Gutless Tech Companies
So far, no company has found a solution for retaining women.
They’ve been told, but are too afraid to do what is needed.
Senior Management pays lip service to these ideas but are unwilling to let go of their deep seated biases and personal fears of change.
This was originally published on my Google Plus account in 2015, in response to an article “Why are Women Leaving the Tech Industry in Droves” from the LA Times.
During my time at Google in Mountain View, California I saw many many examples of sexism — in interviews, in behaviour of engineers with respect to other engineers, in policy and in the speeches and posturing of senior management.
They want to believe on the surface that they are not sexist, and that they are ready and willing to do what is needed but they don’t have the bravery to challenge their own ingrained structural biases.
Here’s just one example of dozens that I saw. I was on the Hiring Intergrouplet and rode along on many interviews as part of that and also as part of on boarding for doing my own interviews. An engineer had his pet question all prepared, and delivered it to a female candidate.
She replied like:
OK, I feel that the performance of the hash-based solution is best here
The interviewer came back with a question and she responded like:
Hmmm, I guess, but I think you’ll find the hash is still better because keys will be cheap to calculate.
Afterwards I totally expected him to give her a full-marks, but he said she wasn’t any good. I was gob-smacked, but luckily Mr White-Dudebro didn’t see the expression on my face.
I recovered my composure and pointed out that she’d actually given the exact answer that he said he was looking for!
He responded like:
Ummm, yeah? But she didn’t know for sure. She kept saying ‘I think’ and talking like she wasn’t sure.
So the woman was being penalized for not behaving like a table-thumping macho software engineer who never admitted any uncertainty in anything said. This was the attitude. Success and technical competence is coded in male terms for so many of these gate-keeper types.
Success and technical competence is coded in male terms.
You try to point that out and they go on the offensive. Suddenly you’re some ranting harridan from the jack-booted feminazi squad come to ruin their boy club.
And I saw variants of this so often it wasn’t funny.
While I was there at Google I got an opportunity to talk to Alan Eustace, after he gave an address about women at Google. He furrowed his brow as he talked earnestly about attracting more great women to Google.
His address disturbed me because it had this “women of merit” type approach, and it was painfully obvious that Google is not capable of assessing if women have merit. Eustace had worked in an office with Anita Borg and had come to recognise her as very talented technically. But Eustace and other Google senior execs cannot work with every woman to see if they are technically brilliant. There are plenty of women who while not technically brilliant are really really good, who are being over-looked for men who are worse than them.
I outlined to Mr Eustace the troubles I saw and gave some thoughts I had about fixing it. He rejected what I said and repeated his line. I had figured he was genuine in his desire to actually do something but it was very clear he was not ready to see beyond the Matrix he had set up for himself.
I left Google because of some family illness back home, but if things had been going fabulously in my career there I might have done more to stay. Point of fact Google never made me feel like I belonged there, and when I tried to do something about it I was smacked down.
Until companies like Google start learning to actually listen instead of fulfilling their own prophesies of white boys from Stanford go big or go home then they will continue with a brain drain of good talented women.
I’ve also had many many examples of being stymied in my own career, frustrated and humiliated by decisions made — in some cases I have seen it directly, in others its taken years, and revelations from ex-co-workers to realise how much steeper the climb was for me than my male peers.
Its because of this stuff that I now run my own business developing apps and games where I am my own boss.
I’ve built this: http://plistinator.com — and this: http://spacebotalpha.com and contributed to Open Source projects.
Not every woman has this opportunity — I’m very lucky. Also at my age I don’t feel like I have any more chances at different careers.
Many more women just leave because of all the crap they have to put up with.
Just to be clear — I’m not saying all men are at fault here. But this is a system, that has structural built-in inequities and biases; and when you are the ones benefiting from them you won’t see them.
Its difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
There are also women, and fashion magazine and… and… that are part of the problem. But — guys in big tech firms — you have a chance to do something. If you’re brave enough.
Open your eyes, be part of the solution.
