Ruchi Sanghavi, the first female computer technician to work at Facebook, has spoken out about how she struggled to fit into the company as a woman.
Ruchi, who’s 32 and started at Facebook in 2005 when it employed just 30 people, claimed that, ‘People in the start–up world aren’t afraid of voicing their opinions; they’re not afraid of calling ideas stupid. You need to be able to defend yourself. My attitude was the same as that of everyone else around me… But people weren’t used to having a woman adopt that kind of attitude.’
As a consequence she says that she gained a reputation for being ‘extremely aggressive’.
She went on to say: ‘It’s not pleasant, having to fight to prove what you can do, and being aggressive, and being opinionated and asking for opportunities… You’re viewed as not being a very nice person.’
It’s a familiar cry from the tech world. Allegations of under-representation of women and sexist ‘boys clubs’ seem to be in the news almost daily. At the end of last year, the New York Times reported that the doors to the technology world ‘remain virtually closed to women’.
Ruchi’s comments come as another high-profile tech start-up Github joins the long list of Silicon Valley companies struggling against allegations of sexism – including TechCrunch Disrupt, Business Insider –as programmer Julie Ann Horvath departed from the company dramatically (via the medium of Twitter) following harassment from a senior member of staff.
Just in case this isn’t all depressing enough, check out new company CodeBabes – the ultimate solution for those who want to be Mark Zuckerberg, but keep getting distracted by things like boobs.
‘Want to learn to code, but having trouble paying attention?’ CodeBabes’ teaching method is simple: each time you get a coding question right, hot babes will take off an item of clothing. Because wearing little-to-no clothing for the benefit of men is totally the way women should be regarded in the tech world, amiright lads?
facepalm
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Follow Jess on Twitter @Jess_Commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.