Shaving my head made me a better programmer
summary
Shaving appearance as an experiment produces an immediate change in how competence is perceived: shaved my head flips microaggressions into respect without any overnight skill change. A concrete intervention is launched—bootcamps and mentoring—and the pilot at Coalition for Queens shows measurable results: 50% women 50% immigrants 50% no college degree 50% Black and Latinx, graduates land jobs at Spotify Pinterest BuzzFeed and some make up to $120,000. Company hires and an education nonprofit scale diversity—40% women 60% folks of color—showing the approach works.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:33Where I learned to code
- 0:47Deciding to major in computer science
- 1:12Dealing with your computer
- 1:25Overcoming perceptions
- 1:57Terminal
- 2:28Becoming a programmer
- 2:41Becoming accepted
- 2:55First fulltime job
- 3:54Quitting programming
- 4:19Meeting female engineers
- 4:56Giving talks
- 5:58Shaving my head
- 6:33I stopped being hypersexualized
- 6:47What had changed
- 7:23Changing myself
- 7:50Teaching
- 8:06Coalition for Queens
- 8:43Skillshare
- 9:14The Code Cooperative
