Tech bros’ attitude to female colleagues stuck in dark ages::Research sheds light on attitudes holding industry back

    • @reliv3@lemmy.ml
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      518 months ago

      On point. Everytime these kind of studies are posted, the bros always have some low key sexist comments which try to explain why the study is wrong… It happens a lot in the scientific community as well. Yet, all you need to do is speak to a few women in the field to understand just how hostile some of these Stem communities can be towards women.

  • @_number8_@lemmy.world
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    448 months ago

    worst time of my life was when i was in computer science. i’m a guy but still - that hyper competitive shit is horrilbly toxic. letters on a computer don’t need to be boot camp toughen up bullshit.

    • @pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Where was that? I found compsci to be an extremely supportive environment where almost everyone was trying to help each other.

      • @Fal@yiffit.net
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        78 months ago

        Electrical engineering major here, and it was very much the same. Very helpful supportive

        • Apolinario Mabussy
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          38 months ago

          Same here! Most people were very supportive and we commiserated a lot about our majors. And the same was the case for the entire engineering department.

          The only anecdote I know about which is similar to the hyper-competitiveness in the top comment is from a friend who was a CS major in a different university but with a heavy entrepreneurship/business slant.

      • @finestnothing@lemmy.world
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        18 months ago

        There were a few hyper competitive people who were always trying to finish everything first to flex on everyone, they hated me because I finished projects earlier (I helped people that were having issues when I finished, they caught on and I got some snotty messages about being a try hard… I just had a lot of free time at work and the projects were easy to me). Along with a few of these in each class, I had some people that were just moochers that actually sucked and just copied other people and constantly did leetcode challenges or whatever, I ended up with 2 of them in my senior project and they did almost nothing even when asked.

        That said, a very very large amount of the people I met were awesome supportive people, both in my comp sci classes and upper div math classes for my minor. We were remote for all but 1 semester of my degree and I lived an hour away from the university so I didn’t end up making any lasting friends, but at least once a week I had study/help/hangout sessions with people I met in group projects, people they met, etc. A few people would show up to copy code and answers, but nearly everyone was great, and would pitch in to help others in the group if needed. There will always be snotty, lazy, and competitive people in every field, but they are (almost) always the extreme monority

    • @vzq
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      8 months ago

      Honestly, I fare even worse in blue collar type environments. YMMV depending on your upbringing and general tolerance, but a lot of the “playful banter” I witness is stuff that would have you expelled from student associations these days.

      That’s not an endorsement of tech bros btw. They are toxic. The fact that other people are toxic in a different way does not exonerate them.

        • @vzq
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          8 months ago

          You’re only allowed to criticize the tech bros now, otherwise you’re deemed toxic too.

          I sure as hell ain’t about to praise fucking tech bros.

          Maybe just quit your “Pc hAs gOnE tOoFaR” winging.

  • @TellusChaosovich@lemmy.world
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    268 months ago

    I work a tech job at a corporate company that isn’t a tech company. 9/10 males have been delightful. They have hired women as head of IT twice in a row now. But there was one coworker who immediately assumed and acted like I knew nothing. He may do that to everyone though to seem smarter and superior… very ambitious guy. I also suspected it may have also been influenced by the non-US culture he grew up in.

    • @0x0@programming.dev
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      98 months ago

      I also suspected it may have also been influenced by the non-US culture he grew up in.

      How so?

      • @TellusChaosovich@lemmy.world
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        128 months ago

        I think the answer to that should be obvious, and you are only asking so you can argue and call me racist. So I will not engage.

        • @mnmalst@lemmy.zip
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          78 months ago

          Honestly, I have no idea what you are referring to either. Would you mind sending me a message if you don’t want to go into detail in public?

          • @TellusChaosovich@lemmy.world
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            138 months ago

            You have no idea that some cultures prefer women barefoot, pregnant, and cleaning their house rather than in the workplace? You have no idea that many cultures are not used to having female bosses over male workers?

            • @Darkenfolk@dormi.zone
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              118 months ago

              I mean “non-US” culture can be anything really, there are loads of cultures where the woman is supposed to look after the house.

              Hell, it used to be pretty normal in Europe and the US not that long ago.

              • @TellusChaosovich@lemmy.world
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                58 months ago

                In order to avoid obnoxious replies, I intentionally chose not to name the particular country I had in mind. The point still stands – there are going to be people in the workplace from cultures with more misogyny than others. And the culture they grew up in will have had an effect on their attitudes.

            • @mnmalst@lemmy.zip
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              58 months ago

              Not sure why you get immediately so confrontational. Of course I know those things exist and can be a problem but it wasn’t at all clear to me that you were talking about those things. That’s why I asked for clarification.

              I get it, some people try to trigger other by asking obvious questions but don’t assume the worst in all of us.

  • @onlinepersona@programming.dev
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    8 months ago

    Tech bros’ attitude to female colleagues stuck in dark ages

    Almost one in five […]

    Imagine if the article started with

    Feminists attitude to men stuck in the dark ages

    Almost one in five

    Would you take it seriously?

    20% is not good, but that title makes it seem like it’s 80%.

    The female IT colleagues I’ve had have been just like med: OK to stellar. The only absolute IT knobhead I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with was a dude, and the only non-IT dickhead colleague was a woman.


    For the study, follow https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/system-update-addressing-the-gender-gap-in-tech-report and scroll to the bottom.

    They interviewed 21 women and had an online survey with

    555 women and 523 men who currently or have recently left a tech role (less than 4 years ago), 360 women who have not worked in tech, but hold a qualification in a STEM subject at Level 3 or above

    and these people were 90% from England. There were 1.7 million people in tech in the UK in July 2023. The US has 9.7M and I have no idea how many the EU has (too lazy to search). But to generalize the findings of a single country globally…

    What a bad article.

  • @0x0@programming.dev
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    8 months ago

    Anecdotally, back in college most of the few women in my course got their grades using their breasts. Fact.

    The few women i’ve worked with professionally have been good professionals, some of the best even.

    Studies say™ is pretty damn irrelevant these days. If that inequality is true, governments should act. Most have legislation against this kind of legislation, but that’s it, paper. There are very few government officials actually controlling these issues proactively, if any at all. Plus few companies make salaries public and it’s not common to discuss paycheck.

    Ensuring neither the company nor the worker gets penalized for pregnancy/newborn care would probably help a lot.

    No, i’m not denying there’s a bias, there most likely is, especially in IT. But in paychecks, for that reason alone, not so much… for sure there are lots of people in the same company in the same role with the same skillset and generally about equal in all the job requirements who do have differences in their salaries, but i’d wager that’s more related to how well they negotiated during the hiring process.

    Edited to add "Anecdotally, ".

    • @Tattorack@lemmy.world
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      238 months ago

      When someone says “fact” I expect to see a fact. As in, evidence that makes something stated as a fact an actual fact. Otherwise it’s just an anecdote, and no better than the anecdotes in the article linked above.

        • Black616Angel
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          58 months ago

          Did you read past the first two words of the headline?

          It says “attitude towards female colleagues” not “pay for female employees”. And the article reflects that, your comment not that much…

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    58 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    It is still 2023, yet anyone familiar with the industry over the last 30 years may feel a sense of déjà vu when reading the findings of a report by The Fawcett Society charity and telecoms biz Virgin Media O2.

    It claimed: “By seeing more female role models in tech, young girls will start to see IT as a realistic and attractive career option.”

    Those daring enough to delve deeper into history will find that far from women being “naturally less well suited” to the industry, they actually helped found it and provided the backbone of its early workforce.

    Historian Mar Hicks, associate professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, has plotted how women staffed early IT departments during the 1950s because the work was seen as uninspiring and lacking in career cachet.

    Among her employees was Ann Moffatt, who coded the black box recorder for the Anglo-French supersonic passenger jet Concorde.

    The “move fast and break things” culture embodying post-millennium tech claims to be the great disruptor in everything – except the numbing predictability of sexism.


    The original article contains 713 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • @WhyDoesntThisThingWork@lemmy.world
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    48 months ago

    This article and study seems pretty toxic to me. Acting and talking like these human beings are lab rats in order to push an agenda. Seems incredibly sexist in my eyes.

  • @kleenbhole@lemy.lol
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    18 months ago

    Female dominated cultural spaces are intolerable to me. Male dominated cultural spaces are intolerable to them.

    It’s almost like there’s a difference in genders and maybe you should let men and women self segregate along lines of interest.