Ask HN: How do I encourage women developers to join our dev team? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I encourage women developers to join our dev team?

6 pointsquxjj5 comments

Right now we have ~5-6 developers, one of whom is a woman. I am not the owner, so I can't necessarily move mountains, but I really want to make sure our team stays balanced as we grow (it's already a bit Bro-y). Any things we can do in particular to attract women? Sponsoring meetups? Changing how we phrase our job applications?

I recognize that it may be sexist to treat hiring women as an end in and of itself, but I prefer to work in a more balanced environment. There are women working in non-technical roles in the company. Recent hires / interviews have mostly been guys too.

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How about you just focus on hiring the best developers, regardless of their gender, and making sure that male and female employees are treated the same by all employees of the company? Reverse discrimination is not the answer.

1+ to this. The value comes from the skill set, not the gender. If you take this, tomorrow it will be another controversial topic, like race, and next week can be another thing. Just hire the best people, that will make the product awesome.

et voilá! Tu as trouvé la meilleur réponse.

This is the one and only response, you just find the best developers you can, and do not look at their genders. Only 10 out of 100 developers are females ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorikozlowski/2012/03/22/women-i... ).

But, also, it is difficult to find a great developer, let's say 1 out of 10. So you will need to interview, on average, 10 women for the position to find a right one, and when you reach 10 women for the interview, you will have 90 men.

It is just about the numbers.

Geek Feminism's page has some useful suggestions: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Recruiting_women

Create external-facing events(meetups, hackathons, etc.) that advertise the culture you want to build, then recruit through them. This will also give you experience in thinking about the overall work environment.

I firmly believe that the "bigger 80%" of the problem when discussing equality/diversity issues is in putting together an appropriately inclusive space, one where people can exchange thoughts without feeling like they're in an argument. At the high level this means successfully tapping into groups outside of your personal circles and getting people from those groups into your events. (The easiest way to do this is to find a well-connected co-host to represent the groups unavailable to you.)

The rest is a matter of managing the event so that respectful intent is maintained and it doesn't turn divisive. If the balance is already good, and you've hit on a type of event that is welcoming to everyone, you won't have to fight fires. The troubles appear when you have a definite minority and the format ignores minority concerns. Again, your co-host can help you avoid the problem areas.

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