Ok, something about this story seems a bit amiss. Gayle Laakmann is complaining about people thinking she is a recruiter, supposedly because she's a woman.<p>Hmm, I'm curious - who is this person? How does she portray herself? Are there any other possible reasons people might view her as someone working in the general HR space?<p><a href="http://www.gayle.com/consulting/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gayle.com/consulting/</a><p>I can't imagine why a consultant who helps with "Technical Interview/Recruiting Consulting" (as well as "Acquisition/Acqui-hire interview prep") would be perceived as a recruiter. Definitely due to gender.
There are many stereotypes that go along with being a programmer that are negative. There are stereotypes that go along with being a recruiter that are positive. While gender may have something to do with people thinking she is a recruiter it may not be the main factor. If you meet someone who is well spoken, well dressed, writes books on how to interview, knows how to talk about code, etc. might there be a greater chance that their job is something other than writing code every day?
Serious question, what is this representative of?<p>Random internet comments? Unscientific internet polls?<p>I honestly can't figure out a reason why any of this is any more relevant or scientific than a youtube comments argument about why some band does or does not suck monkey chode.
>"woman who wrote the #2 Computer Science book on Amazon, about coding and technical interview skills"<p>Computer Science has absolutely nothing to do with either coding or interviews, it's a subfield of mathematics.
Reading anecdotes like this makes me so disappointed in my gender. Why do some people marginalize other groups so eagerly?<p>I see so much "bro culture" in our field, and it feels inescapable. Every time I experience it, I literally cringe. I'm not even a party to being singled out; I can't imagine what it must be like to have this garbage <i>directed</i> at you.<p>The sad thing is, I used to be picked on and ostracized by these types of people. This was one of those things I assumed I was going to be getting away from back in high school by choosing computing. I thought "nerds" didn't do shit like this.<p>Apparently not.<p>I just want to wake up in the decade this is no longer an issue. That must be nice.
This probably should be a blog post with deeper research, but I swear it must be a human rite of passage to have the established groups treat some minority or "new" group poorly.<p>For example, it wasn't but 100 years ago in the USA that groups like Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese, etc. were looked down on as poor immigrants who were taking "real" American jobs. They eventually were accepted only to turn around and put down people who were Black, Latino, Women, etc.<p>Acceptance of African Americans and Women has improved a lot, and in some places Mexicans are more easily accepted than other places. However, there are still plenty of people that treat those groups poorly.<p>Eventually, all the current minorities, including women, will be accepted only to turn around and treat some other group like crap. Why? I assume it's because it's human nature and it's the cycle that seems to happen for things that are different. At some point we all get bullied and we all take turns bullying someone else.<p>It'd be nice to just skip over the ugliness, but that's not really how it works with people.<p>Also, let us not forget that getting treated poorly is not always a minority issue. Some people are just plain jerks and they treat everybody like crap. That's not an excuse, but no amount of positive change will get rid of jerks. They are in every industry and almost every company.
Referenced article mentions a case where some random critic on the net criticizes a CEO who writes books touching on recruitment issues from the candidate perspective, claiming they are a recruiter. Random critic essentially argues that CEO is not a programmer since they don't have code.<p>I think it's a legitimate practice in the field to look at whether someone develops actual code and if their code works in order to evaluate whether or not they are actually a programmer. This is because there are a lot of posers and incompetents in the field. Seeing actual code and/or projects the person has built cuts through a lot of Big Talk and claims.<p>In this particular case, the CEO has listed on her site several projects she developed herself to solve real world problems. This is solid evidence that she is in fact a programmer. Therefore, the random critic's claims are without merit.
To be fair, I looked at her website and she does kind of look like a recruiter. This is likely because being an attractive blonde female opens a lot of doors, and recruiting is a job where you need a lot of doors to open for you. It doesn't mean she's not a rockstar programmer (because once you look at her resume, she obviously is) but she does have a certain "look" that doesn't jive with the stereotype of a software developer. Fortunately, most of us learn early in our careers not to judge a book by its cover.<p>That said, the "asshole" in the article is a troll.
Is this sexism or is it just generalization? The vast majority of (white) women I've spoken to from tech companies are recruiters. And generalizations are very useful, in general. I doubt everyone thinks about how much coding knowledge a recruiter would have. At what point is it "sexist" (and, presumably, <i>bad</i>) to assume something given past experiences?
Its only silicon valley that you will see "C Level" people ranting and dropping Fbombs on a blog. Time and place. Neither seems appropriate to me...
Title should probably be changed from "We Don't Just Need More Women in Tech, We Need Fewer Assholes" to "A hilariously sad tale of gender bias."<p>(Not sure if I should put a spoiler alert or something.) The author of a popular series of books on preparing for technical interviews was upset that, after talking about code for an hour, people assume that she's a recruiter, rather than a programmer. I'll try not to make the mistake that the target of this post made by assuming too much about the content of that talk, but is it at all possible that the perspective of someone who writes books like that comes off as recruiterish?
I'm guessing his assertion that the person of interest is no programmer has more to do with Gayle's book being full of platitudes and errors than her sex.