It was months ago when Anneke approached me with the idea to organize a ladies dinner for frontend developers. I was definitely excited and wanted to be a part of it. Not because nowadays it’s common to organize an IT event with special motivation for women, but I just really miss to have a cozy chat with women.
We were twelve women in the room from at least four different nationalities. Hey! I know what you’re thinking, but I can assure you that Netherlands has more than twelve female frontend developers. The night started at 18:00, we started eating ~19:30 and we had a nice chat until 22:00. This was the summary of the night by numbers. I know... This a boring habit from work. I cannot stop organizing my thoughts with bullets, numbers, etc.
What did it really mean for me? First of all, I was proud of all those smart and strong willed women. If you follow an IT career, it’s common to get an advice to change your path to become a sales person or manager with the reasoning that programming is too geeky for you. I felt normal when everyone admitted experiencing impostor syndrome once in a while. It was funny that most of us felt a sort of guilt while discussing our salary. I was so happy to discover all new and interesting game and movie suggestions, puzzled when the waiter gave a nice introductory speech for the people who ordered cheese and then laughed so hard when he came up with this funny and imaginary story about crème brûlée when I insisted for an explanation. It was refreshing to observe the commonalities of our challenges and realized that I started to ignore them just because I’m the minority.
Last but not least, I was glad to be a part of this dinner and I would like to thank Fronteers for its special support.