

You Say You Want Diversity, but We Can’t Even Get Internships - albemuth
https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/you-say-you-want-diversity-but-we-cant-even-get-internships

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gamechangr
"Why don’t I have a blog, or my own website? Because there’s so much
harassment going on nowadays that I’m actually scared to put my thoughts on
the internet."

That is a really telling line of thinking. The author wants to be recognized
for "doing more than writing code", but is not comfortable being open about
her thoughts on a blog? How exactly should that happen? "Anne" put this on
your blog -- you are better off with misplaced anger than no blog.

"It’s a humiliating experience to witness that people have so much respect and
admiration for an experienced male developer, but there’s no place for you
because you’re female and a beginner."

That has nothing to do with gender? Seriously?

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loco5niner
"It’s a humiliating experience to witness that people have so much respect and
admiration for an experienced male developer, but there’s no place for you
because you’re female and a beginner."

This is where I stopped reading.

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johansch
Is this for real?

"It’s a humiliating experience to witness that people have so much respect and
admiration for an experienced male developer, but there’s no place for you
because you’re female and a beginner."

~~~
angersock
Author is unfortunately conflating gender bias with experience bias.

And for what it's worth, they don't actually have _respect_ for the male
developer--they just covet them more.

------
angersock
There's a lot of unfocused anger in this article (as there should be!), but
I'm going to pick out a few things and respond to them directly.

 _It’s a humiliating experience to witness that people have so much respect
and admiration for an experienced male developer, but there’s no place for you
because you’re female and a beginner._

There's a big difference between "a beginner" and an "experienced developer".
If the company isn't setup to handle the (relatively large) workload of
dealing with junior/novice developers, of course they aren't going to be
interested in you. The gender thing is, I'd like to think, not as big a deal
as the author claims--if it was, well, to hell with those folks.

 _If you are a woman or belong to other underrepresented groups, it’s totally
different. Besides being experienced you need to have a blog, website, GitHub
account and contribute to open source._

I think that that is expected of _any_ new developers these days...at least,
that's what I'm looking for. Failing that, an honest explanation of _why_ you
don't have those things ("I'm working other gigs", "I do a lot of code at my
company, but can't share it", etc.) would do just fine.

 _Why don’t I have a blog, or my own website? Because there’s so much
harassment going on nowadays that I’m actually scared to put my thoughts on
the internet._

So, the author isn't blogging because they are scared. I don't want to work
with people that scare easily--especially in a startup. I want somebody with
_backbone_ , which the author actually seems to have seeing as how she blogged
this. The argument of "because sometimes people on the internet are terrible
and mean" is a shitty reason not to do something.

 _Why don’t I contribute to open source? Because I tried, and people were
unwelcoming and even cruel._

This is the case regardless of gender, and even so there are a great many
projects on Github that would appreciate even a little help with the docs.
Sure, the Linux kernel or OpenBSD or whatever probably are harsh to newcomers,
but there are literally thousands upon thousands of projects on Github or
Sourceforge that will accept patches even in the form of an email and be
thankful for the help.

 _It wouldn’t be so hard to establish bootcamps and let people learn for free
so you can hire them afterwards or actually hire them as interns and mentor
them, turn them into good developers._

Teaching is _hard_. Teaching without additional compensation takes a whole lot
of passion, and those folks are probably doing so outside of work anyways. If
I got a recruiter fee for every promising novice I'd run into that then flaked
out on my, I could afford to teach full time _and_ invest in my business
ecosystem.

There's this idea that "If we just _teach_ these people, we'll get something
back and more developers!". Fuck that. We've seen firsthand that most devs we
train--say, in Houston--just end up moving to other places, or flaking out
before they finish three or four sessions.

Bootcamps exist because, unless they have money/tuition on the line, _people
suck at self-study_. That's the naked truth.

 _It certainly wouldn’t hurt him to give one spot in one of his classes to
someone like me, for free or a lower price._

No, it would cost him whatever the extra burden on the teacher would've been.

