boo hoo, let's hear more about your pity party
Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
361–370 of 464 posts
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just hire based on skill / experience and don't not hire someone because they are a minority. Basic fair hiring goes a long way. If you want more diverse candidates advertise in more diverse places. To go through some cringe-inducing ordeal is not helpful. People want to be judged based on their skills not skin / gender.
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.…
Why do you single out poverty and bias in minority groups? What about say, Appalachia? You think the white people living there were born with a silver spoon in their mouth?
Why someone is poor today shouldn’t be rated. It’s not a suffering rating contest. You could be denied a job 50 years ago because of your skin, your accent, etc.
It’s far better to just look at where someone is financially and use to determine if they need help. It also prevents divides from popping up. A very good way to get people angry is to tell someone who needs help they are privileged and should shut up because they are either white, male, straight, don’t look poor, etc.
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#363Earlier 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.…
There are disparities companies can fix through hiring practices and ones they can’t. Systemic bias is one they can’t—who Google hires or doesn’t simply doesn’t move the needle on generational poverty. Even if every professional industry does it, that doesn’t move the needle because those industries employ a small fraction of overall workers. Fixing biases and barriers to promotion in service jobs and trades would do…
> who Google hires or doesn’t simply doesn’t move the needle on generational poverty.
If it can’t be done in one of the most successful companies on earth, in the richest country, who can?
The value in Google trying is greater than just the value to the successful applicants. It might not be much but just throwing up your hands because it’s hard is not helpful.
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
Respectfully, this is the wrong way to look at the problem. It’s true, objectively, that there are fewer minority/female CS graduates. But there’s no way that gets better if a person who is “not a subject matter expert” gets dismissed. That person needs to be trained. If they want to be expert at that subject, we as an industry need to be able to help them get there. Increasingly I believe the problem with diversity…
> I believe the problem with diversity in tech is a retention and training problem, not a pipeline problem. I saw one guy setting up a hiring pipeline in large industrial/tech company in the south, and changing the face of a office for that company. - When he start : The city is 60% black, almost not black dev. A few in IT/Support. - He strike a deal with a local bootcamp, being extremely specific on the training con…
To be clear, I don’t think input pipelines are not a problem at all, I think they’re just a part of the problem. Sounds like this person is doing things right by investing time and effort across pipeline AND developing talent once hired. You can’t have success without both and the latter is often a secondary consideration at best.
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#365Earlier 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.…
It is impossible to solve systemic bias by using discrimination. It has never worked in the past despite an untold number of attempts. In a very similar way, violence create violence in very predictable cycles. Like violence, the solution to systemic bias are simple but unattractive. Don't display and rub symbols in people faces. Do not create ambiguous borders between groups of people. Treat each person as individua…
> Add social and economical support based on lack of those resources on an individual level, from the bottom up
How do you apply this to a system that has favoured certain groups for so long that the whole structure has close to none of those it supposedly wants to help?
You need representation from groups that need help in order to help. You need representative individuals in the organisation to guide it. You may have to positively discriminate at first, or else you won’t have any representative to draw from.
There are abundant examples of butchered attempts at ‘helping’ when those with good intent have no idea (this thread gives plenty of cringe inducing examples).
The key, I think, it making it clear what the role is and what is wanted to those that are there in that role.
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Elon Musk was born in S.Africa and living in the US. Is he African American? Technically yes. I believe that makes him just African, not African-American.
He's an American citizen, so he can call himself "X.American" Edit: clarification.
He can call himself anything he wants. Does he though?
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely it does, a culture that makes people feel unwelcome and doesn’t invest in helping them thrive in an environment where they are in the minority definitely plays a role.
How do you explain Asians making up almost half of FAANG startups?
Note that as far as I know, all the founders of FAANG were white guys. As for why many Asian people work there, I think there is a strong bias toward engineering/medicine among many immigrant communities that came from a relatively educated background in their home countries (I count myself in that cohort, though I’m not Asian). Crucially though, once they got into the community they were more likely to blend into the group at every stage.
It’s hard to be the only one in a class/company/group that looks like you. That’s a big obstacle and we should be more supportive of those who overcome it.
Also, while Asians make up a large portion of line engineer positions, they make up a smaller fraction of leadership positions. That’s troubling to me as well.
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'd say the dick move is firing someone without any kind of coaching or explanation about what you'd like to see done differently. The coaching should have happened well in advance of the firing. A firing that comes as a complete surprise to the employee is generally a sign of a bad manager (not always, but true enough to be a useful heuristic).
I guess there could be some improvements, such as a right to feedback law (protections for both parties), make it harder to legally fire someone but easier if it's a real democratic team decision, better short term unemployment benefits.
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Respectfully, this is the wrong way to look at the problem. It’s true, objectively, that there are fewer minority/female CS graduates. But there’s no way that gets better if a person who is “not a subject matter expert” gets dismissed. That person needs to be trained. If they want to be expert at that subject, we as an industry need to be able to help them get there. Increasingly I believe the problem with diversity…
> but all you hear about is hell stories The reality is distorted though. Like in this article many would argue that none of it is sexist and it is just human behavior. Whereas other women reading this have their biases confirmed. I really struggle to find any sexism stories that describe situations that don’t also happen to men. Human nature is to pattern match. It’s easier to blame groups than to blame individuals…
I used to think this way, but I think it’s a mistake. If something happens to men but happens far more often to women, then there’s a problem. The fact that we keep hearing about these stories, with various shades of face-palming awfulness should be a sign that something is wrong. “Use your femininity”? I’ve been working professionally in various STEM positions for 15+ years, never once has someone told me to “use my masculinity” to help smooth a working relationship.
We can assume that all of these people, across the industry, in dozens of different contexts are all just whining, or we can do some introspection and wonder if we could do better. Even if some things are unintentional, if they make people en masse feel less welcome, we should re-examine how we do things, and if they are truly necessary.
I’ve personally known several women who are insanely smart and good at what they do who have felt rejected, mistreated and unwelcome in tech. It’s a tragedy they faced that, and it’s sadly way too common. We cannot deny there is something systematic at play here.
Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you’re a woman and you want to be a coder but all you hear about is hell stories, why would you sign up for that major I think this is a bit more complex; think of something like Revenge of the Nerds where computer peeps are all socially inept (sometimes borderline creepy) otherworldly nerds whose only interest in life is computers. Would you want to work in an environment like that? I wouldn't. And luckily I do…
There are a lot of socially enept developers out there. Maybe it’s changed a bit recently. But if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do? Something you see often is developers who were bullied at school, finding refuge in their computer, finding something they enjoy, and then the feminists canceling them because they don’t have the social s…
> if you think about taking your average developer and putting them in a propel-facing sales role, how well would they do
Probably not too well, although I've known more than a few programmers that have also done sales. I have actually, and I'm very bad at it not because of my lack of social skills, but just because I don't like being pushy. Anyway, "not being good at sales" doesn't mean you're "socially inept" just as not being able to program a computer very well makes you "technically inept".
And maybe programmers, on average, are a little bit below average on social skills – I'm not sure if that's the case but it could be – but "a little below average" is still "normal" and not "inept", and it's a far cry from the stereotypes that were being propagated.
I don't really know enough about James Damore to say anything about this, especially not him as a person.