Female developers as a perk | Hacker News Reader

Female developers as a perk

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18 pointsm4tthumphrey21 comments

The line between really great and really creepy is very thin here.

Yes, I too would vastly prefer working in a diverse work environment that includes women, over working in a place that doesn't hire women on principle, or does hire them, but they quickly flee. But I would not want to work in a place that treats women as a commodity, or tries to attract male programmers with them.

It's a matter of attitude, and that attitude does show in the way you present this as a perk.

I'm not sure it's all that thin. It might seem thin because this post is so far on the creepy side that perspective makes it look thin.

I'm pretty hard to offend (and male) and can't read that item as anything other than offensive (to me) and likely incredibly offensive (to some others).

It would really be important to express it tastefully. Describing female coworkers as a "perk" is tasteless and possibly sexist. Saying that "we strive to have a mixed gender workplace" is positive for both men and women.

What seems to make this even more 'creepy' is the listing of ethnicities for the women developers, no? That comes across as saying that the women are somewhat exotic (from other countries). It almost seems like he's saying "if you look French, Italian, and/or Spanish women, this is the place for you". I would have thought it more likely for someone to give the home country for the keg of beer than for the female employees.

The fact that he mentions junior just implies that the aforementioned women are not only exotic, but also young. Definitely clumsy in delivery.

As a female developer, I wasn't terribly offended by line item #8 (regardless of whether it was intended to imply diversity or it was a joke in questionable taste), but I did find it strange that female seemed to equate to "junior" developer in this context. Did I read that wrong?

He didn't want them hired for their expertise. More as an "assistants" with emphasis on the first syllable.

But having gender balanced workplace is indeed a perk. A few of my friends (female) that work in female only environments usually say stuff like viper nest (on bad days) or hen house (on good ones). And when in 2004 after my insistence to hire a girl on the dev team in my then company the workplace become much more civil, the language somewhat tamer, the general tidiness of the rooms increased and because she was awesome slow and steady coder the quality of the shipped code increased a lot.

Because of the use of the slash in the original post, I suspect he meant this as:

    ((junior||front end)&&(back end)) developers.

I took it to mean some of the developers in question would be senior (non-junior) backend developers.

I like your interpretation. If for no other reason, it would seem to back up the idea that the OP is merely bad with words and was in fact describing the current composition of his team (a team diverse in gender, ethnicities, levels of experience, etc)

Have to say I would actually appreciate working with female developers, and would definitely see it as an incentive when choosing a new role. I have spent most of my career working only with guys and it's not very... fun. That said, I think the OP was quite foolish to post it as a perk.

I think the post doesn't translate very well on a mailing list. Although there are (IMO) advantages to having an equal (ish) mix of the sexes on your team, it's not something I would claim as a perk in a job opening.

I would prefer a 4 day week and the 30 days holiday...

It's a bit offensive as it seems like it was intended, but the balance of men and women is definitely something I take into account when looking at a company I might join. An office full of just guys is going to make for a limited company.

The same goes for an all-female team, imo.

A classroom full of guys is why some people (guys and girls) don't major in engineering.

Bit of a strange thing to base the entire future of your career on. It's only a few years of your life, deal with it.

A few years of your life when you're 20 is over 10%.

The composition of your graduating class is a good indicator of the composition of your peers in industry (at least in your age bracket).

There are some notable exceptions, like astrophysics. The crop of astrophysics students where I went to school was >50%, while the established portion of the industry I saw while in school was >90% male.

I seriously wish some of my last workplaces had even a small percentage of female developers. It tells me the company cares about the equally valuable and yet different perspectives both genders bring to the table. Additionally, it helps balance workplace interactions: offices of just 20-something guys too often feel like sweaty cave man clubs and frat houses. Same with age diverse groups; older developers can have some good wisdom that is well balanced with younger developer's energy. A mixed team can be far more hardy than a single mono-culture.

As a guy or a girl, being part of a global diverse workforce is a plus. If the work environment is too narrow, it does say something about diversity of opinion.

Of course it looks like the OP was talking more about eye candy.

Guy who posted this is having his arse handed to him on the thread, it's worth noting.

(Which doesn't excuse the original poster's casual sexism, but does speak well of everyone else on the list.)

Meh. Mars/Venus. We're still intergalactic bacteria with impossibly irrelevant, tiny lives, clinging to space rocks floating in a void whose size we cannot comprehend. Possibly under the toenail of a tiny creature up there in the 'real' world. So what if we're chromosomed differently? We're all still irrelevant. No meaningful kerfuffle here, move along...

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