An interesting, important read. As a woman who worked in tech for nearly 30 years (and who holds B.S. and M.S. computer science degrees, plus an MBA), I have seen firsthand the gross disparity in the number of women in management/leadership positions, as well as the sharp decline in women entering the field since the early nineties. In fact, I've also seen dozens of women leave the field during the past three decades.
Disclaimer: I live in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, not Silicon Valley; and I have worked at traditional, hard-core tech telecom and IT companies, not social media companies like Facebook, Reddit, Uber, and Google. In my opinion, it is primarily the latter (social media app companies) that have given rise to the frat-boy "brogrammer" culture.
However, while the larger telecom and IT companies do not have openly misogynistic, lewd cultures, they do harbor serious rank and pay inequities among men and women. What's more, even at the Ciscos, IBMs, etc., there is certainly a tendency among men to dismiss women's ideas, or, as has happened to me several times, coopt those ideas as their own. I have seen arrogant, entitled men at the large, traditional IT companies, many in management positions. At the same time, those larger firms seem to do a better job of at least attracting more women in the engineering "worker bee" positions than the social media firms, probably because their culture is less frat-boy, more mature. For a thorough, holistic view of the industry, I would have liked Ms. Chang to examine a few of the dynamics at the larger, traditional (B2B) IT companies like Cisco, IBM, HPE, NetApp, etc.
I wholeheartedly agree with Emily Chang that the industry could accomplish so much more by promoting more women to management/leadership positions, resolving pay inequities for women and minorities (as Salesforce seems to have tried), seeking out diverse recruits from different industries, and changing their culture from the myth of a meritocracy, which only encourages white males to hire more white males, to an inclusive, creative, and diverse one. Finally, women in tech leadership positions, like Sheryl Sandberg and others, have a responsibility to use their power to recruit and promote more women.