Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer

I want to make constructive criticisms (which is extremely difficult in the context of someone perceiving harm), but I'd prefer not to get downvoted, so I will try to be as empathetic as possible when stating the following.

> I have a strong opinion about diversity hires: Although I don’t think they are a perfect solution, I consider them an effective measure to break the ceiling glass that excludes minorities from certain roles.

> Was I only selected because I was the only female applicant? Would I have passed the technical assessment? Would I keep moving up the company hierarchy only because I had a minority pass? Did they think that I wouldn’t mind knowing my own recruitment criteria?

These things are exactly why some people are against this way of increasing diversity. Critics of forced diversity hiring see this as a direct and obvious (at least to them) consequence of this practice; her experiencing the result is rather unsurprising (her surprise, however, is). She also does not suggest a better solution, so this just seems like whining (the definition of which is "complaining about a situation without a known solution"). I'd suggest that she probably wasn't informed that she was a diversity hire because intuitively, people know this is a shameful practice without great consequences...

> I have never considered that “having chemistry with the team” could be a reason for being let go. Guess what? After a quick Google search about “cultural fitting in tech,” I discovered that is an argument often used by tech companies to disguise a discriminatory preference.

She links to an example of this, but the example is just another person pulling the racism card when the only example that person gave was not drinking after work with coworkers. You can't expect people to not see you as a diversity hire, but only when it is convenient for you... if you want them to not see you as one when hiring you, but if when letting go of you for some given reason, you want to jump to conclusions based on diversity... you're gonna need much better evidence than that. "Cultural fit" is unfortunately a very valid condition for hire, at least if the goal is productivity and happiness: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-relationships-wor... The fact that "lack of cultural fit" SEEMS TO sometimes fall along diversity lines, is not so much a problem with diversity hiring as it is a problem of people just hanging out too much with other people who seem more like them, something that is (unfortunately) a natural inclination and something that literally every one of us should be consciously fighting. But it's a subpar situation, for sure.

But yes, why was this flagged? It is an extremely important topic and this was a an unusual and valuable approach to it.

Pure tech discussions are better on lobste.rs anyway so I recommend those who are allergic to this kind of topics to seek refugee there.

(Or on second thought, maybe not. I don't want deletionist and flag abusers there either.)

"you will use your whatever skill and you will be fine" is quite patronizing.

i would have stated the situation without making assumptions about her ability to do this, especially not any assumptions tied to her gender. i would have explained that she was the only person on the team who doesn't already have a bad relationship with carl. i would have asked her if she wants to do this and give her the option to decline. and maybe even offered a bonus for taking on a difficult task. and at the same time i would have pushed to have carl fired because he clearly isn't getting along with anyone else.

“I believe everyone can become a good professional as long as they’re willing to learn.”

was most likely speaking to her youth than her femininity.

Source: Myself as someone who has given advice to a lot of different interns/new grads along the same exact lines.