This past week, I went to Velocity and DevOps Days in Silicon Valley, CA. Both conferences were amazing and I learned a ton. During DevOps Days I led an Open Space session on “Encouraging Women in Dev/Ops”. I was humbled by the number of people who attended and their passion for the topic. Read on for a summary of my notes taken during the hour we had.

1. Women will apply for job when they meet 100% of criteria, men 60% I suspect this is because women are taught not to be boastful as girls, while boys are taught to “go for it”. Not sure if there’s science to back up this claim.

2. Hiring managers tend to hire first from their personal networks and those networks contain too few women, so expand those networks.

3. Universities are not going to solve the number of women graduating from STEM programs problem anytime soon, so look for other ways to train women as developers, ops.
   Example: Austin has Girls Hack, provides bonding place for women in tech.
   Other cities have women’s tech meetups. For example, here’s a good listing in Seattle

4. Benefits: Longer maternity, job share, and flex hours are better for women candidates.
   Foosball table is not necessarily a selling point. Be careful not to create a “dude’s” environment at work.

5. As a manager treat everyone as an individual. Be careful not to treat women on your team as “one of the guys”, but also not like a “fragile flower”.

6. We praise women for appearance and kindness; men praised for accomplishments, so praise women for accomplishments. This is an awareness thing and takes practice.

7. “Feels great to not be the only woman on team, very empowering”. This quote really struck me. Of course it’s better to have one woman on your team than none, but in order for the woman to not feel like the token woman on the team it’s better to have two or more.

8. Need women on DevOps Days Organizing team. The DevOps Days organizers really would like women to participate in planning future DevOps Days events. Email for more information.