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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.
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.
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.
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.
I think the idea is that there are two types of qualified women.
The first type is the one in your 1:20 ratio. She's competent and can tolerate the environment of a male dominated workplace. She's not the issue.
The second (theoretical) type is also skilled (or at least has the right inclinations and intelligence type), but she's uncomfortable with the male dominated workplace and so she either leaves the field early or never even gets into the field to begin with.
Some believe that the remedy for the second type of woman is seen to be a place where there are more women, period. This allows them to have friends and the ability to have a more balanced environment. The increase in women in general will make it more attractive to the skilled women as well.
Obviously, this is an assumption, but not a necessarily a terrible one. Many people only feel comfortable among people like them. Same goes for gender, skin color or ethnicity.
A lot of this comes down to what the actual value of a more equitable ratio actually is. What are the quantifiable benefits of this sort of parity or diversity? And are those benefits come at the expense of productivity or opportunity for those who are not selected purely on the basis of their gender? Does one benefit outweigh the other? If so, then the feelings and misconceptions of the other side should give way, at least to the extent that the greatest benefit can be achieved.
I think there is a lot of shooting from the hip on this. I'd like someone to tell me:
1) Does having more females in IT being a perceptible benefit to either IT, or themselves?
2) What methods are necessary to achieve those benefits?
3) In the end, do any benefits actually outweigh the costs?
Liz here. I knew what the interview was going to be about going in to it (even the part about ESR) so, for the record, I'm not annoyed. I was happy to talk to Roblimo about it.
Whilst I'm not sure anyone has been the victim of unfounded allegations by the "womens rights" lot in the IT industry, it has happened elsewhere in science - remember Professor Tim Hunt who spoke at a women's science conference, 3 sentences of his speech were tweeted by a SJW-type and next thing you know, he's out of a job (curing cancer no less) and widely criticised for being a misogynistic white male ba****d.
Turns out the truth is nothing like how its all been blown up to be, but that hasn't got him his job back. I think this is the real issue ESR is talking about, even if he's doing a poor job of highlighting it.