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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

#211
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i disagree with the validity of cultural fit. if there is a problem with someone fitting into the culture, then it is the culture that needs to change. letting someone go because they don't participate in after-work activities or because they don't drink alcohol is unacceptable. as is letting someone go because of gender differences. yes, some people have a problem working together. carl in the story is a good exampl…

> problem with someone fitting into the culture, then it is the culture that needs to change. So the team should change to accept a racist, a rude asshole, an elitist narcissist, all the other toxic personality types. In my experience "doesn't fit culture" is code for they're an asshat. Culture in this context doesn't mean ethnic culture. It's referring to work culture, work ethics and personality at work. Also think…

i am not talking about toxic hires. especially when it comes to gender, it is usually the male majority that is being toxic towards the new hire.

the writer of the article certainly was not an asshat. and most culture-fit issues that i read about are bro-cultures where someone didn't fit in because they didn't join the rest in their behavior.

i am not saying the world needs to change around the new hire. i am saying the world needs to learn to tolerate different interests and not expect everyone to conform to their personal norms. but that also goes for the new hire. they shouldn't complain about about different norms unless they are rude or unreasonable.

on work culture, if for example someone leaves on time, while everyone else works late then that is a difference, but not a reason to fire.

a woman in a male team is usually not a culture fit, neither is an older person in a team full of 20 year olds. both are not a reason to fire someone for lack of culture fit, but require the team to adapt their culture to be more tolerant.

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

#212
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that overcome systemic bias, eg prevalent poverty in many minority groups. The poor don’t have resources, wealth or contacts, to become a super coder/manager/whatever so they don’t make it into your applicant pool based on skill alone in the first place. The cycle continues. Breaking the cycle is hard. You could target low income children but that leaves everyone looking for jobs today in the cold, etc etc.…

You need to fix that at the education level. Offering free top notch education can go a long way.

I agree but that ignores people trying to make it today and doesn’t create any “heroes” or mentors for those in education today.

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

#213
post #94

Tech certainly does have a diversity problem, by which I mean lack of diversity actually works to the detriment of tech companies. Yes, from the POV of companies who are hiring, this is largely a pipeline problem. No, tech companies aren't going to solve this problem directly themselves. But, what tech companies can do is change their candidate sourcing practices. I'm in favor of some version of the Rooney Rule [0] i…

"lack of diversity actually works to the detriment of tech companies. " Tech companies are diverse, more so than most companies. You mean to say 'not the right kind of diverse'. The ridiculous, Monty Python conversation that nobody wants to have, is that since White Americans are slightly underrepresented, but Asian Americans are about 600% over-represented ... which means getting the 'right' kind of diversity litera…

Traditionally, tech diversity referred to gender diversity, in which case, yes tech companies (especially engineering) are very skewed for a white collar position. Note that this post is about gender diversity.

If you attempt to extend it to ethnicity (which this post is not about), this gets all really arbitrary, which is where your point comes in.

The cause of underlying skews is then a different discussion altogether.

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

#214

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…

It's sickening that a white man doesn't have a chance at any of the big companies, unless he's a programming god. This makes white supremacy even more of a problem because the white people that are there, are some of the best ever.

Do you have statistics backing your claim that white men have no chance? It couldn't be further from my experience.

In the 20 years I've been working in tech, I've seen countless candidates rejected because of "culture fit." Of those, the majority were women; but also black, Hispanic, and indigenous men. Only one was a white guy: he was overtly sexist towards every woman he encountered, including the HR recruiter.

Edit: oh, I forgot one. One white guy was slightly effeminate by north American standards, and wasn't considered after somebody made a comment to the effect of "I think it's weird when men wear scarves". I think he was French (or Québécois), and I wouldn't speculate about his sexuality

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

#215
post #164

I've always been afraid of having to lower the hiring bar due to diversity quotas. Thankfully, I have always had the chance to focus on the particular skill set, instead. The ideas about ensuring big enough sampling from diverse sources during sourcing sounds like a good solution, without having to lower your hiring bar. What sparks my curiosity, though, is out of 3 companies the original poster has written about, th…

I think you just misread what her objection was to the first point. Quoting from 1., > I didn’t know what to think. I have a strong opinion about diversity hires: Although I don’t think they are a perfect solution, I consider them an effective measure to break the ceiling glass that excludes minorities from certain roles. But I always thought that if it ever happened to me, it would be a transparent process and I wou…

I think I might simply be biased based on my experience. Haven't changed jobs often enough to use any of my friend's referrals. But none of them were my dream job, either. Might, in fact, change my PoV when an opportunity comes.

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

#216
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a great music director once, now world renowned (we never deserved him), who believed in blind as in blindfolded auditions. Whoever the candidates were, whatever their backgrounds and accolades and educations, he didn't care. No one was to know who they were rating, and after a while there were complaints of bias... for talent. During that period, yes, there were more women and people of color chosen than hist…

I've read about this before (some fancy orchestra, not sure if it's the same one as you've mentioned) and I went to one of those "Let's get more X in technology" speeches. They had some crazy complicated ways to solve this (not Occam's Razor thinking). I asked a question, mentioned the orchestra approach and suggested blind tests for tech recruiting. i.e. HR scrubs the name, pronouns and anything likely to subconscio…

this was part of the tech hiring method at one place I worked. The main filter was colleague review of an anonymised coding test. I don't know any details but it seemed to have the desired effect - high quality colleagues with diverse cultural identities.

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

#217

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 e…

Both whites and blacks get bullied the same amount but when it happens to a black person, it’s racism and is actually taken seriously. I get called dipshit and you get called the N-word. Why race-based bullying has suddenly become considered worse is beyond me.

You honestly don't see the difference? Like, you can't think of any historical reasons why the n-word might carry a lot more weight than "dipshit"?

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

#218

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 e…

Both whites and blacks get bullied the same amount but when it happens to a black person, it’s racism and is actually taken seriously. I get called dipshit and you get called the N-word. Why race-based bullying has suddenly become considered worse is beyond me.

Probably because race based bullying is connected 1) to something a person can't really change - their skin color. On the other hand, most people can stop being dipshits. 2) A legacy of people being enslaved, murdered, etc. for the color of their skin.

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that overcome systemic bias, eg prevalent poverty in many minority groups. The poor don’t have resources, wealth or contacts, to become a super coder/manager/whatever so they don’t make it into your applicant pool based on skill alone in the first place. The cycle continues. Breaking the cycle is hard. You could target low income children but that leaves everyone looking for jobs today in the cold, etc etc.…

The systemic bias I faced was that people assumed I was poor, didn't have resources, wealth or contacts because I am a Native American.

You seem very upset that IBM is trying to give jobs to a group that has had a persistent lack of opportunity. Congrats that you’re rich and well connected, but you’re exceptional in this regard.

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

#220
post #58

Oh, come on! Dozens of threads and thousands of comments for the weekly Dr. Seuss pearl-clutching. But mentioning that, on occasion, tech orgs are shitty to women is immediately flagged? Whose the snowflake that can’t take any criticism and wants to stop others from seeing it here?

Please don't post like this—it does nothing to help, and you're just stoking a flamewar, guaranteed to get dumber and nastier as it gets going, with this flamebait and name-calling. The way to help is to let us know. We don't come close to seeing everything. The way to let us know is by emailing hn@ycombinator.com, as the site guidelines say. Fortunately another user followed them and did so. https://news.ycombinator…

the flamewar was started by the post being flagged, your post is patronising.
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