5 ms·

Being a female software engineer

19 points by phwd 14y ago

shitlord 14y ago
I am curious why "tits or gtfo" is on the list, considering that it is designed to piss off women. It's still awful and is probably one of the most vulgar things you could say to anyone... but do actual professionals say stuff _that_ offensive in software engineering settings? I don't mean to be combative, just curious.
- biscarch 14y ago
  #ruby-lang irc logs: http://irclog.whitequark.org/ruby-lang/search?q=tits http://irclog.whitequark.org/ruby-lang/search?q=tits It happens. I don't know how often.
  - vampirechicken 14y ago
    How much of this happening do you think can be attributed to how young the Ruby user base tends to skew? How often does it occur on the Python or Perl IRC channels?
    - biscarch 14y ago
      I don't have that data, but you could probably get it by parsing all the irc logs that are around.
- femsoftwareeng 14y ago
  Sure, it's a valid question. This is a collection of experiences across many settings, including professional, casual and personal. I don't think anyone would ever say this seriously in a professional setting, but shit like that still happens a lot elsewhere and has a real impact. Joining a technical IRC channel for help and being told "tits or GTFO" is pretty demoralizing. It makes you feel like you don't belong in the community, that you don't deserve to be there and that no one wants you there.
twunde 14y ago
This is awesome and really sad at the same time. My last computer science class was 60-70% women and yet it seems like female representation in tech is only 30% if that. The good news is that it seems that in larger companies the ratio is closer to 50%
- femsoftwareeng 14y ago
  Wow, really? I've worked at a few large companies and the percentage of women in engineering seemed to hover around 15%. Where is this wonderful 50% land so I can go to there?
  - twunde 14y ago
    I don't think there are many large companies with 50%, but they at least have a significant amount of female engineers. I thought Google was at ~40% but I can't find the reference anymore (searching just shows Google+ stats). I know 10gen (MongoDB) has at least some female engineers just because one of them helps run the local python meetup
    - rachelbythebay 14y ago
      Google? 40% female in eng? I don't think so. You wouldn't be able to find that number online since it's embarrassingly low, and they guard it jealously even internally. In 4.5 years on 3 different projects (SRE team, dev team, different dev team), I was all alone. I should tally up all of the names of my coworkers and see just how it worked out. People came and went but it was always guys replacing guys.
      - femsoftwareeng 14y ago
        Agh, I was hoping I was wrong. This is more in line with my experience. It's a shame they don't release the numbers because it's easy for "40%" to float around the Zeitgeist, concealing a very real problem.
  - twunde 14y ago
theleftfielder 14y ago
So I'm a female software engineer (the only one on our team of ~50), and I couldn't really identify with most of the posts on here. Am I just really lucky, and work for one of the few good companies out there?
- femsoftwareeng 14y ago
  That's awesome! I'm so glad to hear you're in a good place. Of the many places I've worked, I'd say about half were kind of hostile for women and half were pretty okay. I've found that conferences are more consistently in the former category. Now let's figure out what to do about that other half.
manicdee 14y ago
It took me a minute to understand what you meant by "coworker gets touchy". At which point my reaction was as portrayed in "lady problems". I am changing careers to something less male dominated. I am taking up long distance truck driving.
up_and_up 14y ago
As a male software engineer, I find this smart, educational and entertaining. But then again, what the hell do I know about it? How can I show support for this without sounding like an idiot?
- femsoftwareeng 14y ago
  You just did. Thank you and all the other allies out there. It's important for me and my cohort to remember most people are well-intentioned and many are even enlightened, in tech and elsewhere. (Source: this is my blog.)
  - unconed 14y ago
    Where "enlightened" = agrees with all my views, simplified into dumb animated GIFs? The "What about the menz" trope is as sexist as the behavior it's pretending to decry. Calling yourself enlightened while stereotyping the opposing gender is sheer hypocrisy. I'm a male dev who has been subject to some very unpleasant behavior because of my work... I didn't have the privilege of summoning my white knights with a simple retweet, as you see women do over and over again in any online sexism shitstorm. I was expected to justify my choices through logical argument, and just accept the fact that people said I should be shot for publishing a Github repo. There was no outrage over that, no brotherhood to back me up. See, if women make less money because they ask for less, it's considered a problem that needs to be solved for women. It's the fault of society that women are conditioned to be insecure about their real value! If men self-select into technical disciplines and don't develop appropriate social skills by being immersed in competitive, meritocratic environments, it's considered a problem that women need to be protected from. The best those men can hope for is a "re-education" from the feminazis, so he knows the leash is not optional. Isn't it funny how female empowerment seems to require the men to do all the work in making changes? That's what "What about the menz" is really about. It's a way for women to hold on to the privilege that when both a man and a woman are crossed, it's the woman's needs which are tended to first. Women and children first, it's been around forever, and it was practiced religiously. That's why 80% of the people on board the Titanic were men, and 80% of the survivors were women. Even when faced with a certain icy death, men across all of society agreed that women 'deserved' to be saved more. The reason it's hard being a female software engineer is because people pay attention to you when you walk into a room. That has its upsides, and its downsides, and it's often not the kind of attention that you want. But you have it anyway. You can't decry the negatives, while continuing to coast on your own privilege of not being called out on your bullshit.
jason_slack 14y ago
As a male Software Engineer, when I encounter the "rare and elusive" (he he) female Software Engineer I automatically assume they are smarter than me and not afraid to get their hands dirty with some low level goodness..
NateDad 14y ago
I have a serious question... is this a west coast thing? A midwest or southern thing? I've worked for over 13 years in Boston, in several companies with several smart female engineers... no one ever treated them differently that I saw. So... anyone seeing this in Boston? Maybe developers here are more enlightened? Maybe all the women coders need to come to Boston. :)
- femsoftwareeng 14y ago
  "No one ever treated them differently that I saw." This is a common and understandable reaction, but it's important to remember how hard it is to be an accurate observer in these situations. For instance, I have almost never witnessed evidence of racism in my workplaces, and yet I know for a fact that in those places racism was real, common, and huge problem for racial minorities. There are 500 incidents you don't see or maybe notice for every one you do. This is why I didn't really try to answer the last question here: http://femalesoftwareeng.tumblr.com/answers http://femalesoftwareeng.tumblr.com/answers Another issue is that some places are far more enlightened than others. Gaming companies, for example, tend to be much worse for female developers. So it's very possible you've never worked somewhere that was very bad. Or maybe your coworkers just never spoke up about it for fear of ridicule/backlash.
  - NateDad 14y ago
    Thanks for responding to my late addition to the thread. You're right, of course... I may have missed a lot of it. And I haven't worked at gaming companies - not a lot of those in Boston, and the "kill yourself working just to get fired 2 months after launch" thing is not really my cup of tea ;) I'll talk to a couple female ex-coworkers and see what they have to say. I hope I didn't come off as not believing sexism exists in the software world, because I absolutely believe it. Anyway, thanks for bringing this up. I looked through your tumblr, and luckily do not see myself in any of the gaffes that you posted about (but I'll try to keep an eye out for things I or other coworkers might do without realizing). I am saddened that there are so many on the list. I can't believe there are men who still act like that in this day and age.

19 points by phwd 14y ago

I am curious why "tits or gtfo" is on the list, considering that it is designed to piss off women. It's still awful and is probably one of the most vulgar things you could say to anyone... but do actual professionals say stuff _that_ offensive in software engineering settings? I don't mean to be combative, just curious.

biscarch 14y ago
#ruby-lang irc logs: http://irclog.whitequark.org/ruby-lang/search?q=tits http://irclog.whitequark.org/ruby-lang/search?q=tits It happens. I don't know how often.
- vampirechicken 14y ago
  How much of this happening do you think can be attributed to how young the Ruby user base tends to skew? How often does it occur on the Python or Perl IRC channels?
  - biscarch 14y ago
    I don't have that data, but you could probably get it by parsing all the irc logs that are around.
femsoftwareeng 14y ago
Sure, it's a valid question. This is a collection of experiences across many settings, including professional, casual and personal. I don't think anyone would ever say this seriously in a professional setting, but shit like that still happens a lot elsewhere and has a real impact. Joining a technical IRC channel for help and being told "tits or GTFO" is pretty demoralizing. It makes you feel like you don't belong in the community, that you don't deserve to be there and that no one wants you there.

twunde 14y ago

This is awesome and really sad at the same time. My last computer science class was 60-70% women and yet it seems like female representation in tech is only 30% if that. The good news is that it seems that in larger companies the ratio is closer to 50%

femsoftwareeng 14y ago
Wow, really? I've worked at a few large companies and the percentage of women in engineering seemed to hover around 15%. Where is this wonderful 50% land so I can go to there?
- twunde 14y ago
  I don't think there are many large companies with 50%, but they at least have a significant amount of female engineers. I thought Google was at ~40% but I can't find the reference anymore (searching just shows Google+ stats). I know 10gen (MongoDB) has at least some female engineers just because one of them helps run the local python meetup
  - rachelbythebay 14y ago
    Google? 40% female in eng? I don't think so. You wouldn't be able to find that number online since it's embarrassingly low, and they guard it jealously even internally. In 4.5 years on 3 different projects (SRE team, dev team, different dev team), I was all alone. I should tally up all of the names of my coworkers and see just how it worked out. People came and went but it was always guys replacing guys.
    - femsoftwareeng 14y ago
      Agh, I was hoping I was wrong. This is more in line with my experience. It's a shame they don't release the numbers because it's easy for "40%" to float around the Zeitgeist, concealing a very real problem.
- twunde 14y ago

theleftfielder 14y ago

So I'm a female software engineer (the only one on our team of ~50), and I couldn't really identify with most of the posts on here. Am I just really lucky, and work for one of the few good companies out there?

femsoftwareeng 14y ago
That's awesome! I'm so glad to hear you're in a good place. Of the many places I've worked, I'd say about half were kind of hostile for women and half were pretty okay. I've found that conferences are more consistently in the former category. Now let's figure out what to do about that other half.

manicdee 14y ago

It took me a minute to understand what you meant by "coworker gets touchy". At which point my reaction was as portrayed in "lady problems". I am changing careers to something less male dominated. I am taking up long distance truck driving.

up_and_up 14y ago

As a male software engineer, I find this smart, educational and entertaining. But then again, what the hell do I know about it? How can I show support for this without sounding like an idiot?

femsoftwareeng 14y ago
You just did. Thank you and all the other allies out there. It's important for me and my cohort to remember most people are well-intentioned and many are even enlightened, in tech and elsewhere. (Source: this is my blog.)
- unconed 14y ago
  Where "enlightened" = agrees with all my views, simplified into dumb animated GIFs? The "What about the menz" trope is as sexist as the behavior it's pretending to decry. Calling yourself enlightened while stereotyping the opposing gender is sheer hypocrisy. I'm a male dev who has been subject to some very unpleasant behavior because of my work... I didn't have the privilege of summoning my white knights with a simple retweet, as you see women do over and over again in any online sexism shitstorm. I was expected to justify my choices through logical argument, and just accept the fact that people said I should be shot for publishing a Github repo. There was no outrage over that, no brotherhood to back me up. See, if women make less money because they ask for less, it's considered a problem that needs to be solved for women. It's the fault of society that women are conditioned to be insecure about their real value! If men self-select into technical disciplines and don't develop appropriate social skills by being immersed in competitive, meritocratic environments, it's considered a problem that women need to be protected from. The best those men can hope for is a "re-education" from the feminazis, so he knows the leash is not optional. Isn't it funny how female empowerment seems to require the men to do all the work in making changes? That's what "What about the menz" is really about. It's a way for women to hold on to the privilege that when both a man and a woman are crossed, it's the woman's needs which are tended to first. Women and children first, it's been around forever, and it was practiced religiously. That's why 80% of the people on board the Titanic were men, and 80% of the survivors were women. Even when faced with a certain icy death, men across all of society agreed that women 'deserved' to be saved more. The reason it's hard being a female software engineer is because people pay attention to you when you walk into a room. That has its upsides, and its downsides, and it's often not the kind of attention that you want. But you have it anyway. You can't decry the negatives, while continuing to coast on your own privilege of not being called out on your bullshit.

jason_slack 14y ago

As a male Software Engineer, when I encounter the "rare and elusive" (he he) female Software Engineer I automatically assume they are smarter than me and not afraid to get their hands dirty with some low level goodness..

NateDad 14y ago

I have a serious question... is this a west coast thing? A midwest or southern thing? I've worked for over 13 years in Boston, in several companies with several smart female engineers... no one ever treated them differently that I saw. So... anyone seeing this in Boston? Maybe developers here are more enlightened? Maybe all the women coders need to come to Boston. :)

femsoftwareeng 14y ago
"No one ever treated them differently that I saw." This is a common and understandable reaction, but it's important to remember how hard it is to be an accurate observer in these situations. For instance, I have almost never witnessed evidence of racism in my workplaces, and yet I know for a fact that in those places racism was real, common, and huge problem for racial minorities. There are 500 incidents you don't see or maybe notice for every one you do. This is why I didn't really try to answer the last question here: http://femalesoftwareeng.tumblr.com/answers http://femalesoftwareeng.tumblr.com/answers Another issue is that some places are far more enlightened than others. Gaming companies, for example, tend to be much worse for female developers. So it's very possible you've never worked somewhere that was very bad. Or maybe your coworkers just never spoke up about it for fear of ridicule/backlash.
- NateDad 14y ago
  Thanks for responding to my late addition to the thread. You're right, of course... I may have missed a lot of it. And I haven't worked at gaming companies - not a lot of those in Boston, and the "kill yourself working just to get fired 2 months after launch" thing is not really my cup of tea ;) I'll talk to a couple female ex-coworkers and see what they have to say. I hope I didn't come off as not believing sexism exists in the software world, because I absolutely believe it. Anyway, thanks for bringing this up. I looked through your tumblr, and luckily do not see myself in any of the gaffes that you posted about (but I'll try to keep an eye out for things I or other coworkers might do without realizing). I am saddened that there are so many on the list. I can't believe there are men who still act like that in this day and age.