> "Amy admits she'll "never know" if she wasn't hired by Google because she's female, because she's not an engineer, or whether there was something else wrong with her application."
If you go through life believing that any prejudice (sexism, in this case) is dominating your career growth, you will always look for it in the tea leaves, project it onto any situation, and in return invite it. In truth, the person who is prejudiced is you.
You have to live your life assuming good faith unless you have direct evidence of bad faith. You're crippling yourself to assume an ethereal, non-specific, constant prejudice against you because you are putting the locus of control outside yourself.
http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AssumeGoodFaith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control
In fact, in Amy's words:
> "I feel like I have no power, that this happened to me, and it’s my fault," she said. "I feel so betrayed. And, at this point, I don't really feel like I have it in me to fail again."
It's critical as a professional to believe that the situation is something specific, direct, and within you sphere of influence, so you can look to ways to improve.
In this situation, if you start with the assumption no one was being sexist, it's not that difficult to identify the most probable reason she was not hired and her salary was lower. Google acquihired the engineering team; she was a designer. Therefore, she was not hired.
If you see that as a cause, then it becomes easier to think of ways to improve, such as gaining software development skills or taking on a larger and larger product design roles to make yourself more valuable as an employee. Or just looking for another job.
Of course, they could have been sexist towards her, but the article doesn't provide direct evidence, only Amy's perception of their attitude, which I fully trust she believes is fact even though I also believe she is just projecting.
> "'Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you’re a girl and you have a rich boyfriend,' she said."
The lesson in an nutshell is to never assume prejudice. Only draw that conclusion from direct evidence.