Thread by @sh_reya

Recruiting womxn engineers 👩‍💻 for my company is so freaking hard, and I’m really frustrated about it! Thread:

When I was in college, common womxn in tech role models included Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Susan & Anne Wojcicki, etc. Many of my womxn CS friends ended up pursuing product management or consulting (great career options).

But PM-ing and consulting shouldn’t be the only sexy career options for womxn to pursue! Many men are venerated both for management and individual technical contributions (IC). Sometimes I’m angry that media representation of tech womxn focuses on “people-managing” leaders.

Where are the womxn ICs?!? Why aren’t they heralded as role models, just as the C-Suite womxn are?! Why, when I read about incredible software innovation, am I only reading about Linus Torvalds and Dennis Ritchie and Tim Berners Lee and man after man after man?!

This "Who are some of the best programmers in the world?" thread literally ONLY HAS PICTURES OF MEN. Except Ada Lovelace, who was born in 1815. We are in 2020, y'all. quora.com/Who-are-some-o…

Maybe because of the technical womxn representation issue, it’s really hard for me to sell a womxn candidate on my company when their alternatives are “conventionally sexy,” like being an Instagram PM or engineer on the Google civic engagement team.

Sometimes I wish what I worked on was considered “cool” too. Machine learning infra literally powers all of the cool features released nowadays! How is that NOT cool?! Maybe then the superstar womxn candidates that get engineering offers at startups would be more excited.

If you have any tips for recruiting, please let me know. really don’t want to be the only technical woman at my company. And I bet that my startup isn’t the only one facing this issue -- any startup that doesn't acknowledge the challenge of hiring womxn is just plain lying.