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Finding women developers is hard

January 4th, 2007 (Visited 2461 times) Tags:

So, it’s all going great here with the new company. Tons of resumes flowing in from a variety of sources, and we’ve already made one hire. But one of the big challenges we’re having is trying to build a diverse team on the gender front. We see this as important because, well, teams of men tend to make games for men. And that’s not what we’re about — as the website says, we’re after something for anyone.

We’re mostly hiring programmers right now, and frankly, female programmers are scarce. Almost all of the resumes we’ve gotten from women are for writing or design. We’ll definitely be hiring for those positions eventually too, and we’re filing those resumes away for that time. But in the meantime, it’s a bit frustrating to know that we want to hire a diverse team, but the resumes we’re getting just aren’t diverse.

This is something that’s an issue across the entire industry, of course, and it comes up periodically in the press. There’s also been much made of the fact that the Sims titles have had very gender-balanced teams, and how it makes a difference in the final product.

One of the approaches that may help the industry is looking more at young hires. A lot of the game development programs I have seen at universities seem to have a fair number of women in them. Aggressively recruiting from these programs i norder to hire in young talent may be one of the ways to improve the gender mix.

In the meantime, I’ll be calling all the women I know in the industry for advice and recommendations, posting on resources like the women developers SIG mailing list for the IGDA, and so on. But I sure do look forward to the day when this isn’t the issue it is now.

P.S., if you think this post is about you, please send your resume.

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Scott Jennings said on January 4th, 2007 at 4:09 pm:

Female programmers are RARE, and in game development rarer still. There were two at Mythic out of several dozen, and Mythic has always aimed for diversity as a staffing goal. So, good luck I wish there were more women at NCsoft in a development role.

Matt Mihaly said on January 4th, 2007 at 5:13 pm:

So, I understand why you’d want gender diversity in your design team, for instance, but does it really matter whether it’s a woman, a man, a caucasian, an American indian, or a dog writing your server code, for instance?

–matt

Tess said on January 4th, 2007 at 5:29 pm:

Ah, now, you missed the window. Had you caught me in the spring, I’d have been happy to drop by for an interview, but as it happens, I am now well employed.

Scott is right. There really aren’t a lot of us. Most of the women in the industry are NOT programmers. I don’t know how many female pro game programmers there are in the US, but I’d guess it’s less than 50. The number that would feel confident enough to apply for a senior MMO position is way less than that. Note, I say, “confident.” They may actually be qualified for your positions (in fact, the ads are written very well in that regard), but they may not even read far enough to find that out.

I’ve really had my best results by going out scouting new blood. I picked up a fantastic intern that way, at my last job.

Morgan Ramsay said on January 4th, 2007 at 6:35 pm:

Matt Mihaly wrote:

… but does it really matter [who's] writing your server code?

In a small, startup venture where employees wear many hats, yes. But I think it even matters in larger organizations affected by bureaucratic conventions. Programmers do more than write code. Programmers will likely interface with members of the development and production teams, including designers and quality testers. They will inevitably, directly or indirectly, influence the team’s decision-making process and thus the outcome of the team’s efforts.

Raph said on January 4th, 2007 at 6:54 pm:

Yeah, it’s not about women programmers per se … it’s about having women at all. If I wait until the CS/writing hires, which are a while from now, then the proportion will always be off.

Tess, if you know of anyone, spread the word.

joshlee said on January 4th, 2007 at 9:27 pm:

The studio I currently work at is all male, and it’s slowly driving me nuts. If nothing else, you want to get women on staff early to prevent the locker-room atmosphere from settling in and actually making it *harder* to recruit women later.

In general, diversity matters as much in programming as in any other profession. The wider the range of experiences and perspectives you have, the more likely it is that people will share different methods/ideas/concerns/etc., rather than just falling into groupthink.

Of course, at my first (non-gaming) software job out of college, there were three coding gurus that constantly had lines of questioners spilling out their cubes, and all three of them were women. That may have spoiled my appetite for working in all-boy shops.

Tess said on January 4th, 2007 at 10:42 pm:

Network online. All systems nominal. Grapevine deployment in 10, 9, 8…

Cael said on January 5th, 2007 at 12:20 am:

Try finding a female programmer on a military site sometime.

After that, if you could just find me Lord Lucan and the Holy Grail as an encore…

Psychochild said on January 5th, 2007 at 1:12 am:

Easy solution: pay for gender reassignment surgery.

Or, just hire from There. No additional appendages, or so some claim!

Yes, yes, back to my cave….

Richard Bartle said on January 5th, 2007 at 4:53 am:

Are there any areas where you’re getting more female applicants than male applicants? Here in the UK, for example, developers’ sales and marketing divisions seem to be very heavily female.

Also, in addition to looking for young female programmers, you might want to look for some older ones. The “programming is for boys” thing didn’t really kick in until the late 1970s, and you may well find some very accomplished programmers who happen to be female and in their 50s.

Richard

Sheri Graner Ray said on January 5th, 2007 at 7:58 am:

Funny this is just the topic the women’s SIG list is talking about right now So here’s my $.02

The problem with hiring women into this industry is not that women don’t want to be here, but rather for most women, the game industry isn’t even on their radar as a potential career. So, there are three steps to hiring females into this industry.

1. Recruit!! This industry is so bad about that. We normally just wait for the resumes to roll in – but the ones that come in won’t be from women… or other minorities for that matter! So if you want minorities.. you have to go out and recruit for them and you have to do it in places that are not the normal game industry places. Try places like university chapters of Women in Engineering (I’m speaking at the UT chapter next month.. I’ll put in a plug for ya!) Architectural schools, graphics arts programs, etc etc.

2. Reach out to organizations like Women In Games International, Women in Technology International, Women in Film and Animation, Women in Cable Communications, etc. They often have job boards, mailing lists, forums, etc you can access. And they can always use help! Unfortunately, we can’t allow job postings on the IGDA’s Women’s SIG, but check out WomenGamers.com’s job board!

3. Farm today for tomorrow’s employees. Get out there and do some work with Girl Scouts (did you know they have a technology badge??) GirlStart, T.W.I.S.T., Boys/Girls Clubs and the like. PTA’s are a great place to get the word out that gaming is a possible career path. In a couple years you’ll have a nice intern group to harvest from!

And finally… I think Laura Fryer says it best. She says “Hire outside your comfort zone.” This is a big problem with game companies. How many times have you been through interviews where you have to talk to the whole team to “see if you are a fit.” Well what that is really saying is “to see if you are just like us.” DO NOT fall into that trap. It just produces homogenious teams. Do NOT hire someone just like you. You don’t need another you.. you are already there. You need someone with terrific skills and talents like you, but with a different set of life experiences to bring different perspectives to your projects.

Good Luck!!

-Sheri

BPMWare said on January 5th, 2007 at 8:33 am:

(a little tongue and cheek here). In my experience, female programmers are either dog ugly or not very good programmers. The other risk you run is that half of your engineering team will get their minds all caught up over the females in the group and it will just lead to trouble.

Personally, I’d suggest hiring for vision (regardless of gender) and those who can think beyond what you’d normally consider a male point of view. I think there’s nothing wrong with an all male team of programmers as long as you mix it up on the design/authoring side.

Janey said on January 5th, 2007 at 9:27 am:

It’s nice to see a sincere effort being made. Sheri has good ideas. BPMWare makes a good point, too.

I’m not looking for employment, nor am I a programmer, nor am I willing to relocate to SD. However, if you need me on a focus group with thirty-something women in it, or something, lemme know.

Evangolis said on January 5th, 2007 at 11:28 am:

On my last contract, there were a very high percentage of female programmers, who were both excellent coders and significantly hot. (and generally married) (The guys were mostly pretty good looking too, btw) Unfortunately, it wasn’t a games shop, but it was pretty good proof that aggressively hiring for diversity and retaining for ability pays off. The code base was in pretty good shape, too, considering it’s size, age, and complexity.

Raph said on January 5th, 2007 at 2:34 pm:

Are there any areas where you’re getting more female applicants than male applicants?

Writing and design, marketing… And I have found that usually, when you look for designers, the women tend to be writers, not more technical designers. You’d expect a few more artists, but they don’t seem to be that common either.

Reach out to organizations like Women In Games International, Women in Technology International, Women in Film and Animation, Women in Cable Communications, etc. They often have job boards, mailing lists, forums, etc you can access. And they can always use help! Unfortunately, we can’t allow job postings on the IGDA’s Women’s SIG, but check out WomenGamers.com’s job board!

We’ll be following up on exactly this today and over the next few days! Thanks for the advice.

Get out there and do some work with Girl Scouts (did you know they have a technology badge??) GirlStart, T.W.I.S.T., Boys/Girls Clubs and the like.

My daughter is a Girl Scout, actually, so I’m all up on this. Doesn’t help my hiring right now, though. I agree it’s good to do long term though.

However, if you need me on a focus group with thirty-something women in it, or something, lemme know.

Oh, definitely. You’re on my list.

StGabe said on January 5th, 2007 at 3:40 pm:

I just started work at a new company and out of 25 or so people in active development, producers, programmers, artists, etc., there’s not a single woman. Of course our HR person, our office assistant and our business development person are all women. And I think we have one or two in QA.

We just don’t really have the cultural infrastructure to have a lot of women entering game development right now and it’s not something that I think is likely to change anytime soon. I think the real tools to being a talented game developer have nothing to do with what you learn in college but with the problem solving skills and activities you engage in when you’re a kid. So any change now (like getting involved with Girl Scouts) isn’t going to take affect until a decade later. And gaming is so fast paced that no one is likely to have time to get involved with the girl scouts, etc.

Sarah said on January 5th, 2007 at 3:56 pm:

One point I’m surprised no one has brought up has become stereotype, but is based on trends. (Warning, wild generalizations follow. Please don’t attack me.)

In general, women care more about quality of life issues because, in general, they tend to be the caretakers in their families. Also in general, startups tend to be less stable than larger companies with established practices. If you can convince people that your company will be stable and family-friendly, I think you will be on the right track.

Kressilac said on January 5th, 2007 at 11:15 pm:

Careful that you don’t make hiring decisions based on gender. It’s a protected EO category. If a male caught wind of you hiring a female over him primarily because she was female, it could lead to a lawsuit just as easily as the other way around. Even more so because intent is easy to prove with this blog post.

I’ve spent a good portion of my career in IT recruiting and it’s always difficult to find women programmers. That doesn’t change regardless of your industry. I guess all I am saying is that when you do hire a female programmer, be sure you’re hiring her because she can do the job and that gender plays next to no role in the decision. Run amok of EO laws and life becomes hell. There are no EO restrictions until you have over 20 people in your office. There are discrimination restrictions though. Last thing you need for your startup is a lawsuit from some guy who feels being male was what caused him to get passed up in the interview. Believe it or not gender discrimination works both ways regardless of what the media wants us to believe. (i.e. men can’t possibly be victims ever.)

Raph said on January 5th, 2007 at 11:40 pm:

Kressilac, we’re very familiar with those rules, we’ve been doing this a while. In the end, we have to hire based on who is the best candidate, because that’s what’s right for the project and the company. But at the same time, making the effort to get the jobs listed where they’ll get seen by a diverse group of possible candidates seems worthwhile.

Raph said on January 5th, 2007 at 11:41 pm:

Oh, and Sarah — most of the folks hired so far have families, myself included. We’re not intending to be a crazy-crunch sort of place.

Morgan Ramsay said on January 6th, 2007 at 1:37 am:

Not intending, Raph? Where’s your commitment to quality of life, huh?

Nathan Forget said on January 6th, 2007 at 7:48 am:

I think the point about women in academic game development programs may not be correct. I attend FIEA (http://fiea.ucf.edu/) and we have only two females in our class of thirty-four. However, academia may be a place to start tackling the problem. It’s easy to imagine how more women can be persuaded to enter this kind of academic program.

Kressilac said on January 6th, 2007 at 5:28 pm:

Raph,

Please don’t get me wrong. Women in the workplace is only a good thing for all the reasons you mentioned. A diverse workgroup is very desirable, especially for a MMO because of its more social elements. All men designing a game makes a MMO very goal oriented. The more women you have on the team, the more centered your game play should be. At least that’s my outlook on it and we all know that MMOs that have a good balance of the 4 player types tend to fare well. I see women on the team as a pretty critical element but unfortunately setting that as a HR goal is pretty thin ice to tread on.

As for how to solve the problem I have no idea. I’ve been looking for the answer for a while now. It’s extremely difficult to make a change in policy or selection criteria such that the employee search outcome indirectly favors women candidates without resorting to gross stereotypes that do more harm than good. In the end, I’ve pretty much given up on the idea because I believe there simply are not enough candidates in the marketplace. I use recruiting firms and take employees from what I am fed. The liability is no longer on my company because I outsourced the hiring process and when my company gets larger than 20 employees I’ll readdress the outsourced hiring process. If I’m only fed male resumes then so be it and I don’t think much more of it. In reality, I’m given a fair number of female resumes but the ratio still majorly favors males.

Now, the question I pose for you is that in a startup environment where investors are holding you to a deadline so they can get a return on investment is it ok to ask a 20 – 30 year old female candidate if they have plans to start a family? The law says no but how is it fair to you, the one responsible for making the return on investment happen, to lose 6 – 12 weeks of work from an early hire employee (read key to the success of the project or anyone you’re hiring in these early months) due to pregnancy leave. If your investors require you to get something out the door and half your staff is 20 somethting females then you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose 3 – 6 months of man hours over the course of a 18 – 24 month project. Just as I don’t like to hire simply because the candidate is a female, I find it very difficult to hire if there’s a hint she’s going to abandon the project for 6 to 12 weeks on pregnancy leave. In a more established company with a stable revenue stream, starting a family is easy to overcome and doesn’t factor at all into the hiring decision. Is it different for a startup? Part of me says yes while the other part says no. You can only lessen the risk by violating another EO law based on age. Hire women only over the age of 35 or 40 though that solution sucks as well and is patently not fair to the 20 – 30 year old women out there. Look back to the start of the WNBA. Three of the top five stars the league was betting on to help lauch the league didn’t start the first half of the season because they got pregnant. The league never recovered.

While I think women on the team is a fantastic goal and an undeniably great asset to the team and game design, there’s some real world issues that come up when you focus hiring practices on them and/or set goals for diversity. Those issues are only compounded by the tight schedule of a startup company and the need to get profitable as quickly as possible. I’m betting that scenarios like the one I painted above are the reason why companies under 20 employees do not have to meet EO guidelines. EO could place unnecessary risk on the launch of a fledgling company. Then again EO might get you a better game… Startups are so much fun are they not?

Kartones said on January 7th, 2007 at 3:24 am:

Well, In my company we’re 27 people, and 4 of them are women (3 developers and the secretary).

So yes, may not be the same “volume” of women developers… but definetly there are. And most of my university friends that last (being friends I mean) are women too (I studied computers)

Morgan Ramsay said on January 7th, 2007 at 2:52 pm:

Kressilac wrote:

… but unfortunately setting that as a HR goal is pretty thin ice to tread on.

Nevermind that EEO-1 requires employers with 100 or more employees to collect information on race, sex, and national origin—bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) permits employers to use religion, age, sex, or national origin in employment practices when necessary to normal operations. Gender BFOQ exceptions are frequently raised in the entertainment business, and age BFOQ exceptions are frequently raised in the transportation business. This entails the question, “Is diversity a business necessity?”

… if there’s a hint she’s going to abandon the project for 6 to 12 weeks on pregnancy leave.

Men can actually take pregnancy leave, too.

… starting a family is easy to overcome and doesn’t factor at all into the hiring decision.

Applicants with families are more desirable in organizations that are concerned with employee retention.

Finding women developers is hard

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