Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

niniane.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 105 posts

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#91

Post by marvin »

zasz wrote: post #26
adwn wrote: post #19

To summarize: Most of the team wants to watch progam A; watching program A during dinner is an established team ritual; author wants to change channel to program B, which is "met with incredulity and laughter". Some time later, program B is running; team members come in and want to change the channel to program A. And that latter event is the most alienating during her time at Microsoft. Wat. It gets better: Because…

The implication is that the rest of the team felt comfortable enough in that environment that they could change the channel without even having to ask, while OP was loudly ridiculed for wanting to change the channel in a more polite way. The rest of the team felt comfortable with the team dynamic in a way that OP did not, and by ridiculing her, they made it clear that her desires were less important than theirs, thus…

> The implication is that the rest of the team felt comfortable enough in that environment that they could change the channel without even having to ask, while OP was loudly ridiculed for wanting to change the channel in a more polite way.

And not only once -- the single event of her requesting a switch to the different show was repeatedly ridiculed, as if this was a completely outrageous suggestion. This would have been quite okay if she asked "could we watch Friends today instead" and the other team members looked at each other and simply responded "Eh, we'd all really like to watch this game".

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#92

Post by marvin »

Jommi wrote: post #80
zasz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you can be a majority that's a tyranny, or a majority that occasionally is more accommodating.

Yup, and it sucks and I would personally not be part of that kind of circle. Ofcourse in a work environment this is hard to avoid. That's why "Culture fit" is stressed so much in recruiting.

This is unrelated, but I don't really get why one would want to watch TV with colleagues. It's not like you're productive when doing it. The requirement for the infamous "culture fit" is lower if you don't require that all coworkers are 100% socially compatible with each other. Then again, I'm from Europe.

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#93

Post by zer0defex »

How does she know gender actually had anything to do with the difficulties she was/is experiencing? Sounds like the author may be what the book "Leadership & Self-Deception" terms as "being in the box", which is to say her own behavior/attitude is doing way more to manifest these scenarios, much more than anything her co-workers probably have done. Something about this article just seems off... 90% of it complaining about not getting to watch a certain TV show at work (could she not go to her own desk and watch whatever struck her fancy?), while the much clearer example of sexual harassment in the car is tacked on the end as little more than an afterthought...

Then again, she comes across as rather passive, so I wouldn't be surprised if she's also uncomfortable with confrontation, so maybe this is her way of passive aggressively sticking it to the person in the car story? Who knows..

My advice: find a female power executive to serve as a mentor / career coach for a few months. Ideally a real hard-ass that pulls no punches when it comes to getting shit done, knows her shit and gives zero fucks whether an employee is male, female, penguin, or alien provided the work is done right, done well, and delivered on-schedule and most importantly, has no qualms about laying down the wrath of god on any employees slacking off and/or delivering shit quality work.

Seeing someone like that in action up-close and personal, while also benefiting from their input and guidance on her own situations encountered would I think pay huge dividends toward future career growth and happiness.

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#94

Post by crimsonalucard »

She's just being treated as a bro. Dudes are just immature like that. The touching is different though but I won't address that. Anyway to give my explanation more color, let me tell you about one of my "bro" friends.

We go to college together and we always make fun of each other for our differing tastes in TV shows. He likes pokemon, which I think is for little kids or adults with developmental problems while I like game of thrones, which he thinks is a show only liked by people who enjoy watching penises on television as the show periodically flashes one into your face for no reason. We make fun of each other about this all the time because we're bros, in manspeak this means we're just close friends.

I've had worse pranks played on me by said bro. One day I left my computer unattended and unlocked. He took control of my computer, changed the background to a giant wet penis; Took a screenshot of the page; made that screenshot the background then proceeded to hide all the icons and menu bars on my desktop. The end result was essentially what appeared to be a frozen computer screen with the background replaced by a huge penis. I thought it was some crazy virus as even restarting my computer didn't work. I spent the next ten minutes trying to debug the situation all the while staring at a giant penis. Funniest thing ever, we both got a good laugh out of it.

I mean this prank could be interpreted as inappropriate depending on the situation and person, but the point is neither me nor my friend would be willing to treat each other so "inappropriately" if we didn't feel close.

So in short, both sides have made social errors. Their actions were immature and they failed take into regard your discomfort as a woman, while the OP misinterpreted their intentions as sexist.

The resolution to this situation is easy. Ask him to stop... or join in on the fun. Openly declare their tastes in baseball as stupid and mindless. How could any sport be more boring? Everyone would've definitely got a good laugh if you were the one who pulled off that remote control prank.

You must also keep in mind that you are still in a situation where majority rules and you must honor that situation as you're the only person who wants to watch friends, it would be disproportionately unfair if they catered to your tastes instead of the majority.

Whatever the OP chooses to do I honestly believe that her coworkers actions were not intentionally discriminatory.

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#95

Post by emsy »

asQuirreL wrote: post #85
emsy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see where you're coming from but I disagree with the argument, because it only holds up under the assumption that they acted this way mainly to preserve the group identity. The simpler explanation is that the group made a democratic choice and she was unhappy with thre result.

You are right, it is just democracy at work, but I'm not sure that that is different from a group trying preserve its identity. The interesting thing is that most people assume that democracy is inclusive, because everybody has a voice, but in this case, the inclusive thing to do would have been to watch something that only one person wanted to watch, to make them as a minority, comfortable, whereas the democratic th…

I agree with you on this. My point was that we should be charitable in our judgement of the group, especially if we lack other perspectives. Someone from the group might say she always wanted to get her will and alienated herself. We can't know. That's the problem with anecdotes.

Regardless, a small group of people has more room for compromise than a democratic state, and as I said, I don't condone the way these kind of situations are usually handled.

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#96

Post by namaemuta »

nicolas_t wrote: post #68

Well, I'm male and I've been in the same exact situation multiple times. I do not like sports. I find watching sports on tv to be an absolute boring waste of time. Try suggesting in Europe, that you don't want to watch a soccer match and instead would like to watch Friends (which I like incidentally). It'll be met with ridicule. If there's something on the tv and soccer match is coming, you can be 100% sure that peop…

Specially now with the Eurocup. Try to get into a bar an propose to change the channel to something else.

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#97

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

fleitz wrote: post #49
yomly wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty awful. Out of interest, what did the CEO do? Sounds like a pretty bold thing for the other employee to say in front of the CEO. What was the context? Could that employee have equally said something as vile to another man without repercussion?

I'm a man, I changed my gender to see if it would stop the downvotes, it did. He looked at the other guy told him to apologize while I had my fist in the air. We moved on. Don't worry, you're free to change your opinion now that you know I'm a man. I mostly didn't care except for having to punch the guy out which was thankfully avoided by him retracting his statement.

Why did you think it was ok to respond to that sort of thing with violence?

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#98

Post by vlod »

coroutines wrote: post #82
adwn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think she blogged about this because it's a very small incident, but it had a very powerful effect on her. If it's a very small incident, why is it such a big deal for her? Especially compared to the real harrassment by her mentor in the car? > Over time this began to really bother me simply because of how small and benign it should have been. Well, did you ask your coworker why she did that? Being an adult also…

When you reframe it, what she experienced with the TV is minor - but I'm saying the bigger issues seem even more serious when you deal with minor stuff too? It's like if you forgot to do a chore and you stub your toe while doing that chore? As a followup to the thing I went through: I did confront my coworker. I spent a few weeks feeling like I couldn't bring it up because it's so small. This particular lady had alwa…

Just to mess with here, I would move my mug back to the group and take her mug out and place it by itself. ;)

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#99

Post by Tar90 »

emsy wrote: post #71
elevenfist wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with identity, it's just common bullying. I imagine the thought process may be something like "We're the majority, we don't care, so we're not going to share the tv. "

From that perspective, democracy is bullying.

The infamous tyranny of majority. That's why we have mechanisms in place in society to ensure fair representation.

Re: The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

#100

Post by [deleted] »

zasz wrote: post #26
adwn wrote: post #19

To summarize: Most of the team wants to watch progam A; watching program A during dinner is an established team ritual; author wants to change channel to program B, which is "met with incredulity and laughter". Some time later, program B is running; team members come in and want to change the channel to program A. And that latter event is the most alienating during her time at Microsoft. Wat. It gets better: Because…

The implication is that the rest of the team felt comfortable enough in that environment that they could change the channel without even having to ask, while OP was loudly ridiculed for wanting to change the channel in a more polite way. The rest of the team felt comfortable with the team dynamic in a way that OP did not, and by ridiculing her, they made it clear that her desires were less important than theirs, thus…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN