If you read just that, okay fine. But if you're going to the front page of the website, you'd also see PROGRAMMER there. (Way to, by the way, cherry pick examples. Why not use this page? http://www.gayle.com/projects/ Oh, right, because it doesn't prove the straw man you'd built.)

But that wasn't the example referenced. The example referenced about doing a talk on coding topics (data structures, algorithms, code) for an hour and having some ask about my "prior" role as a recruiter.

Why not use that page? The link is buried in the "writing" dropdown. To even find the link I had to "view source", which I only did after you pointed it out.

I went to your homepage, and "programmer" is just a small piece of the subtitle. I look at your first 6 panels, 4 of which (the leftmost 4) are about recruiter/interview stuff, 1 is programming, and 1 is "other". I scroll down to your blog and books, and everything on the homepage is about recruiting or interviewing.

If the vast majority of your homepage is recruiting, it's hardly unreasonable to think you are a recruiter. That's true even if you slap the word "programmer" and "CS degree" in a couple of places.

If you believe your webpage portrays you as a programmer, I suggest you might want to work on your messaging. Consider the possibility that your in-person messaging is similarly off.

(Of course, you seem pretty successful as a recruiter/author/interview coach, so perhaps leave the messaging as is and just be more aware of it.)

... but that wasn't the situation described. This isn't about someone going to my webpage - or to a particular subpage - and concluding "recruiter".

This is about someone talking to me AFTER A TALK ABOUT CODING and starting a sentence with, "So when you were a recruiter at Google, ..."

On your site, you advertise that you give talks on HR and recruiting and every talk listed is on that topic. To be clear, "Cracking the coding interview" is a recruiting/HR talk even if coding is involved.

I wasn't there. I can't rule out the possibility that you a) didn't list this talk on your site, b) discussed a completely different topic than all your other listed talks and c) convey a completely different impression than your online persona.

But I hope you can understand why I, and many others, find this claim a bit implausible.

Your analogy is strange. You realize I have never worked as a recruiter, right? This is the second time you've referred to me as a recruiter. I do things in the intersection of interviewing and technology space, yes, but I've never worked as a recruiter. I know you know that I'm not a recruiter, so... whatcha up to over there? Whatcha trying to prove?

This talk discussed coding at far more depth than the vast majority of recruiters could do. How many recruiters could tell you about big O time? Binary trees? Breadth first search? Not many.

Also, are you actually trying to argue that gender isn't a factor in how people perceive someone?

Tell me how you would like to brush off these examples:

1. Someone asking me at a conference exclusively for programmers where you MUST be a programmer to attend [there are no company booths or anything like that] if I've ever considered learning to code.

2. Someone asking me in my first week at Google if I'm new to marketing. This was in an office that was exclusively engineering. There was no marketing team there. I was just walking down the hall and said someone came up to say this.

3. At a small event where at least 50% of the people worked for Microsoft or Amazon, someone starting off the conversation with "So I assume you don't work for Microsoft or Amazon."

4. At an event which was very, very programmer heavy, someone walking up and saying "hey it must be great for you to meet all these programmers. At least you've got someone to fix your computer."

5. Someone referring to me at CES, where I was staffing the Google booth, as a "booth babe." (Keep in mind that CES doesn't really have booth babes, nor was I dressed at all like a booth babe.

6. Someone actually specifically admitting that he was surprised that I was teaching technical interview topics. He specifically said that he assumed otherwise because I was female.

7. On a technical interview video on YouTube, 2/3rds of the comments are either overtly sexual or overtly sexist (e.g., "I would've hit on the interviewer. I wouldn't be able to focus on the problems!", "Good tits").

This stuff happens all the time. Note that #1 through #5 had nothing to do with my working in the interview space. #6 and #7 is pretty clearly gender related.

Sorry, I should have been precise about "recruitment consultant" rather than "recruiter". Gives you a tangential and irrelevant point to hit me with.

As a person outside HR, I mentally lump the entire field into the one corner I interact with. I know it's technically wrong - once when I worked at a big company I met a non-recruiter HR person. But it's fairly normal.

Similarly, to non-tech people, I'm a programmer rather than a data scientist, and I used to be a professor rather than postdoc ("wtf is a postdoc?" "it's like professor but I get paid less").

Also, are you actually trying to argue that gender isn't a factor in how people perceive someone

I'm arguing that when a person who advertises themselves online as being in HR and gives talks about HR, it's plausible that people might perceive them as being in HR for non-sexist reasons.

Making the leap from "HR as a whole" to "the only part of HR I ever interact with" is just human nature.

> I'm arguing that when a person who advertises themselves online as being in HR and gives talks about HR, it's plausible that people might perceive them as being in HR for non-sexist reasons.

But again, the situation isn't "someone looked at my website and thought I was a recruiter" or "someone saw that I was doing hiring consulting and thought I was a recruiter".

It's giving a talk which is talking in depth about technical topics, far more so than the vast majority of recruiters could do, and then having someone say, "So when you were a recruiter at Google..."

This is just one little example. Not a big deal. Except that things like this happen all the time. You can't just continue to brush them off as "oh, well, it was just because you do this other stuff that the person didn't even know about."

I don't think it's fruitful to engage yummyfajitas in conversation. In my opinion/limited and indirect experience, he cares a little about being right, a lot about being provocative, and not at all for understanding experiences other than his own.

I've got to say I'm impressed how persistent you are in explaining the same thing over and over again to someone who clearly doesn't want to get it.

I'm glad you challenge people's stupid assumptions.

Apart from #5 where they may have been hitting on you (insert mental clicking sound) and #7 where the comment level is renowned for .. well adjectives don't really describe it enough, I can feel your frustration from the other side of the world. I'm (not so) happy to admit I'm guilty of making assumptions of woman in the tech space, and I mentally slap myself when I do. It's a pain when people make assumptions of you, being young I get it occasionally but no where near the level woman and minorities do. Given my occasionally short fuse, I'd probably snap once or twice a week.

This is something which doesn't make sense to me. Why are they assuming that you WERE a recruiter, why aren't they assuming you ARE a recruiter if this is due to sexism? Clearly they are assuming that you ARE a programmer, but used to be a recruiter.

Assuming a person USED to adhere to a gender/race/group stereotype is a weird thing.

If it was a man who claimed to be a programmer and who wrote the book on passing technical interviews for programmers, would you doubt he was a programmer?

But because she's a woman who knows both programming and job interviews, you latch onto her recruiting aspect, and not her programming side. And note that people assumed she was a recruiter and not a programmer after she'd been talking code for an hour, not after she'd been talking job interviews for an hour.

It's not just about what she is, it's about how people choose to look at her, based on her gender.

There is a difference between saying that her audience didn't think she was currently a programmer and saying they didn't think she had ever worked as a programmer.

If you look at her blog, you will not assume she writes much code now days. If you look at the topics she speaks on, you will probably assume she doesn't write much code. If you look at what consulting services she provides, you'll assume that you can't hire her to write code for your company.

Perhaps this one talk was not listed on her site. Perhaps no one in the audience looked up her website to find out who she was while she was speaking. Perhaps, the speakers information was completely different than the way she presents what she does on her website.

Or maybe they didn't think she is currently working as a programmer because...well it doesn't currently look like she is primarily writing code for a living.

But, as I've said repeatedly, the comment wasn't about what I'm currently doing.

Oh, and by the way -- still write a ton of code.

Speaking for myself, if Gayle was a man, I would doubt he as a programmer as well. It's overall image, not gender. In fact, one of the posters highlighted in the blog post said just that, even though the author chose to take it as sexist anyway.

Um, actually, this is what the highlighted post said:

"when you 'talk about' code for an hour and still ppl think you're a recruiter, that's not about gender - that's about your tech skill: people don't think you are a good coder. You looked like a saleman in that case if you are a guy or a recruiter if you are a girl. The key thing here is not your gender. You were looked down upon not because you are a female engineer, it's solely because you are an incapable coder thus don't deserve the certain level of respect you expected."

So, first of all, the person is denying that it was about gender while basically saying that it is. If man -> sales If woman -> recruiter

That... sounds like gender to me.

Moreover, this person was suggesting that "incapable coder" -> not a coder. Which is sort of weird.

> So, first of all, the person is denying that it was about gender while basically saying that it is. If man -> sales If woman -> recruiter

Thus, the gender bias is as to which non-technical role the poster puts you in, not whether they think you are non-technical.

Yes, I was wrong to indicate there was nothing sexist at all about the post. I was thinking primarily of the non-technical part.

> Moreover, this person was suggesting that "incapable coder" -> not a coder. Which is sort of weird.

I see that sentiment expressed about programmers of all types. It's the idea that if you are not at a certain level you are a faker, and thus not really a "coder". I see such accusations leveled at people constantly, without regard to gender.

The core point I was making is that you are not being typecast as non-technical for being a woman. You are being typecast for the writings for which you are best known, not for being a woman.

EDIT: So, I posted this reply from my comments view four hours after my GP post. Then I went back and read your other comments. In that context, I change my opinion. The submitted blog post needs the details you posted in this thread, and on it's own does present a very strong argument.

No recruiter, out of every recruiter I have ever spoken with from Google down to smaller startups, has ever discussed code with me beyond what languages I know and if I have experience writing tests.

It is absurd to talk with someone about code for an hour and assume they are a recruiter.

that is absurd, completely and totally absurd. In fact I have trouble even imagining the most misogynistic of people sitting in on a talk about "coding" and coming to the conclusion that the person talking is a recruiter.

What was the talk on? Coding? Seems a bit broad, what was it actually on? Was it about passing technical questions in for programmer interviews? Details about some of the questions and ways methodologies to reach solutions?

If something seems utterly absurd to you, it might be because it is.

> This talk discussed coding at far more depth than the vast majority of recruiters could do. How many recruiters could tell you about big O time? Binary trees? Breadth first search? Not many.

Source https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291665

Interesting you can't imagine this, because as a woman, similar situations as Gayle's have happened to me and to every female programmer I know. I have talked about code to people at language and framework-specific meetups only for them to later assume I'm not a programmer.

Perhaps she was somebody who figured out that writing books and consulting about interviews and recruiting was more lucrative? I'm not about to doubt somebody's credentials because she saw and opportunity and took it.

Also, who cares what field she says she's in? She's clearly making a lot of money on her books, why doesn't isn't she considered primarily an author? I don't think it's a problem that there aren't enough women who say that they are programmers. I think the issue is gender bias in the workplace seemingly causing a lack of women in technology rolls.

The example referenced is actually about someone asking "So when you were a recruiter at Google, ..." This is after a talk I gave on coding that covered data structures, algorithms, etc.

If someone refers to be as an author now, that's totally fine.