The little things are the big things

Since I started my journey in Software Engineering three years ago, there have been plenty of times that I’ve found the field to be non-inclusive. The most egregious of these is in the term “master-slave” architecture and the fact that I start off every day on Github requesting updates from “master.”

Even worse is that in Software Engineering “machines” are often called “workers” so I’ve heard people _at work _discuss “killing the slave [workers]” when talking about taking down servers.

Recently,  Github made a transition from labeling their main branches as the “master” branch in an effort to promote more inclusive language and today I created my first repo on Github where the term “master” has been renamed to “main.”

This is in line with a number of changes across the tech industry to shift towards more inclusive language and it is a _massive _understatement to say that this change, while small, is incredibly satisfying.

“master” has now been replaced with “main” in new repos

It may seem small. However, many, if not most, minorities currently in Software Engineering roles have found their own ways to suppress or repress these daily references to slavery — while many of our white colleagues don’t think twice when they interact with “master” or “slave” terminology in their daily work.

More importantly, recruiters and those complaining about the (alleged) ever-elusive “pipeline problem” of getting minorities into tech have no idea how much of a road block unnecessarily non-inclusive terms like “master” and “slave” have in causing many minorities who do enter the “pipeline” to leave at higher rates than their white counterparts.

#diversity-in-tech #inclusion #github