10 ms·

Introducing Passion Projects

88 points by bencevans 14y ago

goldfeld 14y ago
Thanks Github, it's great to have your weight behind making tech more friendly to women, and spotlighting female role models so that more of the young might pursue a career in the field.
cbeach 14y ago
Tech should be friendlier to women. However, segregation isn't the way forward, IMHO. I'm always sad to see gender-focussed events and groups. I'd much rather see women and men -integrate- than congregate within their own gender. And just to pre-empt, please don't give me the disingenuous "men are welcome too" line. This is, by definition, a women-focussed group.
- jamesmiller5 14y ago
  Women are underrepresented in technology. This event is to help promote the potential as well as accomplishments of women in technology. I fail to see how this is segregation, they make no claim that this series is to be representing everyone, just highlighting women. It is an event focused on women's roles in technology and available to the community.
  - jessedhillon 14y ago
    By the self-centered logic of the OP, even if a minority group has only 0.1% representation, they should have no events targeting specifically them and their causes -- the 99.9% majority should be able to attend, and presumably contribute to the conversation with no ability of the event's organizers to moderate the dialog or direct the focus to the minority's experiences. Anything less than that is segregation. It doesn't occur to the OP, apparently, that they are trying to create something that is decidedly different from the ordinary tech experience -- a conversation dominated by awkward-to-arrogant, entitled males who think that their very important opinions need to be heard everywhere and at all times. I wonder if the OP (presumably male) insists on attending (female) rape survivor meetups, or if he could understand why attendees thereof would not feel totally comfortable with his attendance.
    - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
      I see, women are going to share their traumatic experience in tech. BTW, this discussion is just silly because there are millions of meet Ups in tech filled with only men, but in the other hand meet ups of rape survivors not accepting men would be just evil, men are a minority in that group, it would be like a tech company not accepting any women.
      - jessedhillon 14y ago
        Ok. Good luck trying to convince them to let you in, I'm sure your unassailable logic misses nothing obvious. Make sure you let them know that it's evil for you not to be allowed in.
        jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
        What? Fortunately I wasn't talking about me, just men victims of rape. And doesn't matter if they follow my logic or not, we are discussing what's right, not the logic of the organizers of such meetings.
        jessedhillon 14y ago
        If you can't take your knowledge of "what's right" and actually change objective reality with it in a useful way, then it's dubious as to whether what you know is actually true. And IMO you would not be able to convince a female survivors group to let you in with logic, so again, I doubt strongly that it actually corresponds to truth.
        jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
        Why you keep suggesting I'm talking about me?... are you just trolling?
        jessedhillon 14y ago
- mcantelon 14y ago
  From the sounds of it the talks are all given by women, but men can come to see them. So not segregation.
jamescun 14y ago
It is brilliant to see a move forward to recognising that there are women in technology and they provide as good a contribution as everybody else, BUT, Is creating a specific, segregated, event/group really the way forward or is it just creating a greater divide in the tech community along gender lines? What would really need to be done is look properly into why there is a disproportionate number of men versus women who go into technology, rather than introduce yet more segregation. I do not believe that there is an event/group out there currently that would place any sort of restriction, intentional or otherwise, on female entry.
- AlexandrB 14y ago
  > What would really need to be done is look properly into why there is a disproportionate number of men versus women who go into technology, rather than introduce yet more segregation. This isn't some big mystery. At least one reason that women don't enter technology fields is a lack of female role-models. Another is societal pressure that dictates that women are bad at technology. Technology conferences focusing on women aren't just for the participants, they help counteract these two forces by giving visibility to notable women in tech. http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.ca/2006/03/women-need-female-role-models.html http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.ca/2006/03/women-need-fe... http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/21/where-have-all-the-women-gone http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/21/where-have-al...
  - recuter 14y ago
    What role models did Grace Hopper have? And I can only speak for myself but I was never drawn to 'technology' out of having famous neckbeards or Jobs or Gates and so forth as role models. You have to ask why women are more under represented in this particular field than others which used to be just as male dominated in the past. But people don't like to think about such deep large hairy societal problems. None of this is to say that what's described in the OP is a bad thing.
    - ceejayoz 14y ago
      > What role models did Grace Hopper have? This is a fallacy. Just because one person managed to surmount the lack of role models doesn't mean it isn't an issue. > And I can only speak for myself but I was never drawn to 'technology' out of having famous neckbeards or Jobs or Gates and so forth as role models. That's nice, but I don't see how your personal motivations are relevant on an industry-wide scale.
jenius 14y ago
This is how you get more women involved in tech, by actually taking action. I hope that we see more initiatives like this rather than hateful articles, which we've seen so many of recently.
Zikes 14y ago
I think this is an excellent initiative by GitHub. It's well-acknowledged that there is a lack of women in tech, for what I'm sure is a wide variety of reasons, and celebrating the successes of women in that field is a noble endeavor. Personally I believe that these women are capable of being a role model to both men and women, as they presumably have achieved their successes through their own merits and not by virtue of their gender, so I'm sure the wisdom they have to share at these meetups would benefit everyone. To that end I would be disappointed to hear if, while the meetups may encourage or advertise to a female audience, they chose to exclude men.
mlent 14y ago
I disagree with everyone saying, "Why create something separate for women? Isn't that further separation?" For the most part, women don't take up much space in the tech industry. Women look at the big names in tech, and they don't really see people who are "like me." This can be intimidating and disheartening. Creating more spaces for women to connect with other women, and share their experiences and encouragement is much needed. Of course, let's also not forget women of color and trans women, who obviously face additional challenges in finding people like themselves to look up to in tech. I hope that GitHub makes an effort to include a wide range of women with different backgrounds to include in this series. Also, there's no reason why any women's group should have to admit men to appease the "I promise we're not sexist against men" line of reasoning. I probably shouldn't be surprised that some of the first comments on something oriented towards women is, "But...WHAT ABOUT MEN?!" Get over yourselves! Let this be a reminder that the world does not revolve around you and people like you.
- Zikes 14y ago
  > Also, there's no reason why any women's group should have to admit men to appease the "I promise we're not sexist against men" line of reasoning. Is sexism not reason enough in itself? Is this not the very thing we're trying to fight against? I fully acknowledge and lament that there is a severe lack of women in tech, and were it up to me men and women both would have equal opportunities in all regards, but you only debase your message and dilute your efforts when you try to level the playing field by making an environment that is more hostile towards men rather than one less hostile towards women. The overarching goal is to be inclusive, of people of all genders, races, and the spectrum of people that fall in between. Yes, celebrate successes, find role models of all types and praise their accomplishments. Bring them forward to share their wisdom and experiences so that everyone can learn and benefit. Edit: To clarify, I have no issues with an initiative that seeks out role models specifically within a category of minorities, such as by gender or race. My only qualm would be in limiting the audience.
  - mlent 14y ago
    To put it simply, sexism against men does not exist. You can discriminate against men, but let's be clear: sexism is systematic oppression by those in power on the basis of gender. So...having a series of talks that is for women by women cannot possibly be sexist. You can say it discriminates by not allowing men to be speakers, if you so wish. I can't say I'd find it to interesting to listen to a man tell me what it's like to be a woman in tech, though, so you could also just say that they're just featuring people who are interesting to their audience: women. Also -- who said anything about hostility? What I meant was, "This is about women...why are you bringing men up at all? Don't they have their own spheres which they already dominate?" I just get tired of all this "reverse sexism" nonsense. Edit: To be clear, I agree with your last paragraph. I don't think it's limiting the audience to feature women speakers, unless you don't think that men can find women interesting. ;)
oliverhunt 14y ago
I think this is a good idea but is the word 'Passion' only in the name because it's women?
- ad_hominem 14y ago
  Passion Party => Passion Project?
- mnicole 14y ago
  It takes passion for someone to keep doing what they do despite the challenges they face.
- holman 14y ago
  A "passion project", in my mind, is simply a project that you're excited about (notably one that is likely outside the bounds of your normal, day-to-day job). I distinguish them from "side projects", which tend to be something you're interested in, but not something you're necessarily defined by. That's the reason the program's called passion projects — hopefully we'll have a ton of talks on really interesting things that our speakers are really, well, passionate about. I don't view "passion" as a word that is exclusive to women, in other words — we could just as easily pull in men for the same talk series.
  - oliverhunt 14y ago
    Most definitely. We share the same meaning of the concept of a passion project. I was probably just over thinking it, I am just suspicious of the way such highly emotive language has been used and it just happens to be for an interview series with women. I'll admit I had not read the link before I posted that comment, but looking at it now I still believe that the language used is overly emotional and I think that it has been used just because this is a series on women. A definition of the word passion involves, among other things "strong and barely controllable emotion" and I think this may be an obvious case where a gendered stereotype has been blatantly applied. Some sentences taken from the link: "celebrate the work of some of the most passionate women in our industry." "share one of their nearest and dearest passion projects with our community." "to hear about some positive experiences from other women in our industry doing what they love."
msoad 14y ago
So I started programming (for real) about two years ago. I spent about four months teaching myself coding PHP, JavaScript and CSS. I was able to secure a job after four months. I wasn't really good enough for the position. My wife is doing the same. She is following my path. She have me, I teach her and she is learning much faster. After a year, she is still looking for a volunteer job! Nobody believes she can do anything. This is extremely sad. My wife is far more advanced than me when I got my first job. We are immigrants and we are not white, I believe those adds to our problems. Everyone who says women don't deserve this kind of attention never saw a women struggling get in tech world.
- lfborjas 14y ago
  I hear you, friend, it's like it's ok for companies to hire us , men, as a "risky bet", I'm not the best engineer but thankfully my employers have all "seen" something in me to have enough faith to give me the chance to learn the job and then become better. Women seem to not get the same kind of good faith: my partner has two engineering degrees and she's by far a better engineer than I (skill-and-attitude-wise), and yet most companies reject her because of her "lack of experience". I know that that is a problem that befalls recent graduates all over the globe, but the fact that I garnered faith from employers more than once and she hasn't, not a single time, is -IMO- telling of a lack of balance.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Aye, holding people to different standards is a way to discriminate.
- pablasso 14y ago
  She should just release whatever she creates why learning. Stereotypes are no longer valid if you have a proof of your skills in Github.
  - girvo 14y ago
    In an ideal world, you would be correct. This is not an ideal world.
muan 14y ago
As a female developer, I would intuitively feel glad when seeing this kind of events/groups being formed, but thinking about it I am not sure why. I don't even think I feel like going to them for any other reason than, well, I am female and they're also female so I should probably check it out. After reading the reasons Github wrote, I find it hard to relate. For me picking up coding has nothing to do with seeing some other women do it, but perhaps seeing some human beings do it. And I don't think seeing female developers would inspire me further more than male developers. But I could be completely false and it might be that turns out I don't know what I really feel... Perhaps it's because I have not yet noticed any serious injustice around where I've been, could be that I just didn't realised what they were or I haven't spend enough time in the tech industry. The most unfair thing in tech I've ever encountered was interviewing at a company where there is no ladies restroom... Anyhoo. I don't personally know any other female developer and I've been coding since 11, that's 10+ years, I guess that's ought to be wrong. And since there are no samples around me, I don't really know what inspired other female developer to learn how to code. Is there anyone here who cares to share her experience?
mark_l_watson 14y ago
Very cool! Not too far off topic: I worked for a good tech company for most of the years between 1973 and 1996. The only major negative thing about the company was a 'glass ceiling' for women engineers (we did have some very high profile women on our board of directors though). I found that situation embarrassing. So, yes, special events featuring women engineers are a good thing. BTW, my granddaughter can program fairly well using the Scratch game platform :-)
MrAlmostWrong 14y ago
Does anyone happen to know the percentage of women that work @Github?
- cobychapple 14y ago
  19 out of our 152 employees are women, so a little over 12%.
  - MrAlmostWrong 14y ago
    Thanks for the reply.
memset 14y ago
This is really neat! Kudos to github. Here is a question: as one of two engineers at a 6-person seed-round startup, what could we be doing to contribute to the ecosystem of people who support women in technology? We don't have the office space - much less the money - to find or sponsor a monthly talk. So within the context of running our business, what can we do? Sometimes I fear that, until we have a successful and profitable company (with spare conference rooms, clout to find people who would like to give lectures here, or an otherwise large audience), there isn't much we can do to contribute. What can smaller companies or even individuals within organizations do?
- hypotext 14y ago
  You could contribute resources to Women in CS organizations at universities. I'm part of one, and we'd love to have engineers come in and give tech talks, especially about web development. You also could donate a bit to sponsor events (we hold events like "Interview Workshop sponsored by Google") or even offer internships. Every bit helps.
- noahl 14y ago
  I'm not as familiar with this problem as I'd like to be, so please take this with a grain of salt, but maybe you could invite female CS majors from nearby universities to come see your offices? Or better yet, to see what it's like to work with you for a day. After all, one of the major issues seems to be that women don't see role models working in tech companies. If you have female students come and work with you, then they should be able to imagine themselves working at your company, or another small startup.
dmazin 14y ago
It makes me pretty happy to see that this event is already full.
arcwhite 14y ago
To those saying that "this is discrimination is it is morally wrong" (and I don't think this event constitutes discrimination, but here goes): 1. Should we then do away with gender segregated sports teams? 2. Should other minorities (e.g. LBGTQ groups) no longer have support groups that focus on issues relevant to them? Having groups that cater to certain minorities feels to me both necessary and useful. We are not all identical. You probably don't want to live in a world without exceptional and different people in it; it would be boring. That means there are times when some of those people who are like-minded want to get together and support each other. In some cases, that means other groups need to be discouraged (because that minority would otherwise be overwhelmed, drowned out in a sea of majority voices). Why are so many voices in our industry constantly fighting events like this?
- hnacc10 14y ago
  When will "enough be enough"? When will we have no more need for these separate groups? Instead of actually choosing the best candidates based on their best abilities, we now resort to purposely choosing people based on their sex or race. That is wrong. There are much more women than men who attend college now. Women score better than men in reading and other subjects. The wage gap IS a myth. More money is focused on women's health issues. Do you see that any area where women don't already represent at least 50% of the workforce, there will be loud voices decrying sexism at this? On the other hand, there are 0 efforts on raising standards for boys, or trying to get them into X field. Nothing. As seen in history, once a group starts to gain power and privileges, it will continue in that direction no matter the actual circumstances.
  - arcwhite 14y ago
    "Instead of actually choosing the best candidates based on their best abilities, we now resort to purposely choosing people based on their sex or race." I call bulltwang. Please provide evidence of this supposed systematic selection of 'minority' candidates, because I'm sure as heck not seeing it where I am. You assert that the wage gap is myth. Please also provide evidence for this statement, because everything I've read suggests that it remains a problem across the board - and for the record we're talking about IT specifically here, and we're not talking about the wage gap, we're talking about the abysmally low rates of entry into this sector by half the population as defined by gender identification. It's all well and good to say "NO ENOUGH IS ENOUGH MERITOCRACY NAO PLZ", but who decides what is meritorious? The entrenched majority? This is why that term was coined in derision. I say, enough will be enough when there's no longer a problem (c.f. uptake of science/engineering/tech by women). Until then, we have a problem, and we need to do things to fix that problem.

88 points by bencevans 14y ago

Thanks Github, it's great to have your weight behind making tech more friendly to women, and spotlighting female role models so that more of the young might pursue a career in the field.

cbeach 14y ago

Tech should be friendlier to women. However, segregation isn't the way forward, IMHO. I'm always sad to see gender-focussed events and groups. I'd much rather see women and men -integrate- than congregate within their own gender. And just to pre-empt, please don't give me the disingenuous "men are welcome too" line. This is, by definition, a women-focussed group.

jamesmiller5 14y ago
Women are underrepresented in technology. This event is to help promote the potential as well as accomplishments of women in technology. I fail to see how this is segregation, they make no claim that this series is to be representing everyone, just highlighting women. It is an event focused on women's roles in technology and available to the community.
- jessedhillon 14y ago
  By the self-centered logic of the OP, even if a minority group has only 0.1% representation, they should have no events targeting specifically them and their causes -- the 99.9% majority should be able to attend, and presumably contribute to the conversation with no ability of the event's organizers to moderate the dialog or direct the focus to the minority's experiences. Anything less than that is segregation. It doesn't occur to the OP, apparently, that they are trying to create something that is decidedly different from the ordinary tech experience -- a conversation dominated by awkward-to-arrogant, entitled males who think that their very important opinions need to be heard everywhere and at all times. I wonder if the OP (presumably male) insists on attending (female) rape survivor meetups, or if he could understand why attendees thereof would not feel totally comfortable with his attendance.
  - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
    I see, women are going to share their traumatic experience in tech. BTW, this discussion is just silly because there are millions of meet Ups in tech filled with only men, but in the other hand meet ups of rape survivors not accepting men would be just evil, men are a minority in that group, it would be like a tech company not accepting any women.
    - jessedhillon 14y ago
      Ok. Good luck trying to convince them to let you in, I'm sure your unassailable logic misses nothing obvious. Make sure you let them know that it's evil for you not to be allowed in.
      - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
        What? Fortunately I wasn't talking about me, just men victims of rape. And doesn't matter if they follow my logic or not, we are discussing what's right, not the logic of the organizers of such meetings.
        jessedhillon 14y ago
        If you can't take your knowledge of "what's right" and actually change objective reality with it in a useful way, then it's dubious as to whether what you know is actually true. And IMO you would not be able to convince a female survivors group to let you in with logic, so again, I doubt strongly that it actually corresponds to truth.
        jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
        Why you keep suggesting I'm talking about me?... are you just trolling?
        jessedhillon 14y ago
mcantelon 14y ago
From the sounds of it the talks are all given by women, but men can come to see them. So not segregation.

jamescun 14y ago

It is brilliant to see a move forward to recognising that there are women in technology and they provide as good a contribution as everybody else, BUT, Is creating a specific, segregated, event/group really the way forward or is it just creating a greater divide in the tech community along gender lines? What would really need to be done is look properly into why there is a disproportionate number of men versus women who go into technology, rather than introduce yet more segregation. I do not believe that there is an event/group out there currently that would place any sort of restriction, intentional or otherwise, on female entry.

AlexandrB 14y ago
> What would really need to be done is look properly into why there is a disproportionate number of men versus women who go into technology, rather than introduce yet more segregation. This isn't some big mystery. At least one reason that women don't enter technology fields is a lack of female role-models. Another is societal pressure that dictates that women are bad at technology. Technology conferences focusing on women aren't just for the participants, they help counteract these two forces by giving visibility to notable women in tech. http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.ca/2006/03/women-need-female-role-models.html http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.ca/2006/03/women-need-fe... http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/21/where-have-all-the-women-gone http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/21/where-have-al...
- recuter 14y ago
  What role models did Grace Hopper have? And I can only speak for myself but I was never drawn to 'technology' out of having famous neckbeards or Jobs or Gates and so forth as role models. You have to ask why women are more under represented in this particular field than others which used to be just as male dominated in the past. But people don't like to think about such deep large hairy societal problems. None of this is to say that what's described in the OP is a bad thing.
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    > What role models did Grace Hopper have? This is a fallacy. Just because one person managed to surmount the lack of role models doesn't mean it isn't an issue. > And I can only speak for myself but I was never drawn to 'technology' out of having famous neckbeards or Jobs or Gates and so forth as role models. That's nice, but I don't see how your personal motivations are relevant on an industry-wide scale.

jenius 14y ago

This is how you get more women involved in tech, by actually taking action. I hope that we see more initiatives like this rather than hateful articles, which we've seen so many of recently.

Zikes 14y ago

I think this is an excellent initiative by GitHub. It's well-acknowledged that there is a lack of women in tech, for what I'm sure is a wide variety of reasons, and celebrating the successes of women in that field is a noble endeavor. Personally I believe that these women are capable of being a role model to both men and women, as they presumably have achieved their successes through their own merits and not by virtue of their gender, so I'm sure the wisdom they have to share at these meetups would benefit everyone. To that end I would be disappointed to hear if, while the meetups may encourage or advertise to a female audience, they chose to exclude men.

mlent 14y ago

I disagree with everyone saying, "Why create something separate for women? Isn't that further separation?" For the most part, women don't take up much space in the tech industry. Women look at the big names in tech, and they don't really see people who are "like me." This can be intimidating and disheartening. Creating more spaces for women to connect with other women, and share their experiences and encouragement is much needed. Of course, let's also not forget women of color and trans women, who obviously face additional challenges in finding people like themselves to look up to in tech. I hope that GitHub makes an effort to include a wide range of women with different backgrounds to include in this series. Also, there's no reason why any women's group should have to admit men to appease the "I promise we're not sexist against men" line of reasoning. I probably shouldn't be surprised that some of the first comments on something oriented towards women is, "But...WHAT ABOUT MEN?!" Get over yourselves! Let this be a reminder that the world does not revolve around you and people like you.

Zikes 14y ago
> Also, there's no reason why any women's group should have to admit men to appease the "I promise we're not sexist against men" line of reasoning. Is sexism not reason enough in itself? Is this not the very thing we're trying to fight against? I fully acknowledge and lament that there is a severe lack of women in tech, and were it up to me men and women both would have equal opportunities in all regards, but you only debase your message and dilute your efforts when you try to level the playing field by making an environment that is more hostile towards men rather than one less hostile towards women. The overarching goal is to be inclusive, of people of all genders, races, and the spectrum of people that fall in between. Yes, celebrate successes, find role models of all types and praise their accomplishments. Bring them forward to share their wisdom and experiences so that everyone can learn and benefit. Edit: To clarify, I have no issues with an initiative that seeks out role models specifically within a category of minorities, such as by gender or race. My only qualm would be in limiting the audience.
- mlent 14y ago
  To put it simply, sexism against men does not exist. You can discriminate against men, but let's be clear: sexism is systematic oppression by those in power on the basis of gender. So...having a series of talks that is for women by women cannot possibly be sexist. You can say it discriminates by not allowing men to be speakers, if you so wish. I can't say I'd find it to interesting to listen to a man tell me what it's like to be a woman in tech, though, so you could also just say that they're just featuring people who are interesting to their audience: women. Also -- who said anything about hostility? What I meant was, "This is about women...why are you bringing men up at all? Don't they have their own spheres which they already dominate?" I just get tired of all this "reverse sexism" nonsense. Edit: To be clear, I agree with your last paragraph. I don't think it's limiting the audience to feature women speakers, unless you don't think that men can find women interesting. ;)

oliverhunt 14y ago

I think this is a good idea but is the word 'Passion' only in the name because it's women?

ad_hominem 14y ago
Passion Party => Passion Project?
mnicole 14y ago
It takes passion for someone to keep doing what they do despite the challenges they face.
holman 14y ago
A "passion project", in my mind, is simply a project that you're excited about (notably one that is likely outside the bounds of your normal, day-to-day job). I distinguish them from "side projects", which tend to be something you're interested in, but not something you're necessarily defined by. That's the reason the program's called passion projects — hopefully we'll have a ton of talks on really interesting things that our speakers are really, well, passionate about. I don't view "passion" as a word that is exclusive to women, in other words — we could just as easily pull in men for the same talk series.
- oliverhunt 14y ago
  Most definitely. We share the same meaning of the concept of a passion project. I was probably just over thinking it, I am just suspicious of the way such highly emotive language has been used and it just happens to be for an interview series with women. I'll admit I had not read the link before I posted that comment, but looking at it now I still believe that the language used is overly emotional and I think that it has been used just because this is a series on women. A definition of the word passion involves, among other things "strong and barely controllable emotion" and I think this may be an obvious case where a gendered stereotype has been blatantly applied. Some sentences taken from the link: "celebrate the work of some of the most passionate women in our industry." "share one of their nearest and dearest passion projects with our community." "to hear about some positive experiences from other women in our industry doing what they love."

msoad 14y ago

So I started programming (for real) about two years ago. I spent about four months teaching myself coding PHP, JavaScript and CSS. I was able to secure a job after four months. I wasn't really good enough for the position. My wife is doing the same. She is following my path. She have me, I teach her and she is learning much faster. After a year, she is still looking for a volunteer job! Nobody believes she can do anything. This is extremely sad. My wife is far more advanced than me when I got my first job. We are immigrants and we are not white, I believe those adds to our problems. Everyone who says women don't deserve this kind of attention never saw a women struggling get in tech world.

lfborjas 14y ago
I hear you, friend, it's like it's ok for companies to hire us , men, as a "risky bet", I'm not the best engineer but thankfully my employers have all "seen" something in me to have enough faith to give me the chance to learn the job and then become better. Women seem to not get the same kind of good faith: my partner has two engineering degrees and she's by far a better engineer than I (skill-and-attitude-wise), and yet most companies reject her because of her "lack of experience". I know that that is a problem that befalls recent graduates all over the globe, but the fact that I garnered faith from employers more than once and she hasn't, not a single time, is -IMO- telling of a lack of balance.
- rmc 14y ago
  Aye, holding people to different standards is a way to discriminate.
pablasso 14y ago
She should just release whatever she creates why learning. Stereotypes are no longer valid if you have a proof of your skills in Github.
- girvo 14y ago
  In an ideal world, you would be correct. This is not an ideal world.

muan 14y ago

As a female developer, I would intuitively feel glad when seeing this kind of events/groups being formed, but thinking about it I am not sure why. I don't even think I feel like going to them for any other reason than, well, I am female and they're also female so I should probably check it out. After reading the reasons Github wrote, I find it hard to relate. For me picking up coding has nothing to do with seeing some other women do it, but perhaps seeing some human beings do it. And I don't think seeing female developers would inspire me further more than male developers. But I could be completely false and it might be that turns out I don't know what I really feel... Perhaps it's because I have not yet noticed any serious injustice around where I've been, could be that I just didn't realised what they were or I haven't spend enough time in the tech industry. The most unfair thing in tech I've ever encountered was interviewing at a company where there is no ladies restroom... Anyhoo. I don't personally know any other female developer and I've been coding since 11, that's 10+ years, I guess that's ought to be wrong. And since there are no samples around me, I don't really know what inspired other female developer to learn how to code. Is there anyone here who cares to share her experience?

mark_l_watson 14y ago

Very cool! Not too far off topic: I worked for a good tech company for most of the years between 1973 and 1996. The only major negative thing about the company was a 'glass ceiling' for women engineers (we did have some very high profile women on our board of directors though). I found that situation embarrassing. So, yes, special events featuring women engineers are a good thing. BTW, my granddaughter can program fairly well using the Scratch game platform :-)

MrAlmostWrong 14y ago

Does anyone happen to know the percentage of women that work @Github?

cobychapple 14y ago
19 out of our 152 employees are women, so a little over 12%.
- MrAlmostWrong 14y ago
  Thanks for the reply.

memset 14y ago

This is really neat! Kudos to github. Here is a question: as one of two engineers at a 6-person seed-round startup, what could we be doing to contribute to the ecosystem of people who support women in technology? We don't have the office space - much less the money - to find or sponsor a monthly talk. So within the context of running our business, what can we do? Sometimes I fear that, until we have a successful and profitable company (with spare conference rooms, clout to find people who would like to give lectures here, or an otherwise large audience), there isn't much we can do to contribute. What can smaller companies or even individuals within organizations do?

hypotext 14y ago
You could contribute resources to Women in CS organizations at universities. I'm part of one, and we'd love to have engineers come in and give tech talks, especially about web development. You also could donate a bit to sponsor events (we hold events like "Interview Workshop sponsored by Google") or even offer internships. Every bit helps.
noahl 14y ago
I'm not as familiar with this problem as I'd like to be, so please take this with a grain of salt, but maybe you could invite female CS majors from nearby universities to come see your offices? Or better yet, to see what it's like to work with you for a day. After all, one of the major issues seems to be that women don't see role models working in tech companies. If you have female students come and work with you, then they should be able to imagine themselves working at your company, or another small startup.

dmazin 14y ago

It makes me pretty happy to see that this event is already full.

arcwhite 14y ago

To those saying that "this is discrimination is it is morally wrong" (and I don't think this event constitutes discrimination, but here goes): 1. Should we then do away with gender segregated sports teams? 2. Should other minorities (e.g. LBGTQ groups) no longer have support groups that focus on issues relevant to them? Having groups that cater to certain minorities feels to me both necessary and useful. We are not all identical. You probably don't want to live in a world without exceptional and different people in it; it would be boring. That means there are times when some of those people who are like-minded want to get together and support each other. In some cases, that means other groups need to be discouraged (because that minority would otherwise be overwhelmed, drowned out in a sea of majority voices). Why are so many voices in our industry constantly fighting events like this?

hnacc10 14y ago
When will "enough be enough"? When will we have no more need for these separate groups? Instead of actually choosing the best candidates based on their best abilities, we now resort to purposely choosing people based on their sex or race. That is wrong. There are much more women than men who attend college now. Women score better than men in reading and other subjects. The wage gap IS a myth. More money is focused on women's health issues. Do you see that any area where women don't already represent at least 50% of the workforce, there will be loud voices decrying sexism at this? On the other hand, there are 0 efforts on raising standards for boys, or trying to get them into X field. Nothing. As seen in history, once a group starts to gain power and privileges, it will continue in that direction no matter the actual circumstances.
- arcwhite 14y ago
  "Instead of actually choosing the best candidates based on their best abilities, we now resort to purposely choosing people based on their sex or race." I call bulltwang. Please provide evidence of this supposed systematic selection of 'minority' candidates, because I'm sure as heck not seeing it where I am. You assert that the wage gap is myth. Please also provide evidence for this statement, because everything I've read suggests that it remains a problem across the board - and for the record we're talking about IT specifically here, and we're not talking about the wage gap, we're talking about the abysmally low rates of entry into this sector by half the population as defined by gender identification. It's all well and good to say "NO ENOUGH IS ENOUGH MERITOCRACY NAO PLZ", but who decides what is meritorious? The entrenched majority? This is why that term was coined in derision. I say, enough will be enough when there's no longer a problem (c.f. uptake of science/engineering/tech by women). Until then, we have a problem, and we need to do things to fix that problem.