As for how to bring up her issue? Well, her initial way was one way. It turned out it wasn’t the best. The parameters you can modify is when and also to whom.
Believe it or not, speaking directly to faang level senior engineers can provide insight into higher levels of standards that a larger diverse audience can extract value from since due diligence was done on providing perspective. That’s an adjustment.
Edit:
I’ll just add one thing to give an example of honing perspective. It is entirely possible that the first three days of on boarding is a dream come true for a lot of people, just to finally be at that company. Now how would I sound if I compared my dismissive experience of it in contrast to that?
If this is you fifth or sixth go around, and you picked up some good/bad, make that clear, and be aware of the diversity in people’s experiences so that your critiques are palatable in a variety of contexts.
I would trust that both of you are telling the truth about the way you experience reality, wouldn't assume that one had to be false for the other to be true, would probably try to offer some words of sympathy or encouragement for your bad experience, and would do my best to accommodate both in the future, of course :)
You seem to misunderstand my “serious accusation” as if I’m saying criticizing a woman is unacceptable. I’m saying I believe there’s a gender difference in people’s default level of empathy.
Spoiler: I thought her post about the onboarding sucked too, for all the same reasons everyone else did. And I’m someone who usually loves her blog.
I try to be empathetic to the fact that we’re all different people and will react to the same situation in vastly individual ways. Her reaction to that onboarding situation is her own, and those emotions are the kind of thing that can’t really be “wrong” or up for debate. You can’t reason somebody into un-feeling an emotion.
Maybe the HN discussion for her post could have been about making these kind of huggy feely human processes more accessible? Instead it was about how she’s so ungrateful, or about how she shouldn’t have published it, or even speculation about her neurotypicality.
Lots of people in tech circles talk a big game about how they’re so progressive and support all people’s differences because a person can bring so much in other areas despite the areas where they are weak. Just don’t be female I guess.