women belittled, their input completely ignored, and have heard a fair amount of sexist remarks. Anyone who thinks women are less capable of tech work is a piece of garbage.
26Being a computer nerd from childhood and growing up going to/organizing lan parties, gaming cons, being around that whole scene... you know about those weird guys who are just gross, uncomfortable around, naive towards women, sometimes feeling like their space is being invaded, thinking attractive women fake being nerds so they can get attention. The whole adjacent incel mindset as well. I've seen it take all sorts of forms, some perfectly innocent due to social isolation, potentially autism, just being intimidated by women especially if they're attractive. Sometimes it gets truly malicious and gross, and those guys need dick punches.
Like I'd have a guy walk in to a lan party, completely disheveled looking and unkempt, smelly, and he'd get pissed that "we didn't say there'd be girls here," implying he would have cleaned up if that were the case. I forgive any sort of mental illness or autism related thing when it comes to this, but it's not an excuse when it's clear they understand it's an issue. One guy once brought his freshman "Asian girlfriend" who could barely speak English, and would talk about their sex in gross ways in front of her without her knowing. That was a tough one because they were inseparable the whole time and finding a way to tell him to stfu without making her uncomfortable was a challenge. Someone blew up at him after the event and he never made it out again.
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Good lord, the sheer amount of “nuh-uh!!” in the comments is insane (and yet also fully expected). It’s the same shit I’ve heard again and again and again in the blue collar industry where I work, as though just because some guy hasn’t personally witnessed one specific incident that somehow discrimination against women magically doesn’t exist, instead of coming to the realization that they’re just not seeing it, probably because they aren’t looking for it.
Open your eyes, gentlemen. Discrimination holds many forms, more than you’d think. Pay more attention to what’s going on around you at work. Maybe actually talk to the one woman in your workplace, and then actually listen to what she has to say (and to what she isn’t saying).
You want to prove that somehow your workplace is the exception to the rule? Then make it that way. Correct hiring practices that bias towards men (and this starts with how job ads are written up, by the way). Change how pay is structured in your company to a fixed, listed scale that is open and readily available to all employees. Have clear, consistent pathways to promotion to correct the gender bias. Allow for flexibility on working hours, or remote work.
And if you can’t do any of these things because you aren’t on a position to, then at least start the conversation. Be an ally. Recognize discriminatory practices when you see them, and push for change. In the end, you’ll benefit, too.
25i am autistic as balls, but i grew up surrounded by women and have a lot of female friends. i am happily married to an attractive and extroverted neurotypical woman.
it is only working in tech that ive experienced complaints from women about my serial killer vibes or whatever. looking at someone in the face for too long, smiling too much, laughing at the wrong times, misinterpreted sarcasm... i can try to avoid women in the workplace, but that isn't normal behavior either.
in no universe have i ever thought it would be a good idea to flirt with or be rude to a coworker. i have no idea how to improve but id love to figure it out some day. i work well with most people.
i have female friends who have received some frighteningly severe sexual harassment at work. weird comments, touching, sexually charged insults, things like that. most men don't see it because it's often done privately. if she speaks up she might win a lawsuit, but she loses her job and possibly her career. i have to wonder if the industry has simply been poisoned by this sort of thing.
24Permanently Deleted
12if people think you're a creep, you won't get comments about it directly to your face. my strategy to deal with passive aggression in a workplace is to pretend it isn't happening. if i feel like shit about going into work then i'll look for another job.
11
Sounds like LTT. Lol
Every time a company appears to have any amount of frat culture there needs to be an investigation performed.
15I just want to point out this is very much cultural:
- In my home country (Portugal) women were maybe half of the pupils taking IT Degrees and maybe half the programmers I worked with were women. (This is apparently also the case in many Eastern Europe countries).
- In The Netherlands, there were fewer women in IT but still quite a number of them.
- In Britain they were almost absent. Working as a freelancer (so in more places than a permanent employee would) in over a decade I've worked with maybe 3 female programmers (out of, I guess, 100 or so colleagues), all foreigners. In management, sure there were women, programming not so much.
Funnilly enough the most machist environment I worked in was in Britain and it actually had the highest proportion of women (none of which a programmer, most low-level management) but they were there due to gender quotas and were to a large extent treated as eye-candy by their own management, seemed to have been selected for looks and whilst some of the women seemed competent, others were not and were clearly playing that game.
I've seen how male-only environments tend to end up with this wierd disfunctional dick-wagging culture (though that's not at all guaranteed), but if there's one thing that specific case in Britain alongside my experience working in places were some of our colleagues were naturally women showed me, is that women need to be there on merit and thus accepted as equally capable colleagues, otherwise the result can be a lot worse than a "mere" macho dick-wagging culture were wannabe "young-bulls" in their ignorance think that "women can't code".
PS: I was thinking about it some more and just wanted to add that the only environment I worked in The Netherlands with almost no women (this was a small Software Products company of maybe 30 people and if I remember it correctly there was a single female secretary) did NOT have a "bro" culture at all. I suspect this was to a large extent because most people there were out of their of their 20s, plus the manager-owners were pretty decent guys (plus the Dutch culture itself) so it was a mature adults environment not a bunch of young-bucks dick-wagging and posturing.
A thing often left unmentioned in all the talk of machismo on startups (in the US) is that it's a very ageist environment relying on young guys who are willing and capable of working 12h/day and that definitelly makes such companies tend towards the immature end of the spectrum.
14I swear, I've worked with career engineers and mathematicians who mysteriously forget how basic statistics work the moment this issue comes up.
I mean literally drawing two normal distributions overlapping on a napkin to people who could teach this stuff in universities, pointing at the top percentiles and going "alright, but if women are just naturally less willing or able to work in this stuff where are all these outliers that should still rank way above most dudes?"
Blank stares all around.
Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
12Is that Kim Wexler?
9I've interviewed dozens of candidates to hire entire new teams and the percentage of women showing up was very very low. I ended up with an extremely diverse team of mostly men. If i interview 50 candidates and only 3 of them are women, what's the likelihood they are going to be better than all the others? I complained about this and nothing changed. And my opinion has never been that they are less competent, but it certainly looks like they are less interested in the topic, maybe becase it's male-dominated. The women I managed to hire nevertheless are absolutely good devs and if anything they have a better work ethic on average.
9I could answer yes to half those questions as a man...
8This is what makes me uncomfortable about going all-in as an "ally". I've heard very dubious and unprovable allegations in my time. If you dig a bit, it always end up being very much indistinguishable from insecurity. Everyone experience being ignored and talked over in those meetings, how is the get-go explaination sexism? How can you possibly know? Don't get me wrong, I know for a fact that some of those situations are real, but I have witnessed way too many ridiculous accusations to take this talking point seriously anymore. I am not talking about overt sexism here and bad"jokes", but at this micro-aggression concept where you can be labeled a sexist for... not agreeing with a woman?
I can tell you my experience as a man tho, I worked with incredibly nice men who were scared to say the wrong thing or to participate in some meetings because we worked with extremely vocals and repressives feminists, and you can definitely lose your job for being accused of any type of misogyny around here. The tone gets really hostile real quick too. There is no discussion to be bad on this subject, my experience is invalid because I am a man, to be ridiculed because I am ignoring very clear evidences on purpose, apparently. Next week I could write about being ignored due to my height and I would get laughted out of the room, rightly so.
6Same as well here, I've been in situations were I propose ideas for months and then a higher up or older team members repeats my idea and then what? Should I start to grieve or what?
Same with being ignored for months on team meetings, gas happened to me as well until I got of it by a new team member. 19 months missing important information for me at least because people forgot to invite me. Should I start calling micro aggressions now?
Shit happens. Improvise, adapt, overcome
1
Are these courses taught in middle and high school to all students?
In the 90s, in middle school we had some basic computer classes that everyone had to take. In high school, both the computer programming and electronics courses were optional.
The optional courses had more men than women.
Are they still optional? Should we be making them mandatory for entry level classes so everyone gets exposed and even sees if they are interested?
Entry level science classes were mandatory.
4The tech companies I have worked for have all been the most welcoming and egalitarian environments one could possibly ask for. Down to the level of having slack bots correcting anyone for saying 'hey guys'.
3Can't find a single link to methodology or what the population was. Unless my Google is horrific I would take this with a grain of salt.
Men are definitely overrepresented. However in my 15 years of experience working in the field I've seen maybe one overt case of sexism. I can count on one hand times where I've heard a "under the radar" type problematic statement that I've needed to address. I do not believe this data is representative of anything in the US or EU from my personal experiences.
2Just wondering, are you speaking as a woman from experience or as a man from observation?
6As a man who has taken a good deal of effort to observe and look for non inclusive language and actions that might cause a woman on my team to feel uncomfortable or undervalued. I have experience at VC backed startups, an f50, and several smaller 10-200 people companies, and frankly went to a male dominated technology school in the early 00s. 40% of my technical leadership team are women.
That's not to try and create a binders full of women type statement... I just genuinely have not experienced anything remotely close to 20% and I feel I've go out of my way to recognize abuse and had the support of my peers when I called someone out very publicly at a conference for their behavior towards one of my peers.
Underrepresented, 100% true without a doubt. But I do not believe this mentality is tolerated and certainly not 1 in 5 in the US.
0
I've never seen any of this. And I've worked with some very old nerds.
But I guess they're not 'tech bros' so it's not a good counter example.
They've also not answered surveys, nor would they answer questions like "do you think Melissa's as good as Dave in IT"; politely, at least.
Do I need to read the article to spot the selection bias and clickbait? I think it's all in the headline.
0"Old nerds" were ostracized in school. They got started in tech when it was about coding and tech being fun; there was no crazy money in it. Even the dotcom boom can't hold a candle to the salaries and status swirling around now. It's a different attitude and I think it shows in how you approach work and the workplace.
Ageism is a serious topic in tech and I wonder how each generation will be viewed. Certainly "greybeards" were considered oracles of wisdom and solid foundations.
4
This is the type of post lemmy is being used for? For shame.
-1Meanwhile here you guys writing and posting articles about your open disdain for men in the tech industry. I doubt any of these guys have ever done that about women.
No no, it's ok when I do it.
-3I was censored for the following comment:
-5I'm being censored by a mod for the following comment for "trolling".
"Can't find a single link to methodology or what the population was. Unless my Google is horrific I would take this with a grain of salt. Men are definitely overrepresented. However in my 15 years of experience working in the field I've seen maybe one overt case of sexism. I can count on one hand times where I've heard a "under the radar" type problematic statement that I've needed to address. I do not believe this data is representative of anything in the US or EU from my personal experiences."
This comment, was again censored because I'm apparently a troll. My comment and voice is being attacked by mods who don't like that my own personal experiences do not match their narrative.
-6As you can tell there is a large amount of retards on Lemmy for such a minimal amount of users. Unfortunately a chunk of these retards are also mods and conversation morphing assholes.
1