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So a female programmer walks into a bar…

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Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#21

Post by commandar »

>Because we have a motto that says “you’re not your code” that all of us stick to and it works in many ways.

This struck a chord with me.

I work in the healthcare sector, so I deal with what is, for IT, an unusually high proportion of women. I've dealt with bad female developers, but I've also worked with absolutely great ones. Just like I've dealt with incompetent and solid male developers.

Maybe it's just my exposure and the fact that it's a normal thing for me, but gender just doesn't even register on my radar when I have to work with someone. All I care about is the ability to get the job done.

While I think the dearth of women in the tech sector is systematic on a deep enough level that it's very difficult to "solve" in any manner that won't take decades, I do find myself somewhat worried about the byproducts of tech's current insular nature. I feel that normalizing dealing with people -- diverse groups of people -- on a regular basis yields healthy benefits well beyond simply saying "we're inclusive!" It breeds openness to just plain working with people as people.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#22

Post by commandar »

mindcrime wrote: post #19

“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's fucking stupid . I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've never seen any reason…

>It really boggles the imagination... where do these guys come up with this shit?

I touch on this in my comment upthread and you mention it as well, but I really feel like insularity has a strong causative effect here.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#23

Post by nawitus »

mindcrime wrote: post #19

“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's fucking stupid . I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've never seen any reason…

Are you implying that the comment was supposed to be a rational argument?

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#24

Post by leephillips »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #16
ufmace wrote: post #13

Misleading title, there is no bar in this story. But seriously, I think this is a refreshing article, considering the usual gender in tech articles here. I'd like to think that there are plenty of places a woman can work as a professional developer and not be subject to such rampant discrimination and sexual harassment that most of us find it difficult to believe. I recommend everybody believe and act as if there are…

If you find yourself at a company that sucks, for whatever reason, kick their asses to the curb and find a new one. And don't forget to call them out for it, publicly. I know that's easy to say, and in reality it's going to be hard to deal with the inevitable onslaught of abuse you're going to take for it. But companies have to make an effort to ensure that toxic environments are eliminated.

"And don't forget to call them out for it, publicly."

Many homeowner's policies allow you to pay a bit extra to add defense against defamation lawsuits to your liability coverage. You should at least put this in place, unless you have $30,000 - $100,000 in disposable savings to defend against a defamation suit.

This is what you need to plan for if you intend to make public statements that damage a business' reputation - and that's if you know you're right and have thorough documentation of every claim you make. If you lack any of that documentation, it's going to cost you a lot more.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#25

Post by commandar »

EGreg wrote: post #12

You know that comic, from back in the 90s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_y... Well, this is another point for the distributed, asynchronous programming championed by http://asyncmanifesto.org/ I would be happy to hire a woman programmer at our company provided she was awesome at the stuff we need -- Javascript, PHP, etc. In fact if someone here is reading this (man or woman) and thinks th…

>In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job.

The problem is that it shouldn't require anonymity to get people to simply treat each other like people.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#26

Post by devgutt »

mindcrime wrote: post #19

“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's fucking stupid . I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've never seen any reason…

This is an easy way, especially if you don't have any arguments, to diminish other people. Doesn't matter the gender. If one was a guy, the other one would say "you're a PHP developer, leave this crap to REAL developers". This is not sexist, it's just plain stupid, as you said.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#27

Post by madsheep »

You might think this is fake, planned or otherwise staged - I get that, I would think the same. But you should see my anger when I saw what's going on with that tiny little excuse for a server, becouse nobody told me this is happening. They did not think they need to, since it's only felt natural and normal thing to do, reposting an article of one of our coworkers and going to HN with it. passenger_max_instances_per_app 4 my ass.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#28

Post by EGreg »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #20
EGreg wrote: post #12

You know that comic, from back in the 90s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_y... Well, this is another point for the distributed, asynchronous programming championed by http://asyncmanifesto.org/ I would be happy to hire a woman programmer at our company provided she was awesome at the stuff we need -- Javascript, PHP, etc. In fact if someone here is reading this (man or woman) and thinks th…

In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job. This is the meritocracy argument. I am sympathetic to it, and agree to a great extent. But the main objection—and it's an important one—is that an unbalanced, male-dominated workplace becomes less attractive to women. In most cases…

Even more argument to vote for the internet, where 90% of the communication would be about the work and they won't have to constantly see discrimination in 50% or more of the communication.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#29

Post by JPKab »

ufmace wrote: post #13

Misleading title, there is no bar in this story. But seriously, I think this is a refreshing article, considering the usual gender in tech articles here. I'd like to think that there are plenty of places a woman can work as a professional developer and not be subject to such rampant discrimination and sexual harassment that most of us find it difficult to believe. I recommend everybody believe and act as if there are…

I was recently in an 11 week class for Machine Learning. 3 of the best students in this course were females. What was funny to me was how gender was never really an issue for anyone. Competent people are typically awestruck by smart people who are displaying brilliance. I was always cracking jokes about "well, I'm not (insert her name here), so I'll have to go look at her code before I can do that."

The big difference in treatment occurred with the lone female in the course who wasn't a good coder. Despite her having more experience than many in the class, she quickly fell behind. I witnessed a vicious cycle, in which she (probably due to the way she had been treated in the past) was ultra defensive when criticism came down, which then caused a difference in how she was criticized, which was then picked up on by her...... She complained to me about being discriminated against for her gender. While I'm very sympathetic to females in our industry who suffer at the hands of these brogrammer idiots (anytime I see anything remotely like that kind of behavior, I don't hesitate to LITERALLY GRAB the guy/guys, pull them aside, and give them a menacing rebuke), this was a case in which gender wasn't actually the issue. It was personality. And I have no doubt that gender discrimination in her past helped create this personality. Such a challenge to deal with this.

Re: So a female programmer walks into a bar…

#30

Post by kordless »

mindcrime wrote: post #19

“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's fucking stupid . I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've never seen any reason…

Reading about history is usually a good way to educate. ENIAC, the world's first and fastest (at that time) electronic computer, had a full time devops staff of six. ENIAC was a beast of a machine, using a whopping 150kW of power, and broke on a daily basis. ENIAC's devops team was comprised of Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC#Programming

If you program or do operations for a living, know the first of your kind were hard working women who also dressed to the nines when they showed up for work.

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