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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.
Maybe not. It sounds like a waste of resources.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.