Social let's-help-female-programmers warriors piss me off.

The other day a massive email thread at work on how women are misrepresented in tech and how we need to help them and how using words such as "guys" is intimidating and generally patronising shit like "let's advertise jobs on websites like femaleprogrammers.com instead stackoverflow because there's too many white males on stackoverflow."

99% participants in this topic were guys.
One girl sent a message saying she doesn't want to be helped and she wants to know she has been picked for her skill and not filling in diversity numbers.

...would you believe she has been schooled on problems women in tech face by those lads too.

Like "woman, please... we speak diversity here"

So annoying....!!

I'm so glad I'm not the only one.

@fuck2code exactly. If you have a box with identical size and shape blocks with 1:10 ratio green:yellow and I ask you to pick 5 what's the chance it'll be 3 green and 2 yellow unless you look and pick?
Instead of bitching and schooling people social warriors should make sure they make a difference in their local community. Because you won't get more green blocks by shaking the box. You'll get it by changing the ratio in the first place.

I always thought this sounded more insulting than helpful.

@Root You're not. I try to ignore this shit because I usually get really pissed off and my blood pressure rise lol.

I tried to type a comment on my opinion like 4 different times but I always ended up sounding like a dick, so I just gave up.

@diffchar well, it does.. 😁 it's nearly like
"ah wow look at you you made it despite being a woman. Who would have thought you'll ever make it! Let's celebrate you!"
..what about leave me alone ^^

Yeah I agree. These things can be pretty annoying. 😑
I usually say that the effort of thinking about it is often useless. As long as other people do not intend to hurt me, there is no need to think about these stuff.

Totally agree. I read a post on Medium which said, "if you're a woman in tech, stop complaining about there not being women in tech, write about tech and you'll inspire others"

people just need to stop being so goddamn sensitive. it will be the downfall of Western culture.

I worked with a guy that used to make a BIG deal out of anyone saying the word “guys”.

We had 2 women working with us on our team of ~10 devs/designers.

One day he was going off on us for using the word “guys” while we were at a bar drinking as a team.

The 2 women were there and didn’t want to argue, they just wanted to have fun.

One of the women stops the guy and says...

“So your arguing that using the word ‘guys’ makes us uncomfortable. When the fact is that the only thing making us uncomfortable is your arguing about this stupid word. It’s just a word! I use it all the time! Relax dude.”

Then the other women said,

“I don’t use the word but it doesn’t offend me. I’m not a child”

This was a great display of the simple fact that women are not weak people who need our help (for the most part, of course we all need help sometimes), if they need help they will ask!

With all that said, just don’t be sexist or creepy toward women. Simple

@mjones44 people need to stop getting offended for other people too

I don't care if somebody is a male or female as long as he/she is is a valuable asset to the team (not just a leech).
But giving women stuff like this, that "special female only attention" is just doing more harm than good.
Imo, if they want to have equal opportunities, they should do it like everybody else, without special snowflake attention just because you're female.

feminazis don't really want equality, they want equity, which in some cases is a good thing (if you're handicapped for example), but in this case, only makes you look like a joke

@ausername true, that is the heart and soul of #SJW

That's America for you, future planning shoved right down the ass with the whole racism thing (not that it doesn't exist elsewhere just tad more here ) . It's like spanking a hot ass from behind and finding out it's a man , Now you really can't go back to a non gay relationship with that dude .

Very similar to the whole racism thing with just the right amount of blood and slavery added to taste.

@aerfromenes

As per reports, the % of women in tech is about 25%, that is 1 in four.

So, in any company's workforce sample, if the women % is more, it is artificially enhanced by reservations / providing preferences.

It indeed makes the work environment toxic as people who made it on the skills always have grudge against the other. Also, women, who made it on the skills are looked upon suspiciously.

I totally agree that companies, as per social responsibility, should work on increasing the overall % of women in tech industry rather than providing reservations / preferences.

Also, people worried about gender inequality should contribute as much to their local community / online to encourage more women in technology.

I don't entirely disagree with you but I kinda like my extra scholarships for being a woman in tech soooo. XD

@Condor (not OP but I got something to share on this)
I encountered this problem pretty often. Teachers as well as potential employers wouldn't believe what my skills are; happend more than once that i was denied to finish a school task at home because 'my partner would do it for me'. Yeah right. Because I'm totally not able to do it myself /s. My (male) classmates were allowed to do it at home.
My partner helps me but he never tells me a solution. He just points me in the right direction, because I want to learn it myself.
Pretty frustrating. But that's the past. Got an apprenticeship starting in August at a really nice company. (They told me they were impressed by my knowledge about Arduino. Was so nice to be appreciated.)

@NoMad i helped my partner with Arduino a few times. Was really funny. Could happen more often in the future as i'm going to specialise in software development and he's a sys admin (and pretty decent self taught programmer).

@USAce You totally should take every advantage. School is way too expensive... 😱

@fuck2code To these people, diversity is a one-way street.

I don’t want people to care about my gender. I’d like to be appreciated for what my coding skills are, and that’s it. If I’m not good enough to be hired, so be it. I’ll work harder.

It starts early at home.

Many parents still tell their 5 year old girl that they should not get the Lego kit, they should play with dolls... or at least get the pink Lego dollhouse.

You can artificially try to convince young women to get into tech when they're 15 or 20, but the bias is already present.

My girlfriend discovered she's brilliant at math when she was 25, after hearing from family and teachers: "Work on languages, that's really your talent. Low grade for math? Fine! Your mom wasn't great at it either"

I would love to see more women in tech, and I do believe that the office should be a welcoming fun place, so when a coworker makes a truly misogynous remark I start spreading peanut butter between their macbook butterfly keys.

But I think artificial quota or women empowerment initiatives are a terrible idea -- you create an atmosphere in which women cheered at just for their gender.

So buy your kids some soldering kits, regardless of their genitals.

@bittersweet This this this this this.

Treating people differently because of their gender is sexism no matter why you're doing it, and doing it "for equality" is like drinking more poison to cure your poisoning. It's backwards and bloody stupid.

Just treat people the same.
It's not that hard.

@Root

Yeah, I think there are two separate issues: Some men (and women) make a workplace toxic with prejudiced opinions and bigoted remarks. This should be brought to attention, corrected, even punished.

But skewed gender ratio is an effect which takes decades to change, and while HR can certainly make it worse, they can't completely fix it with a company hiring policy.

The best way forward is simple: Hire based on merits, create a relaxed but professional workplace, and fix skewed ratios close to the source by training parents and teachers to think about gender preconceptions.

@bittersweet yes. 😊