Why I won't be applying for the SQL Lead position at UST Global in Addison, TX #nosammich

So my original plan for today was to talk about the projects I'm planning around the house like network expansion and building a PVR appliance. We'll have to save that for another time because what I'm going to talk about instead will be so much more interesting for all of us. Oh, and because this wasn't my original plan this is kind of free-verse. Deal with it.

Companies have you ever had that "we're working hard to promote diversity, but for some reason women won't come work here" feeling? Perhaps it's because you hired the same person to write your recruiting materials that UST Global did. Here's an excerpt from a recent job posting:

Require 7+ years experience with SQL Development. This position is for an SQL Application developer who has very good SQL analysis, monitoring, tuning skills. He will be working on multiple SQL Applications. His major responsibilities would be monitoring the SQL database application and helping the application teams to optimize.

So like any person entering offers, I start comparing my skills to the ones listed... 7+ years? Yeah, I've been doing this for that long. Analysis, monitoring, and tuning? Yeah, we're good there too. Monitoring the SQL database application and helping the application teams? Great, this is all stuff I've done before! Wait; did that say "he"? "His duties"? <Looks down at self.> Guess I'm not as qualified for this as I thought.

And don't try to play Devil's advocate and tell me that mankind is inclusive of "womankind". The active exclusion of women from technological spaces requires that companies start looking for ways to actively include them and stop tolerating even passive exclusions. So you basically have 3 options here: the grammatically incorrect "their", the awkward "he or she", or just drop the the pronouns altogether and provide the job duties as a list. Had any one of those been done, I would have quickly passed over this posting and not spent part of my evening writing a blog post (and I bet Twitter will enjoy it too) that will probably get lots of hits from people searching for "Working at UST Global". Because now they have to be wondering whether or not this company is a little sexist. And who wants to work at a place like that? I know I don't. So my Masters of Science in Computer Science with the 4.0 GPA* will just have to look elsewhere. *Informal transcripts provided at my leisure.

So companies if you want to encourage more women to join your workforce, perhaps you should stop asking them how many sammiches they can make an hour in interviews... Just a suggestion.

Reversing Gender Roles: You Make Me a Sammich by egogenius