What, in your mind, does a typical software developer look like? Act like?
Male? Twenty-something? Without family responsibilities? Arrives to the office after 9 am but works until late into the night, thanks to endless cokes or cups of coffee?
At a party last night I connected with a woman who had just left software development after a fifteen-year career. She was burned out. When I told her I had considered getting back into software development after a five-year hiatus taking care of kids, she looked at me skeptically. She gently related her experience of seeking a job as an “older” woman. She came to believe that she didn’t look like what people expected a software developer to look like. “They liked my resume but when I walked in for the interview, they weren’t interested. They didn’t want to hire someone who looked like their mom.”
She has a point. On TV, in the news, on the Web, we’re treated to a particular vision of the super-genius technologist. It’s usually a man and he’s usually youngish. But I hold onto the idea that we can build better technology if we have different kinds of people working on it, not just one kind. Am I fooling myself?
12 Comments
I can identify strongly with your friend. It scares me some times — more than I like to admit.
I hope you’re not fooling yourself!
Personally, I’m hoping that as the market becomes stronger and stronger we’ll be able to not *have* to work for someone who has such a narrowminded idea of what a software developer is.
Oh, and that there will be more people who look like a mum hiring software developers who look like mums
I agree with leisa. Of course maybe the real reason is that a young kid doesn’t yet have a life, and so the economic factor is: Pay for 40 hours/week, get 60+ “for free”. Have seen it happen.
I’ve never cared what the person looked like - only that they can deliver quality code and are they motivated to make a change with what they are doing.
It takes a team to build something meaningful - what they look like is irrelevant.
All the best,
Peter
There are always employers who are prejudiced, in any field, and plenty of stereotypes to go around. Smart employers look for, and find, employees who are undervalued in the market (for whatever reason).
Anne,
I heartfully agree to your idea. (Means “No” to your question).
Stereotypes are useful in coding activities but dangerous in social context.
To feed your idea, here’s my view on the needed diversity in software development:
1. coding in a team is not distribution of labor, but division of thinking.
2. If we all think the same, we can not work together efficiently
3. Thus, IMHO, the so-called software crisis is (more) a social crisis
4. In a team, we need more diverse thinking to attack problems of all sizes
5. we also need better conflict-resolution (I remember myself how I felt when delivering code to someone I did not like…thinking was more difficult:-D)
Being aware that I just use another stereotype, I’d like to extend your statement: we need more different kinds of people working on technology +plus+ we need more moms in the teams!
I completly agree with you.
I also add that in Italy, every CV post specifies the range age limit which is always from 25 to 35 years old.
Gianluca
being the stereotype himself,
a youngish 20-something not that much of a genious type of guy, i agree with you,
here in colombia, the employement situation is quite hard as well, nobody above 35 gets any jobs, so they have to statr their own busisness,
perhaos its time to start working for yourself, and stop making other people rich from your work…
This is one of several important topics discussed in the fantastic book Close to the Machine: Technophillia and its Discontents by Ellen Ullman.
I always think of the story in Blink about the introduction of screens during symphony auditions. Before screens, when a musician was trying out, the judges could (obviously) see which sex they were. After screens, they (equally obviously) couldn’t.
So, before screens were used, there weren’t that many women who got the job. Afterwards, many, many more women found themselves hired.
I suspect the same would be true in IT. For all the chatter about meritocracy in our industry, at least in America, we’re all terribly biased and ageist when it comes to hiring and thinking.
Marshall, I’ll have to get that book. I hadn’t heard of it before.
Cote’: yes, I think of that story too. Too bad there’s no way to put up a screen during tech hiring. Although at that point it’s probably too late–women and other nontraditional techies have already been mostly screened OUT instead of screened IN.
Yeah, as a certified old guy (57 and heart still beating) I get the mini-version of the evil experience you’re describing, or at least anticipating.
My current employer, happily, seems to make a practice of hiring persons with the deviant gender or demographic, and being a software architect / designer is a label that makes people at least consider that all those scars on the back might be worth a few bucks.
But if I had to do a job search? I like the idea of screens.
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[…] Anna si chiede qual'è il ritratto di un programmatore: maschio? ventenne? senza famiglia a carico, che lavora fino a tarda notte? […]
[…] The idea that only a certain type of person is interested in or capable of building software is flat-out wrong. And it’s a pernicious idea, too, because it keeps people who don’t look like the stereotype (male, young or youngish, of European or Asian descent, lacking social skills–you get the picture) from trying out computer science or other technically-oriented subjects. […]