Me being a woman was mentioned on a group recruitment call, now I feel bummed out

DolinaMacKinnon·Jun 05, 2020

I'm sure the comment was innocent enough.They mentioned web development was a male-dominated industry and it was nice to have a women in the group.But now I feel like if I get chosen it will be simply because I'm a woman, not because of my skills.Or am I reading too much into it??

cadran·Jun 05, 2020

My take is that you are going to bump into a lot of comments like this over your career and you have to choose which hills you want to die on / what you want to expend emotional energy on. I've found thinking about them really distracting and that it's useful to think more generally about what you want your strategy to be for coping.It sucks to feel like you may have been chosen because of something other than your skills, but since you wont know what all went into being chosen, I think the best things you can do are be good at your job, find happiness in your work, and have the impact that you set out to have. If the place you work turns out to generally detract from these three things, then consider moving on / giving them feedback.

DolinaMacKinnon·Jun 07, 2020

Thank you for your comment @cadran I think you are so right about thinking about whether or not you want to expend your emotional energy. That's very good advice to keep in mind for when I start my first tech job.

alexcia·Jun 18, 2020

I totally feel that sometimes when your a women in tech there can be this underlying feeling of "am I only here because I'm a women?". I've certainly felt it as sexism in the office culture can be subtle micro things that can add up. I agree with @cadran though that you will never be able to really know what's going on in there head unless the sexism is blatant. These thoughts fade though as you gain more experience in tech. When you have more experience you have alot more confidence and this helps alot with imposter syndrome and with the questions your asking. I've had a comment like that before, I thought though that it seemed genuine. It is nice to have a balanced team that's not all white men. There's something about working with more women on your team that makes things so much better, perhaps there is less alpha male coders in the room, or perhaps it is being able to relate to your female co-workers struggles in tech that your male co-workers don't know anything about. I'd say keep with it and try to be the best coder you can be, if you sense blatant sexism in your workplace you can definitely find somewhere else.