games.md

This could be given day as a queer woman in games programming

• Code reviews.
• Standup. You feel inadequate because half of your productive hours yesterday went on glue work, so you barely cleared one issue while the men on the team went heads-down and cleared two apiece. The team doesn’t track glue work.
• 1:1 with a lead. Instead of seeking career advice, you spend it pleading with him to hire women. He tells you he sympathizes, but he “just needs to ship games right now”
• Write feedback to the person who misgendered you earlier. You generally prefer to do this in person but you don't know him well and you want to keep it in writing until you can gauge whether he's safe.
• Sync version control and open Visual Studio.
• D&I round table discussion. Burn 4,000 calories explaining the concept of privilege to someone with a director title and five years less experience than you.
• Stare blankly into space wondering if anyone noticed you trying not to cry, and when/if the feedback that you "didn't show proper leadership poise" will show up at your door.
• Look at the repro steps for your current bug again. You press F12 a few times in Visual Studio and glide to the point where you suspect the issue might be.
• Your news app buzzes: something dreadful has happened involving your civil rights. Nobody else on your team is affected.
• Insert a breakpoint in the code, idly pondering the possibility that you might one day be taken and disappeared. You mentally nominate the person who will take care of your pets.
• If you're lucky, the other woman on the team notices your body language and asks if you need to go for a coffee. You trade stories and sympathies about your harassment experiences for 32 minutes, making her late for a meeting.
• You return to your desk and compile the code.
• Pause for an interview. They want a woman on every panel, and since you're the only woman rated for technical interviews you're surfing the brink of calendar bankruptcy. You keep doing it because when you do eventually get to interview another woman you want her to feel safe.
• Writing up your interview feedback, you type "he kept looking at my tits" and then delete it. You don't want to have to explain this at the roundup meeting because it'll cause several of the people in that room to start looking at your chest.
• An engineer needs help. You mentally throw a tarp over the other issues and help them out, because that's your job and you're damned good at it. You fix the thing together. It’s cool. Players will love it. For one, shining moment, you remember why you’re here.
• Back to your desk. If you're lucky, the bug repros. But the fix will need to wait for tomorrow, because adrenaline has curdled your brain. There are 7 code reviews waiting for your attention the next morning.