Maya Bohnhoff
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

I didn’t have the experience Clementine Pirlot writes about here, until the company I worked for was bought out by a larger corporation, I was essentially demoted, and found myself facing casual and systemic sexism. Nothing so overt as this, but significant because it had an impact on my advancement and earning potential in the company.

I should note that my entree into tech was quite different than Clementine’s. I was an office manager for about two weeks when the owner of our small startup saw how good I was at using software and articulating its use. In a month’s time he had promoted me to software developer, taught me how to code using a high-level C++ language he’d devised, and bumped my salary up by $5k. I was the only female on a very harmonious development team in which I was treated as an equal, and I ended up managing a team of developers in fairly short order. I never had to ask for a raise or toot my own horn; my boss knew what I was doing and was quick to reward me for it.

It wasn’t until he sold the company to a big staffing organization that things changed. Talk about culture shock. I was used to a manager who noticed my work and my development and who rewarded me for it without me having to beg. The culture changed to one in which, when I asked why I hadn’t gotten a promotion in X years though I was getting glowing reviews, I was told that the male members of the team needed it more because they were supporting families … as was I.

To be fair, when I femme-splained that I was the main breadwinner for my family and the role I was playing was not the one the owner had designed for me when he sold the company, my executive manager did try to get me the promotion I’d been denied. He didn’t succeed, but he did try.

New flash, boyz. The reasons women often fail to thrive in high tech has nothing to do with the tech. Like Clementine, I loved coding, problem-solving, debugging, all of it. LOVED it. And I was good at it.

Because I code like a girl.

    Maya Bohnhoff

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    I write, therefore, I am.