throwaway19342

Hi taneq,

repolfx's reply is grotesquely uncharitable and I was planning to just let people judge it for themselves. To clarify this one point, though, there was a semi-technical data-cleanup department from which we routinely made cross-departmental hires. My recollection is that one of the women who was hired into a junior engineering position came from there. So did the guy who's now a Googler.

If it would be helpful for you to hear more, let me know if you're also `taneq` on reddit and I'll pm you.

There are other approaches you're leaving out. For example, outreach: make sure that you have considered all candidates, make sure that you communicate to them that you truly value them.

We made a couple cross-departmental promotions into the tech team of people who would not have taken the initiative to present themselves as candidates despite having natural aptitudes. In the absence of role models and with the rampant hostility in this industry, good people may take some convincing.

For what it's worth, another cross-departmental recruit matured to be an absolutely incredible engineer, who went from a standing start to making big bucks at Google within 5 years. He happened to be a white guy, haha -- but that's what you get when you cast a wide net.

No, but I think it would be odd and likely sub-optimal to have a team which was exclusively female build that product.

We hired -- and kept -- a couple of outstanding people who would probably not have worked there for long in the previous, less welcoming environment.

We built bridges to other departments, providing some technical training and helping them to interact with us more confidently and more effectively, and I made sure that everyone received a strong outreach effort (regardless of gender). Those efforts were of course not gender specific, but the non-tech personnel in the company happened to be disproportionately female. The improved cooperation had an impact on both operations and morale.

And lastly, I would say that my male colleagues felt a sense of contentment -- they had always seen themselves as good people, and the change in our department, which they saw as positive, brought them more in line with that self-image.

Indeed, one of my arguments was the same one used at Etsy: our userbase happened to be disproportionately female.

To be honest, the atmosphere when I arrived was not that great -- a case could have been made that it was a hostile workplace environment. However, my colleagues saw themselves as loyal to the company, and they didn't see themselves as discriminators. To their great credit, they found ways to moderate both their their behaviors and their mindsets.

This approach won't always work. Some people are more entrenched in their attitudes and had there been someone like that there, maybe it would have been uglier and more difficult.

But sometimes, one at a time, people can change.

> Women, of course, have clearly played a major role in their own successes in the field. But that is only half the story: They were also helped by early feminist men like Daniel Lehrman.

A few years ago, I started at company that had a tech department of 15, all male. I made the case to the department that it was in the interest of the company to have a diverse tech team, and my colleagues and management responded. Three years later, the department was 5 women and 11 men.

People who care can make a difference.