Experiences of a self-taught female coder- “Women can’t code?”

https://medium.com/@thesurbhioberoi/experiences-of-a-self-taught-female-coder-girls-can-t-code-30ae10e39b33#.ey8xcmtx3

by oberoi • 10 years ago

13 6 10 years ago

parennoob• 10 years ago

Being from India myself and having had partially similar experiences, there are two instances of bias in this story that perhaps need to be illustrated individually.

1. A strong bias against a candidate because of not having a computer science degree: This is liberally applied to both men and women, and is fairly common. It is even enforced by college policy during career fairs to some extent. For example, my college's application process did not allow civil engineering majors to apply to "computer" companies, even if the companies themselves might potentially have been interested. Similarly CS graduates were excluded from civil engineering companies. Since all job applications passed through the college's centralised system, it was impossible to bypass this requirement, short of personally trying to persuade one of the recruiters.

2. Chauvinism -- what the author experienced is the real and horrible chauvinism that is prevalent among the older (equivalent of Baby Boomers) generation in India. Actually, chauvinism is just one of a range of "we know best" attitude that seems to pervade this generation. Kudos to the author for keeping her cool in dealing with this cohort of assholes and winning out.

bArray2• 10 years ago

As already mentioned, most of the points aren't specifically against women. Another thing you'll be up against is the lack of commercial experience, being the reason students take placements to get their foot in the door.

But different from those points, what sorts of companies are you applying for? I've worked in and heard of tonnes of companies employing tonnes of women in London, it may be a prejudice specific to location you are experiencing?

Ellahn2• 10 years ago

She explains she is from India, and she also recognized it's a cultural problem.

bArray2• 10 years ago

For some reason I was under the impression she was doing a stint in the US or UK, I think it was just from how the article read.

xiphias• 10 years ago

If she really started coding 2 months ago, I don't understand why she expects to have a job. It's great that she started, and I understand that she doesn't have the money for a university, but if she doesn't go to university, she should have a real portfolio and show real understanding and spend real time learning (for example not just using angularjs, but making commits to angularjs, which shows a much greater understanding of complex code).

Should I try to teach myself to play the piano for 2 months and expect getting a job as a pianist?

Ellahn2• 10 years ago

She says 6 months, not 2, before the first interview.

Funny how she says how she had a Github and Codepen and she sent her code yet people said "But you're a girl", and then and you reply like this.

If I send my code and people don't look at it, I assume they're assholes. In her case, it's systematic, and obviously more complex.

I'm not sure if you can't read or if you just couldn't comprehend what was written...

Experiences of a self-taught female coder- “Women can’t code?”

Related Stories