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Comment by msoad | Hacker News Reader

So I started programming (for real) about two years ago. I spent about four months teaching myself coding PHP, JavaScript and CSS. I was able to secure a job after four months. I wasn't really good enough for the position.

My wife is doing the same. She is following my path. She have me, I teach her and she is learning much faster. After a year, she is still looking for a volunteer job! Nobody believes she can do anything.

This is extremely sad. My wife is far more advanced than me when I got my first job. We are immigrants and we are not white, I believe those adds to our problems.

Everyone who says women don't deserve this kind of attention never saw a women struggling get in tech world.

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I hear you, friend, it's like it's ok for companies to hire us , men, as a "risky bet", I'm not the best engineer but thankfully my employers have all "seen" something in me to have enough faith to give me the chance to learn the job and then become better. Women seem to not get the same kind of good faith: my partner has two engineering degrees and she's by far a better engineer than I (skill-and-attitude-wise), and yet most companies reject her because of her "lack of experience". I know that that is a problem that befalls recent graduates all over the globe, but the fact that I garnered faith from employers more than once and she hasn't, not a single time, is -IMO- telling of a lack of balance.

Aye, holding people to different standards is a way to discriminate.

>We are immigrants and we are not white, I believe those adds to our problems.

Usually, sadly, this is because initially you don't have a formal education (university or otherwise)...

Self taught programmers are more discriminated against these days than women, in my opinion. A lot of companies _say_ they don't care if you don't have a degree, but my experience is that the programmer with a degree from Stanford but a blank github account will get the job over a self-taught developer with dozens of shipped projects under their belt.

That is the exact opposite of my experience.

I have never had the slightest indication that anyone actually looked at my Github account listed at the top of the resume, let alone that this ever helped me get any job I've had. So I'm inclined to treat this as an urban legend.

hm. as a self-taught sysadmin, this hasn't been my experience.

I mean, a degree from Stanford is something that is worth a whole hell of a lot more than your average degree... so yeah, maybe someone from Stanford would have a significant advantage over someone self-taught... but someone from an average university? maybe some advantage, but yeah, I don't think it's as big of a deal as being a woman, or being foreign or what have you.

Of course, if you are self taught and have no experience? sure, you have it really rough. Much more so than a person who has a degree and no experience. You need the experience. but after ten years? (remember, you should have /at least/ 4 years more experience than the kid with the degree, if you are self-taught.) From what I've seen? I can be pretty competitive.

But women? Nobody has ever rejected /me/ from a job with:

"I'm sorry, but we don't have any diversity positions at this time."

The mind reels. I have had a job, before, when I was much younger, where I thought I was hired for altruistic reasons. It was soul-crushing. Imagine that rattling around the back of your head for the rest of your career.

She should just release whatever she creates why learning. Stereotypes are no longer valid if you have a proof of your skills in Github.

In an ideal world, you would be correct. This is not an ideal world.

What if I tell you I didn't know Git when I got my first job and she has a bunch of green dots in her Github profile?

I tell you I absolutely believe you, because I watched my wife have the exact same problems.

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