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If it was a situation where most of the devs were men and your colleague was one of the only women, it seems likely that gender dynamics and stereotypes about w

by decasia 11y ago

If it was a situation where most of the devs were men and your colleague was one of the only women, it seems likely that gender dynamics and stereotypes about women made a big difference in her getting perceived as "non-technical and comforting" (that's one of the usual stereotypes about women developers, after all).

nickbauman 11y ago
In this case not a stereotype. I think she had tremendous raw intelligence but she was a fulltime mom with kids and was caregiving for her aging parents at the same time and a husband on the road a lot. This just didn't leave her much time to deep dive on anything. If I were in her shoes I'd probably been fired for not keeping up. So she likely had the potential of being the most technically deep person on the team but her life didn't really give her much time to develop that. In the end it didn't matter for the team as a whole: she made things better because she simply was a better and more preceptive person than most people.
jameshart 11y ago
Interesting. If the previous comment had used male pronouns, would it even have occurred to you to associate the described attributes with gender stereotypes?
- tajen 11y ago
  Yes. There is a very visible pattern. Yes in 2006, but times have changed around 2011-2013 (Twitter's IPO, Mozilla CEO fired, GitHub CEO fired, conferences excluding people for sexual jokes), and if in 2016 I had on my team a woman whose role was to be talkative rather than technical, I would find it sexist. The pattern is "If a junior woman can't code, let's promote her as team lead; If a junior man can't code, let's teach him to code" - and this is wrong because both sides have everything to lose with this behavior.
  - nickbauman 11y ago
    But the better team is the one where she becomes the team lead. That's not sexist. Some of the most important skills are leadership skills. And leadership skills are not about command and control. They're about understanding and leveraging (often intuitively) a million complicated things we barely understand about our ancient primate wiring. Those things make computer programming look like preschool skills.
    - tajen 11y ago
      As long as she becomes the team lead after learning the technical skills like everyone, and as long as it's not out of prejudice that males don't have people skills, yes. After 7 years trying, I've left the corporate game which was rigged in favour of women, and I've created my own company, and I vote against women rights, which is also a racist party. I really don't want to vote for the racist part, but I've worked in 3 companies, in 3 different countries, 19 women met, 18 were in management positions, including 11 promoted in my presence, not all of them skilled, and I've seen only 1 male be promoted. Feelings were hurt. Fairness is out of the window. You bet it's going to take long to repair.

by decasia 11y ago

nickbauman 11y ago

In this case not a stereotype. I think she had tremendous raw intelligence but she was a fulltime mom with kids and was caregiving for her aging parents at the same time and a husband on the road a lot. This just didn't leave her much time to deep dive on anything. If I were in her shoes I'd probably been fired for not keeping up. So she likely had the potential of being the most technically deep person on the team but her life didn't really give her much time to develop that. In the end it didn't matter for the team as a whole: she made things better because she simply was a better and more preceptive person than most people.

jameshart 11y ago

Interesting. If the previous comment had used male pronouns, would it even have occurred to you to associate the described attributes with gender stereotypes?

tajen 11y ago
Yes. There is a very visible pattern. Yes in 2006, but times have changed around 2011-2013 (Twitter's IPO, Mozilla CEO fired, GitHub CEO fired, conferences excluding people for sexual jokes), and if in 2016 I had on my team a woman whose role was to be talkative rather than technical, I would find it sexist. The pattern is "If a junior woman can't code, let's promote her as team lead; If a junior man can't code, let's teach him to code" - and this is wrong because both sides have everything to lose with this behavior.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  But the better team is the one where she becomes the team lead. That's not sexist. Some of the most important skills are leadership skills. And leadership skills are not about command and control. They're about understanding and leveraging (often intuitively) a million complicated things we barely understand about our ancient primate wiring. Those things make computer programming look like preschool skills.
  - tajen 11y ago
    As long as she becomes the team lead after learning the technical skills like everyone, and as long as it's not out of prejudice that males don't have people skills, yes. After 7 years trying, I've left the corporate game which was rigged in favour of women, and I've created my own company, and I vote against women rights, which is also a racist party. I really don't want to vote for the racist part, but I've worked in 3 companies, in 3 different countries, 19 women met, 18 were in management positions, including 11 promoted in my presence, not all of them skilled, and I've seen only 1 male be promoted. Feelings were hurt. Fairness is out of the window. You bet it's going to take long to repair.