One of my readers informed me that the grift group “Women Who Code” is shutting down. For those not familiar with it, this organization promoted women in tech, as did many others for a brief moment in time. Their demise is quite telling, so let us dive in!

The official statement released by this grift group hints at the source of the problem:

It is with profound sadness that, today, on April 18, 2024, we are announcing the difficult decision to close Women Who Code, following a vote by the Board of Directors to dissolve the organization. This decision has not been made lightly. It only comes after careful consideration of all options and is due to factors that have materially impacted our funding sources – funds that were critical to continuing our programming and delivering on our mission.

To translate from corporate speak to English, this means that this grift group ran out of money. If you dig deeper, you realize that the setup was not stupid at all. I do not want to call it the perfect grift, but it worked extremely well for a few years: The executives lined their pockets while they had people work for free. Their local support groups furthermore consisted of volunteers. Yet, as this organization depends on donations to float their operations, corporate donors backing out quickly leads to financial problems, which is precisely what seems to have happened.

Women Who Code used to be quite prominent in tech circles. This organization shutting down is surely a sign of things to come, now that money is no longer effectively free. In case you have not been following the boom and bust of the tech industry, let me give you a brief rundown: tech salaries began to explode in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis due to ZIRP (zero interest-rate policy). Investors put money into the most harebrained companies because they could borrow money without cost and if a venture went belly up, it was not their own money. This madness lasted from roughly 2008 to late 2022.

Funding excesses in tech led to more and more start-ups popping up that all needed software engineers and various tech-adjacent people such as Product Managers or Scrum Masters. One response was to pretend that computer science and programming are not fields reserved for people with an IQ of at least about 115 who show significant dedication. Instead, “bootcamps” appeared that promised to teach you just enough to get your foot in the door, even if you have no relevant background. As unbelievable as it sounds, there were indeed stories about people, i.e. women and “underrepresented minorities” who landed well-paying jobs at tech companies after a six-week bootcamp.

What helped the bootcamp crowd with getting hired was also that investors pushed ESG/DIE targets. Thus, companies had to have a certain percentage of women and blacks on the payroll to get all that mullah, but don’t blame BlackRocks’ Larry Fink and his pals for that! This was all just a good-hearted attempt at tikkun olam and not some kind of nasty scheme to subvert society. Be that as it may, the fact that you could only get free money via investors, but the most money was only to be had from investors that fully embraced ESG/DIE, led to the floodgates opening. We were told that the days of the introverted male coder were over. The nerds needed to get out because Jaqueesha, Tyrone, and Becky were now going to work in tech instead.

The consequence of a few years of this clown show was that tech companies became incredibly bloated. It also did not help that a lot of these women and minorities did not quite understand that there was something wrong with making $200k/year plus stocks while not doing any work. Had they kept their mouth shut, more of them may still have jobs. Instead, they recorded day-in-the-life-of videos for TikTok, showing off that they are making six-figures by visiting yoga sessions at the office, “vibing” with their colleagues, and enjoying the sun on the rooftop terrace.

I think that Elon Musk was a catalyst for the still ongoing downsizing in tech. He bought Twitter and fired about 80% of its employees. Yet, Twitter arguably runs much better than before. Other tech companies likewise fired many thousand employees. Of course, Musk recently did it again when Tesla announced the firing of about 14,000 employees. Now that money is no longer free, investors need to see a return on their investment. This should be self-evident, but in clown world this is not the case.

From industry contacts, I know that in recent layoffs, women and “underrepresented minorities” do not seem to enjoy a lot of protections. I even know of cases where companies laid off men and women roughly in even numbers, yet employed many fewer women overall. On the other end of the so-called employee lifecycle, i.e. in hiring, DIE is no longer seen as that important. Plenty of companies still give lip service to DIE but even these reduce the number of “non-traditional” hires. Now that many companies struggle to stay or become profitable and funding is no longer guaranteed, they cannot take such risks anymore. The neck-beard geek who bangs out code is in demand, not Anita with her psychology degree who managed to make it through a two-hour Python tutorial with extensive hand-holding in less than two weeks.

Working in tech has also become a lot more stressful than it used to be. You also no longer get perks like in-office massages and other frivolities. Also, when people try to hang on to their job, they are normally less inclined to help out a struggling colleague. Thus, non-performing non-traditional hires end up having a much harder time staying employed. An additional factor is that companies are getting rid of DIE grifters in their ranks. Thus, there are fewer HR drones who put pressure on hiring managers to give that promising applicant named LaToya a chance. There is also the aspect of increased automation in HR, which entails that there are fewer women promoting hiring women.

Girl coders should not feel discouraged, though. The tech industry is highly meritocratic and any woman who can do the work will easily get hired. However, we will see the continued disappearance of loafers. I also wonder how many of those tech-adjacent roles will stick around. There are bizarre roles like “Agile Coach” that are based on the assumption that a woman without any clue about the work engineers do is absolutely required to get engineers to produce any work. Plenty of companies have removed this position, too. Overall, the tech industry seems to be shrinking. Girl coders will be disproportionally affected.