7 ms·

The most alienating thing that happened to me as a female engineer

• marvel_boy 10y ago
  "If I had walked in, and baseball was showing on the television, it would be completely unthinkable for me to grab the remote and change it to Friends. If I had done that, the outcry would've been thundering. People would question my social skills." Good point. By the way, what a bunch of asholes!
  • emsy 10y ago
    I'm not sure whether you're serious or ironic. This is a social dynamic I've witnessed several times in my life, in male-only and mixed-gender groups. When someone acts against the groups collective will, he or she faces an "outcry". I don't condone this, but to call this out as a gender or diversity issue seems to be a bit of a stretch.
    • asQuirreL 10y ago
      I feel like it is a diversity issue, albeit not of the usual kind, and it is not exclusive to groups whose identity is strongly linked to gender. All groups will try and preserve their own identity, because if they don't, they stop existing. I'm merely making an observation here, not condoning the actions of groups. This kind of behaviour may seem harmless in some situations, but then also fuels some of the worst instances of discrimination humanity has seen.
      • elevenfist 10y ago
        This has nothing to do with identity, it's just common bullying. I imagine the thought process may be something like "We're the majority, we don't care, so we're not going to share the tv. "
        • emsy 10y ago
          From that perspective, democracy is bullying.
          • Tar90 10y ago
            The infamous tyranny of majority. That's why we have mechanisms in place in society to ensure fair representation.
          • elevenfist 10y ago
            ...You're overgeneralizing my comment. The solution to this small scale problem is to share, and be open to trying new things.
      • emsy 10y ago
        I see where you're coming from but I disagree with the argument, because it only holds up under the assumption that they acted this way mainly to preserve the group identity. The simpler explanation is that the group made a democratic choice and she was unhappy with thre result.
        • asQuirreL 10y ago
          You are right, it is just democracy at work, but I'm not sure that that is different from a group trying preserve its identity. The interesting thing is that most people assume that democracy is inclusive, because everybody has a voice, but in this case, the inclusive thing to do would have been to watch something that only one person wanted to watch, to make them as a minority, comfortable, whereas the democratic thing to do is to ignore the opinion of the minority as not relevant to the views of the group. Where the discussion becomes difficult, I guess, is when the dividing line between majority and minority coincides with that of privileged (PS. I hate what this word has come to mean) and unprivileged.
          • emsy 10y ago
            I agree with you on this. My point was that we should be charitable in our judgement of the group, especially if we lack other perspectives. Someone from the group might say she always wanted to get her will and alienated herself. We can't know. That's the problem with anecdotes. Regardless, a small group of people has more room for compromise than a democratic state, and as I said, I don't condone the way these kind of situations are usually handled.
• smegel 10y ago
  > If I had done that, the outcry would've been thundering. People would question my social skills. They would tell me that I lack social etiquette Sounds like she still is socially retarded. Has she never heard of group dynamic?
  • rhizome 10y ago
    It's been awhile since I've seen someone define "culture fit" in such stark terms.
  • aerovistae 10y ago
    And it sounds like you need to practice your delivery until you can participate in conversations like a civilized adult.
    • crimsonalucard 10y ago
      You're no different with that comment buddy.
• ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  You know it's bad when that creepy story about the car is just thrown in as an extra, with no fanfare whatsoever.
  • King-Aaron 10y ago
    I feel that this part of the story might not be exclusive to work situations for a lot of women. But that was particularly creepy sounding compared to the TV.
• berntb 10y ago
  How many people around there had expressed an interest in baseball and how many prefered Friends? If there is e.g. an 85+% majority for anything, the minority gets marginalized. As an expat, I can relate to being in a minority of one and hearing comments that are just taboo back home. (And personally, I wouldn't watch either.)
• King-Aaron 10y ago
  I really don't want to make this sound like I'm diminishing OP's experience, because from the sounds of that the experience sounded awful. However I've experienced pretty much identical treatment over a very similar thing (music) and I'm a male software dev. Wanting to listen to something quiet because the loud commercial radio/adverts that always run are pretty distracting. I can completely relate to her experience as I get similar comments. The all-male t-shirts, the work mentor being creepy, things like that are shocking to hear and ruffles my feathers as someone who was raised with very strong morals by my parents. However I tend to feel that bullying (on a more basic level) will happen to anyone if you give a group of people (in an stablished social clique) the chance. I'd like to say though (if the blog OP is on here), massive effort sticking with the industry and not letting it get the better of you, good job.
  • ap3 10y ago
    Do they play the radio soneveryone can hear? That is annoying and distracting - I used to do that myself at my previous work and never thought it was annoying and distracting until someone pointed it out to me.
• soft_dev_person 10y ago
  As a male who hates sports, I can relate. However, it has nothing to do with gender. The inappropriate touching in car event was more worrying, I think.
  • riffraff 10y ago
    I thought the same on first reading. But now I think the author felt the first more strongly because it made her feel "not even worth consideration" rather than "merely" objectified, which presumably is something she might have more familiarity/ability to cope with.
    • anc84 10y ago
      Still nothing to do with gender.
      • patall 10y ago
        That is not the point. She is complaining that they were 5 to 10 person watching a TV show, another guy comes in and wants to change the channel, not even considering asking the other people why they watched something different that day. Not about gender, not about sports, just shows total social incompetence.
        • anc84 10y ago
          It is the main point, see the title: The most alienating thing that ever happened to me, as a female engineer
      • riffraff 10y ago
        I was referring to the second sentence ("more worrying" bit). I don't really see the main event as especially gender-related either.
  • epicureanideal 10y ago
    "Touching me a lot in the process" was a bit ambiguous to me. It was a sports car, and I've ridden in a sports car with a male co-worker (and I'm male), and I had to reach around awkwardly to get the seatbelt in his small expensive sports car. I wouldn't help another man out with a buckle, and I'd feel really weird if one helped me with one, but if that "uh, I don't want to reach toward my male co-worker in a confined space" thing wasn't there, I could totally imagine at least reaching over and grabbing the buckle and handing it to the person, and they might happen to brush against me in the process. This is potentially a "male-male interaction weirdness" kind of gender treatment difference. If the guy grew up with younger siblings he might even be in the habit of doing this kind of thing without thinking. Again, that's where the ambiguity comes in. If, due to female anatomy, the back side of his arm happened to brush against her chest as he reached for a buckle in a confined space, that could be considered "touching her a lot", but is that the same as a grope? Also, let's say he did have some intent to have some physical contact. She doesn't explicitly say where he "touched her a lot". Was it on the leg while he was buckling her, on her shoulder as he was reaching for the buckle? Maybe he was in fact trying to initiate some limited physical contact, known outside the work world in some circles as "kino". "Kino" from someone you're not attracted to is seen as creepy, whereas from someone you are attracted to isn't, and let's be honest here, we don't all explicitly say "may I brush against you as I reach for this buckle" or "may I kiss you" etc. In a perfect world, unwanted touching wouldn't happen at all, but playing devil's advocate here... here's a guy with his female coworker (and work is where the most marriages happen outside of college, I've read) who agrees to take a ride in his sports car. Aside from explicit verbal discussion about it (which again doesn't happen 95% of the time when contact IS wanted) this guy had some reason to think she might be interested, and initiated some possibly very casual contact. Unless it was an outright grope, I don't know that I'd read so much negative intent into it. At some point people try to break the ice. For example, at various jobs I've had male coworkers touch my arms or shoulders while speaking to me. Some people think that this helps establish more psychological closeness, although I often don't appreciate it, but I understand the intent. Unless someone were to go out of their way to grope on me, I tend to brush it off and move on with my day. It's totally possible her experience was different than what I'm reading into it, but again, it was ambiguous enough that I can see other possible interpretations of that interaction.
• dimgl 10y ago
  This happens to both females and males. I've worked in toxic environments where normal things I do and like are ridiculed. I've had the COO of a company tell me that "my girlfriend sounds like my hand". I've also worked in environments where everyone respects each other and their differences. This may have been happening simply because you were working with toxic people who simply didn't like you, and less because you were a female.
• petecooper 10y ago
  From the article comments: >Somebody just shared this post on Hacker News. Based on past behavior from the majority of its users I think you can look forward to being called a "feminazi" and being doxxed. You will definitely have a new "most alienating experience in tech" in your near future. Nobody on Hacker News is sexist and they are very good at understanding the difficulties of people who ain't exactly like them. They will call you every name in the book just to prove that. Ouch.
• SmokyBorbon 10y ago
  Who the hell wants to work with someone who thinks baseball is offensive?
• mgraczyk 10y ago
  Wow, if that's the most alienating experience she has had, I am envious. As a male engineer who does not like sports, I've had far worse experiences involving outright ridicule when I asked to watch something besides a game. I didn't blog about it though, because I have real problems far more vexing than not having 100% compatibility with my coworkers.
  • fleitz 10y ago
    That's because we don't tolerate dissent in the ranks, you either conform, or you get tough enough to stop taking other people's shit. Like the downvotes I will take for this post, I'd rather speak my mind than have more 1 bits on some server somewhere.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • scrollaway 10y ago
      With 2649 days on HN, how do you not realize that the only reason someone would downvote your post is because you're pre-empting downvotes? That one addition to your post turned it into a passive-aggressive rant. Well done speaking your mind, I guess?
      • spacemanmatt 10y ago
        That's not true. People dv here for pretty petty reasons all the time.
        • Jommi 10y ago
          and how do you know that..?
    • golergka 10y ago
      I'm downvoting this comment for two reasons. First, while your sentiment about conforming is unfortunately close to the truth in a lot of cases, you present it in a very simplified way that doesn't represent a lot of nuances of team dynamic — and I hate it when complex things are oversimplified. Second, you predict getting downvotes — which is passive-aggressive behaviour that tends to create conflict in conversation out of nothing.
• fleitz 10y ago
  Want to know the most alienating thing that ever happened to me as a female engineer? Someone told me to suck their dick in front of the CEO. Suck it the fuck up buttercup.
  • King-Aaron 10y ago
    That's a very relaxed outcome... I agree however, sometimes you just need to suck it up and get on with things. Every day I get treated like dirt. I've been in the industry nearly two decades, and everywhere you go there's arseholes. You've just got to rise above it, take that paycheque home and just think 'fuck em all'.
  • yomly 10y ago
    That's pretty awful. Out of interest, what did the CEO do? Sounds like a pretty bold thing for the other employee to say in front of the CEO. What was the context? Could that employee have equally said something as vile to another man without repercussion?
    • fleitz 10y ago
      I'm a man, I changed my gender to see if it would stop the downvotes, it did. He looked at the other guy told him to apologize while I had my fist in the air. We moved on. Don't worry, you're free to change your opinion now that you know I'm a man. I mostly didn't care except for having to punch the guy out which was thankfully avoided by him retracting his statement.
      • patates 10y ago
        Why did you have to punch him? One could imagine why you would want to, but...
      • GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
        Why did you think it was ok to respond to that sort of thing with violence?
  • 10y ago
• riotdash 10y ago
  Another retarded feminist cunt who instead of actually talking to her colleagues and addressing the issues is just sitting there quiet building hate and insane rage inside her and trying to find problems where there are none. The fact that they didn't let you change the basketball to friends has nothing to do with you being a women but simply because majority of the office wanted to watch the basketball. It's amazing how some of these bitches in the industry think that everyone should worship them and do everything like they demand and if there is even the slightest thing wrong it's always discrimination, "being a woman in <insert any engineering industry here>" etc.
• Swizec 10y ago
  > If I had walked in, and baseball was showing on the television, it would be completely unthinkable for me to grab the remote and change it to Friends. Why? I wonder if she ever tried, or just assumed it was unthinkable. I suspect it was less unthinkable than she thinks it was. From the rest of the story, it sounds like not only was it thinkable for people to try to change the channel, it was expected even. Otherwise the joke wouldn't work. As people on imgur like to say: Do Thing. Maintain eye contact. Assert dominance. You have to establish boundaries. If people are doing shit you don't want them to, stop them. As a general rule, people will treat you the way you let them treat you. edit: I wonder how many people downvoting me are assuming I write this as a member of The In-Group. Okay I am a guy, but that's where the ingroupness stops for various reasons that would take a while to list.
  • fleitz 10y ago
    Exactly. Life doesn't just walk up to you and hand you opportunties because you grew up this way or that way, if you want to survive you fight. If you don't want to fight, get to the back of the line for resources.
  • patates 10y ago
    > Assert dominance IMO this is discrimination. You may get away with suggesting a specific role, maybe a negotiator, would need to have/develop this ability. As a very accepting and peaceful guy, I really feel bad (insecure, even) when people assert that I need to be dominant to be successful. BTW, I'm not trying to explain why you are being down-voted as I didn't, wouldn't (and also can't) down-vote you.
    • Swizec 10y ago
      It's tongue-in-cheek. You don't have to be dominant to be successful. But you can't be a pushover. If something bothers you, you have to speak up. Immediately and decisively. The first time it happens. Not when it becomes the established social norm. If you speak up, normal mature people will say something like "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize that bothered you. I'll be more careful.". They might push back, if they think you're pushing too far or too hard because of whatever pre-existing beliefs. But it's a dynamic balance. Both sides have to push and pull. Without active participation from everyone, teams become imbalanced and less effective.
• adwn 10y ago
  To summarize: Most of the team wants to watch progam A; watching program A during dinner is an established team ritual; author wants to change channel to program B, which is "met with incredulity and laughter". Some time later, program B is running; team members come in and want to change the channel to program A. And that latter event is the most alienating during her time at Microsoft. Wat. It gets better: Because program A is baseball, and program B is Friends, and since we all know that baseball is a man's program, and Friends is a woman's program, this is really about gender discrimination and sexism. > People would question my social skills. I really do.
  • Swizec 10y ago
    > baseball is a man's program, and Friends is a woman's program Yeah I don't get that part either. When I was a kid everyone watched Friends. We never realized it was supposed to be "for girls". Hell, the main cast is 3 men and 3 women. Doesn't get more neutral than that.
  • zasz 10y ago
    The implication is that the rest of the team felt comfortable enough in that environment that they could change the channel without even having to ask, while OP was loudly ridiculed for wanting to change the channel in a more polite way. The rest of the team felt comfortable with the team dynamic in a way that OP did not, and by ridiculing her, they made it clear that her desires were less important than theirs, thus proving that her sense of discomfort was justified. To put it as clearly and simply as possible, as if we were examining the results of a double-blind clinical trial: OP attempts to change the channel. OP is loudly ridiculed in an unpleasant way. Rando teammate changes the channel. Everyone thinks it's a really funny joke. What changed? Just the OP. It's pretty obvious the team doesn't like her the way it likes the rest of its members. Is this necessarily an example of sexism, like the seat-belt incident that OP also references? Not necessarily, but it's certainly quite alienating. Also, while I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that there is a hierarchy of things that are better and things that are worse, how impactful an event is, is ultimately subjective and often not under any conscious control. The time I was mugged in San Francisco honestly made much less of an impression than the time my coworker said he hated all of us and refused to go out for lunch.
• greenleafjacob 10y ago
  What does the TV story have to do with gender? I don't think gender adds anything. It would be no less rude if they were all die hard Firefly fans and watched re-runs every night, and author changed it to baseball. I won't defend the other anecdotes though.
• goldenkey 10y ago
  What else is to be expected when working with people who have next to no social skills in organizations that have next to no soul?
• sedlich 10y ago
  Why is it so difficult to have the empathy to say: ok every n'th day we switch to program B for her? Because too many mens clubs lack empathy and respect. It's that dead simple. (I am male).
  • elevenfist 10y ago
    nothing to do with "mens clubs," if you were a guy who didn't like baseball I wouldn't be surprised if these guys treated you the same way. Source: That was me.
    • sedlich 10y ago
      You might be right. But I argue that this is often highly more significant in nmen-1women then nmen-1men. Havn't there been studies here in hackernews or cited by Cherly Sandbergs book to prove this?!
• beemboy 10y ago
  Lots of males here providing shameful confirmation of the same thoughtless behavior the OP is calling out (finally after all these years). By focusing on specifics most commenters here seen to be missing the point that subtle marginalizing behaviors cause harm in unseen ways.
  • adwn 10y ago
    > Lots of males here providing shameful confirmation of the same thoughtless behavior the OP is calling out (finally after all these years). How do you know they are males? Do you think that the main anecdote in the linked article is about sexism, and if so, why?
• joe563323 10y ago
  Might be it hurt her genuinely.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• sklogic 10y ago
  Does it matter at all if she's a female? She is just a minority in terms of preferences. If a male wanted to watch, say, football while the rest of the crowd settled on a baseball, things would not have been any different. In the aircon control wars majority always wins, so why would it be different with a TV?
• x0 10y ago
  Christ there's some ugly comments down the bottom of this thread. I always thought Hacker News was a bit more professional than reddit, now it seems the only difference is the comments calling her a "feminist", "c--t", "retard" are downvoted below threshold here.
  • Kristine1975 10y ago
    That is a big difference though: It shows that these comments are not welcome on HN.
• nabla9 10y ago
  Imagine the same situation in UK, you are foreigner and everybody is watching cricket. Cultural alienation is not somebody's fault. It happens when you are minority in a group that has different culture. In these kind of situations basic politeness and hospitality would lessen the effect. The solution is not to watch Friends sometimes to distribute boredom more equally. People who have been born in monoculture are not usually aware of the work needed to have fun and inclusive social event. Outside the work those who are alienated leave. The "mandatory fun" in workplace may need work from the host to be inclusive.
• nicolas_t 10y ago
  Well, I'm male and I've been in the same exact situation multiple times. I do not like sports. I find watching sports on tv to be an absolute boring waste of time. Try suggesting in Europe, that you don't want to watch a soccer match and instead would like to watch Friends (which I like incidentally). It'll be met with ridicule. If there's something on the tv and soccer match is coming, you can be 100% sure that people will change it to the soccer game without even asking. I don't think that's a question of sexism, it's just a question of shared culture and the fact that most people cannot imagine that there are people that do not like soccer. For some people, someone not liking soccer is as shocking as someone declaring himself an atheist during the times of the inquisition. There are a lot of problems for women in tech but I think that in the case of sports, it's a behavior that touches equally men and women who do not like sports.
  • namaemuta 10y ago
    Specially now with the Eurocup. Try to get into a bar an propose to change the channel to something else.
• greybox 10y ago
  I think the way the community has reacted to this post is pretty disgusting and I think says way more than the actual post does about sexism in engineering
  • DanBC 10y ago
    Yes, these kinds of threads are almost always predictably terrible.
• marincounty 10y ago
  I think the main problem is the use of Friends as an example of alienation? To most Americans watching that show was like dripping hot wax into the ear canal. I understand reruns are popular in other countries. I kinda get it. No one on the show was hungry, and their biggest problem was whom to love. (That show was the first show, I recall, that treated Homelessness with an air of frivolity? I grew up in an era where you did not make fun of homelessness in any fashion. You never used it as a funny sitcom line. You just never joked about it. That America is Gone.) That's said, real harrasement/alienation is aweful. These examples do not fit my definition of alienation. As to the lack of female tees. Most guys are stupid when it comes to female sizes. Plus, if the buyer of the tee shirts bought anything snug fitting, or tailored towards a female physique; they might be accused of being a creep, perverted, or worse. Personally, I never liked wearing clothes I didn't buy. Wearin those stupid corporate advertisements always rubbed me the wrong way. I would usually slip them off when it was safe--kinda like my Scouts uniform.
• sandisk5 10y ago
  If they all arrived at the same time each night (dinner) then new entrants may simply think that the others just got there and simply haven't changed the channel to the normal channel yet, perhaps they didn't see the remote or were in a conversation when they entered, so by grabbing the remote and changing the channel to the normal program people aren't disrespecting the other people who really aren't watching the program but are simply laughing at the most recent entrants. Also some seat belts are non-obvious, especially in a fancy sports car, and people help other people with seat belts all the time. Perhaps the driver has given a lot of people rides in his fancy car and has seen many people struggle with it. Perhaps x seconds didn't seem long to her but to him, who knows how it works, it seemed like she was having a problem.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• namaemuta 10y ago
  So... has she even considered that her question was silly because everybody assumed that everybody can change the channel without asking it? like when an adult in a meeting of adults ask for permission to go to the toilet. That usually makes people laugh because it's a child thing. And about Mike, the one that changed the channel for the joke, has she thought that he was well known for doing that kind of jokes and because of it he was confident doing them and people didn't mind at all? Maybe OP got personal because of her own insecurities and didn't even bother to consider that her interpretation was wrong.
• zer0defex 10y ago
  How does she know gender actually had anything to do with the difficulties she was/is experiencing? Sounds like the author may be what the book "Leadership & Self-Deception" terms as "being in the box", which is to say her own behavior/attitude is doing way more to manifest these scenarios, much more than anything her co-workers probably have done. Something about this article just seems off... 90% of it complaining about not getting to watch a certain TV show at work (could she not go to her own desk and watch whatever struck her fancy?), while the much clearer example of sexual harassment in the car is tacked on the end as little more than an afterthought... Then again, she comes across as rather passive, so I wouldn't be surprised if she's also uncomfortable with confrontation, so maybe this is her way of passive aggressively sticking it to the person in the car story? Who knows.. My advice: find a female power executive to serve as a mentor / career coach for a few months. Ideally a real hard-ass that pulls no punches when it comes to getting shit done, knows her shit and gives zero fucks whether an employee is male, female, penguin, or alien provided the work is done right, done well, and delivered on-schedule and most importantly, has no qualms about laying down the wrath of god on any employees slacking off and/or delivering shit quality work. Seeing someone like that in action up-close and personal, while also benefiting from their input and guidance on her own situations encountered would I think pay huge dividends toward future career growth and happiness.
• crimsonalucard 10y ago
  She's just being treated as a bro. Dudes are just immature like that. The touching is different though but I won't address that. Anyway to give my explanation more color, let me tell you about one of my "bro" friends. We go to college together and we always make fun of each other for our differing tastes in TV shows. He likes pokemon, which I think is for little kids or adults with developmental problems while I like game of thrones, which he thinks is a show only liked by people who enjoy watching penises on television as the show periodically flashes one into your face for no reason. We make fun of each other about this all the time because we're bros, in manspeak this means we're just close friends. I've had worse pranks played on me by said bro. One day I left my computer unattended and unlocked. He took control of my computer, changed the background to a giant wet penis; Took a screenshot of the page; made that screenshot the background then proceeded to hide all the icons and menu bars on my desktop. The end result was essentially what appeared to be a frozen computer screen with the background replaced by a huge penis. I thought it was some crazy virus as even restarting my computer didn't work. I spent the next ten minutes trying to debug the situation all the while staring at a giant penis. Funniest thing ever, we both got a good laugh out of it. I mean this prank could be interpreted as inappropriate depending on the situation and person, but the point is neither me nor my friend would be willing to treat each other so "inappropriately" if we didn't feel close. So in short, both sides have made social errors. Their actions were immature and they failed take into regard your discomfort as a woman, while the OP misinterpreted their intentions as sexist. The resolution to this situation is easy. Ask him to stop... or join in on the fun. Openly declare their tastes in baseball as stupid and mindless. How could any sport be more boring? Everyone would've definitely got a good laugh if you were the one who pulled off that remote control prank. You must also keep in mind that you are still in a situation where majority rules and you must honor that situation as you're the only person who wants to watch friends, it would be disproportionately unfair if they catered to your tastes instead of the majority. Whatever the OP chooses to do I honestly believe that her coworkers actions were not intentionally discriminatory.
• nikki-9696 10y ago
  I'm a girl, and let me just say that if someone wanted to watch Friends, I'd laugh at them too. Have we considered that the show is just stupid and everyone there knew it except OP? Look, there's no accounting for taste, but if I watch something that no one else on my team watches, but they all watch something else, I would not consider that to be alienating. I also wouldn't make them change the channel. I would, however, make fun of baseball the entire time I was sitting there watching it, because I hate it, and all my co-workers will tell you how much I enjoy making fun of sports. They are never offended by this. They find it amusing. And we all get along just fine.