The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

T-shirt with a programming joke is the easy answer.

> Bonus question. If "clothing is signalling", what does a typical coder's outfit say about their ability to come up with non copy-paste solutions?

What are you trying to say here? An outfit tells you what someone's into, not how good they are at it.

> Double bonus question. What do you think of black coders, who are even less common than female coders? Do you presume they are at a tech event to play basketball? Would you advise them to come in white face so they could provide the right "signalling"?

If someone's dressed in basketball gear then I'm going to assume they're into basketball yeah. But most black programmers I've met dressed like programmers. And while there aren't that many black programmers, it's the ratio that matters. At a typical tech event, most of the black people you meet are programmers. Most of the women you meet aren't. Most people wearing a suit or dress aren't.

If you want people to think you're a business person, dress like a business person. If you want people to think you're a coder, dress like a coder. If you enjoy dressing as a punk but you're actually politically authoritarian, fine, more power to you, but don't complain when people make reasonable inferences from what you've chosen to wear.

They'd much rather be wrong on one case and save a hole lot of time, than make sure they get all the cases and finally find nothing. They could find a gem, but what are the odds, it's a gem after all.

So how does his audience being ignorant of something, aid him in his comedy? How can it help him if people don't know of it?

Assume that they think he is a white American - then he looks like a typical white guy, making racist jokes (presumably, I've never seen them). The fact that he's really Mexican is not known to most people, so people will just think of him as a typical white American.

In that context I have experienced similar issues but I chalk it up to people simply not being exposed enough to oddities like me. I am guilty of it too towards people I come across who break my mental image of how something "is."

For example, I live near Austin, Texas. I recently saw a really tall, very handsome black man wearing a cowboy hat and full-length duster. Certainly that's not the norm for me to see but not too incredibly odd either. That is until I heard him speak with the most refined British accent I'd ever heard in my life. I completely lost my composure and started viewing him if he were a novelty act. I have no doubt I was at least as much of an ass as the men you describe.

As other commenters have pondered, I wonder if these situations will actually start to decrease as the commonality of females in tech starts to increase.

I go to tech events and I never ever see anyone dressed in t-shirts with programming jokes on them (1). It's mostly the same ole sloppy t-shirt with jeans or chinos. So no, I am not going to wear the dorky scarlet letter all by my lonesome, thank you very much.

An outfit tells you what someone's into, not how good they are at it.

You mean, like, someone in a sloppy t-shirt and jeans is into complete and utter conformity?

At a typical tech event, most of the black people you meet are programmers. Most of the women you meet aren't.

Oh please. Most black people you see at a typical tech event are security and catering. As for the 2nd part of your statement, holy guacamole confirmation bias!

(1) For science, I just googled images for pycon, disrupt nyc, def con and finally just "hackathon" and nope, not a single programming joke t-shirt in sight. So your "easy answer" is anything but - you are asking women, and women only, to jump through extra hoops in order to get a seat at the proverbial table. Talk about a privileged, entitled stance.