I studied computer science at the university, and with the overwhelming majority of classmates being male, acting like just "one of the guys" worke...
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I know it's intended for women, but this is also excellent career advice for anyone starting out or beginning a new position, regardless of gender or industry. Thank you for a great post.
So why would it be intended to women? I'm sorry but the link with the "women" is unjustified and to a certain personalized to the female gender.
I'm not dismissing a potential inequality but this article is when logic gets twisted.
We tend to write from the perspective of our own experiences. Some people make it known their writing is from their own experience, while others tend to be general with the perspective so it can have a wider audience.
You should watch the Black Hat presentation linked in the OP. It was eye opening and I think the data presented in the talk might help you realize why certain people in tech tend to focus on their identities moreso than others.
@jim you are just confirming my point. I didn't say that the points are wrong, it's just that they are for everyone and when the author considers them something special for women as the title suggest, then there is a different side to the story you mention.
I don't believe the author claimed these were experiences special to women. But being that OP is a woman, and in tech, it only makes sense that the advice given would be related to something she is familiar with.
If you had to write the same sort of post from your perspective, how do you think it would read? I would probably have written something along the lines of "What I wish I knew, as a veteran, before leaving the military". It would probably have a lot of advice that could be applied broadly to the general public, but the advice would be intended for the benefit of other veterans who may find themselves in similar situations.
I don't think OP was being exclusionary, I speculate she was following the general advice of "write what you know".
Anyhow, it doesn't matter. The title felt misleading to me, because I wanted to read something about but I read something for everyone that many know. Not a bad post, just a misleading title.
I would be interested though in a post that is really specific to the perspective of the female gender in the tech world. If there isn't, then there is nothing to specialize about and justify comments that we hear from left and right. I think there is though and I've seen this the most in India and I had discussed a bit about this with the most progressive of the men in the office.
+1 to this!
"Do what makes you excited and challenge yourself. Even in tech, eventually, you got to decide whether you want to go into management and give up being an engineer."
This statement is true and quite powerful 👍🏼
Thank you for your words! I am happy you liked it 🙂
Conformity is the death of creativity. Conformity is also boring. A lot of people don't understand nor accept it, but software development is a creative field. You need a team with diversity, and that's not just gender or ethnicity.
As you mention, checking the culture and make of the company/team is important. If everybody is the same it will be soulless job.
Overall, great advice for anybody (including hiring managers.)
In case it helps someone else, a shortcut I've found to getting a sense of company culture (because even as a white guy, I don't want to need to rely on sexists and racists) is to ask about how you'll be expected to interact with people in positions that are "coded" as feminine and non-white. You can justify it (if anybody asks you why you're asking) by pointing out that those "support roles" are important to company health and you want to get a sense of whether you can rely on them.
It's not perfect, but "stupid marketing people keep changing our deadlines even though they don't code, man!" or "the boss will insulate you from needing to interact with those people" are huge red flags that you'll hear regularly.
'Evaluate company culture before joining': the most of the times is very difficult, unfortunatelly.
I found myself in some companies perfect on the theory, but with very incompetent HR that laughed about my reports about rape jokes and promoted the, like I call, 'good sexism', that was: uplifting me, a female dev, and call me the 'quotas' by the ceo of the company or being forced to say that I am the first and only one female dev in the team in a video made for clients.
Of course, not every company is like this, but find them in 2020 still in very depressing
Loved it. Great advice. Thank you Ilona 🙏🙌👩💻👏
Thank you for writing this! I needed this today.
That's a really great article. I am strictly going to follow them. 😅
Thank you for a great post. 🤝👏