Let's say you bring up an issue about a bug in software you're working on. Let's also say you didn't cause it. But the moment you talk about it, I respond, 'did

Let's say you bring up an issue about a bug in software you're working on. Let's also say you didn't cause it. But the moment you talk about it, I respond, 'didn't the code you wrote yesterday have a bug?', 'isn't this code base from a reputed oss repo?' and so on. Essentially my exact words don't mean that this is also your bug, but there is an (un)intended implication that you're a crappy developer. You're probably gonna latch on to that at the speed of light rather than giving a Data like logical response. That's the problem with bringing up such alternatives. It alludes that women or minority will right away fall back to their gender or whatever when convenient. It also alludes that they don't know the weight of one such allegation, they aren't thinking about the effect it is going to have on their future employment opportunities (It so happens this kind of allegations true or not seriously affect your career, everyone starts to tiptoe around you at the least in your new job) - essentially attributes a lack of integrity and foresight. IOW - I do agree that there is a very interesting question around what do we do about incompetent employees who happen to be a minority. I also know this line of responses are probably not going to be productive :)