I normally have a very high tolerance for talking about any topic but anyone who says that stuff in public and not in the small company of close friends has bigger issues than just sexism.
As others have pointed out most of these situations sound like grown men acting like frat boys or teenagers, not adult males with a singular problem with how they treat women. These are men who need to learn how to act around other adults and how to treat people with respect in public. Or at a very minimum leave it for your off-time among close friends in private.
Software has largely confronted the 'brogrammer' issue publicly, and I believe is working to improve itself, but it's well known that finance is still heavily influenced by untamed frat boy culture. This is a culture where these immature boys don't get their behaviour properly confronted and corrected. Especially when you throw personal wealth into the occassion.
You're probably better off asking your HR for a training if you can't fathom what topics may be appropriate for work or not. But most of it is common sense.
Is it sexual/racial or otherwise offensive to some within earshot? Don't say it.
Is it possibly offensive but you're not sure if they'd like to hear it? Don't say it.
You're there to work, not to push societal boundaries/ maximize discourse.
If we had always followed the "don't say it" default, then it would still be considered offensive to advocate for LGBT or religious or gender rights in the workplace. This is what I meant by taboos being sometimes harmful.
Everything I've seen in all the jobs I've worked shows a massive disconnect between "HR reality" and actual reality. I've seen women openly and proudly objectifying male subordinates in company meetings. I've seen men spending extensive time distracting their female coworkers with no consequences. I've seen women objectifying the "hot catering delivery boy". I've seen salesjerks harassing and flirting and getting away with it, while genuine people are slapped down for trivialities. The loudest and most prolific swearing I've ever heard was in a company with a highly religiously conservative employee demographic.
Nowhere have I seen a workplace where people robotically clock in, work silently, and clock out. Never have I seen a workplace free of non-work-related conversations.
People spend a majority of their waking time at work or on work-related matters. A sizable proportion of couples report meeting each other at work. There's simply no such thing as a work-only workplace. The HR-ification of society only facilitates the kind of abuse and discrimination that the devious get away with and the genuine get blamed for.
Again, you're equating social progress with the ability to say controversial things at work. I would argue that most of the progress LGBT/religious/etc. groups have made have been made outside of office cubicles. More importantly, there's a clear difference between "what are we doing to encourage a more diverse group of developers" to "who do you think is the hottest engineer on our team?"
I'm still failing to see what your point is. Yes, some people can choose to violate the rules and risk getting away with it or not.
If not sure, ask your mother/sister/daughter/other female relative/female friend.
If you don't have a female relative or friend to ask - random HN user and Ellen Pao advise you that discussing pornography and sex work in business meetings can make women feel uncomfortable.
And this is the crux of the problem. Let's pretend that I do not have any issue having this kind of a discussion ( in passing, as a single comment or even at length ) with grandmother, mother, sister or daughter?
As far as where information is maintained, as I said, the Cod of Federal Regulation states the law for each of us to refer to. It can be found on the US EEOC website. In short, the following is the law:
Harassment Harassment is a form of employment discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, (ADEA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, (ADA).
Harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. Harassment becomes unlawful where 1) enduring the offensive conduct becomes a condition of continued employment, or 2) the conduct is severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive. Anti-discrimination laws also prohibit harassment against individuals in retaliation for filing a discrimination charge, testifying, or participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or lawsuit under these laws; or opposing employment practices that they reasonably believe discriminate against individuals, in violation of these laws.
Petty slights, annoyances, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not rise to the level of illegality. To be unlawful, the conduct must create a work environment that would be intimidating, hostile, or offensive to reasonable people.
Offensive conduct may include, but is not limited to, offensive jokes, slurs, epithets or name calling, physical assaults or threats, intimidation, ridicule or mockery, insults or put-downs, offensive objects or pictures, and interference with work performance. Harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances, including, but not limited to, the following:
The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, an agent of the employer, a co-worker, or a non-employee.
The victim does not have to be the person harassed, but can be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.
Unlawful harassment may occur without economic injury to, or discharge of, the victim.
In the light of those assertions, it sounds fairly hard to believe that the culture of the world described by Pao doesn't have a strong influence in the VC-funded tech startup (and post-startup) world.
They can be reined-in using the same money the value so much. If retirement funds stop putting money into their funds (because of bad PR or any other leverage), then they'll start to behave.
Doctors have them, lawyers have them, civil engineers have them.
Lots of software written is at least as critical as what the above professionals do.
But software is a young field compared to all the above so I think it'll take time (or several really serious disasters...which is how the civil engineers got theirs).
a. Protectionism that prevents lowering of wages too much
b. The organization being subverted by its loudest members because everybody else is too busy living their lives.
The examples we see, AMA included, are all plagued with problems. There's a quote about doing the same things and expecting different outcomes but dang made a special request for this thread.
Look at the Australian Computer Society. You pay hundreds per year and have to jump through thousands of dollars of training and such. For what?! That you meet their standards?? What a joke.
I'm a member of the American Association for Computer Machinery instead. At least they charge a reasonable amount and you get a Safari subscription with it.
This is a really weird complaint from somebody who is (presumably) a developer. [If parent commenter is an owner or executive, then it makes more sense]
Are there other industries where workers actively disdain proposals to secure better treatment at the hands of owners?
The government of EVERY country in the world is elected to take care of their citizens. Why should the US government worry about wages of Chinese citizens - Chinese people have their own government, no?
BTW, the US is already very open (close to 15% of population is foreign born, the highest in a century). In an economic crisis, it is not unreasonable to slow down immigration a bit.
Also, it is ironic that you use the example of China, perhaps the most protectionist major country in the world.
But I do feel that it's wrong to restrict the supply of foreign programmers so that an engineer in Silicon Valley can earn $200k instead of 'only' $150k. The average SV programmer is already in the global 0.1%, they don't need protectionism.
Do you feel that Yelp paying $200k rather than $150k is a greater injustice than poorer countries footing the bill for educating their best and brightest only to see their best and brightest flee to San Francisco because domestic companies cannot compete with 'only $150k'?
Do you imply that "poorer countries" somehow own their people and those people owe them indentured servitude until they "return" the "investment" made into them to their "country"? And until then they are not free to move wherever they please and seek as large salary as they can find? That the only "just" outcome would be for people not to seek better lives, whereever that could be, but to stay where they were born, even in worse conditions and despite their wishes, because they owe "the bill" now?
Because it certainly looks like you do. Moreover, it looks like you claim US has a moral obligation to impose this lockdown and not allow any foreign nationals in until they paid their "debt" to the home country.
This also looks exactly like the argument USSR made when prohibiting its citizens to leave. "The country invested in you, so we can't allow you to move freely outside and benefit those capitalists now". I mean, exactly to the letter. It is eery how closely these match.
Honestly, I don't even really like the Singaporean approach of educating your citizens and then slapping a bond on them either. I think education should be free.
I think the US owes the poorer country if it takes their citizens though, and in a just world, corporation taxes on the companies that employ these people would foot the bill of the education they are are using.
We live in a world where poor subsidize rich though and the USSR being both very poor and having a great education system was one example of that.
I think it's weird that you used scare quotes around the word "investment". Do you consider the idea that there should be a societal gain for educating ones' citizens controversial?
Jesus Christ. I literally explicitly said that I didn't believe that.
You mean college professors should work for free? Or somebody else should pay for your education? That's not the worst part though. The worst part is where you turn around and say "well, since we paid for your education (with other people's money of course, but let's forget about that), we now own you and you are indebted to us forever".
> I think the US owes the poorer country if it takes their citizens though
So, you think the "poorer country" owns its citizens. Because otherwise how you can owe anybody for something they don't own? Do you owe me for sunlight? For the air you breathe? No, because I don't own it. But if you took something I do own, I would certainly be expecting something in return, you'd owe me. That's directly the idea of ownership, and what you said directly implies ownership of the country (at least "poor country") over the citizens.
> We live in a world where poor subsidize rich
No we do not. It is a completely false statement. Look into any table of who pays most of the taxes, they are widely available online.
> USSR being both very poor and having a great education system
Did you experience that system? Because I did. It sucked. There were a few (half-dozen or so) of good schools per city (if the city is large). The rest were more or less garbage. Even in the good ones, usually some things were taught well (i.e., in one school, math & physics, in another - languages, in another - chemistry, etc. - the rest again was pretty bad). There was a number (maybe a dozen or so over the whole country) decent higher education institutions, the rest was mediocre at the best. And for it being free I was forced (literally, under the threat of expulsion) to sort rotten vegetables in the local agricultural storage depot. Do you know how potatoes rotting for weeks smell like? Did you have to go through a pile of them with you bare hands? It was part of my CS curriculum. Tell me more about how education in USSR was the best. Fortunately, I got the idea eventually and left (I was lucky, by then it was permitted) and got education in a place where you can pay for it with money and not forced labor.
> Do you consider the idea that there should be a societal gain for educating ones' citizens controversial?
I consider the idea that the state owns people because it took their money and made an "investment" controversial. Investment implies you own whatever you invested into. And your claims about people leaving the country after being educated being unfair implies you buy into that concept of ownership.
Except I didn't say that.
>So, you think the "poorer country" owns its citizens.
>I consider the idea that the state owns people
How many times do I have to say "I don't believe this" before you stop turning around and telling me that I believe it?
>Did you experience that system? Because I did. It sucked.
Oh believe me, this whole conversation is making me reconsider my opinion.
I don't know what the solution to education financing would be in this scenario; perhaps something like Singapore's Tuition Grant Agreement obligating students to stay in-country or pay a big penalty to leave.
Honestly, what's weird is that what I'm saying is even remotely controversial.
But it was contextual.
Sure, every market crash there's one story or another about employees desperately fighting their unions for a worse deal so they can stay employed, while the union insists that all staff get high salaries, but also the newest hires get fired outright.
Higher wages aren't bad, but a fairly serious issue with unions is that they're not very rational when it comes to the health of the 'parent' organization. I suspect that it'd become much more relevant in software, where companies often have rapid growth and short lifespans.
As for wages, I am not seeing developers working at hunger wages right now. Giving some bureaucratic body control over who is employed and on what conditions under the guise that only these people can figure out how to get better treatment and people themselves can't - doesn't sound like a winning proposition now.
"You must be an ACXXXYA-accredited Node JS 0.12-p125 developer who's earned his NPM 1.01-a B-level cert and can use Visual Studio 2008 SP3 (no other version has been approved by the body) to write the codes at this job".
After watching committees by the "best and brightest" of us come up with amazing ideas like SOAP, WSDL, and Annex K of the latest C11 spec, I shudder at the thought of giving someone like that authority over my work.
All of those have something to do with working with humans, the way we all work with computers. And neither group has much else in common.
Never really taken titles seriously ;).
Since then, I don't believe I've ever heard it mentioned.
I find that figure surprising because:
1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/11/19/the-colle...
2) This is purely anecdotal, but I've had no problem finding jobs as a self-taught programmer in Canada. I'm paid nearly 6 figures with 3 years of experience in a field where I don't have formal training. If that's not sign of a skills shortage, I don't know what is.
The Graun being the Graun they can't make the leap of logic to "supply and demand".
As a decent software developer, if my less talented co-workers, or, god forbid, some HR-type, started telling me constantly about how I needed to be more "professional", I would hand in my resignation the next day and go somewhere that didn't absolutely suck to work.
People telling you that you're unprofessional can mean that you're the one making work suck for them.
I read the point that being "professional" is also about being able to do good programming work and take responsibility for what you do technically - not just appearing at the office at the right time, being courteous to other people and accepting HR buzzwords and policies and opinions without question.
Appearing at the office at the right time is unnecessary just for appearance's sake, but can be a factor in respecting and empathizing with coworkers, for example to be available for questions. It is usually not that important in the grand scheme of things.
This can be as subjective as the word professionalism. People always use their own value judgement in these things - whether it's deciding if something is professional, or not, or if something is respectful, or not.
Sometimes, you do have to just follow rules, for the sake of it, because there is no standard in personal value.
It doesn't matter if you get your work done. There are a hundred other people who can get your work done and do it without being a dick.
Note: I'm not calling _you_ a dick. I just vehemently disagree with anyone who thinks they get to be a dick (or, more generally, act however they please) just because, to borrow terminology from earlier comments, they're "talented".
If you want to pin down a concept, you can't just deal with easily categorised instances - the real distinctions exist in the grey areas.
There's a multi-dimensional gradient between polite and impolite, and where the thresholds lie is determined by personal value. Pick points far enough to either side, and most of those thresholds will fall within - but it is in the "grey area" that they disagree. That is why an arbitrary, but unambiguous threshold is needed as a standard.
However, those are all things that I've personally seen these so-called "talented" individuals do, because they think their talent makes them immune from criticism. And, sure, that's just my own, anecdotal experience, but the very fact that it's also a widely-held stereotype of these types of people, I would wager that I'm not alone in having been confronted with these types of people.
This isn't a gray area. This is the basic idea of being professional, and it holds true between places where a suit and tie is mandatory and places where you can bring your dog to work every day.
And to be absolutely clear, this is a very Western-centric view. I simply _don't know_ enough to comment on how this applies to more Eastern work environments.
This are unambiguous when you are interacting with people before you have established your own norms. It's possible for a healthy team to have a dynamic where cursing out bad code is completely acceptable, while cursing a person is not. The camaraderie built around breaking a social norm (cursing) can offset shock at violating the norm. However, that should change or be re-evaluated every time that norm is disturbed.
It's also possible to go 'too polite', to the point where criticism goes unsaid because you don't want to offend. That's just as toxic of a culture, it just leads to a much slower demise than the flame-outs you get from more visceral bad behaviors.
...
>This isn't a gray area.
Argument from extremes.
Whenever the topic of "Well, what do they mean by professionalism?" you'll invariably get a response stating something really obvious, and pointing out people who violated those obvious norms.
Since I didn't, and don't expect to, violate them, this kind of comment is almost useless. Why? Because in no place where I've worked is the use of the word "professionalism" limited to those domains.
You will get people who do everything you said still be called unprofessional. Which is why the question becomes "Well, what does professional mean?" and invariably someone will give your response and we get nowhere.
I worked for a tutoring agency once. Our boss was trying to tell us that we should be careful not to make the student feel like a moron because they couldn't solve a problem we tutors found easy. What does that mean? He demonstrated it to us by saying "Well, when someone asks you an easy question, don't say 'Wow! You really can't do such a simple question?!'"
That demonstration was really helpful. We all went back and occasionally said to a student "Sure I can help you solve this trivial problem".
(No, of course we didn't. The point was to someone who wasn't aware, this approach would be totally appropriate for a tutor to do because he's not making explicit fun of the student).
People who leave with 2 week's notice have been called unprofessional.
People who don't reply to pointless emails have been called unprofessional.
Just open up an "Ask HN" thread and ask people what crazy things have been called "unprofessional" in their work place.
Sorry, but I have to agree with the others. Saying "Be professional" is as useless as "Be cool" or "Be good".
If a company doesn't have proper guidelines and training on what they expect their employees to do, then that company doesn't value professionalism. Not providing guidance and then pointing fingers is pretty low.
To what degree tech does, or should, value "professional"/polite behavior is a different topic.
The problem here is I think people have different definitions of "wildly unprofessional behavior".
They are skills you have to develop though and young people will make mistakes as they figure out what the boundaries are. If you are fortunate enough to have a mentor in the business, you have a huge advantage.
For better or worse at the forefront of your field and at the top of the social ladder the rules are different.
It's a sliding scale. The better one's results are the bigger douche one can be and get away with it. And that's a very good thing because it ensures that most people who know that they are not that fantastic at producing great results go out of their way to avoid being total douche bags.
Or be more "professional", but that's boring af.
I'm assuming you don't intend to defend mistreating coworkers, so you must think that there is unprofessional behavior that is nonetheless acceptable in the workplace.
Because I avoid meetings that exist solely to stroke manager egos. If it's not related to what I'm doing I don't go no matter how mandatory it is.
Because I avoid war rooms (getting people from every team into a room for days on end to troubleshoot some issue; but where it's not your problem and everyone just does normal work because it's not their problem either - again it's another management ego stroking thing).
Because I don't attend team building sessions especially if they involve sports or touching other people or being touched.
Because I refuse to travel. I generally don't travel for myself, so I don't travel for the company - spending days and weeks in a foreign place with nothing to do away from my family and in an unfamiliar bed teeming with potential nasties. No thanks. Had bed bugs once and it led to me losing everything and becoming homeless for a while. Never again.
Lots of people will think one or more of those are "unprofessional" and that your company owns you. I have bills to pay too but I want to live what little crappy life I have on my own terms and do my job - not the ancillary bullcrap.
This sounds like an extraordinary tragedy, and one that really ought to have been considered a workplace accident, in the same category as people who lose fingers to power tools. I'm sorry this happened to you.
> team building sessions especially if they involve sports or touching other people or being touched.
The dark side of team building sessions; they can be both disturbing and extremely exclusionary if they're lead by well-meaning but clueless people.
I had never put together quite how awful your average "team building seminar" could be for someone with autism or other physical-touch issues. I've never been in a position to call one, so I've always just left it at "those are annoying". But on reflection, "a room full of people openly pressuring you to let people touch you without warning" sounds like hell on earth for several people I know. And yet it's quite common to make them mandatory and expect everyone to act like they had fun...
What about if it's your more talented co-workers?
You really think it's acceptable or even laudable to harass coworkers?
To play devils advocate, sexism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why men and women are treated differently, e.g. child care (mostly women) versus hard physical labor (mostly men)
Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same.
But even with that, there may be biological reasons why men and women are interested in different things. Which may mean more women in job A, or more men in job B.
> Maybe other industries suffer less from these things because they have a longer history and have more guild-like working practices, where professional behavior is more clearly defined.
Any job which has "guild-like working practices" is very likely going to be male dominated. Because most guilds were based on men working. e.g. construction, stone masons, electricians, etc. And those jobs are rife with sexism, because of their historical roots.
> I studied CS and I never learned about what it means to be a professional software developer.
Because schools teach concepts, not social skills. They should probably teach social skills and social practices, IMHO. Everyone would be better off for it.
But it might impact supply and demand of applicants with a certain background (either educational or self-study). Companies can take responsibility for the demand, but not the supply of human capital. Solutions are more likely found within education, family and youth culture. The top tier companies (like Google) can't hide behind that fact, since they generally get first pick, but that would make it even harder for lower tier companies to uphold an effective diversity policy.
There may be a strong business opportunity to exclusively invest in and hire minorities. If you have (a lot of) money and believe minorities to be discriminated against due to culture, hiring policy or financial rewards, it logically follows that you should invest in minorities. You would get, on average, better people that are more competitive.
Nothing argues quicker than profit. And the end of the day, we live in a capitalistic society. The economic arguments are the only types of arguments that will change anything.
If the invisible hand of the free market has a bias where it does not properly allocate its resources for maximum profitability, go bet against it and get rich.
There's a useful graph somewhere of various degrees earned by gender split. The numbers run the gamut.
Thanks in Advance!
https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot...
It spends a while at the beginning on credentials and the importance of using citations (something damore failed at), and starts getting into the science at 'universal across all cultures, are we sure?'
Uncivil swipes will get your account banned on HN, so please don't post like this again.
Maybe read the medium post he linked to? (The irony of your comment is killing me). If Wikipedia, The Atlantic, and the NY Post appear as citations more than primary literature, it is absolutely a failure to cite (as described in the medium post).
The one legit paper he linked to (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.173...) didn't reach the conclusion he was claiming. That paper demonstrates that in egalitarian developed societies men are less oppressed by other men, not that there are innate differences. In all cases women's behavior is the result of being oppressed to a greater or lesser degree. In other words in less developed societies many men are just as oppressed by the powerful as women and use the same coping strategies.
He also failed to address the fact that interest doesn't necessarily correlate with ability. Research shows men and women don't differ in empathy unless men know they are being judged, which suggests it is a culturally-imposed trait and definitely not universal.
He makes a lot of assumptions without bothering to explain them, eg: assuming effective meritocracy and blindly ignoring his own caveats, never resolving the conflict with his own arguments. He never once presents ANY evidence that cognitive differences between men/women influence performance in software engineering.
Here are just a few papers: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-11115-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-01642-012 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9450.1963.... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3438111 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10666324 http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-p... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951011/
There are plenty of books and articles on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-Troubleso... https://sites.google.com/site/dianehalperncmc/books/sex-diff... http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/science/monogamys-boost-to... https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-struggle-for-equality-a-fight-... https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/sexual-body-size-... http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179827-the-data-on-div...
One interesting result is if you can get women to picture themselves as men most of the cases where we do see differences disappears, again suggesting the vast majority of differences are cultural: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s...
Honestly it doesn't take much effort to stop with the confirmation bias. Do some actual research on your own and don't just look for sources that reinforce your existing biases.
James Damore wrote a document mostly describing his feelings and sprinkled in a few footnotes to make it look like he had done some research. He is woefully out of date with the current research (because he obviously didn't do any). That's pretty much what everyone does regarding this topic, both on HN and elsewhere.
It has become a demoralizing slog to repeatedly attempt to educate people when they are both a) so ignorant on a topic and b) so absolutely certain they are correct despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I suppose this issue falls into the category of things that "everyone knows" so people Dunning-Kruger themselves into a position without giving it any thought.
The question of whether there are biological differences that make men and women suited for different tasks has been studied for decades. There are mountains of data. Brilliant men and women have written extensively on the topic. For the love of God, please take the time to educate yourself.
Even if you want to cling to the idea that women aren't as suited to programming (despite the evidence to the contrary) you could at least avoid doing an incompetent job by being aware of the research in the field.
You say biological reasons, I say social programming. The whole nature vs. nurture debate has been going on for ages.
Basically, we have no way of knowing what portion of women's tendencies to gravitate towards certain jobs and careers can be attributed to biological factors vs. to the way they were raised by their parents and conditioned by society.
Consider this: back in the 50s and 60s, women dominated computer programming. It was seen as an obvious career choice for young, talented women. This article explains the history much better:
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...
My point is women aren't into programming because lack of biological ability.
The science says biological reasons:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Baron-Cohen/publi...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spice...
Among others...
> Basically, we have no way of knowing what portion of women's tendencies to gravitate towards certain jobs and careers can be attributed to biological factors vs. to the way they were raised by their parents and conditioned by society.
That isn't true, either.
Let's look at Sweden, which is a modern egalitarian society. If society is largely gender-blind, then people should overwhelmingly make "free" choices. i.e. choices which are strongly influenced by biology.
And we see that. Jobs in Sweden are still overwhelmingly split by gender. Engineers are overwhelmingly male, and people-oriented jobs (nurse, etc.) are overwhelmingly female.
Here's another discussion of gender differences:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201...
To deny that men and women are psychologically different is to claim that evolution / biology works on the physical attributes, but does not work on the corresponding mental attributes.
That claim just cannot possibly be true.
>> racism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be.
>To play devils advocate, racism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why blacks and whites are treated differently, e.g. basketball (mostly blacks) versus swimming (mostly whites)
If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.
> If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you :)
We, on HN, are keenly aware of Turing's contributions - the fact that he was gay has literally no bearing on our appreciation of his contributions;
Wifi as you know it (frequency hopping) was invented by a female
Many people with many contributions to the advancement of modern civilization were... human!!!!
Now, if we really want to be inclusionary - who are the undersung animals? The jelly fish, lab rats, telomeres of the immortal, Pavlov's dogs?
This whole argument is quite stupid (stupid that it is even an argument)
Fighting over merits is bullshit; hey Sur Gregor Clegane, squeeze through that doggy door. Hey Gary Coleman, bring me that 500 pound axel!
Physicality surely has its pigeon holes, mental capabilities do as well: clearly gender does not.
Brianne of Tarth could dig a bigger ditch than theon or Tyrion...
The sad thing is that Google has built itself on an interview process of supposed meritocracy - and witha single memo exposed themselves as not being such... wage fixing etc...
Human judgement is the real culprit. Bias. Where is it learned, innate or developed? How do personal, professional,psychological, physiological or familial bias occur and present?
Well, they clearly just present all around you! They are everywhere - so how to judge another?
The problem with the issue at hand is that we are using professional/physiological situations to judge psychological/other factors...
Bias silos exist. I'll defer my time to the gentleman with better articulation ability than I.
Wow. You realize that you, or whoever you read or heard this from, has absolutely no evidence to back this up, right? Not to mention we're talking about passing up millions because someone played Future in the locker room, if there's a white dude that'd do that, I dunno what to say. But best of all is when you listen to white players in the league and how they've picked up black colloquialisms in the speech (listen to Dirk Nowitzski talk), or are rather comfortable doing shit like that time fucking Doug Collins and Jalen Rose were quoting "What happened to that boy?" by Baby and Clipse.
(it's a play on current PC tropes on the lack of women in tech and how insane they sound when applied to race/nba)
Replace with religion and blacks and whites with Jews and muslims, sure the paragraph can still be written as such, but still doesn't change the original meaning.
If it wasn't obvious, one of my points was that being good at swimming is just that - it has nothing to do with software engineering. The whole "inherently different" argument is a red-herring if it has no provable bearing on the ability to do the (software engineering) work.
edit: my main point though, was that differences in statistical sport affinities are not, and do not explain "racism" - just as difference in statistical career-affinity is not, and doesn't explain "sexism".
>Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same.
You argued against a strawman.
That being said as long as a job/role's requirements are appropriate and fair, there should be no reason a senegalese (black) woman, philippino (asian) man, or danish (caucasian) woman can't be a software engineer, soldier, nurse, or nanny.
That makes about as much sense as saying "let me remap what you're saying to hair color"
> If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.
It does sound insane, because it is insane.
But it's your text. Not mine.
The problem is that you're making the following insinuation:
there are no more differences between men and women than between black people and white people
That statement is simply not true. In terms of physical prowess, men are stronger, faster, etc. There is just no question:
* the record for mens "clean and jerk" is as much as the womans record... plus the woman who's doing the record
* national / olympic womens teams (soccer, baseball, etc.) compete with mens high school teams... and lose.
* the records for swimming, sprinting, marathon, etc. show huge difference by sex
What is insane is denying biological reality, while insinuating I'm no better than a racist.
More importantly, your original point dodges the issue of sexism altogether. Obviously there are biological differences between men and women, but sexism is not an issue over who is able to bear children and who has more estrogen in their body. Sexism is about an unfair social power dynamic. Nobody is denying that there is a biological reality to it; the conversation is over how to work with that knowledge to give both men and women an even playing field.
Take one example that men will sometimes fall in love with women they work with, or vice versa. Without any rules or precedence you can end up with seriously messed up power dynamics, like a man in a more senior position pressuring women into unwanted sexual situations in which rejection puts them at fear for their jobs. Sexual harassment laws exist to try to protect against this, and inter-office relationships are generally forbidden as a preventative measure.
Sexism is a really difficult and nuanced issue, and to say "yeah but this will always be an issue because men and women are biologically different" trivializes it and takes away from the discussion.
Except I wasn't being sexist. The re-phrasing of my comment as racism was offensive and demeaning, and entirely not analogous.
> Sexism is about an unfair social power dynamic
Such as men dying earlier than women? Such as 80% of homeless being men? Such as 93% of "on the job" deaths being male? Such as never-married childless women earning more than equivalent men... going back to the 1960's?
I could go on.
My point is that everyone touts the party line of "OMFG women are oppressed". Very few people look into the facts. And when all the facts are presented, it's a whole lot more nuanced than "think of the Women!"
> to say "yeah but this will always be an issue because men and women are biologically different" trivializes it and takes away from the discussion.
You're reading a whole lot more into my comment than I said. That shows rather more projection that reality-based discussion.
Which is completely false and not based on any facts. Businesses have different policies. You can't reduce all IT in world to a few businesses in the Silicon Valley. That's preposterous. And I doubt IT has anymore "unprofessional behavior" than any other industries. There is absolutely no data that demonstrate that.
My girlfriend works for a major company in corporate real estate. The stories she tells put most stuff I've seen leveled at IT to shame. Managers that scream at employees in front of everyone else and bring them to tears, constant bickering, backstabbing, and general refusal to do their own job or help you do your job in any possible way, even though you're on the same team, people getting thrown under the bus constantly, people getting panic attacks and taking leaves from the company because they've been verbally abused so much, you have to have a high level of assertiveness and a fighting attitude to get anything accomplished. She's gone from men in charge of her to women, and she thinks it actually got worse with women in charge, because they pretend to be friendly but are secretly doing everything they can to undermine you.
How these people stay employed and these companies stay in business I have no idea. I know the turnover is really, really high at her company, and they've lost a lot of bids recently.
It's not true of everyone or every company in corporate real estate, but the nature of it seems to foster and encourages that type of behavior. Big money, high stakes, if you win the company millions of dollars in business they let you be a total asshole. Well, at least if you're high enough on the totem pole.
She's been trying to get out of it for years, but she can't find anything else that pays as well for her skillset.
This is a shame. As part of my CS degree I was required to take a "management" module that covered a bunch of legal aspects of the job, and a professional skills module that covered a bit more of what it means to be a professional engineer. The modules weren't great and many (myself included) looked down on them a bit while taking them, but looking back I know they helped and I would advocate for more education like that in CS degrees.
Some rules transcend companies and are socially tethered like ethic, morals, maturity, responsibility, etc... But disregard for social judgement is actually a strength in achieving power.
This may be why grassroots true change takes so long. The upper levels needs to pass away because they can't be convinced because they aren't bound by anything.
Most people think they can handle power, but the "true" freedom it provides will corrupt almost anyone because most people are unaware of just how much they delegate thoughts and outlooks to outside frameworks. ("Culture")
Many cultures and subcultures in many times and places have had cultural protocols for people to indicate that they are interested in each other and would potentially like to do whatever, and protocols for acceptance and rejection of said advances. Perhaps tech (and to be honest the office workplace in general) needs to work something out for that. Most "nice" people end up holding themselves to restrictions that turn out to be grossly stricter than what the actual law says, so the "nice" people feel stifled when they actually aren't, and the not-so-nice people have no real guidelines and just do as they please.
It would at least give some guidelines to people on how to act, because right now the guidelines are all mostly negative... don't do this, don't do that, don't do the other thing, but I don't know the positive guidelines. That's sort of difficult to navigate through.
So, caveats. First, please don't read into my first paragraph anything that isn't there. I am not endorsing any particular set of protocols nor claiming that any particular set was perfect. I am simply saying it might be helpful if something existed; feel free to craft it to your sensibilities. Second, I'm married with no intention of changing that, not in SV, and psychologically and politically not a match for SV culture anyhow, so I'm not trying to suggest any specific protocol because anything I'd suggest wouldn't stick anyhow. (Or possibly there is a clear protocol and I'm just so out of it that I don't know what it is on account of not caring, but I'd expect more people to be discussing it in these matters and I don't see that, so I assume this is not the problem.) Third, I make no claim that the mere existence of such protocols would suddenly magically make all harassment go away, but having something, especially something with positive suggestions about how to go about courting, would be a good start. It's hard to referee a game with no lines on the field. (That may be the most important sentence in this post.)
My only specific feedback is that "nobody should ever be approached for anything ever and anyone who is approached has all rights to go arbitrarily ballistic on social media" is simply unrealistic; humans are gonna human. Part of the eventual contract would have to be that whatever an "approach" is, you do get one chance, and if you get the "go away and never raise this again" then yes, you are obligated to do that. The protocol could include some way of opting out entirely; without an argument that this should be used by tech, as an example, I would point out this is one of the purposes wedding rings serve.
For instance, the company in question discriminates against women when it comes to promotion of employees. I have a friend who worked at a very well known company where she experienced the same problem.
I think these apparently structural problems should receive continuous attention, otherwise maybe they will never be solved. So, I think it might not be a good idea to shift the focus away from that discussion.
I don't think it has anything to do with either one of those things, but everything to do with some people just being sociopaths. It seems to be concentrating on people with power over others.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pao_v._Kleiner_Perkins
Why would you defend false allegations by Pao? They hurt women that actually do experience it. They also give more evidence to the fact that women do use the system to get rich quick by suing in hopes of getting a massive settlement.
She should be condemned and her claims should not be used to demonstrate sexism, which is what you're trying to do.
> It's easy to get hung up on the particulars of Pao's story and get sidetracked into defending or judging her, but I feel that is besides the point.
in its opening sentence.
I'm wondering though: is this just about sexism, or is it about professionalism and maturity? Getting hit on by someone higher up the hierarchy than you can make it impossible to do your job, so that behavior is clearly unprofessional. But getting yelled at by your boss for shipping a bug is also unprofessional, and can also make it a toxic work environment. I'm not saying the two are the same, just that both are examples of unprofessional behavior that many places will tolerate.
Isn't it time we have conversations about what it means to be a professional in tech? Maybe other industries suffer less from these things because they have a longer history and have more guild-like working practices, where professional behavior is more clearly defined. In tech people get away with wildly unprofessional behavior as long as "they get stuff done", and personally I never felt that was acceptable.
Maybe this stuff is also sort of everywhere. Plenty of industries have toxic working relationships. Why isn't professionalism part of standard education tracks? I studied CS and I never learned about what it means to be a professional software developer. How do you have productive conversations with coworkers? How do you organize your work effectively? All of these things you're supposed to figure out on your own, but looking around I can tell that mostly people never do, or only do so after decades of getting it wrong.