How often do women bring up their own gender in tech interviews? I've never done it, and I've never interviewed anyone, but I'm curious about whether it's ever explicitly mentioned (beyond a, "I'm in a women in tech group" or "I mentor young girls in my free time").

I don't want to start any debates. Just curious about what people on the Other Side of the Table see.

I’m curious as well. Im sure it’s often factor on if they get hired or not depending on what kind of views the employer has. Either “we could use diversity” or “I don’t want a woman on the team”.

📌

nope never. though im pretty sure I got my new internship because I'm female, the office manager won't stop mentioning it. also questions like "how do you handle being the only female in a team?" or "why did someone like you choose this type of work?" are very common.

I've never mentioned it, either.
Honestly, being female often feels like a detriment when finding work. Either they think women can't do as good a job, are too emotional, or that we'd throw off their manly jam (I guess).

I've only ever been hired when a) there was only one other dev, or b) there was already another girl on the team.

It just makes everything harder.

Anecdotally...
I've just hired a female python dev, it never came up in conversation.

Had some female applicants for a front end position too and also never came up in conversation

I'm the only female in the devs team and i always get comments based on my gender... i had to work twice harder because no one expecting a female to be able to code... and many times i hear things like : "you're too good for a girl", "aren't you tired of coding ... ", "don't be afraid to do this or that (while i'm only considering security or scalability or regression issues)" .... and you know we can't really blame them ... they're just few females in the tech world...and the media is not really helping

@aicha you totally can blame them. Just because there are less female devs, doesn't mean that they all are incompetent. Devs should try to follow logic, this doesn't have any.

btt: I sadly never had a female dev at an interview

@notcool agreed! That's how it should be

I think it's kinda funny that a post asking if women are using their gender to increase their chances of getting a job have comments from women telling that they are the only female in the team and getting job is harder for them than for men. Only @firecall has really answered the question!

I don't care about gender, only about personality.

We could start a sex war about this, but I won't, just because I don't believe in sex wars...
Woman and man are different and treated in different ways.

When I went to the army I was a big supporter of women in the Army (In Portugal it's only authorized around 15 years ago, we had our first female captain in the marines in this decade).
Only took me a week to realize that woman, in certain situations are not equal to man.

So, I divided the females (more than 50% in my course, back in 2006) in 3 parts.

1/3 were sluts, going for the easy life and trying to get an officer on top of them

1/3 were naive and turned sluts because of the influence of the first 1/3

Notice that I'm not talking military yet... because this are the ones who give a bad name to females, taking advantage of their sex to work less and get more, promotions, exceptions....

And then, you have the military.

The last 1/3...

True warriors, females that had to do double then man to get the same respect and be considered military, and not girls.

Now, the problem is the 2/3 who took advantage of their sex to get special treatment, promotions and easy jobs. Changed my perspective, and I now see it in every day life.

I actually think that girls are better devs / programmers (In general), but it will all depend of their personality.

Girls are usually more mature, deal better with multi-tasking and office pressure, but only takes one bad apple to break a team. A girl in a dev team is a plus... a team of dev girls is a nightmare.

Back to the army stories... Funny enough, the person who broke my platoon wasn't a female, but a male who would spread poison, lies and mistrust, something usually associated with girls.

So, to my point of view, If a girl brings her gender to a tech interview, usually they aren't trying to influence the interview, since girls are usually not seen as competent in tech. So, GirlDevPower

@Agred Less about "using gender to try to get a job" (although, I suppose that /anything/ said during an interview is about trying to get a job)

It would be pretty easy for someone to bring up gender during a the behavioral portion of an interview. Being asked to talk about "a time when you and a coworker disagreed and how did you handle it" or "what makes you different" or "why do you want to switch jobs" etc etc. While I don't have any gender related answers to these questions, I'm curious about if those who do, use those answers.

Yeah, was hoping for interviewers with large data sets, but singular data points from women work too :)

I've interviewed women, but have never heard it brought up or mentioned amongst my female colleagues. I do hear it from people NOT in tech bring it up to them, though. The response they get is usually along the line of "I know my shit, go away" and "I'm not a female engineer, I'm an engineer".

I can relate to the military stuff, too. There was one woman that abused the fact she was a woman officer on a warship, and some dudes had their career's in jeopardy because of her extremism. Obviously, she didn't have many people to go out with in foreign ports.

@aicha that’s wild that guys make those comments at work. I expected developers to be a bit more intellectual than that.

@Nilo-jxn Very happy I've never faced comments like that! Closest thing I can think of is a holiday party a couple years ago, when I met my team lead's girlfriend, who said she was so excited when she heard that a female dev was being hired, haha.

@notcool Idiots care. It's not how it should be, I agree, but we can't just deny that it happens.

@RodrigoF why is a team of dev girls a nightmare?

Out of the countless interviews I've done, I've only ever interviewed men. Women in tech are just too rare ☹

Usually lots of girls working together doesn't go well. Although some teams work great... I think it all depends on the personality.

@RodrigoF I can say the same about men. 😋

Yah @Root ... When it comes to brake a team only one person is needed, man or woman.
I actually perfer to work with woman. Because I work with lots of not that smart and very envious man, I must downgrade myself or else I'll be teased a lot... And it's stupid behing teased by people because they don't understand what I'm talking about (and I talk a lot, knowledge is my addiction and I like to share what I know).