
Survival Tips for Women in Tech - ingve
https://patricia.no/2018/09/06/survival_tips_for_women_in_tech.html
======
cimmanom
That a post like this even exists saddens me.

Maybe it’s easier to accomplish this outside the Valley, but despite being a
woman engineer I’ve never had to explicitly choose any of these positions.

Why not? Because I’ve always worked places where I was taken seriously and
treated professionally. It is possible (and at least in NYC, not at all
difficult) to find and choose workplaces and teams with high standards of
workplace professionalism. Where people know better than to suggest team
building in a sauna.

It also is a good idea to have an emergency fund that will allow you to say
“fuck this” and walk out of any job where they lack that professionalism, but
in 15-ish years I’ve yet to sign on to such an environment in the first place.

That such toxic environments seem to be so prevalent in SV is infuriating in
part because it’s so clear that it doesn’t have to be that way.

~~~
zeroname
Consider the possibility that these "toxic environments" are in fact not the
norm, but the exception, _especially_ in Silicon Valley in 2018. The person
who wrote this blog post has never even worked in the US.

~~~
sneak
I think that a lot of people who have not directly experienced this sexism
believe this, that it is the exception and not the norm.

Even as a guy, I have personally witnessed that it is the norm, and that most
organizations that have managed to avoid being sexist by default are very
special indeed.

There is some bias that makes people (men) want to believe that “it can’t
possibly that bad, or if it is, it can’t possibly be that common”. Be aware of
this bias.

~~~
zazen
Whether this is the norm for a large population of employers is a statistical
question that you cannot "personally witness" even in principle. We
desperately need a better way than anecdata to look at this.

~~~
GauntletWizard
I don't think it matters whether or not this is "the norm"; what matters, to
the large extent, is whether or not these problems are common enough that
people write these articles and that people uovote them. "The norm" isn't some
magical threshold where if it's below a percentage of environments it doesn't
matter - how much effort we should put into fixing these problems is more-or-
less directly proportional to how bad they are as measured by how much
complaining we see about them.

Almost all of these pieces of advice function for anyone, and those
specifically about women can be translated for any trait "X" \- minority group
or even something-common-but-not-here. I've gotten typecast because I like
videogames - Freaking _everyone_ likes videogames.

~~~
zazen
> how bad they are as measured by how much complaining we see about them. >
> common enough that ... people uovote them.

But you must have noticed that social media feeds on outrage? People amplify
the extent of things they are shocked by, by sharing and upvoting. Looking at
the amount of noise generated in media/social-media would be a very poor way
of measuring the true extent of anything, but especially of something so
politicized as harassment of women.

------
cirgue
If you remove gendered language, this is good advice for quite literally
everyone.

~~~
Sileni
Yep, point for point, you should probably be following this as a dude as well.
The one I think is somewhat unique to these types of lists is the enthusiasm
one. It's easy to push off hostile people, but it can throw you when someone
seems a little too interested in you. Stay on the defensive, odds are they
want you to start doing something that's technically their responsibility.

~~~
rectang
There's a little wisdom in that point for "allies" as well: don't be an ally
because you expect recognition or something else in return -- do it because
that's what you believe.

------
hyperman1
I'm a bit scared about this one:

    
    
      14) Introduce Rules for Communication, like praise in public, criticize in private
    

This devolves very quickly into not being able to point at problems.

To be clear: I agree with talking about the problem and not the person. But,is
it a good idea to push rules on others group before any consensus there is a
problem? Especially as new person in an existing group? Especially as first
women, comfirming the stereotype women care more about social than technical
aspects.

This tip might be a reasonable idea to try in specific situations, but stated
as is, I don't think can agree. Maybe it's just the wording, though.

~~~
AlexanderNull
As a man/person I still wholeheartedly agree here. Ultimately it comes down to
recognizing exactly what your end goal is in choosing one route over another.
At best someone will ignore public criticizing and start thinking of the
criticizer as a jerk, a perfectionist, a "nagger", or just annoying. At worst
they take it personally, start avoiding work that might lead to public
shaming, and start fearing parts of their work day.

Engineering is stressful enough. No need to drive people away faster than
necessary. Private criticizing can be delivered directly to offending person,
especially if you're a team lead or manager, or it can be delivered to your
manager. If it's significant enough to result in actionable items then the
situation will be handled one way or another. Meanwhile if the person is
capable of resolving the issue after your private criticizing they'll often
respect your decision to keep things professional. Heck, sometimes there's an
entire bag of worms under the surface like serious family problems they're
going through outside of work at that same time that explains their behavior,
something you almost certainly wouldn't find out with public criticizing.

I've seen some significant turn arounds from previous team members after some
pointed private talks. Alternatively, I've seen people dig in their heals and
become a problem team member after improperly timed public shamings.

------
navs
> Try to convince yourself when you begin to doubt yourself: “It’s not me,
> it’s them”?

Doesn't this just put you in your own bubble? Can all criticism be so easily
dismissed?

~~~
throwaway080383
This always seemed like one of the biggest tangible advantages of being a
white dude. When someone criticizes me or shits on my idea, it never even
crosses my mind that it might be because of my race or gender.

~~~
kochikame
Try living in a country like Japan for a while and you may have the experience
of having your idea shit on or ignored because of your race.

It's just a majority/minority thing.

As a caveat, it is still a pretty privileged position to be a white person,
even in Japan. I think non-white foreigners have a much harder time there.

------
symlock
Yes, don't be afraid to quit.

I've left companies for some of these situations/items and I'm financially
better off.

------
User23
This reads more like a beginner’s guide to office politics.

------
geebee
Much of this is very good advice for people working in tech. It's interesting
that it arises from survival tips for women in tech (more on that in a
moment).

"Document your work" is very, very important. And be very careful about how
documenting your work can go sideways. For instance, I once wrote extensive
documentation for a wiki. The documentation was moved during a reasonable re-
org of the wiki, but the new "bye-line" was now the person who restructured
the wiki. I don't think there was anything insidious going on there, but it
can happen. Another thing is when a GitHub repository is moved, or a new team
is involved. Sometimes it makes sense to just create a new repo from scratch,
but when it happens, your name and history may be removed from your code. I
think a lot of this may simply be due to the immaturity of our field
(literally and figuratively). Even if it isn't sinister, in most publishing,
it's a big deal to take a writer's name off a piece and replace it with
whoever copy and pasted the piece to a new location. Unfortunately, this does
happen with code and documentation quite often. It's also wise to document in
multiple places - write up a blog post, do an in office presentation with
slides, speak at a conference if you can. All this is very good advice.

It is inconceivable to me that an actual company event would take place at a
strip club, and events that would require dressing in a bathing suite seem
unlikely. A sauna? Woah. This is a thing? (NOTE: I'm kinda old for tech).

Well... I suppose river rafting is a possibility. I'm in my late 40s, and I
spent my earlier years in large boring corps or universities. When a startup
shows a large group photo of a group of 20 somethings on a weekend hiking
trip, I get it, it means older people who coach their kid's baseball team on
the weekend should probably look for a job elsewhere. I've yet to see a big
picture of them all in the sauna, though. Yikes.

There's a lot of good general info here. But on to the interesting thing about
women in tech I mentioned above. It's possible to see the problems afflicting
women in tech as specifically afflicting women - that it's an bro-tastic place
for men, but crappy for women. Another way to see it is that the problems
women experience shine a particularly bright light on what is so horrible
about this industry.

I think a big part of the problem is that there is a billion dollar industry
around convincing young people that tech is a wonderful career and the only
problem is that there's a shortage of people who realize how wonderful it is
and want to become software developers in Silicon Valley. The reality is that
there's something very rotten in tech. I certainly don't think it's a paradise
for men, by a long shot, but I also don't have any real trouble believing that
what's already unpleasant enough for the gander is particularly crap-tastic
for the goose.

~~~
jkoudys
There's a credibility you gain with experience that tends not to be afforded
is generously to women. You're right that documenting your work is critical
for new devs too. A man with seniority can claim credit and not be doubted. A
man without seniority, or a woman at many companies, doesn't have that luxury.

------
crunchlibrarian
#1 is huge, I've seen way too many women try to be one of the guys and do
things like tag along to awful events like lunch at the strip club or hooters
because they want to seem 'fun'. Just a disaster of a strategy.

I mean if you're a woman who wants to go to hooters then by all means go to
hooters, but be who you are not one of the guys.

#3 is not always true, I've worked at some companies where HR actually has
power and is an ally of employees, but yeah in the majority of companies they
are effectively rubber stamps for whatever the CEO says regardless of ethics
or legality. In those organizations just know that HR is your enemy, not a
resource.

