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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

#331

Post by refurb »

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…

Another anecdote, but back in in the mid-2000's a VP at my Fortune 50 company (not tech) verbatim said "If you know any women or African Americans looking for a job let us know and we'll find a job for them".

I get the intent, but it seems so incredibly forced and to your point, condescending for someone who busted their ass to get where they are in their career.

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

#332

Post by mcculley »

mcculley wrote: post #261
ausbah wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is just a rehash of "you shouldn't complain because other people have it worse"

Not at all. I think the characterization of tech as especially bad is incorrect and put forward only by those with no experience in other industries.

As I thought more about this, I realized (again) that the reason this happens is that people in tech are more likely to have blogs and other ways to make themselves heard. They don't see their privilege. This article could easily be titled "4 Times I Felt Discriminated Against for Being a Female" and drop the word "Developer". The oppressed in other industries don't have as much power. This reinforces the case that those who oppose the tech industry having an outsize influence on culture.

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

#333

Post by refurb »

pvaldes wrote: post #284
nzmsv wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a bit weird to have someone who is not Native American (you) tell an actual Native American how they should feel and what kind of experiences they are supposed to have had? I would guess that the subset of Native Americans who have a chance of getting the IBM job are more like the OP and less like the ones you are picturing. But no, instead it's "how dare you think our cringeworthy efforts to make you feel i…

> Isn't it a bit weird to have someone who is not Native American tell an actual Native American how they should feel. Not. Human experience is universal. Every single human in the planet can understand how other humans feel. We all have experienced similar events before and can provide solid advice about it to fellow humans. "You can't understand me, because I'm ... (native /black / woman / trans / philatelic...) an…

It's not binary. Sure, there are elements of being human that transcend racial, ethic and cultural differences, but there aspects that are difficult to understand if you didn't grow up in that culture or have extensive exposure.

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

#334

Post by alienthrowaway »

pacman2 wrote: post #247
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 am not sure mate. Yes, some things you mention sound annoying and insulting but still. You are an immigrant to the US, got a non US education, you got a job in Silicon Valley and you made it. Honestly, I feel like I received more discrimination as a white, western European in the US than you did. When I was still working in a university lab in the US, it was extremely diverse, with a strong bias/over-representation…

> Honestly, I feel like I received more discrimination as a white, western European in the US than you did.

What is the point of bringing this up - is this thread the oppression olympics/"Four Yorkshiremen" of discrimination? Do I have a bit for you: White, western European, you say? Try being an immigrant as a black, African in tech - I'm sure I had it worse than you, at least you people assume you had electricity growing up.

As you can imagine, it takes longer than I'd like to establish trust in my engineering chops, and this is an additional consideration when changing jobs.

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

#335

Post by refurb »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #120
SavantIdiot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of a non-diverse company that doesn't understand diversity trying to implement some kind of diversity. I recall these kinds of ham-fisted attempts everywhere in the late 90's. Ironically, this was most likely cringe because there were no minorities on the staff, a consequence of: no diversity. I observed a similar event in the early 90's when a bunch of white folk in HR tried to show off diversity…

> When minorities are made "ambassadors" as though they suddenly speak for EVERYONE in their minority, it is awful, and wrong. People don't get this: "But X minority said it was OK..." No, it takes literal diversity of opinion. Which is why the entire concept of demographics-based "diversity" is such a shambles. The premise is supposed to be that if you get some women and minorities in there then you'll have a divers…

Exactly. Overly focusing on race is pretty one dimensional when it comes to diversity.

The example I like is which would be more diverse in a silicon valley tech company - 1) an African American guy who grew up upper-middle class and went to an Ivy League school and always voted for "progressive" candidates or 2) a white guy who grew up poor in West Virginia, was the first to go to college and has an affinity for right wing politics?

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

#336

Post by seattle_spring »

kvetching wrote: post #166
SavantIdiot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of a non-diverse company that doesn't understand diversity trying to implement some kind of diversity. I recall these kinds of ham-fisted attempts everywhere in the late 90's. Ironically, this was most likely cringe because there were no minorities on the staff, a consequence of: no diversity. I observed a similar event in the early 90's when a bunch of white folk in HR tried to show off diversity…

It's sickening that a white man doesn't have a chance at any of the big companies, unless he's a programming god. This makes white supremacy even more of a problem because the white people that are there, are some of the best ever.

TIL that I'm a programming God.

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

#337

Post by core-questions »

twalla wrote: post #307
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…

> this time they have a Native American employee, you, that they can talk to about how to reach out to that group. I remember reading someone's opinion basically stating that things like that for underrepresented groups are unpaid emotional labor, which I kind of agree with - it's got to be a weird position to be in to be hired to write code and somehow end up as the defacto sounding board for questions regarding the…

> Imagine having randos come up to you and ask you for your time to pitch new ideas for how to recruit white dudes or asking questions about how it was growing up a white dude or even just people making the assumption that since you're a white dude you care about hiring more white dudes.

I imagine this all the time, yet it never happens.

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

#338

Post by dopidopHN »

entee wrote: post #277
worker767424 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hiring more black people It's not like there's a large, untapped pool of talented black software engineers. I'm at a large tech company. There was a team I worked with for a big with some really talented people, the sort of team where really smart domain experts go. There was a black guy on it who asked questions showing he wasn't an obviously talented domain expert. I found out he was recruited for coming from an…

Respectfully, this is the wrong way to look at the problem. It’s true, objectively, that there are fewer minority/female CS graduates. But there’s no way that gets better if a person who is “not a subject matter expert” gets dismissed. That person needs to be trained. If they want to be expert at that subject, we as an industry need to be able to help them get there. Increasingly I believe the problem with diversity…

> I believe the problem with diversity in tech is a retention and training problem, not a pipeline problem.

I saw one guy setting up a hiring pipeline in large industrial/tech company in the south, and changing the face of a office for that company.

- When he start : The city is 60% black, almost not black dev. A few in IT/Support. - He strike a deal with a local bootcamp, being extremely specific on the training content. Basically the boot-camp became a dedicated training ground for that company. several hiring event a year, summer internship program. Young folks from diverse backgroun. usually a solid 40/60 female/male blend.

- 2 years later I see junior black devs male AND female in a lot of teams. When I left some were promoted senior and a few really good recruits were on track to become team-lead/architect/whatever they wanted.

It's highly anecdotal, and that was matching that industrial behemoth goal to 'blend' into the culture of the south. ( read : hire black folks )

But I do think that a hiring pipeline do make a difference. Maybe this particular exemple was just too easy. Again, more than a majority of folk here are black, so it just natural to find more black candidate.

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

#339

Post by malandrew »

ipaddr wrote: post #201
conception wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

You need to fix that at the education level. Offering free top notch education can go a long way.

> Offering free top notch education can go a long way

I find it strange that people think you can just magically provide a top notch school and things magically correct themselves. How can you completely discount the impact of the parents involvement with their children's educational life?

Paraphasing JFK, "Ask not what your school can do for your kid's education, but what you can do for your kid's education".

Parents play a huge part in imparting good values in their children and also holding their children accountable for their performance in school. Furthermore, when some kids do poorly that rubs off on all the other kids by lowering the bar and setting bad examples. The parents set bad examples for their kids and then those kids set bad examples for other kids. It's turtles all the way down.

"If you want to see the poor remain poor, generation after generation, just keep the standards low in their schools and make excuses for their academic shortcomings and personal misbehavior. But please don't congratulate yourself on your compassion." – Thomas Sowell

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

#340

Post by betwixthewires »

joshz404 wrote: post #264
soulofmischief wrote: post #254

I'm sorry, but... > I have never considered that “having chemistry with the team” could be a reason for being let go. When you're working in a startup with 5 people and you're not in sync with their personalities, it can be a major drag on everyone. Having had to see people let go in startups for simply not fitting in, this has nothing to do with you being a woman and to frame it that way reduces the effectiveness of…

You're excluding this part: > I had never received any feedback indicating my performance was poor. In fact, it was exactly the other way around: I’ve never had a role that was such a good fit for my expertise before. So I asked if he could detail better where I failed. He refused to.. It is completely unprofessional to fire someone having never given any feedback. Startup or not.

To me, it seems obvious (I should say though that this is speculation, even if I think I'm right) that she was fired for precisely what she's doing in the article: looking for sexism where it doesn't exist. You cannot coach that behavior, you'll get labelled sexist immediately. There's no way to correct such a problem before letting someone go.

And providing reasons after the fact, as others have stated, is a bad idea because it opens up liability. You have no discriminatory reasons whatsoever for letting someone go, but you bumble some words and the next thing you know you're getting sued. Better to treat it like you're talking to the cops and just not say anything.

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