Discussion on: Are we pretentious and arrogant?

I'd like to encourage you with the observation that during my career as a dev in the Australian Public Service I saw many women enter the service as developers, and within a few years they were my superiors. I never had a female boss I disliked or could not get along with. I personally never felt the need to seek promotion, and there was definitely a lot of devs who didn't. They were all men. Perhaps they were difficult men, I can't say. But I know I didn't advance because I did not have the personality for dealing with and managing other people. It's pretty obvious that there is a certain type who love coding and dev work. I'll leave it to others to decide whether that co-incides with hostility toward females. But, my point is; if you are like my female colleagues, you won't be content to stay a dev but will want to move up. The devs you initially find yourselves with won't trouble you for long. That said, at higher levels of big organisations you definitely have to be resilient enough to deal with some difficult, and definitely pretentious and arrogant people. Don't let them stop you.