Answer by Cassidy Williams, Student at Iowa State, Future Venmo Engineer, on Quora,
I'm a female CS student who generally knows her crap. I had 10 job offers within 2 months of my senior year, and I go to a lot of hackathons, and I've won 2 (and been in the top for a few more).
Just establishing some credibility.
Okay.
I genuinely like hackathons, there's an amazing energy there that makes you just want to get stuff DONE.
Here's why I think more females don't go, and why I sometimes hesitate:
- A majority of the time, someone asks, "what does it feel like to be the only woman in the room?"
- Women's bathrooms are turned co-ed (I know that this is because there are a ton of guys, but seriously, we want our space and guys can have theirs).
- The reps at companies that are female seem to always be in HR, which sucks.
- Because you always feel like you have to prove yourself to get any credibility.
That last point is probably my biggest issue. Look at how I started my answer. I started off explaining that I knew something. Whenever I am in a group of coder guys, I feel like I have to establish myself among them. I have actually been told by a few that if they didn't know I was a good coder, we probably wouldn't have been friends. What kind of statement is that??
Anyway, this is turning into a rant, but that is why I think they/we don't go as often.
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Answer by an Anonymous user on Quora,
You're going to have to take for word my background: I'm a female university student studying cs, have had several internships at top companies, and have gone to about 8 hackathons since I started to learn how to code three years ago. I've been to university, internal/company, and public hackathons.
I don't go to hackathons to try to win prizes; I go for the joy of building a prototype of something I'm passionate about with a team.
Fact: At 6 of the 8 hackathons I've been to, my team has placed in the top three or won a category.
That sounds great, right? So, what's the problem? I'm a woman and I apparently do well at hackathons. Woo hoo!
I have not gone to a single hackathon in the past 8 months. I don't know when I will attend one again.
I'm cracking under the pressure. I'm stressed out.
As I have progressed in my undergraduate studies, I am increasingly on the receiving end of comments such as these:
- Here, design our front end. Girls are good at art.
- You had male teammates on your hackathon team. They probably did all the work.
- You won an award/got the job because you're a girl.
- The bathroom is over there, in case you need to fix your make up. (Hint, I rarely wear make up.)
- You wrote that component? Oh, probably with lots of help from that guy over there.
- (After walking into the lab) Oh hey, it's the girl.
- (At a hackathon) You the designer for the team?
- What's your favorite <insert obscure topic here that I've heard of once before>? Oh, you don't know about this? What? Really? Wow, how can you call yourself a CS major? Girls are so dumb! scoffs
I don't just hear these at university. I've heard them at my internships. I've heard them at hackathons. I've heard it during an interview.
I don't know why people feel the need to throw these at others. I thought the hurdle was when I switched into engineering and people sneered at the thought. I thought that as upperclassmen with industry experience, my peers would recognize that I am competent and put my heart and soul into every project.
At one point, I lost all self-confidence in my computer science skills. You might think it's stupid for comments to get to you, but imagine getting at least one of these comments every day. It wears me down. There's only so much I can do to keep my chin up and keep going. I don't want to deal with this anymore.
The love that I've once poured into hackathon projects is fading away quickly. It seems that many people don't even care about what I built or which components I worked on. All that matters is that I was female.
Once, my team was interviewed for a local paper about our hack project. I was so excited to talk about the project! I had proposed the idea to my teammates, and the rest was history.
When the reporter turned to me, he asked what it felt like to be a woman at the hackathon.
Way to make me feel out of place! I talked to my team about it afterwards, and everyone was very uncomfortable about it. I'm lucky to have a supporting team who didn't pressure me to answer the question and instead highlighted that I was actually an asset to the team (who would have thought?).
I love the thrill of building that project that I have invested so much time to think about beforehand. I'd like to think that I'm a reliable team player who usually worked on back end components. Judges have deemed my teams' projects worthy of some sort of recognition, so the projects were probably good, right?
I can't believe I'm doubting my own skill set as I write this. I know what I can and cannot do. I won't lie about being somewhat clueless if you ask me to do something in python, because I spend most of my time with javascript and rails.
Now, I refuse to attend a hackathon without a solid team and well thought out idea. I'm afraid that failing to place or having a product that is less than adequate will lead to so much contempt from my peers. That stress will affect my ability to think clearly while I am put into a room to build a cool thing with a time limit.
It's another excuse for more people to tell me I'm not cut out for the field. It's a strike against women because we "aren't good enough." I don't want to fend off guys walking by our team's table making comments about how there's a woman in the house. It's a distraction to my team, and they don't deserve to have to deal with that.
These sound like excuses. Maybe they are. They're now what I think of first when I hear a hackathon is coming up.
Everyone is watching, because I am a woman.
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Answer by an Anonymous user on Quora,
I'm a female software engineer who works at Facebook. I say that so you know that I don't totally suck at what I'm doing. I'm not an idiot.
I've thought about attending a hackathon. I'm curious. I want to. I'm still thinking about it. But I'm scared.
If I go, I won't just blend in. People will know I'm there. You can't just blend in as a woman, you know?
I WILL BE WATCHED.
Going to a hackathon as a woman (and an attractive one, too) is like singing on stage or dancing in front of a crowd.
How do you feel about doing those things? Are you eager to be put on stage, being vulnerable, with people just expecting you to fail and assuming that you will?
Shit. I don't want to do that.
If I am to be totally honest, I'm not sure I am good enough. There's that little insecurity gnawing at me.
Yeah, okay, I passed Facebook's interviews. I'm smart, and I know my data structures and algorithms stuff. Whatever. That doesn't mean that I'm good at hackathon-style programming.
Hackathons test a different side of programming. I don't necessarily know the ins and outs of various libraries and how to whip up a prototype quickly. I could have any number of annoying server configuration issues.
I probably will fail. With everyone watching me. Awesome.
Then, on top of that, I have to deal with all the usual shit at these sort of things.
- Telling people that, no, I'm not a designer or a marketer or a recruiter. (And finding a way to tell them that when they haven't really asked so you can't explicitly tell them they're wrong but you know - you just know - the assumption they're making.)
- Finding a team who wants to work with me. My female friends don't want to go either. (Sorry, was that "female friends", plural? That should be singular. I only have one programmer friend who's of my gender.) My male friends ... I don't know. I don't feel like they'd want to go either. And I don't really want to deal with their "who? you? you want to do a hackathon?" comment. I don't want to push them to come with me only to have them begrudgingly agree or just outright reject me.
- The exhaustion of having to work extra hard to try to convince people that I'm actually a good engineer. It's so ****ing tiring. Especially when I myself privately fear that they're right. Of course you can't even call people out when they assume you're less technical ("no no, it wasn't that you are female! Oh, of course not. It was just that I saw you mention something about the icon, so I assumed you were a designer"), because then you're that girl. You're that ****ing feminist who always assumes sexism.
- Constantly feeling out of place. I'm not like the rest of these people at the hackathon, you know.
I'm not saying these are good reasons. They're not. I know that I should just say, **** it, who cares if I fail so publicly?
But, s**t, I don't see you going up to sing and dance on stage. It's so much easier just to sit at home, go out with your friends, and forget that hackathons even exist. After all, that's what you do all the other weekends anyway, right?
I'll just sit out this hackathon, thanks. Maybe next time.
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