Report Shows Another Diversity Challenge: Retaining Employees (sfchronicle.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Women, blacks and Latinos are far more likely to quit jobs in tech than white or Asian men, according to a new report by the Kapor Center for Social Impact. The Oakland nonprofit commissioned an online survey by the Harris Poll, which asked 2,006 people who voluntarily left tech jobs in the past three years about why they quit. It found women were twice as likely to leave as men (alternative link), while black and Latino tech workers were 3.5 times likelier to quit than white or Asian colleagues. The most common reason they gave for their departures was workplace mistreatment.

Comments

Literally in the Summary

[SeattleLawGuy]

I know it doesn't account for all of it, but I've lost many female co-workers to motherhood and their decision to stay at home with their children.

"The most common reason they gave for their departures was workplace mistreatment."

Motherhood is one factor, but I hesitate to go there first because there is still such a problem with harassment in tech. Still, a company can make the job easier for working mothers in a couple of ways (e.g. good maternity leave policy, providing good day care, providing a place and break time for recent mothers to express milk even if they are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, etc...).

Re:Literally in the Summary

[HornWumpus]

Stats are hard to find. Last I saw, fully 50% of 'maternity leave mothers' just take the bene but _never_ come back to work at their old employer.

Re:Literally in the Summary

[Solandri]

"The most common reason they gave for their departures was workplace mistreatment."

Motherhood is one factor, but I hesitate to go there first because there is still such a problem with harassment in tech.

Congratulations. You've just demonstrated the anti-male bias OP was implying exists in these types of reports. That statement from TFA applies to both female and male employees who left their job.

If you dig up the actual report, you'll find that men left due to unfairness/mistreatment more than women - 40% vs 31%. You read the general stat and assumed it indicated a problem with how women are treated, when in fact it's men who more often feel they're mistreated.

The actual report makes pretty interesting reading. The stats are all over the place. Women report experiencing or seeing more mistreatment, but reported experiencing stereotyping at roughly the same rate as men (23% vs 24% for minority men vs women, 14% vs 12 % for white/asian men vs women). The rate of unwanted sexual attention is drastically higher in the tech industry than other industries (10% vs 6%), but the rate of unwanted sexual attention reported by women is only slightly higher than by men (10% vs 8%). For bullying and harassment, white/asian women reported a lower incident rate than white/asian men (15% vs 16%). But minority women reported a substantially higher rate than minority men (13% vs 9%). You'll also notice minorities reported a lower harassment rate than whites/asians.

I highly recommend reading the actual report if you're curious about this stuff. It doesn't really fit into any of the stereotypes (hah) about male/female or white/asian vs minorities.

Re:Literally in the Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

My employer has several large private "mother's rooms" on each floor of the office. They are nice, have a fridge, sofa, rocking chair, and so on inside with a locking door.

Re: AKA "snowflake syndrome"

[Z80a]

And that's one of the big problems of having a "diversity quota" in the first place, you're basically branding anyone "diverse" as a bad worker automatically, even if they're actually good.
Now if the test is actually equal to everyone and hard enough to filter out the bad workers, well, getting in gets you respect automatically as well because "you survived that hell".