Hmmm...
(Anyway, personally, I think that toxic tech culture selects against "people who don't fit the stereotype," which includes lots of men, and lots more women, and I don't think framing this as either "it's terrible for women and not for men" or "actually men have it worse" is particularly productive.)
EDIT: I see that the article links the Kapor report with the sentence "Staying silent about the unfairness that causes 37% of underrepresented people of color to leave tech helps no one," which I think is the same misreading of the Kapor report. 37% of underrepresented people of color who have left tech have left because of unfairness - it is not that 37% of underrepresented people of color in tech have left because of unfairness. The previous sentence from the author, about the 50% retention rate, looks like it better supports the narrative point being made (although the source is about STEM as a whole and not just tech).
In this particular case, it is natural that people that believe they are treated unfairly leave, and conversely, if somebody left, one of the probably reasons is because they were unhappy, and one of common reasons of unhappiness is that they don't believe they were treated fairly. The question pertinent to the purpose of the article is do e.g. women have it worse? For that, one needs more than one number, so any claim that includes only one number is automatically disqualified from providing proper information - it provides no more than half of it.
I am assuming the study has taken some care to be representative. Otherwise, there's no need to talk about the findings at all.
The first is a recruitment/sourcing problem. There are many demonstrable factors, such as educational availability or social norms/pressure, that serve primarily to influence entrance rates into tech among different groups.
The second problem is a retention problem. Other social and cultural traits, like the aforementioned willingness to "sacrifice for the cause", place work above family, and so on, are also not evenly distributed among different [age|race|gender|socioeconomic] demographics; I think these traits (or lack thereof) are more strongly correlated with leaving (or being forced out) of tech. To some extent, these might also serve as cooling effects for entrance as well, but I'd hesitate to make any claims about the strength of that effect.
Perhaps by explicitly addressing these two issues independently, rather than by evaluating a "where are we at this current moment statistically" snapshot, this issue can be tackled more effectively?
I think many current approaches fall into the trap of evaluating the snapshot, effectively saying "How has it come to this?!", and then trying to treat the symptom, rather than the cause.
The rest of the study provides even less information, just tendentious excerpts. What does "30% of underrepresented women of color were passed over for promotion" even mean??
The ACM did a study a while back that contradicted virtually all of the stereotypes[1].
"Men and women in our survey both generally reported a similar level of experience with role models. Women, even in a predominately male work environment did not report a significant difference from men in the influence role models had on their careers in IT. This surprising finding does not support previous assumptions that the lack of females in IT means a lack of role models for women, which was assumed to be a disadvantage for women"
"Similarly, men and women in the survey reported comparable levels of learning and comfort around the social aspects of the profession despite stereotypes that suggest women are drawn more to social interaction [7]. However, our surveyed male IT professionals also reported stronger socialization with regard to the technical aspects of the profession, including familiarity with its language and confidence concerning their own skills "
"Our findings uncovered only one significant gender difference across a variety of work-related experiences. Female and male IT professionals alike reported similar levels of experience regarding the work-family conflict, feelings of burnout, perceptions of work load, perceptions of fair treatment in job scheduling, assignment of job responsibilities, pay and other rewards, and perceptions of supervisor support related to family issues. They differed in regard to their perceptions of supervisor support related to their careers. This finding indicates that women perceive greater support in meeting career goals, recognizing opportunities, and improving their job performance."
Yes, women reported greater support in this ACM survey.
"We found no significant gender differences for these measures of attitude. Male and female IT professionals in the study reported similar levels of satisfaction with their IT careers. They also reported similar (strong) levels of professional identification with the profession. Finally, and perhaps most important to the question at hand, we found no significant gender differences in intention to leave the profession"
Etc.
There was also a huge study done on why women leave engineering[2].
Top reasons (in order):
1. Wanted more time with family
2. Lost interest
3. No advancement
4. Didn't like daily tasks
5. Didn't like culture
6. Didn't like boss
7. Poor working conditions
8. Conflict with family
9. Too many hours
10. Low salary
11. Too much travel
12. Didn't like co-workers
13. Started own business
14. Couldn't find position
15. Too difficult
Oh...and "almost half the women who left the engineering field over five years ago reported working at least 40 hours per week in a current non-engineering position [..] More than half the women in this group reported being in an executive management position, 15% were in a managerial position and 30% reported being individual contributors". So they left "engineering" for "management". The humanity!
And of course when this study was reported, it was "It's the [sexist] culture!!". Sigh. Culture comes in at number 5 and is culture in general.
[1] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-...
[2] https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid...
Source: I lived through it and started with almost no experience and was hired and trained on the job. They hired a ton of people to be trained, and many didn't succeed and were transferred to non dev jobs.
The article measures shares of reasons between the people that left, but those are not correct by the share of people that left on each subgroup.
> The willingness to slog though abusive working conditions is one of the most highly-selected-for trait in tech.
The comment claims that "abuse tolerance" is one of the most highly-selected-for traits, not the only thing you need to become a programmer. Further, programming skill isn't even necessarily a "trait" - the colloquial meaning of "trait" is often a personality trait, not any possible characteristic of a person.
I don't see how the comment is substantively different from the many others on this topic.
It always shocks me when people silently do that to undermine someone's reply; it seems so blatantly dishonest. Do we need to make comments non-editable once they have replies?
Even then, I don't think your reply is correct in dismissing the claim. A charitable interpretation would be that the poster meant personality trait, not including programming skill. Even a very strict interpretation still leaves room for the poster's assertion, via this hypothetical:
- totality of traits used when determining programmer quality is 100%
- abuse tolerance is the most highly selected, at 10%
- programming skill is quantified by 90 different traits at 1% each
This would mean that people without programming skill would not become programmers, but the top trait would still be abuse tolerance.
Anyway, I feel this is getting highly nitpicky at this point, I don't feel the poster was trying to make a statistical claim, but rather just emphasize that they believe "abuse tolerance" is very important for programmers, which I don't find to be facially unsubstantive or "flamebait".
(disclaimer: I made several edits to this post as I was writing it out)
The sibling essentially sees what was going on here, I was thinking of a closely-weighted linear classfier where a small change to the weights could alter their ordering but do little to change the results.
Although it's definitely my responsibility to write clearly, in the future I'll think more carefully about what my replies are actually disagreeing with before I make edits that I think are just phrasing!
(And yes, I also had a few edits here before I found a way to write it clearly.)