7 ms·

On being a female on a male-dominated engineering team

50 points by timtyrrell 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
zdw 11y ago
While this is an interesting article, I have a minor quibble with the title - does the author really mean that her team is "predominantly male", which has a very different meaning than "male dominated"? One just expresses a ratio of genders, whereas the other implies a distinct control and power dynamic.
- Zikes 11y ago
  She does say that the two engineering managers are also male, so the current title would be correct.
- itsybitsycoder 11y ago
  "Male-dominated" is used all the time to refer to workplaces and industries that skew heavily male.
- roflc0ptic 11y ago
  Given that it was 100% male, calling it male dominated is also true by default. Male dominated also means "predominantly male", though, in common usage.
cbeach 11y ago
Bryana refers several times to a fear she has been chosen or favoured due to her gender, and because of the positive discrimination we have allowed to happen in our industry. Positive discrimination is not positive, because discrimination is never positive, no matter which group it favours. And here we see the consequences - a cohort of women who will suffer the paranoia of not knowing whether they were selected on merit. And a cohort of men who will have their misogynistic prejudices reinforced because the bar was visibly lowered for women.
- contactmatts 11y ago
  Exactly. When an entity (i.e. a company, tech conference, etc.) chooses someone for any reason outside of merit, it's discrimination, and marginalizes the hard work of others.
  - lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
    This logic falls appart almost immediately. A couple immediate counter examples: Two candidates for job, one objectively brilliant but an arrogant SoB the other more modestly skilled but jells with our culture. I hire the second, and the first can take is "hard work" and beat it. Two more candidates, one again is more technically qualified but the second grew up in a market Im targeting for expansion. Again, I take the second because the circumstances of his birth are worth more to me than difference in developed ability. Every choice made is a combination of hundreds of culminating value judgements and to pretend that we can create some objective score based on merit is intellectually dishonest; to pretend that we want to ignore the other factors is unhealthy.
    - onetimePete 11y ago
      Thank you for that reply. I always favoured meritocracy, but im currently running into this "outside" world, the challenges the outside world poses are fascinating. People are so complicated, it should be a science.
  - neogodless 11y ago
    This isn't a split second in time in a vacuum. There is a history and a future. The history is that males dominate the industry, and if we look further back, there is much more to the divide between the genders. The future hasn't been written, but if we want it to differ from the past, we have to make decisions that affect that. In order for young girls (whether we're talking about children or just engineers early in their career path) to feel confident, to relate and feel like a natural part of the industry, there has to be a change. There has to be more females at conferences. There has to be more female leadership. If you continue to look only at a point of time (a result of history) and say "right now there are more men qualified then women" for every decision, you prevent a future where women had the same comfort and opportunity to truly level the playing field.
new_corp_dev 11y ago
She says she was encouraged to apply and speak at conferences, and that management would campaign for the whole team to attend any conferences where she is accepted to speak. > This may seem like special treatment or in some ways unfair. "Reverse sexism" some might call it. I don't see it that way. This industry treats women differently, so my managers treat me differently in the exact opposite way the industry does. I would not call it "reverse sexism", because it is is just plain sexism. Of course the author doesn't "see it that way", despite acknowledging it, because the author directly benefits from said sexism. If the author is being encouraged to apply for and accepted to speak at conferences primarily based on their gender, then the industry's reaction will be to expect that women speakers are token speakers, and this will set back women in the industry. Embrace differences, embrace diversity, but in the long run special treatment does not benefit anybody.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  Agreed. How I wish that (at least for the remaining few conferences where you can submit a proposal without having to be a "silver sponsor"), submissions were "blind". No name submitted, you get a reference number back to confirm your submission. Focus on merit, not gender/name recognition/budget.
- jonahrd 11y ago
  What kind of manager treats every single employee the same, regardless of differences in talent, background, needs, etc? If a manager hires a person who needs a bit more structure in order to stay focused, that person should be given a little more structure. Or in this case, if a manager hires someone who has been pushed down her whole life and has learned to fade into the background so as not to upset men around her, the manager should most definitely spend some time helping her get accustomed to speaking her mind and advocating for herself. It's just good managing. This way, she'll be able to contribute much more to the team that she would if she was still worried about fitting in. And her knowledge can be spread to new female employees, which helps move the inequality further towards equality in the long run. I don't see how this "special treatment" is in any way detrimental.
  - 11y ago
trjordan 11y ago
Woah there, team. Lots of comments in here to the tune of "the support for her is sexism!" This blog post is about a specific person and her experience. She tells you up front that she was nervous about this. Her management encouraged her to go to conferences, _and that was exactly the right response to her personal nervousness_. There's a lot of cases where the broader social context becomes part of a person's emotional landscape. A good manager will recognize this (just like any other barrier to working effectively) and balance out doubts with encouragement. The trick is look for possible problems, and management that knows how to look for these problems and help with them is doing their job well.
xlm1717 11y ago
Turns out, it's just like being an engineer for everyone else.
davesims 11y ago
As someone who was directly involved with hiring & managing Bryana let me set one aspect of this conversation to rest: Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, without qualification. She commanded, and continues to command, respect from her peers for both her technical contributions on a very challenging tech stack, and product savvy in an extremely complex business domain. I was on her interview and there was no question of moving bars. It didn't even come up, because she was so very well-prepared. We just evaluated the performance and hired the best dev for the position, end of conversation. On the job she spoke with authority and confidence in standups and earned every single bit of responsibility she ever got. Mention her to anyone who's worked with Bryana and you'll get the "eye roll of respect." She's so talented there was a minor running joke with a couple of us that we should keep a countdown clock of "minutes till I work for Bryana." I only wish that early in my career I could have been half as well-rounded and with a fraction of the aptitude, product savvy and technical depth Bryana has.
- new_corp_dev 11y ago
  Nobody is questioning her ability or qualifications, only your decision to offer her opportunities and incentives based on her gender which her post implies were not also available to equally qualified male members of her team. If you want to put the conversation to rest, simply clarify that point.
  - davesims 11y ago
    > only your decision to offer her opportunities and incentives based on her gender which her post implies were not also available to equally qualified male members of her team. Her post only implied her own personal, subjective and utterly understandable anxieties on that point. My response was at pains to put both her questions and anyone else's to rest. She earned everything she got, and the comprehensive respect she received from her peers was without qualification. Never mind gender, she coded way beyond her years of experience. The main thing with managing Bryana was to get out of her way and let her do outstanding work, which she did. > If you want to put the conversation to rest, simply clarify that point. Was there something ambiguous to you in my statements here? * Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, _without qualification_. * ...she..._earned_ every single bit of responsibility she ever got. * We just evaluated the [interview] performance and hired the best dev for the position, _end of conversation_.
littletimmy 11y ago
About the "assertiveness" part - no, I think most women have it totally wrong on this. When you say that men are assertive and women are not, you are in fact talking about a subset of men - the extroverts - who are assertive. In reality, and in particular in the software world, you'll find a lot of introverted men who are much like you - they don't feel comfortable speaking up. It is just that they're not very visible because they aren't heard. In my opinion, assertiveness is more of a personality issue. And it is ridiculous that we expect everyone to be assertive - it does not improve your ability to code in any way.

50 points by timtyrrell 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

zdw 11y ago

While this is an interesting article, I have a minor quibble with the title - does the author really mean that her team is "predominantly male", which has a very different meaning than "male dominated"? One just expresses a ratio of genders, whereas the other implies a distinct control and power dynamic.

Zikes 11y ago
She does say that the two engineering managers are also male, so the current title would be correct.
itsybitsycoder 11y ago
"Male-dominated" is used all the time to refer to workplaces and industries that skew heavily male.
roflc0ptic 11y ago
Given that it was 100% male, calling it male dominated is also true by default. Male dominated also means "predominantly male", though, in common usage.

cbeach 11y ago

Bryana refers several times to a fear she has been chosen or favoured due to her gender, and because of the positive discrimination we have allowed to happen in our industry. Positive discrimination is not positive, because discrimination is never positive, no matter which group it favours. And here we see the consequences - a cohort of women who will suffer the paranoia of not knowing whether they were selected on merit. And a cohort of men who will have their misogynistic prejudices reinforced because the bar was visibly lowered for women.

contactmatts 11y ago
Exactly. When an entity (i.e. a company, tech conference, etc.) chooses someone for any reason outside of merit, it's discrimination, and marginalizes the hard work of others.
- lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
  This logic falls appart almost immediately. A couple immediate counter examples: Two candidates for job, one objectively brilliant but an arrogant SoB the other more modestly skilled but jells with our culture. I hire the second, and the first can take is "hard work" and beat it. Two more candidates, one again is more technically qualified but the second grew up in a market Im targeting for expansion. Again, I take the second because the circumstances of his birth are worth more to me than difference in developed ability. Every choice made is a combination of hundreds of culminating value judgements and to pretend that we can create some objective score based on merit is intellectually dishonest; to pretend that we want to ignore the other factors is unhealthy.
  - onetimePete 11y ago
    Thank you for that reply. I always favoured meritocracy, but im currently running into this "outside" world, the challenges the outside world poses are fascinating. People are so complicated, it should be a science.
- neogodless 11y ago
  This isn't a split second in time in a vacuum. There is a history and a future. The history is that males dominate the industry, and if we look further back, there is much more to the divide between the genders. The future hasn't been written, but if we want it to differ from the past, we have to make decisions that affect that. In order for young girls (whether we're talking about children or just engineers early in their career path) to feel confident, to relate and feel like a natural part of the industry, there has to be a change. There has to be more females at conferences. There has to be more female leadership. If you continue to look only at a point of time (a result of history) and say "right now there are more men qualified then women" for every decision, you prevent a future where women had the same comfort and opportunity to truly level the playing field.

new_corp_dev 11y ago

She says she was encouraged to apply and speak at conferences, and that management would campaign for the whole team to attend any conferences where she is accepted to speak. > This may seem like special treatment or in some ways unfair. "Reverse sexism" some might call it. I don't see it that way. This industry treats women differently, so my managers treat me differently in the exact opposite way the industry does. I would not call it "reverse sexism", because it is is just plain sexism. Of course the author doesn't "see it that way", despite acknowledging it, because the author directly benefits from said sexism. If the author is being encouraged to apply for and accepted to speak at conferences primarily based on their gender, then the industry's reaction will be to expect that women speakers are token speakers, and this will set back women in the industry. Embrace differences, embrace diversity, but in the long run special treatment does not benefit anybody.

jazzyk 11y ago
Agreed. How I wish that (at least for the remaining few conferences where you can submit a proposal without having to be a "silver sponsor"), submissions were "blind". No name submitted, you get a reference number back to confirm your submission. Focus on merit, not gender/name recognition/budget.
jonahrd 11y ago
What kind of manager treats every single employee the same, regardless of differences in talent, background, needs, etc? If a manager hires a person who needs a bit more structure in order to stay focused, that person should be given a little more structure. Or in this case, if a manager hires someone who has been pushed down her whole life and has learned to fade into the background so as not to upset men around her, the manager should most definitely spend some time helping her get accustomed to speaking her mind and advocating for herself. It's just good managing. This way, she'll be able to contribute much more to the team that she would if she was still worried about fitting in. And her knowledge can be spread to new female employees, which helps move the inequality further towards equality in the long run. I don't see how this "special treatment" is in any way detrimental.
- 11y ago

trjordan 11y ago

Woah there, team. Lots of comments in here to the tune of "the support for her is sexism!" This blog post is about a specific person and her experience. She tells you up front that she was nervous about this. Her management encouraged her to go to conferences, _and that was exactly the right response to her personal nervousness_. There's a lot of cases where the broader social context becomes part of a person's emotional landscape. A good manager will recognize this (just like any other barrier to working effectively) and balance out doubts with encouragement. The trick is look for possible problems, and management that knows how to look for these problems and help with them is doing their job well.

xlm1717 11y ago

Turns out, it's just like being an engineer for everyone else.

davesims 11y ago

As someone who was directly involved with hiring & managing Bryana let me set one aspect of this conversation to rest: Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, without qualification. She commanded, and continues to command, respect from her peers for both her technical contributions on a very challenging tech stack, and product savvy in an extremely complex business domain. I was on her interview and there was no question of moving bars. It didn't even come up, because she was so very well-prepared. We just evaluated the performance and hired the best dev for the position, end of conversation. On the job she spoke with authority and confidence in standups and earned every single bit of responsibility she ever got. Mention her to anyone who's worked with Bryana and you'll get the "eye roll of respect." She's so talented there was a minor running joke with a couple of us that we should keep a countdown clock of "minutes till I work for Bryana." I only wish that early in my career I could have been half as well-rounded and with a fraction of the aptitude, product savvy and technical depth Bryana has.

new_corp_dev 11y ago
Nobody is questioning her ability or qualifications, only your decision to offer her opportunities and incentives based on her gender which her post implies were not also available to equally qualified male members of her team. If you want to put the conversation to rest, simply clarify that point.
- davesims 11y ago
  > only your decision to offer her opportunities and incentives based on her gender which her post implies were not also available to equally qualified male members of her team. Her post only implied her own personal, subjective and utterly understandable anxieties on that point. My response was at pains to put both her questions and anyone else's to rest. She earned everything she got, and the comprehensive respect she received from her peers was without qualification. Never mind gender, she coded way beyond her years of experience. The main thing with managing Bryana was to get out of her way and let her do outstanding work, which she did. > If you want to put the conversation to rest, simply clarify that point. Was there something ambiguous to you in my statements here? * Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, _without qualification_. * ...she..._earned_ every single bit of responsibility she ever got. * We just evaluated the [interview] performance and hired the best dev for the position, _end of conversation_.

littletimmy 11y ago

About the "assertiveness" part - no, I think most women have it totally wrong on this. When you say that men are assertive and women are not, you are in fact talking about a subset of men - the extroverts - who are assertive. In reality, and in particular in the software world, you'll find a lot of introverted men who are much like you - they don't feel comfortable speaking up. It is just that they're not very visible because they aren't heard. In my opinion, assertiveness is more of a personality issue. And it is ridiculous that we expect everyone to be assertive - it does not improve your ability to code in any way.