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Used to work in digital design. By pure happenstance the foundational initial team on a major project was all women and we recognised that wasn’t a good balance in terms of external perception but also in terms of getting different perspectives on design approaches.
We managed to recruit some great blokes, but they were hard to find. So many of the new dudes didn’t work out because it was so obvious how inferior they perceived us women to be. Very few of them had the skills to warrant any level of arrogance, let alone full blown superiority complex.
It was disappointing.
- ravhall ( @ravhall@discuss.online ) 41•7 months ago
When I was hiring a developer to come on to my all white male team I was really hoping for a woman to apply. Sadly, that never happened. I was able to cut down on the whiteness though, and no I didn’t pick a lesser candidate because they weren’t white. It was just coincidence.
I found a technique that worked well for me. I want to share with you and others, but I don’t want to come across as judging you in anyway. It’s hard to find great candidates of any sort. And I wouldn’t necessarily recommend my technique to every company, because it’s just not reasonable in all cases.
I’ve found that the best way to get a good mix of people hired onto the team is to do more than hope that it happens.
I had to get out to workshops, conferences, and meetups. Local universities had groups that I got in touch with. I had to make connections with the communities that I was looking to hire from. It was a lot of hard work.
But once you’ve developed those connections, candidates roll in with surprising regularity for a long time. After two years I had a team of 10 great devs with a 50/50 split between genders and a huge range of background and cultures. It was the most fun team to work with and we made awesome stuff.
- ravhall ( @ravhall@discuss.online ) 9•7 months ago
That’s awesome. I don’t have that patience. 😇
My conflict would be between giving up my free time after work to recruiting to have more fun at work, or deal with people that aren’t as good. Am I reading that right?
I’ve witnessed many of the kinds of situations described here and I think the proposed mechanics adequately explain them.
Man I wish there were more women in programming, I’ve met like 3 and one of them was the sole female classmate in cs
I’d finally have something I could talk passionately about without boring them out of their minds
I feel it really depends on the country you work with. Back in Sweden it was such a sausage fest. But since I started working with people from Russia, Ukraine and especially China it changed significantly. OK top management is still full of dudes, but middle management and the people who do the implementation is a good mix. About 40℅ women even in positions of power. Korea seems to be somewhere in the middle.
As someone on the opposite end, it’s interesting how similar and different the discriminations we face are.
Where do you live that you find women computer scientists to be the dominant population?
I work in a 97% female industry.
I don’t want to take away from the initial topic at hand but I’d genuinely be interested to hear what similarities and differences you encounter (as someone who once thought of working in a female dominated workplace but got reality checked quickly out of the idea by bad experiences)
What industry is that?
Early Childhood Education.
So teaching/tutoring or something different? Had thought schools were a lot more balanced gender wise nowadays, at least from what I remember
Early childhood is preschool aged, so ages 0-5. What some may call nursery/creche/daycare/kindergarten.
Ah right, wild guess says it’s designing systems for them and not attempting to teach 5 year olds c++
That’s exceedingly rare.
Nursing/Kindergarten or something? Isn’t that about that high?