Thread by @laurieontech

We're going to try something different today. This is not an isolated incident and it isn't ok.

I want to hear people's stories of discrimination in our industry. If you're not comfortable having your name attached feel free to DM me and I'll post it anonymously.

https://twitter.com/editingemily/status/1164552411832152065

I'll start. I was once in a role where my boss didn't feel he needed to give me a raise because I wasn't a head of household. He assumed my parents/boyfriend were responsible for financially taking care of me.

Anonymous: Two years into my first 'major' tech role I was at the top of my game, fantastic reviews across the board, my manager's 'rising star'. I loved my team, we all worked well together 1/?

everybody on the team except my manager and his assistant had known for at least a year and a half that I was lesbian. We went out every Friday night and had drinks and played pool. One Friday night, we were playing pool 2/?

one of the waitresses was getting hit on by guys at another table and when they didn't take a hint, she walked over to our table and kissed me. I didn't stop her, we'd been going to that same pool hall ever week for over a year, I knew her, it was innocent. 3/?

What I didn't realize until two minutes later was that my manager's assistant was there and saw it. I was fired - from AT&T, with a stellar record, including a 'top marks' review from three weeks earlier, because I was apparently 'unqualified for my job and underperforming'. 4/?

Note: this probably wouldn't happen today, that was close to two decades ago. But, it still impacts me - it's why my name isn't on twitter, it's why I don't talk family with clients 5/?

, it's why I freelance instead of putting all my eggs in one corporate basket where one bigoted jerk can crush them all at once. 6/6

Anonymous: I was passed up for promotion a few times while every male in my group (with less knowledge and experience than me) were getting promoted left and right. 1/?

We also have a junior dev (also female) from a coding academy in my group who has also been passed up a few times from getting promoted to where we hire college grads even though she’s created features that have benefitted so many of our users 2/?

while the aforementioned males have not contributed nearly as much as she has.

I finally got promoted but only after threatening to leave for a job that would have paid me 50% more but would have required me to move. 🤷‍♀️ 3/3

Anonymous: I was at a workplace's inauguration. And I was talking about discrimination in IT. 5 minutes later I went to the bathroom to wash my face. And 30 secondes, a man came "to pee" and he said "can I kiss you". 1/2

Out of nowhere. He was here when I was talking about discrimination, and we never really talk before. 2/2

I told my boss about a coworker who was (once again) committing horrible workplace bullying. Boss said "Is it ____?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Man, everyone's complaining about him. It's like he's on his period or something." I said, "Wow, that's sexist!" 1/2

He doubles down: "Yeah, <laughing> but it's kinda true." 2/2

I used to work as a Senior Dev and had some 1-2-1 and low managerial duties. We had an awesome female frontend dev and I was told that she had a much less salary than her counterpart. Like £10,000 less. 1/?

As she was outperforming consistently I put a proposal forward to have her promoted to a senior frontend dev. She was very happy with her offer but I asked her if she didn't mind running it by me before she accepted. 2/?

I found out they had only given her a £5k pay rise do she would still be lower than the guy she would now be senior to.

She should have got a £20,000 pay rise and I told her so. I gave her the avg rate for that salary as a reference and she did the rest of the negotiating. 3/?

Apparently they originally turned her down but she said she was going to have the senior management team for discrimination if they didn't give it to her. So she got it in the end.

The thing I've always found so sad is that she had to fight for it. 4/?

She is now doing awesomely in another company. We have all left that company. That company is actually a shell of the place it used to be. And that makes me happy! 5/5

Anonymous: I’m a black small business owner. I can’t tell you how many times when I explain what we do that I get some version of “you are so well spoken”. It’s second to only “you’re a big guy, did you play football?”

Another anonymous submission:
The company owners told me I’d be good for the company’s leadership team [all men], but I needed to be at the company longer. After I was there a while, they told me the team was full and I had to wait for someone to leave. 1/?

Someone left, and they added someone newer than me, saying they needed his specific expertise. Another person left, and they added another man who hadn’t been there as long as I had. 2/?

When I complained, they told me the team required people who would work extra hours and I’d recently had a child, so I should “concentrate on my family.” 3/3

Another Anon:
From India. Me and my colleague joined my current company around the same time. I worked on business modules he worked on system modules

My appraisal was less stating that my contribution to business was less. Whereas he got double of what I got. 1/3

When asked I was told I didn't contribute enough, I'm not as good as people who are in the company for 4 years. When I told them I'm gonna quit they said they will pay me because they want me to be happy and not because I deserve it. 2/3

I don't know why women should always fight for what she deserve and even if she succeeds it's given to her as if she doesn't deserve it.

Anyways I'm moving to another company with a much higher pay than what they were offering for my happiness 3/3

Anon: I’m a tech student, and usually the only female in class. In my cybersecurity class my professor would refer to me any time he was talking about women in general. My name was always used as the female example. 1/3

His favorite was to use my name or gender as a punchline for jokes. It got so ridiculous, the males in class stopped laughing at his jokes and stopped looking at me. It finally stopped when I confided in a female professor when she said “he’s such a great guy.” 2/3

She looked like I slapped her when I told her. It immediately stopped and he rarely engaged after that. I’m learning to be a programmer, but hands down I would have quit the program if I was in the security program. 3/3

Anon again:
New to academia, >10 years in tech. Looked forward to working with one of the most elder researchers in my specialty. Sidelined instead, for seemingly
vague/counterproductive reasons. One day, the elder researcher tells me (apropos of nothing) that he has a wife. Ah.

Anon:
Job searching and went to a meetup to network. Someone pitched her on joining their startup by saying "oh yeah, we're looking for a woman engineer" - no mention of her experience, values, or any other reason why the job might be a good fit, just "woman engineer" 🙄

Anon:
Interviewing for a role in B2B tech for the construction industry. The only woman interviewer asked me repeatedly if I'd be comfortable visiting customers because of their "blue" language. She stressed I'd have to be careful and not make the customers uncomfortable. 1/?

I took the role (recession) and it was worse than I expected. Finally at a conference when 1 guy's presentation at 8:30am involved porn references in front of 100 people. I was so ill that I couldn't say anything b/c it could hurt my company. And I could lose my job. 2/?

But I wrote a letter to my company's HR & Legal department. They didn't do anything until I shared it with the Head of Adv. Development. He went to bat and then the company got an apology from the conference. 3/?

(Not the presenter) I was out of there 6 months later, jumping up a level too. But recessions are a THING.

Going back to work after years of caretaking in a recession? Not easy. 4/4

Anonymous:
I was nominated to be an MVP for a very specific software that I'm specialized in. A pretty big honor. Apparently there was debate on the committee as to whether it would be appropriate to allow an open Christian to be in the group. 1/2

Ultimately they decided that I would be ok, and then they TOLD ME that they were very nervous about their decision.

These were all western Europeans. 2/2

Another anon:
Me, testing a guy's code: "Hey, looks like this isn't quite working properly. Result should be X but it's Y."
Guy: *throws a huge tantrum, calls me incompetent and unprofessional, refuses to get on a call with my manager because he's "too upset"*. 1/2

My manager: "You need to make more of an effort to get along with him."

Months later I ended up at a lunch with him and he "explained" that he only treated me that way because he thought I was inexperienced. 2/2

Anonymous:

i was part of the interview 'team' and we saw maybe 10 candidate in person - the most qualified was a young woman - but management decided to go with someone else anyway, far less qualified, but much more of a 'culture fit'...

1/?

My manager quit the next week and told us they didn't want to hire more women (unofficially of course) - we had one woman who was an engineer already on a team of 40+ people

Myself and about 10 others put our notice in over the next few weeks 2/2

Anon:
In all it was 6 years at HP, 3 years at Mercury and I had 5 previous years of experience with the product I was supporting

In all 9 years of HP/Mercury employment I had never had a single reprimand. 1/?

Stellar reviews and was known in the Load and Performance testing world as one of the top people

Three months after my 45th birthday I was informed that I was being let go. For no reason other than RIF. 2/?

My title at the time was Technical Account Manager and I had 6 customers who I was their go-to person for anything they needed for LoadRunner or the account

My customers were furious. Two even wrote emails to Meg Whitman asking that I not be let go. 3/?

Nothing worked and my last day came and 9 years if service died.

I retained friendships to this day with my customers. Through them I learned the HP hired 2 twenty something's to replace me 4/?

but 5 of the 6 customers did not renew their TAM contracts because the new guys didn't know the product and were more like salesmen, trying to constantly push more products and services

Now I am trying to get a job as a developer and recruiters from GitHub 5/?

and a couple others have had initial interviews with me and despite good skills and lots of real world experience I get passed by. Of course they will never say it is because of age, but it sure seems like when the finally see the resume 6?

(not the computer review that had the calling me in the first place) the realize I have been in the software industry longer than they have been alive and the interview goes cold... Age discrimination feels pretty real.... 7/7