Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #203

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…

Both whites and blacks get bullied the same amount but when it happens to a black person, it’s racism and is actually taken seriously. I get called dipshit and you get called the N-word. Why race-based bullying has suddenly become considered worse is beyond me.

[deleted]

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

#422

Post by prepend » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

I think is important to talk about because insensitive comments aren’t always clear. Finding a good way to talk about comments in a healthy way is the difference between me having more peace or stewing.

Sometimes people don’t know what they’re saying is offensive, sometimes I misperceive something.

An example is that I was in a staff meeting and one of the seniors said “Paying for itself in spades...” and another developer’s face just sunk and he was clearly upset but the senior didn’t notice.

Dev2 went to a colleague to talk and explained how he was really upset because Dev1 uses this term quite a bit and that it’s offensive. Colleague pulled up some info on the origins of the term [0] and how it has nothing to do with race.

If Dev2 hadn’t talked about it, then they would have continued thinking that Dev1 was saying racist things.

Obviously, the particulars of situations will vary and there are jerks. But given that we work with lots of different cultures, it’s good to try to find a way to confront these offenses in a way that’s not exhausting and can help build team relationships.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_spade_a_spade

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

#423

Post by belorn » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

conception wrote: post #345

belorn wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is impossible to solve systemic bias by using discrimination. It has never worked in the past despite an untold number of attempts. In a very similar way, violence create violence in very predictable cycles. Like violence, the solution to systemic bias are simple but unattractive. Don't display and rub symbols in people faces. Do not create ambiguous borders between groups of people. Treat each person as individua…

Despite declarations that busing to desegregate schools failed in the 1970s and 1980s, that era actually saw significant improvement in educational equity. When the National Assessment of Educational Progress began in the early 1970s, there was a 53-point gap in reading scores between black and white 17-year-olds. That chasm narrowed to 20 points by 1988. During that time, every region of the country except the North…

The case is interesting, through I would compare it to a similar but failed experiment in Sweden where students of got free points in their grade if they applied to a program where there would be a minority. Why did one have some success and the other had none? I would go back to the things I wrote above about what to do and what not to do.

Providing free buses to people who live far away from desired schools do not rub the act in the face of people who live near those schools and do not need buses. It might cause a negative side effect that school buses becomes a symbolic proxy for being poor, making those intended to use them less likely to agree to use them, but it extends the option available for those who only have few options to begin with. In contrast, free grade points is much more displayed directly in the face of other fellow students, both to those who get into the program and those who were rejected with similar grades.

Free buses does not provide any ambiguous borders or rules once the student is at school. The requirements and expectations of the student is same as any other student. There are few situation where uncertainty and doubt can occur between buss and non-buss student, except maybe for times of heavy snow or road congestion. To my knowledge, when students who depend on buses can't reach the school and thus given a pass to skip school, the other students are given the same pass. If we go back to the Swedish example, requirements and expectations get ambiguous when people get in through other means than merit, causing tensions between those who got in through grades and those who got in through the free points system.

Both systems has generalizations, so I would say that a way to improve the desegregation efforts would have been to skip the qualification of race and simply provide the busing to any individual that is below a set amount of wealth and live a distance far away from the desired school in order to need a bus. Such change might have saved it from being abandoned in 1988.

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

#424

Post by prepend » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #265

asdff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one take. Another take is that people want chums at work. An average person hires someone they see themselves as being friends with rather than the best qualified candidate. Animals such as bees, monkeys, and ourselves are also biased to favor their genetic group (kin selection). In other words, you subconsciously favor people who look like you and act like you. In that light, the non diverse office might be s…

> But the whole point of the diversity hire isn't that you get someone who isn't white and that's it. The idea is that for every job, there are thousands of people who are qualified to do it, and among those, there are certainly people from all sorts of walks of life, and you'd spend earnest effort overcoming your subconscious biases by dipping your hand into the pool of equally skilled candidates, and pulling out th…

I have interviewed hundreds and hired dozens of software developers over the years. It’s always been a challenge to find qualified candidates and I’ve never had a situation where there were 5 similarly qualified programmers, much less thousands.

I think there may be some positions where there lots of people equally skilled, but not aware of any in tech.

Perhaps there are thousands in the entire world, but not that apply to my positions. I think this is a good argument for trying to get more and better applications. But it confuses me to think that of the applicants I get, I can assume many are equally skilled.

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

#425

Post by ta988 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #118

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…

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 is not how things happen, I have yet to see any large organization that let itself or its procedures changed by new hires. And telling someone that was mistreated by a company that they should have accepted and then tried to change the things from the inside is insensitivity at its best. Now if they hire you specifically for that purpose that's different, but it abaolutely doesnt sound like it here.

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

#426

Post by ta988 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

midasz wrote: post #397

kvetching wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm as white as it gets. Blonde, blue eyes, and I've never had a problem getting a job. This victim complex is based on nothing but disinformation from alt-right actors. We're not the victims, not in any way. Just because people are trying to make opportunities more equal doesn't mean we are suddenly oppressed.

Absolutely. I also noticed (a feeling for now but I will start documenting) that in the last two years and especially more in the last months there seem to be more and more of this kind of comments here (the one you are dismantling, not yours). And weirdly they seem to be dog-whistling to each other and they gather in subcomments areas.

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

#427

Post by ttz » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #418

ttz wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. Spew this BS elsewhere to people who are actually gullible enough to not see through this rhetorical regurgitation. Human experience is not universal. Try going back in time and be a slave. Or a victim of the Nanjing rape. Tell me, with a straight face, that you can truly understand the pain and suffering those people went through. You think a royal family member can understand what it is like to be whippe…

Are you aware that the term 'slave' cames originary from slavic people, also called 'white people'? There are lots of white people perfectly able to understand what was to be a slave in Siberia, Germany, Spain or Roma, and for sure asian people could tell us about their own quote of pain. Please don't feel so special, there is plenty of s*t for everyone in the history of humanity.

I'm quite aware of the etymology of the word "slave". Why is that relevant at all to this discussion?

It's about socioeconomic and class status. There are lots of poor white communities that suffer serious oppression and missed opportunities too, but that's not the point of my post, or why I found your post disgusting. There are lots of rich East Asian people who've never had to do any manual labor in their life, or worry about their infant not being able to eat; just as there are East Asians who watched as Japanese soldiers tore the infants from their pregnant mother. Or German/Russian Mennonites who watched as Slavic peoples(as you call them) come in and murder their village. The common denominator here is class, power, and social status, not race.

Are you saying that the rich and poor have equal human experience? Please, answer that point first, instead of redirecting into this tired anti-"white guilt" narrative.

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

#428

Post by tim333 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #192

"I believe everyone can become a good professional as long as they’re willing to learn." This isn't sexist. I've been told this, and I've told this to junior engineers of both genders. It's not even just a stretch to claim it's sexist, it's ridiculous to. The remark about prioritizing is actually more troublesome, and entirely independent of this comment. "Some things went well, others not so well. I am not giving yo…

>"Boys are just predisposed for technology by nature, and there is nothing we can do. I see it in my children: While my son prefers video games, my daughter only cares about Facebook."

Well you're not supposed to say that though there may be some differences between the sexes. Like myself and my sister fit the stereotype.

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

#429

Post by LocalH » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

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…

Human experience is anything but universal, or everyone's personalities would end up a lot more similar. Most of today's problems are rooted in people insisting that the human experience is universal. The human experience is very personal, and if you haven't experienced something, you can't truly understand it. Sure, you can study it from the outside, but if your studying causes you to invalidate the experience of others, then it is not a net gain.

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

#430

Post by bagacrap » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

oji0hub wrote: post #395

About this quote: > “Boys are just predisposed for technology by nature, and there is nothing we can do. I see it in my children: While my son prefers video games, my daughter only cares about Facebook.” We can see that adult women and men make different choices. We can go back in time and see they made different choices as teenagers and young adult when on average they chose to study different things. In the example…

> Is this a problem?

It's a problem if one applies the typical to the specific. If a woman is sitting in front of you and you assume her characteristics match the mean of all women's characteristics, congrats, you are sexist.