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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.

25 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. "Diversity is a Strength!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe not. It sounds like a waste of resources.

    1. Re:"Diversity is a Strength!" by bluelip · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sounds like the study was flawed. I'm sure "I sucked at my job and decided to go elsewhere" wasn't an appealing reason for most to select.

      --

      Yep, I never spell check.
      More incorrect spellings can be found he
    2. Re:"Diversity is a Strength!" by SirSlud · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's like you just decided to do a little demo of the kind of quick to judge hostility they face.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    3. Re: "Diversity is a Strength!" by sethstorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except that SJW is accurate at describing the people defined by it. Same with those that virtue signal.

      Claims of overuse or "idiocy" affirm it while identifying the speakers ideological leanings.

      --
      Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  2. AKA "snowflake syndrome" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let me guess, they were expected to be productive members of the team and not just the token minority, and that got to be too much for them, so they quit rather than be fired for incompetence.

    1. Re: AKA "snowflake syndrome" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That comment should be modded up. It's correct. It isn't nice to think about, but 'affirmative action' has put a lot of unqualified people into job positions they never deserved, never earned, and often do a horrible job at. This just generates resentment from the qualified people who lost out on the positions, and the co-workers who have to fix the unqualified employees' mistakes, and the customers who have to deal with awful service. Of course unqualified 'affirmative action' hires will feel some heat when everybody else knows all too well that these hires are way more of a burden than a benefit.

    2. Re: AKA "snowflake syndrome" by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Remember: Ego comes first.

      The unqualified never know that they are unqualified. It's just a bunch of meanies, picking on them.

      The worst thing that can happen to office morale is for an incompetent to be promoted and rewarded. I've seen it happen, it's the fastest way to wreck a working team.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:AKA "snowflake syndrome" by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or due to their minority status they found it easier to get another (better pay/conditions) job at another company who wanted to satisfy their diversity quota.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    4. Re: AKA "snowflake syndrome" by Tanktalus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When an incompetent white guy gets a job nobody complains that he got it because he's a white guy. Funny how that works.

      Really? I see a lot of complaining about white guys getting jobs, whether they're competent at it or not, just because they're white. Funny how that works.

  3. Perception is not Reality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When a White person (or an Asian) gets mistreated, then he just thinks "Man, people are assholes!"

    When a Black or Latino gets mistreated, then he thinks "Man, white people are assholes!"

    When a woman gets mistreated, then she thinks "Woman, men are assholes!"

    In my black, female opinion (I'm transgender and transracial): Only the Whites (and Asians) have the right understanding: People are assholes.

  4. Re:Company's Fault by bigman2003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    White male here.

    Coincidentally, I left my last 2 jobs for the exact same reason (perceived mistreatment). I think it is a 'thing', and not just for protected classes.

    That's why people leave their jobs. Were they expecting to hear, "I just lost interest in my job?"

    No...people don't say that. They blame the job, and those assholes they left behind.

    --
    No reason to lie.
  5. Re:Childbirth? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    But that has nothing to do with "tech". If that was the reason, then women would be more likely quit non-tech jobs as well. TFA doesn't address that ... because it is crap journalism written to push an agenda rather than present facts.

    In the broader economy, the progress of women from entry level jobs (where they represent 53%) to mid-level (37%) to senior (26%) is often referred to as a "leaky pipeline", with women more likely to quit at every level and in all industries. Is it worse in tech? I dunno. Some tech-specific numbers would be interesting.

  6. The Answer Comes Around 1am by OYAHHH · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On the whole, if you want to see who is most successful in IT just watch who walks out the office's front door at 1am, exhausted, stumbling to their car.

    In a vast majority of cases it will not be the female employees. Invariably they have to leave at 5pm to catch the commuter train, or to pick up the kids, or a million other things.

    Who it will be will be the single man who has no life or a married man who has a strong wife who works as a team with him to fulfill the goals of family.

    That's been my experience. It's just the reality of life. It's not discriminatory. It is to each his own.

    The real problem is that women are of the opinion that career success == life success. That is about as far from reality as you can get.

    Women should consider the ability to hold a job and contribute to their total family as a "Battle Win".

    Then they should look at their long-term ability to have children and raise them well as a "Winning the War."

    --
    Caution: Contents under pressure
    1. Re:The Answer Comes Around 1am by dabadab · · Score: 4, Insightful

      if you want to see who is most successful in IT just watch who walks out the office's front door at 1am, exhausted, stumbling to their car.

      To me it does not sound like "successful" more like "loser".

      a married man who has a strong wife who works as a team with him to fulfill the goals of family.

      I would expect one of the goals of the family is to be actually a family - and that does not really work when you get home from work at 1:30, totally exhausted.

      --
      Real life is overrated.
  7. The first question that comes to mind by taustin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    is "Are women and minorities mistreated more often, or are white men more tolerant of being mistreated?"

    Unfortunately, there's no possible way to ask that question that won't produce an hysterical, blind hatred response from pretty much everybody.

    1. Re:The first question that comes to mind by Pfhorrest · · Score: 4, Insightful

      An important corollary is that even if it is the latter, that doesn't automatically make the less-tolerant-of-mistreatment women and minorities at fault for anything. Just because one group of people are willing to put up with something doesn't make the something okay or another group somehow in the wrong for not putting up with it; maybe the people who put up with bad things don't have the balls to stand up for themselves and wrongly let themselves be pushed over. It's an open question where the line of "too sensitive" vs "not sensitive enough" is, and not an open-and-shut case that more sensitive is bad, no matter how much people who want you to put up with their shit may tell you it is.

      Consider the oft-cited fact(?) that men are tougher salary negotiators. Does that make them "less tolerant of low pay", or "more sensitive about their pay", and is that then a fault? Should we be saying "poor little babies whine for more money and won't just suck it up and accept what they're offered", instead of praising them for confidence and boldness?

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    2. Re:The first question that comes to mind by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you look at the actual report, you can see that men actually report leaving jobs due to unfairness more often than women. There are a lot of patterns shown in the report that aren't reflected accurately in the summary.

  8. Re:[OT] MIT is not that special. by Rakarra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    50% of my graduating class were valedictorians of their high schools. Something like 80% got perfect mathematics SAT scores. I got perfect math SAT scores, and was by far the smartest in mathematics my school had ever seen. I got a 5 on my AP Calculus BC test. At MIT, I did only just OK in 18.014 and 18.024 (Calculus with Theory, for non-MIT folks) ... only just OK

    I did fantastic in high school, valedictorian of my high school, high math (and English, after enough retakes). Got to college, struggled in the Calculus courses, started doing even worse after the first year. Was the problem that the university was that much harder? Well yes it was, but there was a bigger problem. Away from home, I was away from the pressures of my parents. They were the ones that pushed me to excel, to make sure that Bs weren't something to settle for. I had control over my own time and my own work ethic, and I crumbled without those pillars, and had to relearn how to be a good student all over again.

    Many smarty-pants don't do nearly as well in college as they guessed, and sometimes it's just they're introduced to freedom, and they might not know how to handle it.

  9. Re:A comment from outside the slashdot sewer: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Accuses white men of "the inherent racism and sexism" and then proceeds to call them "little white male snowflakes".

    I guess it's ok to be a sexist and a racist as long as you're racist and sexist against white men.

  10. Harassment by other women is rampant by FeelGood314 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My Ex is a very competent programmer/manager and I know a number of very competent female programmers. Good female developers put in the same number of hours as men married men and maybe even more. Harassment from male engineers is almost non-existent with one exception.

    Institutional stupidity and harassment towards women occasionally happens. There still are some senior managers that will promote a man over a woman and some companies are clueless when it comes to pregnancy or bathroom availability.

    The biggest problem by far that I have seen is harassment by other women. And I've seen it at every single company I've worked at. Women will back stab each other and withhold key information. Secretaries are passive aggressive to female engineers, will refuse or be late with simple but critical tasks to other women, short change other women in petty ways like giving them the noisy office, saving $20 on a flight by choosing the flight with 2 extra stops,etc. If a woman gives the same instruction a man would give a woman in the exact same way the woman receiving the order will be resentful. Woman have to be friends and show they are a team or some bullshit like that and then make their orders requests. And women are expected to put up with this crap and not make a big thing about it. This last point is the exception. If the secretary was passive aggressive to a male engineer he could complain and at least get a sympathetic hearing of his complaint. If a woman complains then the problem is the women in the office not getting along.

  11. Re:A comment from outside the slashdot sewer: by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This marxist response to valid criticism of modern social justice shows why it's so hard to maximize organizational talent: These insecure losers have managed to make skin color and sex more relevant to worthiness than ability and accomplishment under the guise of fighting against such bigoted discrimination. There are, however, quite a few people who actually see this hypocrisy for what it is as the western world has starting moving away from such damaging ideology.

  12. Re:Literally in the Summary by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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.

  13. Re:Literally in the Summary by Orgasmatron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Erm, the parable is intended to illustrate a point about God and salvation by demonstrating it with a metaphor that the hearer is likely to understand. Jesus is saying that you can be fully saved at any time in your life, even if you aren't working all day - and he is using the local cultural norms of shame and honor to drive it home in a way that it is hard for westerners to really understand.

    Parables are not intended to be applied in reverse. Jesus does not support your non-theological argument just because one of the characters in a story he tells says something similar to what you are saying. It is categorically invalid.

    --
    See that "Preview" button?
  14. Quit to be a mother by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From my experience, a number of women with boring jobs quit their jobs when they have their first kid. Because they have an excuse.

    Mostly, men are expected to keep their boring jobs even after they have their first kid. In fact, especially after they have their first kid.

    And, make no mistake: most jobs are boring. Having a kid just gives you a good excuse to leave a job that you'd rather leave anyway.

  15. Re:Literally in the Summary by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    There is a very strong anti-male bias, even when it is approached in a friendly manner - see below.

    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.

    I'm not surprised. I know that in my setting, we had a bit of a bias in hiring women over men, they came in at the same pay as the men, and we promoted them more quickly than men. I voluntarily gave up several promotions in order for a female co worker to get a promotion - stupid quota system with promotions.

    Yet - they all left. Despite preferential treatment, they quit. Getting married, having children, just going back to live with the family were typical. One engineer woman left to become a personal trainer - musta been a helluva hit to the pocket, and another opened a daycare center. Some were let go during slowdowns, in large part because if myself or the other guy were let go, more people would be hired because they usually had a distinct list of what they would or wouldn't do.Travel, Overtime, and non standard work hours were a no-no. One of the biggest problems when there were personnel conflicts? Other women.

    In the end, even though I missed a number of promotions, I was paid a lot more than the others. And there were a few complaints over the years. Quickly taken care of by the boss who asked if they wanted to do what I did. No takers. 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.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.