In slightly weird news, Women Who Code is shutting down! I know, tech is having problems everywhere, and especially websites are having to figure out funding streams. But WWC is far from just a website, and it seems like they still have plenty of funding! More of my thoughts below the quote box.
Women Who Code (WWC), a charity which supports women who work in the technology sector, has announced it is shutting down because of a lack of funding.
The US-based organisation says it had 360,000 people in its community, across 145 countries.
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WWC announced that "with profound sadness," it had closed "following a vote by the Board of Directors to dissolve the organization".
My first thought was, “But they’ve helped hundreds of thousands of women get good jobs in tech! Shouldn’t those who have benefited be giving back and helping keep WWC going?” Then my second thought, after seeing their Partners page, was “What happened to all this corporate support?” I presume they lost some, but surely Microsoft, Boeing, healthcare companies, and so on need a tech expert pipeline. There are even lots of companies I can think of that aren’t listed, where executives might look to them for help recruiting talented people.
Is the dismantling of DEI commitments suddenly this widely spread?
And then there was this also at the BBC link above:
The most recent annual report, for 2022, showed the charity made almost $4m that year, while its expenses were just under $4.2m.
That seems like a pretty good income stream to me. They couldn’t cut their expenses just 5% to live within their budget? And if you read the whole thing at that link, it seems like they have been less than transparent that these discussions were happening at the Board. People in the industry are expressing shock. Maybe if they’d had a heads up, they could have helped them.
Thus my opening statement: Slightly weird news.
