Etsy’s Revolutionary Yet Simple Policy Results in More Female Engineers

[redqueen]

As someone who loves Etsy, for me, this is extra fantastic news.

What happens when 80% of your customers are female, but your engineers behind-the-scenes are 87% male? If you're Etsy, you try to fix it.

We often discuss the challenges facing women in STEM jobs: Men hold 75% of the positions in science, technology, engineering and math — and make 14 cents more on the dollar than their female colleagues. Studies find that girls do well in science in many nations, just not the US. For some companies, there's a catch 22: If you have no women working for you, you might find it hard to get women to work for you: Doesa female engineer really want to go work for a company where she's the only woman in the office?

But as Anya Kamenetz writes for Fast Company, instead of searching for awesome female engineers, Etsy decided to create some:

When Etsy stopped poaching and started training junior women to be rockstars,more senior engineers—men and women—saw the company's progressive policies and started calling.

...

http://jezebel.com/5990132/etsys-revolutionary-yet-simple-policy-results-in-more-female-engineers

[seabeyond]

1. that is just awesome. paying forward and making it work. great. thanks. nt

[ismnotwasm]

2. Ha!

That's the spirit. That's how you do.