As a woman you can not speak out in Akamai, you will be threatened and silenced by managers and HR.
This company has appalling atmosphere of fear and discrimination.
Below is my blog post that caused immediate termination (post was made after a period of lengthy harassment and hostile environment after I complained about discrimination).
Tech industry horrible misogyny
Comments to this blog are disallowed.
While laughable assurances that 'we support women' float around, misogyny is alive and well in tech industry and in this very company, though it might be taking less ugly forms than usual, as sexists, being under public pressure are now adopting guerilla war tactics, making their actions less obvious, and methods of getting rid of dissenters more stealth. They continue to have powerful corporate machine behind them, at their disposal (after all, who runs it? Hint: the answer is just a google search away....)
A little background: from almost day one in this world, a female encounters subtle or not so subtle forms of harassment, degradation and/or insults based on gender; things range from statements such as "girls aren't good at math" to beatings or assaults, from anyone ranging from own family to strangers and classmates. (if someone grew up in isolated and privileged sterile environment, in the "first world country", this experience might be delayed until college). As soon as a person gets exposed to the public media, they become a subject to bombardment by mass institutional misogyny, in the forms of advertisements telling women how to look, "movies" that are always promoting submissive and victim roles or, alternatively, sexualized roles for women, daily misogyny of well-meaning simpletons, and other gender role brainwash. Latter had resulted in very sad state where most women had become brainwashed on how they should look and act, god forbid they cross into forbidden privileged domain that belongs to males.
In Computer Science school, this pressure intensifies 10-fold, amplified by isolation and exclusion (though latter is still better than harassment, if one is lucky), and early hints that "you're not welcome in this industry, we are giving you a little preview of what's coming". Stellar grades and projects will not not matter: they'll just single you out as undesirable dissenter who dared to cross into male domain (yes, don't believe me.....I had made up École Polytechnique massacre too, sure). Do I need to list all anti-women statements one can hear at school? Anything from "women don't understand engineers" to various jokes, where gender-based insults sometimes were conveniently combined with ethnicity-based degradation. And you have to eat it all quietly. Complain: and they would crush you. And they would cover up their actions hoping that you, a little fleck of dust in their system, will not be able to win, lacking resources including financial.
This h e ll continues in the software industry. I don't even need to mention only a tiny percentage of software engineers being female, this is well-known. I don't need to detail numerous, endless accounts of horrible treatment of female engineers in this industry (Google is a friend here, one can easily find multitude of articles detailing all kinds of harassment, exclusion and 2nd class person treatment....I don't even start on horrific agism of this industry and pervasive and blatant discrimination based on age and race/ethnicity, this deserves a separate topic, though this is a part of the same trend of unabashed hatred exercising its power over "serfs", what most modern people are being reduced to ). But most of the accounts of discrimination against women in this industry are unpublished, as victims are silent, living in fear of HR and industry-wide blacklisting.
There's a persistent trend to view women as 2nd class people in this industry, as unwelcome intruders into a "boys club". You are made feel as a 2nd class person in this environment, and eventually this becomes your nature, especially if you're exposed to this since childhood. You are second-guessing yourself, feel incapable and worthless, find yourself needing to prove yourself 10 times more than male peers (who'll never accept you as a peer, but fearing legal repercussions in the US will never tell you this in your face. Outside the US, though, they'll tell this right into your face....and will add much more, such as 'women should know their place'). This erodes human dignity and confidence in the future, making a person feel they live on a dynamite box where male colleague can push you out any time, for any reason, just because they're more privileged, and is the exact reason for women leaving this industry en masse. It wears the person out and eventually breaks them, especially if they're not the kind to compromise with the bigots.
The tactics of misogynists in the US are often more subtle than outside the country, because there're some more legal protections for women, though these are still largely ineffective, as evidenced by the exclusion of women from the tech industry. In companies like Uber they had employed more brazen tactics of open harassment (the things one can easily look up on internet search) and in many other companies such as Akamai tactics are more stealth. For example, they will show you in various ways, without stating directly/in more subtle ways, that you don't belong to "the boys club" and will eventually push you out completely : such as disparaging or dismissive comments, publicly and privately de-valuing your opinions and results of your work, and excluding you from the team by things like not responding to your email questions/requests/ignoring, and even complaining to management when you simply ask questions needed to do your job that you ask too many questions or that "you help too much" (of course, it's a shame, to take help from a female, right?), in general, by treating you/making you feel like annoying worthless fly and engaging other forms of backstabbing. You'll be always "wrong" and THEY (males) will be right, no matter what they had said to you. YOU will be punished for slightest attempt to stand up for yourself. Your technical expertise does not matter, neither matters you proven it by earning talent award from the company: they'll denigrate it. This is exactly the "death by thousand cut" when they remove you from the industry via many small actions.
Unfortunately, in Akamai, they're also aided by some people in management who protect them and will try to silence you if you try to speak back to people (male employees) who make disparaging comments towards you, including publicly, as soon as you're female. They'll tell you that you must stay silent or else, on no uncertain terms (and will raise voice at you while at it, to make it personal), placing you into atmosphere of constant fear, stress and feeling like a 2nd class person, which is going to take a toll on your health, including physical health, after living in it for a while, atmosphere of fear that breaks you down as a person, breaks your morale and dehumanizes you.
They'll tell you to just ignore it when you're put down, as if males who had put your down have a PRIVILEGE to do so. They'll tell you to just smile and turn it all into a joke (do YOU tell males to smile and be sweet? No! You don't tell this to males, you tell this to females only, just because this industry and society finds this acceptable). They'll tell you that male person "just has a personality" and "the way he is with others" as if you, being a female, is not entitled to "a personality".They'll tell you this is just the way it is, and "I was put down too, myself and kept quiet" as a good example of behavior....(as if one should take gender-based put downs quietly just because they did, in some twisted Orwellian reality of theirs?)
And they will persecute you and take adverse actions against you, if you do not stay silent. Because what they need silent, cowardly people living in fear. Not only misogyny is aided by management chain, but entire HR system appears to be there to protect it (as the majority in engineering and managment are male, holding the power): the goal appears to be protect misogynist discriminatory status quo. Just like in Uber.
I wonder what prompted the head of HR to post earlier blog about James Damore scandal, which I had perceived as semi-sympathetic to Damore. So your company persecutes females who stand up for themselves while you think that Damore possibly should have been protected? Was this blog posted to draw out dissenters who will not take misogyny quietly and to single them out for adverse actions? And if this was about race -- if Damore made a manifesto claiming that people of one race are less capable at technology -- would you even discuss such insulting drivel publicly? No you would not! So, there's a double standard held for females who're clearly being treated as if 2nd class persons here: fascist Damore's drivel degrading all women is allowed to be discussed/supported and public forum is opened for this, by head of HR no less -- while supporting race-bashing would obviously not be allowed or tolerated. This post had open comments policy and clearly served to open a forum to voice support for Damore. (so that one can later feel like if they have to be in buckets of dirt, knowing his supporters, misogynist bigots are around, just to remind about "woman's place" in this hierarchy, in case she forgets, one more reminder about bigotry around just when you managed to make yourself ignore it).
The hatred towards women in this industry is astounding.
If you looked at software developer positions in my organization in Akamai, in non-test roles, most of them had been taken by males. It seems like only in the last year, 2017, there was some increase in hiring of female developers in my organization (probably driven by some lawsuit or scandal, considering the status quo), otherwise there is almost no female software engineers (in non-test), which resulted in pathetic and sad picture of product software developer teams being dominated by males and often almost or even exclusively male-teams. Such demographics is only more enabling for exclusion of women via tactics I had described above. The reason number of women is small in engineering is not the incapability a la Damore, but "death by thousand cuts"/overall hostile atmosphere. There's a number of people fiercely competing for the pie, and women being the minority simply can not get the ground, no diversity in interview panels with results accordingly, no blind interviews where gender isn't known/masking the name on resume, etc.
This is just a beginning of a fight for justice, first steps. Software industry is full of appalling hatred and discrimination, becoming more and more ruthless place. When you realize that all your efforts, years of life invested in schooling and self-study became worthless, because vile misogyny dominating this industry is invalidating it all excluding your from employment, destroying your life, you don't have much to lose. On my last day on Earth, I don't want to look back and have regrets that I stayed silent and took their abuse quietly, like a spineless coward they wanted to turn me into.
