mblack68

I am very disappointed that one of my "own kind" is disparaging women. If that's what females in this field encounter, no wonder there are so few. My deep disappointment cannot be expressed in words right now. Hiring is hard to get right, period. Why are we worrying about gender traits--this article is generalizing to the point of absurdity.

I feel motivated at this point, to change my name to a gender neutral one for hiring purposes.

When people see articles like this, it is affirming, and others will follow silently.

The problem is, once you demonstrate skills in creative, if you are female, that's now your label. Period. At least, that's my personal, anecdotal experience.

It was seeming proof that even within the happy-go-lucky world of tech start-ups, there are winners and losers, and more often than not, the losers in situations like these are the designers, who are more likely to be female than their engineer counterparts, and whose "soft" skills are seen as less valuable than coding chops.

If a field is dominated by women, the pay tends to be less. Anecdotal, no proof. But this rule of thumb has worked for me. I am often asked to do UI and design stuff. I could be good at it, but I refuse to do it because it shunts me into a lower paid position. I stick to programming and don't allow my male counterparts to make the assumption that I will do their prettifying.

Design work is necessary, and I enjoy my attempts at it on personal projects. If it were my dream job, maybe I would feel differently? I don't know. I just know that as someone who is viewed as "creative", my personal experience is that the stereotype is stunting.

Legitimate question. But it is a trap. I'm under a new user name here, but I used to post here years ago. Every answer I give will get me closer to hell-banning. :)

I will think about it. If I can find a way to present my position more clearly without social Hacker News repercussions, I will.

edit: funny, how I do the same in real life, with my career, etc. I withhold strong positions, and give watered down expressions, to survive. Kinda sad. Lack of real anonymity means I also have to moderate expressions. Any future employer finding me here will hold everything I say here against me.

Getting fat is also stigmatized. Sigh. I know.

Bald men and short men have hurdles, too.

I am a woman, 45 years old, building websites for a living.

After 13 years, I still prefer to sit down and disappear into the screen and build things. I have natural leadership ability, I have a big personality when required, but I just don't feel motivated by money or rewards to take on the responsibility of leading a team.

I watch my colleagues get promoted, all male. And then I watch them try to balance wife, kids, and life. Without their wives, they tend to do poorly at life maintenance. They get fat, or pot-bellies at least, their hair falls out (probably just genetic but still) and after a few years the stress has broken them. The factors of leading means your reward depends on others whom you are unable to really control. So they spend time playing head games with people and taking work home that others can't or won't complete.

The handful of women I know in leadership positions also have a stigma attached. Their ego leads just like the males, but the women are considered "too aggressive" and get labeled as such.

So with minimal reward (I require double my income to ruin my life), management/leadership is just not an option for me, regardless of my abilities. I suppose living up to my capabilities should be reward enough, but it isn't.

Until I get a wife and/or make enough money to pay for the easy leisure and lack of worry I have now, I don't care about the prestige of leadership.

Chauvinistic or not, I truly believe if the reward were there, our society would have more women in leadership positions.

My personal life has a higher "fee" than men for living and breathing my job. Pay me that fee, I will make a go of it.