Stories like these are why I laugh whenever someone mentions improving the “pipeline” of diverse students graduating with tech industry-ready skills: Why? So we can get more women and people of color into a field that’s going to chew them up and spit them out, all while telling them to smile more or making their ethnicity the butt of jokes? So we can tell more of them to speak up in meetings—while never acknowledging the fact that speaking up is often what leads them to be seen as “abrasive” or “difficult”?
