Life as a Woman Programmer

"I had a boss who said flatly: I hate to hire all you girls but you’re too damned smart. By “all” he meant three but, at the time, it was rare to find even one woman in a well-placed technical position. At a meeting, he kept interrupting me to say; Gee, you sure have pretty hair. By then I realized he was teaching me a great deal about computing. It would be a complicated professional relationship, in which his occasional need for male dominance would surface."

Narration by American computer programmer and author Ellen Ullman, in her book "Life in Code, A personal history of technology"