Tech Company Decides To Compare Software To Women, Says It's Annoying And Complains A Lot
The tech industry is known as a sector with a disproportionate amount of male employees, and a serious lack of women in senior-level positions.
One company recently highlighted why this phenomenon might be sustained, and it's not because fewer girls are taught to take STEM courses seriously in high school.
Showing how the tech world can be a truly hostile place for women, one company featured a whole lot of sexism during a presentation at a conference in Berlin.
Atlassian, the company that produces software products like Jira, Confluence, HipChat and more, was holding an #AtlasCamp for developers, when developer Jonathan Doklovic turned the presentation to focus on Maven, a software product that Atlassian uses.
But instead of talking about Maven in a normal manner, Doklovic used the software to introduce a slew of sexist comparisons, remarking that Maven was like "his girlfriend" because, although she's beautiful, she "complains a lot, demands my attention, interrupts me when I'm working" and "doesn't play well with my other friends."
The developers at the instruction session (mostly men) did not appear to be offended, but others who heard about the incident expressed their discomfort with those ideas via social media and to the company itself.
Atlassian was forced to respond to the offensive slides. An apology posted to the company blog said:
We are sorry for having allowed this offensive slide into an AtlasCamp presentation. The content does not reflect our company values – nor our personal values as co-founders and individuals. Quite simply, it's not OK. Sexism is a difficult issue for the tech industry, and today we didn't make it any better.
Atlassian has since vowed to help "change the culture" that makes tech a space where men often feel more comfortable and more accepted than women.
