<i>“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”.</i><p>I really don't understand guys who say (or think) shit like this. Honestly, it annoys me not so much because it's sexist, or misogynistic, or bigoted or whatever, but rather because it's <i>fucking stupid</i>.<p>I've been doing this stuff professional for around 20 years now, and I've worked with oodles of female programmers over the years, and I've <i>never</i> seen any reason to believe that female programmers are in any way less competent than their male counterparts. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.<p>It really boggles the imagination... where do these guys come up with this shit? Making crude jokes, sexually charged statements, some of these other things I can understand (that doesn't make them <i>right</i> mind you, I'm just saying I can understand the place some of it comes from), but I can't even begin to understand a mindset of insinuating that women are less capable as developers/hackers/programmers/whatever.<p>To anybody who believes that women are somehow inherently inferior at coding, let me just say that you're wrong. Absolutely, totally, completely wrong. Maybe you haven't worked with enough women, or maybe you had the bad fortune to work with the wrong women, or maybe you just weren't paying attention, but it's just not true.
Have you ever noticed that HN posts concerning gender discrimination tend to attract hundreds of comments?<p>That's not intrinsically bad. What's questionable is the quality of the comments. It seems that almost all the remarks on this page are drawn from opinion or personal anecdotes. Don't get me wrong... personal stories can be interesting and insightful; it's just that, in most discussion threads, HN tends to balance opinion with links to more objective qualitative and quantitative sources. That's what differentiates HN from sites like Facebook and Reddit.<p>So, there should be a barrier to participating in discussions about gender on HN. If you have personal or professional experience that qualifies you to discuss the topic, please share it. If you took the time to research the issue and present a substantial, new perspective, please share it. But if you want to chime in with a vague, unsubstantiated opinion that dozens of others have already shared, please consider using another forum. That's what makes these discussions less productive.
Misleading title, there is no bar in this story.<p>But seriously, I think this is a refreshing article, considering the usual gender in tech articles here. I'd like to think that there are plenty of places a woman can work as a professional developer and not be subject to such rampant discrimination and sexual harassment that most of us find it difficult to believe.<p>I recommend everybody believe and act as if there are plenty of awesome companies to work at. If you find yourself at a company that sucks, for whatever reason, kick their asses to the curb and find a new one.
Over 50% of this article is a job posting... I find it a little messed up to take a real issue and spin it as a hiring campaign. A footnote about the positive work environment at Netguru? Sure. But this is just plain advertising.
I'd like to acknowledge the courage of Gosia to put something like this online. (Original post: <a href="http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female-programmer-walks-into-a-bar/" rel="nofollow">http://ineedmorehobbies.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/so-a-female...</a> )<p>It frustrates and angers me knowing the article will almost certainly draw asinine comments and threats that are wholly inappropriate.<p>It takes a kind of bravery I'm not sure I have, and I can't tell if I do because it isn't required when I write.<p>The reasons it's needed aside, the signal of this blog that this is a safe place for women to work is important.<p>To the author, well done, and know that support is out there.
I've been a professional programmer since 1997. I've worked for defense contractors, consulting companies and medical software shops. I've NEVER had a problem with my gender in the workplace. I've always been treated the same as the other developers.<p>Now, I can't be certain that my resume hasn't been skipped in the pile because I'm a woman. But, it's been my experience that developers on a team just want somebody who can do the work and can appreciate the good work that they do.<p>With so many articles posted about discrimination and sexism, it's refreshing to see others share their experience as being just one of the gang.
This is a terrible PR article but we might actually need more of these.<p>That's basically how one changes social stigmas in a society/industry. Just make sure all cool places are doing the exact opposite of unwanted behaviour. If that's not possible, then everybody needs to fake it with PR stunts like this until everyone else believes that's the thing to do.
You know that comic, from back in the 90s?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_y...</a><p>Well, this is another point for the distributed, asynchronous programming championed by <a href="http://asyncmanifesto.org/" rel="nofollow">http://asyncmanifesto.org/</a><p>I would be happy to hire a woman programmer at our company provided she was awesome at the stuff we need -- Javascript, PHP, etc. In fact if someone here is reading this (man or woman) and thinks they would like to work with us on <a href="http://github.com/EGreg/Q" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/EGreg/Q</a>, I would be very happy to talk to you -- if you can figure out how to contact me from there.<p>In programming, the internet is the great equalizer. Have your work speak for itself, have your reviews speak for themselves, and this may be a faster vector for advancement than at a job.<p>PS: Recently I did reach out to one woman who I found on oDesk and she was busy with a project, but recommended someone else, a man. And now I'm talking to him, because she recommended well.<p>PPS: We do have a woman working in our company, doing sales. I really hire based simply on competence with the stuff we need and so far it's ben mostly men doing the programming.
Where was the substance to the post? The post she linked to was far more interesting:<p><a href="https://netguru.co/blog/posts/brace-no-more-going-from-java-to-ruby-on-rails" rel="nofollow">https://netguru.co/blog/posts/brace-no-more-going-from-java-...</a>
It's kinda sad that she has to call out Netguru as someplace safe for women. Honestly, I think it's just a bit of moral panic brought on by a few high profile stories. I've been in and out of a lot of organizations and never witnessed female colleagues being given a hard time. A few instances of creepy guy behavior, but I've also seen guys get bothered by creepy gay guy behavior. That's not unique to the programmer world at least.
<i>“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”</i><p>Seriously, what kind of a dick says that to anybody - even if it was nothing to do with gender, it's an egregious offence.
>Because we have a motto that says “you’re not your code” that all of us stick to and it works in many ways.<p>This struck a chord with me.<p>I work in the healthcare sector, so I deal with what is, for IT, an unusually high proportion of women. I've dealt with bad female developers, but I've also worked with absolutely great ones. Just like I've dealt with incompetent and solid male developers.<p>Maybe it's just my exposure and the fact that it's a normal thing for me, but gender just doesn't even register on my radar when I have to work with someone. All I care about is the ability to get the job done.<p>While I think the dearth of women in the tech sector is systematic on a deep enough level that it's very difficult to "solve" in any manner that won't take decades, I do find myself somewhat worried about the byproducts of tech's current insular nature. I feel that normalizing <i>dealing with people</i> -- diverse groups of people -- on a regular basis yields healthy benefits well beyond simply saying "we're inclusive!" It breeds openness to just plain working with people as people.
It's very nice to read some women have positive experiences and that some companies are able to create a discrimination-free culture. I'm happy for Gosia and it gives me some hope for the future.<p>What I am scared of is some people using what Gosia wrote as an argument to silence other women: "Look! Read! See? It's not bad! So shut up".
I wonder how significant the importance of the long-time/early female employee was in shaping a welcoming culture. It is easy for a group of extremely like minded and homogenous (male) group to start a company and grow to a decent size before any diversity is introduced. It might prove to be a powerful strategy to consciously introduce diversity before most would start thinking about "company culture". (Obviously I don't mean this as something only white male founders should worry about, I think it could be powerful for all young companies)
So a female programmer walks into a bar... and nothing of importance in relation to her gender happens. What a piece of crap article. Why is she obsessing about her gender when it clearly isn't affecting her in any way mentionable, let alone writing an article about it? Such a useless article. Doesn't surprise me a woman wrote it.
It's sad that being generally decent to women is remarkable enough to be newsworthy, but it's important to highlight successes instead of failures if for no better reason than to remind the world that geek misogyny is far from universal or universally tolerated.
Right now hiring women is a competitive advantage. If you're not an asshole and make sure that the work environment is sane, you get an employee who is grateful for the opportunity to do her job in a nice environment and who is more likely to advertise her job...
Rolling my eyes the whole post. Is overly dramatic for something so mundane, and to be honest i don't even believe it.<p>“you’re a chick, leave this crap to REAL developers”.<p>Who say stupid thing like this on this day of age or even get dramatic when someone say that to you?. Please give yourself some pride, you are better than this.
You might think this is fake, planned or otherwise staged - I get that, I would think the same. But you should see my anger when I saw what's going on with that tiny little excuse for a server, becouse nobody told me this is happening. They did not think they need to, since it's only felt natural and normal thing to do, reposting an article of one of our coworkers and going to HN with it. passenger_max_instances_per_app 4 my ass.