Women Coders in Finance IT Say They're Given the Worst Jobs | Hacker News Reader

Women Coders in Finance IT Say They're Given the Worst Jobs

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12 pointsWrightStuff19 comments

> suggests anecdotal evidence

> Another woman coder at a U.S. investment bank

> says an anonymous woman

First off you'll need more than that if you want to build a case. It says more about their teams and companies than every "Women in Finance IT".

How much of this sentiment is due to years of near propaganda level of "tech is fun and rewarding". The fact is that tech is fun and rewarding in a very small subset of companies and for a small subset of projects. The vast majority of tech jobs are just as boring as any desk jobs.

> I haven’t seen crude or overt sexism in tech, but particularly at the junior level I’ve seen a lack of trust placed in female coders. They’re less likely to be given important projects or to be made responsible for delivery.

Come on, that applies for any junior until they proved themselves.

I worked number of years in IT in financial institutions. Almost none of that work was very interesting on its own. A lot of IT work in finance is about moving data, transforming data etc.

There is maybe some fancy work out there - algorithmic trading, super-low latency trading etc, but rest is mostly boring.

The more senior I get, the more "crap" work I seem to end up doing. Maybe its just because I understand the importance of having clean data. And becasue I am hired because people know that the codebase is a mess and they want someone competent to keep it running.

are you refactoring code or performing code reviews for jr devs? If not the later, I'd be worried your not properly utilizing your skills, time, and career trajectory in the right ways.

> While that may be an isolated case, a VP-level male coder at the same bank says he’s also seen behaviors that could frustrate his women colleagues.

Please note that VP titles are handed out like candy at banks. Most "VP-level" coders at banks end up (at best) as L4 hires at FAANG (L5 is titled Senior usually.) For the uninitiated, L3 is the level you start out as if you're a college graduate.

It's probably true but this article is pretty light on what qualifies as "worst." As others have mentioned, I would avoid working for a bank like the plague, because all of those jobs are going to be the worst.

I also think that if I were a women I would be looking for jobs in tech and many women engineers I have known are now working for big tech companies.

Isn't finance IT in general just kinda boring?

I mean isn't it often legacy software written in COBOL for archaic mainframes? Or just plain out boring stuff like data juggling and report printing?

Just shooting from the hip here, but every job I've had in finance has sucked royally. Could that have anything to do with it? lol

Are they the worst programmers? If they were hired as the consequence of a diversity quota, then they are statistically likely, even guaranteed, to have been hired at a lower barrier to entry than their peers.

To take something like this seriously, bring data. What is an example of a worse job? How does your performance compare to the person put on a different job? People primed to think a certain way tend to think a certain way, and it experience so far has very often shown that people have reality twisted according to their expectations.

I'm, of course, not saying that this isn't possibly something that is happening. I do, however, bring a healthy level of skepticism.

This data does not exist, will never exist (how would you even quantify half of those things?), and if you require it as a standard of evidence for acknowledging the existence of sexism you will fulfill the function of protecting and perpetuating sexism.

We do have data on many other similar types of sexism, of which I'm sure as someone laser-focused on evidence you are already aware.

You might construe this as "don't question claims of sexism!" but understand that questioning claims of sexism is the default reaction offered to people reporting sexism, and this quantity has a quality all of its own.

> if you require it as a standard of evidence for acknowledging the existence of sexism you will fulfill the function of protecting and perpetuating sexism.

Whoa, what are you insinuating here?

I don't think I'm insinuating anything, it is stated very clearly.

I'm afraid it isn't. Your comment seems to imply that if the evidence were to be collected it would not be in favor of the "diversity hires" thus perpetuating sexism in the workplace. If this isn't the case, could you care to unpack why collecting data on this is actually a bad thing?

Nowhere did I say collecting data is a bad thing. I am sure data would support the allegations. I said requiring this type of data before taking action fulfills the function of protecting and perpetuating sexism, because it is an impossible bar to clear.

> I said requiring this type of data before taking action fulfills the function of protecting and perpetuating sexism

How do you take action to fix something if you don't even know if/why/how it's broken ? It's pure madness to pass feel good equality of outcome laws and never checking on the data to see if it has a positive effect or not.

You do know whether it's broken, because you have people telling you. Testimony is evidence, and it's used for making almost all business decisions.

Go ahead and collect data to see whether your policies are working. A much better world compared to the usual, where people are asked to show the data and zero resources are provided to gather that data.

> You do know whether it's broken, because you have people telling you.

As many people are saying the opposite. So what now ? We chose the side that shouts "inequality !" the loudest ?

> Go ahead and collect data

It's illegal in my country.

Not only that, but it is impossible to tell if the initiative fulfilled it's outcome. This allows for endless riddance.

If someone is hired on your team that's allegedly under-qualified (at the time of hire) and isn't able to earn their stripes at work (despite being given the opportunity to do so over a long enough time horizon) then they have no business complaining that they're not getting work that delights them. This argument applies to literally anybody regardless of their sex/race/age/orientation.

GP is basically advocating the collection and use of data to verify and possibly correct any manifestation of this alleged unconscious bias. Just because the data isn't perfect doesn't mean it's useless. You seem to be OK with pre-meditated "correction" without looking at the data. You even seem to think that the collected data would vindicate managers of allocating "less glamorous work" to the non-high performers.

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