
Being a Female Developer - crufo
http://www.andela.com/blog/being-a-female-developer/
======
mamoswined
Honestly having been a "female developer" for 10+ years my main thought on the
subject of being that is it's just a job. And it's a job that's really not for
everyone. I've tried to sell a lot of people I've worked with in other fields
on it, both men and women, and there are a lot of things that keep people away
from it. And most of them are not related to gender.

I also have learned to have a healthy suspicion of companies that seem too
obsessed with the "women in tech" thing. I usually find they seem to just be
doing it because out of causes you could pick in tech, it has little downside
for the company and even serves as a recruiting tool.

~~~
atom-morgan
I've started to think this as well. I believe people, when confronted with
dicks at work, are going to attribute it to something that differentiates them
from the majority. Someone made a comment that insults your intelligence? Well
they must have said it because you're a woman, black, gay, etc. In reality, I
think a lot of us go through similar experiences and attribute its occurrence
to different characteristics.

~~~
DanBC
Your point - that some people are dicks and they are dicks to everybody is
obviously true.

But you seem to miss the point that some people are dicks, but are mostly
dicks to women, or black people, or disabled people. They may not realise
they're being dicks, but other people will recognise elements of dickishness
or outright dickery.

And also that fighting the dicks makes life better for everyone.

I find it weird that when women say (for example) "We are sexually assaulted
so often a separate women only London Underground carriage would be welcome,
until law enforcement and society can pressure offenders to stop offending"
they are met with hostility and denial, rather than a willingness to try to
understand the severity of the problem.

~~~
atom-morgan
I'm not missing that point at all. But I would ask why is someone being a dick
to someone because they don't like their personality or hobbies so
significantly different than someone doing the same because of a handicap or
skin color? People are going to hate other people for a variety of reasons yet
we single out a few and get a little more outraged about it than the others.

Concerning your last point - I'd guess they're met with hostility and denial
because they legitimately don't believe the issue is as widespread as many are
led to believe.

~~~
DanBC
Women asking for the carriages are met with hostility and denial. The people
providing that hostility and denial might "legitimately believe" anything, but
if they haven't bothered reading the crime survey or the crime stats their
"legitimate belief" is less legitimate. It's more opinion.

As for why we single out people who hate others because of skin colour, but
not because of say hobbies: A large number of people have been murdered (or
beaten, or denied employment, or denied housing, or etc etc) because they are
black. I don't think I can find more than a handful of philatelists who were
murdered because they collect stamps.

I think the touchiness around discrimination based on skin colour is
understandable and based on plenty of evidence.

~~~
atom-morgan
There’s plenty of people on both sides of the wage gap. Those crime surveys
may be flawed in the same way campus sexual assaults had a very generous
definition of sexual assault. I’m not sure in this case. I was just throwing
out a possible reason for resisting crime statistics. Plenty of people
disagree about how those are collected.

Yes of course, a lot of people aren’t killed for collecting stamps. But I
don’t think many people today are killed specifically for being black or gay
either. It does happen, yes. But I believe the overwhelming majority of people
just carry on with life. We should all remember that whites vs. colored
fountains were deemed lawful by the government.

I truly believe most people today just want to go to work, do their job, and
get paid regardless of the gender or color of the people around them. And
honestly, what more would you expect? We live in the country with the greatest
amount of diversity you can’t escape. Americans think Americans are the least
tolerant and my travels to other countries and interactions with different
people shows me the exact opposite.

Edit: I say this as someone who grew up in the South. I lived around racists
but most of that stays in their head.

------
wmsiler
Unlike most of the other commenters, I'm not a huge fan of this article. From
the article, it seems the author hasn't really experienced much, if any,
gender discrimination at work. That's great; it really is refreshing to hear
stories of women in tech who are judged purely on their merits, as they should
be.

However, her two takeaways from her experience are, "your skills will speak
louder than your gender," and, "to become a female developer, you only have to
do what any other smart dev would do...[i.e. work hard]." I think the problem
is precisely that many women have found these statements to be false. Many
women that are smart devs have gone into the tech sector with good skills, but
found that they are still judged unfairly by their gender. The fact that this
women hasn't experienced that doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist for
others.

Also, the claim that if you work hard and have good skills, then your gender
won't matter has the (probably unintended) implication that if you do find
others discriminating against your based on your gender, then you must not
have the skills or the work ethic.

I really don't know to what extent gender discrimination exists in the tech
sector, but I think we should be careful to avoid over generalizing from
individual experiences and we should be especially careful not to suggest that
discrimination only happens to the developers whose skills aren't good enough
to overcome other people's stereotypes.

~~~
mamoswined
Being female, and a developer, and having worked in several other fields, I
think people overestimate the sexism in tech and underestimate it elsewhere.
I'm ashamed to say I was one of the "who needs feminism?" women in my late
teens and early twenties because I have had a good experience in tech. Then I
took a journalism job...and actually experienced it for myself and saw so many
other women experience it.

Sexism is everywhere, at least in tech there is a fair amount of awareness
that it's at least an issue. In writing I found it was just taken for granted.

And in writing/journalism I found it way more depressing to see SO many women
as a total percentage of the profession and then the gender breakdown of the
people in charge. In tech there aren't that many of us, but almost all the
ones I know are in good positions.

~~~
cableshaft
According to my girlfriend (who's in corporate real estate), the sexism is
pretty rampant in her field also, and some of the stories I've heard from her
surprise the hell out of me, because I've never heard of anything that bad in
tech.

Especially since most of it is perpetuated by people in management in her
field, not young guys that don't really know how to communicate with anyone
properly, let alone women, as it tends to be in tech fields.

~~~
mamoswined
I think one of the reasons sexism in tech gets so much press is paradoxically
because developers/project managers/etc. are in such high demand. You can quit
and write a Medium post about how awful your job was and still be able to get
work. You have a ton of power in this way.

In real estate, journalism, PR, etc. it's so tight knit and competitive that
speaking out can destroy your career. I merely quit a journalism job because
of an awful EIC and didn't say anything publicly against him, but he was
eventually fired and blamed me (though a lot of people had complained to HR
about him and it wasn't just about sexism). I really doubt I could even
freelance for many local publications because of it because they are all run
by his friends and it's not that hard to find another writer.

------
nickpsecurity
I love this piece! So refreshing to read after all the one's that are
underhanded, SJW-style feminism. She says focus on mastering programming while
working with likeminded people in good environments. Finds that this can get
her places. Encourages events to bring other women in tech or help them
navigate obstacles but wisely warns against detrimental effects of overdoing
gender part.

Need more articles like this. Not just realistic but also motivational.

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nicolethenerd
Clicked through to her site, and the tagline is "True && False of two Female
Developers"... True && False evaluates to False... so, lies by two female
developers?

Not a criticism - I get what she meant, but it's amusing.

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arvinsim
> Spend weekends and late nights in front of your computer, laying down lines
> of code, debugging and developing your personal projects.

This is the only thing I disagree with. Although this would be good for your
career, it does not work for all types of people.

~~~
tracker1
If you're just starting out, and not doing this, you won't get very far, at
least not very fast... if just starting out is in school, or out... It takes
at least 5 years to master any skill/craft... and even then given the churn in
tech, specifically with development, you have to put more in to get to a good
point.

I don't do as much on my own time as I used to... but I absolutely did for the
first decade of my career.

~~~
craigvn
If you are not doing personal projects or work on the side you will never be
top 5-10% of devs. But the majority of devs are building reports and doing
maintenance for some fortune 500 insurance co, they are doing fine.

~~~
yoklov
If you're trying to impress with your skills, you should aim to be in the 1st
group, rather than the 2nd.

~~~
Bahamut
While that's true, not everyone is looking for that in their career was the
point of the post you replied to. Every person has different career goals.

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rjzzleep
This is decent view, which is extremely rare when it comes to the topic at
hand.

From my perspective I am a person that throughout the majority of my life has
been considered turkish in germany because of my looks, until people get to
know my actual heritage. Yet in the US I'm just considered a random white guy.
In Germany turkish are not really considered a minority and the degratory
terms are overlayed by more and more political correctness (Ausländer,
Migrationshintergrund - someone who's parents immigrated sometime in the past,
Musel - nowadays it's ok to hate muslims and beard means muslim anyway right).

For a long time in my naivity I did not know why I got that special treatment.
Why I was the first to blame when something went wrong, and why people would
think it's funny when I'd vote for the more complicated Goethe book in German
class. Oh you speak very well German may I ask where you learned that?

There's plenty research on all the shit you have take when you're a foreigner
in Europe. Fun fact, being Romanian or Italian can be just as bad depending on
where you are in Germany.

When we talk diversity it's a whole different story. Being a white spanish
dude in northern Europe can be diverse. Americans in their ignorance will see
"just two white caucasian dudes at a conference".

I liked being in the US precisely because I'm considered just another white
guy. Yet what absolutely utterly pisses me off about american culture is how
disengenious it is.

Despite having had to spend days at the police station for forgetting my ID or
getting assaulted by security guards and then getting sued in the most absurd
kangoroo court i've ever been to.

Now to get back to the argument, for some reason in the US I have white middle
class women, who's parents can just lash out 60k a year for an Ivy league
school (an amount most Südländer as they call them will never make in their
lifetime) and who haven't had a hint of discrimination in their lifetime tell
me that I should keep my mouth shut and just take whatever they say and:

"what do you know, you're way too white anyway" \- that's the level at which
the discussion is happening.

I wouldn't even care that much if these people weren't so hell bent in
destroying the only safe haven people like me had. I'm not even sure why
they're doing it.

The only reason I'm at the place in my life I am right now, is because
whenever I got back home from all the shit I had to take in school and
elsewhere I just went online hung out in IRC and did random stuff. Very few
people actually knew me in person. When I'd talk too much shit and not do
anything they'd shut me up. Oh you read the dragon book and wrote an LR
parser? Now we're talking.

There were some lunatics in there, but you know what, it didn't matter.
Because whenever I wanted to learn something from them. I was demanding that
someone I don't know, devotes his time to me for free. I don't get to make
demands in that position, if you think differently something is wrong with
you. It's called entitlement.

Most discussions are not about women in tech, they're about culture or work
etiquette. I'm not saying you can't be actively pissed about it, but they're
two different things.

I once wore a Jacket at an Erlang conference in DC(I thought that's what they
wear in the capitol). It was the most awkward moment in my life in a tech
environment.

~~~
vacri
It's a bit similar here in Australia - you can have a team that is made from
anglos, greeks, and russians, and it's "not diverse" because all the faces are
white.

------
sridca
I am noticing a clear trend. Why are articles like this less likely to stay in
the front page?

~~~
tomp
Because they usually don't have very good/strong arguments for the points
they're making, so people find it easy to disagree with them. In addition,
most are written as propaganda (not this one though).

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glassie
Being a Female in general...

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LukeB_UK
Can we have the link changed to be the Medium post[0] that this is copied from
please? The site currently linked hijacks the scroll and has annoying popups
trying to get you to subscribe.

[0] [https://medium.com/art-marketing/being-a-female-
developer-6f...](https://medium.com/art-marketing/being-a-female-
developer-6f0dd6692598)

~~~
atomical
What do you mean by hijacks the scroll?

~~~
avel
The page seems to have the code described here:
[http://blog.bassta.bg/2013/05/smooth-page-scrolling-with-
twe...](http://blog.bassta.bg/2013/05/smooth-page-scrolling-with-tweenmax/)
Basically it disables the browser's default scrolling behavior and handles the
mouse scrollwheel events by itself via javascript. Which is usually annoying
since the new behavior can be different to what the user is accustomed to, and
for other reasons as well. You might find some more arguments in discussions
like this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/47n9ph/psa_dont_use...](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/47n9ph/psa_dont_use_smooth_scroll_scriptsplugins_on_your/)

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domrdy
Sorry for being off-topic / ranting, but why do sites feel the need to hijack
scrolling behaviour? Is it me or does this make following the text much more
difficult? Instantly threw me off reading the rest of the text...

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, same here :/ I expect scrolling to work one way and scroll by the amount
I'm used to, not the amount the author considers good for them. I closed the
article after skimming a few sentences, because it was too hard to follow the
flow when I couldn't scroll properly.

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madmax96
This is the most reasonable thing I've read in a while. I couldn't agree more
with the author; very nuanced opinion. Outstanding work.

The hijacked scroll was annoying though!

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throwaway21816
Oh boy another "I worked so hard because im a woman in tech" post. Everyone in
tech works hard regardless of gender but some people choose to brag less than
others.

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frogfuzion
Good article. Disconcerting that all of the comments are from men though...

~~~
tracker1
I never really look at the gender of the comments, or even look at the
pictures, if there are any... I would suspect a lot of people are that way.

Once upon a time, I was in IRC having a discussion with someone about the
electronic art scene... it was a few months later I discovered the person in
question was even a she.

This is in particular one of the things that's great about open source, online
communications, and github culture... it really doesn't matter your gender,
race, or anything else, so long as you make an effort, you'll generally fit in
just fine.

