Should we be concerned about lack of gender diversity in the Engineering department?
Posted by XenOmega@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 43 comments
Hey everyone!
Learned recently that a colleague (F) was let go. This brings down the number of Engineers (F) in our company to about 5 in a department with well over 120 engineers (M).
How do we know if it's normal due to the fact that our field is men dominated ? Or if perhaps our work environment is toxic for women ? Or if perhaps we're not putting enough effort to reach out to certain communities ?
Beginning-Comedian-2@reddit
I run a job board for developers.
99% are men.
Women and men are of equal intelligence, but women in general don't want to become developers so it's tough to find them.
JagoffAndOnAgain@reddit
Agreed but I'd slightly tweak that last line by saying "Developer culture is more inviting to men than it is to women." The culture makes a huge difference especially for someone curious or just starting out.
Beginning-Comedian-2@reddit
Maybe it’s an infinite loop.
ring2ding@reddit
Here's a question, and I'm asking it to men in general, not necessarily you or OP or anybody specifically.
Is it somehow wrong for women to become programmers? Obviously no, right. "We support women around here" and all that, ra ra.
With that being said: is it wrong for men to become nurses? Ahh.. Now we're onto something. Nursing is:
1. Highly in demand
2. Pays well
3. Great job security
If engineering is no longer "a man's job" then nursing is no longer "a woman's job".
Beginning-Comedian-2@reddit
I'm pointing out that women and men have different inclinations of jobs they want to do regardless of their ability to do them.
AreWeNotDoinPhrasing@reddit
Nursing isn’t a women’s job… I don’t understand your point.
Sheldor5@reddit
it's not a woman's job but the job is female dominated ... and no one cares
narwhality@reddit
Developers are not 99% men. Where are you advertising this job board?
Beginning-Comedian-2@reddit
I advertised a job board?
simonfl@reddit
99% of "unemployed developers on your job board" are men, doesn't really say much beside that.
Beginning-Comedian-2@reddit
Oh brother. Have a good day.
k032@reddit
Probably, or least investigate it some. Like of the resume pool you've gotten, has it been the typical 20% - 25%, but you ended up this way? Or was the pool not normal either?
5/120 is pretty outside the normal expected based on like BLS etc. Also assuming in the USA too.
travislaborde@reddit
well, what are the concerns?
concerned that the team is less awesome because of less of a particular gender, or race, or religion, or ethnicity? I'd say "no." I think that the effort spent hiring for diversity could potentially be spent more productively training existing talent, or bettering processes, or just interviewing for more competence instead. Meaning "the concern" would be more efficiently spent on other areas.
concerned that you might get a lawsuit because you don't have enough diversity? then "yes," of course. your team can't be awesome at all if it goes away with the company because it gets "canceled."
personally I've been lucky enough my entire career to hire a team with enough diversity to never have come under scrutiny. I've never had to say "darn, this person is great but too much like everyone else so I'll hire this other person instead." Talented people of "not my" race, gender, orientation, religion, etc have been plentiful. Most of my tech hiring has been East Coast USA but for the past 10+ years I've hired remotely too so that makes it even easier.
Foreign_Addition2844@reddit
Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
GumboSamson@reddit
In my experience, women make up ~20% of the software engineers.
If you’re below (or above) this number, it might indicate some sort of systemic bias.
ccb621@reddit
Women make up half of the population. 20% is too low.
GumboSamson@reddit
My 20% figure wasn’t a judgement of what the ratio should be. Merely an acknowledgement of the industry’s present state.
Smile-Nod@reddit
Ask the 5 women left.
WolfNo680@reddit
yeah I don't think a subreddit is the kind of place to get answers for this kind of question... 😂
cremated-remains@reddit
Yeah, people on reddit can speculate but the real answer is going to depend on a lot of unknowns. FWIW, I was the only woman engineer in a small company of ~30 (before we got acquired), so a similar ratio. My field is more male dominated than the rest of CS, so I never expect to have many women coworkers anyway, but there was someone pretty high up in the interview process who was clearly the culprit of that ratio.
It could be someone in the interview process, it could be coworkers being inappropriate (currently at the only job so far where I have not been harassed by a coworker to date them), it could even be something as simple as maternity benefits not being up to industry standards.
blahyawnblah@reddit
When I was in college, there was exactly one girl once in all of my CS classes. She was super smart.
In all my years of programming professionally I've worked with a total of 3 women programmers.
snorktacular@reddit
I know I'm an outlier here but I didn't appreciate how much. I just counted from memory:
Still heavily unbalanced, but I feel like I never went more than a few months as the only woman engineer around.
tonydrago@reddit
Given there are so few women entering the field at the very beginning (e.g. CS courses in college), it's no surprise there aren't many at later stages
wake-me-disclosure@reddit
No
GrogRedLub4242@reddit
we should focus on engineering, not gender
No_Tea2273@reddit
Hi XenOmega!
Not sure why this comment is getting so many downvote – it is wild, but yes, this is unfortunately normal due to the field being
I have seen this play out in conferences, (where we see 20 men, vs 2-3 women), I have never seen it as bad as 120 vs 5 to be honest, but yes - we need to be doing quite a bit more to reach out to certain communities in our hiring process (these efforts will need legislation though, companies rarely do this by themselves)
This is further exaggerated as a few algorithms are designed to exclude women in the hiring process - see : https://www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/why-amazons-automated-hiring-tool-discriminated-against , (this bias has been further evidenced and researched by companies themselves, here's a good explaination https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59bMh59JQDo )
davearneson@reddit
If you go to an engineering school you will find that 15% of students are women. So it would be right to expect that 15% of your engineers were women.
Most companies have been trying to hire more women into engineering since the 80's so if your company does nothing those women will probably go elsewhere.
So yes there does seem to be something wrong. Are most of the engineers of the same ethnicity of the leaders as well?
unconceivables@reddit
I've reviewed thousands of resumes for developers, and I honestly don't remember when I came across a resume from a female developer. For data science roles it's a much more common sight.
Oreamnos_americanus@reddit
1:25 is not a normal female:male ratio, even in engineering. Without knowing anything else about your companies, I would confidently guess that yes, that ratio is because of something your company/department is doing and not just a coincidence. To be honest, your company has probably already fucked itself over in terms of being able to realistically hire more women, because I guarantee you that no woman who is a strong engineering candidate with options is going to look at that ratio and want to work there. But your company should probably still try to figure out what's going on and make things better in order to retain 5 women who do still work there.
OkLanguage9942@reddit
That sounds abnormally low to me, and looking at the turnover rate by gender could also be a useful metric. Improving your work environment for women (and others) will likely be more effective than active outreach. Identifying drop off in your hiring pipeline can also reveal issues. What proportion of women apply vs get to each stage? Given women are more likely to self select out when not meeting the criteria fully, I would expect to see a well functioning process that selects the most qualified candidate disproportionately hire any women who apply. Active outreach without fixing internal issues is like trying to fill a sieve up with water.
Sheldor5@reddit
HR, nurses, kindergarten teachers, ... all female dominated fields and nobody gives a shit
RebbitUzer@reddit
In the uni there was 2 girls among overall 28 students in my class. I don’t have anything to add.
ring2ding@reddit
What is this, 2015? We're doing racism now, get with the program.
TangerineSorry8463@reddit
Actually Indian jokes are gonna last us for the next 5 years of comment sections
dbxp@reddit
I would look at the number of applicants and compare to that. sure you can try outreach programs and marketing your jobs specifically to women but for the most part you're limited to the people who apply.
zhephyx@reddit
No, this isn't the olympics.
Teh_Original@reddit
Yes.
Intelligent_Water_79@reddit
In the field as a whole, its about 29 percent i think. But observation suggests much higher at the front end and much much lower in Devops.
So your company seems quite low
Maltiriel@reddit
5 in 120 means you have issues. Yes, there is a pipeline problem, but it's not THAT imbalanced. Hard to say what the issue is, it may be culture, policies that are more likely to be an issue for women such as lack of maternity leave, bias in the interviewing process, the way your job ads are worded, or more likely a combination of all of those.
If you do nothing, nothing will change. Advertising in different spaces won't be enough. Figure out what the issue(s) are and go from there.
Significant_Mouse_25@reddit
It definitely leans heavily male but even in my department it’s more like forty of two hundred. Five out of 120 is a bit of a red flag.
visicalc_is_best@reddit
This is certainly the first time this question has been asked or considered, doubt there are any resources on this topic on the wider Internet.
atomheartother@reddit
Have you considered asking the women / PoC in your orgs what they think the issue is? Not sure how we would know.
Difficult-Sherbet854@reddit
5 in 120? 😂 Holy fuck