How to Recruit, Hire and Retain Female Engineers
Originally posted on TechCrunch.
Leaders at tech startups are alarmed by the absence of women from mission-critical roles — software engineering, especially — at their own companies. Their boards are saying, “We gave you the money to grow, grow, grow, but you’re not. You don’t have the engineers to get it done.” The board can’t miss that you only seem able to hire men. So your dev team is shorthanded.
Moreover, they might be shortsighted. As a 15-year veteran board member at more than a dozen tech companies — I’m still on three of them — and a venture partner at Scale Venture Partners, I don’t need to pummel you with studies or quote profitability reports from McKinsey and Morgan Stanley. I’ve seen firsthand, over and over, that companies with diverse teams (Salesforce: 23 percent female in technical roles) do better financially and compete better in the market.
