Happy Ending for Discrimination Experienced at Tech Companies

I reported a few weeks ago some discrimination that my girlfriend has experienced at a tech team, which is similar to discrimination I have experienced in the Ruby community. The good news is last week, my girlfriend finally had a happy ending to this discrimination problem. The good guys and gals always win in the end! Evil never triumphs permanently!

Assuming you read the previous blog post on the topic, what happened next is the manager who was enabling discrimination against my girlfriend totally lost it and started commanding and controlling every developer on the team, telling them to stop sharing their opinions at meetings and only follow orders from the manager going forward. The manager completely stopped the whole agile Scrum collaborative approach and wanted to turn the team into the worst kind of Waterfallish nightmare in which devs cannot question anything and must only do as the manager says. As part of that, he stopped my girlfriend's retro meetings and was beginning to have her cut out several Scrum practices that help with team collaboration because he wanted to be in charge of everything all of the sudden.

Needless to say, my girlfriend couldn't take that BS anymore, and told the manager point blank that the team is NOT Scrum or Agile anymore, and her title is literally Scrum Master, so she did not want to work on that team anymore. She told the manager she was gonna use her many accumulated vacation days over several years and take a month long vacation. 

My girlfriend just got back to her job last week, and after her first day back, she shared with me the big surprises that happened in her absence. Apparently, several members of the team quit (both devs and product people) or became extremely demoralized by the insanity of that manager and his changes that destroyed collaborative Software Development. His team moved so slowly as a result that the directors above him ended up pulling the plug on the project and killing it completely.

Fortunately, my girlfriend got re-assigned to another team that has just had their Scrum Master promoted into a higher level manager, so my girlfriend became the new Scrum Master on that team. And, the good news, my girlfriend told me the new team is amazing! They do even more Agile Software Development than straight up Scrum by augmenting Scrum with Kanban. They are very friendly and nice. And, they have a highly collaborative approach!

I had surprising good news like this happen to me last year after an abusive coworker from another Software Development team got suddenly let go with his entire team because his team failed to deliver and my team inherited his project and finished it in about 2 months despite being completely unfamiliar with its code beforehand. While working at the same company as me, that abusive dev missed all the Montreal.rb Ruby meetups I have organized except one, which he abandoned in the middle of. He never cared to support me, so he was definitely not the kind of dev I'd ever hire in the first place (he was at the company from before my time until he was let go). In fact, some dev at a different company contacted me a few months later to ask me about that abusive dev because he had applied for a job at his company. I ended up giving the full scoop on that abusive dev, which resulted in him getting rejected for that job. 

So, the good guys and gals always win! Never give up when you are in a bullying abusive discriminatory situation at your job or elsewhere!!! Bad people always end up paying for it sooner or later.

PS I am disappointed only a few people told me they sympathized with my situation after I posted the original blog post about the discrimination my girlfriend was suffering from. It's like many people in the Ruby community are 100% OK with discrimination/bullying/unnice-behavior nowadays or just they don't care if it's not happening to them! I would say 50% of the devs in the Ruby community today are part of the problem not the solution as either they are too complacent/lazy/cowardly to lend support to people affected by the problem of discrimination or they indirectly benefit from the discrimination because they are unqualified devs that only get ahead by getting some other devs pushed down. Do not be part of the problem through inaction! Speak up against discrimination, bullying, and unethical behavior! Offer sympathy, help, and support! Share your stories! Share triumphs over discrimination and bullying! 

The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Subreddit Chronicles 2025-10-09

I have covered multiple times the mean discriminatory ways Ruby/Rails subreddit members treat some Rubyists, which started happening only in the last 10 years. Now, I will be regularly sharing examples of that for everyone to see to increase the level of awareness of the un-Ruby-community-like meanness, lack of sympathy, lying, and discrimination that Ruby/Rails subreddit members practice and moderators tolerate to the detriment of the Ruby on Rails community. Eventually, if the problem is not corrected, I will be talking about this problem at Ruby meetups and conferences to increase awareness of this big elephant in the room that isn't being addressed. It is basically a double standard that excludes some people like me from participating safely in the Ruby/Rails subreddits while the Subreddit members are nice to others they deem "in their clique" or "tribe". That's exactly what discrimination is, let alone, it's not nice as per the MINASWAN Ruby principle (Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice). Also, the argument that nobody forced me to join those groups is akin to telling someone who went into a bar and got stabbed that nobody forced them to go into the bar instead of correctly sympathizing with them and reporting the bad behavior to the authorities, potentially closing the bar permanently if it doesn't reform in its treatment of clients who enter it.

Before sharing examples, here are some of my previous posts about the topic:

• Entitled/Incompetent/Mean Members of Ruby/Rails Subreddits
• The Rails subreddit is an embarrassment to the Ruby community

I am very confident secure person and have thick skin, so I can freely share the interactions without being anxious about others' opinions.

As a first example, 10 months ago, I shared an article about "How To Spot Covert Discrimination in the Ruby Community", and I got downvoted to 0 in both the Ruby subreddit and Rails subreddit (probably got a very large negative number in both subreddits as Reddit doesn't show the real number when it's negative anymore I believe).

We all know that downvoting an article that speaks against discrimination means all the downvoters are discriminators (assuming what is shared is truthful). Meaning, this downvoting unwittingly confirmed 100% that the Ruby/Rails downvoters are discriminators.

Even if there might be some disagreement with what is written, the nice Ruby way to express that is by refraining from downvoting and having a conversation in a sympathetic, serious, and patient way (that's how things happened 10 years ago and before). It is very weird that Ruby/Rails subreddit members don't act that way, but it is possible they are indirectly benefiting from the discrimination that is happening in the Ruby community as that discrimination frees up jobs for them that they are not most qualified for, which enables them to steal those jobs at the expense of pushing defenseless members of the Ruby community down with bullying and discrimination. But, how come no leaders in the Ruby community are commenting about this mean behavior when in fact it is not normal whatsoever?!! Could it be that they are indirectly benefiting financially somehow from this discrimination too by taming the competition of Ruby developers indirectly? 

As a second example, I will share a very recent interaction that demonstrates total lack of sympathy by a Ruby subreddit member with the fact that I got discriminated against by a certain Ruby shop. And, the subreddit member ended up embarrassing themselves further by defending embarrassing lack of support for a local Ruby community by a well-funded Ruby shop that claims to be a "big supporter of Ruby", which is obviously a lie if actions don't match their words or if they discriminate against some members in the Ruby community in their support. Of course, defending mediocrity indicates mediocrity in the defender, which is why they embarrassed themselves further with the defense, let alone they told everyone they have no manners and aren't nice members of the Ruby community. One more thing that is also embarrassing about the interaction is that I am sure the commenter fits the profile of the post above "Entitled/Incompetent/Mean Members of Ruby/Rails Subreddits", meaning it's an unqualified person with entitlement issues that make them act in a mean way as if they're a god instead of being humble and sympathetic.

If a normal person was told by somebody that some other person suffered from discrimination, they would assume a serious sympathetic attitude and ask what happened to see if they could help. Any other reaction, like making fun of the person or being sarcastic with them, immediately reveals that the listener isn't a normal loving person, yet a person who is mean, unloving, a discriminator by extension through endorsement of discrimination, and probably someone indirectly benefiting from the discrimination to defend it. Even if the reporter of the discrimination was wrong in misinterpreting some behavior as discrimination, the right reaction would be to at least show concern and ask questions or explain in a calm rational manner any misunderstandings without joking about a topic like discrimination. That Ruby subreddit member's reaction was totally unacceptable and inappropriate as part of the nice Ruby decorum.

Here is the interaction:

Here is the link shared in my Reddit comment to learn more about what it says: https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2025/06/shopify-has-been-bad-for-ruby-community.html

The bottom line is that this person's interaction made the Ruby community worse not better overall. Offering sympathy or at least a listening ear to a person who suffered discrimination would have made the Ruby community better overall regardless of whether the discrimination took place or was a false perception that needed a patient gentle correction.

Not sympathizing with discrimination while affirming lack of support for members of the Ruby community means the commenter is by extension a mean discriminator who does not support the Ruby community nor kindly sympathizes with people who are mistreated, meaning a manner-less trash person. Also, by simple logical deduction, upvoting that comment indicates that all the upvoters are mean discriminators who do not support the Ruby community nor kindly sympathize with people who are mistreated equally, meaning manner-less trash people.

This demonstrates how ugly the Ruby on Rails community has become, especially with people in it enabling this kind of behavior and not doing the right things to discourage it, while conducting that with double standards, meaning they sometimes defend some members of the Ruby community from this sort of behavior, but also allow this behavior to go unchecked against other members of the community. Having double-standards is the very definition of discrimination.

I will start sharing more and more of those interactions to expose the unnice ways of Ruby/Rails subreddit members to the maintainers and contributors of Ruby, Rails, and other high-profile Ruby projects. It is important for everyone to become aware of this problem to eventually resolve it.

It's Official! The Bullies Are Running The Ruby Community!

Update 2025-10-24: Since this article has been written, new development has happened that led to the Ruby core team officially taking over RubyGems and Bundler, so fortunately, the hostile takeover by Shopify has been corrected and Ruby devs won everywhere as a result!!!

After reading Joel Drapper's article "Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover" and Josef Simanek's article "Why I leave Ruby Central", there is no doubt left in the fact that Shopify is a mean opportunistic company and isn't good for the Ruby community. They intentionally compromised the neutrality of RubyGems and Bundler for their own commercial interests. Meaning, they don't have the best interests of the Ruby community and customers in mind aside from profit, yet only their own self interests that are ultimately about their own profit. That fully compromised RubyGems and Bundler as being non-profit neutral platforms not associated directly with any company's commercial interests.

Just like that, the false image of Shopify as a nice entity in the Ruby community is completely shattered and exposed for the illusion it always was! Shopify does in no way follow the Ruby MINASWAN attitude and practice (Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice)!

I already blogged about how Shopify has been bad for the Ruby community in the article "Shopify Has Been Bad for the Ruby Community in the Last 10 Years". The events of last week support everything I wrote as true. I haven't received any apologies from Shopify about what I wrote even though it is all 100% true. Everybody makes mistakes, but good people humbly own up and apologize when they realize their mistakes whereas bad people neither humbly own up nor apologize for their mistakes. 

A wronged person would at least expect something like "Hey, sorry! We messed up! We don't do this anymore as we learned from our past mistakes (or we fired whoever did this). Let's have a chat to make sure we're good going forward!". Not receiving communication as basic as that means the company is truly evil. If I was working at Shopify right now and I read a story like this, I'd immediately dust up my resume to go find another job. After all, everyone who works at Shopify right now is working at the expense of pushing people like me down by Shopify's mean elitist discriminatory practices. It's like someone living at a house that was paid for by stealing from a percentage of people in their community. It's not right at all! 

That's part of the reason why I was surprised DHH recently joined Shopify's board of directors. That indicts him further as part of the problem, not the solution. I have observed that companies that have evil discriminatory practices like Shopify's are almost always 1000+ employee companies as they treat people like numbers by the definition of them being too large. After all, their size, which is mainly driven by the greed for too much profit, makes it impractical for everybody to know everybody and treat everybody like an equal, let alone they have fake problems caused mostly by their size, preventing them from being truly agile like small-to-mid-size companies. DHH's 37Signals is a small company that should have a much better culture, so it's surprising that he chose to join the board of directors of one of those big corrupt evil companies that are totally unlike his.

In summary, it's official! The bullies are running the Ruby Community today! And, it's been having terrible effects on the Ruby community as a whole, especially innovation in Ruby. I recently recorded a video of myself talking about how "Ruby on Rails Conferences Are Discriminatory, Unintelligent, and Hateful of Ruby in 2025". This is a direct result of the bullies running the Ruby community!!!

In fact, I have suffered quite a bit from this covert bullying in the Ruby community in previous jobs, and have written an article about "How To Spot Covert Discrimination in the Ruby Community".

I had a hard time talking about the bullying in the Ruby community in the past because I really needed to keep my job for financial reasons, and I didn't want to lose my job by talking about the discrimination I was facing at various companies I worked at as well as in the interview process of companies I was considering. Fortunately, I have a good job now, and I am not worried anymore about talking about all the discrimination I received from past companies in past jobs. 

If you have faced bullying in the Ruby community at a previous job, please speak up about it for the benefit of everyone who is oppressed by unethical Ruby companies. Don't do it just for yourself, but for the benefit of the tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees that are potentially being bullied at bad Ruby companies today. After all, speaking up about this problem is the only way to expose it and then eventually eliminate it and prevent it. I know it is very hard to speak up about this problem, but every voice that gets added in opposition of bullying helps prevent further bullying in the future.

Unlimited Tech Debt Work

I love that at my job, our managers are 100% on board with doing as much tech debt work as needed. That's what enables my team to stay productive month in month out. It's very sad when company politics prevent tech debt work from happening and employees end up getting forced to accept the unproductive status quo because "that's the way it is". That's why good work relationships are of paramount importance. They enable us to bypass politics entirely to focus on getting work done in the most effective way possible for customers.

Ruby on Rails Conferences Are Discriminatory, Unintelligent, and Hateful of Ruby in 2025

I think I might have finally figured out why Ruby on Rails 2025 conferences rejected my talk proposals for my open-source project Glimmer DSL for Web that won a 2025 Fukuoka award from Matz (the creator of Ruby) even though the library provides a 100% innovative and useful tool, is used at my job, has no competition by any other open-source projects, is Matz-approved, and I am the most qualified person to give a talk that unique and interesting due to being the creator, a multi-time RailsConf/RubyConf speaker, and an award winner (meaning, the excuse of other talks winning over doesn't really apply here as they're all inferior if they don't cover a topic that is as innovative and aren't given by someone as qualified as I am due to winning an award by Matz).

I noticed in the past that some Ruby on Rails conference websites were built using React and kinda sucked because they didn't have bookmarkable URLs for when the user clicked on a talk to expand it and read it, preventing users from being able to share direct talk links with others. So, the devs presiding over the conferences were probably insulted by my talk saying that using Glimmer results in writing much less Frontend code as to be able to do 12 months of JS Frontend work in 6 months in much more readable Ruby because they've drank the React koolaid, are biased, and would hate to stop using React no matter how inferior it is to using a Ruby Frontend Framework. In other words, they're devs who are insecure, standing in the way of progress and innovation, attached to inferior technologies for emotional reasons not rational reasons, and hate Ruby, so would rather side with React's folks against real Rubyists to the point of discriminating against me by rejecting my 100% qualified and unique talk that had zero competition. 

Honestly, that auto-disqualifies those conferences from being ones that I'd like to speak at due to being run by unintelligent biased haters of Ruby who don't respect accomplishments like winning an international competition with an open-source project by the creator of the Ruby language himself, meaning they discourage innovation and encourage devs to either use outdated tech like JavaScript and React (Inertia is just inside-the-box unimaginative lipstick on a pig and Glimmer DSL for Web already bridges the gap to all JS libraries via Opal) or follow the hero worship anti-pattern by only allowing DHH to "innovate" with Turbo without anyone else in the community being accepted for their innovative idea contributions (a form of discrimination). So, it wasn't a loss for me not to present as I'd be embarrassed to speak at one of those inferior conferences like RailsConf that are now run by unintelligent haters of Ruby in 2025. In fact, I am already embarrassed I spoke at RailsConf twice in the past given how anti-innovation, unintelligent, and downright discriminatory RailsConf has become. But, it is a loss for attendees of those conferences to miss out on a tool that lets them cut down development time and code by half in the Frontend of Rails apps when Turbo isn't cutting it anymore, meaning the selfishness in being biased towards React and JavaScript against Ruby is literally robbing all devs and customers of months of saved costs and time in Frontend work. 

Obviously, the Ruby community has a cancer that has invaded it through fake Ruby shops that claim to like Ruby, but use React in the Frontend instead of Frontend Ruby (Frontend Ruby via Opal has been around for 10 years, so no Ruby shop has any excuses not to have adopted it as a standard even before I created my Frontend Framework, Glimmer DSL for Web, on top of it). A while ago, I saw a guy give a talk at a Ruby meetup about how much he liked using Ruby at his startup, but then he mentioned that his team used React in the Frontend, even though React's code and approach completely contradicts and goes against the Ruby way, resulting in very bad maintainability. When I told him and his team after the talk that they could use Ruby in the Frontend via Opal now, their eyes glazed over as if they didn't care for Ruby whatsoever, disproving 100% that they really liked Ruby and proving they were hypocrites that just used Ruby on Rails for the "cool association factor" (that's what they truly liked Ruby for), not for appreciating or understanding the benefits of Ruby. That's the story of 50% of Ruby shops in 2025. 

I have no choice but to conclude that those Rails conference rejections are 100% discrimination and exclusion given I am 100% qualified (I have spoken at the last 3 RubyConfs in a row), the topic is very important as it would save companies that do Frontend Development with JavaScript months of work every year, and no other speaker at all in any of those conferences has won a Fukuoka international technology competition award with a Ruby open-source project from Matz, meaning the excuse of "other talks won over" doesn't really apply unless there is discriminatory bias. I mean some of those conferences literally accepted JavaScript Frontend talks with Inertia and favored them over using Ruby even though  they are Ruby conferences believe it or not, and Ruby produces much more readable/maintainable/slim code than Inertia/React while cutting Frontend work by half and allowing the use of any JS library from Ruby (that's infinitely way more innovative than using Inertia), and yet those conferences claim to be "Ruby conferences" (obviously a lie nowadays)!!! 

While inferior tools like Inertia think inside-the-box, truly innovative tools like Glimmer DSL for Web in Rails-like fashion totally tear down the box and re-imagine Frontend Development in Ruby. Why did the once-forward-thinking Rails community become so backwards thinking about the Frontend Development story aside from Turbo in 2025? The talk that covered Inertia at RailsConf 2025 didn't even mention Opal Ruby as part of the Rails Frontend evolution at all, nor cover Ruby WASM and how it allows writing Frontend code in Ruby as an alternative to Opal. I personally covered both with a talk at my local Ruby meetup years ago now, proving I'm a more qualified speaker than the guy who mentioned Inertia in his Frontend talk at RailsConf 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AdcfbI6A4c . The RailsConf 2025 Frontend talk didn't highlight how Rails 6 broke its own Convention over Configuration principle by including a configuration heavy library like Webpack in Rails due to lack of intelligence in selecting Opal Ruby as a default instead. Had that happened, the Rails community would be 10 years ahead today, but it is in fact 10 years behind. Just because people aren't aware of that, that doesn't mean it's not true. Smart people think of what the highest potential that could have been achieved over the last 10 years had DHH didn't completely mess up and simp to the JS folks as a pushover instead of confidently sticking as a leader with the superior language he was already using in Rails, Ruby!

The Ruby on Rails community cancer of discrimination, bias, and hate of Ruby is very ugly in 2025. Conference organizers could put an end to the discrimination and incompetence by apologizing for their discriminatory treatment and guaranteeing a spot for me to speak at their conference next year if they want to make things right and prove that the Ruby community isn't run by discriminatory unintelligent biased haters of Ruby. Otherwise, RailsConf 2025 actually provided outdated, incomplete, and inaccurate information about the Frontend story in Rails that neglected a Fukuoka Prefecture Future IT Initiative 2025 Award Winning Ruby on Rails Frontend library (Glimmer DSL for Web), neglected Opal (won an award in 2023), and neglected Ruby WASM entirely! The Ruby on Rails community is worse for it, and more importantly, customers are paying double the fee for Rails Software Development and getting the Software in double the time as a result. RailsConf was a weak conference that degraded developers' skills. Still, everybody makes mistakes, but good people apologize when they are made aware of their mistakes, and they redeem themselves as a result. I do make mistakes and say sorry at work from time to time. I say sorry because if I don't, customers suffer like they're suffering today from terrible React/Inertia codebases. Devs not realizing that doesn't mean the codebases aren't terrible (the Dunning-Kruger effect) when the devs could have done half the work in half the time using Frontend Ruby and contributed to the betterment of Ruby in the Frontend as well. 

Honestly, saving 6 months of Frontend work a year via Frontend Ruby (vs doing 12 months of work in JavaScript) provides the biggest improvement to Rails shops in 2025, so this is actually the most important topic at any Ruby on Rails conference in 2025 as I am 100% sure that not a single other RailsConf 2025 talk provides that big a benefit to companies. 

Glimmer DSL for Web Component Attribute Listener & Component Attribute Data-Binding

Glimmer DSL for Web (Fukuoka Award Winning Frontend Framework for Ruby on Rails) versions 0.7.2 & 0.7.3 add new samples to demonstrate the newly added features of Component Attribute Listener and Component Attribute Data-Binding. So, not only could we listen to HTML element events like a select element's onchange event, but now, if you add any attribute to a component, it automatically supports having consumers listen to that attribute's updates by hooking into `on_attributename_update` by convention (this is the Rails Convention Over Configuration principle at play). Additionally, consumers could even automatically data-bind that attribute to a model attribute by using the typical Glimmer approach of <=> for bidirectional data-binding and <= for unidirectional data-binding.

Suppose we have an address type select box.

The address_type_select component code would be something like this:

Now, we can attach a listener to the selected_address_type component attribute without the developer of the component doing anything extra by writing this consumer code:

address_type_select(address_types: ['Home', 'Work', 'Other'], 

                    selected_address_type: 'Home') {

  on_selected_address_type_update do |selected_address_type|

    # Do something

  end

}

Alternatively, we could data-bind the component attribute to a model attribute:

address_type_select(address_types: ['Home', 'Work', 'Other']) {

  selected_address_type <=> [address_type_presenter, :selected_address_type]

}

That opens the door for building higher concepts with components and being able to listen to their attribute changes and data-bind them as if they are basic HTML elements.

New samples:

• Hello, Component Attribute Listeners! 
• Hello, Component Attribute Data-Binding!

Happy Glimmering!

Discrimination Experienced at Tech Companies

I have experienced something like this at Ruby shops before. My girlfriend keeps getting mistreated at her job where she works as a Scrum Master. Some devs on her team miss her meetings and ignore her deadlines, and then instead of apologizing for their bad work ethic, they lie and bully my girlfriend by pretending they're the "victims" and she's the "oppressor", which makes zero sense given that she's like the nicest person and incapable of being mean towards anyone. 

Worse yet, instead of the manager bringing the other devs and my girlfriend into a room to have them speak their sides of the conflict and hash out their differences respectfully (as done at normal ethical companies), or at least investigating if the claims by the devs about my girlfriend are even true at all (they're not), he decided to blindly trust the claims without giving equality to all sides (meaning he is taking sides with one side instead of staying unbiased and letting both sides be equally trustworthy or equally have to prove their claim). Afterwards, he decided to split the team into 2 teams with the excuse that "there is no cultural fit between some people on the team, so it's better to split them into 2 different teams". That's ridiculous as it completely ignores the bad work ethic of the lying developers (like not attending meetings and not hitting deadlines) and ignores the fact that my girlfriend is a certified Scrum Master and a very friendly team player. She would be a great fit in any tech culture given that she is a qualified team player. On the other hand, the other devs are very individualistic and don't care about the team or teamwork whatsoever. So now, they are using "culture fit" as a way to discriminate against my girlfriend and defend bad coworkers who are literally missing meetings without being held responsible while bullying my girlfriend and treating her with discrimination. They don't see themselves as equals to her, yet as being on a higher platform from which they don't need to follow the same standards my girlfriend follows like attending meetings and respecting deadlines. 

I actually cover these exact kinds of discrimination in my writeup on covert discrimination (like having double standards and using "culture fit" as an excuse to discriminate): https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2024/12/how-to-spot-covert-discrimination-in.html

Stop covert discrimination from happening at work places by spreading awareness via sharing this article and the one linked above. 

In my experience, 100% of companies that have 1000 employees or more (the kind of company my girlfriend works for) practice some sort of discrimination while treating employees as numbers, with some treated as part of the "elite" and others treated as second class citizens regardless of their technical qualifications and merit. That's why a number of years ago, I stopped accepting high paying jobs at 1000+ employee companies even if I am fully qualified for them technically because I discovered that they are all essentially discriminatory environments that prioritize greed/pride over servitude to customers and coworkers (any company that makes more than a certain large amount of money cares more about greed than providing 100% equal service to everyone without discrimination). I am much happier working for small and mid-size companies where such discrimination doesn't take place while working in a much more agile fashion than any 1000+ employee company could.