Accidentally in Code

Tag: women in computing

  • So, You Finally Have a Woman on Your Team?

    So, You Finally Have a Woman on Your Team?

    odd one out

    Some unsolicited thoughts (OK, advice) for managers who finally have a woman reporting to them.

    1. Meaningful Projects

    None of us got into the tech industry for the casual misogyny and the rampant sexual harassment, and we don’t go into work excited for the possibility of someone mistaking us for the help. Same as the dudes, we want to build cool stuff.

    Advice I give all the time, and tell myself repeatedly when I’m making a decision that means I can’t do something for the “collective good” – the best thing that any technical woman can do for the plight of technical women is be happy in, and awesome at her job.

    As a manager, the best thing you can do for women on your team is give them something that they will find meaningful, where they can show their awesomeness. This goes double if she’s just had a traumatic experience – remind her why she got into this industry in the first place.

    This is called sponsorship. I’ve noticed white men often struggle with this concept, but they often don’t have a word for it because it’s just something that happens for them. Make it happen for the women on your team, too.

    2. Accept the Possibility of Bias

    All the data shows that women (for the most part) are not treated equally. Take the time to admit that statistically, it’s unlikely that you are without bias. And given those statistics, the probability that everyone around you is without bias is a vanishing impossibility.

    Depressing? Yep. But this is the world we live in.

    I would never advocate giving women on your team more reason to worry, but as an internal consideration this can be helpful to have. If they’ve internalized enough statistics to worry, never deny that worry – the statistics show that it is entirely rational, and in this industry we pride ourselves on rationality, right?

    Things to look for: Ideas being repeated without credit. Judging women on past performance and men on “potential”. Code reviews can be a place for men to exert, or resent (perceived) dominance.

    Overall

    Here’s the thing – women don’t want to be treated differently. These suggestions are not about “special treatment”, they are about the internal work that we can do to ensure that women are, actually, treated equally. Or at least more equally – because truly equally is a long way off.

  • Advice for Future Engineers

    Credit: xkcd

    I can’t tell you how happy this xkcd made me. It’s a powerful statement on women in science (and engineering) but also contains this snippet of amazing advice.

    You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.

    Timely cartoon for me, because every week I do something to try and make a dent in the huge problem that is the lack of women in CS. Last week, actually, it was 4 things. The week before I gave up a piece of my weekend. It’s easy to get tired, and feel like I’m not making any kind of difference. Some advice I got not long ago – don’t let this burn you out on engineering. Don’t leave because you feel that you have to fix it, but you can’t.

    I thought I wouldn’t get discouraged, but the person who gave me this advice was completely right and soon enough after I had a bit of a crisis. Because I felt that I was slogging away at this and a couple of things happened that were upsetting personally but also, I thought, impeded what I was doing. I could have screamed in frustration at someone’s thoughtlessness. Like, I’m plugging away at this, week in, week out. And you just set me back, damnit. How many f*cking weeks did you just set me back?!

    My calendar beeped at me, and I went where it told me to go. And I met a girl, whose mind had been changed and was excited to be an engineer because of a program – the kind of thing that I spend so much time trying to support. It had made a difference.

    We talked about a few things, but in part her doubts about being an engineer.

    What if you build a bridge, and it collapses, and people die?

    I happened to be in Minnesota when the bridge collapsed. We were terrified that people that we knew had been hurt, and later we went to see the aftermath. It was chilling. In Canada, engineers wear the Iron Ring – a symbol of the responsibility of being an engineer. If you screw up, people die. Take it seriously.

    But you don’t design a bridge in a locked room, send it out into the world, have it built with no impact from other people. Don’t not be an engineer because at 16 or 17 you worry that you can’t be responsible for building a bridge all by yourself. (I would be more worried about the 17 year old that was confident he could build a bridge by himself, frankly).

    Be it a bridge, or some other scary project – you’ll never do it all by yourself.

    What if I’m not completely sure what I want to do in 10 years time?

    I think it’s insane to plan for 10 years from now. The world is changing so fast, how can we know what it will look like? What will excite us?

    I love my job, and I feel tremendously fortunate to get to do what I do. But, I know if I were 10 years older computer science would not be as appealing a career. 10 years ago the problems that were worked on were very different. The constraints of memory and performance more severe. The opportunities to make things pretty less abundant. I took the grounding from university, not all of which was interesting to me, and I get to turn it into a career I love where I work on things I’m passionate about.

    You won’t know all the options you’ll have 5, 10 years from now. So why decide before you have to?

    Just two pieces of advice for potential future engineers, with the standard disclaimer that YMMV. If you have more advice, please – leave it in the comments!