67 karma · joined June 18, 2013
There's a general flow of conversation in any social situation that organically arises from the composition of the group of people involved. Unless your friend's teammates are jerks, she should be able to easily influence the direction of the conversation. Perhaps instead of suffering from an issue because she is a woman, she is simply too shy. Maybe this industry or society at large is bad at including shy people general.
How would a manager even know where to direct the discussion if the person who feels alienated doesn't speak up during the conversation? The last thing I want is a manager to try to point the discussion to movies, pop music, fashion, makeup, or whatever else women are supposed to like. I would absolutely be offended.
Although, the idea in general doesn't sit too well with me since it's a little bit unfair for guys since they have less of a chance of getting in (and have to pay more).
But, I guess the priority ticketing system is an okay fix for possibly getting more women who are interested in angular to go to this conference. (If that is an important goal, which I guess it apparently is)
I get that lots of groups use the term girl, though I think some of them actually deal with teaching girls (actual school aged ones) to code. In general I dislike being called "girl" in a professional setting. (But maybe I am in the minority for this opinion)
In general there was an attitude among my circle of friends to try and show off how little work they can do to still pull off a high score. I would say yes, most of the people I know who are considered "gifted" in general do work harder in the background than they let on. They themselves probably want to believe that they can effortlessly achieve in the classroom (and probably in life).
I think for me, at least, what happened was that I would really get into things and work extremely hard for a short period of time (sometimes without realizing it) and then coast for a while and appear as though I'm super talented and naturally good at many subjects. I don't think I was consciously planning any of this, but it just happened that way.
Looking back now, I do think that the attitude was pretty immature and obnoxious.