Leaders in the developer community - including Microsoft's Scott Hanselman and Kelsey Hightower, a former developer advocate at Google - cancelled their appearances at DevTernity, which has tickets costing as much as $870, said the report.
Participants discovered the fake profiles after Gergely Orosz, who runs a popular tech newsletter, posted on social media that he had identified fabricated profiles of women on DevTernity's speakers list. He also claimed to have found fake women's profiles on the speakers lists for previous and future events.
"It struck a chord with the developer community, which saw the practice as misleading and potentially deceitful, and a step backward from their goal of diversity in male-dominated tech events," explains the Bloomberg report.
Gregely Orosz, showing profile of one of an alleged fake speaker, wrote on X (formerly Twitter)," DevTernity has had fake women speakers listed for years. Here is fake Anna Boyle’s “colleague” fake Natalie Stadler claimed to be at Coinbase (no such person ever worked there ofc - I checked). She “spoke” in 2022 there as well. Just incredible."
DevTernity has had fake women speakers listed for years.
— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 25, 2023
Here is fake Anna Boyle’s “colleague” fake Natalie Stadler claimed to be at Coinbase (no such person ever worked there ofc - I checked).
She “spoke” in 2022 there as well.
Just incredible.https://t.co/q4mpwrw3ym pic.twitter.com/2sdhEcuORc
The event's organizer, Eduards Sizovs, said in a post on X (Twitter) that he “auto-generated” a fake woman’s profile after a female speaker had dropped out of the conference, but that it was a placeholder and not meant to imply a more diverse conference. He later removed the fake profile.
"... you know that I have high standards of work and professional ethics. You know that DevTernity has been my life's work, and DevTernity is the event that I love and deeply care about. We've always delivered on the promise, and the event has been highly regarded by both speakers and attendees. It's all the result of hard and ethical work. 8 years in a row," Eduards said in an X post.
Almost half of the 23 speakers still listed on the event’s website have withdrawn from the conference, according to social media posts and interviews with panelists.
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