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As a female engineer, I am not diversity

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Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#41

Post by zhangela »

bootsz wrote: post #2

Great article. Thanks for sharing this. I think perspectives like yours are what we need to move beyond what are often one-dimensional conversations about diversity. Aside: Please forgive the nitpick, but despite its widespread use I really don't think "extroverted introvert" is a thing. The problem is that these two things are opposite ends of a spectrum. I think what people really mean when they say "extroverted in…

Thank you for the feedback!

Agreed the term "extroverted introvert" is not most clear. What I tried to express in this post is "even though social interactions can be draining to me, I'm comfortable being outspoken and actively participating in discussions, which gives me an advantage in the work setting," so most similar to (2) in your description above.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#42

Post by rexaliquid »

skrebbel wrote: post #36
gorpomon wrote: post #17

In reference to the point she makes about people not assuming women are developers, I now make it a point to assume two things about most everyone (male and female identifying) that I meet in tech: 1) That they are competent and smart until they definitely prove otherwise to me. 2) That they are technical and interested in technology. It's worked really well for me so far. In practice it means when I meet someone I s…

I try to do the same, and I share your experience. That said, sometimes it gets awkward in funny ways. A few months ago I was at a conference/event selling our product (booth and everything), talking to two young Polish girls who were running a tech startup. I don't recall the details by heart, but it was some marketplace I think. Our product is relatively technical, so your approach, "You're a dev, right?" usually p…

I can see that getting awkward! But, you might also have been able to save the moment with a confident "Yes. You look like you'd make awesome developers."

I try to live by "It's only awkward if you let it be awkward" to get through those situations.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#43

Post by daemonk »

This comment might not be relevant to the article.

Isn't diversity ultimately relative to the group you are comparing to? And how you want to define the group might differ among people? Also how you weigh the trait in relation to its effect on the some kind of performance metric of the group?

Someone with trait A could be considered diverse if we define a group with predominantly trait B. Does having diverse traits (a mix of both A and B) highly correlated with better performance/survival/whatever metric? Maybe having diversity means the group can adapt better over time (surviving an evolutionary bottleneck in some sense)?

Most of these concepts are obviously not quantifiable in this way, but I think we need some kind of framework to think about how we define diversity.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#44

Post by jriot »

wccrawford wrote: post #20

I do think that pointing at someone's physical body and saying, "They bring diversity because they're X!" is wrong. However, I do think that gender and race have an influence on your thought processes because of who you tend to associate with. In addition, she spent 15 years in China, which is definitely not very common here in the US. That alone means she's going to think somewhat differently than the average engine…

A group of white males can be diverse, we just don't accept it.

Do you think a group of white males who went to Stanford, MIT etc... right after high school, are the same as those who joined the military, yet now work in the same company?

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#45

Post by zhangela »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #29
abnry wrote: post #4

If men and women are completely interchangeable, physically and psychologically, then this article makes a lot of sense. But if women really do have something different (at least on average) to bring to the table, then this women really does add diversity. The purpose of diversity is not quotas, but differences that work together and add something to the whole.

I think the point is that the diversity she brings isn’t enough diversity to justify her as someone who is adding to diversity in a tech company. You could add 1000s of women like her and the company wouldn’t be particularly different.

Thank you so much for helping clarify! This is exactly what I meant in the article.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#46

Post by minitel »

skrebbel wrote: post #36
gorpomon wrote: post #17

In reference to the point she makes about people not assuming women are developers, I now make it a point to assume two things about most everyone (male and female identifying) that I meet in tech: 1) That they are competent and smart until they definitely prove otherwise to me. 2) That they are technical and interested in technology. It's worked really well for me so far. In practice it means when I meet someone I s…

I try to do the same, and I share your experience. That said, sometimes it gets awkward in funny ways. A few months ago I was at a conference/event selling our product (booth and everything), talking to two young Polish girls who were running a tech startup. I don't recall the details by heart, but it was some marketplace I think. Our product is relatively technical, so your approach, "You're a dev, right?" usually p…

They probably, rightly, assumed that certain personality types gravitate toward programming work. They also probably felt that their manner and choice in clothing style helped to convey their personality type. For example, in their minds a programmer might choose to dress more like the girl in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" or interact socially in a way that's either more intense (excitable nerd stereotype) or more withdrawn (shy nerd stereotype) than is the norm.

I know that despite my gender people will change their expectations about my career based on how I dress. When I had an undercut and wore around hoodies more often people were much more likely to assume I was technical. Now that I've gotten a little older and my fashion sense has become more conservative people tend to assume I'm a manager or in some other sort of administrative/people oriented role.

It doesn't take much experience in the world to notice that personality type, fashion sense, and career choice are correlated with one another.

It takes a lot of experience on the other hand to learn that you are supposed to ignore such things for the sake of politeness.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#50

Post by Jach »

zwieback wrote: post #15
bootsz wrote: post #2

Great article. Thanks for sharing this. I think perspectives like yours are what we need to move beyond what are often one-dimensional conversations about diversity. Aside: Please forgive the nitpick, but despite its widespread use I really don't think "extroverted introvert" is a thing. The problem is that these two things are opposite ends of a spectrum. I think what people really mean when they say "extroverted in…

I just finished "The personality brokers", fantastic book, which explores how E I entered popular culture via the Myers-Briggs test. When the E I spectrum was subjected to more rigorous analysis it turned out it may just be a metric of "talkativeness" and not really related to the Jungian concept.

Extraversion has had proper studies with the Big 5 traits, it's more than just "talkativeness". But some of the seeming conflicts come from the 5 traits being able to be factored further into 10 aspects; for extraversion it splits between "enthusiasm" and "assertiveness". See e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4818974/ or http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.513...
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