And I haven’t been trying exceptionally hard to avoid it.
If such jibes had happened those people would not have a job, point blank.
Given the average seniority for a full stack engineer is 10 years, I should have encountered at least one, or worked with someone who had been in such an environment.
I think chud behaviour is an excuse, because it’s not tolerated for at least my lifetime.
That sort of chud behavior is very much tolerated in many places: https://www.romerolaw.com/blog/2021/11/complaint-alleges-ram...
I don’t know a single engineer who doesn’t get imposter syndrome.
As a man, I have been openly derided for doing something stupid, if I were a woman I might internalise that as if it was sexism- so how do you deal with that? When people are so convinced that if anything critical could be based on gender?
At some point you're treating people like children.
Again I’ll say it: every single educational institution and workplace I have ever been in has intentionally mentioned that anything that could be perceived as misogyny or sexual harassment have a zero tolerance policy.
Am I really the outlier? I’ve worked so many places and across so many countries and industries…
Just because they say that doesn't mean they'll do that. People lie, they systematically sexually harass for years, and only if its made public will they actually do anything about it.
https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/uber-pay-44-million-resolve-ee...
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/activision-blizzard-gender-...
I have been through some really awful experiences in the workplace in the last few years, and some of the most egregiously abusive behavior came from another woman. Women can be incredibly cruel to each other, and this woman in particular seemed to have it out for other women. Women are not inherently saints, and they are not inherently kind to other women.
On the other hand, I have often, often worked on teams that were (except for me) all men, but by and large they were men who had mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters that they loved, and who therefore had no trouble relating to me with respect and affection. While it is true that some men treat women specifically badly, and that some men treat people generally badly, it is not true that men in general treat women badly. Quite the opposite.
It does take a moment, as a woman, to find your feet socially in an all male space. But does it not always take a moment to find your feet in any new space? I have generally found that what makes it go smoothly is the fact that we are all hackers. If anything, it is all the walking on eggshells about sexism that makes social integration awkward at first. People are trying to figure out how they are "supposed" to behave around me, worried that I will be aggressive socially and legally. When we focus on the work we do together and the love we have in common for the field, we become friends naturally and get along well.
I myself think all the hand-wringing over demographics has been a waste of time at best and counterproductive at worst. I think it makes more sense to focus on developing virtue, civility, and good leadership among the people who find themselves here.
In my teens my mom tried to reenter the workforce and got an office job, and she absolutely hated working with other women because of this. She wanted to work with men because in her experience, women were so much worse.
FWIW, I do think most men with wives and/or daughters are generally thoughtful coworkers, but I'm not sure that's a majority in most tech workplaces, especially the ones that skew young. Thinking back to my own experience, I think, I was blind to a lot of the things I'm speaking about (or perhaps even resistant to the idea of calling it out) until I had a long-term partner.
For a number of years I had the sense that I might be going crazy, because it seemed that throughout my whole working life I'd encountered good and bad people of both sexes, but never witnessed the kind of systematic targeting of women that both mainstream and alternative media sources told me was rife. How could it be that I couldn't see what was apparently right under my nose? So it's reassuring to know that there are also women who have had a similar experience.
Sure. One of the women I dated detailed a story about how a man at a conference she attended suggested it'd be more fun if she was roofies. To her face, in front of her co-workers (many of them women). She was in a majority female industry (healthcare).
Why do we just assume that men stop doing cringe stuff just because women are around?
I am passing along these anecdotes because they're more easy to empathize with than some of the more general arguments of why it can be hard to succeed in tech as a woman (but they really only tell part of the story). Some of my other anecdotes might also sound closer to things you've seen or heard at the work place, or perhaps it's easier to see how some of these things might have happened without you being aware of them, given their (relative) infrequency and the contexts in which they arise. All of them happened without an HR incident (like, really, should a guy who wrote a system called "naggy-wife" get in trouble? a choice was made like 20 years ago... and maybe the guy doesn't even work there anymore). But you can also see how negative experiences like this can build up and contribute to the relatively common feeling among female engineers that they "don't belong".
Not really, TBH. I especially can't see why a woman experiencing these (to my mind, rather mild) interactions would think that things would be better in some other career path.
Let's say I, a man, went to work in a traditionally female-dominated field like nursing, and found that the other nurses there had named their cafeteria dishwasher "Hubby" as a joke because it took forever to work.
Would I, a grown man, consider changing my career because of this? No, I wouldn't.
OTOH, if the other nurses seemed to view me with disrespect or suspicion and I found I wasn't able to shift that perception through my actions, then I'd reconsider.
Actually, this issue is in nursing. If you talk to male nurse organizations they do actually have issues of e.g. constantly being saddled with the heaviest patients or most physical labor because they're assumed to be strong, not having sexual harassment taken seriously from patients, and to be expected to take one for the team in handling the patients that were sexually inappropriate with female nurses. It does grate over time!
Tech workers are one of the least sexist groups out of any. If you think techies are sexist, you’d never last a day in medicine, law, or finance. Yet, women sign up for those in far higher percentages. Genuinely, it is actually hard to find a more left/progressive leaning professional field. It is not sexism that is the one thing keeping women out of tech. It is that it’s not an attractive or high status field to women. The people working in it are not seen as socially competent, it is highly outsourced, and depending on role has relatively little socializing. It’s also insanely competitive and you have to fight to keep your job from an army of H1B workers invading the country due to CEOs looking for slave labor. There are so many reasons to not be in tech and sexism should be one of the lowest reasons out there.
I don’t know any women complaining about sexism in comparison to the level of “holy fuck, when will I ever get a break?” It is an unrelenting field that constantly has you worried you’ll lose your job next month. On top of requiring you study at least 500 leetcode problems before you do any interviews. Go figure, most women don’t enjoy that.
She was placed in a group overseen by another consultant. He was from the same firm. In fact he was a principle in the firm.
He immediately started undermining her. He gave her advice that she followed, and then he criticized her for following his advice. He was extremely helpful to women employees from the client, but a complete dick to her. There were many other things he did. She documented what was happening, and complained to the skip-level but he denied it, and they didn't believe her. It looked like she was going to be out.
Then there was a reorganization and several other women from the same consulting company were moved onto her team. They had much more history with the company. They were all high performers. He started doing the same shit to them. When they started reporting the same treatments and complaints management finally listened, and recalled him to the central office.
The story has a great ending though. Once back in the main office, said horrible man then made a wonderful mistake. He started sexually harassing the new corporate council. That ended very badly for him.
So, yeah, sexual harassment happens.
This sounds like what happens to other males too? I'm not sure if that's related to sexual harassment though.
The solution there has nothing to do with hiring more women, and everything to do with zero tolerance for a sexist environment.
I mean, that happening is just insane. This isn't the 1950's.