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Software Engineer Liz Bennett Talks About Being a Woman in a Nearly All Male Workplace (Video)
This conversation was generated by a post Eric S. Raymond published on his "Armed and Dangerous" blog that said, "...if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a 'women in tech' advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp." Eric later wrote a post about how Social Justice Warriors may be more of a problem than the problems they complain about.
Whoa! Predatory women in tech trying to entrap people like (and including) Linus Torvalds the way an old-time private eye got the goods on an errant husband as part of a divorce case? Scary! And worrying about thoughtcrime, too? Oh my! But Liz Bennett is an actual software engineer who works at Loggly in San Francisco. She writes for her company's blog when she's not writing Java code, has a (not very active) GitHub account, and plays bassoon. And her attitude is similar to the one espoused by ESR in the second post (above): write great code -- and if you do, they (for any value of they) have no right to be negative about you, period. And, she says, before you take a job you should be sure the company is a good "fit" for you and doesn't harbor people who will work to bring you down -- which is great advice for anyone, in any field of endeavor.
Whoa! Predatory women in tech trying to entrap people like (and including) Linus Torvalds the way an old-time private eye got the goods on an errant husband as part of a divorce case? Scary! And worrying about thoughtcrime, too? Oh my! But Liz Bennett is an actual software engineer who works at Loggly in San Francisco. She writes for her company's blog when she's not writing Java code, has a (not very active) GitHub account, and plays bassoon. And her attitude is similar to the one espoused by ESR in the second post (above): write great code -- and if you do, they (for any value of they) have no right to be negative about you, period. And, she says, before you take a job you should be sure the company is a good "fit" for you and doesn't harbor people who will work to bring you down -- which is great advice for anyone, in any field of endeavor.
What was the purpose of the first paragraph? And yes, I am very sorry and feel directly responsible for something Eric Raymond said.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Stop hazing us dice. We're just nerds. We're not bad people. We and our industries aren't hostile to women, or minorities, or transgenders, or disabled people.
Stop hazing us. We're not like those sour hipsters who work for/with your offices. We're just nerds. Stop injecting sex and politics and religion into our jobs and pastimes and pursuits. Many of us chose these fields in part to get away from that. Stop labeling programmers as "men", "women", "[RACE HERE]", etc, etc and telling us how we opressed everybody simply by existing. We have usernames and handles to escape our meatspace identities.
This has to stop. These stories have to stop. The politics and the propaganda has to stop.
Tech doesn't have a problem. The media has a problem with tech. This hazing has to stop.
I've met software engineers - as in they went through EE degrees and have the ring to prove it - so do tell, what "accountability" do they have over and above any regular software developer? Because I sure as heck have never seen it. I've never seen them sign off on a gold master with their engineer stamp or suffer any sort of additional accountability in the event of a massive software screwup they were responsible for.
Software engineering is a field in computer science with a focus on applying engineering principles to software development. It is well known that software does not yet have a methodical tool set similar to that of classic engineering disciplines, but it is called software engineering, so you will just have to get over it. Mind you, "proper" engineering didn't start out all rigorous and responsible either. Also, way off topic.
The term engineer predates your little bureaucracy by millennia. Get over it.
So in your mind the only people qualified to be Engineers are mechanical and structural engineers. Those railroad guys, well we have all been hood winked and they were never given that title. Social Engineers, those don't exist either.
In slightly different terms, you are a flippin idiot.
She is NOT an engineer. ... What she is, is a software developer. ... Fuck all these people who think otherwise and dilute the word
Those new-fangled train drivers aren't really engineers! Unless you roll your petard against the castle gates, you're just diluting the word!
Call it what you want, the best paying jobs with an "engineer" job title are software developers. That's sufficient recognition for me.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This conversation was generated by a post Eric S. Raymond published on his "Armed and Dangerous" blog that said, "...if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a 'women in tech' advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp."
Yeah, I think it's a fair fear.
Women are a subset of people, and a subset of people are malicious. There's a sexist idea out there that "women are never malicious," or "women are malicious far less than men," but if what my daughter tells me about the social antics of girls are true, then I suspect that the real situation is equality: There are just as many malicious women out there as there are malicious men out there.
It's not women, or "people" if you like, like the one interviewed that are a concern. No: They are treasures. Rather, it's the kind of woman who is actively looking to take offense and play drama queen -- who are at issue.
I think not being alone with women at a technical conference is a VERY good idea for any many. It's nothing against women; It IS recognizing that we are in a super-charged politicized climate right now. I think women should be very happy with this kind of rule as well: If something happens, there will be witnesses. Win-win for everybody.
Who wold have thought. Women in IT want to be treated like people. Not with some special care or preferential treatment, want to be judged on their professional merits rather than having privileges for being the "oppressed sex". They don't want to feel offended, and they don't want to be defended, but it seems they want to, ya know, do their effin' WORK.
Dear SJWs. It's really awesome what you want to do, but maybe, just maybe, try to find out first whether what you fight for actually WANTS you to fight for them? You remind me a lot of those "foreign aid" workers who "helped" those "poor, poor Africans" by sending food there until the local farmers had to shut down production because they couldn't compete with your free food anymore. they were not poor. You made them poor. And I fear the same development here.
There are good and hard working women in IT. No, they are not numerous, but they exist. And they are far from being marginalized. They are part of great teams and they are good at what they're doing. I had the fortune that I managed to work with some of them. They are not here because of their looks, they can easily pull their weight as anyone else. And you will notice that they are usually at the very least a little bit embarrassed by all the shit going down about this "women in IT" thing. Because it does harm their reputation.
A friend of mine recently complained about the problem. She has been in IT for about 15 years now, we worked together before and she is a very good programmer. With more and more women being signed up on no other merit than being a women, stereotypes are starting to grow. Because these women cannot code well. They would not have gotten that job were they men, simply because their skills are lacking. The main reason they were hired is (in HER words, please note that!) to be the "quota bitch".
And that casts a shadow on HER reputation. Because stereotypes are a powerful thing. Just ponder the following scenario and tell me honestly and truthfully what you would think:
The former situation was that the women:men ratio was maybe 1:10, maybe even only 1:20 in IT. Of course, all of these 20, 19 men one woman, would know their trade. That's because they were hired. Now, that "affirmative action" bull takes place and women are hired based more on the fact that they're women than their actual skill levels. You'll probably end up with a 1:1 ratio, even, but that would probably also mean that you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel because there simply are not as many women as there are men in IT.
So that means you have one "good" women and about 10 mediocre to bad programmers of the female gender.
Question for 100 points: What would you think of "the female coworkers"?
And do you really think that this would aid those women in IT that are really good in their job?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The very best thing you could have done with that particular posting of Eric's would have been to ignore it, and run the story about that nice woman without mentioning it. She can stand on her own and nobody but Eric should be held to account for what he said.
Bruce Perens.
because they think just because they are smart that they can code.
No. It's because the coding profession has no minimum competency and licensing requirements. Shitty code is; a subjective opinion and also not grounds for disciplinary action on the part of an independent licensing or certification body.
Have gnu, will travel.
That term is reserved for those who have accountability for what they create and in most of the civilized world have gone through a certification process.
What she is, is a software developer. Part of that process is design and testing, but that alone does not make her an engineer.
Fuck all these people who think otherwise and dilute the word because they want to have a way to place themselves from their peers, because they can't do it with their work.
Maybe she is a Software Engineer. There is such a job title, and you don't even have to go to Engineering school to get it. Your company gives it to you. Get over it. Engineer is not a term reserved only for certified people. Professional Engineer is. Use that instead if you want to feel good about yourself and feel the need to lord it over others who may have many more certifications from many other governing bodies that just don't happen to be the one you worship before.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Engineering is:
1) That branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures.
2) The action of working artfully to bring something about.
3) Work done by an engineer.
Those of us who do software work create structure; we (if we do hardware as well, create and) use and empower machines; we work artfully to bring the desired outcome about; we are therefore, in every sense of the word, doing engineering, and we are engineers. Many are artists as well, in the domain of the very same pursuits.
As far as a license goes, that's in no way a guarantee of competence (any more than a college degree is), nor is the presumptive ability to sue a worthy indirect guarantee. All you have to look at to understand that is take a look at the incredibly incompetent RF systems put in place at a very large number of radio stations by the system designers, and further, at the incredibly incompetent rules and regulations the engineers at the FCC have put in place both to specify the requirements, and to validate the results of said designs. Oh, and WRT RFI as well. (The idiots at the FCC decided that high speed networking over power lines (BPL) was a reasonable idea. In the realm of undertakings that clearly show government licensed engineers up as complete buffoons, that is surely in the running for number one.)
It is perfectly valid to say that professional software types aren't "licensed engineers." But that in no way is the same thing as saying that software engineers aren't engineers at all. Or that they aren't professionals. They are quite often both. And within that context, there are good ones, bad ones, terrific ones, utterly incompetent ones - but still engineers, doing engineering.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So, My father who has a degree in mechanical engineering, worked for TRW on steering systems, and had the title Senior Engineer was not an engineer, because he did not have a license? He was not required to have a license by his employer or the state. Before he worked on steering systems, he worked on presses for aluminum extrusion (read as involving extremely high pressures).
Both of these positions required him to design systems that if they failed would be vary dangerous and likely seriously injure or kill people. Yet you claim he was not an engineer.
I wonder if you would consider Gustave Eiffel, Henry Ford, Leonardo da Vinci, or James Watt engineers.
Some engineers are licensed in some jurisdictions because it is required by the law or by the employer. However, a license does not make the engineer.
She is NOT an engineer
Are you saying she is too hot to be an engineer?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
All that other stuff is okay - but playing the bassoon is simply unforgivable.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Women in software keep calling bullshit on that and people just keep repeating it. Funny how for people so obsessed with women they never seem to actually listen to any...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
This was actually my first Slashdot TV video. And it'll be my last. The interviewer's an absolute idiot. Kept asking the same question over and over again.
Thanks for four minutes of my life I'll never get back. And no, I had to stop at the four-minute mark.
... at a company that has some of the highest percentage of women in the industry, as well as the highest retention rate.
The key to both is ample benefits that allow for good life balance, and raising a family even if you are a single mom.
People here often complain about agism, and temporary work visas, not realizing that it all flows from the same source: The disregard for the "human resource" in tech.
Divide and conquer, turning the women in tech issue in yet another culture war, is exactly what the industry wants.
Rob. What an asshole. He's trying to hard to put her in a situation where she'll say something that supports the narrative he's hoping for. He should be fired. This wasn't so much an interview as it was an attempted ambush.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I feel you. My dad was a mechanical engineer and hates it when I say I'm a software engineer. He grumbles on and on about certifications I don't have and lives that aren't in peril because of the work I do. Software engineer has become a standard job title in the industry though, so you're fighting an up hill battle. =)
It was actually in Mount Vernon, a little more than an hour north of Seattle. The I-5 bridge that crosses the Skagit River collapsed because an oversized truck hit some support trusses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No they do not. This is complete bullshit. Code is code. It's either, good, or it isn't. If you stop running around like a chicken with your head cut off long enough to actually listen to women in tech, the vast majority do not actually encounter these imaginary issues you think are so rampant.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I can definitely go to jail for releasing buggy code. Human lives depend on it working correctly (or failing gracefully), and if someone dies because of an error I made, I'm definitely facing a sentence. Also, knowing how to code is a lesser part of my occupation. Understanding the problem the code is to solve, along with all the ways it can go wrong, coming up with the project and finally implementing it in software is what I do.
The difference between a software engineer and a developer is the same as between a structural engineer and a drafter. To an outsider it seems they do the same thing.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"keep calling bullshit on" is not the same as "repeatedly posting links to one source".
Also, the world is large, and there are a lot of experiences. Not everyone's is the same. Just because one person happens to have a very good experience, doesn't mean it's representative of the whole. Anyway, I don't know that author, so I go on experiences of what I've observed and what people I know have experienced and observed. And those tell me that the author had a rare experience.
But go ahead and cherry pick if it makes you feel better about yourself.
SJW n. One who posts facts.