webehere
"I don't want Danny to come and see Jim Jeffries comedy because Jim says a lot of negative things about religion, and Danny as a Christian would be a buzzkill".
"I don't want Danny to come and see Anita Sarkesian talk because he is a man and his being there will be a buzzkill".
"I don't want Danny to come and see Barcelona Play Real Madrid because he is a buzzkill whenever sport comes up".
Seems to me that there are lots of valid reasons why people wouldn't want certain people around - people exclude me from all manner of things, and I don't think that is evidence of systematic bias against me. In fact, in many situations I'd say it is reasonable to exclude me, because I would very much be a buzzkill. As one such example:
"I don't want webehere to come and see the psychic, because he will spend his whole time trying to prove they are full of shit, and that will be a buzzkill".
"YOU MISOGYNIST! The female characters are all X".
"We've taken feedback and made some Y & Z characters as well".
"YOU MISOGYNIST! There is more to women than X, Y & Z."
"So we've made a game with male characters..."
That's the argument as I can see it. Is it fair or real? Who knows, but that's what it is!
My girlfriend is a lawyer and she is quitting for much the same reasons - the long hours, the fact that to get promoted you need to get clients which you need to be part of the boy's club to do etc etc.
The thing, is MANY of her male peers feel the same way.
The biggest difference IMHO is that women have more guts than men and actually will leave. Most men ARE their jobs, so they stay DESPITE how terrible it is.
Women, often with more rounded senses of self esteem, go "fuck this shit - I'm Audi".
I'm not sure how that is a good thing for men OR women, and I'm not sure how to fix it. "Make women miserable" seems, to me at least, the worst outcome, but really, that's the only way to address the issue of ratios, without addressing the underlying issues.
"The X bias is Y, and from the data we'd expect a bias of Z, therefore the bias is D".
By calling it sexism, we make it a value judgement. By talking about bias, we remove judgement.
Silicon Valley is what? LinkedIn, or a 2015 YC summer intake company? At the scale of LinkedIn, maybe this argument is inconsequential in many ways. At the scale of a 2015 YC summer intake company, it is irrelevant.
Where between those two is this argument relevant? Should a growing company desperate for talent spend seed money while unprofitable on "operations staff"? Or should they minimise that pay and try to get great devs? Great sales people?
That's the issue with these kind of sweeping statements - there are so many companies in a labour market, and very few arguments can ever apply to all of them, or even most of them.
I think we should make a T-Shirt of that!
I get it - I fell the same way - but it feels a little clingey now!