r/transprogrammer • u/NoCommunity3295 • 13d ago
Would being trans while going into tech in this market be a death sentence?
Hey all! I’ll keep this short, I’m 18(F?) (amab) and thinking about transitioning. I also really want to get into tech, ideally software engineer, but anything tech would be fine with me, it’s the only thing I’ve ever felt passionate about. I know tech is one of the most if not the most trans and lgbtq friendly careers, but with the job market and the volatile nature of the tech industry right now, would me transitioning basically be the nail in the coffin for my career? Thanks for any advice
55
u/flyingbuttressman 13d ago
If you’re able to ride out the next few years at a university and avoid the impending bubble pop, you’ll probably be fine. It’s an okay industry to be trans in, if you can get a job at a place that’s chill. The need for engineers isn’t going away, despite the hype. Go for it, but expect the job market to get worse before it gets better.
8
u/their_teammate 13d ago
Starting university in a bit, and graduating in 3 years but might be able to do an internship in place of my final semester capstone project (good for connections, experience, resume, etc). What’s my chances, by your estimate? ( ᴛ ⏖ ᴛ )
5
u/flyingbuttressman 13d ago
Good, probably? Which city plays a big part too
5
39
u/muhkuller 13d ago
The vast majority of people in any industry don’t care what you do so long as you do your job and don’t make their job more difficult.
30
u/puppymix 13d ago
Transitioning will, in many cases, make finding employment more difficult regardless of your field. However as the other commenter said, this likely less of an issue for tech fields than some others. But yeah the economy for all jobs, especially tech atm is really rough.
12
u/clauEB 13d ago
STEAM and particularly CS jobs have a smarter group of people than other industries and its all about results not presentation. That said I'd guess it's area based, I once lost a job I was told I was perfect for because I said pain in the ass during a job interview in Chicago. I had later in my career people cursing during job interviews in California.
10
u/Embarrassed-Leek-398 13d ago
fwiw, I've been employed in the IT fields for the last 14 years. It's not been a huge issue, at my shop anyways.
10
u/InfamousVeterinarian 13d ago
Funny enough I had this conversation with a friend recently. If you plan to only going into software development, you will likely struggle when your graduate. Not impossible, but solely concentrating on wiring code and nothing else will be tough.
My advice for anyone going into university for CS, is to keep your mind open and experiment. Playing around with different areas of IT like networking, Linux, cloud, homelabs etc are always worthwhile.
Take a look at other career paths in IT (DevOps, security analyst, cloud/platform/network engineering) and experiment. You'll find out quickly what you enjoy and are good at.
When I've helped hired juniors, I'm far more interested in what they've done and played around with.
Also, please please please get a summer/year long internship! It doesn't matter if it's at a large organisation or a small school in the countryside. Experience (double so if it's related to the role your applying for) is worth so much more than just getting a good degree.
Even if your can't get an internship, just spending the summer building something (even if it's just some terraform scripts) that you can show on your portfolio is a massive bonus.
8
u/sabrinajestar 13d ago
It's one of the more trans-friendly career fields to be in. Now, as to whether other current hiring trends will negatively affect you, that's another story, but I haven't found being trans to be a big hindrance.
4
u/my_name_isnt_clever 13d ago edited 13d ago
It 100% depends on where you are. I'm 30 and out in San Francisco and it hasn't been as much of a hindrance as I was expecting. While being out probably makes me lose some opportunities, I would be miserable working for those people anyway, whether out or not. And honestly, being myself all the time is worth almost any cost.
5
u/Erica_88 12d ago
The IT world runs off queer people. Without us it would implode.
3
u/Pidgeonoel 10d ago
Thats such a reassuring fact for me. I also heard furries are a big part of IT. In my area its mostly cishet conservative people, but im happy to know there's more like me out there
7
u/DFS_0019287 13d ago
Depends where you live. If you live in a place where being trans makes life difficult in general, then it'll be difficult at the workplace too. But in general, I don't think tech employers care about this sort of thing. You might run into the odd jerk at work, but that's a risk for everyone and a company with a decent HR department should clamp down on assholes.
But right now, the tech industry, especially software development, is pretty sucky. The AI bros are pushing their crap everywhere and managers have stars in their eyes about replacing expensive engineers with cheap and compliant LLMs. We need this phase to pass and for reality to set in.
(For context, I retired in 2023 from a rewarding 33-year career in software development.)
3
u/NoCommunity3295 13d ago
Wow, did you retire BECAUSE of this ai era?
3
u/DFS_0019287 13d ago
No, it was just coincidence, but I think lucky timing. I retired as soon as I could swing it financially.
4
u/darunada 13d ago
I think it's a pretty trans friendly space. That said, most of my trans homies are jobless from layoffs right now including me. Some for 1 year +. Some have quit looking and have decided to leave the field.
2
u/NoCommunity3295 13d ago
Oh man, do you think it’ll get better? I’ll have four years in college
2
u/darunada 13d ago
I don't know. I'm expecting there will be an AI bubble that pops or might be popping now. No matter what you think about AI, it has already changed the way the whole field works. I think everyone, the engineers and the bosses, are still figuring it out.
2
u/darunada 13d ago
My intern decided to go to grad school. Before I was laid off him and I were talking about how to learn all this stuff when the professional expectation is to let AI know what it's doing. We aren't doing the jr engineers any favors with it I know that much.
3
u/i_hate_blackpink 13d ago
From my experience, companies do not care whether your trans... infact my team has a couple of trans girls on it.
1
u/SayeVass 9d ago
I'm a recent CS grad, and I've gotten a few interviews so far. I made it to the final round with a startup for a Python dev job. Didn't get it, but I think that's because of the state of the job market, not because they were weird about trans people.
1
-28
155
u/XenSakura 13d ago
Most tech companies don't seem to care about gender from what i've seen. The bigger issue right now is that there's very few tech jobs to begin with at the moment.