Great article. Now as in my case as woman programmer in the military, I usually broke the ice by telling the story of how I handled sexual harassment as a teenager. I beat the shit out of a co-worker who grabbed my crotch. It shocks teammates who are almost all guys. Especially when you are under 5 feet tall and petite.
Then you break the news that you earned a black belt in a martial art because in a previous job, your additional duty was couriering classified material overseas and you needed self-defense training. Never had any problems in the military. It’s too bad this is what it takes to avoid harassment or rape.
Nowadays, I work in a tech company and usually spend the days avoiding boredom in my cubicle. I’m bored with the overly complicated mess the guys have built and no one wants to work on it, including me. I try to discuss ways to simplify the code and configuration management, but the guys don’t want to change thing. I don’t have the energy or the will to push any changes.
So I work on ideas for my startup and code samples of code I use for learning new libraries. I will probably later incorporate the code into my software. I do this the same time I am working on the boring code.