”We aren’t talking about coffee.” by Novall Khan

We are exploring using The Hum more often as a platform to tell stories. Real, unfiltered, no-BS, personal accounts of what is it like to start a company. We have been searching for a contributor’s story our readers could connect with on a recurring basis, and we found our winner.

Novall Khan, 29, is a mobile engineer whose work includes some pretty cool apps you’ve probably used, but can’t be disclosed because of some pesky NDA’s. She most recently worked on the Splitwise app. If you haven’t heard of it, but have roommates with shared expenses or just want your money back, you should check it out. Novall is currently building a smarter, more connected dating app, Arrow, to launch in June.

All of this goes to say that she is far smarter than any of the three of us. We are honored to be working with her on this piece and moving forward as we follow her story in the weeks leading up to Arrow’s launch.

I am on a mission to bring a fresh perspective to the online dating space. I’m pouring my heart into Xcode, one line of Swift at a time, in hopes that I’ll be able to build a better dating experience for everyone. But before I share my entrepreneurial endeavors with you, I want to provide some context about my experiences as an engineer — specifically, as a female engineer.

First and foremost, I am an engineer at my core. I love to solve problems, and get totally, utterly immersed in them. But I’m also a woman, and with that comes some challenges I did not foresee at the onset of my career. Yes, there is a gender pay gap — a female programmer earns 72 cents for every dollar that a male programmer makes — and yes, there are stories swirling around Silicon Valley of the challenging environments women face in tech — but none of that really sinks in until you live out one of these experiences.

For me, one of the biggest challenges I encounter is my assumed lack of technical knowledge in social situations.

Recently, I was at a wedding, standing awkwardly around the hors d’oeuvres table. Not knowing many of the guests, I was excited to be able to connect with a group of people when I overheard some Java talk. I approached the group, eager to contribute, when a 20-something turned to me and said, “We’re not talking about coffee.” Everyone laughed, and all I could say was, “Well, I’m a programmer,” but that killed the conversation and the group disbanded.

I was crushed. The incident happened in an instant, yet the classic gender stereotyping left me incredibly disheartened. Sure, I was angered at the absurdity of the comment and the response from the rest of the group. More so, I was discouraged that there was nothing I could do to break down these gendered categorical boxes. To this person, I was a woman, and therefore couldn’t possibly understand technical talk, let alone be interested in it.

Shortly after the wedding, I was at a small social gathering and one man asked me what I do for work. When I told him I was an iOS developer, he said, “What do you mean, you’re a developer? That can mean a lot of things. What do you actually do?”

I’ve got to tell you, I am tired of having to defend what I do. My male colleagues are never doubted when they tell someone what they do for work. I am an experienced programmer who has given conference talks about Swift compilers and debugging tools in Xcode and am proud of the code I’ve written for apps used by people all over the world.

And yet, no matter how much work I put into crafting my programming skills, people will continue to subconsciously or overtly doubt me when they meet me.

I am fortunate that I’ve had a largely positive experience working with people who looked past my gender and cared about the quality of my code. I’ve had colleagues stand up for me in odd circumstances in which I was singled out, like one instance in which I was co-interviewing a candidate for a developer opening, and the candidate blatantly ignored my presence in the room.

The interview was an hour long, and the candidate chose not to acknowledge me or look in my direction when I asked him to elaborate on his programming experience. My colleague got up from his chair and moved next to me to try to curb the problem, though sadly, this had no impact.

I wish I could come up with some other reason for this incident — like maybe I had spinach in my teeth or forgot to wear deodorant — but I can’t find a way to sincerely give the benefit-of-the-doubt. I came to the conclusion that this person believed I didn’t belong in that room that day because I didn’t look like the rest of the engineers on my team, and that’s what really hurt — the outward expression that you don’t belong.

Being doubted and having to prove people wrong is one thing, but it really sucks when that extends to tangible code contributions. Take, for instance, a recent study of Github contributions, in which researchers found that women’s pull requests were accepted at a lower rate than men, at an average of 62.5%. Conceal their gender, and suddenly women outperform men at 71.8%.

This is shocking for a community built largely on open-sourced work, which relies on contributions from talented people. We’re evidently slowing our own technological progress because we’re denying contributions from women.

One question I get a lot from people is, “Why is it so important to have more women in tech?” Well, here’s a big reason. Study after study proves that more diverse companies perform better financially and are ultimately more successful. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians.

And in the startup world, First Round Capital found that female-founded startups outperformed their all-male led startup investments. Women also make up the largest single economic force in the world — $4.3 trillion of total U.S. consumer spending of $5.9 trillion.

Of course, this is not to say that only women can create great products for women, but we can certainly benefit from the different perspectives and understanding of the people who are of this key demographic.

This is important. It’s something I think about often, and a key driver for me as I work to find unique solutions to problems and offer a fresh perspective in the male-dominated world of software.

Building a dating app from the ground up as a woman is kind of like Debbie Sterling taking on Barbie dolls with Goldie Blox. Few have challenged products with one gender norm in mind, but when they do, something awesome is bound to emerge from it. I’m excited to build a brand-new dating experience, and can’t wait to share this journey with you. Stay tuned.