As someone who was directly involved with hiring & managing Bryana let me set one aspect of this conversation to rest: Bryana's performance _across the board_ was top-notch, without qualification.

She commanded, and continues to command, respect from her peers for both her technical contributions on a very challenging tech stack, and product savvy in an extremely complex business domain. I was on her interview and there was no question of moving bars. It didn't even come up, because she was so very well-prepared. We just evaluated the performance and hired the best dev for the position, end of conversation.

On the job she spoke with authority and confidence in standups and earned every single bit of responsibility she ever got. Mention her to anyone who's worked with Bryana and you'll get the "eye roll of respect." She's so talented there was a minor running joke with a couple of us that we should keep a countdown clock of "minutes till I work for Bryana."

I only wish that early in my career I could have been half as well-rounded and with a fraction of the aptitude, product savvy and technical depth Bryana has.

Woah there, team. Lots of comments in here to the tune of "the support for her is sexism!"

This blog post is about a specific person and her experience. She tells you up front that she was nervous about this. Her management encouraged her to go to conferences, _and that was exactly the right response to her personal nervousness_.

There's a lot of cases where the broader social context becomes part of a person's emotional landscape. A good manager will recognize this (just like any other barrier to working effectively) and balance out doubts with encouragement. The trick is look for possible problems, and management that knows how to look for these problems and help with them is doing their job well.

Bryana refers several times to a fear she has been chosen or favoured due to her gender, and because of the positive discrimination we have allowed to happen in our industry.

Positive discrimination is not positive, because discrimination is never positive, no matter which group it favours. And here we see the consequences - a cohort of women who will suffer the paranoia of not knowing whether they were selected on merit. And a cohort of men who will have their misogynistic prejudices reinforced because the bar was visibly lowered for women.

While this is an interesting article, I have a minor quibble with the title - does the author really mean that her team is "predominantly male", which has a very different meaning than "male dominated"?

One just expresses a ratio of genders, whereas the other implies a distinct control and power dynamic.

Turns out, it's just like being an engineer for everyone else.

She says she was encouraged to apply and speak at conferences, and that management would campaign for the whole team to attend any conferences where she is accepted to speak.

> This may seem like special treatment or in some ways unfair. "Reverse sexism" some might call it. I don't see it that way. This industry treats women differently, so my managers treat me differently in the exact opposite way the industry does.

I would not call it "reverse sexism", because it is is just plain sexism. Of course the author doesn't "see it that way", despite acknowledging it, because the author directly benefits from said sexism.

If the author is being encouraged to apply for and accepted to speak at conferences primarily based on their gender, then the industry's reaction will be to expect that women speakers are token speakers, and this will set back women in the industry.

Embrace differences, embrace diversity, but in the long run special treatment does not benefit anybody.

About the "assertiveness" part - no, I think most women have it totally wrong on this.

When you say that men are assertive and women are not, you are in fact talking about a subset of men - the extroverts - who are assertive. In reality, and in particular in the software world, you'll find a lot of introverted men who are much like you - they don't feel comfortable speaking up. It is just that they're not very visible because they aren't heard.

In my opinion, assertiveness is more of a personality issue. And it is ridiculous that we expect everyone to be assertive - it does not improve your ability to code in any way.