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On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

bryanaknight.com

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Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#41

Post by onetimePete »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #20
contactmatts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. When an entity (i.e. a company, tech conference, etc.) chooses someone for any reason outside of merit, it's discrimination, and marginalizes the hard work of others.

This logic falls appart almost immediately. A couple immediate counter examples: Two candidates for job, one objectively brilliant but an arrogant SoB the other more modestly skilled but jells with our culture. I hire the second, and the first can take is "hard work" and beat it. Two more candidates, one again is more technically qualified but the second grew up in a market Im targeting for expansion. Again, I take t…

Thank you for that reply. I always favoured meritocracy, but im currently running into this "outside" world, the challenges the outside world poses are fascinating. People are so complicated, it should be a science.

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#42

Post by RIMR »

new_corp_dev wrote: post #17
jonahrd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of manager treats every single employee the same, regardless of differences in talent, background, needs, etc? If a manager hires a person who needs a bit more structure in order to stay focused, that person should be given a little more structure. Or in this case, if a manager hires someone who has been pushed down her whole life and has learned to fade into the background so as not to upset men around her…

Helping people overcome whatever unique problems they face in order to reach their full potential is expected and encouraged. Offering them opportunities solely based on a protected status is not. I reiterate: if the industry sees a glut of women speakers who are there only because they are women, then the industry will have no choice but to acknowledge their token status. In the very same article the author laments…

>I reiterate: if the industry sees a glut of women speakers who are there only because they are women, then the industry will have no choice but to acknowledge their token status.

This is exactly the problem that goes ignored when people argue that "reverse discrimination" isn't a problem. Treating people differently because of their protected status only serves to further divide.

The interest should be on making sure boys and girls get the same opportunities and encouragement growing up. in US universities, we have 30 male STEM majors for every female STEM major. We aren't going to see the industry change until we fix the root problem - that men are 30x more interested in STEM jobs than women.

No amount of Social Justice Theater is going to level the playing field when men are being raised believing they can be whatever they want, and women are raised believing that marrying a wealthy man and becoming a stay-at-home mom is the greatest thing they can do with their lives.

Women are lacking in STEM not because STEM is sexist, but because few women ever consider a future in STEM. Introducing pro-woman sexism into STEM is a paradoxical way to "solve" the problem.

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#43

Post by JoeAltmaier »

new_corp_dev wrote: post #36
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we can be sure folks will bring it up again. Nobody is ignoring this issue, especially on internet comment sites. But for now, the status quo is unacceptable and special treatment is called for. Doing nothing is tantamount to acceptance of the unfair situation. Here's an idea: lets reverse things for now. You lose your job, along with most other men, and women are put in their place. That's millions of people c…

Let's make it more fair: instead of men and women changing jobs, ostensibly causing a great deal of chaos, let's go with a parallel universe where your conditions are already in place. Or even better, let's use industries in our own universe that already has those conditions: education and child care. What sort of "special treatment" do men get in those industries? Well, in many day care services, the male employees…

The standard reply is, those industries are among the lowest-paid. And men are among the highest-offenders. So its a straw man.

How about, we use instead any of the other 100 industries where men already hold the best-paid positions? We'll just swap 30 or 40 of them, so as not to cause as much pain to all those poor men.

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#44

Post by JoeAltmaier »

RIMR wrote: post #30
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. Inequality can be fought with quotas, biased hiring etc. Until the culture starts to change; then you need to change tactics. Are we so rich in diverse developers, that we can stop trying? I don't think so.

Let's be honest. Are Bryana's employers trying to make the workplace more diverse? It doesn't seem so given that they have a 20:1 male:female ratio. It seems much more likely that they have chosen Bryana to represent them at conferences so that they can APPEAR to be more diverse. She's a token female in a majority-male environment. If they cared about equality, they would participate in programs targeting younger gir…

My local Engineering college is 25% women. The education part has begun already, and is picking up steam.

We can do both. No good reason remains to delay corrective pressure in staffing processes.

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#45

Post by RIMR »

davesims wrote: post #32

As someone who was directly involved with hiring & managing Bryana let me set one aspect of this conversation to rest: Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, without qualification. She commanded, and continues to command, respect from her peers for both her technical contributions on a very challenging tech stack, and product savvy in an extremely complex business domain. I was on her interview and th…

Have you made any decisions about Bryana's responsibilities that were motivated by her gender, rather than her personal strengths?

Putting your only female dev in the position of representing your company at conferences suggests that she's taken on the role of "token female". If this is coincidental, and she just happens to be the best spoken developer with the least stagefright, then clearly there is no problem. However, if you deliberately chose her because she is female, then you are doing her no long-term favors, and are engaged in sexist business practices yourself.

new_corp_dev put it better than I could: "If the industry sees a glut of women speakers who are there only because they are women, then the industry will have no choice but to acknowledge their token status."

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#46

Post by new_corp_dev »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #43
new_corp_dev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's make it more fair: instead of men and women changing jobs, ostensibly causing a great deal of chaos, let's go with a parallel universe where your conditions are already in place. Or even better, let's use industries in our own universe that already has those conditions: education and child care. What sort of "special treatment" do men get in those industries? Well, in many day care services, the male employees…

The standard reply is, those industries are among the lowest-paid. And men are among the highest-offenders. So its a straw man. How about, we use instead any of the other 100 industries where men already hold the best-paid positions? We'll just swap 30 or 40 of them, so as not to cause as much pain to all those poor men.

We've built our straw effigies from the same bale, mine just happens to burn more cleanly.

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#47

Post by programmernews3 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #27
RIMR wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they said "Bryana, you're a great speaker and can really hold a crowd. We want you to attend conferences and represent our company. You're really the best at it!", then it would be wonderful. There is no need to treat every employee equally when they clearly have differing skills and strengths. This isn't what is happening here though. This comes off much more as "Bryana, you're our only female programmer, and we…

Sure it does. Inequality can be fought with quotas, biased hiring etc. Until the culture starts to change; then you need to change tactics. Are we so rich in diverse developers, that we can stop trying? I don't think so.

The irony of the left - they want to treat people differently based on their gender and skin colour.

In the UK, white British make up 40% of medical doctors.

Would you support quotas and biased hiring to increase the number of white British doctors? It would make it more representative of the population.

What about primary school teachers? If 9 females and 1 male go for a job, should the male always get preference?

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#48

Post by JoeAltmaier »

RIMR wrote: post #45
davesims wrote: post #32

As someone who was directly involved with hiring & managing Bryana let me set one aspect of this conversation to rest: Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, without qualification. She commanded, and continues to command, respect from her peers for both her technical contributions on a very challenging tech stack, and product savvy in an extremely complex business domain. I was on her interview and th…

Have you made any decisions about Bryana's responsibilities that were motivated by her gender, rather than her personal strengths? Putting your only female dev in the position of representing your company at conferences suggests that she's taken on the role of "token female". If this is coincidental, and she just happens to be the best spoken developer with the least stagefright, then clearly there is no problem. How…

So what? What harm is there in showcasing female workers? There's nothing about being a 'token' that precludes competence.

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#49

Post by JoeAltmaier »

programmernews3 wrote: post #47
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. Inequality can be fought with quotas, biased hiring etc. Until the culture starts to change; then you need to change tactics. Are we so rich in diverse developers, that we can stop trying? I don't think so.

The irony of the left - they want to treat people differently based on their gender and skin colour. In the UK, white British make up 40% of medical doctors. Would you support quotas and biased hiring to increase the number of white British doctors? It would make it more representative of the population. What about primary school teachers? If 9 females and 1 male go for a job, should the male always get preference?

Yes straw men can always be found. But for the other 100 high-paying jobs and industries, there's a lot to be done.

Re: On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

#50

Post by davesims »

new_corp_dev wrote: post #39
davesims wrote: post #32

As someone who was directly involved with hiring & managing Bryana let me set one aspect of this conversation to rest: Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, without qualification. She commanded, and continues to command, respect from her peers for both her technical contributions on a very challenging tech stack, and product savvy in an extremely complex business domain. I was on her interview and th…

Nobody is questioning her ability or qualifications, only your decision to offer her opportunities and incentives based on her gender which her post implies were not also available to equally qualified male members of her team. If you want to put the conversation to rest, simply clarify that point.

> only your decision to offer her opportunities and incentives based on her gender which her post implies were not also available to equally qualified male members of her team.

Her post only implied her own personal, subjective and utterly understandable anxieties on that point. My response was at pains to put both her questions and anyone else's to rest. She earned everything she got, and the comprehensive respect she received from her peers was without qualification. Never mind gender, she coded way beyond her years of experience. The main thing with managing Bryana was to get out of her way and let her do outstanding work, which she did.

> If you want to put the conversation to rest, simply clarify that point.

Was there something ambiguous to you in my statements here?

* Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, _without qualification_.

* ...she..._earned_ every single bit of responsibility she ever got.

* We just evaluated the [interview] performance and hired the best dev for the position, _end of conversation_.

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