On Monday, Melinda French Gates twitter.com/melindagates/status/1790049411227086949″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>give up of the philanthropic organization she ran with her ex-husband Bill Gates.
That he left is less surprising than that he stayed so long. The couple divorced in 2021. In August 2021, the charity tech/bill-melinda-gates-divorce-finalized/index.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>he told CNN who was doing a two-year trial period to see if the two could continue to work well together. They survived that period for almost a year.
French Gates will leave next month with an additional $12.5 billion, he said. She wants to dedicate that money to her “lifelong work on behalf of women and families.”
The Gates Foundation is famous for working on projects to help impoverished people, especially in developing countries, such as fighting malaria, polio or improving sanitation.
But I'm here to lobby for people who consider themselves pampered, not impoverished. Female tech engineers still face a shocking level of mistreatment that causes more than half of them to leave their companies and often the tech industry, according to according to a recent McKinsey report.
The famous technology industry is to blame. “brilliant idiot” either tech-stats” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>“brother culture” atmosphere that is not good for anyone of any gender, but that particularly beats women to a pulp.
And it was largely introduced by prototypes like Bill Gates, who was famous for being harsh and impatient during his early years, to the point that GQ once compared him to “an office bully.” Gates' nemesis, Steve Jobs, had his own reputation, as did other legendary billionaire founders with names like Larry and Charles.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-women-in-tech-are-bruised”>Women in tech are bruised
in a tech-stats” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Women in technology Survey 2024, 72% of women reported experiencing a predominant “bro culture” at work that led to microaggressions ranging from badmouthing during meetings (64%) to being asked to “provide food” for meetings (11 %). Other research quantifies how women, regardless of seniority, are often treated like tech-stats#:~:text=Additionally%2C%2057%25%20of%20women%20in,4912%20profiles%20from%2054%20companies.” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>junior level worker However, they also receive less support, are more likely to be fired and less likely to be promoted, etc.
Working in an environment like that is painful! A woman who leads a hardware development team cried when she told me how she was left out of a meeting with the most important client on her team. She was expected to prepare her boss for the meeting and he kept contacting her for information while she was sitting in her office near her, but he didn't invite her to the literal table.
There's a Reddit sub called r/womenintech that has over 21,000 members where a constant theme is dealing with male coworkers who belittle their work; or a constantly moving bar that blocks a promotion. “I no longer have any hope about my 'career'. “I love IT work, but the perpetual boys club cured me of my ambition and destroyed my mental health,” she wrote. a poster to the sub explaining why he is leaving the industry.
Many men feel the same way about the culture of the tech industry. there is routine giant discussions on Hacker News about the misery one can expect in a coding career.
To be fair, moving the tech industry (and corporate culture in general) beyond these deep, hostile roots is work French Gates has been doing since at least 2017, when she began researching why so many women leave the profession.
Through Pivotal Ventures, his own organization that he ran for many years before parting ways with Bill, he has been trying to address root causes. Pivotal is part of a venture capital fund of funds, meaning it invests in other venture capital funds; partly philanthropic; partly lobbying effort; part of anything else the billionaire wants to do. (Pivotal Ventures declined to comment.)
When French Gates said in her resignation that she was going to use her new billion-dollar reserve to work in service of women, she hinted that she would work across a broader spectrum: everything from bodily autonomy to investing in more startups. directed by women. For example, Pivotal partnered with Techstars for a Future of longevity accelerator which featured a list of such startups. She backs women-led venture capital funds such as Miriam Rivera's Ulu Ventures and Promise Phelon's Growth Warrior Capital.
She is a strong advocate for family leave policies and modern systems of care; mental health pressure groups; funds partners who are bringing more diversity to technology and artificial intelligence; and now she is working to help more women win elections.
in a opinion piece on that topic last year for Time (owned, ironically, by another tech billionaire, Marc Benioff), she wrote: “Ultimately, though, we can't keep shoving women into a broken system: We have to fix the system, addressing the full range of barriers.” structural structures that prevent our government from looking like the people it purports to serve.”
The same goes for corporate systems.
What else can Melinda French Gates do?
So what else can she (or any other interested billionaire) do with her extra chunk of billions?
I think it's time for some kind of employee bill of rights that eliminates the draconian contracts that most tech workers must sign as a condition of employment, even at startups.
While Biden's Federal Speak Out Act of 2022 makes many non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements for allegations of sexual assault or harassment unenforceable, all non-disparagement clauses should be rejected. People should be free to speak publicly about their personal experiences in their jobs, good or bad, without fear of being sued by the company or other retaliation. Think about how many more Susan Fowlers, the famous Uber cultural whistleblower, there would be if people felt free to speak out. Better yet: think about how the threat of speaking out could push humans in positions of power to build cultures that didn't need to come out.
Another thing that needs to go: the draconian confidentiality and non-disparagement agreements that laid-off workers are forced to sign as a condition of receiving severance payments.
And lastly, I would like to see American companies end secrecy around employee salaries as another area that would empower women and all employees.
Yes, this is a lot to ask of a woman, considering everything she's already doing. And even another $12.5 billion won't be enough to make people be nicer to each other at work because humans are who they are. But the more pressure someone as powerful as Melinda French Gates can exert to change the structures, the better off we'll all be.
Do you have any advice about a hard tech company or startup culture you're experiencing? Contact Julie Bort via twitter.com/Julie188″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>email, twitter.com/Julie188″>x/twitter or call 970-430-6112.
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