Where are the Female Programmers?
blog.overclocked.com
blog.overclocked.com
That doesn't ring true to me. Professional software development is inherently a collaborative process. Yes, there are portion of the day or week when the primary interaction is the human struggling with the computer to bend the machine to the human will, but the process of defining the product, the architecture, and the implementation -- even in a small company -- is work that involves interpersonal interaction.
I don't know any software developer who doesn't need to -- and benefit from -- talking to real people on a daily basis. The successful programmers are the ones who can actually do this without burning bridges and making enemies.
So: I'd love to hear more about your experience, because it's a pretty far cry from anything I've seen.
Seriously, after you move around a few times and keep seeing the same things happen, you might decide it's unfixable and move on.
This discussion becomes one of predator and prey, and can women ever be safe in a world or a profession where men have enough power for the predators to proceed unfettered.
To my original point, it is certainly possible that by virtue of the dynamic that the profession is already dominated by men, women stay out of it purely for concern of their own safety, and the rise of 'brogrammer' culture certainly reinforces this ( see http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.htm... ), but I'm not persuaded that's actually the necessary-and-sufficient condition. I think the brogrammer culture is overstated, and women have taken down many male-dominated fields, opening them (and public opinion) to a better way.
Personally, I hope progamming is next in that queue, because I, for one, am tired of working with all white (and indian, and chinese) guys.
At that point you can jump to another venue and hope for improvement, or try to alter your behavior to be less than genuine. Basically, start acting like someone else at work. The acting thing wears thin sooner or later.
I can dig up a citation for that last claim if you like. I've also written a bunch of my own posts about these topics over the past year or so. http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/06/04/fireandforget/ is one of them.
That's not male or female developers, that's all developers. However, I am interested in the "Fire and Forget" meme applied to software management. I'm going to noodle on that some more.