[...] For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I had written.
[...] Shortly after this happened to me, the code review feature was prioritized. This functionality was rolled out internally pretty quickly. From that point on I didn't get dogpiled anymore [...]
Re: who cares if they were all male? If I open a PR and I get dozens of feedback, either they are legit feedback or not. Or maybe they are all sexist comments, that you should absolutely report. But it sounds like the "all of who were male" wants to imply a specific subtext, but the accusation is neither explicit nor provides any justifications. Saying it in other words: if a colleague would say "I am getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of who were black women)", wouldn't that raise an eyebrow or more?
I took it to indicate that she believes that she is getting so much 'feedback' specifically because of what she is and what she's trying to do.
The fact that all of the people offering feedback were male is weak evidence in favour of this (consider that much of her immediate team is female). She offers as another piece of evidence that she compared notes with a colleague with a similar background who was male and who wasn't getting the same level of attention.
> Re: who cares if they were all male? If I open a PR and I get dozens of feedback, either they are legit feedback or not.
If you're working somewhere where you and people like you are getting 20 people peering over your shoulder uninvited and criticizing your every move and people of a different group only have 2 people reviewing their code then you can legitimately claim to be working in a hostile environment.
Code reviews are always a mixture of objective and subjective feedback, and having to consider detailed comments (objective, subjective, substantive, trivial) from a large number of people not directly involved and without appropriate context would be a stress on anyone (not to mention is a simple drain on productivity).
On a purely technical note, she says nowhere that the PRs should be dismissed because they were from men. I think that was something you read into it. At issue was the unusual quantity of the feedback.
> if a colleague would say "I am getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of who were black women)", wouldn't that raise an eyebrow or more?
If it were fact, then I would assume that there was some way in which this colleague had upset a group of black women. I think a similar conclusion is being offered here (although given the likely employment ratios the black women theory would have a whole lot more evidence).
For purposes of neutrality, she shouldn't mention the gender or race of the reviewers. In many places that I have worked, I do not even know the ethnicity of my coworkers. As an aside, I am not white and honestly believe there is more to ethnicity than skin color.
@kybernetikos definitely already said it, but to be clear:
That doesn't sound like she dismissed the PRs, or that she dismissed them for gender reasons, and there's no mention of race anywhere in there.
> if a colleague would say... wouldn't that raise an eyebrow or more?
Yes, yes it would. I'd look at the feedback, the thing receiving feedback, and then go ask the people who gave the feedback. Then I'd probably circle back around to the colleague for more information, because clearly, something is wrong, but from just that information? Cannot tell what.
Re: who cares if they were all male? If I open a PR and I get dozens of feedback, either they are legit feedback or not. Or maybe they are all sexist comments, that you should absolutely report. But it sounds like the "all of who were male" wants to imply a specific subtext, but the accusation is neither explicit nor provides any justifications. Saying it in other words: if a colleague would say "I am getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of who were black women)", wouldn't that raise an eyebrow or more?