Eileen Burbidge on women in technology over at Techcrunch;

All of these guys (and others that I know and work with) would love to work with more women. […] They’re not opposed to hiring women and some would prefer evenly-qualified female candidates to male ones, but they (and I) don’t often see enough to choose from.

About half of my technology/business role models are women. Let’s start with my mum: she’s the person who taught me to program. She was doing things I’ll never understand, with military systems which I’d never want to get near to, at Ferranti in the 1970s. Thanks to her, I’ve never thought of computers as something only men did. Another’s Eileen: while we’ve beating our business into shape, she’s always been there to call us out on what we’ve been missing. I could go through the whole list, and the people on it know who they are, but you get the point.

Timetric’s based in White Bear Yard: I’m one of the “these guys” Eileen writes about above. Now, favouring either male or female candidates really isn’t on, but we’re trying to build a company where you’d want to work. The kind of people I want to work alongside enjoy learning, and we work at getting better at what we do. How can you do that if you surround yourself with people who are all exactly the same and exactly like you? What can you learn from them?

Startups are the ultimate in contrarian strategies. If we were typical we wouldn’t be doing it, and if we’re going to make it work, it’s not going to be by doing what everyone else does. Being open-minded and flexible’s one of our biggest structural advantages over our larger rivals. So, when I read comments like these, soaked in fear and so closed-minded, it makes me sad.