zlacker

>>femfos+(OP)
This meshes with an experience I had a few years into my career which I'll never forget and had definitely influenced and will continue to influence my future interactions with women in tech.

I, cis white guy in the bay, was hired as a consultant to help build out a product and was pair programming with a woman founder & new engineer and made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something of the sort. This was later brought up as something that they interpreted as some kind of sexism which completely caught me off guard and put me in a very awkward position of having to respond to that and explain that it was just poorly phrased, not sexism.

In the grand scheme this was very minor situation, e.g. no managers, HR, or social media involved, just between a few people on the project, but it's something I'll never forget and had colored how I interact with women going forward.

Basically I just want to avoid that ever happening again because if you're on the "No I'm not sexist" side of the argument, you've basically already lost in how society engages these days.

>>throwa+T11
> made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something of the sort

Not saying you weren't the subject of over-reaction, or not, but I think this is an example of sub-par feedback. It would be better to point out the issues in concrete terms, and say this is something that should be addressed, and why. And if you can't do that, you should ruminate on it until you can reify whether it is wrong, and what ought to be done, and why. Do this with anybody. If they argue with you, they'll be arguing only on technicalities, not personalities.

>>h0l0cu+bD1
It has only been in recent years that I have even been able to articulate what the issues are with the code of some junior developers. I was fortunate to find "Semantic Compression" by Casey Muratori and now I have something I can point to and language to use. Before that, junior devs may have perceived the feedback as either an undue imposition of my taste, intimidation or (if any of them had ever been a woman) toxic masculinity.

Should we refrain from giving feedback before we have fully articulated the principles by which we would like our code to be written? What about the abundance of tacit knowledge that we can only hope others to learn by osmosis?

>>mbar84+S32
> Should we refrain from giving feedback before we have fully articulated the principles by which we would like our code to be written? What about the abundance of tacit knowledge that we can only hope others to learn by osmosis?

I think these are fair questions. Reflecting back on a younger and more arrogant self, I can see that I was quite more pushy with my opinions. And they were that, opinions. Having them challenged when I was no longer the best coder in the room was how I grew, but that required speaking in clear language, and having clear arguments. I think the sooner you learn to do this, the better, and it might challenge some bad ideas that you've held dear.