Merge Conflict

I'm just minding my own business, focusing on fixing a bug before tomorrow's release. Suddenly some guy appears beside me. An engineer from another team. "Since Matt is not here, I need your help with an urgent problem," he begins. It's obvious that he'd rather talk to Matt. But Matt is on vacation, so he has no choice but to talk to me. I listen to his problems and tell him what to do. He is not convinced and begins arguing. Another colleague overhears us and tells him the same thing. This time, he thanks the guy and walks off without a word to me. It's not the first time I get the brush off from casual colleagues outside my team, and it won't be the last. If you're a woman in a predominantly male workforce, you are used to being contradicted, snubbed, and ignored. It is the unspoken modus operandi of most large tech firms. In recent years, due to various HR policies, outright prejudices have mostly been made taboo. They are seldom verba...

I have a confession. When it comes to necessary evils in the workplace, the one thing I hate more than interviewing for a job is to interview someone for a job. How can that be? You ask. It's true that as an interviewer I am not on the hook to answer random and esoteric technical questions for four to five hours straight. It's true that my next job is not on the line, and after an hour of interview I can go back to my regular tasks and put it all behind me. And it's true that during an interview I am in the driver's seat, on this side of the table and thus in a position of power--I get to say yay or nay, hire/no-hire, thumbs-up/thumbs-down. Still, it is something I dread all the time. Being the only woman on my team and one of only a handful of senior female engineers in my organization, I get called on more often than I'd like for interview duties. I think it has something to do with the company's inclusive hiring policies and gender representation guidel...