*Pre-read fun fact: Men at Everlane—7. Women—15.
An excerpt from Lauren Bacon’s “Tech Companies, stop hiring women to
be Office Mom”:
“Whenever I visit a tech company’s website…more often than not, I have to scroll past four or more men before I see a woman (on the Team page)—and very frequently, her title places her in one of the “people” roles: human resources, communications, project or client management, user experience, customer service, or office administration. This wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself…except that there are a couple of complicating factors:
- Coders are lionized in the tech sector, and are compensated for their technical skills with higher wages and positional power—so women without coding chops are automatically less likely to advance to senior positions or command the
highest salaries. - There is a culture in tech companies that simultaneously reveres the “user”
(at least as a source of revenue and data) and places low expectations on coders
to empathize with users (or colleagues, for that matter)—creating a disconnect that can only be bridged by assigning user (and team) empathy responsibilities
to another department.”
Do you work at a tech company? Do you find these dynamics to be true?
Photo from Life Magazine.
