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The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
11–20 of 116 posts
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#12> Less Drama A male developer saying that would _so_ not get away with it :P
A male developer even thinking in terms of "More\Less Drama" ?
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#13She doesn't mention it, but another great thing about being an engineer is that engineers are quite egalitarian and the evaluation criteria is often very objective (speed of the code, complexity of the algorithm, etc.). As a result, women just have to be good at what they do, and there's hardly any discrimination. In other fields, often, for a woman to just be good is not enough; there is overt (or covert) discrimina…
Good point--that's pretty much the experience I've had, but I've only worked in software, so I didn't have much to compare it to!
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#14Re: "Being Liked"
If I were to say "I like having women at work, especially when they make brownies and are not bitches," I'd have an angry horde at my door.
But Jean Hsu thinks it is okay to say it because she is a woman?
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#15She doesn't mention it, but another great thing about being an engineer is that engineers are quite egalitarian and the evaluation criteria is often very objective (speed of the code, complexity of the algorithm, etc.). As a result, women just have to be good at what they do, and there's hardly any discrimination. In other fields, often, for a woman to just be good is not enough; there is overt (or covert) discrimina…
That's a nice thought, but the real promotions often happen on the grounds of "leadership", "management" and "communication skills", which women are often perceived to lack.
Or maybe you work in a more egalitarian place than me.
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#16She doesn't mention it, but another great thing about being an engineer is that engineers are quite egalitarian and the evaluation criteria is often very objective (speed of the code, complexity of the algorithm, etc.). As a result, women just have to be good at what they do, and there's hardly any discrimination. In other fields, often, for a woman to just be good is not enough; there is overt (or covert) discrimina…
That's a nice thought, but the real promotions often happen on the grounds of "leadership", "management" and "communication skills", which women are often perceived to lack. Or maybe you work in a more egalitarian place than me.
If anything, I think women generally have _better_ communication skills than men.
You do realize that we're talking in vast generalizations here. Engineers run the gamut; there will be sexist, racist and bigoted engineers too. But my experience in nearly 20 years of being in the field has been that engineers, _in general_, are more egalitarian. If someone comes up with cool shit, no one cares whether that person is a woman, or a man, or what color his/her skin is; if it's cool, everyone goes "oooh!" and s/he gets instant respect.
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#17She doesn't mention it, but another great thing about being an engineer is that engineers are quite egalitarian and the evaluation criteria is often very objective (speed of the code, complexity of the algorithm, etc.). As a result, women just have to be good at what they do, and there's hardly any discrimination. In other fields, often, for a woman to just be good is not enough; there is overt (or covert) discrimina…
That's a nice thought, but the real promotions often happen on the grounds of "leadership", "management" and "communication skills", which women are often perceived to lack. Or maybe you work in a more egalitarian place than me.
An alternative is being encouraged to go into product / management roles (read: out of engineering) because you've got "communication skills."
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#18Re: "Being Liked" If I were to say "I like having women at work, especially when they make brownies and are not bitches," I'd have an angry horde at my door. But Jean Hsu thinks it is okay to say it because she is a woman?
I'm going to assume both you and Jean Hsu wouldn't be serious when they said that. In that case, if you were to say that, the angry horde would consist of women that didn't know you and were taking your words at face value, because guys have been known to actually feel that way. Those women would give Jean Hsu the benefit of the doubt, because there are few women known to have actually ever felt that way. However, with people you know, who understood the broader context of what you were saying, it wouldn't (shouldn't) be a problem.
"I like some female colleagues among my male colleagues for a number of reasons, but the fact that they tend to bring brownies definitely stands out for me, because I love brownies." There, defused the entire problem?
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a nice thought, but the real promotions often happen on the grounds of "leadership", "management" and "communication skills", which women are often perceived to lack. Or maybe you work in a more egalitarian place than me.
An alternative is being encouraged to go into product / management roles (read: out of engineering) because you've got "communication skills."
Yes! I can't tell you how many people have tried to steer me away from development because I speak human AND code, and can actually make eye contact.
Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer
#20Sorry, I can't hear about gender in engineering jobs anymore.
The likelihood that you will see a blog post about the "benefits of being a male software engineer" is exactly the same as the likelihood to see a blog post about the "benefits of being a male social worker".
We do not need to artificially try to bring in more engineers of a certain gender just because the numbers don't make sense.
And we do not need more blog posts calling out our oddities as engineers. We all dress like dorks. We all have our quirks. Get over it.