I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak.

It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year olds --- let alone 9 and 7 year olds --- neither has any clue what they're really going to end up doing.

The piece culminates in a recommendation that we focus our diversity efforts on college admissions and earlier stages in the pipeline. But that's a cop-out. We should work on all stages of the pipeline. It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline, but the fact is that virtually none of the software engineering we do in the industry --- very much including most of the work done at Google --- requires a college degree in the first place.

Most importantly, though, the only contribution this post makes to the discussion is to add "I'm a woman and I agree with one side of the debate" to the mix. Everything in it is a restatement of an argument that has been made, forcefully and loudly, already. Frankly: who cares?

Edit: I added "some of the" to the beginning of the comment, not because I believe that, but because I concede that there are arguments in the post that can't be dispatched with a single paragraph in a message board comment (through clearly there are some that can.)

Even though what I say might sound a bit stupid, I think it's because of style. Everybody that I work with is a geek. If you always thought of yourself more of a guy who is a lawyer, serious, likes to dress well, you will probably want to run away from being a software dev. They generally like to geek out, look weird, look smart or whatever.

Then you might have less geeky people and companies, but the overall sentiment that I get is that who does "computers" are geeks, nerds, people with glasses and so on.

Being a male myself, I saw how rare are geeky-type of girls, and usually how many males usually one gets attention from(lots!). It's not that there aren't many, there are many geeky girls, but the pool, in comparison to men, is big. Maybe it's just my eye, but at least I saw how much lonely man there is due to this fact, they lookout for a geek girl, see how much competition there is, much more to the attractive ones and then end up alone. 4chan is an example of this.

And this is mostly regarding to culture. The stuff we watch, the stuff our parents talk with us, it has too many factors. In the end, you are a geek. Or you are something else.

So I think that either tech has to look less geeky(how to?). Now that I've grown up, I'm less interested in being a geek, I've started to look up to fashion and a range of other things which I didn't when I was younger, but it was when I was younger that I've picked my profession and many other do.

I've started to discover that there was a lot of stuff I was missing out, I've never had money to buy clothes for myself, now that I do, I pay attention to what people wear, how to they act and so on. I talk to my wife and she teaches me many things. As time passes, I actually distance myself from the prototype of people who I work with.

To my very small knowledge of lawyers, they behave very very differently from IT people in general. Some people might be more attracted to becoming one, for example. It feels more mainstream. I think that when we make this kind of choice, it's more like we want to fit in. Nowadays, after years of working experience, I think that even me, I would pick something else, even though I love coding, studying new programming languages and so on, but I could as well be as productive somewhere else, maybe being a lawyer or a doctor, why not?

As a software dev you are also expected some kind of weird labour, you are always building, your leadership capabilities aren't so well tested. For many, they would even like if you would just code. I don't like the industry so much anymore. I feel that the industry enjoys the way that it breeds very smart people which would rather be given orders(or pseudo-orders, in a SCRUM cycle or whatever agile methodology) versus actually taking up responsibility from very early on your career.

Coming back to my argument, people when deciding on what to do on their life, they chose something which they want to belong, generally. Girls because of their experience and what they get bombarded by media end up choosing different stuff. There are rare cases though.

> They generally like to geek out, look weird, look smart or whatever.

Playing off this, I think pop culture deserves more blame than it gets for the lack of women in tech. A software engineer is more likely to enjoy ComicCon than than the average person, but actually working in software is pretty normal.

In the previous decade or two, some TV shows have been casting women as the "tech genius" quite a bit. That's good. But they are often weird, rude, or creepy (still 40 and shopping at Hot Topic?). They're usually taking orders rather than giving them. And they're often squirreled away in some lab instead of being part of the story itself. I'm concerned the message for women (and men for that matter) is "Tech is great... if you're into dressing up like a wizard and sitting in a cubical. You do you (over there)!"

Could you list some of the "tech genius" characters you have in mind?

I don't watch that much TV, but Abby (sp?) from NCIS springs to mind, slightly quirky, but v. intelligent, commanding.

The equivalent character in Alias, f.e., was (in early series at least) a one-dimensional dork.