It's life amongst a slice of immature people. It's not inherent, and there are plenty of work cultures where it doesn't happen.
Unfortunately, in an industry of anti-social children who have never been valued for much more than their code, it's the default developmental pathology. Which brings us back to the point of the article: why don't women work in tech? Because tech's culture blows, and nobody does a damned thing to change it, for fear of upsetting the apple cart.
Let's assume that the author's perception of the meeting situation is completely correct, and that things went down exactly as described. Who failed? The other "engineers" failed, of course...but more importantly, the manager failed. It was an epic fail, in fact: the manager should have stepped in when he noticed that one of the quieter employees was being closed out of a discussion. The manager should have done something to control the tenor of the meeting to help ensure that it wasn't a ridiculous, shouted free-for-all. The manager should have pulled the other participants aside and told them that their performance scores would suffer if they continued to behave like a cage full of juvenile howler monkeys.
Did the manager do that? Not even close. The manager scolded the marginalized employee for asserting herself so that she could make her (correct!) point. That's just incredibly fucked up, and it doesn't sound like a productive work environment for anyone. I've been on her side of the table more than one time in this industry, and nothing is more demotivating.
Exactly. In my eyes, this is grounds for dismissal. As a manager, allowing all competent voices to be heard is your fucking job. While the gender issue complicates things, it's really just a red herring - the core problem is this "alpha male" culture within IT, total lack of humility, disingenuousness, selective memory, outright dishonesty, etc.
I've seen this chronically in at least 50% of the places I've worked, without females even being involved in the situation. Technically, it's by no means restricted to IT, it's just especially common there.
