
On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team - timtyrrell
http://bryanaknight.com/on-being-a-female-on-a-male-dominated-engineering-team/
======
davesims
As someone who was directly involved with hiring & managing Bryana let me set
one aspect of this conversation to rest: Bryana's performance _across the
board_ was top-notch, without qualification.

She commanded, and continues to command, respect from her peers for both her
technical contributions on a very challenging tech stack, and product savvy in
an extremely complex business domain. I was on her interview and there was no
question of moving bars. It didn't even come up, because she was so very well-
prepared. We just evaluated the performance and hired the best dev for the
position, end of conversation.

On the job she spoke with authority and confidence in standups and earned
every single bit of responsibility she ever got. Mention her to anyone who's
worked with Bryana and you'll get the "eye roll of respect." She's so talented
there was a minor running joke with a couple of us that we should keep a
countdown clock of "minutes till I work for Bryana."

I only wish that early in my career I could have been half as well-rounded and
with a fraction of the aptitude, product savvy and technical depth Bryana has.

~~~
RIMR
Have you made any decisions about Bryana's responsibilities that were
motivated by her gender, rather than her personal strengths?

Putting your only female dev in the position of representing your company at
conferences suggests that she's taken on the role of "token female". If this
is coincidental, and she just happens to be the best spoken developer with the
least stagefright, then clearly there is no problem. However, if you
deliberately chose her because she is female, then you are doing her no long-
term favors, and are engaged in sexist business practices yourself.

new_corp_dev put it better than I could: "If the industry sees a glut of women
speakers who are there only because they are women, then the industry will
have no choice but to acknowledge their token status."

~~~
JoeAltmaier
So what? What harm is there in showcasing female workers? There's nothing
about being a 'token' that precludes competence.

~~~
RIMR
There's nothing wrong with showcase female workers, as long as you aren't
doing so BECAUSE they are female.

Since you are constantly accusing everyone here of the Straw Man fallacy, let
me provide you an example of an actual Straw Man argument:

>So what? What harm is there in showcasing female workers? There's nothing
about being a 'token' that precludes competence.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Um, we must have different ideas of what that phrase means. "A weak or
imaginary opposition, set up to be easily refuted". I'd have had to set up
something, for that to be the case. Instead of, just exploring the previous
comment's setup.

------
trjordan
Woah there, team. Lots of comments in here to the tune of "the support for her
is sexism!"

This blog post is about a specific person and her experience. She tells you up
front that she was nervous about this. Her management encouraged her to go to
conferences, _and that was exactly the right response to her personal
nervousness_.

There's a lot of cases where the broader social context becomes part of a
person's emotional landscape. A good manager will recognize this (just like
any other barrier to working effectively) and balance out doubts with
encouragement. The trick is look for possible problems, and management that
knows how to look for these problems and help with them is doing their job
well.

------
cbeach
Bryana refers several times to a fear she has been chosen or favoured due to
her gender, and because of the positive discrimination we have allowed to
happen in our industry.

Positive discrimination is not positive, because discrimination is never
positive, no matter which group it favours. And here we see the consequences -
a cohort of women who will suffer the paranoia of not knowing whether they
were selected on merit. And a cohort of men who will have their misogynistic
prejudices reinforced because the bar was visibly lowered for women.

~~~
contactmatts
Exactly. When an entity (i.e. a company, tech conference, etc.) chooses
someone for any reason outside of merit, it's discrimination, and marginalizes
the hard work of others.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
This logic falls appart almost immediately. A couple immediate counter
examples: Two candidates for job, one objectively brilliant but an arrogant
SoB the other more modestly skilled but jells with our culture. I hire the
second, and the first can take is "hard work" and beat it.

Two more candidates, one again is more technically qualified but the second
grew up in a market Im targeting for expansion. Again, I take the second
because the circumstances of his birth are worth more to me than difference in
developed ability.

Every choice made is a combination of hundreds of culminating value judgements
and to pretend that we can create some objective score based on merit is
intellectually dishonest; to pretend that we want to ignore the other factors
is unhealthy.

~~~
onetimePete
Thank you for that reply. I always favoured meritocracy, but im currently
running into this "outside" world, the challenges the outside world poses are
fascinating. People are so complicated, it should be a science.

------
zdw
While this is an interesting article, I have a minor quibble with the title -
does the author really mean that her team is "predominantly male", which has a
very different meaning than "male dominated"?

One just expresses a ratio of genders, whereas the other implies a distinct
control and power dynamic.

~~~
roflc0ptic
Given that it was 100% male, calling it male dominated is also true by
default.

Male dominated also means "predominantly male", though, in common usage.

------
xlm1717
Turns out, it's just like being an engineer for everyone else.

------
new_corp_dev
She says she was encouraged to apply and speak at conferences, and that
management would campaign for the whole team to attend any conferences where
she is accepted to speak.

> This may seem like special treatment or in some ways unfair. "Reverse
> sexism" some might call it. I don't see it that way. This industry treats
> women differently, so my managers treat me differently in the exact opposite
> way the industry does.

I would not call it "reverse sexism", because it is is just plain sexism. Of
course the author doesn't "see it that way", despite acknowledging it, because
the author directly benefits from said sexism.

If the author is being encouraged to apply for and accepted to speak at
conferences primarily based on their gender, then the industry's reaction will
be to expect that women speakers are token speakers, and this will _set back_
women in the industry.

Embrace differences, embrace diversity, but in the long run special treatment
does not benefit anybody.

~~~
frandroid
In critical race theory
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory)),
the main tenet is that racism is the combination of discrimination and power.
Everyone can do negative discrimination versus anyone based on race, but it
becomes racism when the party that does the discrimination has power over the
party being discriminated again. If you apply this schema to patriarchy, one
cannot call positive discrimination "reverse sexism" or "sexism".

I agree with you that "special treatment" does not benefit anybody, but there
is so much misogyny (aka "special treatment") that counter-treatment is not
just desirable, but necessary.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>one cannot call positive discrimination "reverse sexism" or "sexism".

Positive discrimination for one person is negative discrimination against
another, of whom the discriminator has power over the discriminated. So it
still fits as being a *ism.

That is assuming you even accept the whole 'power + mistreatment' bit.

~~~
neogodless
No - the actor in this scenario, the one with power - is not the male or
female engineer, but rather the employer or conference coordinator. They may
very well be male, but they are giving the female engineer, who as a class
have less power then the class of male engineers a leg up in getting an
opportunity to speak.

The male engineers experiencing what you call reverse discrimination are still
in a position of power as a class.

~~~
new_corp_dev
Giving someone an opportunity based on a protected class, which denies that
same opportunity to someone else of that protected class, is discrimination.
It is treating someone negatively based on their protected class. It's the
textbook definition of discrimination.

Critical race theory is as effective at hiding that fact as a Klu Klux Klan
white hood.

------
littletimmy
About the "assertiveness" part - no, I think most women have it totally wrong
on this.

When you say that men are assertive and women are not, you are in fact talking
about a subset of men - the extroverts - who are assertive. In reality, and in
particular in the software world, you'll find a lot of introverted men who are
much like you - they don't feel comfortable speaking up. It is just that
they're not very visible because they aren't heard.

In my opinion, assertiveness is more of a personality issue. And it is
ridiculous that we expect everyone to be assertive - it does not improve your
ability to code in any way.

