A friend/co-worker and I went out to lunch today. We were talking about some of the cool things about our workplace culture, particularly how it is not sexist. Since we work in an operations department for a software company, that quality isn't necessarily a given.

One thing she pointed out that hadn't even really crossed my mind was that the new dev ops woman we just hired was introduced in an email with her name and picture, and mentioned that her hobbies are decorating and cooking - and that no one asked if she could code. Because, well, duh - that's what she was hired for. If she couldn't code, we wouldn't have hired her for that job.

This reminded me of another new hire email, a recent male hire for the support team who mentioned that his hobbies also include decorating and cooking - not hobbies a man could admit to in every workplace.

This is what diversity and professionalism is supposed to be like, and it's awesome. I hope more companies will join us.