I've read a lot of articles with this general tone and theme over the last year or so, and they always bother me, for a number of reasons. They tend to paint the overall industry with a very broad brush, and are, in my experience, often caricatures (this one certainly isn't the worst). This article is based mostly on anonymous anecdotes and is peppered with weasel words, for example: "More broadly, some economists say..." "Workers with children say..." The one piece of data I saw, the number of women in the workforce, has a truncated Y scale.
I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley at tech companies for the last 17 years at many small and large high tech companies, including Apple. My wife also has been working in tech for longer than that, and she enjoys it. I have two young children. When I read these articles, I feel like I'm reading about another universe, as it is so vastly different than my experience. Of course, I can only offer my own anecdotes in response, but here are a few of mine:
- My wife interviewed at a small startup when she was pregnant with our first son. During the interviews, she informed them she was pregnant and wasn't sure how much time she wanted to take off after the baby was born. They were totally cool about it and said they'd be happy to have her for as long as they could. She ended up working there and loved it.
- I'm 40 years old. The people who work with me are a mix of ages. I've rarely been the oldest, and I certainly don't feel like I'm outnumbered by people much younger than me. I've interviewed at a number of companies with young founders, and never felt discriminated against. I still get pinged by plenty of recruiters, so I'm not seeing the ageism that is supposedly so rampant here. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who are close to my age, and I'm not hearing these complaints from them either.
Honestly, I think this is sloppy journalism, designed to provoke an emotional reaction. I don't want to deny the very real problems in this industry that we should be working on, but I don't think articles like this are helping. If anything, they are scaring women and minorities away from the industry and making the diversity problem worse.
Yes, I certainly agree. However, the thing that bothers me about the article is that it insinuates that the problems they talk about are the norm. That is a strong indictment and, I believe requires more evidence than they've given. I'd go farther and say it does a disservice to many decent people in this industry.
I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley at tech companies for the last 17 years at many small and large high tech companies, including Apple. My wife also has been working in tech for longer than that, and she enjoys it. I have two young children. When I read these articles, I feel like I'm reading about another universe, as it is so vastly different than my experience. Of course, I can only offer my own anecdotes in response, but here are a few of mine:
- My wife interviewed at a small startup when she was pregnant with our first son. During the interviews, she informed them she was pregnant and wasn't sure how much time she wanted to take off after the baby was born. They were totally cool about it and said they'd be happy to have her for as long as they could. She ended up working there and loved it.
- I'm 40 years old. The people who work with me are a mix of ages. I've rarely been the oldest, and I certainly don't feel like I'm outnumbered by people much younger than me. I've interviewed at a number of companies with young founders, and never felt discriminated against. I still get pinged by plenty of recruiters, so I'm not seeing the ageism that is supposedly so rampant here. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who are close to my age, and I'm not hearing these complaints from them either.
Honestly, I think this is sloppy journalism, designed to provoke an emotional reaction. I don't want to deny the very real problems in this industry that we should be working on, but I don't think articles like this are helping. If anything, they are scaring women and minorities away from the industry and making the diversity problem worse.