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> What the FUCK is wrong with this industry, that thinks it can destroy people like this?

I would echo this sentiment if it were "What the FUCK is wrong with my colleagues?"

I have never had a sour personal experience involving any coworkers in tech. Not sexism, racism, anything-ism. Never once, I'm over 5 years in (developer as well).

I've had terrible experiences before I moved to tech.

I know it's just an anecdote--like yours--and I feel fortunate and lucky.

Anyway, I can't echo your sentiment that it's an entire industry. Nearly the entire tech industry would be appalled and disgusted by the behavior of the people in your story.

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I shared this story with my company (90% women). Not a single person here has ever experienced anything as overtly sexist as this. They all agree though that they would've quit on the spot and found another job.

This issue certainly isn't found in every tech company and I'd argue that it isn't even most.

There's also selection bias (is that what this is called?) in that folks write blog posts about these kinds of negative experiences but very few write blog posts saying "my team is great, everyone is respectful and we all get along swimmingly."

Maybe not many consider sharing the video with the word "fuck" in it sexist? We use WTF quite a lot, I'd never ever even dream to think about it as something sexist.

Edit: my bad, I missed the part in which context that repsonse was posted. It changes the perspective a lot.

I think there's a difference between saying WTF (in Slack, or wherever) and replying "We don't give a fuck" in response to an article about sexism in the work place.

At my company WTF is acceptable language but saying you don't care about a coworker's valid concern is not.

The video "We don't give a fuck" was shared as a response to the author sharing a link to "an article on why so many women leave engineering".

Actually it's not "fuck" but, word for word, "we beat our bollocks", which is a French equivalent of "we don't give a fuck"

Hi Rimliu ! The video can be translated to "we don't give a fuck" but it literally means "we whip our balls with it" :p

That sounds gross to me, but is it offensive in French culture?

Totally not trying to justify anything, I just have zero understanding of the cultural context.

Yeah it is gross and you're really not supposed to say it in a work environment.

It's great that you've never had similar negative experiences but stories like these are common and, while not exclusive to this industry, very prevalent.

You might think the entire industry would be disgusted but stories like these keep coming out, from high profile tech companies to small firms so it seems pretty clear this is a problem.

I think the issue comes up consistently when people say things like "what's wrong with people in this industry". The statement would seem to apply to literally everyone in the industry is bad, which is trivially untrue. Especially when you are doing all you can it's weird to just be lumped in with other people and being able to do nothing about it. I'm not saying that how she says things is bad but it often will make people defensive regardless of whether they agree that it's a problem or not

The tech industry shouldn't aim for perfection. It should aim for the average level of negative experiences across all industries, meaning it should have as many of these cases as other industries. It is not really a travesty or an indication of a problem in the tech industry if a few of these cases pop up from time to time.

What is clear is that these cases are publicized to a disproportionate degree when they occur in the tech industry compared to other industries.

I'm not sure it's just publicity though. It seems like having such a high male ratio can create these kinds of environment. You're right that perfection is probably impossible but I think 0 tolerance is still a good target.

You're kind of ignoring the huge chasm of a gap between "perfection" and "average level of negative experiences".

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Giving disproportionate attention to sexism in tech will probably discourage women from entering the field though.

Like you say, it's not exclusive to this industry and I think it's a problem that, the way we're often presenting it, we make it sound like these problems are only in STEM. We don't consider whether anything is a US-centric issue, or a SV-centric issue, France-centric issue, or whether it's simply humans being shitty.

Focusing on "fixing sexism in the industry" is hopeless if the problem isn't specific to the industry, I think.

Sexism isn't specific to any one single place. You try to fix the issues that you can impact, in this case the industry we're in.

What makes "the industry we're in" easier to impact than "the country we're in"?

And I would say that while sexism isn't specific to any single place, culture is highly impactful on the amount of racism/sexism/homophobia you may experience and this is what changes the most when you go from country to country. A startup in San Francisco will have a very different culture to a mid-size company in Madrid.

The industry is smaller and less resistant to change then the entire country. I also have the ability to affect where I work and my coworkers. I have almost no ability to affect the country besides voting and maybe arguably activism.

I get the sense that industry-level change is not as obviously a low-hanging fruit versus government-level change. There's a mechanism operating over the government, but what's the mechanism operating over an industry? A secret cabal of investors?

The individual. You call out shitty behavior, you don't support/work for shitty behavior, you support people dealing with shitty behavior.

Because fixing the entire country is a much large problem.

Most of the time, when people talk about "lets fix the broader problem not our specific problem", it is mostly an excuse to do nothing, as opposed to an actual attempt to solve the bigger problem.

People in tech have both the ability and responsibility to fix issues that directly effect the tech industry.

Whereas we don't necessarily have the ability to change worldwide culture as a whole.

The tech industry isn't US-only. What you see in the US is the tip of an iceberg that spans six continents.

So again how exactly is it easier to fix something "in the industry" vs. in the country?

Because you and me can do our part to help solve the problem here and now.

We can make direct contributions by working to solve the problem within our own companies and move the needle that way.

It is also because this whole "it is better to solve a different problem" is basically just an excuse to do nothing, by throwing our hands in the air.

I'll be more worried when it stops being news.

I have done contracts at ad agencies, banks and insurances and from my experience these are much, much worse. Tech companies are super friendly places in comparison.

> I had studied women in tech for two years as part of my master’s in Sociology degree

I think the author has more than her personal anecdote to back up her statement.

This is 100% right. I've only worked in a bar and a restaurant for a combined total of a year and I've heard so many women repeat very similar comments as to what offended her on a daily basis. Bad jokes about tits, pussys, and small dicks. Some people are aggressive, plain and simple.

I've also worked with several women in tech who very strongly resisted the feminist movement and felt they needed to carve their own path. They are some of the most badass software developers I've ever worked with and without them their teams would falter into a horrible mess of terrible code and documentation. If anything I'm understating how important they are to the companies they work for.

It's my personal belief that the changes with women's rights in our country over the several decades has been one of the best things to ever happen. For the majority of my life growing up it has been just me and my mom, and even in the past two decades I've seen a lot of really good change. I can't imagine the amount of change in the past four decades.

The issue is that much like the BLM movement SOME people, not all, are turning it into an us versus them situation. This mentality is never productive and indefensible. Read the final statement "We won’t let them grind us down."

Right now my Facebook is jam packed full of friends posting about how everyone needs to revolt against white men because of the transsexual military ban that Trump just enacted. I'd love to have a discussion with them about how Trump's actions don't represent white males everywhere, but they will turn hostile and rip me to shreds the moment I say anything which opposes that statement. They've done it before and I don't want to argue with my friends like that.

All of this said, the manager is horribly sexist with comments like below. Even if that is true, there is a strong context in the situation. Why even bring it up, what point is he trying to make? "Later that night, he also said that women had a smaller brain. That’s when I couldn’t take it anymore and left."

That's really fucked up, go finish the contract and find a better team to work with. Life is too short for shit like that. And please don't turn this into us versus them. Find better people to work with.

EDIT: In the comment section responding to someone suggesting a company for her to work at, she wrote: "Thank you for the tip ! I have to keep fighting but it’s not easy, I know that 42 school is very sexist as well and there are only 7% of women there so I’m not so delighted to go there. But that school is very famous in France and I want to acquire those low level C language skills."

Then don't go! Go work at some place where people treat you with respect.

I'm a female student currently enrolled at Holberton School where the culture is not sexist AND the student body is 40% women AND we're learning both low and high level languages (C, Python).

"I have never had a sour personal experience involving any coworkers in tech."

Isn't that the same as saying "not all men" etc?

No - it's saying don't extrapolate your personal experiences to an entire industry. That's not that crazy.

And since this is a totally new kind of story that hasn't been in the international headlines repeatedly over the last 5 years and a general topic of discussion for the last 25 we should ignore anec...

Hey wait. It IS those things. Gosh maybe we should listen then?

This urge to tell people anecdotes are not data is very very stale, when it comes to this topic. We have data and it's consistent with this anecdote. A woman being harassed in the workplace appears to be plausible and backed by data.

So why does anyone feel like immediately posting a not-all-tech-orgs helps anyone buy the tech org you're representing?

Never said that -

The story wasn't "I almost quit my job" - the story was "I almost quit tech." If you want to keep generalizing - we can keep going to "I almost quit modern cities and went off to live as a hermit."

I think it's important to share her story. However, it's more powerful when people don't overreach, and talk about their specific situation and how it had specific instances & issues because it allows people to understand, empathize & change things that are within their circle of influence.

Saying "tech" has a problem is easy to say, but it doesn't actually provide any actionable insight on what to do about it.

So... You want to mollify her point by saying, "Not all tech?"

I'm just confused, because this seems like such an obvious statement. Of course not every workplace is this bad. Why does that have to be said here?

The author seems to convey a frustration with what she feels is an industy-level problem. Given the events of the last 5 years and the general statistics for women in tech, maybe that's not unreasonable.

Both your point and hers can coexist in the same narrative. It's just that your point seems a bit like you're mad the article wasn't copy-edited to avoid pedantic objections about implicit quantification.

You're looking for an argument that you're not going to get.

I'm all about holding people accountable - but in order to do that you have to be specific about who is causing the issue & what they're doing.

Have a good day.

> I had studied women in tech for two years as part of my master’s in Sociology degree

I don't think the author is extrapolating her personal experience to the industry. Her experience is a personal example of a trend she had previously studied.

No, it's sort of the opposite. "Not all men" in this case would be "not all companies have cultures like this". The response to "not all men" is "but (practically) all women have experienced harassment". So in this case one might say "even if not all companies do this, all employees have experienced it". And mod's comment is that at least one employee has not.

In some cases “not all men” is used to shut down the woman who is speaking. It’s like saying since not all men are like the man described in your experience, your experience doesn’t matter. In that case, “not all men” is a phrase I wouldn’t use.

However, when the individual extrapolates his/her experience to the men in the industry as a whole, comprising of millions of different people, I think “not all men” or “not everyone in this industry” is a perfectly valid response.

It's been demonstrated time and time again that this is an issue that is rampant across the entire tech industry. Just because you personally haven't experienced this doesn't mean that's not true.

It's rampant in almost every industry. Tech is just talking about it more.

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