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Comment by ajays | Hacker News Reader

She doesn't mention it, but another great thing about being an engineer is that engineers are quite egalitarian and the evaluation criteria is often very objective (speed of the code, complexity of the algorithm, etc.). As a result, women just have to be good at what they do, and there's hardly any discrimination. In other fields, often, for a woman to just be good is not enough; there is overt (or covert) discrimination, "old boys" networks, etc.

// male here, but with several female engineer friends

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I don't know. Engineers in general may be more impressed with skill than non-engineers, but as a woman in a technical field, I do feel constant pressure to not merely meet, but exceed, the abilities of my male peers in order to receive the same level of respect. I've felt it all my life, even as far back as middle and high school, competing in math competitions and our school's academic team, and being in the honors and AP classes.

It's not an overt thing. There's never any one comment or specific action by an individual you can point at and say, "See! Right there! You aren't giving me equal respect!" but the pressure is definitely there.

Also, the converse is true. Not only do you have to be better, to be seen as equal, anything you do wrong is magnified. Would Leah Culver's "creative" rounding method have been nearly a big deal if she'd been male? I have the feeling that while people would still have joked about it, it wouldn't have been as widespread or for as long.

I think it's likely that your male peers, those who are interested in excellence, are also feeling that same pressure. I'm not suggesting that everything is equal, because it patently isn't, but the constant pressure to exceed the abilities of your peers is common, and I believe is motivating and even healthy. Someone's got to be the best at foo; if foo is important, why should you be the best at it and let others be the best at bar, baaz, quux, etc?

I've also obviously made mistakes and while the mistake spotlight is shining in your face, it feels pretty magnified, especially if you're one who has previously earned significant technical respect. For three years, I led the group in our company responsible for post-morteming every production issue, and reporting to our business leadership in a weekly meeting every issue that cost us more than $2000. In all that time, and in the rest of my two decades in the field, I don't think I've ever sensed a whiff of "you made that mistake because of your extra X chromosome..." (unfamiliar with Leah Culver, but will google now)

They probably do, but I even recognize the bias in myself. Even having experienced the wrong end of it, I often recognize myself subconsciously defaulting to less respect to another woman in technical matters.

Down in her comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2274993 pamelafox linked a blog post she had written about it being good to be a girl in CS, but that post references a previous one she'd written in which she talks about her experience in Model UN in school, where she found herself doing the same thing. Automatically requiring other girls to 'prove' themselves more than the boys before she had respect for them as a speaker. (That post is here: http://blog.pamelafox.org/2009/10/should-i-defend-my-cred-ye...)

I try to be conscious of it, but again, I know what it's like to be on the receiving end. If this is a bias even other women aware of the problem have and have to consciously fight in themselves, how many others (men and women) don't even get as far as recognizing it?

Would Leah Culver's "creative" rounding method have been nearly a big deal if she'd been male?

Definitely not. If she were male (or an unattractive female), we'd never have heard of her to begin with. She would have been just another anonymous low level coder working for Kevin Rose.

"He's the Michael Moore of software." That's what the community says when a man with visibility writes bad code:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=923660

I'm quite sure women "feel constant pressure"; I'm just not sure its there. It may be a different emotional response to social pressure: guys are largely oblivious, while some women are acutely sensitive.

That's a nice thought, but the real promotions often happen on the grounds of "leadership", "management" and "communication skills", which women are often perceived to lack.

Or maybe you work in a more egalitarian place than me.

If anything, I think women generally have _better_ communication skills than men.

You do realize that we're talking in vast generalizations here. Engineers run the gamut; there will be sexist, racist and bigoted engineers too. But my experience in nearly 20 years of being in the field has been that engineers, _in general_, are more egalitarian. If someone comes up with cool shit, no one cares whether that person is a woman, or a man, or what color his/her skin is; if it's cool, everyone goes "oooh!" and s/he gets instant respect.

It's still status-seeking behaviour, just with different totems.

An alternative is being encouraged to go into product / management roles (read: out of engineering) because you've got "communication skills."

Yes! I can't tell you how many people have tried to steer me away from development because I speak human AND code, and can actually make eye contact.

What's eye contact for, anyway? I can read body language reasonably well, but I always feel like people are expecting me to do something with my eyes and I can never tell what, exactly, I'm supposed to do with them.

Then you're safe! No management role for you!

Phew! :-P

I got used to it over time, but sometimes it nags at me.

Some of us have significant hearing loss. Eye contact (better stated face contact) provides a lot of non-verbal cues as to what the %!*^&%! you're saying. It's not quite lip-reading, but I think it's getting additional information about where the syllable breaks are.

Basically you're supposed to look at their eyes for 5-7 seconds at a go. Then look away but not at their chest (regardless of sex). Flick to something behind and above them, glance at a window or clock or other feature in the area.

If you don't like their eyes, focus on the bridge of their nose, they won't be able to tell the difference.

For neurotypicals, it creates sensations of companionship and trust, until it goes on too long and then it becomes creepy and uncomfortable for them.

"The eyes of men converse as much their tongues." ~ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/he-speaks-she-speaks/201...

Maybe. I've met a damn large number of openly sexist engineers though, so I'm not sure how true it is.

Good point--that's pretty much the experience I've had, but I've only worked in software, so I didn't have much to compare it to!

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