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The Moral Implications of Being a Moderately Successful Computer Scientist and a Woman

https://www.sigops.org/2024/the-moral-implications-of-being-a-moderately-successful-computer-scientist-and-a-woman/

I recently reached a few high points in my career that coincided, not coincidentally, with some of the worst harassment of my life. It made me reflect on how my career has been defined as much in terms of misogyny as technical excellence (I’ve garnered quite a CV in both), and how I have struggled t

33 comments

boogetyboo

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Used to work in digital design. By pure happenstance the foundational initial team on a major project was all women and we recognised that wasn't a good balance in terms of external perception but also in terms of getting different perspectives on design approaches.

We managed to recruit some great blokes, but they were hard to find. So many of the new dudes didn't work out because it was so obvious how inferior they perceived us women to be. Very few of them had the skills to warrant any level of arrogance, let alone full blown superiority complex.

It was disappointing.

Isoprenoid

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MostlyBlindGamer

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You’re absolutely right. The most likely scenario is that the person with first-hand knowledge misinterpreted the situation. These poor men and their sensitive feelings…

Irony aside, I’m sure it’s a complex situation with different relevant points to any perspective, but the events as told line up with my own experiences.

bradorsomething

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I would suspect it’s a humility issue. It’s a constant challenge, for me at least, to be vulnerable about my weaknesses and not be bull-rushed by other men seeing an opportunity to push me down. Fortunately I’m the boss now, so I can set an example that I can be wrong and trust others to say I’m right, or step back and admit a weakness that another can cover.

MostlyBlindGamer

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Right, making it look like you know what you’re doing is a great way to advance to the point where you cause real damage. I’m glad you don’t have to do that, and aren’t getting trampled by the people who do.

Isoprenoid

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The most likely scenario is that the person with first-hand knowledge misinterpreted the situation.

Exactly. Which is why I started with questions so you could explain more. That's how a conversation works and prevents it from getting toxic.

These poor men and their sensitive feelings…

Case and point.

MostlyBlindGamer

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Oh, uh. I’m wondering if I laid the irony down too thick. I think the comment you originally replied to is probably correct. I think your questions are typical escape hatches for men to be blameless in any situation. I can imagine you didn’t mean them that way, but that’s what’s usually meant by them.

jonne

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Having worked with designers in an ad agency (although not a designer myself), the male designers didn't ever have a good thing to say about the work of any of the female designers. Consequently, none of them stuck around for long (one of them is a creative director in a big agency now, so presumably she wasn't that bad).

Then again, they were assholes in many other respects as well, and the guys in the next companies I worked for were a lot better.

boogetyboo

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Uh yeah... Some did say things to that effect.

And there are other behaviours that can demonstrate that mindset.

But thank you for mansplaining my lived experience, champ. Couldn't have navigated that one with my pea sized, woman's brain.

I go through life making snap judgements of people I hire and don't at all try to find common ground or empathise with their position, because I love pissing money up the wall and endless recruitment processes. Just floats my boat, you know

Isoprenoid

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ravhall

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When I was hiring a developer to come on to my all white male team I was really hoping for a woman to apply. Sadly, that never happened. I was able to cut down on the whiteness though, and no I didn’t pick a lesser candidate because they weren’t white. It was just coincidence.

myfavouritename

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I found a technique that worked well for me. I want to share with you and others, but I don't want to come across as judging you in anyway. It's hard to find great candidates of any sort. And I wouldn't necessarily recommend my technique to every company, because it's just not reasonable in all cases.

I've found that the best way to get a good mix of people hired onto the team is to do more than hope that it happens.

I had to get out to workshops, conferences, and meetups. Local universities had groups that I got in touch with. I had to make connections with the communities that I was looking to hire from. It was a lot of hard work.

But once you've developed those connections, candidates roll in with surprising regularity for a long time. After two years I had a team of 10 great devs with a 50/50 split between genders and a huge range of background and cultures. It was the most fun team to work with and we made awesome stuff.

ravhall

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That’s awesome. I don’t have that patience. 😇

diskmaster23

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My conflict would be between giving up my free time after work to recruiting to have more fun at work, or deal with people that aren't as good. Am I reading that right?

baseless_discourse

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Shortly after publishing this article in her blog, she also published a gh repo collecting incidents of misogynism https://github.com/iyzhang/misogyny/ It would be great if people can give it a read or contribute incidents.

Glad to see this article is eventually published by the ACM.

Vilian

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Open source misogyny

MostlyBlindGamer

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I’ve witnessed many of the kinds of situations described here and I think the proposed mechanics adequately explain them.

flashgnash

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Man I wish there were more women in programming, I've met like 3 and one of them was the sole female classmate in cs

I'd finally have something I could talk passionately about without boring them out of their minds

jeena

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I feel it really depends on the country you work with. Back in Sweden it was such a sausage fest. But since I started working with people from Russia, Ukraine and especially China it changed significantly. OK top management is still full of dudes, but middle management and the people who do the implementation is a good mix. About 40℅ women even in positions of power. Korea seems to be somewhere in the middle.

onlinepersona

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falcunculus

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Even going as far as calling her husband an asshole (might be true, I'm not married to the dude).

You misunderstood the text, the sentence is :

If only I got a penny for every time someone said: you don’t look like a computer scientist, I could be Mackenzie Scott without having to marry an asshole.

She's calling Jeff Bezos an asshole, not her own husband.

onlinepersona

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Ah, yep. Indeed. Thanks for pointing that out.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Xero

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You have a lot of issues and you might want to look at why this triggered you so much. Are you behaving this way because it made you re-examine your own past behavior?

onlinepersona

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flying_sheep

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Wow you're insane. “I know, I'll discredit the woman who just pointed out that it's hard to get credit in her field as a woman ”

daqu

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PotentiallyApricots

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This was a great read. These dynamics are so prevalent.

Deceptichum

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As someone on the opposite end, it’s interesting how similar and different the discriminations we face are.

pineapplelover

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Where do you live that you find women computer scientists to be the dominant population?

Deceptichum

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I work in a 97% female industry.

Fatcat560

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I don't want to take away from the initial topic at hand but I'd genuinely be interested to hear what similarities and differences you encounter (as someone who once thought of working in a female dominated workplace but got reality checked quickly out of the idea by bad experiences)