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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

#261

Post by mcculley »

ausbah wrote: post #236
mcculley wrote: post #205

I am amused about these perceptions of bias in “tech”, especially coming from those with little experience elsewhere. I work in tech and also in the tugboat industry. My consulting work has brought me into organizations in many industries. Tech is much better at being fair to minorities and the otherwise disadvantaged than non-tech industries. I don’t know how people end up complaining about tech without noticing the…

this is just a rehash of "you shouldn't complain because other people have it worse"

Not at all. I think the characterization of tech as especially bad is incorrect and put forward only by those with no experience in other industries.

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

#262

Post by jariel »

usaar333 wrote: post #213
jariel wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 altoget…

"Traditionally, tech diversity referred to gender diversity"

This is definitely not true.

" extend it to ethnicity ... gets all really arbitrary "

I don't think so, the issues are very similar.

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

#263

Post by asdff »

wahern wrote: post #186
vlod wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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? I recently heard a radio interview where the guest explained that part of her character was "blackness", and she was offended by intimations that her character could be…

>Taken at face value it necessarily implies a partial refutation of some of MLK's premises

Having a self respect for your cultural identity doesn't mean you prefer to be judged by the color of your skin rather than your character.

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

#264

Post by joshz404 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #254

I'm sorry, but... > I have never considered that “having chemistry with the team” could be a reason for being let go. When you're working in a startup with 5 people and you're not in sync with their personalities, it can be a major drag on everyone. Having had to see people let go in startups for simply not fitting in, this has nothing to do with you being a woman and to frame it that way reduces the effectiveness of…

You're excluding this part:

> I had never received any feedback indicating my performance was poor. In fact, it was exactly the other way around: I’ve never had a role that was such a good fit for my expertise before. So I asked if he could detail better where I failed. He refused to..

It is completely unprofessional to fire someone having never given any feedback. Startup or not.

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

#265

Post by 908B64B197 »

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…

> But the whole point of the diversity hire isn't that you get someone who isn't white and that's it. The idea is that for every job, there are thousands of people who are qualified to do it, and among those, there are certainly people from all sorts of walks of life, and you'd spend earnest effort overcoming your subconscious biases by dipping your hand into the pool of equally skilled candidates, and pulling out the one that this overtly white dominated society we live in has held down since forever.

How did you find a recruiting pipeline where you can confidently say that there are thousands of equally competent potential hires in it? In Software Engineering?

I'm very curious to know where and how you source talent.

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

#266

Post by usaar333 »

jariel wrote: post #262
usaar333 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 altoget…

"Traditionally, tech diversity referred to gender diversity" This is definitely not true. " extend it to ethnicity ... gets all really arbitrary " I don't think so, the issues are very similar.

Ethnic diversity is relatively new (it was rarely discussed much 10 years ago compared to gender, at least as far as goal settings was concerned) -- and how is it not arbitrary?

The "major groups" used are entirely arbitrary (yes, they are EEOC definitions generally, but those are arbitrary and there's no particular reason they should be relevant for tech).

It's also an arbitrary choice whether to consider group intersectionality or not. (e.g. Are Asian women underrepresented in tech?)

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

#267

Post by bobthepanda »

ipaddr wrote: post #201
conception wrote: post #179

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.

Usually, you need to start super super early. Achievement gaps show up pretty early and only get wider. And I don’t think most companies have the stomach for broad-based improvements to education starting all the way from elementary school or even preschool, particularly when the payoff is going to be when the first wave of kids in preschool make it out of at least undergrad.

Of course, the superlocal, balkanized property tax system used to fund schools really doesn’t help things.

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

#268

Post by arp242 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #203
ibudiallo wrote: post #132

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.

If I get called a dipshit then it's, presumably, because something I did. Perhaps it's completely unjustified, but it's still over something I did.

Being called a nigger is very different: it's about who you are and not about what you did. You're not judged for your actions (again, perhaps completely unjustified) but about who you are.

It's like being called a "typical dumb American" every time you (allegedly) did something wrong. And while being called that once or twice probably won't faze most, being called that on a regular basis will wear your down eventually.

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

#269

Post by smokey_the_bear »

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…

Fwiw, I attended a nearly identical recruiting event at Microsoft for women and minorities.

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

#270

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

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…

You don't want to work for IBM anyway, they burn new-grads like you to a cinder then dump you in a third world country at local salary or HR you out the door. Not to mention they are pretty much a has-been company at this point anyway. I can't remember the last time I came across any of their products in the field. They have been in decline ever since Lou Gerstner retired and they were well past their peak before he came along.

You were right though that they were trying to check some boxes on a diversity report. IBM trots out those special events at trials to try and paint a favorable picture of their hiring practices - and if that doesn't work they just don't pay the judgements.

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