Here's an example, from internet deep learning celebrity Siraj Raval: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Decentralized-Applications-Harnessi...
(not denying any of the credentials you quoted in your comment though, just responding to that particular point)
It is proof that she wrote a book.
To present an analogy about Susan Fowler with "if a journalist with no experience..." is to present an analogy that is factually incorrect regarding her experience.
If a person created an open-source project on nights and weekends that received industry-wide acclaim, regardless of day job, he/she would most certainly be getting job offers.
They are different jobs. You can write a book without doing any investigative reporting, but it would be hard for a journalist to do so. Siraj Raval might be a published author, but he still has next to no experience being a journalist.
Here's the link in case anyone is interested:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Production-Ready-Microservices-Stan...
So I think writing a topical piece does make you a journalist, though perhaps not one qualified for prestigious awards.
This is really under-selling what Susan Fowler did. She exposed and reformed a massive, multibillion-dollar company with a single essay. How many journalists have done that?
Some, certainly. But not many.
I see this as a media-train hop. If this same situation had happened in a multibillion-dollar financial company that didn't have as many subsequent PR issues, would we be praising her as high?
I'm not trying to take any thing away from her. I want Uber to crash and burn and be forgotten. I want her to receive as much as possible in terms of justice. What I DON'T want is for this to be spun into click-bait PR for the pulitzer, and tangentially - Uber. What about the millions of women who get harassed daily but work for less "important" companies? Shouldn't they be considered potential pulitzer winners for their blog posts and facebook statuses?
The only reason anybody cares is because Uber is A Big Name. This will not change her life for the better. Uber will continue doing as it has been doing. The issue will not be solved. But these articles will get clicked on.
She wrote about her experience, which was incredibly brave and hard to do. She put her future career on the line. And she was the right person at the right company at the right time (or wrong, depending on how you look at it).
She didn't investigate much at all. She didn't uncover much at all. She certainly hasn't reformed uber, but caused a spotlight on uber that has caused reform to happen.
Google just recently refused to release salary numbers across their workforce because it "would be too expensive" which is really another way of saying the truth would paint them in a very harsh light. Going further back the big three were colluding to keep engineer salaries low with non-poaching agreements.
The industry as a whole is unhealthy and it is important to continue calling out all the bullshit and not becoming complacent with the status quo. For every Susan Fowler there are a few thousand that suffer in silence or worse yet they speak up and are punished.
FFS, merit dude. Merit. That's the thing, the only thing. If a rank amateur who is 14 years old and looks funny does superlative work and you are recognising superlative work ...
Is this work good enough for a pulitzer? Other considerations are utter crap and should be made fun of in a cruel fashion. After all, as nerds, that's what we /do/ in life.
After all, as nerds, we should have an idea what it's like to be bullied.
> Most of us don't make fun of others in a cruel fashion
Highlights mine. I think you missed that rather important distinction.
Nerds being bullied seems to be a predominantly US phenomenon that is generalized far too often.
Counter point: If an indie game dev makes a non-aaa game that enthralls people, would that not be a contender for a game-of-the-whatever award?
A personal account -- however valuable -- is not that kind of investigative journalism; at most, it might feed into someone else's investigative work, where they go in and get access to documents, get other sources (including people) to corroborate the information, etc. That kind of thing is what the Pulitzer organization is trying to recognize.
To adapt your analogy:
>Counter point: If an indie game dev makes a non-aaa game that enthralls people, would that not be a contender for a game-of-the-whatever award?
If the award were for groundbreaking new games, then no, they shouldn't discriminate against someone merely for being a low budget indie. But if it were merely a mod to some existing game that keeps the core functionality, then the award would be inappropriate. Another category could still be merited, though.
She didn't just build something "interesting", but something that was so compelling it launched a large investigtion that affected the executive management structure at a $50B company.
If this journalist turned programmer did the same, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were hired by Google.
The obvious counter to this argument is that Google, Uber, etc frequently acqui-hire companies founded by people with no professional experience. That's the very definition of hiring someone because they made something interesting.
Every Google SRE started out not a engineer. Every Pulitzer winner started out not a journalist.