9 ms·

So a female programmer walks into a bar…

110 points by filozynka 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
unfamiliar 12y ago
What a creative job advertisement.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- pestaa 12y ago
  Honestly I was expecting a little more meat in the article, and it turned out not to be primarily an article. On the other hand, I'd love to work with female programmers more. The one I had the pleasure to work with had good insight, took care of legacy code like only a mother can, and documented every wtf line tenfold. There might be tasks men are genetically more suited to, but women could also bring a lot to the table.
  - hashbanged 12y ago
    Did you just characterize documentation as women's work? Not every woman developer wants to maintain your legacy code while you go off and write features...
  - pja 12y ago
    That is the most back-handed set of compliments I've seen in a while - you're doing a great job of entrenching the "HN is irredeemably sexist" image so many people already have.
    - romanovcode 12y ago
      This is one person who states his opinion, saying that "HN is irredeemably sexist" because of one person is irredeemably stupid.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
    > There might be tasks men are genetically more suited to, but I'm sure that was intended as praise, but it falls short. Astonishingly far short.
  - theop 12y ago
    there are jobs where men are genetically more suited for but we don't have to hunt bare hands anymore so it's not a big problem nowadays
    - SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
      There may be things that the average man is a bit better at than the average woman and vice versa, but individual variation is much larger than this. A decent coder is far from the competency profile of an average person of their gender anyway, so that average is not even relevant.
  - chc 12y ago
    I believe this is what's now called "Peggy Olsoning."
- lnanek2 12y ago
  It's always less exciting to hear that there isn't a problem somewhere than that there is, I guess. Sorry you weren't entertained.
ColinDabritz 12y ago
I'd like to acknowledge the courage of Gosia to put something like this online. (Original post: http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female-programmer-walks-into-a-bar/ http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female... ) It frustrates and angers me knowing the article will almost certainly draw asinine comments and threats that are wholly inappropriate. It takes a kind of bravery I'm not sure I have, and I can't tell if I do because it isn't required when I write. The reasons it's needed aside, the signal of this blog that this is a safe place for women to work is important. To the author, well done, and know that support is out there.
mathetic 12y ago
This is a terrible PR article but we might actually need more of these. That's basically how one changes social stigmas in a society/industry. Just make sure all cool places are doing the exact opposite of unwanted behaviour. If that's not possible, then everybody needs to fake it with PR stunts like this until everyone else believes that's the thing to do.
swalsh 12y ago
Where was the substance to the post? The post she linked to was far more interesting: https://netguru.co/blog/posts/brace-no-more-going-from-java-to-ruby-on-rails https://netguru.co/blog/posts/brace-no-more-going-from-java-...
- twic 12y ago
  That article raised a frown with me. It presents some Java code, then shows the Ruby version, which ends up being much more concise. But the Java code is needlessly verbose. Here's how i'd arrange it: @Override public boolean equals(Object object) { if (!(object instanceof Gallery)) return false; Gallery other = (Gallery) object; return (this.gid != null || other.gid == null) && (this.gid == null || this.gid.equals(other.gid)); } Apart from the cast, which you need because Java has static types and Ruby doesn't, it's the same length. It's basically the same code, token for token. Actually, the logical structure of the final line is a bit obscure to me; i'd write it: return this.gid != null ? this.gid.equals(other.gid) : other.gid == null; Or, in Java 7 or later: return Objects.equals(this.gid, other.gid);
EGreg 12y ago
You know that comic, from back in the 90s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_y... Well, this is another point for the distributed, asynchronous programming championed by http://asyncmanifesto.org/ http://asyncmanifesto.org/ I would be happy to hire a woman programmer at our company provided she was awesome at the stuff we need -- Javascript, PHP, etc. In fact if someone here is reading this (man or woman) and thinks they would like to work with us on http://github.com/EGreg/Q http://github.com/EGreg/Q, I would be very happy to talk to you -- if you can figure out how to contact me from there. In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job. PS: Recently I did reach out to one woman who I found on oDesk and she was busy with a project, but recommended someone else, a man. And now I'm talking to him, because she recommended well. PPS: We do have a woman working in our company, doing sales. I really hire based simply on competence with the stuff we need and so far it's ben mostly men doing the programming.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job. This is the meritocracy argument. I am sympathetic to it, and agree to a great extent. But the main objection—and it's an important one—is that an unbalanced, male-dominated workplace becomes less attractive to women. In most cases, it probably isn't even conscious - but it can become pretty hostile.
  - EGreg 12y ago
    Even more argument to vote for the internet, where 90% of the communication would be about the work and they won't have to constantly see discrimination in 50% or more of the communication.
- commandar 12y ago
  >In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job. The problem is that it shouldn't require anonymity to get people to simply treat each other like people.
ufmace 12y ago
Misleading title, there is no bar in this story. But seriously, I think this is a refreshing article, considering the usual gender in tech articles here. I'd like to think that there are plenty of places a woman can work as a professional developer and not be subject to such rampant discrimination and sexual harassment that most of us find it difficult to believe. I recommend everybody believe and act as if there are plenty of awesome companies to work at. If you find yourself at a company that sucks, for whatever reason, kick their asses to the curb and find a new one.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  If you find yourself at a company that sucks, for whatever reason, kick their asses to the curb and find a new one. And don't forget to call them out for it, publicly. I know that's easy to say, and in reality it's going to be hard to deal with the inevitable onslaught of abuse you're going to take for it. But companies have to make an effort to ensure that toxic environments are eliminated.
  - leephillips 12y ago
    "And don't forget to call them out for it, publicly." Many homeowner's policies allow you to pay a bit extra to add defense against defamation lawsuits to your liability coverage. You should at least put this in place, unless you have $30,000 - $100,000 in disposable savings to defend against a defamation suit. This is what you need to plan for if you intend to make public statements that damage a business' reputation - and that's if you know you're right and have thorough documentation of every claim you make. If you lack any of that documentation, it's going to cost you a lot more.
    - chc 12y ago
      I don't understand what you just said here. Because homeowner's insurance policies allow riders for defense against defamation lawsuits, you shouldn't talk about your experience at a company? Why?
      - 12y ago
matthewmacleod 12y ago
“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers” Seriously, what kind of a dick says that to anybody - even if it was nothing to do with gender, it's an egregious offence.
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  My guess? An insecure one, who therefore is trying to build up his own self-esteem by tearing other people down.
andrewguenther 12y ago
Over 50% of this article is a job posting... I find it a little messed up to take a real issue and spin it as a hiring campaign. A footnote about the positive work environment at Netguru? Sure. But this is just plain advertising.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- phkahler 12y ago
  Even worse, the link goes to some dude who copied the blog so he could get page views instead of the author. HN posts it with a link to his page, not hers. He doesn't even talk about it, just "hey this is cool I'm gonna repost it so I get hits."
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mindcrime 12y ago
“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's fucking stupid. I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've never seen any reason to believe that female programmers are in any way less competent than their male counterparts. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. It really boggles the imagination... where do these guys come up with this shit? Making crude jokes, sexually charged statements, some of these other things I can understand (that doesn't make them right mind you, I'm just saying I can understand the place some of it comes from), but I can't even begin to understand a mindset of insinuating that women are less capable as developers/hackers/programmers/whatever. To anybody who believes that women are somehow inherently inferior at coding, let me just say that you're wrong. Absolutely, totally, completely wrong. Maybe you haven't worked with enough women, or maybe you had the bad fortune to work with the wrong women, or maybe you just weren't paying attention, but it's just not true.
- commandar 12y ago
  >It really boggles the imagination... where do these guys come up with this shit? I touch on this in my comment upthread and you mention it as well, but I really feel like insularity has a strong causative effect here.
- nawitus 12y ago
  Are you implying that the comment was supposed to be a rational argument?
- devgutt 12y ago
  This is an easy way, especially if you don't have any arguments, to diminish other people. Doesn't matter the gender. If one was a guy, the other one would say "you're a PHP developer, leave this crap to REAL developers". This is not sexist, it's just plain stupid, as you said.
  - mgkimsal 12y ago
commandar 12y ago
>Because we have a motto that says “you’re not your code” that all of us stick to and it works in many ways. This struck a chord with me. I work in the healthcare sector, so I deal with what is, for IT, an unusually high proportion of women. I've dealt with bad female developers, but I've also worked with absolutely great ones. Just like I've dealt with incompetent and solid male developers. Maybe it's just my exposure and the fact that it's a normal thing for me, but gender just doesn't even register on my radar when I have to work with someone. All I care about is the ability to get the job done. While I think the dearth of women in the tech sector is systematic on a deep enough level that it's very difficult to "solve" in any manner that won't take decades, I do find myself somewhat worried about the byproducts of tech's current insular nature. I feel that normalizing dealing with people -- diverse groups of people -- on a regular basis yields healthy benefits well beyond simply saying "we're inclusive!" It breeds openness to just plain working with people as people.
- Shebanator 12y ago
  The important thing here is that despite the claims of some, there is no evidence that the proportion of good to bad programmers is any different for males vs. females. Same holds true for race, sexual orientation, etc. Anyone claiming otherwise is merely displaying their own biases.
madsheep 12y ago
You might think this is fake, planned or otherwise staged - I get that, I would think the same. But you should see my anger when I saw what's going on with that tiny little excuse for a server, becouse nobody told me this is happening. They did not think they need to, since it's only felt natural and normal thing to do, reposting an article of one of our coworkers and going to HN with it. passenger_max_instances_per_app 4 my ass.
imchillyb 12y ago
Shady little advert there, masquerading as news.
- dep_b 12y ago
  Right, my thoughts too. Still good to have a positive story as well after all those awful stories of lately.
hawkharris 12y ago
Have you ever noticed that HN posts concerning gender discrimination tend to attract hundreds of comments? That's not intrinsically bad. What's questionable is the quality of the comments. It seems that almost all the remarks on this page are drawn from opinion or personal anecdotes. Don't get me wrong... personal stories can be interesting and insightful; it's just that, in most discussion threads, HN tends to balance opinion with links to more objective qualitative and quantitative sources. That's what differentiates HN from sites like Facebook and Reddit. So, there should be a barrier to participating in discussions about gender on HN. If you have personal or professional experience that qualifies you to discuss the topic, please share it. If you took the time to research the issue and present a substantial, new perspective, please share it. But if you want to chime in with a vague, unsubstantiated opinion that dozens of others have already shared, please consider using another forum. That's what makes these discussions less productive.
- muglug 12y ago
  Why the need to explicitly police the discussion? Doesn't HN's system of up-and-down votes already accomplish that?
  - ufo 12y ago
    Downvotes are pointless if peopoe don't agree on what they should be downvoting. For example, contrast r/askscience with r/funny
  - thrillgore 12y ago
    Allowing a voting system does not guarantee any form of quality control, especially when the content of the article is very controversial, if not intended to insight differing opinions.
  - wambotron 12y ago
    I still don't see downvotes. I don't really post or comment very often, but I've been reading this site almost daily for years. Maybe they could work that in to an algorithm that gives you the downvote option.. My point is that there are many, many people who are just readers (of posts and comments) who don't feel the need to comment on everything but are perfectly capable of helping police the content. Right now, I can only upvote if I like something. There is no other option for "this is not good/helpful"
amykhar 12y ago
I've been a professional programmer since 1997. I've worked for defense contractors, consulting companies and medical software shops. I've NEVER had a problem with my gender in the workplace. I've always been treated the same as the other developers. Now, I can't be certain that my resume hasn't been skipped in the pile because I'm a woman. But, it's been my experience that developers on a team just want somebody who can do the work and can appreciate the good work that they do. With so many articles posted about discrimination and sexism, it's refreshing to see others share their experience as being just one of the gang.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tootie 12y ago
It's kinda sad that she has to call out Netguru as someplace safe for women. Honestly, I think it's just a bit of moral panic brought on by a few high profile stories. I've been in and out of a lot of organizations and never witnessed female colleagues being given a hard time. A few instances of creepy guy behavior, but I've also seen guys get bothered by creepy gay guy behavior. That's not unique to the programmer world at least.
- chc 12y ago
  But how many female programmers did you witness, compared to how many male programmers? Even if you worked in anomalously female-heavy places, I can almost guarantee you the ratio is anomalously low on a global and historical scale.
- steveklabnik 12y ago
  > I've been in and out of a lot of organizations and never witnessed female colleagues being given a hard time. Liberally stolen from Anil Dash, consider this sentence and how it compares to yours: > I'm an iPhone user, and I've been in and out of a lot of organizations where I also work with Android users, and they're always complaining about bugs. I can't ever reproduce their bugs on iOS.
- melindajb 12y ago
  just because you never witnessed it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. women are usually harassed well out of sight of other people.
jbeja 12y ago
Rolling my eyes the whole post. Is overly dramatic for something so mundane, and to be honest i don't even believe it. “you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. Who say stupid thing like this on this day of age or even get dramatic when someone say that to you?. Please give yourself some pride, you are better than this.
Pxtl 12y ago
It's sad that being generally decent to women is remarkable enough to be newsworthy, but it's important to highlight successes instead of failures if for no better reason than to remind the world that geek misogyny is far from universal or universally tolerated.
song 12y ago
Right now hiring women is a competitive advantage. If you're not an asshole and make sure that the work environment is sane, you get an employee who is grateful for the opportunity to do her job in a nice environment and who is more likely to advertise her job...
austinhutch 12y ago
I wonder how significant the importance of the long-time/early female employee was in shaping a welcoming culture. It is easy for a group of extremely like minded and homogenous (male) group to start a company and grow to a decent size before any diversity is introduced. It might prove to be a powerful strategy to consciously introduce diversity before most would start thinking about "company culture". (Obviously I don't mean this as something only white male founders should worry about, I think it could be powerful for all young companies)
xamebax 12y ago
It's very nice to read some women have positive experiences and that some companies are able to create a discrimination-free culture. I'm happy for Gosia and it gives me some hope for the future. What I am scared of is some people using what Gosia wrote as an argument to silence other women: "Look! Read! See? It's not bad! So shut up".
skakri 12y ago
Blogspam. Please visit original page – http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female-programmer-walks-into-a-bar/ http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female...
dickface 12y ago
So a female programmer walks into a bar... and nothing of importance in relation to her gender happens. What a piece of crap article. Why is she obsessing about her gender when it clearly isn't affecting her in any way mentionable, let alone writing an article about it? Such a useless article. Doesn't surprise me a woman wrote it.

110 points by filozynka 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

unfamiliar 12y ago

What a creative job advertisement.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pestaa 12y ago
Honestly I was expecting a little more meat in the article, and it turned out not to be primarily an article. On the other hand, I'd love to work with female programmers more. The one I had the pleasure to work with had good insight, took care of legacy code like only a mother can, and documented every wtf line tenfold. There might be tasks men are genetically more suited to, but women could also bring a lot to the table.
- hashbanged 12y ago
  Did you just characterize documentation as women's work? Not every woman developer wants to maintain your legacy code while you go off and write features...
- pja 12y ago
  That is the most back-handed set of compliments I've seen in a while - you're doing a great job of entrenching the "HN is irredeemably sexist" image so many people already have.
  - romanovcode 12y ago
    This is one person who states his opinion, saying that "HN is irredeemably sexist" because of one person is irredeemably stupid.
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
  > There might be tasks men are genetically more suited to, but I'm sure that was intended as praise, but it falls short. Astonishingly far short.
- theop 12y ago
  there are jobs where men are genetically more suited for but we don't have to hunt bare hands anymore so it's not a big problem nowadays
  - SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
    There may be things that the average man is a bit better at than the average woman and vice versa, but individual variation is much larger than this. A decent coder is far from the competency profile of an average person of their gender anyway, so that average is not even relevant.
- chc 12y ago
  I believe this is what's now called "Peggy Olsoning."
lnanek2 12y ago
It's always less exciting to hear that there isn't a problem somewhere than that there is, I guess. Sorry you weren't entertained.

ColinDabritz 12y ago

I'd like to acknowledge the courage of Gosia to put something like this online. (Original post: http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female-programmer-walks-into-a-bar/ http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female... ) It frustrates and angers me knowing the article will almost certainly draw asinine comments and threats that are wholly inappropriate. It takes a kind of bravery I'm not sure I have, and I can't tell if I do because it isn't required when I write. The reasons it's needed aside, the signal of this blog that this is a safe place for women to work is important. To the author, well done, and know that support is out there.

mathetic 12y ago

This is a terrible PR article but we might actually need more of these. That's basically how one changes social stigmas in a society/industry. Just make sure all cool places are doing the exact opposite of unwanted behaviour. If that's not possible, then everybody needs to fake it with PR stunts like this until everyone else believes that's the thing to do.

swalsh 12y ago

Where was the substance to the post? The post she linked to was far more interesting: https://netguru.co/blog/posts/brace-no-more-going-from-java-to-ruby-on-rails https://netguru.co/blog/posts/brace-no-more-going-from-java-...

twic 12y ago
That article raised a frown with me. It presents some Java code, then shows the Ruby version, which ends up being much more concise. But the Java code is needlessly verbose. Here's how i'd arrange it: @Override public boolean equals(Object object) { if (!(object instanceof Gallery)) return false; Gallery other = (Gallery) object; return (this.gid != null || other.gid == null) && (this.gid == null || this.gid.equals(other.gid)); } Apart from the cast, which you need because Java has static types and Ruby doesn't, it's the same length. It's basically the same code, token for token. Actually, the logical structure of the final line is a bit obscure to me; i'd write it: return this.gid != null ? this.gid.equals(other.gid) : other.gid == null; Or, in Java 7 or later: return Objects.equals(this.gid, other.gid);

EGreg 12y ago

You know that comic, from back in the 90s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_y... Well, this is another point for the distributed, asynchronous programming championed by http://asyncmanifesto.org/ http://asyncmanifesto.org/ I would be happy to hire a woman programmer at our company provided she was awesome at the stuff we need -- Javascript, PHP, etc. In fact if someone here is reading this (man or woman) and thinks they would like to work with us on http://github.com/EGreg/Q http://github.com/EGreg/Q, I would be very happy to talk to you -- if you can figure out how to contact me from there. In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job. PS: Recently I did reach out to one woman who I found on oDesk and she was busy with a project, but recommended someone else, a man. And now I'm talking to him, because she recommended well. PPS: We do have a woman working in our company, doing sales. I really hire based simply on competence with the stuff we need and so far it's ben mostly men doing the programming.

matthewmacleod 12y ago
In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job. This is the meritocracy argument. I am sympathetic to it, and agree to a great extent. But the main objection—and it's an important one—is that an unbalanced, male-dominated workplace becomes less attractive to women. In most cases, it probably isn't even conscious - but it can become pretty hostile.
- EGreg 12y ago
  Even more argument to vote for the internet, where 90% of the communication would be about the work and they won't have to constantly see discrimination in 50% or more of the communication.
commandar 12y ago
>In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job. The problem is that it shouldn't require anonymity to get people to simply treat each other like people.

ufmace 12y ago

Misleading title, there is no bar in this story. But seriously, I think this is a refreshing article, considering the usual gender in tech articles here. I'd like to think that there are plenty of places a woman can work as a professional developer and not be subject to such rampant discrimination and sexual harassment that most of us find it difficult to believe. I recommend everybody believe and act as if there are plenty of awesome companies to work at. If you find yourself at a company that sucks, for whatever reason, kick their asses to the curb and find a new one.

matthewmacleod 12y ago
If you find yourself at a company that sucks, for whatever reason, kick their asses to the curb and find a new one. And don't forget to call them out for it, publicly. I know that's easy to say, and in reality it's going to be hard to deal with the inevitable onslaught of abuse you're going to take for it. But companies have to make an effort to ensure that toxic environments are eliminated.
- leephillips 12y ago
  "And don't forget to call them out for it, publicly." Many homeowner's policies allow you to pay a bit extra to add defense against defamation lawsuits to your liability coverage. You should at least put this in place, unless you have $30,000 - $100,000 in disposable savings to defend against a defamation suit. This is what you need to plan for if you intend to make public statements that damage a business' reputation - and that's if you know you're right and have thorough documentation of every claim you make. If you lack any of that documentation, it's going to cost you a lot more.
  - chc 12y ago
    I don't understand what you just said here. Because homeowner's insurance policies allow riders for defense against defamation lawsuits, you shouldn't talk about your experience at a company? Why?
    - 12y ago

matthewmacleod 12y ago

“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers” Seriously, what kind of a dick says that to anybody - even if it was nothing to do with gender, it's an egregious offence.

AnimalMuppet 12y ago
My guess? An insecure one, who therefore is trying to build up his own self-esteem by tearing other people down.

andrewguenther 12y ago

Over 50% of this article is a job posting... I find it a little messed up to take a real issue and spin it as a hiring campaign. A footnote about the positive work environment at Netguru? Sure. But this is just plain advertising.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
phkahler 12y ago
Even worse, the link goes to some dude who copied the blog so he could get page views instead of the author. HN posts it with a link to his page, not hers. He doesn't even talk about it, just "hey this is cool I'm gonna repost it so I get hits."

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mindcrime 12y ago

“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's fucking stupid. I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've never seen any reason to believe that female programmers are in any way less competent than their male counterparts. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. It really boggles the imagination... where do these guys come up with this shit? Making crude jokes, sexually charged statements, some of these other things I can understand (that doesn't make them right mind you, I'm just saying I can understand the place some of it comes from), but I can't even begin to understand a mindset of insinuating that women are less capable as developers/hackers/programmers/whatever. To anybody who believes that women are somehow inherently inferior at coding, let me just say that you're wrong. Absolutely, totally, completely wrong. Maybe you haven't worked with enough women, or maybe you had the bad fortune to work with the wrong women, or maybe you just weren't paying attention, but it's just not true.

commandar 12y ago
>It really boggles the imagination... where do these guys come up with this shit? I touch on this in my comment upthread and you mention it as well, but I really feel like insularity has a strong causative effect here.
nawitus 12y ago
Are you implying that the comment was supposed to be a rational argument?
devgutt 12y ago
This is an easy way, especially if you don't have any arguments, to diminish other people. Doesn't matter the gender. If one was a guy, the other one would say "you're a PHP developer, leave this crap to REAL developers". This is not sexist, it's just plain stupid, as you said.
- mgkimsal 12y ago

commandar 12y ago

>Because we have a motto that says “you’re not your code” that all of us stick to and it works in many ways. This struck a chord with me. I work in the healthcare sector, so I deal with what is, for IT, an unusually high proportion of women. I've dealt with bad female developers, but I've also worked with absolutely great ones. Just like I've dealt with incompetent and solid male developers. Maybe it's just my exposure and the fact that it's a normal thing for me, but gender just doesn't even register on my radar when I have to work with someone. All I care about is the ability to get the job done. While I think the dearth of women in the tech sector is systematic on a deep enough level that it's very difficult to "solve" in any manner that won't take decades, I do find myself somewhat worried about the byproducts of tech's current insular nature. I feel that normalizing dealing with people -- diverse groups of people -- on a regular basis yields healthy benefits well beyond simply saying "we're inclusive!" It breeds openness to just plain working with people as people.

Shebanator 12y ago
The important thing here is that despite the claims of some, there is no evidence that the proportion of good to bad programmers is any different for males vs. females. Same holds true for race, sexual orientation, etc. Anyone claiming otherwise is merely displaying their own biases.

madsheep 12y ago

You might think this is fake, planned or otherwise staged - I get that, I would think the same. But you should see my anger when I saw what's going on with that tiny little excuse for a server, becouse nobody told me this is happening. They did not think they need to, since it's only felt natural and normal thing to do, reposting an article of one of our coworkers and going to HN with it. passenger_max_instances_per_app 4 my ass.

imchillyb 12y ago

Shady little advert there, masquerading as news.

dep_b 12y ago
Right, my thoughts too. Still good to have a positive story as well after all those awful stories of lately.

hawkharris 12y ago

Have you ever noticed that HN posts concerning gender discrimination tend to attract hundreds of comments? That's not intrinsically bad. What's questionable is the quality of the comments. It seems that almost all the remarks on this page are drawn from opinion or personal anecdotes. Don't get me wrong... personal stories can be interesting and insightful; it's just that, in most discussion threads, HN tends to balance opinion with links to more objective qualitative and quantitative sources. That's what differentiates HN from sites like Facebook and Reddit. So, there should be a barrier to participating in discussions about gender on HN. If you have personal or professional experience that qualifies you to discuss the topic, please share it. If you took the time to research the issue and present a substantial, new perspective, please share it. But if you want to chime in with a vague, unsubstantiated opinion that dozens of others have already shared, please consider using another forum. That's what makes these discussions less productive.

muglug 12y ago
Why the need to explicitly police the discussion? Doesn't HN's system of up-and-down votes already accomplish that?
- ufo 12y ago
  Downvotes are pointless if peopoe don't agree on what they should be downvoting. For example, contrast r/askscience with r/funny
- thrillgore 12y ago
  Allowing a voting system does not guarantee any form of quality control, especially when the content of the article is very controversial, if not intended to insight differing opinions.
- wambotron 12y ago
  I still don't see downvotes. I don't really post or comment very often, but I've been reading this site almost daily for years. Maybe they could work that in to an algorithm that gives you the downvote option.. My point is that there are many, many people who are just readers (of posts and comments) who don't feel the need to comment on everything but are perfectly capable of helping police the content. Right now, I can only upvote if I like something. There is no other option for "this is not good/helpful"

amykhar 12y ago

I've been a professional programmer since 1997. I've worked for defense contractors, consulting companies and medical software shops. I've NEVER had a problem with my gender in the workplace. I've always been treated the same as the other developers. Now, I can't be certain that my resume hasn't been skipped in the pile because I'm a woman. But, it's been my experience that developers on a team just want somebody who can do the work and can appreciate the good work that they do. With so many articles posted about discrimination and sexism, it's refreshing to see others share their experience as being just one of the gang.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tootie 12y ago

It's kinda sad that she has to call out Netguru as someplace safe for women. Honestly, I think it's just a bit of moral panic brought on by a few high profile stories. I've been in and out of a lot of organizations and never witnessed female colleagues being given a hard time. A few instances of creepy guy behavior, but I've also seen guys get bothered by creepy gay guy behavior. That's not unique to the programmer world at least.

chc 12y ago
But how many female programmers did you witness, compared to how many male programmers? Even if you worked in anomalously female-heavy places, I can almost guarantee you the ratio is anomalously low on a global and historical scale.
steveklabnik 12y ago
> I've been in and out of a lot of organizations and never witnessed female colleagues being given a hard time. Liberally stolen from Anil Dash, consider this sentence and how it compares to yours: > I'm an iPhone user, and I've been in and out of a lot of organizations where I also work with Android users, and they're always complaining about bugs. I can't ever reproduce their bugs on iOS.
melindajb 12y ago
just because you never witnessed it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. women are usually harassed well out of sight of other people.

jbeja 12y ago

Rolling my eyes the whole post. Is overly dramatic for something so mundane, and to be honest i don't even believe it. “you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”. Who say stupid thing like this on this day of age or even get dramatic when someone say that to you?. Please give yourself some pride, you are better than this.

Pxtl 12y ago

It's sad that being generally decent to women is remarkable enough to be newsworthy, but it's important to highlight successes instead of failures if for no better reason than to remind the world that geek misogyny is far from universal or universally tolerated.

song 12y ago

Right now hiring women is a competitive advantage. If you're not an asshole and make sure that the work environment is sane, you get an employee who is grateful for the opportunity to do her job in a nice environment and who is more likely to advertise her job...

austinhutch 12y ago

I wonder how significant the importance of the long-time/early female employee was in shaping a welcoming culture. It is easy for a group of extremely like minded and homogenous (male) group to start a company and grow to a decent size before any diversity is introduced. It might prove to be a powerful strategy to consciously introduce diversity before most would start thinking about "company culture". (Obviously I don't mean this as something only white male founders should worry about, I think it could be powerful for all young companies)

xamebax 12y ago

It's very nice to read some women have positive experiences and that some companies are able to create a discrimination-free culture. I'm happy for Gosia and it gives me some hope for the future. What I am scared of is some people using what Gosia wrote as an argument to silence other women: "Look! Read! See? It's not bad! So shut up".

skakri 12y ago

Blogspam. Please visit original page – http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female-programmer-walks-into-a-bar/ http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female...

dickface 12y ago

So a female programmer walks into a bar... and nothing of importance in relation to her gender happens. What a piece of crap article. Why is she obsessing about her gender when it clearly isn't affecting her in any way mentionable, let alone writing an article about it? Such a useless article. Doesn't surprise me a woman wrote it.