I’ll attempt to gently point out something that’s important to me: this is also an example of how males discuss things.
It’s very difficult to bring up this topic in a constructive, thoughtful, and impactful way. But I urge you to really sit down and think carefully about it, even for a few minutes.
His tone was the tone I used to use. I still do, sometimes. I have to catch myself, because old habits are hard to break.
The reason I decided to break the habit is because it discourages people like my wife from becoming engineers, let alone founders. She’s one of the most talented hackers I know. And you’d be reasonable to suspect that I’m exaggerating or being nice because she’s a woman, but you’d be mistaken. If you’re a react dev, there’s a very strong probability that if you went head to hews with her in a “who can ship a great looking website faster?” contest, you would lose badly. I didn’t believe it until I saw it more than once.
The world is worse without people like her as engineers. And — most importantly — it’s worth altering our behavior in the default case, not to be nice or to be more inclusive, but because it will make everyone’s lives better in the long run.
Just some food for thought. It didn’t sink in for me until I pointed out she could be paid a lot more if only she’d aggressively negotiate. She mentioned “yeah, I know it’s how men do it.” A little switch flipped in my head. It doesn’t need to be this way; we decide to be this way.