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Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

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Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#171

Post by mc32 »

serjester wrote: post #81

With all due respect, I think part of her issue is she looks at everything from a "sexism" lens. Her first discriminatory comment seems like a sensible thing to tell any new grad. She complains that the company didn't tell her she was a diversity hire? Doing this seems like a recipe for any diversity hire to always have imposter syndrome. There's definitely sexism in the tech industry but I'd argue the best way forwa…

I have to agree. Some of it is sexist (her feminist coworker) but the others not so much. I could accuse them of lacking tact, perhaps.

One has to keep in mind that not only do Other people offend us inadvertently but also WE inadvertently offend others too.

We can’t be so sensitive that we become prickly and then have people avoid you because you’re so prickly.

We have to be okay with not everything coming from your point of view. You won’t be able to have the Other persons PoV either even if you’re conscious of it. You have no idea what I’m thinking in a moment. It’s a fool’s errand.

Be genuine, be respectful, but don’t fault people for coming short when trying.

When talking to an audience you cannot simultaneously please everyone. It’s just not possible. At best you can be compliant with whatever the accepted practice is.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#172

Post by missosoup »

> The time I was told at a feminist event that men are more naturally predisposed to do my job

They are. This is well studied in several countries now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

Edit for the downvoting morons:

'Predisposed to do job' doesn't mean 'better at doing job'. It means 'more likely to do job'. Read the fucking article.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#173

Post by arenaninja »

ibudiallo wrote: post #132

I wrote about my experience as a black developer not too long ago [1]. At first, you are shocked when you hear some insensitive comments made around you. Then you realize no one else even notices, so it must be something wrong with you. Eventually you ignore it. When someone says something stupid, you rationalize it and move on. After all, you are only just here to do a job. But then you get angry. You are angry at e…

I'm in a similar boat, story time!

$current_company runs internal events and makes noise about leadership bonuses being tied to diversity targets. I'm part of $targeted_minority so I usually show to the relevant zoom meetings. There's recurring meetings but no actionable items emerge from these meetings.

In a way I'm alright with this because some people need the meetings as a coping mechanism but it doesn't fix the underlying problem; bringing in more $targeted_minority does that. What's missing: data about internal hiring/promotions/referrals showing whether $targeted_minority has a funnel problem. Maybe those reports are above my pay grade at this company. For some anecdata I've made over 30 referrals and not one has been hired. At $previous_company I made 6 referrals that turned into 4 offers and 3 hires (and one of those referrals walked away before being made an offer). Sure, $current_company has higher standards but I'm a bit incredulous at the success rate gap.

Maybe one day they will give up and pad the numbers with marketing/HR folk, etc. and pat themselves on the back. Maybe they already do that and I just don't know about it.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#174

Post by LockAndLol »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #97
908B64B197 wrote: post #2

> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges. That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it. When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other one…

We had a great music director once, now world renowned (we never deserved him), who believed in blind as in blindfolded auditions. Whoever the candidates were, whatever their backgrounds and accolades and educations, he didn't care. No one was to know who they were rating, and after a while there were complaints of bias... for talent. During that period, yes, there were more women and people of color chosen than hist…

This is the kind of thing I think of when people talk a out meritocracy. Somehow social studies have warped the perception of meritocracy to mean "anti my group" by selecting examples that aren't meritocratic.

Just look up "meritocracy dead" on a search engine of your choice. It's pretty minds boggling what people want to replace the goal of meritocracy with these days.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#176

Post by tharne »

908B64B197 wrote: post #2

> I was even madder when I found the data science interns hired in a parallel recruitment process had been submitted to technical challenges. That's the miracle of "affirmative action" or whatever you want to call it. When looking at candidates internally, if a company decides to do affirmative action there are those that you know are there because of their skills (non-diverse individuals) and there are the other one…

I've seen this plenty of times. I even heard one manager at a happy hour say, "Thank god I finally hired an ABC and an XYZ, I can finally start recruiting based on talent again". This may be an extreme example, but still.

Unfortunately when you have affirmative action or hiring quotas, you inadvertently to create a culture where the diverse individuals are seen as less skilled and less qualified even when many of them would have gotten to the same place without the quotas.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#177

Post by Macha »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #37

I'm a light skinned male. I'm also a Choctaw Native American. In my senior year of college in 2004 I applied to dozens of companies. I never got a single response. I decided to try an experiment - I applied to IBM and, for the first time, I selected "Native American" as my ethnicity. Within 24 hours I got an email inviting me to a special, all expenses paid IBM recruiting event held for Native Americans in Albuquerqu…

Have had a former female coworker report a similar experience with IBM more recently than yours, pretty much search and replace "native american" with "female engineer". It was her first career out of college, and she just was not assigned very much duties in her actual team, and her management were far more interested in her DEI work than her engineering work. After a year of going "well maybe they just think I'm too junior for interesting work", she left for the company where we worked together.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#178

Post by Planktonne »

missosoup wrote: post #172

> The time I was told at a feminist event that men are more naturally predisposed to do my job They are. This is well studied in several countries now. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... Edit for the downvoting morons: 'Predisposed to do job' doesn't mean 'better at doing job'. It means 'more likely to do job'. Read the fucking article.

The linked article says the exact opposite of what you are claiming:

> The issue doesn’t appear to be girls’ aptitude for STEM professions. In looking at test scores across 67 countries and regions, Stoet and Geary found that girls performed about as well or better than boys did on science in most countries, and in almost all countries, girls would have been capable of college-level science and math classes if they had enrolled in them.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#179

Post by conception »

ipaddr wrote: post #149
munificent wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this sounds horribly cringe-inducing and I don't fault you at all for walking away from IBM. At the same time, I can't help but look at this from an iterated organizational perspective. Let's say you had taken the offer at IBM. Next year, IBM does the recruiting event. But this time they have a Native American employee, you, that they can talk to about how to reach out to that group. So it's a little less awkw…

Just hire based on skill / experience and don't not hire someone because they are a minority. Basic fair hiring goes a long way. If you want more diverse candidates advertise in more diverse places. To go through some cringe-inducing ordeal is not helpful. People want to be judged based on their skills not skin / gender.

How does that overcome systemic bias, eg prevalent poverty in many minority groups. The poor don’t have resources, wealth or contacts, to become a super coder/manager/whatever so they don’t make it into your applicant pool based on skill alone in the first place.

The cycle continues.

Breaking the cycle is hard. You could target low income children but that leaves everyone looking for jobs today in the cold, etc etc.

It’s a tough nut to crack but trying to fix historical bias isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Re: Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

#180

Post by kevinmgranger »

vlod wrote: post #134
f154hfds wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The Case For Color Blindness' by Coleman Hughes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_hRr5J9UUc I was sort of raised to believe 'Color blindness' was the right approach to take. It wasn't until the last couple years that I realized there was significant push back to the philosophy.

Here's Coleman Hughes in an abbreviated version: https://twitter.com/coldxman/status/1305959575930142723?lang... This is the first time I've heard of this push-back. I always thought that the words of Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." was a good approach?

Not to advocate for either approach, but surely MLK was describing an end goal, not a means for getting there, no?
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