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Being a Female Developer

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Re: Being a Female Developer

#31

Post by arvinsim »

mattlondon wrote: post #25
arvinsim wrote: post #8

> Spend weekends and late nights in front of your computer, laying down lines of code, debugging and developing your personal projects. This is the only thing I disagree with. Although this would be good for your career, it does not work for all types of people.

If you really enjoy what you do, you'll find yourself sucked into doing this in your spare time anyway. For a lot of us, we're really blessed to do something that we actually enjoy .

That's correct. I just don't think that everyone wants to. Some are perfectly content with the 9-5 routine.

Re: Being a Female Developer

#32

Post by mamoswined »

wmsiler wrote: post #20

Unlike most of the other commenters, I'm not a huge fan of this article. From the article, it seems the author hasn't really experienced much, if any, gender discrimination at work. That's great; it really is refreshing to hear stories of women in tech who are judged purely on their merits, as they should be. However, her two takeaways from her experience are, "your skills will speak louder than your gender," and, "t…

Being female, and a developer, and having worked in several other fields, I think people overestimate the sexism in tech and underestimate it elsewhere. I'm ashamed to say I was one of the "who needs feminism?" women in my late teens and early twenties because I have had a good experience in tech. Then I took a journalism job...and actually experienced it for myself and saw so many other women experience it.

Sexism is everywhere, at least in tech there is a fair amount of awareness that it's at least an issue. In writing I found it was just taken for granted.

And in writing/journalism I found it way more depressing to see SO many women as a total percentage of the profession and then the gender breakdown of the people in charge. In tech there aren't that many of us, but almost all the ones I know are in good positions.

Re: Being a Female Developer

#33

Post by mamoswined »

arvinsim wrote: post #8

> Spend weekends and late nights in front of your computer, laying down lines of code, debugging and developing your personal projects. This is the only thing I disagree with. Although this would be good for your career, it does not work for all types of people.

It's interesting because I and most other female developers I know got into programming like this. When I try to sell it to other women I know who are looking for a better line of work, I think this is the biggest obstacle for them. They just don't want to do it/aren't interested. Whereas when I was a teenager I'd happy spend all night modding games or making websites about ponies.

Re: Being a Female Developer

#34

Post by eevilspock »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #28
wmsiler wrote: post #20

Unlike most of the other commenters, I'm not a huge fan of this article. From the article, it seems the author hasn't really experienced much, if any, gender discrimination at work. That's great; it really is refreshing to hear stories of women in tech who are judged purely on their merits, as they should be. However, her two takeaways from her experience are, "your skills will speak louder than your gender," and, "t…

I agree. At the same time, I get the feeling that the west coast must be a very different place compared to the east coast. I've worked for six different employers in the tech scene here on the east coast, and I've yet to see any sort of gender discrimination in the workplace. I'm not denying that it happens, because I'm sure that it does. But either it's far more frequent or much more overt in other parts of the wor…

> I've yet to see any sort of gender discrimination in the workplace

You're a man. I'm not sure you're in the best position to see.

Re: Being a Female Developer

#35

Post by mamoswined »

Honestly having been a "female developer" for 10+ years my main thought on the subject of being that is it's just a job. And it's a job that's really not for everyone. I've tried to sell a lot of people I've worked with in other fields on it, both men and women, and there are a lot of things that keep people away from it. And most of them are not related to gender.

I also have learned to have a healthy suspicion of companies that seem too obsessed with the "women in tech" thing. I usually find they seem to just be doing it because out of causes you could pick in tech, it has little downside for the company and even serves as a recruiting tool.

Re: Being a Female Developer

#36

Post by monksy »

eevilspock wrote: post #34
groovy2shoes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. At the same time, I get the feeling that the west coast must be a very different place compared to the east coast. I've worked for six different employers in the tech scene here on the east coast, and I've yet to see any sort of gender discrimination in the workplace. I'm not denying that it happens, because I'm sure that it does. But either it's far more frequent or much more overt in other parts of the wor…

> I've yet to see any sort of gender discrimination in the workplace You're a man. I'm not sure you're in the best position to see.

> You're a man. I'm not sure you're in the best position to see.

I found the sexism right there. ("Is man must not be able to see or have valid experiences.")

Re: Being a Female Developer

#37

Post by Frondo »

monksy wrote: post #36
eevilspock wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've yet to see any sort of gender discrimination in the workplace You're a man. I'm not sure you're in the best position to see.

> You're a man. I'm not sure you're in the best position to see. I found the sexism right there. ("Is man must not be able to see or have valid experiences.")

Well, of course a man can have valid experiences. A man can't have the experience of being a woman, though, pretty much by definition.

That's not sexism, the claim that a man can't experience life as a woman would. In fact, that seems like a really uncontroversial statement.

Re: Being a Female Developer

#38

Post by groovy2shoes »

eevilspock wrote: post #34
groovy2shoes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. At the same time, I get the feeling that the west coast must be a very different place compared to the east coast. I've worked for six different employers in the tech scene here on the east coast, and I've yet to see any sort of gender discrimination in the workplace. I'm not denying that it happens, because I'm sure that it does. But either it's far more frequent or much more overt in other parts of the wor…

> I've yet to see any sort of gender discrimination in the workplace You're a man. I'm not sure you're in the best position to see.

Yes, I am indeed a man. But I've worked on teams with women, and worked for women, and gotten lunch with women, and hung out with women after hours. I've never seen them be discriminated against, nor have I ever heard them mention it.

Like I said, I'm sure it happens. But it also seems to me like it's either worse in other locations, or it's blown completely out of proportion in terms of frequency.

Re: Being a Female Developer

#39

Post by howsitrelevant »

craigvn wrote: post #21
tracker1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're just starting out, and not doing this, you won't get very far, at least not very fast... if just starting out is in school, or out... It takes at least 5 years to master any skill/craft... and even then given the churn in tech, specifically with development, you have to put more in to get to a good point. I don't do as much on my own time as I used to... but I absolutely did for the first decade of my caree…

If you are not doing personal projects or work on the side you will never be top 5-10% of devs. But the majority of devs are building reports and doing maintenance for some fortune 500 insurance co, they are doing fine.

I think this is mostly true. There are a lot of us now who grew up with very advanced programming languages that allowed us to learn very advanced programming practices and principals at a very young age.

We've also been allowed to learn modern languages very quickly, half attributed to our spongey brain, the other to the free time we had growing up. They're the same languages that companies are built on nowadays.

Now we're in the workforce, in a few years time we'll have a wealth of knowledge not considered deep by experts, but "good enough" by many. And if we've stuck with a particular area, or a particular language we'll be able to flout ourselves as "masters", when in reality, we've just screwed the bolt so many times, we know how many screws it takes.

And the bar will be raised. Because you raised it for us, and then you made it easier for us to learn to raise it ourselves.

The complexity of development has increased massively in the last 15 years. Not just the languages (arguably becoming less complex), or the frameworks, or the different patterns or technologies (ala queueing, authentication, architecture and environments).. But the sheer wealth of knowledge required for an entry level dev job.

We're full stack. We can do a DBA's, an architects, a BA's and a technical writers job - we've been doing it on our own since our age reached double digits.

We haven't just built the car. We've designed it, we've tested it, we've pulled it together and have gone on to become professional drivers. Sure some of the parts.. We don't know how they work. But we know that they do work. And we know they're reliable. Why reinvent the wheel when you can import it?

Re: Being a Female Developer

#40

Post by skeolawn »

rjzzleep wrote: post #10

This is decent view, which is extremely rare when it comes to the topic at hand. From my perspective I am a person that throughout the majority of my life has been considered turkish in germany because of my looks, until people get to know my actual heritage. Yet in the US I'm just considered a random white guy. In Germany turkish are not really considered a minority and the degratory terms are overlayed by more and…

I've found the same in the US as a non-native (but white) - my ethnicity is discounted, I'm lumped into a very peculiar bucket and my opinions don't count. Pretty weird experience. Is it really diversity or just a different power trip?

Pretty cool article though. We all became developers so we can build things: we have that in common I think.

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