A Tech Conference Invented Women Experts
Did DevTernity just start a hot, new trend in the diversity and inclusion space?
Everyone knows it by now.
We don’t have enough women working in the tech industry. As a senior woman in the field, managing a team of men, I see it every day.
There are many reasons for this, but none of them is that women are not interested in tech. That’s why companies and event organizers are trying to support diversity.
When they organize an event or conference, they scour the Internet for women experts to enrich their events. Huffing and puffing how hard it is to find these elusive women-shaped experts.
Nobody wants to be caught hosting a sausage fest or a manel. That’s so 2019. Today, you’ll be called out immediately if you’re caught with an all-male lineup.
But what if there was an easier way to wrap yourself in the halo of diversity without doing any of the actual work?
Just make up some female speakers. No one will notice, or will they?
Despite all efforts, not much has changed.
Despite setting up ERGS (Employee Resource Groups) for diversity and inclusion, showcasing brave women as role models at talent acquisition events, headhunter fees and good intentions, the tech industry is still overwhelmingly male.
Women still only hold around a quarter of all tech roles.
There are still so many cases where I am the only woman in the room.
If anything, the situation is deteriorating.
Jessica Hubert at Exploding Topics reports that “The total number of women in tech-related positions has actually decreased by 2.1% over the last few years.”
So maybe we should just give up trying?
Apparently, some members of the tech community are going down that path. And might have been doing so for years.
Yesterday, Gergely Orosz called out the organizers of DevTernity 2023 in a long LinkedIn post for putting non-existent female speakers on the conference’s website.
DevTernitiy, founded by Eduards Sizovs, markets itself as the #1 international software development conference, with tickets costing up to $870.
Gergely Orosz, writer of the “Pragmatic Engineer,” noticed that one of the three female speakers advertised on the conference website did not exist.
Anna Boyko was supposed to be an engineer at Coinbase and a key contributor at Ethereum. But it turns out neither Coinbase nor Ethereum knew of her existence. Anna Boyko is fake.
Now, this could have been a fluke. We all know mistakes happen, but Orosz dove deeper, and this is what he found:
Anna Boyko, one of the 3 confirmed women speakers at DevTernity doesn’t exist. She was knowingly invented by the organisers (the conference has no call for papers). But she wasn’t the only fake speaker at the conference.
Alina Prokhoda, “Senior Engineer at WhatsApp, Microsoft MVP”: she was also fake on the JDKon website scheduled in May 2024: ran by the same organizers.
Natalie Stadler, “Software Craftswoman at Coinbase,” a featured speaker at DevTernity in 2021 and 2022: does not exist.
This no longer looks like a mistake. It looks like a toxic pattern.
Naturally, this diversity-hijacking tactic made waves on LinkedIn. The “non-existent” women in tech called out the conference and the creator in the comments of Orosz’s post.
24 hours later, it had almost 5000 comments and 500 reactions and had been re-posted 600 times. And the fallout has reached the real world.
Sizovs stoked the flames by trying to gaslight a community of software developers of all people to believe that this had been an issue with the website that “was not a quick fix” and that he has, of course, always “been deeply concerned about inclusion and diversity.”
At the moment of my writing, the DevTernity website is down, as tech executives from major companies like Microsoft and Google have pulled out of the conference in the eye of the storm.
Nearly half of the 23 speakers still listed on the event’s website have withdrawn from the conference, according to social media posts and interviews with panelists. That includes Amazon Web Services’ Kristine Howard, who would have been the sole woman scheduled to speak, Howard confirmed in an email.
Apparently, they were just as underwhelmed with Eduards Sizovs’ answer on X as the majority of the commenters. As a result, DevTernity seems to be canceled.
It’s painfully obvious people are not impressed by Sizovs’ attempt to paint himself as the victim.
In the comments, users were quick to remind him that he has an (alleged) history of questionable behavior, such as being caught impersonating a female coder named “codingunicorn” a few years ago.
It took less than 48 hours from Orosz's original LinkedIn post to this point where DevTernity seems to be history. And I’m uncertain if this swift retribution is valid or completely over the top.
If Sizovs knowingly left the fake Anna Boyko on the website to obscure the fact that the conference had “a worse-than-expected level of diversity of speakers,” he should absolutely be called out.
There are far too many men in this field who don’t see the lack of diversity as a real problem. They like to keep to themselves, and some even see women as a nuisance.
Some are just oblivious to their surroundings.
Unlike them, I don’t have the luxury of ignoring the status quo. I rarely have the opportunity to collaborate with other women tech experts. But I’ve been asked why we still need diversity and inclusion programs when women have equal opportunities today.
This happened when I was the only woman in a meeting with 20 men.
Some even feel discriminated against because women are now getting opportunities. Yes, that was said to me, a brown woman in the tech industry, by a 50-year-old white colleague. He didn’t even notice the irony.
But should we cancel an entire conference? I’m on the fence here.
Attending a conference is an opportunity to connect with your community. We look forward to catching up with old colleagues and friends and hopefully learning new things. If you’re a speaker, you’ve probably spent a lot of time preparing for your talk.
We’re punishing more than the organizers here.
What do you think? Does the “punishment” fit the crime?
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