the boyfriend’s response is:
“i find that article kind of frightening and a bit dissapointing. I think it’s in an important space and is an interesting slice of percieved-reality from a skilled/succesful female programmer.
I generally think that the situations that she describes as “bad for women” are not particularly “good for men.” I’ve been in “vocal-punch-to-the-face” environments and think they’re usually poorly focused. That said, i do think i could “handle” them pretty well because of reasons. I would argue that aside from some brutally high functioning programmers, people who communicate like this can’t dream of being in a position to lead others or be “more than just a programmer;” not that they’d want to.
The article is disappointing because Rebekah misses her chance to describe a better environment for female developers, and developers in general. You, female programmer, can benefit from these things but will have these drawbacks. That is all. I am a warrior women and you must be to.
A more constructive article might go like:
‘
Female programmers experience these crappy things but can also have these intrinsic advantadges. Software development (and high tech) would benefit if all of the orgs in the food chain (companies, colleges, open-source community, etc) would focus on ”training” women in some styles of communication of man-ogres while also training man-ogres in human-sensitive and organizational-sensitive interactions. This paper describes some of the short term and long term efforts that individuals and organizations could do to increase the efficacy of the community.
In conclusion, technology is super fun and super valuable and we should be super focused on making sure all the smart capable people join us, not just Xena Warrior Princess.
‘
or something. “
Rebekah Cox's frustrating HuffPo article on Women in Technology
