✋ Newsletter #38: #MeToo
A bi-monthly newsletter about Ruby on Rails and the web.
In this issue we are relieved that justice is done, we keep looking at the stars, we ask questions to improve…
👋 French version (version française) | 🤌 Italian version (versione italiana) | 🤝 Spanish version (versión española)
#MeToo
In December 2020 Thibaut Assus, one of the creators of Paris.rb, has been brought to court in France and found guilty of rape and sexual assaults with aggravating factor: the use of his position of power. He was condemned to 5 years in prison and decided to appeal.
This judgment was upheld on appeal on October 28, 2022, and the sentence was extended to 6 years in prison.
He committed these acts of violence against his intern in a professional setting, an intern who was also part of Paris.rb, where she met her abuser.
Sexual violence is systemic in our patriarchal society, and therefore also present in the professional environment, in every field. Today, tech is a male-dominated field not spared from this violence, with some informal networks or working environments that are characterized by a “boy's club” atmosphere.
We know the mechanisms of these acts of violence because some women, by necessity and with courage, talked, shared what they experienced, and denounced it. And others helped spread their stories.
What makes our community safe?
The ability to identify any situation that does not feel normal. To support victims so they know it’s not their fault. To know how to use the law and also advocate for its enforcement and improvement. To offer solidarity and a safe space for victims to be able to speak up, and get moral support in any legal process they want to engage in.
Women On Rails is an intersectional feminist community. Like other communities for women, when we meet we can talk about what we live at work, without judgment: a long-awaited promotion, sexists, and insistent jokes…
We would like to reassert that we are here for all women who feel threatened, or who have been assaulted at work. You can share during our meet-ups, on Slack, by email, or on our Twitter account: we will listen, and we will give you support.
We shared resources in the French version of the newsletter to get to know about your right to safety at work. To our international readers, if you can advise us of some NGOs working to prevent sexual violence at work, we’ll reshare them on Twitter.
We can recommend joining WNB.rb, which is a community for women and non-binary Rubyists, and a safe space to network and share.
Some reading: Better Allies, Be a better ally
Ruby Tip 💎
gem 'safe_pusher'A gem that helps you execute linters and tests on files you modified with just one command, before committing and pushing your branch on GitHub. It can even open a PR on GitHub.
$ safepush test lint push open
# or
$ safepush t l p oOn the Web 🕸️
🙋♀️ No Stupid Questions
Sometimes we don’t dare ask those so-called stupid questions: for fear of showing our ignorance, fear to sound like someone incompetent… Yet, according to Molly Graham, they have a superpower. Simple questions, even naive ones, can be a good opportunity to get much info and make sure everybody understands the same thing. And it even works during the recruitment for the highest roles.
✨ “Black Hole Words” and the power of asking stupid questions - Molly Graham
😨 Persona 2: Antipersona
Personas are people for who we shape the product we build or maintain. Antipersonas are those who can have a malicious use of it (if we manage sensitive data for example) or if a bad use of the product can harm the user (like children facing violent content). Sara Ramaswamy explains why we need these personas and how we can define them.
✨ Antipersonas: What, How, Who, and Why? - Sara Ramaswamy
🌿 A Greener Internet
When we think of carbon footprint, we go for: shutting off the lights, recycling, and local food network. But rarely about the internet. Yet, in 2025, the tech industry is expected to consume almost 20% of the world's electricity production. Laura Keen gives us some ideas to build digital products and websites more respectful of the environment.
✨ Making digital products more sustainable - Laura Keen
Some Code 💻
🤙 Who You Gonna Call?
At Adobe, they realized that the people who manage the bugs the best are… the ones who maintain the code that creates the said bugs (DevOps for the win). Bianca Costache describes the system put in place for an app that needs 99.9% availability with some 60 billion requests a day (no pressure).
✨ Creating a Thriving On-Call Engineering Workflow by Embracing Healthy Team Habits - Bianca Costache (Teşilă)
🔢 In Need of Another Game?
Did you do the Wordle today? Or the Worldle? We love this kind of game. What if we code one? Olivia Gibson shows us how she built a Wordle with numbers. A great exercise to work on our algorithm skills.
✨Build Your Own Wordle For Numbers: Numble - Olivia Gibson
🧇 Team Pie
It is not always easy to understand lines and lines of data in an app, so we often use graphs for better visualization… though we need to choose them wisely! Everything doesn’t fit in the good ol’ pie chart, and Miroslava Jovicic explains clearly what to use depending on the type of data and the information we want to communicate.
✨Data-heavy applications: How to design perfect charts - Miroslava Jovicic
Fun 🎉
🚀 A Tribute to Star Trek
“The continuing mission of the Starship Enterprise has been to take us out of the smog of fear and hate into an open space where
difference is opportunity,
and justice matters,
and you can still see the stars.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
Events 🎡
🌅 Senior, and Then? - November 3
Junior, Mid, Senior, what’s next? Four experts are invited to talk about their experience and the choices we can make for our careers.
✨ Career Beyond Senior - Women Who Code London
☕ Buy us a coffee to support the newsletter 🍰 Thank you Fanny for your support!
✨ Join us: meet-up | twitter | website
Editors: Aurelie, Camille, Lucille and Juliette
English version: Aurelie
Italian version: Paola
Spanish version: Kattya