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Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

betterprogramming.pub

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Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#81

Post by serjester »

With all due respect, I think part of her issue is she looks at everything from a "sexism" lens. Her first discriminatory comment seems like a sensible thing to tell any new grad.

She complains that the company didn't tell her she was a diversity hire? Doing this seems like a recipe for any diversity hire to always have imposter syndrome.

There's definitely sexism in the tech industry but I'd argue the best way forward is with tact. Coming out guns blaring with accusations and always assuming bad intentions will just alienate people from the cause.

She'd be better served trying to understand where people are coming from and working through specific, addressable issues.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#83

Post by grayhatter »

serjester wrote: post #81

With all due respect, I think part of her issue is she looks at everything from a "sexism" lens. Her first discriminatory comment seems like a sensible thing to tell any new grad. She complains that the company didn't tell her she was a diversity hire? Doing this seems like a recipe for any diversity hire to always have imposter syndrome. There's definitely sexism in the tech industry but I'd argue the best way forwa…

she looks at everything from a sexism lense?... in the essay's topic of sexism she experienced? Yeah, agreed, she's too narrowly focused on her topic... She should ramble more and include more unrelated observations.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#84

Post by hinkley »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #37

I'm a light skinned male. I'm also a Choctaw Native American. In my senior year of college in 2004 I applied to dozens of companies. I never got a single response. I decided to try an experiment - I applied to IBM and, for the first time, I selected "Native American" as my ethnicity. Within 24 hours I got an email inviting me to a special, all expenses paid IBM recruiting event held for Native Americans in Albuquerqu…

Probably you dodged a bullet.

It's always seemed to me that people are aggressively attempting to hire for some criteria (even position) because they're either having trouble getting people on board, or holding onto them. There's something 'wrong' with them, for some definition of wrong.

Either they're looking in the wrong place, they're giving off a bad vibe that scares people off, or people who have that quality they're looking for are leaving at a higher rate than everyone else.

Why is this team trying so hard to hire team leads? Can't find any in house? Keep chewing them up? Or just incompetent hiring? Why doesn't this team have any women? Can't find any in house? Keep chewing them up? Or just incompetent hiring?

My guess is you would find out pretty quick why there is nobody quite like you at those companies, and soon they'll be fishing for your replacements.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#85

Post by f154hfds »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #37

I'm a light skinned male. I'm also a Choctaw Native American. In my senior year of college in 2004 I applied to dozens of companies. I never got a single response. I decided to try an experiment - I applied to IBM and, for the first time, I selected "Native American" as my ethnicity. Within 24 hours I got an email inviting me to a special, all expenses paid IBM recruiting event held for Native Americans in Albuquerqu…

'The Case For Color Blindness' by Coleman Hughes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_hRr5J9UUc

I was sort of raised to believe 'Color blindness' was the right approach to take. It wasn't until the last couple years that I realized there was significant push back to the philosophy.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#86

Post by darkwater »

asdff wrote: post #51
908B64B197 wrote: post #2

> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges. That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it. When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other one…

That's one take. Another take is that people want chums at work. An average person hires someone they see themselves as being friends with rather than the best qualified candidate. Animals such as bees, monkeys, and ourselves are also biased to favor their genetic group (kin selection). In other words, you subconsciously favor people who look like you and act like you. In that light, the non diverse office might be s…

Thanks for saying and explaining what diversity hiring actually is. Much needed and much appreciated.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#87

Post by darioush »

metajack wrote: post #26
908B64B197 wrote: post #2

> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges. That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it. When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other one…

> Some places I've even seen a "diversity quota" for tech recruiters that's tied to a bonus. It makes sense if you want to increase diversity to have the beginning of the funnel get lots of diverse candidates in. The recruiter is not a decision maker in most places, so the hiring bar is not necessarily affected by whether the recruiter got more diversity candidates into the funnel or not. As an example, in my experie…

> Some places ... yeah you mean all (~ most) places :)

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#88

Post by azinman2 »

grayhatter wrote: post #83
serjester wrote: post #81

With all due respect, I think part of her issue is she looks at everything from a "sexism" lens. Her first discriminatory comment seems like a sensible thing to tell any new grad. She complains that the company didn't tell her she was a diversity hire? Doing this seems like a recipe for any diversity hire to always have imposter syndrome. There's definitely sexism in the tech industry but I'd argue the best way forwa…

she looks at everything from a sexism lense?... in the essay's topic of sexism she experienced? Yeah, agreed, she's too narrowly focused on her topic... She should ramble more and include more unrelated observations.

It seems like she’s experienced a lot of inappropriate and difficult things explicitly about gender. My only question was the cultural fit — we don’t know for sure that gender had anything to do with it. Often times when people are fired not only can you never tell them why, they are incapable of seeing, assessing, and recognizing their own flaws (particular when it comes to personal interaction versus quantitative measurements).

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#89

Post by DC1350 »

> The time I was asked to use my “female approach”

This stuff is why a lot of diversity recruiting makes no sense to me. There are lots of good arguments in favour of targeting under represented groups (social justice, discovering talented people who get missed with traditional methods, willing to accept lower wages, less likely to unionize, etc) but the idea that women or Black people are useful because they “think differently” just seems offensive.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#90

Post by clarkdale »

serjester wrote: post #81

With all due respect, I think part of her issue is she looks at everything from a "sexism" lens. Her first discriminatory comment seems like a sensible thing to tell any new grad. She complains that the company didn't tell her she was a diversity hire? Doing this seems like a recipe for any diversity hire to always have imposter syndrome. There's definitely sexism in the tech industry but I'd argue the best way forwa…

> Coming out guns blaring with accusations

She is not doing that

> working through specific, addressable issues

She is doing exactly this

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