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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

#371

Post by wombatmobile »

f154hfds wrote: post #317
wombatmobile wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But really, it's a question one might legitimately ask another they met at a bar or an airplane, or some such... Really? Consider it this way, by substituting x for something that fits for you personally: What was it like growing up x? Was it hard? Tell me about how hard it was for you." How might you feel by the end of the flight?

Like my neighbor is a curious person (perhaps more chatty than I would like)? Between acquaintances the above would be compassionate conversation. Of course in the wrong context many innocuous questions can come off as patronizing, and an employer should ask work-related questions over outside culture questions naturally. However, the plane-neighbor conversation doesn't seem belittling at face value.

What quality did you use for x?

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

#372

Post by ingsoc79 »

entee wrote: post #277
worker767424 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hiring more black people It's not like there's a large, untapped pool of talented black software engineers. I'm at a large tech company. There was a team I worked with for a big with some really talented people, the sort of team where really smart domain experts go. There was a black guy on it who asked questions showing he wasn't an obviously talented domain expert. I found out he was recruited for coming from an…

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…

While not the entirety of the under-representation situation, the pipeline is absolutely the biggest contributing factor. Take a look at any CS class today and you'll see a sea of white and east/south asian faces, an almost no black students – I took several CS courses at the University of Washington a couple years back (staff perk) and out of ~500 students perhaps 2-3 were black.

No amount of corporate diversity training or preferential hiring is going to fix that ratio.

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

#373

Post by datavirtue »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #97
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…

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…

Often times it's pretty cheap. Really nice girl I knew at college, her dad dropped $10k on the school. This set her up for life in a town where a $45k per year job was life changing. When I left she was a VP in the college administration knocking down a very easy $85k. (The president made $155k, for comparison)

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

#374

Post by logan42 »

robin21 wrote: post #341

> Boys are just predisposed for technology by nature This is true. There is scientific evidence that shows men prefer things, women prefer people. This is not to say women can’t succeed in tech or are not as good at tech, but the fact that women choose other fields belies this nature. Women are better at language, social interactions, etc. So when her boss says to use her “feminine” skills to talk to a difficult co-w…

Nah bud, this ain’t it.

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

#375

Post by logan42 »

mcculley wrote: post #261
ausbah wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that’s totally what your initial statement conveys. Whether that’s your intent is a different thing.

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

#376

Post by skavi »

robin21 wrote: post #341

> Boys are just predisposed for technology by nature This is true. There is scientific evidence that shows men prefer things, women prefer people. This is not to say women can’t succeed in tech or are not as good at tech, but the fact that women choose other fields belies this nature. Women are better at language, social interactions, etc. So when her boss says to use her “feminine” skills to talk to a difficult co-w…

> Women are better at language, social interactions, etc. So when her boss says to use her “feminine” skills to talk to a difficult co-worker, it’s simply a comment on a predisposed advantage women have over men when looking at the statistics.

This boss was clearly an amateur. A truly effective manager inputs their employees' eye colors, clothing preferences, heart rates, favorite books, and heights into the magic statistics machine to determine the correct person for each task.

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

#377

Post by aeoleonn »

jariel wrote: post #94
pmiller2 wrote: post #34

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…

What’s funny to me is that people are only complaining about diversity in the US and Europe. Although I have seen a few articles about class based diversity in Latin America and India.

Maybe I am missing something but I don’t see complaints about diversity in Arabia, Persia, African Regions, Asian regions.

Yet there are historic multi-ethnic conflicts in most of not all of these areas.

Take the Hausa, Fula, Igbo, and Yoruba of Nigeria for example, as an example.

Ultimately, dividing people and calling it “diversity” resembles a divide and conquer tactic for reducing the cohesion of a society, making it easier to control (via narratives and reducing my inter-group trust compared to some central, approved authority), in my view.

Check out Ryan Long for a humorous example: “When Racists and Woke Agree On Everything”:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg

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

#378

Post by silly-silly »

refurb wrote: post #333
pvaldes wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't it a bit weird to have someone who is not Native American tell an actual Native American how they should feel. Not. Human experience is universal. Every single human in the planet can understand how other humans feel. We all have experienced similar events before and can provide solid advice about it to fellow humans. "You can't understand me, because I'm ... (native /black / woman / trans / philatelic...) an…

It's not binary. Sure, there are elements of being human that transcend racial, ethic and cultural differences, but there aspects that are difficult to understand if you didn't grow up in that culture or have extensive exposure.

Understanding is a thought process, not a genetic or environmental one.

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

#379

Post by [deleted] »

betwixthewires wrote: post #325
f154hfds wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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.

Most of us were raised that way. This phenomenon of everything being about what color you are is relatively new and orders of magnitude more controversial than its pushers like to admit.

[deleted]

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

#380

Post by silly-silly »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #127
bedhead wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm your everyday white guy, I've never understood why people among minority groups would accept this completely over-the-top pandering. It's a form of shaming and it's dehumanizing. Who wants this?

They're just putting up with stupid crap for pay. Plenty of people do that. After you've got a couple jobs on your resume nobody knows or cares you were the diversity hire at your first one. Yeah the mere presence of diversity hires makes your accomplishments worth slightly less but it's still better for you to take advantage of it. See also: prisoner's dilemma.

Thanks for this comment, I was thinking along the lines of the parent to your post. You put that in perspective.
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