This is a shame. My anecdotic experience is that 9 out of 10 female engineers are solid, productive members of society and 1 out of 10 is marginal. The male side is much worse. Yes there is 1 out of 10 who is really good, but 2 out of 10 are not worth their paycheck at all, 1 is marginal and 6 out of 10 are solid productive members of society.
My experience is the opposite of yours (I wish it wasn't so). I've haven't worked with that many female engineers in 28 years as an engineer. There's been maybe 12 total as there are so few.
Of those 12 only 2 would I personally hire. That's under 20%. On the male side, depending on the company, it's between 95% at good companies and 50% at bad. In other words, 80% of the women I've worked with didn't seem like a peer (as in able to keep up) whereas less than 50% of the men couldn't keep up. In both camps, men and women, there were plenty of people I liked as people and would be happy to have as friends but I wouldn't hire them to work with.
I know that's just an anecdote
Maybe we're saying different things though. You're claiming in your experience 9 of 10 female engineers are productive members of society. I'm claiming in mine 10 of 12 female engineers are not productive engineers. They may be productive members of society but at work I need productive engineers.
It would really be nice if there was an objective way to measure and or fix this. I'd really like engineering more if there were more women and every time I interview a woman for a job position I hope she's going to pass but even that has been poor. Then again, so few women interview that I don't know what the hit vs miss ratio is there vs men. I'd say it's 1 of 6 or men at best. So far it's 1 of 5 for women meaning I've only interview 5 women since we get so few female applicants.
HN has to stop complaining about people's experiences that they don't like by crying "anectdotes", or "anectdata is not data". If someone says that it is their experience then that's it, take it for what it is rather than demanding that they should start peer-reviewing their life.
Same goes for apologizing for sharing one's experiences...
