“Try software engineers with experience in sensors, wireless and hardware stacks before angrily correcting my stats there.”
Question: In the article you make the point that while there are female software engineers, when you get to specialties the female candidate pool shrinks.
I don’t come from a formal computer science background, so I am curious as to how these “specialty” software engineers are born? Is it mainly during undergrad/graduate studies? Or is it on-the-job type of training that can happen as a junior developer? If it is the latter, I’m wonder if then more can be done to make these specialties more accessible/appealing to women at tech companies.
I agree that more needs to be done to increase the number of women interested in tech at the education level, but I also think the issue is more complex than the “pipeline” problem that most tech companies point to as the main driver for lack of diversity. I think that improving company culture is essential for retaining women in tech, so that when we finally get that next generation of female programmers graduating from university, there are female tech leaders they can look up to.
Creating a female-friendly work culture is not easy, as the current state of tech shows, and involves addressing a lot of unconscious biases that everyone, not just men, have towards women. This requires changing a lot of what seems fundamental to tech/start-up culture: long, long hours that aren’t doable for mothers/care-givers, informality which leaves a lot of gray areas for inappropriate conduct, the expectation that prospective employees fit “company culture,” which is all too often code for “looks + acts like us.”
In a lean startup, a diverse workplace is not a priority. When you need to work long hours and make fast decisions — these things are just easier if you are working with people just like you without the overhead of HR. I also agree that simply trying to fill “quotas” is not the solution to diversity in tech.
But I think that all companies need to be aware that what works at a startup level is not sustainable for the industry. There ARE great female engineers out there, and there can be even more that have highly desirable skills, specialties, and experience, if companies also look inward and examine themselves.
