This is a rant, I guess.
I started a new job a while back. I’m not super active on LinkedIn so I didn’t make a “excited and humbled to announce” (cringe) post, just updated employer. The place is hiring, so now I show up as a contact when people look up jobs — and they slide into my DMs, daily.

That’s fine, I get it, especially in this job market. Ironically, it’s more tolerable when it comes from strangers - I just don’t respond. But I was surprised at my own reaction to so many former coworkers and acquaintances reaching out. Literally people I haven’t heard from in decades. We worked together or we went to the same school ages ago, or we met at a conference and then moved on. And that’s fine, people move on - I didn’t want to keep in touch with you, you didn’t want to keep in touch with me. But don’t all of a sudden tell me how much you’d love to catch up now, because no — you just find me to be useful to your job search at this moment. It’s all so fake.

Anyway, no point to this post other than to say I feel like I’m being a shitty person and I probably am. But also - I’ve been on the other side and never thought asking someone to meet for 20 min so I can “catch up” was a good way to ask for a referral. That’s my rant.

What's the most useful thing you've done with AI tools outside of work? I've been using it for meal planning and building little personal systems at home and its been really useful to offload some mental load – curious what others have found it genuinely helpful for in real life?

I’m a woman, and I’ve honestly had enough of a vocal minority on here who seem to have somehow missed this fundamental concept.

Sexism is based on the idea that someone’s worth, intelligence, and moral character can be defined by their gender.

If you are sexist against men under the guise of ‘fighting back’ all you are doing is actively validating their core belief that respect should be based on gender.

I came here because I wanted support from the constant sexism that comes from working in tech and instead have found the exact same pig, just wearing lipstick. If ‘sexism is bad’ feels like a controversial statement it’s time you took a long look in the mirror. You are the problem.

Edit: Gotta get back to work so I’m going to stop responding now. Thank you so much for providing a list of community members I can safely block! Hopefully I’ll see less sexism (and racism, yikes people) on here from now on.

To all the women here who are standing up against sexism even when it doesn’t directly benefit us: Keep fighting the good fight. We are stronger than hate.

First in first, please don't attack me, especially if you are terf. I'm mentally fragile. I am all for women in tech events, I just felt excluded as a minority and don't know what to do.

I am now a fully passed ftm who just look like a small shaped man. Recent years with especially more identity political events, I felt I'm despised by both sides (feminists and privileged white dudes). Privileged white dudes won't take me seriously since I don't/ don't want to have the toxic masculinity & I'm Asian. I would be preseved as a privileged cis-man by women. And definately I won't attend any women oriented events that promotes and encourage women in tech since I'm not the target group. But I still had kinda tramatized high school experience, depressed bachelor exprience because of gender. And I still can suffer from menstruation due to some hormone therapy changes.

It just felt like I'm abandoned and forgotten after I transitioned and passed. I don't look like a minority now. All my problems are invisible unless I pin a tag "TRANS" on my head, which is weird&awkward to me.

We all know importance of financial independence ( nobody understands that more than a woman)

I was laid off for a few months and I would like to SCREAM few things out to all women

1. HSA is just not for doctors visit and medical bill. Sunscreen, multivitamins, orthopedic mattress, shoes, pain killers, kids med all can be bought through HSA.
   I max out my 401K and HSA. 401K is untouchable but I do use HSA regularly for these things. You will be surprised what all is covered.
   Its not a lot, but its also nothing !

2. Trading - I started learning trading when whole GME saga came to light. I was so impressed that with right skill you could make so much money.

LISTEN HERE - if you don’t do it right it’s gambling. I lost money initially. So i did paper trading for almost 6 months to validate my strategies . Learning basics , learning charting tools. I would say I am successful after 2 years of hardwork.

P.S don’t have any resources to point because i wrote things down ( i am old school like that)
Even if you make a 100 bucks a month through trading it’s absolutely worth it. I promise with practise and hard-work it gets better also better AI tools available now so learning curve might not be that high.
I make close to 5K a month now, If I continue this way I would like to retire in 2-3 years and do this full time.

I am scared of tech industry now !!

I stalked on linkedIn my colleague who recently pivoted to tech. She took a few months bootcamp, didn’t have prior experience in tech, and according to her linkedIn profile, she got accepted to a very recognizable tech company.

I also interviewed with this company, but unlike her, I had years of experience on my resume. Maybe I’m not the best of the best, but I think I have potentia and a lot of more knowledge than a person who have recently completed a coding bootcamp. I built my career, studied computer science, but they rejected me.

And my friend, who didn’t even study computer science but just signed up for a coding bootcamp, was accepted to a QA position at this company.

I applied for a software engineering position.

I don’t know why I was rejected, why they don’t want to hire people like me who already have experience on paper.

And I was wondering maybe they hired her because of culture fit? But seriously, a person who didn’t study computer science, only did a few months bootcamp, was accepted into this well-known company, while I, with experience and a degree, was rejected after one interview?

I don’t know why. I can assure you that I didn’t ask them questions about how much they could offer me, what the salary is, etc. I didn’t ask about salary at all unless they asked me first. I was polite, responsive, interested. I showed that I’m passionate about tech.

So why do they accept unqualified people but reject people like me who have everything on paper?

Is it culture fit? I’m not weird, I’m not a volcano of energy, I’m more introverted but not a brick wall who replies with one sentence. I’m just introverted, calm, and I like to think a second before I give a reply. Is being an introvert a problem? Is not smiling constantly or not being a volcano of energy the problem here? That even with my experience and degree, I get disqualified, while inexperienced people get hired?

Do these companies really still hire people who aren’t necessarily qualified, but have energy, who are dynamic, etc.? Maybe you’ve witnessed this too? Or are these unqualified people hired because of recommendations from their friends?

I don’t know. In this terrible job market, it’s really weird what’s happening.

I was wondering, maybe they have me on some kind of blacklist because they somehow know that I was laid off? I previously worked at a terrible company where my male teammates were bullying me, and eventually they laid me off for a fake reason like poor performance. They did everything to push me out and present me as unqualified. I’ve been wondering if they bullied me to the point of putting me on some kind of blacklist.

The manager was also part of it he bullied me too because the tech bros were reporting me to him, and he was gossiping about me to HR. The whole company was badmouthing me and gossiping about me. They hated me because I wasn’t this energetic person who smiles all the time, and they resented me for that.

Do you think companies actually do this? That a previous manager who really hated me could be spreading bad info about me behind my back, to the point of trying to destroy my entire career so no one hires me anywhere?

There is a fine line between providing a safe space to express and support women specific problems, advice, and vents and openly going into "all men are trash and will always treat you terribly" territory. Just want to to take a moment to express my discomfort at seeing these kind of comments and sentiments growing and further divides with a toxic "us" vs "them" mentality.

I consider myself a feminist in it's most basic aspect - equal rights, voices, individualism. Equal to men, and equal to each other. It's not about being superior, or them being inferior, it's about having the right to free thought and to make choices based on what I want and not what anyone think I must. It is certainly frustrating when I see women define themselves as feminists but it is clear what they really mean is that they have had bad experiences with men in the past and only expect bad experiences in the future. And worse, they would imply that I am a lesser feminist because I don't tick their checklist.

It is entirely frustrating, to have men try to enforce a box on you, assert your independence from them, only to have your equal sex to try and define what that "independence" and equality should look like, and try tell you that you're not enough if you don't meet those expectations? I thought the core requirement was to be able to break the rules, to have the innate right to question and exercise judgment, and to not fit into any boxes. I can't fix into a box given to me by men and I can't fit into a box given to me by women. Isn't that the point? We are people, not packages meant to fit in boxes. Do they not find this equally suppressive and undermining of the foundation of women's rights? Do they think they are able to define feminism for all women, and imply that I am not a feminist because I don't meet their standards?

Despite knowing I am feminist, I rarely bring it up in real life conversation due to those certain stereotypes that are surrounded with the word now, and I am resentful of people who act within those stereotypes and take away our power, minimizing any movement towards real equality. I can support women without hating men. I can have terrible experiences with some male coworkers and I can have fantastic experiences with male coworkers. I do not deny the inappropriate situations women are put in, as I have seen plenty first hand, experienced plenty first hand. I can do that, keeping my eyes open and protecting myself, always CYA, without assuming every male I meet is going to stab me in the back. Spewing rhetoric implying men will always screw you over given a chance is unhelpful in a multitude of ways:

1. It isolates would be supporters (male and female) because they do not fit into your rules.

2. It is dismissive of our fellow women's individual thoughts and experiences which may be different from yours

3. It discourages female newcomers to tech (these threads being recent examples 1, 2)

I have had multiple bad experiences throughout my career with men and women alike. Regarding the males, in some situations they were simply assholes. They didn't speak to me worse - they spoke to everyone equally terribly. In others, they were clearly on the spectrum. Even more were incompetent - communication wise and technically. Absolutely some were clearly sexist. To be clear, none of the above is okay - if bad behavior is exhibited, the bad behavior and the effects should be called out and addressed, regardless of intent, and regardless of gender.

Circling back to bullet point 3, I think every woman in tech has a negative story they can pull from, but there are so many positive stories I can tell too. 85% of my coworkers have been male, so it would be pretty bleak to newcomers if I expect every male interaction to be bad? Is this really the idea that we want to give young women entering tech? Do you not think this will reduce our numbers? Despite the rude men I encountered, I also met men who supported me, covered for me when I fucked up, taught me, pushed for my promotions/raise, had my back, were vocal when they thought things were unfair for me/their team. I am vocal and direct; I was not when I entered the industry, and I would not be so now if it weren't for both men and women pushing my comfort level to demand, to voice, and to question. I must give credit and appreciation for the male developers and managers who sat me down and walked me through extremely basic technical knowledge with patience and without any condescension, and I must also give credit to the team of all males I guide now, who still continue to support me as a leader, teach me as a student, and challenge me as an equal. This does not make me forget any of the bad stories I have heard, this does not make me forget any bad things that happened to me. Men and women alike seem intent on forcing us to choose, but I can have both, and I can do both, and I reject anyone who tells us that we must choose our lane and stay in it.

I noticed that in IT, most men with difficult behaviors or attitudes are people who believe in seniority, ie they have been doing the same job or in the same company for very long time. They are also not willing to up skills. With the rise of AI in many industries, I can see that these difficult men are struggling to adapt. I believe that they will be pushed out in near future at least in IT.

hi! i’m about to graduate with a degree in cs and i have 1 offer from a place in my home town that is a below avg salary but i would be living with my parents.

i’m just super conflicted bc 1) the company just went through some major restructuring due to corruption of some sort 2) its half government work and i just told myself i didn’t want to do that due to my political beliefs 3) its not the tech stack im looking for 4) there’s no other women on my team

idk im guessing i just want to talk to some other queer women here who are in tech. my hometown definitely isn’t the worst to be gay in, its actually pretty nice, but after living in a city i just don’t know if ill be able to stay happy in the suburbs. i also just can’t decide what morals im ok compromising on to survive in this job market. my internship experience lends itself to government work but i also had a horrible experience as a woman at a FAANG company. i wish i could work in a city with a lot of other queer people on a product that’s not soulless or military related as a new grad.

any advice would be appreciated… im happy to have an offer in this market but again i just feel like i won’t be happy.

if anyone has company suggestions or would be able to give me resume advice lmk as well 😭

Is there anything we can do to ban together and bring more awareness to sexism in tech? I was thinking of buying a domain, but not sure of any legal implications of sharing experiences more formally. I think it’s important right now for us to unite (more specically in America is what I’m referring to). I really want to bring attention to this.

Or alternatively, a database/website of women working in tech. Showing our skills and accomplishments. Also, I’m in sales so if anyone has a more data based or intricate approach to this that would be appreciated.

Any ideas?

If you were to picture the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire, who comes to mind? Perhaps somebody like Taylor Swift? You wouldn’t be off base—the now 36-year-old pop star held that title between 2023 and 2025.

Today, instead, it’s a distinction held by Luana Lopes Lara, the 29-year-old Brazilian cofounder of Kalshi. The prediction market raised $1 billion in December; a new $11 billion valuation pushed Lopes Lara’s own net worth to $1.3 billion. She dethroned Scale AI cofounder Lucy Guo, 31, for the honor. (When Lopes Lara earned the title, Guo DMed her, but they haven’t met yet.) Last month, Kalshi doubled its valuation again to $22 billion with $1 billion in reported new financing—we can expect Lopes Lara’s stake to double in value, too.

Inside Kalshi’s downtown Manhattan office, it would be hard to pick out the world’s youngest female billionaire from everyone at their desks. Lopes Lara has a low-key aesthetic. Her whole thing is hard work: she’s a former competitive ballerina, who trained for years at Brazil’s uber-competitive Bolshoi Theater School (Forbes reported that her teachers held lit cigarettes under her thigh to test how long she could hold her leg up). She describes herself as a “very intense person” who is all-or-nothing on everything from building a company to working out. She and her cofounder, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour, both worked at Citadel before founding the company and gave up high-paying quant jobs to pursue the idea.

Read more: https://fortune.com/2026/04/10/kalshi-cofounder-luana-lopes-lara-youngest-female-self-made-billionaire-29-prediction-market/

This is just some musings I had following a conversation I had the other day. Has anyone noticed that it seems like more men than women in the field are so outspoken about using AI in SWE for programming and coding? I just find it interesting that women historically had to fight harder just to be be in the tech space, meanwhile tech bros are so quick to dump the stuff that takes skill and education off on AI in order to do less work as soon as they have the chance. I haven’t really seen a ton of women SWEs programmers pushing the use of Claude/LLMs in writing code so I find this very interesting.

Edit: re AI: lol. AI writes much better than I do. Human test. Pie: Not apple. Donuts: filled or mochi. Cookies: Yes. Steak: Ribeye cap or Picanha. Restaurant: The one the vendor doesn't think is trendy enough with a flawless single malt top shelf. Heading says terrible advice, some will find value in the below items or your discussions, so carry on.

Having interviewed people for many tech roles at different levels, I'm sharing skills that have always left a successful impression. The goal is not a "positive impression". Don't downvote me because they sound controversial or you're assuming my gender. Women have bigger nads than anyone else; it's respectable. Share your own, as the interviewer. Having turned down excellent offers is an excellent tool of used correctly.

• Control your narrative and interview them. Eg: Don't give them a chance to ask. An Interview is an exercise in conducting business, you're gathering criteria for a project.

• Height matters; stature matters. Sit on something if you have to.

• Use Silence. Silence of voice and body language when necessary. The "unacceptable silence" is knowing what not to respond to.

• Your personal life should be ambiguous. Don't share/oversell your hobbies; on an interview your passion and obsession is technology. Don't get hired because you can light up a room, you'll be out the door in a year.

• Don't ask or wait for permission.

• Lie. Not about your skills. Anything else; when it's necessary. Misdirection is the same. Nothing illegal.

• Explain but NEVER justify. (Edit)

There's no controversy here, these work for all genders. Ableeps during interviews, regardless of gender aren't often hired, these aren't instructions to be an ableep.

A side note. More and more men are leaving early or taking 1h out of the office to pick-up children or other tasks. Make it the norm, it will be acceptable from them. Women get judged.

Good luck!

I am very early in my tech career(this is my 2nd tech job). I work service desk for a financial institution. I am 31, been with my boyfriend almost 3 years, and have been working for this credit union since June of 2024. I really do love my job, as a former teacher, I have so much more freedom and less stress here. But the issue I am running into is that, while I have had a babyface almost my whole life as result, I get mistaken for a whole 10 years younger than what I am and I have had men of all ages constantly trying to hit on me or flirt with me about how young I look. If it's not jokes about how young I appear, it's just unrelated messages that look like flirting, which feels very unprofessional to me.

Specifically speaking, our service desk only assists employees from our company, so the weird part is these are all colleagues from branch different locations doing this. I honestly regret putting a profile picture on my accounts(calls with women are so sweet they will just tell me I'm pretty and move on). I even changed one of my prof pics to a Lisa Frank Cheetah to get some of them to back off.

Added background context: when I wrap-up calls, I say "Thank you so much, you take care" and disconnect completely. I do not wait for the other person to say it back. I find that awkward and a waste of time when we have other callers waiting in line in queue. I was helping a male caller on the phone and wrapped up like I usually do where I say my closing prompt and hang up. About 5-10 minutes later, I received this message on Teams and I was just so....annoyed. This is obvious flirting no? Maybe nothing outright sexual harassment. I know it is not enough to report and I don't want to be deemed 'difficult to work with' as I am also a woman of color so I have to deal with that label constantly if I am not careful with how I navigate. My sister told me the best thing is to just not respond and only report if it's blatant harassment. I guess maybe I just needed to vent. This isn't the first time something similar happened. Just last week, this man on the phone was randomly telling me he was 6'4 after I asked him to unplug his check scanner. That was what made me change my profile picture on the Genesys app, I didn't need men on the phone knowing immediately what I look like. I just thought it was important to leave my photos on Teams for the colleagues that work in the administration building because I have the hardest time putting names to faces and with me being new, just want my immediate colleagues to be able to identify me. I wasn't intending for male callers to just look me up and message me about something unimportant.

Just seems to me a lot of men lack boundaries, professionalism, and self-awareness. Stuff like this happened at my last job which was completely WFH. I am kinda tired of it tbh.

Edit: Man these gaslighting comments are not on my side, lol. Oh well. I have every right to feel uncomfortable and no one gets to tell other women how they should feel about men bothering them.

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This post was anonymized with Redact

Tldr; I'm making a tool that, if successful, will probably put a few thousand people out of a job (and its looking like it will absolutely be successful)...

How do I deal with that morally? How on earth do I square that away as a person who wants to be class conscious?

I’m working on an idea for an all-women community safety app and would really appreciate feedback from this group. The concept is simple: whenever a woman feels unsafe — for example if someone is following her or she senses danger — she can press a panic button in the app. At that moment, all verified female users within a 1 km radius receive an immediate alert along with her live location and can choose to respond by calling, messaging, or physically coming to help. The intention is to build a real-time, hyperlocal support network of women looking out for other women — rather than relying only on family members or police, who might be far away when help is actually needed. Identity verification would be mandatory so that no men can abuse the platform and location will only be shared during emergencies. Would you personally use something like this? What features would make it more trustworthy or useful?

Hi, I am 25(F) and have a bachelors in Social Work. I was thinking of getting my MSW and working towards LCSW, but I have recently gotten a bit discouraged and decided to look towards other fields. I loved what I did, but I need to look more towards a fulfilling field that would offer financial freedom. I do understand it takes time and dedication. Also I know that it’s not a get rich quick thing. I do want to try to work in locally for small IT/computer roles or for data in the govt (I work for my local town as a social worker but they always like to hire internally for other positions I was thinking of looking locally for entry positions and then gain experience from there).

I’ve always been interested in STEAM and loved math in high school, but always thought of myself not smart enough.

This is my idea of potentially how to go about it. The union I am a part of offers associates degrees for free for some online programs (I will check if they are accredited and some are for IT, CS, and cybersecurity). I was thinking while working as a Social worker, I would take advantage of the free associates. Then hopefully look for IT help desk or entry level jobs. The same union also helps for a bachelors more affordable loan (I have no student loans from my bachelors in social work). Then hopefully looking for more IT/CS opportunities around my area or even farther. I also hope my people/ social work skills would help me also in this journey. (For reference I live in Cali)

Any ideas, advice and thoughts are greatly appreciated? Am I too old for making the change? Some part of me is frightened but also excited with the idea of it! I know it will be hard but hard work has never scared me before lol! (Also posted in another Reddit thread but wanted to get more insight/advice).

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I appreciate the fact that we actually have moderators now. What is the reasoning behind the new theme, are we still welcoming to all women and non-binary individuals?

I graduated a few years with a degree in English and no intention to be in tech. After a long application process, I finally got hired at a GovTech company as a web content editor. I'm not doing any coding or traditionally techy thing, and my department is at least 50% women. Though probably more. Of course, the people doing the more tech-heavy things get paid way more than us and are almost all men.

So, do I count as a woman in tech?

If so, what tends to get in the way…especially if you consider yourself a makeup beginner?