

Being a female software engineer - phwd
http://femalesoftwareeng.tumblr.com/

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theleftfielder
So I'm a female software engineer (the only one on our team of ~50), and I
couldn't really identify with most of the posts on here. Am I just really
lucky, and work for one of the few good companies out there?

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femsoftwareeng
That's awesome! I'm so glad to hear you're in a good place. Of the many places
I've worked, I'd say about half were kind of hostile for women and half were
pretty okay. I've found that conferences are more consistently in the former
category.

Now let's figure out what to do about that other half.

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up_and_up
As a male software engineer, I find this smart, educational and entertaining.
But then again, what the hell do I know about it?

How can I show support for this without sounding like an idiot?

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femsoftwareeng
You just did. Thank you and all the other allies out there. It's important for
me and my cohort to remember most people are well-intentioned and many are
even enlightened, in tech and elsewhere. (Source: this is my blog.)

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unconed
Where "enlightened" = agrees with all my views, simplified into dumb animated
GIFs?

The "What about the menz" trope is as sexist as the behavior it's pretending
to decry. Calling yourself enlightened while stereotyping the opposing gender
is sheer hypocrisy.

I'm a male dev who has been subject to some very unpleasant behavior because
of my work... I didn't have the privilege of summoning my white knights with a
simple retweet, as you see women do over and over again in any online sexism
shitstorm. I was expected to justify my choices through logical argument, and
just accept the fact that people said I should be shot for publishing a Github
repo. There was no outrage over that, no brotherhood to back me up.

See, if women make less money because they ask for less, it's considered a
problem that needs to be solved _for_ women. It's the fault of society that
women are conditioned to be insecure about their real value!

If men self-select into technical disciplines and don't develop appropriate
social skills by being immersed in competitive, meritocratic environments,
it's considered a problem that women need to be protected _from_. The best
those men can hope for is a "re-education" from the feminazis, so he knows the
leash is not optional.

Isn't it funny how female empowerment seems to require the men to do all the
work in making changes?

That's what "What about the menz" is really about. It's a way for women to
hold on to the privilege that when both a man and a woman are crossed, it's
the woman's needs which are tended to first. Women and children first, it's
been around forever, and it was practiced religiously. That's why 80% of the
people on board the Titanic were men, and 80% of the survivors were women.
Even when faced with a certain icy death, men across all of society agreed
that women 'deserved' to be saved more.

The reason it's hard being a female software engineer is because people pay
attention to you when you walk into a room. That has its upsides, and its
downsides, and it's often not the kind of attention that you want. But you
have it anyway. You can't decry the negatives, while continuing to coast on
your own privilege of not being called out on your bullshit.

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LindseyB
The women and children first thing on the titanic was an EXCEPTION:
[http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/31/3554854.ht...](http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/31/3554854.htm)

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NateDad
I have a serious question... is this a west coast thing? A midwest or southern
thing? I've worked for over 13 years in Boston, in several companies with
several smart female engineers... no one ever treated them differently that I
saw. So... anyone seeing this in Boston? Maybe developers here are more
enlightened? Maybe all the women coders need to come to Boston. :)

~~~
femsoftwareeng
"No one ever treated them differently that I saw." This is a common and
understandable reaction, but it's important to remember how hard it is to be
an accurate observer in these situations. For instance, I have almost never
witnessed evidence of racism in my workplaces, and yet I know for a fact that
in those places racism was real, common, and huge problem for racial
minorities. There are 500 incidents you don't see or maybe notice for every
one you do. This is why I didn't really try to answer the last question here:
<http://femalesoftwareeng.tumblr.com/answers>

Another issue is that some places are far more enlightened than others. Gaming
companies, for example, tend to be much worse for female developers. So it's
very possible you've never worked somewhere that was very bad. Or maybe your
coworkers just never spoke up about it for fear of ridicule/backlash.

~~~
NateDad
Thanks for responding to my late addition to the thread. You're right, of
course... I may have missed a lot of it. And I haven't worked at gaming
companies - not a lot of those in Boston, and the "kill yourself working just
to get fired 2 months after launch" thing is not really my cup of tea ;)

I'll talk to a couple female ex-coworkers and see what they have to say. I
hope I didn't come off as not believing sexism exists in the software world,
because I absolutely believe it.

Anyway, thanks for bringing this up. I looked through your tumblr, and luckily
do not see myself in any of the gaffes that you posted about (but I'll try to
keep an eye out for things I or other coworkers might do without realizing). I
am saddened that there are so many on the list. I can't believe there are men
who still act like that in this day and age.

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shitlord
I am curious why "tits or gtfo" is on the list, considering that it is
designed to piss off women. It's still awful and is probably one of the most
vulgar things you could say to anyone... but do actual professionals say stuff
_that_ offensive in software engineering settings?

I don't mean to be combative, just curious.

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biscarch
#ruby-lang irc logs: <http://irclog.whitequark.org/ruby-lang/search?q=tits>

It happens. I don't know how often.

~~~
vampirechicken
How much of this happening do you think can be attributed to how young the
Ruby user base tends to skew? How often does it occur on the Python or Perl
IRC channels?

~~~
biscarch
I don't have that data, but you could probably get it by parsing all the irc
logs that are around.

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twunde
This is awesome and really sad at the same time. My last computer science
class was 60-70% women and yet it seems like female representation in tech is
only 30% if that. The good news is that it seems that in larger companies the
ratio is closer to 50%

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femsoftwareeng
Wow, really? I've worked at a few large companies and the percentage of women
in engineering seemed to hover around 15%. Where is this wonderful 50% land so
I can go to there?

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twunde
I don't think there are many large companies with 50%, but they at least have
a significant amount of female engineers. I thought Google was at ~40% but I
can't find the reference anymore (searching just shows Google+ stats). I know
10gen (MongoDB) has at least some female engineers just because one of them
helps run the local python meetup

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rachelbythebay
Google? 40% female in eng? I don't think so. You wouldn't be able to find that
number online since it's embarrassingly low, and they guard it jealously even
internally.

In 4.5 years on 3 different projects (SRE team, dev team, different dev team),
I was all alone. I should tally up all of the names of my coworkers and see
just how it worked out. People came and went but it was always guys replacing
guys.

~~~
femsoftwareeng
Agh, I was hoping I was wrong. This is more in line with my experience.

It's a shame they don't release the numbers because it's easy for "40%" to
float around the Zeitgeist, concealing a very real problem.

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manicdee
It took me a minute to understand what you meant by "coworker gets touchy". At
which point my reaction was as portrayed in "lady problems".

I am changing careers to something less male dominated. I am taking up long
distance truck driving.

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jason_slack
As a male Software Engineer, when I encounter the "rare and elusive" (he he)
female Software Engineer I automatically assume they are smarter than me and
not afraid to get their hands dirty with some low level goodness..

