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> But honestly, my boyfriend works at a company with a diversity group and they do the most ridiculous, cringe-worthy activities that really do not make women look very sensible, unfortunately (arts and crafts, etc).

That would make me uncomfortable. Not people who like art and thus do art&craft together, that is cool. But people who tie that to femininity for no good reason.

Maybe controversially, I'm going to suggest that this kind of diversity culture and brogrammer culture are both manifestations of the same misguided mindset - one where people try to engineer a culture from scratch, but end up creating something that only works for the kinds of people they're personally comfortable with.

The comments about more formal workspaces are interesting. Adult-oriented workspaces may be more bland and superficially less creative, but a space where you can be left alone to get on with your work and where "culture" isn't being forced on employees seems like it could be more likely to give everyone freedom to simply be professional.

How would you describe brogammer culture? I haven't really considered this topic at all so I may be entirely blind to it.

It seems similar to tying ping pong or beer to masculinity.

Oh, I agree. Besides, I find that puzzling. Women drink too. (Tho girls that wear girly high heels are at disadvantage at ping pong.)

One of the two made my life really uncomfortable when I surpassed his skill level

Can you give us a sample interaction that concretizes this, if it doesn't compromise the anonymity of you, this individual, or your company? I think some men can fall prey to perpetrating this even subconsciously, and it could be very useful for a lot of people, myself included, to see an example.

It started when our manager gave me a project that this coworker struggled to make progress on (the transition was made in a way that allowed the coworker to save face, if he wanted to). Prior to that, he tried to talk to me as though he was a mentor, which I mostly just nodded at - some of it was useful, at least at first. After the project transition though, he complained that I made gratuitous style changes, opened several PRs to try to fix the problem before I could and then in response to my code review publicly told me that he had more experience than me so maybe I should listen to him.

All of that might be attributed to his own self-consciousness if it weren't for the fact that he was deferential to male engineers in code review, and during the height of the tension with me, during scrum he started openly criticizing/mocking a female contractor's work (on an entirely unrelated project that he knew very little about).

This is a pretty egregious example, but I could imagine that a much subtler version happens more often (possibly it's happened to me but it seems more pragmatic to assume it's not related to sexism if at all possible).

One of the things that's always interesting to me about these kinds of issues is how the inappropriate behaviour is usually inappropriate regardless of the reasons the person targets someone. I see this kind of stuff all the time on teams and it is really frustrating. In a very strange sense, it's actually nice if the person is targeting only people of a particular gender or race because then you can easily fire them. It's much, much, much harder if these people mistreat others indiscriminately.

In my home country I'm part of the racial majority. In my adopted country, I'm a racial minority and I've worked in offices both places. I've experienced bullying in my home country and racism in my adopted country and it really doesn't feel any different to me. If someone is targeting you for abuse, it doesn't really matter what the reason is. I wish both were recognised as being inappropriate in the workplace.

Thank you. This was useful to have articulated for me (and I hope for others).

Being willing to fire people for "just" sexism is a great sign, and one many Big Name companies fail to manage.

Not a woman but just wanted to chime in and agree that just because a company markets itself as a great place for diversity, women, people from different cultures doesn't really mean much at an individual level. There are definitely companies where you see 'women in tech' programs and fliers on the wall while still incubating a chauvinistic, aggressive male culture in parallel during day to day operations. That's why everyone just needs to be very familiar with who they are working with on a daily basis.

From what I've seen 1/20 female engineers isn't something to be ashamed of for a small company. There just aren't that many available, and I suspect many are scooped up by Amazon/Microsoft/etc to pad their numbers, and that's hard to compete with.

Source: I worked at a ~75 person consulting company; we had two female recruiters who tried really hard to get more female engineers. I think we had like 4.

> company has to really push for women-friendly policies to be a great place for women to work, which I happen to completely disagree with.

Could you elaborate a little bit more please, beyond the cringey paper-scissor activities?

It is extremely common for something like "women-friendly policies" to be code for "we talk a good game, so shut the fuck up and quit making us look bad, you whiny bitch."

I do not have a tech job, but I have taken classes on things like social psychology. Attempts to address sexism, racism, etc often suffers from a problem of tokenism. This is not just the problem described in Dedeh Howard's "Black Mirror" of "We already have one black model on staff, so there is no room for you" but also just looking good superficial BS that amounts to metaphorically including pink decor, but not actually promoting women or taking them seriously.

At some point, I saw an article on HN by a woman who wrote that, no, she will not show up at your thing and be the woman talking about women in tech. It isn't her area of expertise. If you want her there to talk about the actual tech she actually knows something about, she is happy to sign up for that. But, no, she won't give speeches on women in tech. This is a widespread form of tokenism where women in tech only get invited to talk about the issues women in tech face for being women in tech while never being invited to actually talk about tech per se. It is hugely soul sucking and suffers from the problem of being belittling and demeaning in a way that makes it hard to rebut or complain about.

Tokenism is definitely an ass. I happen to come with a baggage of other labels (minority within minority within minority...) and even in so-called open environments, I often find myself on this super awkward scale:

- Ignored (only for the same idea to be suggested by another, receiving whoop-whoop, pat on the back)

- Disdained (do your job yeah but you're not supposed to do it so well it makes your colleagues inferior)

- Tokenistic photo add-on

I ain't taking that crap anymore so I'm flying solo now.

I basically also fly solo. I worked for a few years for a company with an excellent track record on things like diversity and I would go home to my sons sometimes and say "If this is excellent, good thing I don't work someplace average because I would be postal already." If BigCo with all the awards for awesomeness is as good as it gets, the only response I can come up with is "Fuck this noise. NO."

To be fair, I was usually saying this about some issue other than being a woman with a job. But I did decide I had no future there and could blithely move on after a senior programmer in the department I wanted a job in asked me for a date. He was the only guy at the entire company in five years of working there who even knew what GIS was without me explaining it and he did not go "OMG. You have a Certificate in GIS? My department could use your skillz!" Or even "Gee, I wonder if she is networking with me and hoping to further her career." Nope, he went straight to "OMG It's a girl and she is interested in some of the same things as me. I wonder if I can get a date!"

"other labels (minority within minority within minority..."

Your description has me curious and sympathetic. What is a "minority within a minority within a minority" in your case?

The more company advertises being woman friendly, the more they are not on the inside, and are usually trying to convince the public they are after multiple women have spoken out. In fact every company I've worked for who had a woman leave because of issues with men and the company realzied they handled it poorly, ramped up their we have lots of women bs campaign right after, and they bring SWE in once a month and all that crap but it has no effect on yoru day to day quality of interaction as a woman in the workplace.

ignore the hype, tune into the culture.

Thanks, I shot off my comment kind of quickly so should clarify that I definitely think that many policies touted as "women-friendly" are incredibly important but I think of them more as family/age-group-friendly or human-friendly (maternity & paternity leave, flexible hours, etc). My comment was basically just referring to diversity groups (as I've experienced them) and women-only events.

Ah ok, I was curious to know your opinion since for me, "women-friendly policies" mean consideration for pregnancy, childcare and so on!

Regarding diversity events, I slightly disagree with you. Ironically I became an advocate only after my engineering education, when I suddenly experienced 'different' treatment. Welcome to the real world, they say, but it affected me quite badly. I suddenly found those women support groups comforting. None of the meetups I went was ever "Down with the opposite sex!" although yes, I find myself wishing that there's more rad startups than just fashion and makeup. But there is something refreshing about just listening to leaders, entrepreneurs and hopefuls, all driven and comfortable with their identities, including being female. I mean, if they can do it, I can do it too, right??

Ah ok, I was curious to know your opinion since for me, "women-friendly policies" mean consideration for pregnancy, childcare and so on!

As a father, it bothers me to see those considerations described as "women-friendly." Why is it assumed that my wife is the one who has to leave early to pick our daughter up from school? The most "woman friendly" policy would also involve changing the expectations on men to allow women's partners to take on more of the care giving role (for example). I strongly agree with seaknoll in characterizing them as "human friendly" policies.

They're not "women-friendly" because they just cover women. The most women-friendly policy in the world is one that provides plenty of these opportunities to both sexes in equal, or almost equal measure.

If HR doesn't have to worry that I'm a bigger liability because of my gender (after all, the man sitting next to me also gets flex time and leeway to pick up his kids) that's a bonus for me.

The worst case is when there are no opportunities, or when they're so lopsided (14 weeks paid parental leave for women, 2 weeks for men) that you become a liability.

"Women-friendly policies" don't just cover things like maternity leave. Ultimately they do boil down to "human-friendly policies." How: they accommodate women more and thus balance a culture that's traditionally male-dominated. At least that's the idea.

(I was going to quote seaknoll's comment until I realised that you already mentioned it!)

It is possible that we are on the same page, but from your choice of language, I feel you are still subtly missing my point. You talk about "accommodating women more" in order to "balance a culture that's traditionally male-dominated." My point is that we also need to accommodate men more to balance that culture. Again, just for example, if I want to be an equal partner in raising my child (and I like to think I am), I need the same sort of considerations that a woman in my position does. In other words, it is not just about breaking women out of their traditional roles; we need to break men out of their traditional roles as well. I suppose that you can call these ideas "women friendly," but to me, that is putting the focus unfairly on women, when it should really be about accommodating both genders to help them meet in the middle, so to speak.

Considering that US federal law seems to be gender agnostic, from skimming Wikipedia, I'm not so sure about this criticism. At least there seems to be a ground work for caring for parents and not only mothers.

While I agree with your sentiment (as a father with ~18 month parental leave behind me) It would be nice to know if there are common policies that are problematic in your view.

You seem to misunderstand. I don't object to the policies; I am strongly in favour of them. After all, I benefit from them as well. I object to it being characterized as primarily a women's issue. That does a disservice to both sexes 1) by implying that women's gender is the problem when it is not, and 2) by failing to recognize that in order to live a balanced life, men need exactly the same policies. In other words, it is not a "women's issue," it is a "human issue."

You have a very balanced view IMOP.