Being a Female Developer
andela.com
andela.com
I also have learned to have a healthy suspicion of companies that seem too obsessed with the "women in tech" thing. I usually find they seem to just be doing it because out of causes you could pick in tech, it has little downside for the company and even serves as a recruiting tool.
But you seem to miss the point that some people are dicks, but are mostly dicks to women, or black people, or disabled people. They may not realise they're being dicks, but other people will recognise elements of dickishness or outright dickery.
And also that fighting the dicks makes life better for everyone.
I find it weird that when women say (for example) "We are sexually assaulted so often a separate women only London Underground carriage would be welcome, until law enforcement and society can pressure offenders to stop offending" they are met with hostility and denial, rather than a willingness to try to understand the severity of the problem.
Concerning your last point - I'd guess they're met with hostility and denial because they legitimately don't believe the issue is as widespread as many are led to believe.
As for why we single out people who hate others because of skin colour, but not because of say hobbies: A large number of people have been murdered (or beaten, or denied employment, or denied housing, or etc etc) because they are black. I don't think I can find more than a handful of philatelists who were murdered because they collect stamps.
I think the touchiness around discrimination based on skin colour is understandable and based on plenty of evidence.
Yes of course, a lot of people aren’t killed for collecting stamps. But I don’t think many people today are killed specifically for being black or gay either. It does happen, yes. But I believe the overwhelming majority of people just carry on with life. We should all remember that whites vs. colored fountains were deemed lawful by the government.
I truly believe most people today just want to go to work, do their job, and get paid regardless of the gender or color of the people around them. And honestly, what more would you expect? We live in the country with the greatest amount of diversity you can’t escape. Americans think Americans are the least tolerant and my travels to other countries and interactions with different people shows me the exact opposite.
Edit: I say this as someone who grew up in the South. I lived around racists but most of that stays in their head.
This is all well, until these same women start vehemently opposing male-only spaces (e.g. men's clubs, male barbers, ...). Sure, the reasons might be different, but just as women are concerned about being touched by men (physical), so are men concerned about being judged by women (psychological). I think both deserve to be taken into account and made a reality.
However, her two takeaways from her experience are, "your skills will speak louder than your gender," and, "to become a female developer, you only have to do what any other smart dev would do...[i.e. work hard]." I think the problem is precisely that many women have found these statements to be false. Many women that are smart devs have gone into the tech sector with good skills, but found that they are still judged unfairly by their gender. The fact that this women hasn't experienced that doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist for others.
Also, the claim that if you work hard and have good skills, then your gender won't matter has the (probably unintended) implication that if you do find others discriminating against your based on your gender, then you must not have the skills or the work ethic.
I really don't know to what extent gender discrimination exists in the tech sector, but I think we should be careful to avoid over generalizing from individual experiences and we should be especially careful not to suggest that discrimination only happens to the developers whose skills aren't good enough to overcome other people's stereotypes.
The fact you're reading it, digesting it, and we're discussing it can only be a positive thing.
You're a man. I'm not sure you're in the best position to see.
I found the sexism right there. ("Is man must not be able to see or have valid experiences.")
That's not sexism, the claim that a man can't experience life as a woman would. In fact, that seems like a really uncontroversial statement.
I thought it was very interesting, because she essentially "served as her own control." The only thing that changed in the situation was how people perceived her gender - the ideas, feelings and performance were from the exact same person. It certainly made me reflect more on unconscious biases I might have.
Absolutely not, the "observer" (i.e. herself) is in a different position and probably in different state of mind.
I wonder why all those women then assume it's sexism. After all, they don't know what a man's experience in the same situation would be (by the same logic as above). So it might just be common, non-discriminatory dickery.
Maybe you could do the same, with your female friends? Better to ask than keep on wondering.
Bullying someone for an opinion you don't agree with? Classy.
Like I said, I'm sure it happens. But it also seems to me like it's either worse in other locations, or it's blown completely out of proportion in terms of frequency.
Sexism is everywhere, at least in tech there is a fair amount of awareness that it's at least an issue. In writing I found it was just taken for granted.
And in writing/journalism I found it way more depressing to see SO many women as a total percentage of the profession and then the gender breakdown of the people in charge. In tech there aren't that many of us, but almost all the ones I know are in good positions.
Especially since most of it is perpetuated by people in management in her field, not young guys that don't really know how to communicate with anyone properly, let alone women, as it tends to be in tech fields.
In real estate, journalism, PR, etc. it's so tight knit and competitive that speaking out can destroy your career. I merely quit a journalism job because of an awful EIC and didn't say anything publicly against him, but he was eventually fired and blamed me (though a lot of people had complained to HR about him and it wasn't just about sexism). I really doubt I could even freelance for many local publications because of it because they are all run by his friends and it's not that hard to find another writer.
Need more articles like this. Not just realistic but also motivational.
Not a criticism - I get what she meant, but it's amusing.
This is the only thing I disagree with. Although this would be good for your career, it does not work for all types of people.
I don't do as much on my own time as I used to... but I absolutely did for the first decade of my career.
To get to the top, you need to put in the extra effort.
We've also been allowed to learn modern languages very quickly, half attributed to our spongey brain, the other to the free time we had growing up. They're the same languages that companies are built on nowadays.
Now we're in the workforce, in a few years time we'll have a wealth of knowledge not considered deep by experts, but "good enough" by many. And if we've stuck with a particular area, or a particular language we'll be able to flout ourselves as "masters", when in reality, we've just screwed the bolt so many times, we know how many screws it takes.
And the bar will be raised. Because you raised it for us, and then you made it easier for us to learn to raise it ourselves.
The complexity of development has increased massively in the last 15 years. Not just the languages (arguably becoming less complex), or the frameworks, or the different patterns or technologies (ala queueing, authentication, architecture and environments).. But the sheer wealth of knowledge required for an entry level dev job.
We're full stack. We can do a DBA's, an architects, a BA's and a technical writers job - we've been doing it on our own since our age reached double digits.
We haven't just built the car. We've designed it, we've tested it, we've pulled it together and have gone on to become professional drivers. Sure some of the parts.. We don't know how they work. But we know that they do work. And we know they're reliable. Why reinvent the wheel when you can import it?
That's a bit too strong a generalization, I believe. To become and remain a top 5-10% developer you need to do varied and challenging projects, but I see no need for them to be personal projects or side work. It is quite possible for one's regular job to provide the variety and challenge necessary to develop and maintain top developer skills. It can be hard to find such jobs, but they are out there.
For a lot of us, we're really blessed to do something that we actually enjoy.
From my perspective I am a person that throughout the majority of my life has been considered turkish in germany because of my looks, until people get to know my actual heritage. Yet in the US I'm just considered a random white guy. In Germany turkish are not really considered a minority and the degratory terms are overlayed by more and more political correctness (Ausländer, Migrationshintergrund - someone who's parents immigrated sometime in the past, Musel - nowadays it's ok to hate muslims and beard means muslim anyway right).
For a long time in my naivity I did not know why I got that special treatment. Why I was the first to blame when something went wrong, and why people would think it's funny when I'd vote for the more complicated Goethe book in German class. Oh you speak very well German may I ask where you learned that?
There's plenty research on all the shit you have take when you're a foreigner in Europe. Fun fact, being Romanian or Italian can be just as bad depending on where you are in Germany.
When we talk diversity it's a whole different story. Being a white spanish dude in northern Europe can be diverse. Americans in their ignorance will see "just two white caucasian dudes at a conference".
I liked being in the US precisely because I'm considered just another white guy. Yet what absolutely utterly pisses me off about american culture is how disengenious it is.
Despite having had to spend days at the police station for forgetting my ID or getting assaulted by security guards and then getting sued in the most absurd kangoroo court i've ever been to.
Now to get back to the argument, for some reason in the US I have white middle class women, who's parents can just lash out 60k a year for an Ivy league school (an amount most Südländer as they call them will never make in their lifetime) and who haven't had a hint of discrimination in their lifetime tell me that I should keep my mouth shut and just take whatever they say and:
"what do you know, you're way too white anyway" - that's the level at which the discussion is happening.
I wouldn't even care that much if these people weren't so hell bent in destroying the only safe haven people like me had. I'm not even sure why they're doing it.
The only reason I'm at the place in my life I am right now, is because whenever I got back home from all the shit I had to take in school and elsewhere I just went online hung out in IRC and did random stuff. Very few people actually knew me in person. When I'd talk too much shit and not do anything they'd shut me up. Oh you read the dragon book and wrote an LR parser? Now we're talking.
There were some lunatics in there, but you know what, it didn't matter. Because whenever I wanted to learn something from them. I was demanding that someone I don't know, devotes his time to me for free. I don't get to make demands in that position, if you think differently something is wrong with you. It's called entitlement.
Most discussions are not about women in tech, they're about culture or work etiquette. I'm not saying you can't be actively pissed about it, but they're two different things.
I once wore a Jacket at an Erlang conference in DC(I thought that's what they wear in the capitol). It was the most awkward moment in my life in a tech environment.
Pretty cool article though. We all became developers so we can build things: we have that in common I think.
[0] https://medium.com/art-marketing/being-a-female-developer-6f...
The hijacked scroll was annoying though!
Once upon a time, I was in IRC having a discussion with someone about the electronic art scene... it was a few months later I discovered the person in question was even a she.
This is in particular one of the things that's great about open source, online communications, and github culture... it really doesn't matter your gender, race, or anything else, so long as you make an effort, you'll generally fit in just fine.