My car needs to go on a diet 💀 #PookieAndWessie

K done now with the DEIB stuff, back to how PHP broke the internet.

Someone asked me yesterday what they could do to be a better ally to women, POC, trans people etc in IT.

My answer: ✨ be a Jeroen ✨

Earlier this year I was a guest on a podcast where some vulgar misogynist jokes were made at me. It visibly threw me off. I was there to talk about my work.

I left with a not great feeling and received many questions and comments afterwards. I really appreciated people like @jeroen94704 and @JeroenBaten and a few others calling it out.

Jeroens are good people.

Anywho, it is what it is. Lets see if we can organize something adjacent to #FOSDEM or with the Community devroom.

And btw, I do have to note that I consider 99% of the white men that I usually work with to be well intended allies. I'm sure that many of #FOSDEM 's visitors would have proudly stuck our cool 'not a tech bro' stickers to their laptops. ❤️

@fosdem
These stats don't even mention other intersectionalities based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, ableness, etc, which are equally impactful.

The #FOSS ecosystem might be missing out on incredibly talented contributors. Which were exactly the type of people we wanted to attract to #FOSDEM27.

@fosdem Now for some numbers.

Women are about 9.8% of OSS contributors; only 5% of projects have women as core developers.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.08777

The Covid 19 pandemic had a huge impact on female public code contributions.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.07278

For women who aren’t project insiders, acceptance of PR's falls from 71.8% to 62.5% when their Github profile made their gender identifiable. Aka documented bias.
https://www.scrippsnews.com/science-and-tech/gender-bias-in-open-source-coding-may-be-tech-s-latest-setback

Lol.

#php #php2shell

Anywho, after Capgemini I joined Mama Cash which, as a feminist fund, was a breath of fresh air. I got to build their open source stack and started going to #FOSDEM.

"A sea of white men" would be an understatement. It was intimidating. I felt like such an imposter. Barely anyone looked like me. I remember being super impressed by a talk by @onepict 🫶

I really liked the #FOSS ecosystem. Sure, there were a few awkward encounters, but overall @fosdem always has a great vibe.

Anecdotally, how not to do inclusive leadership.

I had a senior manager whose wife had broken both arms on a cycling trip and he was complaining NON-STOP about now having to do everything at home while working fulltime. When I pointed out that I also did everything at home while working fulltime, and I was fine, he said "yeah but it comes natural to you" (plural you, 'jullie' in Dutch). This was in a team meeting. The same manager would often try to give secretarial tasks. Fun times.

Me and the literal 6 or so other women in this giant engineering dept even teamed up and participated in a hackathon. There were like 200 men and us in our pink sweaters :')

We made a food tracking app or something dumb, so we didn't win, but I do remember being a bit uncomfortable sitting a hanger with 200 men overnight. The guys didn't engage much with us. It was fine, but not necessarily welcoming.

Without this DEI program, I wouldn't have worked in IT. Again, grateful to Capgemini ❤️

Unfortunately I now worked in corporate IT. I was the only woman in every team. A self taught junior dev. The micro aggressions that I had to deal were _insane_.

Daily:
- expected to get coffee and take notes
- ignored, side eyed or talked over
- expected to write CSS as a Java dev because "girls are good at that"
- SO MANY weird and inappropriate jokes and comments
- weird invites to a senior devs house

First of all, ✨ I was a DEI hire once ✨

Ya girl had studied PolSci, and didn't have the attention span yet for her big girl job as a policy worker in Parliament, so she applied for a junior dev role. I already knew some programming, because as students we were always protesting something, and protesters need a website (html, css, javascript, php).

Capgemini gave me a Java bootcamp. Quote: "this will look great for our diversity numbers." Despite the wording, I'm still grateful they hired me. ❤️

In honor of #FOSDEM rejecting our Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity, and Belonging (DEIB) track, and time permitting, I will be posting numbers about diversity in tech and my personal experiences in IT today.

Feel encouraged to share numbers and experiences as well ❤️

Also, considering some of our more corporate organizers, I quote from our proposal:

✨️ [This track] is not an advertising podium for large organisations or businesses. Talks should come from lived experience in real communities. ✨️

We had an inclusive coalition of organisations willing to sponsor speakers, we were designing cool "not a techbro" stickers, and just lots of cool ideas to platform #FOSS people we generally don't see at #FOSDEM.

At a time where female representation in #opensource is at 9.8% (let alone any other intersectionalities), tech bro culture is infiltrating open source projects, and marginalized communities increasingly rely on these FOSS alternatives, we thought this track would be a no brainer.

I'm actually a bit upset about this. 🙁

@RosannaSibora , @_elena and I, and a whole coalition of open source orgs were hoping to organize a track at #FOSDEM27 about Diversity, Equality, Inclusivity and Belonging (DEIB) in #FOSS.

It got rejected.

https://fosstodon.org/@RosannaSibora/117475238625142335

Something is brewing in Europe... 🇪🇺

There are protests in France against the state of education, in Spain against the housing crisis, in Italy against the cost of living, in Albania against corruption and in Belgium because Belgium.

https://www.ft.com/content/d8df36c2-7e8c-4cfb-ad9e-e6e954fea4b9?syn-25a6b1a6=1

I need to buy a new headset for work. Full honesty plz: will I still be taken seriously if I rock up with a pink headset? 🌸

There's something so dystopian about these AI agents reaching out for invites.

#Mastodon #Fosstodon #AI #deadinternettheory