On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team
bryanaknight.com
bryanaknight.com
She commanded, and continues to command, respect from her peers for both her technical contributions on a very challenging tech stack, and product savvy in an extremely complex business domain. I was on her interview and there was no question of moving bars. It didn't even come up, because she was so very well-prepared. We just evaluated the performance and hired the best dev for the position, end of conversation.
On the job she spoke with authority and confidence in standups and earned every single bit of responsibility she ever got. Mention her to anyone who's worked with Bryana and you'll get the "eye roll of respect." She's so talented there was a minor running joke with a couple of us that we should keep a countdown clock of "minutes till I work for Bryana."
I only wish that early in my career I could have been half as well-rounded and with a fraction of the aptitude, product savvy and technical depth Bryana has.
Putting your only female dev in the position of representing your company at conferences suggests that she's taken on the role of "token female". If this is coincidental, and she just happens to be the best spoken developer with the least stagefright, then clearly there is no problem. However, if you deliberately chose her because she is female, then you are doing her no long-term favors, and are engaged in sexist business practices yourself.
new_corp_dev put it better than I could: "If the industry sees a glut of women speakers who are there only because they are women, then the industry will have no choice but to acknowledge their token status."
Nope. Fortunately for me, while I was in a position to make those decisions about Bryana (I've since changed gigs), her own excellent performance was the only thing I had to think about.
Look, I'll let Bryana's own career speak for itself, which I have no doubt it will, but for myself I'd have confidence putting her in front of any audience on any topic she feels comfortable talking about.
One other thing, if you know anything about how conferences work, CFPs/speaking roles are something managed by the conferences, not companies. Questions of 'token' or otherwise are best posed to the individual organizers of the conference in question.
Since you are constantly accusing everyone here of the Straw Man fallacy, let me provide you an example of an actual Straw Man argument:
>So what? What harm is there in showcasing female workers? There's nothing about being a 'token' that precludes competence.
If you want to put the conversation to rest, simply clarify that point.
Her post only implied her own personal, subjective and utterly understandable anxieties on that point. My response was at pains to put both her questions and anyone else's to rest. She earned everything she got, and the comprehensive respect she received from her peers was without qualification. Never mind gender, she coded way beyond her years of experience. The main thing with managing Bryana was to get out of her way and let her do outstanding work, which she did.
> If you want to put the conversation to rest, simply clarify that point.
Was there something ambiguous to you in my statements here?
* Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, _without qualification_.
* ...she..._earned_ every single bit of responsibility she ever got.
* We just evaluated the [interview] performance and hired the best dev for the position, _end of conversation_.
This blog post is about a specific person and her experience. She tells you up front that she was nervous about this. Her management encouraged her to go to conferences, _and that was exactly the right response to her personal nervousness_.
There's a lot of cases where the broader social context becomes part of a person's emotional landscape. A good manager will recognize this (just like any other barrier to working effectively) and balance out doubts with encouragement. The trick is look for possible problems, and management that knows how to look for these problems and help with them is doing their job well.
Positive discrimination is not positive, because discrimination is never positive, no matter which group it favours. And here we see the consequences - a cohort of women who will suffer the paranoia of not knowing whether they were selected on merit. And a cohort of men who will have their misogynistic prejudices reinforced because the bar was visibly lowered for women.
Nothing will dispel uncertainty better than getting the facts. The bar was not visibly lowered in Bryana's case. Her manager said the fact she is a woman never crossed his mind in giving her lead on a project. The good work she was putting in over her first year demonstrated to management she was ready to take lead on a project. If we're just honest with each other, we'll all be better off.
I think her point is that since there is so much negative discrimination, the positive discrimination is cancelled out.
I also think that if there -is- sexism in the industry, -more sexism- is not the right solution. Call out the sexism. The industry will rally around you, as we've often seen. Don't generalise the industry, and generalise men. That's just bigotry.
Two more candidates, one again is more technically qualified but the second grew up in a market Im targeting for expansion. Again, I take the second because the circumstances of his birth are worth more to me than difference in developed ability.
Every choice made is a combination of hundreds of culminating value judgements and to pretend that we can create some objective score based on merit is intellectually dishonest; to pretend that we want to ignore the other factors is unhealthy.
In order for young girls (whether we're talking about children or just engineers early in their career path) to feel confident, to relate and feel like a natural part of the industry, there has to be a change. There has to be more females at conferences. There has to be more female leadership. If you continue to look only at a point of time (a result of history) and say "right now there are more men qualified then women" for every decision, you prevent a future where women had the same comfort and opportunity to truly level the playing field.
Unless you're hiring at random, a whole host of other value judgements are made per candidate on top of any kind of objective technical merit. If these judgements slant toward inclusionary I think the positive feedback in increasing diversity is worth a lot more than the negatives you mention (imposter syndrome is felt across the entire industry and ignoring the added value of diversity to placate the egos of misogynists has it's own delicious irony).
This is coming from a white male who is acutely aware he only has his job because he looks the part; imposter syndrome never stops being a bitch.
What an absurd characterization. I get that you don't agree with this person, but what -- if anything -- did this person say that was juvenile?
This is the particular statement I take offense to (and should have just quoted in the parent, such is life). Black and white generalities with no argument or data to back it in my experience are the exclusive domain of adolescents and television pundents. Neither of which I would expect to be upvoted here.
One just expresses a ratio of genders, whereas the other implies a distinct control and power dynamic.
Male dominated also means "predominantly male", though, in common usage.
> This may seem like special treatment or in some ways unfair. "Reverse sexism" some might call it. I don't see it that way. This industry treats women differently, so my managers treat me differently in the exact opposite way the industry does.
I would not call it "reverse sexism", because it is is just plain sexism. Of course the author doesn't "see it that way", despite acknowledging it, because the author directly benefits from said sexism.
If the author is being encouraged to apply for and accepted to speak at conferences primarily based on their gender, then the industry's reaction will be to expect that women speakers are token speakers, and this will set back women in the industry.
Embrace differences, embrace diversity, but in the long run special treatment does not benefit anybody.
If a manager hires a person who needs a bit more structure in order to stay focused, that person should be given a little more structure. Or in this case, if a manager hires someone who has been pushed down her whole life and has learned to fade into the background so as not to upset men around her, the manager should most definitely spend some time helping her get accustomed to speaking her mind and advocating for herself. It's just good managing.
This way, she'll be able to contribute much more to the team that she would if she was still worried about fitting in. And her knowledge can be spread to new female employees, which helps move the inequality further towards equality in the long run.
I don't see how this "special treatment" is in any way detrimental.
This isn't what is happening here though.
This comes off much more as "Bryana, you're our only female programmer, and we want to look more progressive and diverse than our competitors. We are sending you to conferences to speak for us so we can show you off as our token female."
It works out in her favor, so she'll never complain, but it is sexism nonetheless. Special treatment doesn't lead to equality. Equal treatment leads to equality.
In the UK, white British make up 40% of medical doctors.
Would you support quotas and biased hiring to increase the number of white British doctors? It would make it more representative of the population.
What about primary school teachers? If 9 females and 1 male go for a job, should the male always get preference?
If you would support treating women special in fields where they are a minority, while opposing treating men special in fields where they are a minority you clearly have a sexist bias.
This isn't about leveling the playing field for a specific industry, this is about "reversing" the problem by pointing discrimination in the opposite direction that is has pointed historically. This ignores the fact that sexual discrimination is still occurring, and is even being encouraged!
Unless you can answer programmernews3's question or provide sourced statistics about these "100 high-paying jobs and industries", I can't regard your argument as anything other than an appeal to emotion.
Semantic quibbling about 'reverse discrimination' is a standard lame trick used by those in power to justify their continued power. It doesn't fool anybody; its just selfishness.
And really, if you have no idea of the state of employment and the gender gap, what place have you in this discussion at all? Denying the widely published statistics and endemic problems in modern hiring is a species of willful ignorance I find breathtaking.
See, I take care 99 days out of 100 to reply evenhandedly and avoid any reference to others posting here; I try to stick with the topic and illuminate the issue as best I can. But today, I've been driven mad by the sophomoric nonsense.
It seems much more likely that they have chosen Bryana to represent them at conferences so that they can APPEAR to be more diverse. She's a token female in a majority-male environment. If they cared about equality, they would participate in programs targeting younger girls to get them more interested in STEM jobs.
The issue isn't in staffing, it's in education. If you want to change the culture of the STEM world, look to the schools, not to the tech conferences...
We can do both. No good reason remains to delay corrective pressure in staffing processes.
Also, your local Engineering college is not representative of the country as a whole. Even if equality of opportunity is picking up steam, that doesn't excuse implementing blatantly sexist policies to try to give women an extra boost...
It's like people think that women are less capable of success by virtue of being women, and need men's help to pull themselves upward. It's asinine and basically infantilizes women...
I reiterate: if the industry sees a glut of women speakers who are there only because they are women, then the industry will have no choice but to acknowledge their token status.
In the very same article the author laments not knowing whether she is being offered more responsibility because she is a woman or if it's because she's seen as capable and competent. It's a completely valid assumption, because she's already been offered more responsibility because she is a woman.
This is exactly the problem that goes ignored when people argue that "reverse discrimination" isn't a problem. Treating people differently because of their protected status only serves to further divide.
The interest should be on making sure boys and girls get the same opportunities and encouragement growing up. in US universities, we have 30 male STEM majors for every female STEM major. We aren't going to see the industry change until we fix the root problem - that men are 30x more interested in STEM jobs than women.
No amount of Social Justice Theater is going to level the playing field when men are being raised believing they can be whatever they want, and women are raised believing that marrying a wealthy man and becoming a stay-at-home mom is the greatest thing they can do with their lives.
Women are lacking in STEM not because STEM is sexist, but because few women ever consider a future in STEM. Introducing pro-woman sexism into STEM is a paradoxical way to "solve" the problem.
Hosting more women speakers at conferences helps to fix the broken stereotype of software engineers all being white dudes, which in turns fixes the problem of fewer women and minorities becoming interested in STEM.
It would set the whole industry back by decades. Not because women got involved, but because they became token minorities instead of competent colleagues. For an entire generation, minority STEM students would face impostor syndrome in themselves, and have to work twice as hard to prove themselves because everyone would assume they got to where they are based on "positive discrimination" instead of merit and ability.
This all relates to the same debate about affirmative action that's been happening since the 60's. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1976/5/19/bernard-davis-an... This guy (happens to be my grandfather) argued essentially the same point as you: that black students would be accepted to the medical school based on a lowered standard, and end up graduating as less qualified doctors as their white counterparts. This in turn would lead people to have a general mistrust of black doctors, because they would be seen as only being in their place through affirmative action, and not through merit. That is definitely a scenario to avoid, and also definitely one worth considering in debate.
However, this has proven not to be the case, and Harvard is still viewed as ranking among the greatest institutions in the world, even though they have been admitting minorities to their program since the 70's! In fact, here is a more recent Crimson article highlighting some points in defense of promoting people in minority groups: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/11/7/affirmative-acti...
If we want to decrease the gender inequality in STEM, we need to take concrete action and promote the hard work of women and other underrepresented groups in order to slowly shift the male-dominated culture to one that's more diverse.
But... either we can discriminate based on gender or we can't. If you have an all male team where most members are extremely shy around women (like bad enough they probably should see a therapist), then it would make perfect business sense to only seek another man for that team. But discrimination based on gender isn't allowed, so you can't do that. And for the same reason, even though there is business reason why special treatment is justified, you can't discriminate based on gender.
The key here is that discrimination against someone for their race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc. is unethical, no matter what kind of social wrong you aim to right.
Giving women more opportunities may seem like it's progressive. I mean, "we're helping women"! But it still contributes to defining people based on their gender, rather than their skills and abilities.
I worked at a company a few years ago that would ONLY hire women to work at the front desk. This was a deliberate move to make the office look more diverse than it actually was, because most of our male employees worked outside of the view of our visitors.
That, and the CEO openly admitted that he enjoyed "seeing a pretty face every time he came to work".
How do you separate my blatantly sexist employer's hiring of women for visibility from social-justice oriented businesses doing the same thing to "further women"?
I'm not sure which is the right one to aim for, and it affects not only the women in engineering debate but also things like affirmative action. There are certainly good arguments for both sides.
I am telling a true story about an actual boss I had who was using "positive discrimination" in a dubious way. This wasn't some fabricated argument meant to replace yours. I'm contrasting two similar actions, one of which you defend, while the other you condemn - yet you can't articulate why.
>We want to see women with skills and abilities hired in the same ratio as men.
Well, if an employer gets 30 male applicants for every female applicant, then by your standard they are now obligated to mass-discriminate against fully-qualified men for no other reason than their gender, while suffering a lack of staffing while they try to find as many technically-qualified women to fill their ranks.
This problem runs much deeper than sexual discrimination by hiring managers (which is actually quite rare). You're trying to put a band-aid on a nonexistent wound.
But there's no reason to assume that is the case. The evidence, in fact, is that women do apply for jobs and are not hired. Blind trials of anonymous resumes show that women would be hired, if only the reader didn't know they were women. That once hired, with nearly identical job histories for men and women, men are complimented for leadership qualities and promoted, while women are criticized for being bossy and demanding, and denied raises and promotion.
Willfully ignoring these well-documented issues is not the same thing as debating. Coming up with one anecdotal case (that 'constructive contrasting') and concluding that nothing should be done because there is no problem, is pretty much classic strawman argument.
This doesn't level the playing field. It specifically encourages employers to treat their female employees differently than male employees.
As Bryana mentioned in her blog, it's pretty much impossible for a woman to not be singled out in STEM, simply because she is a woman. Men almost never have to worry about their gender being brought up, while women generally either have to deal with being looked down or being put on a pedestal.
You can thank "people deliberately righting wrongs such as by giving extra encouragement to female developers" for this additional layer of sexism in STEM...
If all capable employees were encouraged and incentivized equally, in all situations (i.e. all women attending conferences would be encouraged equally as men because the number of women speaking at conferences was equal to the number of men), then we would not have an issue with sexism in the industry.
We do.
Because of that, the industry raising up the females in the industry to attempt parity is necessary, whether or not it qualifies for the definition of discrimination.
But yes, I agree. It is sexist to push her to do things BECAUSE she is a woman. She should be pushed to do things regardless of her gender.
Any emphasis on sex is sexist. Any emphasis on race is racist. We aren't defined by the color of our skin or what we have between our legs. Unfortunately, people regularly do sexist and racist things in an attempt to be "anti-sexist" or "anti-racist", and it just doesn't do any long-term good.
I like to call it "moonwalking", because it gives the illusion that you're moving forward, but really you're just stealthily moving backward...
I see this attitude not infrequently among pseudo-liberal city crowds. I've heard the claims that we're postracial or past the need for feminism or civil rights activism.
I agree that's how it should be, but it's not. Civil rights was only a generation ago, and america has spent more time mistreating its women and minorities than not. It's delusional to believe that everything is going to be fixed.
The reality is that women do have a tougher time due to various social programming, and minorities do as well in many industries due to stereotypes that we all hold. To pretend like we all have the same advantages in America is a lie, and one that benefits the ones already at the top.
Here's a good test: if gender/religion/etc truly doesn't matter, would you rather be a <not straight>, <not white>, <not man> who practices <not christianity> in america, or a straight white anglo man? It shouldn't matter, right?
How I wish that (at least for the remaining few conferences where you can submit a proposal without having to be a "silver sponsor"), submissions were "blind". No name submitted, you get a reference number back to confirm your submission.
Focus on merit, not gender/name recognition/budget.
I agree with you that "special treatment" does not benefit anybody, but there is so much misogyny (aka "special treatment") that counter-treatment is not just desirable, but necessary.
Positive discrimination for one person is negative discrimination against another, of whom the discriminator has power over the discriminated. So it still fits as being a *ism.
That is assuming you even accept the whole 'power + mistreatment' bit.
The male engineers experiencing what you call reverse discrimination are still in a position of power as a class.
Critical race theory is as effective at hiding that fact as a Klu Klux Klan white hood.
The critical race theory definition is just a shield to hide behind while practicing racist or sexist behavior, and I will only acknowledge it as such.
Case in point: "Black History Month" wasn't supposed to be permanent. We still celebrate it though, as if black history were distinctly different from American history. It started off with good intentions, but it continues to this day as an unnecessarily divisive holiday. How much "black history" is ignored 11 months out of the year just so we can celebrate it in February (the shortest month of the year)?
Sexual discrimination is sexual discrimination, regardless of context.
Here's an idea: lets reverse things for now. You lose your job, along with most other men, and women are put in their place. That's millions of people changing jobs. How long before men start complaining? How long before 'special treatment' begins to look good to them?
Or even better, let's use industries in our own universe that already has those conditions: education and child care.
What sort of "special treatment" do men get in those industries? Well, in many day care services, the male employees are not allowed to be alone with children. In education, male teachers make it a deliberate point not to be alone with students, because a single false accusation would end their career permanently.
But are there cries for more "positive discrimination" from the men in those industries? Not that I've heard. Equal treatment would be just dandy, though.
How about, we use instead any of the other 100 industries where men already hold the best-paid positions? We'll just swap 30 or 40 of them, so as not to cause as much pain to all those poor men.
Muslims are the highest offenders for terrorism - should we treat them different?
How about this - it is very radical and might be hard for someone like you to handle.....
How about we allow companies to hire people by merit.
I apologise if it is a horrible thing to hear for authoritarian, "diversity officer" supporting, communists.
And if 'straw man' offends, then I suggest learning to make other kinds of arguments. I call em as I see em.
At root, women are substantially absent from the most lucrative levels of the workforce. Something should be done about it, or we just have to admit we don't care that women are marginalized in our society. All the moaning about how no solution is pure enough in some ivory tower way, is beside the point.
Everything isn't so black-and-white. I agree that "women are substantially absent from the most lucrative levels of the workforce". I also agree that we, as a society, are responsible for inciting positive change in this regard.
Regardless, I simply cannot endorse the implementation of sexually discriminatory business practices as a "solution" to the problem.
The root of the problem isn't with hiring managers. The root is that in the fields in which women are most absent, men make up the vast majority of APPLICANTS. Unless we can level the playing field in education, as well as in family structure, we won't see any change in these industries.
If 15% of men enroll in STEM fields in college, while <1% of women do, then the disparity being reflected in the STEM workforce is inevitable.
Woman aren't as interested in STEM as men are, and we need to determine if:
1) This is the result of sexism.
2a) If so, where can we incite change to boost the likelihood that women will pursue a career in STEM.
2b) If not, why do we see the disparity that we do, and is it actually ethical to try to "fix" it.
I have no problem with the ends here, just the means. If you want to fight against sexual discrimination, you cannot participate in or encourage it. How's that for black-and-white?
Men and women deserve the same opportunities and treatment in all industries, but any situations where those opportunities skew one way or the other does not mean that the solution is more discrimination.
The idea of using sexual discrimination to fight sexual discrimination is absurd. Women being treated differently than men is the root of the problem, not the solution.
When you say that men are assertive and women are not, you are in fact talking about a subset of men - the extroverts - who are assertive. In reality, and in particular in the software world, you'll find a lot of introverted men who are much like you - they don't feel comfortable speaking up. It is just that they're not very visible because they aren't heard.
In my opinion, assertiveness is more of a personality issue. And it is ridiculous that we expect everyone to be assertive - it does not improve your ability to code in any way.