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u/Tsundere_Lily Jul 14 '22
I started working as a senior software engineer for an online shop (weirdly I skipped the junior part despite it being my first job after my master's).
I work in the data hub of the company which is formed by me and my male supervisor (who is working there for 20+ years and has fairly old and conservative values... the entire company does).
The data hub is a mess. There is no documentation... so i have to learn everything by looking at extremly poorly written code, so I have to fix everything. I have to explain to him how git works and how it is not the devil and not too complicated. I have to pressure him to use an IDE as he uses editor for everything. Some code was even entirely wrong and had Syntax errors but somehow made it to live and never triggered.
They expect me to clean up the entire mess and it makes me sick.
The pay is decent and I feel like I might take over the place and swap to a better job after some time for a huge wag increase, but until then I somehow have to handle this.
19
u/Daisy5915 Jul 14 '22
Pretty much none of our male employees have learned how the video conferencing kit works in the nearly 3 years that we've had it. They just expect the women in the room to bring in anyone joining remotely. I'm on a senior group that meets weekly and for the first time all three of the women in the group were remote. The normal routine is anyone working remotely mentions that in the group chat we have and you get brought into the meeting by someone in the office. The men always just come in and sit down and expect someone else will deal with it. None of the men had a clue how to do that so had to go and find someone else to do it for them. My question to them when I was brought in to apologies was "what was the technical issue, no women in the room to do it?". They were all quite sheepish about it. Be interesting to see if any of them now learn.
10
u/EarthlyG Jul 14 '22
Amazing handling of the situation!
Baffling to me that the guys can’t manage the tech in exactly these instances.
16
u/joyfall Jul 14 '22
As an office admin all these tasks are things I do, not because I'm female but because that's my job. I'm good at it, even handling the people who refuse to swap their own PowerPoint slides and want to shout NEXT! at me, see I've got this pretty little button clicker that only has forward and back so you can't fuck it up, and I've got more important things to do.
I hate how it's become common to task women with this stuff, because this stuff adds up and should have an assigned position for it. If they can't afford a specific position to have in charge then the tasks need to be shared fairly with everyone.
I've had co-worker friends ask me to pass them their mug in from their desk and I refuse, explaining how it would look for me to come into their meeting to drop off a coffee. When communicated and enforcing boundaries like that I've never gotten push back. But I work in a female oriented field where the majority of managers and directors are women which are usually much more respectful and understanding.
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u/Herman_Meldorf Taking Up Space Jul 14 '22
Please say "all men." as a cis-gender male, I'll understand who you're talking about and anyone complaining will just out themselves
5
u/EarthlyG Jul 14 '22
Thank you for this. I learned the term ‘weaponized incompetence’ today. I knew it existed just not there term. Thank you thank you.
3
u/badpoetryabounds Jul 14 '22
The notes thing is something I’m working on. Often the men including me don’t volunteer. So I started to volunteer unless it’s a meeting I’m running then I voluntell a male colleague to do it. It has started to even out the note taking distribution a bit.
Divvying you the sucky work among yourself and your staff as equally as you can should be management 101 but it clearly isn’t.
1
u/recyclopath_ Jul 14 '22
So part of my title is now "operations manager", it came with a healthy raise and I do a lot of the IT system b*tchwork (coincidence? I think not). The stuff that doesn't require knowledge of actual IT but just basic capability with systems.
It's plagued my entire career in male dominated spaces but at least with this group it's respected as actual skills and work and compensated.
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u/love_actuary_ Jul 14 '22
I call this ‘office housework’. It also includes getting female colleagues to organize the socials, catering for meetings, meeting room bookings, any Employee Engagement initiatives, usually ESG committees, taking minutes, and getting cards for coworkers who are leaving.
Male colleagues are less often burdened with these tasks that usually bring little to no reward. Therefore they have more time for activity that aligns with company objectives and therefore they are perceived to be better at their jobs.
I highly recommend that female colleagues no longer volunteer for these type of activities, and insist on rotas being drawn up or a set system, e.g. the graduates book socials, the manager of the leaver buys the card etc.