The Syntax Chronicles: (Wo)Men in Tech?
Thoughts on the role of women in the tech industry and a small shitstorm against German anti-social digital policy
This article might have the potential to discourage you, but it’s not meant to. On the one hand, things can be very different for you, and on the other hand, it is up to us to change the world. It is also meant to encourage you to embrace your allies and to make a change.
When I ventured into the tech industry in 2020, I did so via the online courses of SheCodes.io. Officially, I also always say that this was my first contact with programming, but the truth is that this is not the truth. My first contact with programming had been about 10 years earlier via a free online course from the Hasso-Plattner-Institut, but even that was only for a very short time. But why?
A zero in the shark tank
I have to admit that around 2010, I was a real loser when it came to the practical use of computers etc. Although I had been fascinated by everything to do with tech since the 90s, I was totally proud when I managed to make a Power Point presentation, even though I had already created my first website with Beepworld in 1999. I couldn’t really google back then either, and in my environment you could find masses of educators and artists, but not one with minimal tech understanding. My family didn’t have the financial means for programming books and the like, and my English was an absolute disaster back then (I still wonder how it is that I speak fluent English now). Accordingly, most of the resources found on the internet back then fell away for me. I would honestly describe my 2010 self as a digital zero.
A little side information for those who don’t know so much about Germany and the internet: To this day I sometimes find shops and doctors etc. in Berlin that don’t have a website and sometimes can’t even be found on Google (no idea how they survive — probably old regulars). Around 2010, Germany finally started to noticeably discover the internet (at least I thought so), but even then it took a while. The discussions about whether and how to order from online shops are still as vivid in my memory as Angela Merkel’s “The internet is new territory for all of us” from 2013. However, this is just a subjective impression here, which was of course also influenced by my life circumstances at the time. Nevertheless, there are still an alarming number of families in Germany who do not have or cannot afford a computer (and/or a stable internet connection), but I only really became aware of this when the Corona Pandemic created the need for home schooling. Furthermore, although people in Germany now really urgently need the internet in order to look for work and continue their education, the costs of telephone and internet connection contracts are not covered by the job centre for recipients (the costs are supposed to be covered by the far too low standard rate) of Bürgergeld (long-term unemployment benefits). Considering that the amount of the Bürgergeld has already been judicially determined to be just about the subsistence level (Bürgergeld is merely Hartz IV with a new name and we are not considering inflation here) and that this also means that the children of Bürgergeld recipients may not have internet access as a result, one can imagine how critical this is for equal opportunities and the future of this country. On the other hand, a second-hand television and broadcasting fees are taken over by the job centre or one is exempted from the fees. To sum up: Although telephone and internet belong to the socio-cultural subsistence minimum in our time, in the worst case this is withheld from people who urgently need it to reintegrate into the labour market or to have any chance at all of social advancement and free education (or during the pandemic, school at all), but a device to amuse oneself is taken over — good to know where the priorities lie in Germany and why our digitisation of offices will not work, as not all citizens of this country will be able to use the digital services. If you have a choice between the internet and food, you choose food. It’s as simple as that.
Jump into the shark tank
I don’t remember how it happened, but in 2010 I enrolled in a free online course from the Hasso-Plattner-Institut. If I remember correctly, it was a course on Python programming, and I was really horrible at it. I didn’t understand anything, even though the course was in German, but what I haven’t forgotten was the harsh tone I was met with from the other (male) course participants (you could exchange information about the assignments on a platform), which is why I was so ashamed of my inability that I dropped out of the course and didn’t dare sign up for any other programming course for the next few years.
Today I know even better how bad I was then, which is why I can understand the frustration, but nevertheless I still think it is not appropriate.
Women in Tech
Women are a minority both in STEM studies and among developers. The effects of this are dramatic, as the McKinsey study published in January 2023 also proves. One way to change this is to create safe spaces for women.
IT Safe-Spaces for Women
I am not a fan of a gender-oriented separation. In general, I get along very well with men. But this experience I had back then with the Python course makes me realise that there is a need for safe spaces after all. In addition, I had an experience in 2022/2023 when I still had a YouTube channel. I discontinued that after being told far too often by men directly (not in the comments) that my voice aroused them and they (now I don’t know what I’m allowed to write on Medium, which is why I’m paraphrasing) wiggled their palms. At first I thought it was a joke, but after a while I realised it wasn’t and it made me extremely uncomfortable. That’s why no YouTube videos and certainly no podcast from me.
I would never have dived into programming again if I hadn’t come across SheCodes.io. SheCodes.io is, as the name implies, an online learning platform where only women can learn front-end programming. It was advertised in a way that it was okay if I was a tech noob and didn’t get stupid comments as a result. So I ventured into the code waters again.
So without this safe space, there wouldn’t be a single one of these articles here.
Other safe spaces include communities just for women, queer and non-binary people like Girl Code, Women In Tech and Flutteristas, but also special job fairs like the Grace Hopper Celebration.
The Threat to Solidarity
On the 11th of November, I will be giving a talk at the Flutteristas Conference. I was talking to a cis-male, heterosexual friend about it, and he really wanted to support me and see the talk too. When I said that Flutterista is only for women and non-binary people, I wasn’t sure if he would be able to attend. As a joke, he said he would just pretend to be non-binary, which I found absolutely not funny and made my alarm bells ring. What if other men were doing this not for fun but on purpose? Non-binary and queer people are part of my community for me, but what if this solidarity was abused? The conversation with my cis male buddy was about three weeks ago and today I read an article about the Grace Hopper Celebration disaster.
The nightmare that became reality
The Grace Hopper Celebration is both a conference and a job fair for women and non-binary people. And this year it was overrun by cis men, so much so that women seemed to have almost no chance to talk to companies. It seems that people lied when registering and simply stated “non-binary”. On the one hand, the organisers could not check this in advance, on the other hand they feared lawsuits for discrimination.
Why did the men do this?
One reason is certainly the tense situation in the labour market. The mass layoffs led to a glut of developers. Another reason, in my eyes, is something that should give us as a society pause for thought:
A blatant lack of ethics and morals and the transgression of a boundary.
What can be done about it? — As an organiser
Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is the responsibility of the organiser. But here a conversation with a queer friend comes to mind, which I had a few days after the conversation with my cis-male, heterosexual friend, who would also like to participate in the Flutterista Conference and I was not sure whether he is legitimised to do so according to the community’s definition. And that’s where the challenge comes for us as a community, but also for organisers: where do we draw the line? With sexuality? Or is it not rather a matter of personality? How should one check this and what is the legal situation in this case? That is incredibly difficult. One possibility might be a maximum percentage for non-cis female participants, but I honestly wouldn’t like that. The risk of innocent, non-binary and queer participants suffering would be too high for me. The same goes for a cis women only event. Why should whole sections of our community suffer because of a few — pardon the pun — assholes?
What can be done about it? — As a participating company
In my opinion, organisers can’t do much. It’s a different story for the companies. As a company representative at such an event, I would keep a blacklist and whoever ends up on it will never get a job in my company. If I found out that someone was abusing this safe space and solidarity, I would put him on a blacklist, because this behaviour indicates to me a personality that I would not want to have in my company under any circumstances. For those who say that companies can’t know whether a man is queer or not, I recommend a look at my article about the first day at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress this year. The way some of the companies and HR people are researching applicants legally and illegally, there’s a good chance they already can. So those who can virtually destroy their careers by abusing this solidarity and safe space, if enough companies keep blacklists, will think twice before they dare.
The question of will
My solution with the companies is all well and good, but would companies even do that? Quite clearly: no. They will give excuses like too much extra work and a lack of skilled workers.
A little additional information for companies: Keep in mind that according to the Toxic Workers study, a “toxic employee” can cost a company approximately $12,489, and that’s without taking into account any litigation, regulatory penalties and reduced employee morale, which of course reduces productivity and profits. A book that also addresses the issue is “The No Asshole Rule” by Robert I. Sutton, which states that while “assholes” can provide a short-term benefit to companies, the long-term TCA (Total Cost of Assholes) is too high to make it worthwhile to hire an asshole.
But the fact is, if we don’t get more women into the tech industry, this skills shortage will remain and we will only get and keep women in the tech industry if safe spaces are maintained, because no matter how much we hope and try, the fact is that we live in a patriarchal, reactionary society that is increasingly abolishing women’s long and hard-won rights.
Lip service
All too often since 2020, I have experienced that the big announcements by companies that they want to become more female were nothing more than outright lies. This went from an IT specialist apprenticeship at a large insurance company, where I was told that I was better in the application process than the male applicants, but the teacher in charge said that he would rather have a man, even though it was stated in great detail that they would prefer to hire women, to job interviews where I was even told openly by the male developers that as a woman I belonged at most in design and under no circumstances in programming, and this even though it was officially stated in the job advertisement that they were looking for female developers.
For a long time I thought it was me or I was just unlucky, but the longer I looked for work as a developer, the more women I met who also tried to cross over as developers but gave up in the end. These women are very quiet because there are other women who make the transition and if these other women make it, then the fault can only be yours, right? Unfortunately, no. In my article “Why there is (actually) no shortage of skilled workers in Germany’s tech sector” I go into detail about this, but in this article here I would like to address a point that I avoided in the other article:
Misogyny or discrimination of women
It is, unfortunately, the case that misogyny is still common. It does not always manifest itself in beatings and insults, but often in discrimination and minor humiliations. The cause of this is absolutely beyond me because at the end of the day, all women want is the same opportunities and rights as men. I can understand a little that special support programmes and safe spaces attract the envy of these gentlemen because no one wants to be disadvantaged, but the fact is that these measures are necessary precisely because our society is not able to treat people equally. It doesn’t matter whether it’s because of gender, sexuality, possible physical characteristics or skin/hair colour. But since women in tech is the topic here, we focus on that.
It’s hard for me to write about the topic of misogyny in general, but even more so to write about misogyny in the tech industry. The topic is just so difficult to grasp. So I try to explain it with a few of my many anecdotes.
My very first tech job after my SheCodes.io courses was managing a transition from an old webshop to a new webshop. During my one day trial work, I had already made sure that the developer company that always put my employer off contacted him immediately, because I had discovered extreme quality deficiencies (I just say: clean code). Immediately, I enforced that these deficiencies were corrected and was hired accordingly right away. When I had my first day at work shortly afterwards, I was put into a meeting without warning or introduction. There I met not only the head of the development company, but also apparently the CTO of the company and the secretary. The secretary and I were not allowed to say anything, but only to take notes. The CTO said some things that I found strange, such as that the developer was not allowed to use divs (the look on the developer’s face was priceless). After the meeting, the “secretary” introduced herself. She was a UX/UI designer with several years of experience. The “CTO” was the boss’s best friend, SEO expert and had no idea about programming (which was obvious). I tried to explain to him what divs were and where the major problems with the programming of the shop seemed to be, but no chance. Both my colleague and I were told to shut up and just type in the product descriptions for the new online shop. This went on for the entire time of my employment. We were degraded to overqualified typists.
In addition, there are more or less open insults both in application processes and in employment relationships. In the application process, the most frequent insults occurred. For example, at one point there was an interview that was the last straw for me, so much so that by 2022 I was seriously considering giving up being a developer. It wasn’t the worst conversation, but it was… too much.
Background information on this interview: I had been to a job fair called Pitch Club. For this, I had to create a digital profile on their website where the participating companies could discover and contact me afterwards. During the fair, the companies pitched each other. Among them was a company that is a global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation. Since I was a small Flutter developer at the time, I didn’t even leave my CV with this company because I didn’t feel that a career changer like me would fit into such a company. Nevertheless, some time after the job fair I received an email (name of company and employee replaced with Y): “Hi Lea, glad you participated in the Pitch Club Berlin! We received your contact details from the organiser and would like to talk to you about career opportunities at Y. If you are also interested in Y, please send me your CV so that I can take further steps. Please also include the topics that are of interest to you. I look forward to hearing from you! Best regards, Y Best regards Y Senior IT Recruiting Consultant” I was honestly super surprised, but still sent my CV because I don’t let any opportunity go to waste. I was told that my CV must have been interesting somehow, which is why I was invited for an interview. At the interview, the senior project manager started by asking how someone like me could even think of applying to a company like Y. He said he didn’t understand how my CV could be so interesting. He didn’t understand how I could dare to waste his time like that. His tone was ‘friendly’ all the time, but his words were not. The company does not hire lateral hires. But, no, a few lateral hires had been made. The examples he listed were all men. For an hour he put me down. So that I didn’t lose my temper, I remained polite, because when everything is taken away from you, all you have left is professionalism and that you don’t lower yourself to that level in order to retain some self-respect. Apart from that, as a woman you are immediately considered aggressive or difficult if you react to such behaviour in the same way as a man would.
Are these isolated cases? Unfortunately, no. They are not the majority in my case, but they are not rare. On Twitter, I read many statements from women in IT who wrote about terrible experiences in their workplace. Just a few months ago, I read a tweet from a woman who held a leadership position in an IT company. She wrote that she was leaving the tech industry because she could no longer stand how much her male colleagues and superiors refused to diversify the company. Be it in terms of gender or just hiring non-white people for a change. I can’t find the tweet anymore, but it shocked me a lot. This is supported by articles I read in the course of my research for this article. Right up to the statement of a female developer who simply wanted to put aside the application of a lateral entrant of the same age and realised that she was about to discriminate against another woman without any basis in the application process.
One thought: people discriminating against other people because of gender, skin colour or even physical characteristics. I think that’s stupid. I think it would be more logical if assholes had to suffer the consequences of their bad behaviour and not everyone else. Otherwise we can do it like the Browser Ballett (sarcasm).
This leads me to a very unpleasant thing:
When women discriminate against women
It happens. Whether we want to admit it or not. Unfortunately, it happens. Why? No idea. I suspect it’s because of the socialisation of our society over the centuries (by the way, there’s an ingenious playlist by Arte on YouTube — though you’ll need English subtitles). Men are often considered more competent by women — even though we should know better. Even if a woman is just as good or even better than her male colleague. Some statements are only considered valid with the confirmation of a man. One would wish that this would have changed nowadays, but it hasn’t really. Be it a telephone representative who wants to speak to the husband because she doesn’t accept the tenant of a flat as a conversation partner and hangs up if there is no husband (actually happened to my mother in 2022) or a personnel manager or developer who doesn’t give lateral entrants a chance without checking their competence.
But we are already so far along in equality, aren’t we?
The good thing is that more and more women are nevertheless managing to gain a certain reputation, but the fact that a dance video of a female politician leads to our society still declaring this a headline proves that we are still miles away from finally being able to even dream of true equality and recognition.
This becomes even clearer when we look at AI. It is difficult to generate an image with MidJourney where a woman developer or supervisor of men. ChatGPT has improved since December 2022, but even there, it automatically assumes a man when you write that you are asking it to generate a cover letter for a developer position (I don’t recommend this, by the way — better always write your cover letter yourself).
Who is the enemy?
I asked the question provocatively on purpose. I can imagine that spontaneous answers would be: “The men!” “None!” “We already have equal rights!” “Yes, what more do you want?”
I think it’s our society as a whole. In many small points that add up. From structural points to socio-cultural points. The biggest problem, in my eyes, is structural. What exactly I mean by that can be read in “Why there is (actually) no shortage of skilled workers in Germany’s tech sector”. In a nutshell, you could say that the labour market makes itself so exclusive that a large part of the potential remains unused.
The good thing is that we have more and more women who are more clearly demanding their rights and want to get into the tech industry, but there are also more and more men who support us in this.
The man as an ally
Of course, there are still men who don’t understand that we women don’t want more rights, but only the same rights as men, but there are also very many men who support us. Men who are happy when there are more female colleagues and appreciate and recognise their competence. So I can say from my first developer job that my developer colleagues (all male) were really shocked when I quit. They liked me a lot and were always very supportive. Particularly the web development team. So it were men who would have wanted me most in companies as a female developer and it is also a man (Matthieu Delac) who founded SheCodes.io. Not to forget my buddy Francesco and the many great classmates and teachers in my further training who have encouraged me and made me realise how good I am, because of course my past experiences have bruised my ego, but the men in my further training(and of course the women too — but it’s mostly men who are involved with programming in further training, even though we have a really great teacher who always supports me too) help me heal. Without this cumulative force of kindness, it would have been really difficult.
A big thank you to everyone who has supported me on my path so far and still does. I am really grateful and happy that our paths have crossed.
So the problem is not men in general, but only a small group of — pardon — assholes and, if necessary, industry and politics who do not draw any consequences (if they really do not draw any consequences) from behaviour like at the Grace Hopper Celebration.
Women in Tech! Women in Tech?
Nevertheless, I ask myself whether we women are really wanted in the tech industry. There are simply too many Women in Tech image campaigns and too little real change. In my eyes, change can only come about when the economy seriously opens up to women career changers and flexible working conditions and men like those at the Grace Hopper Celebration are put in their place. If such behaviour continues to be tolerated by society and business and there are no consequences, then I don’t think we will be able to seriously reintegrate women into the tech industry. Because remember: programming was once women’s work. So it’s not about integrating women into a new industry, it’s about bringing them back into the tech industry.
What kind of society do we want to live in?
That is the real question that the course or success or failure of the Women in Tech movement will answer, and it is up to all of us to formulate the answer. This is a time of upheaval. Both in terms of AI with all its human-programmed biases, but also in terms of our human rights as women in IT and many other fields around the world.
What can we do?
Be loud. Welcoming our allies. And try not to give up. But unfortunately, even that has its limits. Woman must eat. And no matter what some overprivileged citizens of Germany claim, Bürgergeld (unemployment benefit for the long-term unemployed) is not enough to lead a healthy life. Starting with healthy food and ending with proper medical care, which is absolutely no longer provided by health insurance funds. There are limits to how long a woman can look for work. At some point, she will be forced to look for other work. As a receptionist. As a saleswoman. As a secretary. And is thus socially degraded again.
What I wish for
I wish that something like what happened at the Grace Hopper Celebration would not happen again but that non-binary and queer community members would not have to suffer. I wish that this particular kind of cis men would finally respect certain boundaries and stop being afraid of women, non-binary and queer people. I wish for honest efforts on the part of business and politics to make the tech industry more diverse. Not just for women, but for all people. Our world is colourful and diverse and holds so much potential that it is weathering and withering away when we so desperately need it.
We could do so much more as a society. Let us achieve it.
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