4 ms·

Look, I get it, there aren't a lot of female engineers and saying things like "you guys" is probably annoying to the few there are. That said, inserting "she"

Look, I get it, there aren't a lot of female engineers and saying things like "you guys" is probably annoying to the few there are. That said, inserting "she" everywhere just feels disengenuous, and I notice it everywhere from technical blogs to a16z write ups. Sure your company is 30% female in all positions (amazing for the industry in this hypothetical) and you're top tech team is all over it. You're core engineer, she's digging through mounds of code with only her team of 2, an african american native inuit, top of her year at stanford, and a trans person. I would love to see the industry be attractive to all types. However, you can't just swap pronouns because it sounds so fake amd disingenuous. Probabalistically speaking, your engineering team is not 100% women or even close. idk, maybe blasphemous or inflammatory, just strikes me as a feeble attempt to notmalize something that isnt normal... edit; wow, I apologize I guess? It seems forced to me that the whole industry changed pronouns (if little else) over night. So I guess I am a misoginist for actually thinking more equitable demographics would be better than some language nuance, which just feels forced edit2: i deleted some comments that basically said the above, but slightly more rudely. apologies.

morgante 11y ago
What exactly is "not normal" about female engineers? Occasionally using "she" to refer to an unknown person is a welcome relief from the abundant writing which solely uses the male pronoun. When documentation uses "he" it doesn't mean engineering teams are 100% male and using "she" doesn't mean the inverse.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  It isn't normal unfortunately. It's why there is a push for women in tech. There isn't a top company that is 50/50(i don't believe this has to be the case accross the board) but using it just feels disingenuous. Idk, i'm not a femal engineer. Maybe passport was predominently written by female engineers. If I was a minority in some arena,I suspect I would be slightly off put if they just pretended I wasn't
  - morgante 11y ago
    Why on Earth would it have to be 50/50 for something to be "normal?" Only about 43% of college students are male. Does that mean it's not normal to have a male college student? Please take your casual sexism elsewhere.
    - deleted 11y ago
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xyzzy4 11y ago
A lot of females say "you guys" when referring to other females. I've heard it many times in everyday conversation.
- deleted 11y ago
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IanCal 11y ago
It's one hypothetical person in this article. One!
mmanfrin 11y ago
'She' appears exactly once in the article, 'her' never. You are complaining about a single instance of 'she' involving a hypothetical person. I hope for your sake you are trolling, because you have some warped world of priorities if not.
underwires 11y ago
You are literally saying that 'she' isn't welcome. And having 'she' everywhere is no more disingenuous than having 'he' everywhere. Neither one covers everybody, and just defaulting to the majority has a ton of problems. Even more problematic is when people feel the need to shout it down when they see minority representation. Why did you feel the need to stamp this out instead of responding to the actual content of the post? In a lot of the US, 'you guys' is standard plural you regardless of gender, but we don't have a gender neutral pronoun other than "they" which only works some of the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they But in this case it would have worked fine: "a software engineer has thought about user registration and authentication. Hopefully they have thought a lot about it." Let's push for the expanded use of "they" as gender neutral singular rather than pushing "she" down.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  i think it sounds odd given what I know about the demographics. Almost as if the problem is perception, not real numbers. So i agree with you for sure. I'm not against it, I just think "she" started getting wodespread use after the demographics issue came to a head earlier in the year. edit: > you are literally saying she isn't welcome If I literally said that, qoute me...

morgante 11y ago

What exactly is "not normal" about female engineers? Occasionally using "she" to refer to an unknown person is a welcome relief from the abundant writing which solely uses the male pronoun. When documentation uses "he" it doesn't mean engineering teams are 100% male and using "she" doesn't mean the inverse.

vonklaus 11y ago
It isn't normal unfortunately. It's why there is a push for women in tech. There isn't a top company that is 50/50(i don't believe this has to be the case accross the board) but using it just feels disingenuous. Idk, i'm not a femal engineer. Maybe passport was predominently written by female engineers. If I was a minority in some arena,I suspect I would be slightly off put if they just pretended I wasn't
- morgante 11y ago
  Why on Earth would it have to be 50/50 for something to be "normal?" Only about 43% of college students are male. Does that mean it's not normal to have a male college student? Please take your casual sexism elsewhere.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

xyzzy4 11y ago

A lot of females say "you guys" when referring to other females. I've heard it many times in everyday conversation.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

IanCal 11y ago

It's one hypothetical person in this article. One!

mmanfrin 11y ago

'She' appears exactly once in the article, 'her' never. You are complaining about a single instance of 'she' involving a hypothetical person. I hope for your sake you are trolling, because you have some warped world of priorities if not.

underwires 11y ago

You are literally saying that 'she' isn't welcome. And having 'she' everywhere is no more disingenuous than having 'he' everywhere. Neither one covers everybody, and just defaulting to the majority has a ton of problems. Even more problematic is when people feel the need to shout it down when they see minority representation. Why did you feel the need to stamp this out instead of responding to the actual content of the post? In a lot of the US, 'you guys' is standard plural you regardless of gender, but we don't have a gender neutral pronoun other than "they" which only works some of the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they But in this case it would have worked fine: "a software engineer has thought about user registration and authentication. Hopefully they have thought a lot about it." Let's push for the expanded use of "they" as gender neutral singular rather than pushing "she" down.

vonklaus 11y ago
i think it sounds odd given what I know about the demographics. Almost as if the problem is perception, not real numbers. So i agree with you for sure. I'm not against it, I just think "she" started getting wodespread use after the demographics issue came to a head earlier in the year. edit: > you are literally saying she isn't welcome If I literally said that, qoute me...