Hacker News Reader

Comment by whyileft | Hacker News Reader

Everywhere I've been begs for female applicants. I feel like the low numbers of women trying to get into tech is a fantastic example of how market forces do not solve everything. There is an enormous gap between the supply of female applicants and the demand for them with little change in sight. To any women reading this comment. Places are desperate to hire you so do not be afraid to apply at places where you feel you may be a little under qualified.

View on HN

OK, so could you help me understand something?

I certainly can see how there could be some injustice in the gap between men and women in the industry. And I could certainly see how the lack of perspective from women causes decisions that are suboptimal in some contexts. There are probably some companies in some subindustries that would benefit from hiring women programmers.

But every company being desperate to hire women? I don't see how most companies benefit from hiring a woman vs. a man.

To clarify, I'm saying that it seems that hiring a woman vs. a man has roughly the same value to most, but not all, companies. Thoughts?

I see it as related to what you are saying. You will be more likely to have software features or whatever you are designing have features that are applicable to women. You'll think of problems that men don't notice - the classic is startups full of 20 something guys solve different problems that women, such as women with families. Women just face different experiences than men. Similarly, someone from China will probably have a different idea about some things than someone from the US. Companies avoid sexist choices - a female friend who was a layer was at a place that had an offsite activity where women couldn't be members at a golf club (really!). The women you have will be more comfortable if they are not a super rare bird. An office with women should have supplies in the bathroom like tampons. A company with men might think of razors or deoderant but not that.

> Places are desperate to hire you so do not be afraid to apply at places where you feel you may be a little under qualified.

My automatic reaction to this was "lol what"...

I don't really think most companies are desperate to hire women. I can see companies paying more attention to women (for better or for worse), but desperate is absolutely not the word I'd use. You're still going through the same interview process as everyone else, and having interacted with various people who were applying to the same companies as myself, everything looked exactly the same and acceptance/rejection rates were very similar. It's not like being a woman waves a magic wand to get rid of the many troublesome parts of an interview process that affect men and women all the same.

I don't know if I'd want to work for a company that was desperate to hire a specific subgroup of people, anyway...

I'd take a referral over being female any day.

And yet my wife who has masters in computer science, multiple years of experience finds it hard to get a job because she took multi year break from work for raising kids...

Plus, it was discovered that when looking at the list of requirements for a job offering, women wouldn't apply if they didn't meet some requirement, while men would apply as long as they met ~3 of the requirements.

Do you have a source for this?

Not criticizing, just want citations for my interesting fact/study results.

I'm afraid I don't have one: I heard it in a talk about gender in tech jobs, but the talk wasn't posted online. If you do find the study where it comes from, please let me know!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com