u/AlexanderSerebrenik

Wishing you a lot of strength and a speedy recovery

I am so sorry to hear. Please do not blame yourself for his passing: this might be hard to believe now, but this is true. Life is unfair.

Thank you very much for your message and for your concerns. I am not looking for random people, but for LGBTIQ software developers. So far we have interviewed ca. 20 developers.

I'm listing pronouns and sexuality to indicate that both interviewers are LGBT.

Zoals ik beneden aangaf gat het niet louter en alleen over het coderen maar ook over het "overleven" binnen het bedrijfscontext. Dit gezegd hebbende wil ik graag met u van gedachten wisselen over dit onderwerp, zie de link boven.

Mentoring is not necessarily related to transferral of the technical skills; "company survival skills" can also be mentored. McAllister et al. report that mentoring for LGBTIQ+ individuals remains crucial even in LGBT-friendly environments. Moreover, compared to other engineering disciplines computer science is seen as less LGBTIQ+-friendly than, e.g., biological and chemical engineering but more friendly than e.g., mechanical engineering (Cech, Waidzunas). This being said both studies are ~10 years old and the situation now might be different, so it would be great if we could talk such that we can understand your perspective.

C.A. McAllister, R.D. Harold, B.K. Ahmedani, and E.P. Cramer (2009). Targeted Mentoring: Evaluation of a Program. J Soc Work Educ. Winter. 45(1):89-104.

E.A. Cech, T.J. Waidzunas (2011) Navigating the heteronormativity of engineering: the experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual students, Engineering Studies, 3:1, 1-24

Together with a colleague from the University of Adelaide we have studied how popular media portrays the employability of older software developers. We observed a broad spectrum of advice given to "older" developers, ranging from growing as a software engineer or changing a working environment, to much more controversial things such as performing plastic surgery or modifying CV to hide the age. We have also seen that most of the time "older" software developers are defined as those aged 40+, far below the retirement age in
industrialised countries.

The article is to appear in IEEE Software in the coming months; the preprint is publicly available on https://www.win.tue.nl/~aserebre/IEEESWAge.pdf

I would like to do this, but I am not sure whether the moderators will allow.

No, not really. Different groups of people might have different needs.

Thank you for the advice! Shall I repost it later on?