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As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

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Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#51
post #47
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all this non-work community. There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality: the jobs at non-software companies where programmers are a cost center . E.g. enterprisey - line-of-business - type of programming. Actually, the "back-office" type of software dev is the majority of programming jobs out there . Yes, there may…

It meshes fine with virtually all companies. Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it: their employees burn large amounts of time doing nonproductive stuff while maintaining "face time", and quality suffers terribly as people do shoddy work to maintain the preferred cadence. Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-…

>Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it:

Sorry for not being clear. I'm not talking about burning 60+ hours for the company.

I'm talking about the attraction to programming personalities that truly enjoy programming on their own time. E.g... The programmer spends exactly 40 hours for Google/Facebook/Microsoft and another 20 on his weekend programming side project because he enjoys it.

On the other hand... if you're a Peoplesoft/SAP programmer, no hiring manager cares that you don't write that code "for fun" on your own time as a hobby.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#52
post #47
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all this non-work community. There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality: the jobs at non-software companies where programmers are a cost center . E.g. enterprisey - line-of-business - type of programming. Actually, the "back-office" type of software dev is the majority of programming jobs out there . Yes, there may…

It meshes fine with virtually all companies. Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it: their employees burn large amounts of time doing nonproductive stuff while maintaining "face time", and quality suffers terribly as people do shoddy work to maintain the preferred cadence. Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-…

> Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-day 6-day-a-week people are, in general, spending all that time productively.

I've probably worked that much before during hypomanic episodes. I can't keep it up indefinitely though.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#54
post #51
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It meshes fine with virtually all companies. Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it: their employees burn large amounts of time doing nonproductive stuff while maintaining "face time", and quality suffers terribly as people do shoddy work to maintain the preferred cadence. Nobody who spends significant amounts of time with valley programmers believes that the 10-hour-…

>Companies that attempt to cram 60 hours of productivity into 40 hour weeks suffer for it: Sorry for not being clear. I'm not talking about burning 60+ hours for the company . I'm talking about the attraction to programming personalities that truly enjoy programming on their own time . E.g... The programmer spends exactly 40 hours for Google/Facebook/Microsoft and another 20 on his weekend programming side project be…

Plenty of seriously hardcore people do not spend 20 hours on their weekends writing more code. Obviously, there are lots of programmers who do, but I think what's happening here is pretty simple: the people who have "writing more computer code" as their personal hobby are excited to feel superior to those who don't.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#55
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's not a lot of room for people to be in CS/SWE and not take part in all this non-work community. There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality: the jobs at non-software companies where programmers are a cost center . E.g. enterprisey - line-of-business - type of programming. Actually, the "back-office" type of software dev is the majority of programming jobs out there . Yes, there may…

> There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality And how do you get into those jobs when even CS students still share the same culture? It goes back to the chart I mentioned: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

my father taught programming and CS-lite courses at a community college for decades. whatever culture the students have, it sure as hell isn't the valley one, or anything like i saw in university.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#56
post #50

The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius. All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job. When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be…

No one said you have to be obsessive, but it helps.

No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself.

The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better off it'll be.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#57

That's fine. Many of us don't spend weekends building tech setups in basements - in fact I strive not to. My coworkers don't as well. You don't have to mainly identify as a profession in order to practice it, and I suspect as we improve work life balance, we wont in general.

Our field rapidly evolves. If I don't spend at least 10-20 hours a week improving my skills and experience new tech, I can find myself obsolete in 5 years time.

spend that 10-20 hours to move into something besides web/mobile.

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#58
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've avoided any discussion at all with your confusing use of a variable instead of just making a clear statement

No, his argument is straightforward and lots of other people have made it before. A shorter way of saying it would be "if you don't like the same kinds of video games as most other developers, you are likely to be made to feel unwelcome".

> "if you don't like the same kinds of video games as most other developers, you are likely to be made to feel unwelcome"

Funny, I don't like the same kinds of video games as most other developers. I like Minecraft, and only one colleague I know who enjoys it is a (very smart) woman, although she is a tech writer, not a developer (she is perfectly capable of programming, in fact it is her hobby, she just likes writing better).

So please, don't stereotype. :-)

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#59
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be, but I don't want to get into a pointless discussion of the name of a culture, call it whatever you want. That's why I used X. The name is irrelevant.

That's fine, but without calling it anything it becomes a puzzle to even know what you're talking about.

> a certain culture that I'll call X

> X (which might include sci-fi, fantasy, video-games, board games, certain types of discussions, and a lot more)

Any suggestions on how to make it more clear? I don't want to give it a name, to avoid focusing in the name, which will then lead to an endless gaming culture vs. nerd culture vs. geek culture vs. the world.

Honest question, non-confrontational, really wanna know :)

Re: As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's actually plenty of room for that type of programmer personality And how do you get into those jobs when even CS students still share the same culture? It goes back to the chart I mentioned: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

my father taught programming and CS-lite courses at a community college for decades. whatever culture the students have, it sure as hell isn't the valley one, or anything like i saw in university.

I'm not talking about valley culture, but, for example, liking star wars, XKCD, Tolkien, video games, etc.

Do the students in those community colleges share that as well?

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