Retaining Female and Gender Diverse Software Engineers
Updated: Jun 22, 2019
We got into tech, now what?
The turnover rate for women in tech is nearly twice as high than it is for men. Fifty-six percent of women leave tech mid-career and take a non-technical job, become self-employed or take time out of the workforce.
Ada Developers Academy is focusing on the “pipeline” issue, training women and gender diverse people to code and preparing them for entering the tech industry. Getting into tech is the first step, but staying in tech is the next step.
Why do non-traditional tech workers leave at a faster rate? Advancement opportunities, wage disparity, poor management, conscious and unconscious bias, culture, short maternity leave, harassment and work life balance are some of the factors in a longer list of reasons people walk away.
That list of issues may seem overwhelming - but we are Adies! We’ve learned to code, we’ve learned to interview, we’ve probably been the only person who looks like us on an engineering team for the last few years. Let’s start chipping away at the next challenge; together.
If you are working as an engineer in tech, you have found ways to deal with these issues. But a single Adie can only do so much however, so let’s lean on each other. AdieCon was created to bring Adies together annually and provide a chance to talk about strategies to not only cope on a personal level, but to set goals as a community and keep shifting the tech industry in a direction that serves more diverse individuals in a positive way.
If you have a story to share, AdieCon will be accepting talk, panel and workshop proposals in Summer 2019. Follow AdieCon on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram for news and updates.
Did this article not represent your experience? If you have the time and energy, we would be grateful for you to tell us how the article could be more inclusive. Survey.
Sources and more reading:
https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/womenintech_facts_fullreport_05132016.pdf
https://www.cio.com/article/3321897/why-women-leave-tech.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/90274067/this-is-why-women-leave-jobs-in-tech