Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

medium.datadriveninvestor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 98 posts

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#11

Post by _Microft »

slickdork wrote: post #8

Thoughts from tale 1: - I would have guessed that the person who greeted me, showed me where to sit, and asked if I needed anything before leaving was a receptionist regardless of gender. That seems like an unfair strike/test. - I'm always surprised by how stupid people are. Being nice to the receptionist isn't just good standard human behavior, but it's also obvious that a receptionist will have input on the hiring…

Just for your information: indenting a comment like this renders the indented text as block of code. It might look formatted or more readable on desktop but on mobile it looks broken and requires horizontal scrolling. Maybe there is a different way of structuring the comment that you might like as well?

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#12

Post by slickdork »

_Microft wrote: post #11
slickdork wrote: post #8

Thoughts from tale 1: - I would have guessed that the person who greeted me, showed me where to sit, and asked if I needed anything before leaving was a receptionist regardless of gender. That seems like an unfair strike/test. - I'm always surprised by how stupid people are. Being nice to the receptionist isn't just good standard human behavior, but it's also obvious that a receptionist will have input on the hiring…

Just for your information: indenting a comment like this renders the indented text as block of code. It might look formatted or more readable on desktop but on mobile it looks broken and requires horizontal scrolling. Maybe there is a different way of structuring the comment that you might like as well?

Thanks! Updated.

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#13

Post by hodgesrm »

bsaul wrote: post #7

if i want to play devil's advocate here, i'd say you can't both - remark that throughout your carrer you've been pretty much the only female in your team, - note that you've been naturally assigned the role of greeting newcomers, then - be upset that a new candidate won't assume you're an assistant instead of a developer he'll work with. He's just noticed pretty much the same things as you, and concluded the most lik…

That's not quite what the author was getting at. She was making an important point that I support wholeheartedly.

Any candidate who is a jerk to the person who shows them to the meeting room and provides coffee pretty much guarantees they will not be joining my company. It's a good sieve for people who won't work out on a team because they lack basic consideration for others.

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#14

Post by etrabroline »

thedevelopnik wrote: post #2

How did Dick not get fired long before if everyone thought he was terrible? Oh right, that company did not learn the lesson of the first one, coding is not as important as being a decent person when it comes to building a team.

I will never understand this logic. It doesn't matter how friendly someone is if they can't code, but even if someone is difficult to work with (as many smart computer programmers are) they can still be hugely important to a team's success. Obviously there are limits to both of these, but technical ability is the requirement and "being fun to work with" is the nice-to-have. I think highly socialized people tend to complain about non-social people much more than the reverse.

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#15

Post by hodgesrm »

rasputnik6502 wrote: post #6

Nice story. It takes some experience and self knowledge to identify what is a joke and what is bullying. Most men just want to be liked, seem witty and funny, and sometimes are just going a too far to show off. But there's a group of people who will belittle you to humiliate and assert their higher position in the hierarchy and this is a part of an ugly campaign to destroy any competition (which also means you're per…

It's important to keep things fact based and be very specific about the behavior you want corrected. I would get things in writing as well so that you have email to back you up in case things go south.

The situation you are describing is, unfortunately, not a male/female issue. It is a pattern for a certain type of low performer.

p.s., You might think about why you use the word "girl" as opposed to "woman" BTW. That's a touchy point for a lot of women, as it diminishes their seniority. It may or may not be relevant to the conversations you describe. This is not intended as criticism; I know nothing of the situation beyond what you wrote.

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#16

Post by ja27 »

When we had someone in for an interview, I'd often circle back and ask the office admin (that also covered reception) what she thought of them. It was pretty informative and eliminated a few candidates.

I've seen someone give the advice of responding to crude sexist "jokes" by asking them to explain it then explain the explanation. Just keep insisting that you don't get it and don't understand why it's funny and see how deep you can get them to dig before they get it.

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#17

Post by etrabroline »

hodgesrm wrote: post #13
bsaul wrote: post #7

if i want to play devil's advocate here, i'd say you can't both - remark that throughout your carrer you've been pretty much the only female in your team, - note that you've been naturally assigned the role of greeting newcomers, then - be upset that a new candidate won't assume you're an assistant instead of a developer he'll work with. He's just noticed pretty much the same things as you, and concluded the most lik…

That's not quite what the author was getting at. She was making an important point that I support wholeheartedly. Any candidate who is a jerk to the person who shows them to the meeting room and provides coffee pretty much guarantees they will not be joining my company. It's a good sieve for people who won't work out on a team because they lack basic consideration for others.

>That's not quite what the author was getting at

Of course not, bsaul was making his own point with the facts presented by the author. The characterization of the candidate's choice of words as "being a jerk" is not a fact. Clearly he was making a joke.

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#18

Post by rasputnik6502 »

hodgesrm wrote: post #15
rasputnik6502 wrote: post #6

Nice story. It takes some experience and self knowledge to identify what is a joke and what is bullying. Most men just want to be liked, seem witty and funny, and sometimes are just going a too far to show off. But there's a group of people who will belittle you to humiliate and assert their higher position in the hierarchy and this is a part of an ugly campaign to destroy any competition (which also means you're per…

It's important to keep things fact based and be very specific about the behavior you want corrected. I would get things in writing as well so that you have email to back you up in case things go south. The situation you are describing is, unfortunately, not a male/female issue. It is a pattern for a certain type of low performer. p.s., You might think about why you use the word "girl" as opposed to "woman" BTW. That'…

Probably because of age difference, she's much younger than me. And also because of the way she behaves - i perceive it as a bit childish/immature

But yes, i'm afraid i might be wrongly accused and would have a hard time defending myself, and this also affects the rest of the team (as i dont think they're blind - they see and feel what's going on - but on the other side i'd rather not talk about this with anyone else from the team so it's ok we dont mention that)

PS (edit): "low performer" - this is probably the key, i have worked with some developers doing a poor job but it's first time when i'm served some manipulative crap to prevent any honest discussion of the work done.

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#19

Post by sudosteph »

conradludgate wrote: post #4

I'm always disappointed when I read stories like this. It saddens me that people are like this. My team of 15 has a whopping 2 female engineers and they're amazing. Thankfully I've never witnessed a single instance of sexism here. There's a fair amount of ignorance and some awkward terminology though. (they often use "Hey guys" or "Hey lads"). I do remember in college we did have a female student. Of course the react…

I was often the only girl in my comp sci classes, though not always. I always thought it was interesting to see how my fellow female peers handled the extra attention. Some of them leaned into it and were always surrounded by mediocre male peers eager to "help" them. They would pretty much always defer to their posse of helpers and get praise for being a team player.

My strategy was pretty much the polar opposite though. I found that if I could one-up my male peers early in the course, most of the annoying ones would be too intimidated to bother me. It worked out pretty well too. The ones who weren't intimidated tended to be better at the coursework anyhow. So when I needed to partner up, I would pick one of them - and I wouldn't have to worry about them not respecting me or anything. If it was a random pairing with one of the ones who was uncomfortable around me, that actually worked fine too. They usually let me take the leadership role, and I didn't mind that either. I didn't get points for being agreeable, but nobody doubted my competency - and that was all I really wanted.

I can definitely see how women who aren't comfortable doing either of the things described above would transfer away.

Re: My life as a woman in tech, told in three beverages

#20

Post by domano »

etrabroline wrote: post #14
thedevelopnik wrote: post #2

How did Dick not get fired long before if everyone thought he was terrible? Oh right, that company did not learn the lesson of the first one, coding is not as important as being a decent person when it comes to building a team.

I will never understand this logic. It doesn't matter how friendly someone is if they can't code, but even if someone is difficult to work with (as many smart computer programmers are) they can still be hugely important to a team's success. Obviously there are limits to both of these, but technical ability is the requirement and "being fun to work with" is the nice-to-have. I think highly socialized people tend to co…

Sure, not having any hard skills at all disqualifies, but at some point you are good enough to do work and the social ability becomes the bottleneck.

It is not about being fun to work with (this is a nice bonus, sure), but having the ability to communicate with and enable, mentor, help others or accept help and critique if necessary.

Post reply on HN