50/50 gender parity in software and web development

[skimread]

The world is changing you have to admit more companies want developer gender parity due to pressure from other non dev staff, government, management and shareholders. This is something developers will have to consider as to get gender parity new openings will surely have to all go to females.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/if2z4u

Obviously am using a throw away here.

But I would like to rant this out.

Full disclosure. I am all for empowering women to fight against harassment. Give women a lot of tools to fight against people in power of the company. I am also all for higher maternity benefits. Its a shame that maternity benefits are not regulated in the country and there should be higher benefits. And I am against people viewing that being a women means that they have less tech skills than men. I am also all for MINIMUM % of females at the company.



The size of the company is around 100 people. Of which 40 are in tech. Of the 40, 12 are women. The rest of the 60 people departments are pretty much 30 men and 30 female.



Ever since, Canadian PM made sure that his cabinet will be 50% female and 50% male, in my experience there is a huge pressure for companies to close the gap that being employed between women and men.



During leadership meetings, women are constantly asking why they cannot find more female developers and constantly tell the leadership team to remove bias for women. At one point, one of them threaten to make it public that the company is not trying hard to be 50% women in tech. Cause if the PM can do it why can't the company do it? Already bootcamps and dev degrees in canada are 50/50 gender parity. https://devdegree.ca/ So there should not be any excuse for the company to not be completely 50/50 gender parity.



Then came the hiring for 5 more developers and even though we were open to all genders. I was a part of the hiring team and We disregarded several amazing male candidates. I was told privately that they have to do this because of constant pressure from the employees plus they need to look good in from of investors.



Finding good female candidates were extremely hard eventually we did find some but they were such in high demand its difficult to convince them to join our company because we are still pretty new. In the end what happened was that we had to offer them a higher salary. In the end we hired 5 employees where one was male and the other was females where some of the females have 15k higher salary then their male counter parts even though imo the male is stronger than them technically. i was part of the hiring team so i have the assessments.



The purpose for me writing this because i wanted people to be aware of it. IMO, this is not the right direction to solve gender discrimination. But companies are being forced to do this out of the fear of losing investors.



You may think its okay to hire people who are not the best but they are qualified females, please state your arguments so that I can discuss with you. To me this is forced and it may cause even more gender discrimination. For example this is happening to bumiputera in Malaysia where people from other races view them that they did not earn their success and take advantage of the system.

Regardless, I am all for minimum % but not completely close the gap. Minimum% because if a boss is clearly toxic against women then they could back each other to fight against the toxicity. 50/50 is ways too forced and imo will have a larger adverse effect than the marginal benefit it will provide.

 

[Wasabee!]

What about racial and disability parity, and HIV status?

If you're gonna make it a vegetable garden, you might as well mix it up.

 

[Kosmik]

Yes because economics, skills and aptitude are about parity vs actually getting the job done....

I'm totally against any form of discrimination, irregardless of "flavour". It should really be based off merit and resolving any shortcomings, should be done on a educational level so that all have equal opportunity.

 

[Adeptus Mechanicus]

Anyone trying to force equality of outcome instead of encouraging equality of opportunity is an authoritarian idealist with little to no concern about people or free will.

 

[rietrot]

Nobody wants this.

 

[Hamster]

My heart aches for the first world only having to deal with this now.

 

[Neuk_]

What about racial and disability parity, and HIV status?

If you're gonna make it a vegetable garden, you might as well mix it up.

I just want to be there when they role this out to nurses as there are so many more female nurses compared to male nurses.

 

[Ancalagon]

I must say, I didn't know that it was THAT bad. That they would pay female software engineers more than men now, just to hire them.

I've never been convinced by the argument that women don't want to work in software engineering because of sexism or bias. Sexism and biases absolutely do exist, however, blaming the lack of female software engineers on that is an overreach.

One, it hasn't stopped women in other well paying fields, like law, accounting or project management. Do you really think lawyers are less sexist than software engineers? Please. Maybe it is better now, but I know for a fact that those old law firms were really old boys club. It must have been INCREDIBLY difficult to break into that, and yet women did it. Why is the same not true of software engineering?

Second, I don't think there is solid statistical evidence to back up that assertion. I think its just a lot of assumptions based on hot air.

 

[grok]

Yay, it's about time those females slackers catch up their share in conscription for the army, fire brigades and other previously traditional male orientated jobs.

Luckily we already have a female president..

 

[konfab]

 

[John_Phoenix]

I've met many ladies who write incredible pieces of software on the reg. Seriously there is no shortage of great developers of all sexes, races and ages. Hire skill, not quota and you should not have a problem.

Plus peer programming is more fun if the other person doesn't smell of weed and 3day old meat supreme.

 

[Lupus]

Seems right, we once had a lady come into our office of 8 guys and 1 lady and she's like look how unequal this is, why do you only have one lady? There should be 50/50, my boss turned around and asked her why isn't she in this office? She turned around and was like oh I don't like tech and you can't expect me to lift servers.

 

[Brenden_E]

I've met many ladies who write incredible pieces of software on the reg. Seriously there is no shortage of great developers of all sexes, races and ages. Hire skill, not quota and you should not have a problem.

Plus peer programming is more fun if the other person doesn't smell of weed and 3day old meat supreme.

In our class of 30 cs graduates, we had 2 ladies.

They were both pretty good. Years later the one is still in CS and the other one left for another field. The one who remained looks miserable AF. But most CS men look miserable AF.

I guess if we are to suffer, we might as well suffer equally.

 

[konfab]

Seems right, we once had a lady come into our office of 8 guys and 1 lady and she's like look how unequal this is, why do you only have one lady? There should be 50/50, my boss turned around and asked her why isn't she in this office? She turned around and was like oh I don't like tech and you can't expect me to lift servers.

Do you even lift bro?

 

[Lupus]

Do you even lift bro?

Not much anymore . I've got juniors for that

 

[Moosedrool]

I don't see anyone moaning about equal rights when we consider jobs like waste disposal or mining. Or is it only those nice comfy dev, science and management jobs?

 

[Nemus]

I wouldn't want any company to be forced into quotas on hiring based on gender.. but I would like to see more women in development.
There are many in the BA and Testing roles, but I'm not yet seeing many developers.
Please note that my post is biased as i simply want to improve my view in the office.

 

[Messugga]

I've met many ladies who write incredible pieces of software on the reg. Seriously there is no shortage of great developers of all sexes, races and ages. Hire skill, not quota and you should not have a problem.

Plus peer programming is more fun if the other person doesn't smell of weed and 3day old meat supreme.

That's simply not true. There is a massive shortage of female devs, never mind good ones (those are just as rare as good male devs).

 

[John_Phoenix]

That's simply not true. There is a massive shortage of female devs, never mind good ones (those are just as rare as good male devs).

Amen, a good dev is a once a decade find.

In terms of shortage, a fair few female Devs choose NOT to work in a dev house / company etc.

Why? There is always the one crime against humanity developer that is enough of a f_up to make life miserable for everyone. The guy who brings a mechanical keyboard and vo + bo to work, who has smashed so hard that everyone needs to hear about it...

Also did you know that you've met at least one female designer who can sling code?

Am I saying that globally there IS parity between male and female devs. No of course not, but gender parity is an unreachable goal in parenting, never mind python.

May the force be with you.

 

[R13...]

I don't see anyone moaning about equal rights when we consider jobs like waste disposal or mining. Or is it only those nice comfy dev, science and management jobs?

They are moaning and doing something about it in mining. And I saw a women's day/month thing celebrating some woman who drives a garbage truck in a male dominated environment.

Also you guys are behaving like the boy's club the OP talks about. Not sure how a woman would want to work with people who see women like that. Nice self fulfilling prophecy.