I am a female senior software engineer at one of the big tech companies. I've read about so many similar experiences at other companies, that naming the specific company wouldn't matter much anyway. All employees at my company must undertake unconscious bias training, but I find that all it does is make bias and sexism covert and difficult to prove. The incidents occurred over several years, whilst I worked on different teams, and involved different people - yet the same patterns repeated.

Lack of respect, belittling and bullying

I'm shown little respect - am frequently talked over in meetings, interrupted, my remarks immediately dismissed, designs critiqued in a patronizing tone, spoken to in a condescending manner when I hadn't yet completed a task that had no deadline communicated, people stare at their phones/laptops during my presentations, etc.

Technical discussions are always so exhausting. I try to have respectful, objective debates, evaluating the pros and cons of alternatives in order to arrive at the best solution. However, male engineers use aggression to "win", even in the face of evidence and logical reasoning, because they cannot be upstaged by a woman. I've often had to pick my battles and compromise or concede so that we can make progress.

I've been bullied and harassed by a more senior male engineer, in an attempt to force me to implement his idea. After I got offside by disagreeing with him, he would stalk my work and litter it with critical remarks. If he could not find fault with my technical decisions, he'd resort to nitpicking my choice of words. After all this, he gave me a good performance rating, so it seems he felt threatened and thus used intimidation tactics to establish dominance. Two different tech leads made derogatory remarks when I was complimented by others on my execution of projects. I was a tech lead for about a year and was miserable. Having to sit in meetings with domineering alpha males, and constantly put in my place. Some male engineers in my team couldn't accept a woman as their lead and would undermine me, refuse my help and seek the counsel of male tech leads of other teams. Other women in leadership roles have experienced the same; that they need to constantly prove themselves in order to be respected.

Submissiveness and modesty

I'm a quiet, reserved person and suffered from imposter syndrome (and still do). This invited the belittling and bullying, as described above, and people taking advantage of me. I worked under young, inexperienced male tech leads who would delegate their projects to me because they lacked the skills, contribute nothing, and take credit for my work. I've had my documents plagiarized. Tired of consistently receiving little recognition for my contributions, I started trying to make my work more visible, but then am deemed ambitious. Standing up for my opinions and trying to be more assertive then makes me hostile, apparently. You can't win.

Women are expected to be docile, agreeable and modest. Confidence is a virtue for male engineers and will fast-track them to leadership roles. The same behavior from a woman is deemed abrasive and aggressive (there's an excellent article that discusses this). My constructive criticism is taken with offence and I have been told to adjust my tone. I compared my comments with that of other male engineers and either found no difference in tone, or that theirs was much more insistent and brash - which is perceived as "influence" and "leadership".

It seems like anything I do and say is perceived negatively. On the other hand, no one has a problem with others being blatantly derogatory towards me. When I raised these issues with my managers (always male) and HR, I was told to change my perspective and to assume good intent. I was basically told to stop complaining.

Devaluing of skills, experience and contributions

My skills and experience are constantly devalued. The projects that I independently lead, design and implement have a male engineer's name added to the credits email, sometimes even before my own. People cannot fathom that a senior female engineer is capable of executing a project by herself. Questions about systems that I built are directed to a male engineer.

I've stopped counting the number of times my ideas or analysis were ignored or put down. A male engineer would suggest the same idea a week later and now it's suddenly brilliant; ship it! Or the team would implement the solution that I had originally suggested a year earlier, after several failed attempts that I warned them against, but of course someone else gets the credit because all my original analysis was ignored and forgotten.

A senior engineering manager with multiple decades of experience told me that her manager assumed that she was not very technical. She had to write architecture and design documents to prove that she was technical, something that you never see male engineering managers do.

Recently, people have been complaining that tech companies are lowering their hiring bar to accept diversity candidates. This is not true. Hiring committees are aware that unconscious bias can cloud their judgement, so they have diversity candidates re-reviewed in case there was evidence of bias. They are subjected to the same standards as any other candidate.

Double standards

A female engineer must have stronger technical skills than a male engineer to be afforded the same degree of respect. My performance is evaluated against a different set of standards to other engineers. I was criticized for not reaching 100% precision; any mistake is met with harsh criticism. This, and the expectation that women must be submissive rather than confident, results in no women promoted to senior technical leadership roles such as principal engineer. Although I don't have visibility into salaries at my company, I know that the tech industry is notorious for paying women less than men for the same role.

If I complete a project quickly and to a high standard, excuses are made up for my success or implied that it was easy. If a male engineer falls short, excuses are made for his struggle (e.g. lack of documentation, poor infrastructure). Occasionally, they blame me for their struggle, e.g. "this was difficult for me to run because you didn't write a script" (although I had written detailed instructions), "why didn't you write the code in a programming language that I know" - yes, these were real excuses!

I've always worked hard, did a disproportionate amount of work, took the time to assist others with their work and wrote development guides for the team. I receive very little recognition and gratitude for all this. But when a male engineer takes a bit of time to help someone, they receive a lot of kudos. Hypocrisy is rife. I've worked with authoritarian directors and managers, who accused me of being too stubborn just because I respectfully disagreed with their opinion.

Personality criticism

I've often received performance review feedback that addressed my personality, rather than my work. For example, that I need to be more extroverted, need to partake in playing computer games with the team, need to adjust my communication style. Several women have told me that they needed to change the way they dress at work to t-shirts and jeans in order to be accepted and taken seriously. Wearing more feminine clothes reduced their perceived credibility.

Pressure into management

Engineers can choose to remain individual contributors or take on people management roles. Managers acknowledge my strong technical skills, and I ask for more challenging and impactful projects, but am frequently pressured to manage people instead. This feedback consistently appears in my performance reviews from both peers and managers - it is heavily implied that my duty is to nurture, coach, mentor. A manager even stated that I am selfish for wanting to develop my own technical skills.

Administrative duties

Women in the team are expected to perform administrative duties, such as organizing team building and social events, taking meeting notes and writing documentation. We are penalized for not doing these duties, but are given no recognition when we do.

Conclusion

Wow, this turned out to be a novel! If you read down to here, thank you so much!