• NZVC (unregistered)

    Now I know what year it was when social skills trumped technical expertise!

  • (author) in reply to NZVC

    I mean, technically, that's been "since human beings have worked in teams", which probably predates humanity, honestly. It doesn't matter if Thag is a Rockstar Spearthrower if you can't trust him to help surround the mammoth because you know it takes way more than one well placed spear, so everyone needs to get involved and coordinate. What we absolutely don't need, though, is Eegah trying to establish spear-throwing KPIs so that you can have a dashboard to provide visibility into your execution of your core competencies.

  • Token Developer (unregistered)

    I'd hope that in 2020 women in tech, while still a minority, are not treated differently or looked down on.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Token Developer

    Well that would have been nice. There's very definitely still different treatment and condescension towards women in tech. Not from everyone mind you, so I suppose it's still getting better.

  • MrLovable (unregistered) in reply to Token Developer

    I used to play a game with one of my female friends at work. She would make a suggestion, the senior dev and my boss would either ignore her or tell her what a silly idea that was ("That's the worst way to do x" was the senior dev's catchphrase), then a bit later I would say the same thing as her, often word for word, and would get heaped with praise. We played this game for months, and they were shocked when she told them she was leaving.

  • doubtingposter (unregistered) in reply to Token Developer

    It's still pretty bad. But at least the trend is moving towards companies desperately trying to hire women for IT positions but failing because there are none, instead of dismissing them as candidates.

  • Floutsch (unregistered)

    We had an interviewee who came 45 minutes late, then ranted for 15 minutes how all men are pigs, listed the ones of our clients (small town) she had had a crush on or the other way round and proudly proclaimed that she "programmed the website of Microsoft" - which gradually with lots of inquiry boiled down to: she copied translated text for a specific product line's handfull of pages from a file into their CMS. For me the kicker was that in said inquiry I asked what language she programmed Microsoft's website in - mind we're German - and she replied in a matter-of-factly condescending tone: "In English, of course, that's the language of computers!". Obviously we didn't hire her and my boss told me after the interview that he clearly saw in my expression that I'd very much have liked to slap her.

  • Floutsch (unregistered)

    And because my first comment was about a female applicant I'd like to make it fair and provide a shorter one about a male. Back then I was sent to open up a foreign development site and did the first interviews. Not for technical staff exclusively. There was one guy who told me how many connections he had, that he knew how to bribe (to be fair, it was a country were corruption was ripe), how to keep those bribes affordable and all that kind of stuff. I told him that we would prefer to stay on legal grounds and that was when he upped the ante (imagine he used less polite terms): He said if I'd greenlight him he'd introduce me to women who provide oral services for 5 USD and went the full way for 10. Threw him out.

  • Naomi (unregistered) in reply to Token Developer

    As long as you deviate from "the norm", you'll be treated differently. So, as long as being male is seen as the norm in software, anyone who isn't will be treated differently.

    To put it another way, we want to be seen as professionals, not curiosities. Everything else follows from there.

  • PJR (unregistered) in reply to Naomi

    In other words: It's better to be a curious professional than a professional curiosity.

  • (nodebb)

    So THAT GUY is the reason I need to take these stupid training classes on how to treat people like people every year?

    Thanks a lot, bucko -- really glad you didn't get the job!

  • Anonymous Beaver (unregistered)

    It is getting better, at my university, I'd say maybe 35% of the class is female at undergrad. I stayed on for a masters and surprisingly, the percentage increased to around 50%

  • suspend your disbelief (unregistered)

    This guy noticed, at a glance, that there are "different faces in the office"? Magic Memory Man (MMM), they should hire him.

  • COB (unregistered) in reply to Token Developer

    Just like any other developer, the good ones aren't.

  • MiserableOldGit (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter

    IMHO,

    Thag the spearthrower
    turns out to be far from a rockstar if anyone ever gets close enough for long enough to check out what he's actually doing. The obnoxious attitude to his colleagues is part of a self-defence mechanism.

    Dealt with a few Thag's in my time, they are usually a phenomenon of a broader toxic culture. Thag thinks (and often proclaims) he is only "saying what everyone else thinks". Of course he isn't, there aren't enough twats in the world, but there will be some in the management chain who share his insecurities, likely those saying things like "it's just his way, ignore him".

  • SG (unregistered)

    My own experience is that while women who code are rare, they also tend to be above average in ability... not necessarily superstars, but competent and reliable. My assumption is that those who don't have any real aptitude for it simply don't try to enter a male-dominated industry, so those that do tend to be worth hiring.

  • AM (unregistered)

    Solving the worlds' problems provides a convenient vacation. What a coincidence. Can't criticize cancer cures or unified physics. None of that exists. The inability to control anger and avoid political suction sets up future problems. Get good enough, all jobs are dangerous, not just fighting fires and waging wars. Billions of people in this world tear each other to pieces over a dollar a day.

    The last job interview I went on, someone sat behind a computer screen, and grilled me feature by feature while reading the manual. Everyone is an expert. Agreements push as far as possible with as much mindless burdening submissions one can get. A zero sum world of destruction only destroys. Hostility and malice only remains.

    I really don't see any difference anymore. And that's not a good thing. When I swat a mosquito, I don't think about diversity.

  • Betty (unregistered)

    I'm a female Systems Engineer working for a very small company. We have one main phone line. When someone calls in, all phones ring and whoever happens to be free at the time answers it. I have lost count of the number of times that people assume I am the "office lady" and ask to speak to a tech person or someone who can help with their laptop/PC/server/whatever.

    When I was in undergrad study, the percentage of women in my classes would be 2-3%.

    I worked in IT throughout my undergrad studies. In my first IT job out of university, I was hired on a pretty average salary. A guy with a similar skill set, but less experience than me, was hired about 1 year after I was....on $15K more and given a company vehicle. Things are slowly getting better, but we are still treated differently by some.

  • WAT (unregistered) in reply to AM

    WUT

  • claudia (unregistered) in reply to Token Developer

    I'm having a fine time, thanks. Working in a pretty progressive city for a smaller company has been great. Working on a military base for a DOD contractor... pretty awful, but at least I'm not there anymore!

  • Old timer (unregistered)

    "Not being treated differently" doesn't solve the problem, because "treating women as if they were men" doesn't solve the problem.

    I got to be in a position for a few years where I could observe groups of mostly young men, with 0 or 1 or 2 women. The women often didn't like it, and the complaints (about both staff and group members) could be summarized as "They don't treat us appropriately", but in detail came in two kinds: "They treat us like women" and "They don't treat us like women".

    When there is a gender imbalance in an unfamiliar environment, there are no models for appropriate behavior, and no models for appropriate responses. I don't have a solution, but I can tell you that just "treat everybody the same" doesn't work any better than "observe gender differences".

  • dontbethatguykevin (unregistered) in reply to NZVC

    Ah, the good old, baseless assumption that she was less skilled technically than the man, as opposed to just a better candidate among equals due to her social skills on top of her equally technical prowess.

  • (nodebb)

    This WTF is so classic one of the images still uses http://.

  • Your Mammas name (unregistered)

    Must be the best part of 20 years ago - someone was in for an interview, he was good on paper and had all the right qualities when we were talking to him. Then because it would have involved him relocating we asked if there was anything he wanted to know about (large west coast city heavily involved in IT) - he asked what the strip clubs were like.

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