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8 August 2013

Female web developer wanted. Must love shoes and nail varnish

Some developers are being sexist. It must be a Thursday.

By Alex Hern

Another month, another example of the programming community being a fairly hostile place towards women. German web developers Bloopark are looking for a new developer – but they’ve put up two adverts:

Web developer (m) Need for programming You are addicted to PHP, MySQL and Javascript since years? Your life makes no sence without programming? Your girlfriend doesn't understand, why you start learning the fifth php framework and your parents say, your head is full of unix and linux. Do you want to talk to us about this? We want to invite you to an anonymous or maybe very personal meeting. No worries, we will bring you to a team that understands you and will support your passion of programming.

Web developer (f) Beautiful und sexy code wanted We are convinced that woman are great programmers. Woman write sexy code: neat and clean. Many of them have long relationship... with PHP5, MySQL and Javascript. They like to talk and communication is essential in our work. Female programmers get along with customers very well and take such a good care of code quality, as if it is a pair of their new shoes. The best thing is that their detailed documentation and code organisation match the rules of Feng-Shui. Are you a female programmer with passion? May we invite you for coffee?

In case that’s too small to read, here’s the text alone:

Web developer (m)

Need for programming

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THANK YOU

You are addicted to PHP, MySQL and Javascript since years? Your life makes no sence without programming? Your girlfriend doesn’t understand, why you start learning the fifth php framework and your parents say, your head is full of unix and linux. Do you want to talk to us about this? We want to invite you to an anonymous or maybe very personal meeting. No worries, we will bring you to a team that understands you and will support your passion of programming.

Web developer (f)

Beautiful und sexy code wanted

We are convinced that woman are great programmers. Woman write sexy code: neat and clean. Many of them have long relationship… with PHP5, MySQL and Javascript. They like to talk and communication is essential in our work. Female programmers get along with customers very well and take such a good care of code quality, as if it is a pair of their new shoes. The best thing is that their detailed documentation and code organisation match the rules of Feng-Shui. Are you a female programmer with passion? May we invite you for coffee?

It’s worth noting that each of the adverts leads to an application page with identical wording (male, female); the adverts really do differ purely in an ill-advised effort to appeal to women. While it’s not as offputting as the time a Ruby developer appeared to offer the presence of women as a perk in a job ad, it’s still just the latest example of the endemic sexism in the community.

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