Transmasc

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A community for all transmasculine people.

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founded 1 year ago

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I want to be a professional, but not seeing trans guys in successful positions is disheartening. (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Not saying that I want to go full-corpo, but the idea of getting ahead in a career is really appealing to me. I feel stuck in my job I have now because there's not much chance of advancement and the hours are really inconsistent. I've been considering going back to college to pursue something that would allow me to have a stable income. To tell you the truth, I'm jealous of the memes about trans girls being software engineers. I want to be one too. I would definitely make a lot more than I'm making right now. It's also the job my dad has, and I was curious about what it would be like as a career when I was younger. All the layoffs were really what scared me away from it, but I'm not in a much better situation right now. I just don't really know of any trans guys that are in professional positions like that. I don't know if there's a reason for it, or if the guys that do get ahead like that just go stealth.

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[–] IonAddis 3 points 1 year ago

This is anecdotal, but I strongly suspect in retrospect that I worked with a stealth trans guy in software many, many years ago. (like, 2008 or so.) This was before trans issues got in the limelight, and during a period where medical gatekeeping kept me from revisiting being trans because my support to do so was poor. But hormones and surgery were available to other people with more supportive living situations, and I think it's possible he might have had the ability to access care to fully transition to stealth before I met him.

He started in customer support, which is rather stereotypically female, but ended up years later in software development.

(By the way, I do NOT recommend that route. It's too damn easy to stay in support forever.)

So I think it is true to some extent that trans guys absolutely go stealth if they can. Not everyone is cut out to be an activist, some just want their lives to settle down and stealth helps bring the calm.

What the other person said about programmer being a very skill-driven field is true. What you want to do to get into the field is work on personal coding projects, the more ambitious the better (like don't do a tiny Javascript thingie and call it quits, keep tackling interesting projects so you can learn), so long as you are confident you can sit down and explain what you did and why. (If your relationship with your dad is good, talk to your dad about what they look for in new hires, chances are he's sat in on interviews of new programmers before and can put you through mock interviews and give you guidance.)

In a way, programming is like art and music. If you have a good portfolio or demo tape, it'll be respected. If you can actually code, if you can do what you say you can do, it'll be respected. But you really need to be able to walk people line-by-line through code and not spout buzzwords. A HR person might not be able to spot buzzwords but other programmers can and you'll faceplant if you can't actually code after you get into an interview.

I have a problem where I can actually sit down and do stuff, but my mind doesn't hang onto details (since I keep notes or look things up as I go) so I sound less capable in interviews than I am. If you're serious about going into programming, become a nerd and really learn your shit. If you can demonstrate competence better than I can, then you'll get your foot in the door--especially if there's ANYTHING your dad can teach you or show you. (Again, if your relationship with your dad is good--just straight up see if you can apprentice yourself to him. If you can, you'll be able to both strengthen your bond with your dad if he likes showing things off to someone, and you'll have a HUGE leg up over guys who don't have a personal tutor and mentor to run things by.)