<story><title>As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/as-a-woman-in-tech-i-realized-these-are-not-my-people</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Mz</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail.&lt;p&gt;At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I actually think some portion of this is strongly culturally determined. Women focus on the private stuff, and I don&amp;#x27;t think it is just because our brains are full of estrogen. I think a large share of this is culturally&amp;#x2F;experientially derived.&lt;p&gt;The guy who built the neural network? That may have been &lt;i&gt;his&lt;/i&gt; means to deal with a failed romance. He just didn&amp;#x27;t say that because his love life is not the business of his office mates. This is a distinction I think men are taught to make more than women: These people you work with? They aren&amp;#x27;t your friends, your BFF, or your soul mates. These are just people you WORK with and if you bond with them, you need to bond over the WORK.&lt;p&gt;At least, that&amp;#x27;s my current working hypothesis.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mcv</author><text>Also, just because one male engineer built a network in his weekend doesn&amp;#x27;t mean we all do. I spend my weekends doing stuff with my kids.&lt;p&gt;Well, not last week, when I went to SHA-2017, but there was a surprising number of children there. 10% someone claimed, which is way more than I&amp;#x27;d ever seen at previous hacker festivals. Clearly nerds and hackers are having love lives and kids these days. And although the majority was absolutely typical white male nerds like me, there were also a lot of women.&lt;p&gt;And that&amp;#x27;s the core issue, I think. It doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be a perfect 50&amp;#x2F;50 split, but women and minorities do have to be welcome. Explicitly so, if there&amp;#x27;s any history of sexism and prejudice. If women leave the industry because they don&amp;#x27;t like the content of the work itself, that&amp;#x27;s fine. But if they leave because they don&amp;#x27;t like their co-workers or the atmosphere, then you&amp;#x27;ve got a culture problem.</text></comment>
<story><title>As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/as-a-woman-in-tech-i-realized-these-are-not-my-people</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Mz</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail.&lt;p&gt;At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I actually think some portion of this is strongly culturally determined. Women focus on the private stuff, and I don&amp;#x27;t think it is just because our brains are full of estrogen. I think a large share of this is culturally&amp;#x2F;experientially derived.&lt;p&gt;The guy who built the neural network? That may have been &lt;i&gt;his&lt;/i&gt; means to deal with a failed romance. He just didn&amp;#x27;t say that because his love life is not the business of his office mates. This is a distinction I think men are taught to make more than women: These people you work with? They aren&amp;#x27;t your friends, your BFF, or your soul mates. These are just people you WORK with and if you bond with them, you need to bond over the WORK.&lt;p&gt;At least, that&amp;#x27;s my current working hypothesis.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>msla</author><text>As a man, I&amp;#x27;d never presume to talk too deeply with a coworker about their personal life.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a gross violation of the boundaries in every sense of the term.&lt;p&gt;Long way of saying I agree with you, I suppose.</text></comment>