Anyone else regret choosing this industry?
I’m a woman in tech and I regret choosing to become a software engineer. When I was a kid I had mostly guy friends and I wore my interests in predominately male things as a badge of pride. I wanted to leave my mark and didn’t want to fit into female stereotypes.
However, I’m getting increasingly jaded and depressed from this industry. I’m tired of feeling left out all the time. I’m tired of the isolation of not being similar to anyone on my team. I’m tired of not having anyone to collaborate with outside of work on side projects. I’m tired of being the “token female” but nothing more than that. I’m tired of having to prove myself each time a new male developer joins my team.
Anyone else feel the same way?
Edit: I want to clarify some things based on the comments:
- I am passionate about coding and got into the field because of my passion. I did not join because of $$$.
- I expect to have to prove myself when I join a new team, but it really sucks when a new guy joins my team and automatically assumes I can’t code, but assumes the other dudes on the team are fine. This has only happened to me twice though so maybe those dudes were just 💩
- I’m introverted and get a lot of my daily social interaction through work. Across most of the teams that I’ve been on, the guys hang out outside of work and either play games together, work on a tech thing that’s more interesting than work, or just go out to happy hours together. A lot of times it is assumed that I’m just “not interested” (note that this commentary is more from pre covid)
- I decided to switch into people management a year after making this post and I think it’s a better fit for me so far.
comments
I did mention clearly that these are my opinions before diving deeper. I was hoping to see a critique from you or an agreement and I’m glad I see some valid criticism.
Look up the big 5 personality model. You’ll know exactly how early these traits start to show up and how much scientific literature is out there in support of it. You could question the validity of the model itself like the astrology believers do which is a perfectly valid criticism. But for the most part, it is the most widely accepted personality model in the research community. Hence, my “hunch” that it’s evolutionary.
Most of science consists of theories that generalize and represent the nature of the material world as a set of reliably reproducible phenomena which can be tested and confirmed by subsequent experimentation. Psychology is no different. However, I don’t think I can link you to research papers for each and everything I say in a debate. I certainly would if I was writing a paper.
The early gender socialization that you pointed out is a good one but the research in that area is still vague in its outcomes i.e. giving children gender-neutral toys has not shown any obvious differences in personality development. It’s a non-trivial problem precisely because how do you determine the cause and effect in that situation: is it the child’s biology that makes them more interested in playing with certain toys or if it’s the toys that shape a child’s gender identity? We’ll have to wait and see newer research to say what truly drives gender identity development among children.
In my second point, I was describing a possible explanation for the exclusory/sexist/racist behavior that exists in some competitive workplaces. Again, it was entirely my personal opinion which were formed and influenced by my conversations with coworkers/friends belong to majorities about these issues. There’s some evidence from other countries that suggests that the enforcement of quotas to force representation increases resentment and lowers overall quality requirements.
Since you talk about history of persecution, are you suggesting that the fundamental cause of this behavior for some people belonging to the majority is racial or gender supremacist tendencies manifesting as a form of disgust toward minorities? There’s certainly some truth to that. I sure hope it’s not most of those people that display that kind of behavior.
Personally, I think even tribalist instincts have their roots in an aggressively competitive environment where winner tends to take all. So you choose anything you can use to explain your shortcomings and another person’s success no matter what it is (race, sex, economic status). Even if the “minorities having it easier” is a weak argument at best, it’s enough for a naive and unscrupulous person from a majority to use in their defense while competing against a more competent individual belonging to a minority.
"Having to prove yourself whenever a new male joins the team" is a woman specific problem. The problems of "feeling left out at work, not having anything in common with coworkers, not having anyone to do side projects with" are universal and cross all genders.
Men don't have to deal with sexism with regards to their ability, and get sexually harassed at work much less often than women do. However, men are also susceptible to isolation - when I worked at Amazon, my entire team was brogrammers, or very conservative people, or people from china who socialized in chinese - three very different groups none of which I identify with or have an easy time befriending on a personal level as an introverted nerdy english-speaking leftist. It is common in the modern, multicultural, transantional workplace to feel like you are distant from your coworkers. Most of my local friends are people I've met through hobbies outside of work or through dating. I have made no friends at work in the past four years since I started working for larger corporations.
I don't think this reply was being wrong when he said 'it isn't /neccisarily/ a gender issue' - because OP was legitimatley complaining about some problems that probably aren't gender issues and also alluding to other problems that are, but he was being dismissive of the woman-specific issues and then he became openly sexist when people attacked him for being anti-woman.
In conclusion, this entire industry would be better if everyone chilled the fuck out and got some better social skills. Dudes - stop being sexist. Sexism is a form of social idiocy. Go learn and internalize some basic feminist ideas so you can effectively work with and befriend women. Non-dudes - learn how to convince people with shitty social skills that theyre wrong and need to improve how they treat others without making them feel like human garbage (its hard, I know, but its the most effective way).
Oh and I doubled my TC in the process. But I still have a sorely chapped ass from my experiences in tech.
1) if you feel bar is to high for you leave it and find something better (don't make it political)
2) if you feel no one wants to collaborate blame yourself, no one can see your gender behind nickname in GitHub (don't make political)
3) if there is not many women in the industry, maybe there's a reason for that, no one complains there are too few woman truck drivers. Maybe because it's damn hard and require 12 hours shifts and insane dedication to be the best (don't make it political)
4) there are few man being teachers, nurses and many other occupations, no man complains about that (don't make it political)