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I'm not a Woman in Tech

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Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#501

Post by dodyg »

falsedan wrote: post #21
076ae80a-3c97-4 wrote: post #3

I really agree with this. It has always disturbed me when a push for female developers is mentioned; a company should be focused on acquiring the best developers they can, not finding ones of a specific gender. This behaviour is literally an example of the problem it is trying to resolve. To the company I work for, I am a software engineer, not a man or woman.

> a company should be focused on acquiring the best developers they can, not finding ones of a specific gender I agree, that's why I think companies should consider what is putting off women & why the gender balance in tech is so heavily weighted towards males. That is, most companies (regardless of conscious choice) are finding the best (young, white) male developers only.

I owned a software company. Almost half of our software engineers are female now although historically it has been mostly men as typical.

I had to seek out recruiting female engineers. Now with more balanced gender ratio in the company, things are just better.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#502

Post by OJFord »

michaelmrose wrote: post #463
tomc1985 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it implies an opinion of weakness to the party offering said "help". Many people do not need or want help and forcing it on them only serves to enforce hidden power dynamics on behalf of the requestor. What I really don't understand is how we men can act so innocent about all this. "Oh, I was just asking a question," "I didn't force her to do anything," "she was free to decline," "what, how could you not want…

You are super angry at something. Maybe that something is perfectly valid but it does not seem a reasonable reaction to the situation at hand. You sound like the kind of person I would avoid interacting with at all costs because anything could result in non productive conflict. Have you considered people might be reacting to your hostility not your gender?

> You sound like the kind of person I would avoid interacting with at all costs

And yet...

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#503

Post by [deleted] »

lotharbot wrote: post #500
koaladevops wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit : clearly hackernews is not my audience.

Dove is a woman. (Source: I'm her husband.) EDIT: the issue isn't the Hacker News audience; the issue is that you were wrong in your assumption that Dove was male, and your entire comment depended on that assumption. There is no audience for which you could write that comment where it would have been correct (though some audiences might have cheered it, that would be a fault, not a virtue, of theirs.) One of the beau…

[deleted]

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#504

Post by OJFord »

spyhi wrote: post #482
Dove wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they wind up in jobs they need , in a way we never wi…

Thanks for saying this--too often people hand-wave away others' problems though, ironically, they may end up inheriting them. Your comment reminded me about an article on how Millennial women are conflicted about being breadwinners. [1] Between chuckling about how I (a Millennial guy) have said many of the quotes nearly verbatim, it dawned on me that as we approach equality in the workplace these women are being now…

Is Millennial Guy the (relatively mundane) sequel to Bicentennial Man?

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#505

Post by bobwaycott »

koaladevops wrote: post #499
Dove wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they wind up in jobs they need , in a way we never wi…

edit : clearly hackernews is not my audience.

Dove said she’s a woman pretty clearly. And her comment didn’t make something that was about women all about men. She made it all about shit people deal with in their working life.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#506

Post by wutbrodo »

unidentified103 wrote: post #443
tomc1985 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere offering of assistance to people who do not need it, and feel they should not need it, can be construed as insulting. EDIT: As mentioned to in another comment, "Special treatment feels condescending."

Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a ghetto ? Is your pride really so hurt that someone wanted to help you out around the office that you refuse to believe that you could have learned anything useful from it? You can't even come out of it with another friend, a future business contact, an interpersonal skill, deeper knowledge of a workplace tool? It's great if some people don't think they…

> Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a ghetto?

Man, it's beyond irritating to see this kind "what's the big deal? just chill" type rhetoric used in this context. Particularly because it's a hard-fought (and ongoing) battle to stop this _same exact logic_ from being used to deflate complaints about what it's like for underrepresented minorities in the workplace.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#507

Post by Dove »

spyhi wrote: post #482
Dove wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they wind up in jobs they need , in a way we never wi…

Thanks for saying this--too often people hand-wave away others' problems though, ironically, they may end up inheriting them. Your comment reminded me about an article on how Millennial women are conflicted about being breadwinners. [1] Between chuckling about how I (a Millennial guy) have said many of the quotes nearly verbatim, it dawned on me that as we approach equality in the workplace these women are being now…

Haha! On point. I can identify with that article. Man, there's this wonderful quote about this I wish I could find, about how women were somehow sold the idea that the working world, the land of heart attacks and ulcers, was where the real awesomeness in life was happening, and where they wanted to be.

There's this documentary that I just love on this topic. This lady decides she wants to see what the world of men is like, and goes undercover and lives as one for eighteen months. And at the end of it, she emerges with such a tangible sense of compassion for men and their problems. They have all these difficulties that they don't talk about!, she says. It's so sweet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip7kP_dd6LU

We're playing with powerful forces, here, what with women entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers, and encountering unprecedented success. Historical, cultural forces. Biological forces. Psychological forces. I think we're making the world a better place, but this tale that it's a simple struggle between good and evil, and women and men . . . the world is more complicated than that. We don't need to take out our frustrations on each other. We need all our combined strength and wisdom. We should proceed with empathy and understanding and compassion.

For what it's worth, I think you guys are awesome. Hugs from an internet stranger. :)

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#508

Post by spyhi »

OJFord wrote: post #504
spyhi wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying this--too often people hand-wave away others' problems though, ironically, they may end up inheriting them. Your comment reminded me about an article on how Millennial women are conflicted about being breadwinners. [1] Between chuckling about how I (a Millennial guy) have said many of the quotes nearly verbatim, it dawned on me that as we approach equality in the workplace these women are being now…

Is Millennial Guy the (relatively mundane) sequel to Bicentennial Man ?

"In Millennial Guy, the highly-anticipated sequel to Bicentennial Man, a blogger living in a world where robots seek humanity seeks to become a robot, but spends his time arguing about it on the internet instead, ultimately never achieving his goal. Instead, he waits for his break as an internet "thought leader" while living with his disappointed parents, then he dies."

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#509

Post by meej »

unidentified103 wrote: post #432
meej wrote: post #267

"You’re victimising me when you do that. You’re indicating that it’s most likely I need special, extra support. Just because I’m female." This is exactly how I felt during my Microsoft internship in 1998 when the internal women's organization, HOPPERS, decided to change their successful "intern buddy" program from opt-in to opt-out. (Well, not really opt-out, because until I got upset with them about it they clearly…

I don't quite understand how a corporate policy like an "intern buddy" can be compared to a ghetto or even how it remotely hurts you in the same way that an unspoken "boys club" office setting would. A corporate policy like that is pretty clearly an impersonal management-type fluff program that does not solve every problem that could possibly arise from sexism, but that serves a resource for a few people desperately…

I'm not sure "corporate policy" is the right way to characterize it. This wasn't a policy adopted by HR or anything like that. An internal employee group took this upon themselves, and in the years before I did my internship it was completely voluntary. They changed that the summer I was there.

As for the word ghetto, that is what came to mind when I read the part in Maria's post about special awards for women in tech.

It would have been fine if I had gotten an email describing the program and inviting me to participate. Instead, I got an email from a stranger, completely unannounced, saying "Hi, I'm your intern buddy!"

It was the assumption that I needed help because I'm a woman that I found condescending. I'm not saying programs like this aren't good, or that nobody needs them, it was the blanket application to an entire group without consulting them first that I took issue with. The difference between a safe space and segregation is whether or not your participation is voluntary. Had it been offered as an invitation I might have even taken them up on it, but nobody bothered to ask first. It was just assumed that because I'm female, I needed help. I disagreed.

Nothing can be described as meritocratic because meritocracy is a myth.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#510

Post by thorwww »

booleandilemma wrote: post #42
RUG3Y wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you but I pretty much opted out of social media entirely. If I do participate, it's generally for the purpose of keeping in touch with someone or watching a band's tour schedule. Sharing opinions is just not "safe" anymore.

Sharing opinions is just not "safe" anymore Free speech is dead.

I have to agree on this one. Self censorship is the new norm.
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