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Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

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

#131

Post by munificent »

tester756 wrote: post #11

>I have never considered that “having chemistry with the team” could be a reason for being let go. That's what worries me too. I like to throw a racist jokes, especially about my own nation from time to time and I guess I'd have hard time in corpos and companies like faang because polacks tend to lack of thick skin /s

There was a time in the US when racist/cultural jokes about groups one was a member of were considered harmless and funny. But, for better or worse, that time is not now.

The set of things you can comfortably joke about at work is pretty small these days and almost never includes jokes about any kind of group identity.

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

#132

Post by ibudiallo »

I wrote about my experience as a black developer not too long ago [1]. At first, you are shocked when you hear some insensitive comments made around you. Then you realize no one else even notices, so it must be something wrong with you.

Eventually you ignore it. When someone says something stupid, you rationalize it and move on. After all, you are only just here to do a job.

But then you get angry. You are angry at everything. No one understand why you are angry or why you blow things out of proportion. "Hey Carl didn't mean to offend you. It was just that one time." What they don't understand is that you've been hearing the same stupid jokes or comments for 15 years in your career.

In June of last summer, multiple companies contacted me to help them do something about diversity in their company. Here is what every company is excited to do: Diversity day, minority day, rainbow flag day, Awareness, BLM profile image, hashtags.

Here is what was incredibly hard to do: Hiring more black people. I interviewed hundreds of black people on their behalf, many highly qualified for the jobs. Not more than a 10 candidates got a reply for a follow up. So far I only know of one who was hired.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53180073

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

#133

Post by coldtea »

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…

>One manager asked me "What was it like growing up Native American? Was it hard? Tell me about how hard it was for you." It felt gross.

While "diversity via token hires", and "faux-diversity celebrations with folklore food, music, etc" are fake-ass and crinzy, I don't see the manager's question as gross.

It's a legitimate question a human being can make to another. We're not just individual snowflakes, we're also people with certain traits and members of certain cultures with certain histories.

It makes sense for someone to ask us about those aspects of our life.

Of course, perhaps the way he did it was patronizing or fake, or whatever.

But really, it's a question one might legitimately ask another they met at a bar or an airplane, or some such...

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

#134

Post by vlod »

f154hfds wrote: post #85
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.

Here's Coleman Hughes in an abbreviated version: https://twitter.com/coldxman/status/1305959575930142723?lang...

This is the first time I've heard of this push-back.

I always thought that the words of Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." was a good approach?

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

#135

Post by ironmagma »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #23
maxehmookau wrote: post #6

Firing someone for a "lack of chemistry" and refusing to give details is a Grade A dick move.

Honestly, not really. It sucks, but from a risk management perspective, less information given out is always better. Was she fired for legit reasons? Who knows. There is no advantage to the employer to give reasons. You can't really blame anyone for trying not to be sued.

However, life isn't all about avoiding risk. Sometimes you should seek out risk to make you a better person. Or, if you're part of a company, to make you a better company. Telling people why they weren't hired / were fired helps them improve, and taken to the limit, it helps the entire society improve.

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

#136

Post by anthony_romeo »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #120
SavantIdiot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of a non-diverse company that doesn't understand diversity trying to implement some kind of diversity. I recall these kinds of ham-fisted attempts everywhere in the late 90's. Ironically, this was most likely cringe because there were no minorities on the staff, a consequence of: no diversity. I observed a similar event in the early 90's when a bunch of white folk in HR tried to show off diversity…

> When minorities are made "ambassadors" as though they suddenly speak for EVERYONE in their minority, it is awful, and wrong. People don't get this: "But X minority said it was OK..." No, it takes literal diversity of opinion. Which is why the entire concept of demographics-based "diversity" is such a shambles. The premise is supposed to be that if you get some women and minorities in there then you'll have a divers…

Your overall stance seems to require the assumption that “diversity on paper” is the more common/significant outcome relative to “diversity of opinion”. Do you happen to have any info which might support such an assumption?

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

#137

Post by coldtea »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #115
launderthis wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats what you get when you government mandate things. You cant expect things like diversity and culture to be processed by law. You pretty much have to make it non profitable for companies to not be diverse. Then they company has a personal responsiblity to change rather than a checkbox to check off , much like the "what race are you" checkbox given to pander to their diversity quota. I blame society, people cry abo…

You: "thats what you get when you government mandate things." Also you: "You pretty much have to make it non profitable for companies to not be diverse." /facepalm/

Where's the contradiction?

Things can be made non-profitable outside of government interventions like fines of tax incentives etc.

In fact, the parent's position is an 100% consistent libertarian position: they believe that such a problem will (or wont) be solved by the market itself, and that companies should follow such incentives not being forced by laws.

E.g. diversity would be good economically for companies, because else they will lose black, asian, indian, etc talent they could hire.

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

#138

Post by robbmorganf »

A lot of really insightful and disturbing stories in the comments here about discrimination in hiring. To bring them all together and improve, what hiring practices have you observed that have really worked well?

(Particularly interested in responses from often-marginalized individuals)

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

#139

Post by munchbunny »

lrem wrote: post #64
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…

You can always do affirmative action like Google. Invite the minorities to boot camps, coaching and mentoring programmes and so on... But subject them to the regular interview process and hiring bar.

> Invite the minorities to boot camps, coaching and mentoring programmes and so on... But subject them to the regular interview process and hiring bar.

That's not affirmative action. That's like giving free SAT prep to disadvantaged minorities. Affirmative action is further down the line, moving the bar for test/interview results to hit targets.

Which is not to say Google doesn't do it, just that the programs you're describing aren't it.

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

#140

Post by bollocks187 »

People react to many different things that are said or done to them. Many people use 'discrimination' as the cause. I will give you one example many hi-tech company's in the USA hire a people of the same heritage or culture - is that discrimination. If you say yes then many white people should put a class action lawsuit against all the non-white companies operating in silicon valley.
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