Thoughts On Rails Girls Summer Of Code.
I was terminated from Rails Girls Summer of Code (RGSoC), September 8, 2016. If someone had told me a few months ago that I’d be writing about why and how that termination occurred, I would have laughed in their face, as there’s no possible way this could happen.
For the uninitiated, Rails Girls is a global movement encouraging women to get into tech, with an emphasis on learning Ruby On Rails. Rails Girls involves thousands of women.
Part of Rails Girls is Rails Girls Summer of Code (RGSoC), which is about: “Getting more women into Open Source! With our award winning scholarship program we aim to foster diversity in Open Source since 2013. Selected teams receive a three-month scholarship to work on selected Open Source projects.”
I drank the RGSoC Koolaid. I believed them when they said that 90% of their graduates were employed. I believed that I’d be mentored, coached, and supervised on a consistent basis through an agreed upon project plan. I believed that when they said they had a code of conduct, and external enforcement of that code of conduct, that they would follow through.
I was very, very, wrong.
Here’s how and why I was terminated from RGSoC:
They operate on a 3 strikes and you’re out system. My 3 strikes:
Strike 1: A comment:
“This is an inappropriate and hurtful comment about your team mate and doesn’t have a place in RGSoC. We need people to treat each other with respect and compassion, and ask you to do the same.”
What I’ve said is not an inappropriate and hurtful comment about my team mate at all. It’s my comment that I’m having a tough time with pair programming, and that’s what I wanted to murder, in the same way that people have been known to comment that they could throw their laptop out the window, or flip tables in frustration. It’s a comment made in a small group within a slack community of Australian designers and developers.
This slack community has nothing whatsoever to do with RGSoC, where a screenshot was sent to RGSoC without my knowledge, and without contacting the moderators of that slack community. Before that screenshot was taken, the following comment was added:
Which completely twists what I’d said to mean that I wanted to murder my pair in RGSoC, which isn’t the case in any way, shape or form. Also interesting how what has happened is 5. “Deliberately misrepresenting your thoughts and feelings to the point of absurdity.” of the article “20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You”.
Strike 2: A tweet from my personal account:
“We saw comments on twitter that you posted about your coaching company that do not follow our expectations, including this one”:
“Coaching companies are the backbone of RGSoC, without them we couldn’t survive and we value the enthusiasm and dedicated work, time, energy and love they put in — especially the coaches at these companies.
We want everyone to be respectful of each other and each others’ work. That includes seeking a direct discussion with the people to bring up the points that bother you first and trying to resolve them. We also have a good support network of people who can help you figure out these tensions, so please make use of that, instead of publicly tweeting about a company that is involved and that we depend on a lot to host you for the summer and who have a right of being treated the best you can.”
It’s a shame that the person who did have an issue with the tweet hadn’t done what RGSoC had suggested and bought it up with me before I was terminated from the program. That way, everyone would know that the tweet had nothing to do with my coaching company whatsoever.
Three things in particular stand out:
1) I’d think that my coaches were old school.
This one has me baffled — if anything, I’m the old school one, meaning that I’m one of the oldest people at the startup, and I started in tech in the nineties. Plenty of folk in tech including those working at this startup were born in the nineties.
2) That my coaches/coaching company have a problem with Graphic User Interfaces (GUI).
Once again, I don’t understand this one at all. Coaching company is in the business of providing insight through data, and beautiful, functional user interfaces to their clients. Our coaches had no hesitation whatsoever in recommending alternatives to the command line. They’re also highly skilled in programs with great GUI such as text editor Sublime, to the point of creating commercial tutorials, which is why I was so thrilled to have those coaches in the first place.
3) I’m subtweeting my coaches/coaching company, because I’m obviously new to this twitter thing, and would do so.
There’s over eleven thousand tweets from my personal account. I’ve tweeted on behalf of Australian Progress, Rails Camp Australia, and Ruby Australia — providing assistance to others along with written guidelines on tweeting. When I send out a tweet, have a conversation, and copy a RGSoC coach into that conversation, I know that is not a subtweet, and I can’t believe that they think I’m quite that clueless.
Strike 3: My behaviour:
I’m so glad that Susan Fowler wrote about her experiences with Uber. It finally rammed home the issue with my experience with Rails Girls Summer Of Code. In the final termination email from RGSoC, they provide a litany of problems that they had with me:
“In the weeks following the first warning, we didn’t see a lot of improvement on your behaviour, but the contrary. Not accepting constructive criticism, repeatedly ignoring the help of people who want to help you, not following instructions, being condescending and intimidating to your team mate, mentor and supervisor, or putting blame on others is all problematic behaviour from you that has been reported to us after we sent you the first warning.”
Unfortunately, the termination email was the first time that I’d heard of any of these problems, and there was no specific evidence that I could see. How was I condescending and intimidating to my team mate? There was no feedback from anyone, including my team mate that I had been.
What was I doing during RGSoC was doing my utmost to make things work — for example with my teammate, by regularly going out for coffees with her and fostering a working relationship. By taking her to a surprise competition that she won, so she claimed the prize and we went out to dinner together. By filling out our applications to attend a conference together, which I initiated and we attended.
Susan Fowler’s account of her time at Uber rang alarm bells for me. In particular: “The HR rep began the meeting by asking me if I had noticed that *I* was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making, and that if I had ever considered that I might be the problem.” I’m obviously the (disposable) problem here too.
Of course I tried to fix/sort out this situation. It was incredibly difficult to do so, given that the RGSoC team had written “we don’t want to open a
discussion about it, this is just info for you” in their first email which I took to mean that both them and anyone else involved didn’t want to discuss the matter, and bringing it up would only cause more trouble. So, I contacted the RGSoC trust committee where “They will act as a mediator. The trust committee will leave your request anonymous (unless this is not an issue for you) and devote their time to fixing any issue you might have.”
They suggested that I stop tweeting. I made it clear to them that it didn’t matter how silent I was online — I already had 2 strikes against me in the first month which shouldn’t be there, so it wasn’t going to take much to assemble another one. I asked them to resolve the code of conduct violations by getting help from a founder of Travis, which is the birthplace company of RGsoC instead. They didn’t contact the founder.
I contacted the founder later, only to be told that it was too late, too complex, and they weren’t the right person, with no indication as to whom the right person would be. That was the crux of my problem. If you have an issue with RGSoC, there’s no one for you to contact who can follow through, despite their saying “We also have a good support network of people who can help you figure out these tensions, so please make use of that”. RGSoC’s support network is exactly that — people who support them, so if you have a issue with RGSoC, you’re on your own.
If you’re considering RGSoC, here’s what else you need to know:
Our team went through the recruitment process and filled out the Rails Girls Summer Of Code paperwork, then did the google hangouts interview. In the paperwork, RGSoC ask for you to name your pricing for the studying stipend, indicating that it is confidential. I had no shame in asking for top dollar due to living in a city with one of the world’s most expensive rents, travelling on a daily basis, and the stipend is meant to cover expenses.
Imagine my surprise when the stipend is brought up in conversation within the video chat with my pair, with RGSoC telling us that I’m asking for too high, my pair is asking for too low, and we instead should be asking for a different figure which is the same for both of us. What happened to confidential?
What I don’t agree with is RGSoC telling women recieving stipends that they’re asking for too much, when there’s the issue that women in tech are underpaid, and should be asking for and getting raises. Before Rails Girls Summer Of Code started, I offered to assist them with raising funds, and with my help, they secured funding they otherwise would not have, which made this whole interaction even more strange.
The Australian Council Of Social Service (ACOSS) addresses poverty as being 50% below median wage in Australia, which is AUS$426.30 per week. When RGSoC say they’re paying a living stipend, it would be appropriate that they do, in the same way that Outreachy does, who pays everyone a stipend of around AUS$594.00 a week. In terms of finding funding, there’s 2000 companies in Australia alone who need to show their efforts regarding diversity due to being listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.
When it comes to choosing anything (projects, mentors, coaches) — the key things to look for is expertise, time, and willingness to share those things. If you have a mentor who is looking to get something done in their project, yet that isn’t their area of expertise, or its work that’s been lingering for years (my key learning from RGSoC — a red flag in open source), then change possibly needs to happen. Do a project plan before you start, and make sure that everyone is clear on what needs to be done and what the requirements on them and you are. If anyone doesn’t have time to do a project plan — that’s your red flag. If they don’t have time now, what are their chances of having time for you at all?
Part of Rails Girls Summer Of Code is blogging about the work that you’re doing on a daily basis, so that your supervisor and/or anyone else involved in RGSoC can keep track of what you do. It’s not spelt out anywhere or by anyone what specifically is meant to be in those logs, and when I asked, was told “just keep a log of what you do”. My pair and I took it in turns to blog, and often copied and pasted blog entries from previous entries, as we were simply working on the same thing from day to day.
September 2, I receive an email from RGSoC, citing their concern that I hadn’t done enough work, and there was insufficient documentation in my log. My pair had not received an email, and checking with other students, no one else had either. I felt like I was being targeted, and to give some indication, here’s what my Github account looks like in comparison to others doing Rails Girls Summer Of Code:
Others:
Apparently others had been terminated for this very reason of not doing enough work, even though you’re receiving a scholarship to study. I feel for those terminated, and wonder what was going on for them. I find it hard to believe that they weren’t working hard enough, because it’s tough enough just to get into the program and fulfill their requirements — why waste the opportunity? Did those previously terminated have the same issues that I had?
Mediators need to be objective, independent third parties with prior experience of dealing with code of conduct issues. They need to be available and have time to deal with issues. My first mediator I contacted let me know that they weren’t available at all:
“While it looks like my information is still on the website and I wish I could help out more, I hadn’t been in touch directly with the RGSoC organizers this year and hadn’t budgeted for the time to work in this capacity. Unfortunately, I’m low on bandwidth this summer. I wish you the best of luck in resolving the issue.”
As of writing, they’re still up on the website as a contact. The second mediator was on holiday when I contacted them. I find out over skype that they’re a friend of the RGSoC team, my issue was their first, and they didn’t know what to do. I think it’s time for RGSoC to do better.
