I am typical "white male after 30" kind of person, who does lots of public speaking, conferences, events, teaching, coaching and alike. I've been in developer relations for 11+ years and it is mostly people like me. Talking sort of to people like me... I think it is not right, and we can do better in this industry.
For the last 2-3 years, I've been part of many "women in tech" initiatives and have been vocal about diversity and inclusion in any event I'd organise or even participate.
Now I have a chance to focus more on bringing more women and minorities to developer relations, empowering speakers and raising a new wave of role models. But there's a question I'd like to open up to this community to discuss. A job ad question.
It has been widely discussed how to craft job ads to look appealing to women and minorities. I think King (I've enjoyed 4 years there) is a true role model in this regard.
But can we go even further on?
Now I am consulting a company where there'd be a place for two junior vue.js programmers who I'd help to leap to a developer relations role. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to attract more diverse people to devrel, a craft that often requires 5-6 years in a specific programming field.
But...can we limit the job ad to women and minorities or am I leaping too far off?
Dev community, would you please share your opinions on gender-specific job ads in tech? From one side, there's nothing gender-specific in the junior programmer/devrel role. From the other side, it is a perfect opportunity to bring more diversity to devrel and help bring up diverse public speakers, role models who'd inspire people like them.
First of all, before doing this, make sure it's legal. Only allowing women to apply sounds like discrimination to me, but you're better off checking with a legal professional in your jurisdiction how it would be considered in your location. Of course, making an ad that targets without excluding men is probably less problematic.
To be honest, I don't like it. I would consider it discrimination. A good female friend of mine (currently studying computer sciences) also dislikes the idea that her gender might get her a job rather than her skills, so my guess is that she would pass on your supposed ad for that reason.
That said, there's probably a lot of women who aren't like this friend of mine. And perhaps a little discrimination is necessary in order to get to a more balanced situation. I still don't like it, but perhaps it's not actually a bad idea.