It doesn't even take half the IT department. It only takes one or two rude colleagues to make your life miserable.
Part of the problem -- ironically -- is that programmers are in many ways a very tolerant bunch. We have to be, because many of our colleagues, including some of the most talented ones, have a lot of trouble reading social cues. Call it autism. Call it Asperger's. Call it "quirkiness". Blame it on a tendency to spend too much time mainlining Perl code. But you'd be lying if you claimed this correlation wasn't real. I've manifested the phenomenon myself at times.
Anyway, you won't last long in programming if you can't develop a tolerance for socially awkward people. But that tolerance is much harder to develop when those awkward people are constantly hitting on you. Especially if you are female and they are male. [1]
As a woman, what can you do to dissuade the socially awkward? Subtle social cues often don't work. Ridiculously obvious social cues, like sending a memo or writing a blog post, might help, or not: They might not get the message across to the recipient (trying to teach an autistic person to be socially appropriate can be like teaching photography to the blind) and they tend to be public, which runs the risk that you'll be labeled a "troublemaker". You could try appealing to the guy's colleagues, but they might just conclude that you're too "thin-skinned" for programming. After all, they are all highly tolerant of socially-awkward men. They have to be.
Or you could resign and find a different field.
Other fields don't seem to have this problem to the same extent. I expect that's because they're more efficient at screening out the people who aren't good at reading social cues. Given that I'm rather fond of many of my socially-awkward friends, that's not my favorite solution. I guess the only alternative is education, mutual tolerance, and careful social engineering, but nobody said that process would be easy.
---
[1] It's uncomfortable for men when they are hit on by socially-awkward women. But the potential consequences aren't the same. As a straight male engineer, the idea that I could lose my job because I rejected a co-worker's advances is kind of laughable, the thought of being groped in an elevator is absurd, and the very possibility that I could be raped without going to prison first is almost unthinkable. And, as it happens, I wasn't sexually abused as a child -- unlike an estimated 5-15% of men and 15-25% of women -- so I certainly don't have debilitating flashbacks when some guy shows me soft-core porn and invites me to laugh along with it. Lucky me.
Part of the problem -- ironically -- is that programmers are in many ways a very tolerant bunch. We have to be, because many of our colleagues, including some of the most talented ones, have a lot of trouble reading social cues. Call it autism. Call it Asperger's. Call it "quirkiness". Blame it on a tendency to spend too much time mainlining Perl code. But you'd be lying if you claimed this correlation wasn't real. I've manifested the phenomenon myself at times.
Anyway, you won't last long in programming if you can't develop a tolerance for socially awkward people. But that tolerance is much harder to develop when those awkward people are constantly hitting on you. Especially if you are female and they are male. [1]
As a woman, what can you do to dissuade the socially awkward? Subtle social cues often don't work. Ridiculously obvious social cues, like sending a memo or writing a blog post, might help, or not: They might not get the message across to the recipient (trying to teach an autistic person to be socially appropriate can be like teaching photography to the blind) and they tend to be public, which runs the risk that you'll be labeled a "troublemaker". You could try appealing to the guy's colleagues, but they might just conclude that you're too "thin-skinned" for programming. After all, they are all highly tolerant of socially-awkward men. They have to be.
Or you could resign and find a different field.
Other fields don't seem to have this problem to the same extent. I expect that's because they're more efficient at screening out the people who aren't good at reading social cues. Given that I'm rather fond of many of my socially-awkward friends, that's not my favorite solution. I guess the only alternative is education, mutual tolerance, and careful social engineering, but nobody said that process would be easy.
---
[1] It's uncomfortable for men when they are hit on by socially-awkward women. But the potential consequences aren't the same. As a straight male engineer, the idea that I could lose my job because I rejected a co-worker's advances is kind of laughable, the thought of being groped in an elevator is absurd, and the very possibility that I could be raped without going to prison first is almost unthinkable. And, as it happens, I wasn't sexually abused as a child -- unlike an estimated 5-15% of men and 15-25% of women -- so I certainly don't have debilitating flashbacks when some guy shows me soft-core porn and invites me to laugh along with it. Lucky me.