Maybe it’s easier to accomplish this outside the Valley, but despite being a woman engineer I’ve never had to explicitly choose any of these positions.
Why not? Because I’ve always worked places where I was taken seriously and treated professionally. It is possible (and at least in NYC, not at all difficult) to find and choose workplaces and teams with high standards of workplace professionalism. Where people know better than to suggest team building in a sauna.
It also is a good idea to have an emergency fund that will allow you to say “fuck this” and walk out of any job where they lack that professionalism, but in 15-ish years I’ve yet to sign on to such an environment in the first place.
That such toxic environments seem to be so prevalent in SV is infuriating in part because it’s so clear that it doesn’t have to be that way.
It's really encouraging to see this comment. I wonder about this, not being a woman myself. In my workplace (east coast USA) there are plenty of women in technical roles, definitely a minority but still significant. I don't think it was done on purpose, it just happened as far as I can tell. And I would like to think their experiences haven't been like the author's, where it seems many coworkers are basically enemies to be overcome. But I've definitely seen a coworker or two do some stupid things. No, you are not respecting your female coworker by hitting on her and telling her how good she looks today (that guy got fired, but unfortunately for different reasons). There might be a lot more subtle things going on that I am not sensitive to, but I can't imagine porn actually being up in the office, that's just unprofessional even with all guys, and I would be asking those awkward questions about it myself (not that I am doubting that it happened to the author).
It was very difficult for me to adjust as a new engineer, including with code reviews and all that, and I wonder if I had an outsider identity how tempting it would be to blame my problems on that. Never being sure if the difficulty was because of prejudice or not. Probably one of the worst effects of discrimination, causing you to have suspicion and doubt all the time because it might really be warranted.
Anyway, a lot of these tips are just in general pretty good advice, even for a guy. And an environment that is friendly to women and that makes her advice unnecessary is better environment for everyone to work in.
Consider the possibility that these "toxic environments" are in fact not the norm, but the exception, especially in Silicon Valley in 2018. The person who wrote this blog post has never even worked in the US.
I think that a lot of people who have not directly experienced this sexism believe this, that it is the exception and not the norm.
Even as a guy, I have personally witnessed that it is the norm, and that most organizations that have managed to avoid being sexist by default are very special indeed.
There is some bias that makes people (men) want to believe that “it can’t possibly that bad, or if it is, it can’t possibly be that common”. Be aware of this bias.
Whether this is the norm for a large population of employers is a statistical question that you cannot "personally witness" even in principle. We desperately need a better way than anecdata to look at this.
I don't think it matters whether or not this is "the norm"; what matters, to the large extent, is whether or not these problems are common enough that people write these articles and that people uovote them. "The norm" isn't some magical threshold where if it's below a percentage of environments it doesn't matter - how much effort we should put into fixing these problems is more-or-less directly proportional to how bad they are as measured by how much complaining we see about them.
Almost all of these pieces of advice function for anyone, and those specifically about women can be translated for any trait "X" - minority group or even something-common-but-not-here. I've gotten typecast because I like videogames - Freaking everyone likes videogames.
> how bad they are as measured by how much complaining we see about them.
> common enough that ... people uovote them.
But you must have noticed that social media feeds on outrage? People amplify the extent of things they are shocked by, by sharing and upvoting. Looking at the amount of noise generated in media/social-media would be a very poor way of measuring the true extent of anything, but especially of something so politicized as harassment of women.
I've spent my career in Toronto, and while I've visited SV many times I didn't really realize how deep some of that stuff runs. The reaction to the Damore memo really brought out some of the worst of the worst.
Even if one person chooses not to work in the bad places, someone will end up working in them. So to say it’s possible to avoid isn’t super helpful- sure it’s possible for any given person, but what we care about is who does end up working there, not who doesn’t.
Of course this list is for the person who does end up working there. What saddens me is that those places exist at all and are so common that instead of just avoiding them, women are making lists about how to deal with them.
As a man, an example from this blog post that strikes me as a piece of advice that I won’t follow. Men need to hear from other men that this type of behavior is inappropriate.
Well yeah, I mean if people go by the looks then you might have an easier time if your tanned, muscular, beardy and loud. I got the impression that in Germany this is the case for startup(like) companies. Anyways, for me this is great advise. Too often I got into these stupid situations where people take credit for my work, in the most sneaky ways sometimes. Or that I get these demotion-promotions. I used to love going to work but after 10 years it's just depressing.
Yep, point for point, you should probably be following this as a dude as well. The one I think is somewhat unique to these types of lists is the enthusiasm one. It's easy to push off hostile people, but it can throw you when someone seems a little too interested in you. Stay on the defensive, odds are they want you to start doing something that's technically their responsibility.
There's a little wisdom in that point for "allies" as well: don't be an ally because you expect recognition or something else in return -- do it because that's what you believe.
14) Introduce Rules for Communication, like praise in public, criticize in private
This devolves very quickly into not being able to point at problems.
To be clear: I agree with talking about the problem and not the person. But,is it a good idea to push rules on others group before any consensus there is a problem? Especially as new person in an existing group? Especially as first women, comfirming the stereotype women care more about social than technical aspects.
This tip might be a reasonable idea to try in specific situations, but stated as is, I don't think can agree. Maybe it's just the wording, though.
As a man/person I still wholeheartedly agree here. Ultimately it comes down to recognizing exactly what your end goal is in choosing one route over another. At best someone will ignore public criticizing and start thinking of the criticizer as a jerk, a perfectionist, a "nagger", or just annoying. At worst they take it personally, start avoiding work that might lead to public shaming, and start fearing parts of their work day.
Engineering is stressful enough. No need to drive people away faster than necessary. Private criticizing can be delivered directly to offending person, especially if you're a team lead or manager, or it can be delivered to your manager. If it's significant enough to result in actionable items then the situation will be handled one way or another. Meanwhile if the person is capable of resolving the issue after your private criticizing they'll often respect your decision to keep things professional. Heck, sometimes there's an entire bag of worms under the surface like serious family problems they're going through outside of work at that same time that explains their behavior, something you almost certainly wouldn't find out with public criticizing.
I've seen some significant turn arounds from previous team members after some pointed private talks. Alternatively, I've seen people dig in their heals and become a problem team member after improperly timed public shamings.
This always seemed like one of the biggest tangible advantages of being a white dude. When someone criticizes me or shits on my idea, it never even crosses my mind that it might be because of my race or gender.
(Also a white dude.) I think that's not quite the experience, though? I think it's more that members of outgroups feel imposter syndrome more intensely. In other words, the critique is felt more heavily by the individual, not the individual as a member of a specific group.
It's purely a consequence of being in the majority. The exact same feedback can be given to you in an environment where you are a minority and there will be a good chance you will actually begin to factor it in.
I’m pretty sure this advice is aimed at coping emotionally with the unwarranted hostility and exclusion of a biased workplace; not about dismissing constructive criticism out of hand.
Much of this is very good advice for people working in tech. It's interesting that it arises from survival tips for women in tech (more on that in a moment).
"Document your work" is very, very important. And be very careful about how documenting your work can go sideways. For instance, I once wrote extensive documentation for a wiki. The documentation was moved during a reasonable re-org of the wiki, but the new "bye-line" was now the person who restructured the wiki. I don't think there was anything insidious going on there, but it can happen. Another thing is when a GitHub repository is moved, or a new team is involved. Sometimes it makes sense to just create a new repo from scratch, but when it happens, your name and history may be removed from your code. I think a lot of this may simply be due to the immaturity of our field (literally and figuratively). Even if it isn't sinister, in most publishing, it's a big deal to take a writer's name off a piece and replace it with whoever copy and pasted the piece to a new location. Unfortunately, this does happen with code and documentation quite often. It's also wise to document in multiple places - write up a blog post, do an in office presentation with slides, speak at a conference if you can. All this is very good advice.
It is inconceivable to me that an actual company event would take place at a strip club, and events that would require dressing in a bathing suite seem unlikely. A sauna? Woah. This is a thing? (NOTE: I'm kinda old for tech).
Well... I suppose river rafting is a possibility. I'm in my late 40s, and I spent my earlier years in large boring corps or universities. When a startup shows a large group photo of a group of 20 somethings on a weekend hiking trip, I get it, it means older people who coach their kid's baseball team on the weekend should probably look for a job elsewhere. I've yet to see a big picture of them all in the sauna, though. Yikes.
There's a lot of good general info here. But on to the interesting thing about women in tech I mentioned above. It's possible to see the problems afflicting women in tech as specifically afflicting women - that it's an bro-tastic place for men, but crappy for women. Another way to see it is that the problems women experience shine a particularly bright light on what is so horrible about this industry.
I think a big part of the problem is that there is a billion dollar industry around convincing young people that tech is a wonderful career and the only problem is that there's a shortage of people who realize how wonderful it is and want to become software developers in Silicon Valley. The reality is that there's something very rotten in tech. I certainly don't think it's a paradise for men, by a long shot, but I also don't have any real trouble believing that what's already unpleasant enough for the gander is particularly crap-tastic for the goose.
There's a credibility you gain with experience that tends not to be afforded is generously to women. You're right that documenting your work is critical for new devs too. A man with seniority can claim credit and not be doubted. A man without seniority, or a woman at many companies, doesn't have that luxury.
#1 is huge, I've seen way too many women try to be one of the guys and do things like tag along to awful events like lunch at the strip club or hooters because they want to seem 'fun'. Just a disaster of a strategy.
I mean if you're a woman who wants to go to hooters then by all means go to hooters, but be who you are not one of the guys.
#3 is not always true, I've worked at some companies where HR actually has power and is an ally of employees, but yeah in the majority of companies they are effectively rubber stamps for whatever the CEO says regardless of ethics or legality. In those organizations just know that HR is your enemy, not a resource.
Maybe it’s easier to accomplish this outside the Valley, but despite being a woman engineer I’ve never had to explicitly choose any of these positions.
Why not? Because I’ve always worked places where I was taken seriously and treated professionally. It is possible (and at least in NYC, not at all difficult) to find and choose workplaces and teams with high standards of workplace professionalism. Where people know better than to suggest team building in a sauna.
It also is a good idea to have an emergency fund that will allow you to say “fuck this” and walk out of any job where they lack that professionalism, but in 15-ish years I’ve yet to sign on to such an environment in the first place.
That such toxic environments seem to be so prevalent in SV is infuriating in part because it’s so clear that it doesn’t have to be that way.