For the past decade, major technology companies have grappled with the underrepresentation of women in their industry, especially in technical roles like software engineering. Much of the conversation surrounding gender inequality in the tech industry focuses on the educational pipeline: specifically, the relatively low proportions of women graduating with computer science degrees.
In a new article in the American Journal of Sociology, I argue that women are not only underrepresented in these technical roles because they lack educational credentials but because they are not given the same opportunities as men to learn relevant skills on the job.
Drawing on interviews with 50 tech workers based in the San Francisco Bay Area, I find that men without computer science or engineering degrees are informally coached by their coworkers to learn new technical skills. This training allows them to transition from non-technical to technical roles after entering the industry. Women, on the other hand, are excluded from these coaching opportunities and steered out of technical roles, effectively barring them from some of the most lucrative positions in the tech industry.
“You’d Make a Great Engineer”
Men I spoke with were routinely encouraged by their coworkers to move into more technical positions. One man I interviewed, who I call Sam, entered the tech industry working in customer support at a large tech company. He ultimately learned new coding skills by staying late after work to “hang out” with his coworkers:
Because it was a very male-dominated, young, culturally homogenous space, I stayed late. And started to catch this coding bug. I was self-taught in a lot of ways, though I would harangue the engineers who I befriended. And there was this culture of sarcasm and harassment – sorry not harassment – but sassiness towards one another. And we would play ping-pong and shit-talk one another. And eventually I was like, “Yo, help me with this coding thing.” And he was like, “Whatever, okay what do you need?” Little did I know, behind this sassy, sarcastic, and jerk-like exterior, this was actually a very sensitive guy who later on would empower me and give me opportunities.
Sam’s coworker began meeting with him once a week for one-on-one mentoring sessions, and gave him access to the company’s proprietary code. Sam was able to use this training to transition to a more lucrative role on the engineering team. But it is also worth noting that the “male-dominated” environment he describes might be less welcoming to women who want to learn these same skills.
“I Missed Out on Time to Collaborate”
Women understood the importance of socializing with coworkers for career advancement. As Francesca put it, “I think there’s also a lot of pressure to be social in the tech industry because that’s how a lot of decisions get made . . . If you want to be successful and you want to learn what’s going on, being out with people is important.”
But women often bemoaned the fact that they were expected to stay late after work and participate in company activities. When describing the culture at her workplace, Elise explained that her company chooses events – such as company-wide screenings of superhero movies or golf trips – that she has little interest in. As she explained, “I joke sometimes that the hardest part of my work is going out for the work happy hour.”
Other women I spoke with described incidents of sexual harassment and assault that occurred at these gatherings, which discouraged them from attending in the future. Many women were ultimately deterred from socializing with their coworkers, despite the fact that these were precisely the settings where men experienced informal coaching. When describing a former tech job, Meera explained:
It was mostly White men, and I did notice that they would bond by grabbing a beer after work and having kind of their guy’s club. And that would mean that I missed out on time to collaborate, which is something I really wanted to do.
Rather than being guided into technical roles, women were sometimes steered toward roles that were less technical. This was true even for women who had computer science or engineering degrees. Women therefore hit a glass wall when seeking to enter more technical roles. In the context of the tech industry, where technical roles like software engineering are highly valued, these glass walls become an important barrier to desirable positions.
Diversity Work
Though they missed opportunities to learn technical skills on the job, women – and especially women of color – were channeled into tasks involving diversity and inclusion at work. This diversity work ranged from volunteering for Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to serving as the de facto head of diversity. Taking on this extra diversity work for their companies can be personally rewarding. But the weight of these added tasks can also make it difficult for women to keep up with their paid work or advance professionally. As Ruth explained:
We have these Employee Resource Groups. I was really involved in one but took a step back because it takes up a lot of time. I don’t feel like it’s a solution because it’s a diversity project to keep myself around in the tech industry and make sure that I survive here . . . I had to stop because I was like, “I’m getting behind in my own work here.”
Diversity work comes with opportunity costs that impinge on the time women might otherwise use to develop job-related skills. This means that while women are shouldering the responsibility of making their companies more diverse, some men are learning to code on the job and ultimately advancing their careers.
Take Aways
This study traces how movement between roles exacerbates gender inequality in the tech industry. Not only were the women I spoke with pushed out of technical positions, but men – even those without the educational credentials – were pulled in. Men were given more opportunities to learn technical skills informally from their coworkers, bypassing the requirement for formal educational credentials.
Women, on the other hand, relied on credentials to demonstrate their qualifications for technical roles; even then, it wasn’t always enough to keep them in technical positions. Considering that technical positions pay more than non-technical positions, this role sorting can contribute to the gender wage gap.
On the bright side, these findings demonstrate that workers without degrees in engineering or computer science can learn technical skills on the job. At the moment, however, these opportunities are primarily extended to men and largely offered informally in ways that reproduce inequality in the industry.
Read more:
Sigrid Luhr. (2024). “Engineering Inequality: Informal Coaching, Glass Walls, and Social Closure in Silicon Valley.” American Journal of Sociology 129(5): 1409-1446.