111–116 of 116 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What's eye contact for, anyway? I can read body language reasonably well, but I always feel like people are expecting me to do something with my eyes and I can never tell what, exactly, I'm supposed to do with them.
Until recently, I've found that claims of sexism in software were strange (I'll share a story below to explain). If anything, I've generally found that men tend to be thrilled at having women working with them, and not for the seedy sort of ways that might be expected. Most of the male software engineers I've known honestly wonder why their field has so few women in it -- known that women are full and well as smart a…
Honestly, your story sounds like a typical corporate power struggle which happened to affect a department which was (by some fluke) full of women. If you read about HP under Fiorina, you hear a similar story. Techies were pushed aside and replaced by Fiorina's cronies (mostly marketers), and the company suffered horribly. Such stories don't always end in disaster - a certain investment bank recently brought on a new…
I think what finally made us conclude the sexist element was the speed with which it happened, and that red flags were raised with HR that only seemed to speed things up -- get rid of the complainers faster than they can complain.
Until recently, I've found that claims of sexism in software were strange (I'll share a story below to explain). If anything, I've generally found that men tend to be thrilled at having women working with them, and not for the seedy sort of ways that might be expected. Most of the male software engineers I've known honestly wonder why their field has so few women in it -- known that women are full and well as smart a…
Fired for sexism? Or only because he was losing money? Because if it was sexism, depending upon the state, the women in that company could own the company, after lawsuits.
We came close to collecting enough evidence, but the lawyers we talked to said we needed either a smoking gun, or more overt documentation to establish a pattern. Most of the outward sexism was verbal or in the form of indirect patterns of employee movement.
At one point we considered secretly taping conversations but it turns out those are illegal in our state, which is too bad as my wife related some cases that sounded like something out of a bad 1940's movie.
Until recently, I've found that claims of sexism in software were strange (I'll share a story below to explain). If anything, I've generally found that men tend to be thrilled at having women working with them, and not for the seedy sort of ways that might be expected. Most of the male software engineers I've known honestly wonder why their field has so few women in it -- known that women are full and well as smart a…
Yes, there is sexism. It exists everywhere, not confined to any particular profession. The company where she suffered that probably had women in totally different areas that also suffered from that. That is despicable, dishonest and repulsive. But it doesn't have much to do with the culture of software engineering itself, which on a technical level is very egalitarian in terms of really not caring whether you're male…
That's exactly the kind of industries or departments she's worked in, non-tech in focus, but needing a large technical/development/engineering department to run things.
But yeah, I've definitely noticed at the large system integrator companies, there's a higher than usual (for startup geek standards) % of women.
What differentiates the level of "drama" between the banking industry from the software programming industry? Is it because engineering is inherently more meritocratic and less egotistical? Or is there just too much money and power at stake when it comes to banking that one can't help but get involved in more politicking? Does the (presence or absence of any one)gender come into play at all?