You May Have Seen My Face on BART • Hacker News Board

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#21

Post by freehunter » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #15

> "I am a passionate self-taught engineer, extreme introvert, science-nerd, anime-lover, college dropout" Is engineering not a profession? How can you be an engineer without completing your education in an accredited engineering school?

Engineering is a profession and a title, separately or together. You can graduate with a degree in engineering, at which point you can call yourself an engineer no matter what your job is. Or you can have a job with the title "engineer" at which point you can call yourself an engineer for as long as you have that job title. My job title was engineer for a while, then I switched to consulting. When people asked what I did two years ago, I said "I'm an engineer". Now I say "I'm a consultant". It doesn't matter what my degree is.

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#22

Post by jonshariat » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #15

> "I am a passionate self-taught engineer, extreme introvert, science-nerd, anime-lover, college dropout" Is engineering not a profession? How can you be an engineer without completing your education in an accredited engineering school?

If companies pay you to engineer their products, youre an engineer.

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#23

Post by GeneralMayhem » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

noahtovares wrote: post #10

I think there is another issues with these ads. "My code helps Fortune 500 companies keep their data secure" vs. "My team is great. Everyone is smart, creative, and hilarious" This gives the impression that the woman is not excited about the 'engineering' work, but instead about the social aspects of the workplace.

Bullshit. My work helps Fortune 500 companies keep their data (and money!) secure, but that's not what makes me get up in the morning and go to work. I go to work because the people I work with are extremely good at their jobs, so solving most any challenging problem with them would be interesting.

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#24

Post by ljk » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

fredophile wrote: post #18

ljk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same here, not sure what the big deal is after skimming through it

The big deal is that people are judging her capabilities based on her looks. There are also people who are behaving inappropriately towards her in professional settings as a result of her looks (it isn't clear to me that this is a result of the ad). She gives two very clear examples of this unprofessional behavior. Given the limited information I could see the first being a poor attempt at a joke. However, it made he…

Definitely thought the two examples of unprofessional behavior unacceptable, but those happen to people of all professions.

It's good that these behaviors are getting called out but it seems like people are unnecessarily harsh on the cs field on these issues(almost feels like it's a trend to complain everything about this field, maybe that's what happens when it gets popular)

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#25

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

noahtovares wrote: post #10

I think there is another issues with these ads. "My code helps Fortune 500 companies keep their data secure" vs. "My team is great. Everyone is smart, creative, and hilarious" This gives the impression that the woman is not excited about the 'engineering' work, but instead about the social aspects of the workplace.

Well, that's sort of a good thing IMHO. A recruitment ad should answer the question of 'why would I want to work there' and an environment full of smart, creative, and hilarious people is certainly a good reason. I find it a refreshing change from people claiming to be 'passionate about maximizing database performance' or something.

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#26

Post by freehunter » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

bshimmin wrote: post #12

matthewmacleod wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gives the impression that the woman is not excited about the 'engineering' work, but instead about the social aspects of the workplace. That's a weak objection at best. Talking about how smart and creative your team is is obviously praising their engineering capabilities.

You say that, but "hilarious" isn't normally a word I associate positively with engineering. "Isambard Kingdom Brunel's bridges were hilarious !"

No one is saying their engineering work is hilarious. The idea is that they themselves, the human, is hilarious. We don't judge a person solely based on their technical skills but based on the quality of their character as well. You can work with a genius and hate the job because he's mean. Or you can work with someone who is quite average but a good person to be around and you might love the job.

No one gets called out when they say Elon Musk is charismatic, and you can't argue the man isn't good at what he does. Having a sense of humor says nothing about your technical ability but says a lot about how enjoyable you are to work with. Just based on your comments here, I would guess that I would not enjoy working beside you. If you don't associate the character description of "hilarious" with anything positive, you and I would not get along. See how that works?

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#27

Post by fredophile » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

ljk wrote: post #24

fredophile wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big deal is that people are judging her capabilities based on her looks. There are also people who are behaving inappropriately towards her in professional settings as a result of her looks (it isn't clear to me that this is a result of the ad). She gives two very clear examples of this unprofessional behavior. Given the limited information I could see the first being a poor attempt at a joke. However, it made he…

Definitely thought the two examples of unprofessional behavior unacceptable, but those happen to people of all professions. It's good that these behaviors are getting called out but it seems like people are unnecessarily harsh on the cs field on these issues(almost feels like it's a trend to complain everything about this field, maybe that's what happens when it gets popular)

Just because there is also unacceptable behavior in other professions doesn't mean we should ignore it in ours. Change needs to start somewhere and creating awareness of the issue helps to encourage change. Hopefully more people in all professions will speak out against this sort of behavior.

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#28

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 6:55 PM UTC

The negative opinions about this ad that strangers feel so compelled to share illustrate solid examples of the sexism that plagues tech.

Actually I didn't find the comments highlighted in the illustration all that sexist. It seemed to me that that commenter was not so much weighing in on what engineers are supposed to look like, but rather attempting to analyze the semantic content of the recruitment ad, because most ads/corporate presentations are so heavily designed and the people depicted are often professional models/actors, whether working on commission or selected from a stock photography database. Think of all the generic business websites where everyone in the photographs just happens to have culturally ideal proportions, have perfect skin/hair/teeth and look impeccably stylish. When I see that I don't think that the company is made up of fantastically good-looking people who happened to be photographed at their desks, but that the people depicted were chosen for a mix of attractive looks and professional presentation.

(Now, I don't mean this as dismissive of sexism in the tech industry, which I think is a huge problem, well summed up by the real-life experiences mentioned in the article.)

At the end of the day, this is just an ad campaign and it is targeted at engineers. [...] News flash: this isn’t by any means an attempt to label “what female engineers look like.” This is literally just ME, an example of ONE engineer at OneLogin. The ad is supposed to be authentic.

Yeah, but 'authenticity' is itself a commodity in the world of advertising, and advertising is fundamentally about turning things into commodities. Paying money to display images of people along with a commercial message in front of the largest audience possible is fundamentally different from presenting a portrait of an individual. Here, the commodity bargain is 'be part of a group of friendly cool people, in exchange for performing this kind of work.' I don't believe that people are reacting to you so much as they are responding to the superficiality of advertising in general.

In fact, if you knew me you would probably know that being famous is one of my biggest nightmares

PTSD aside, aren't nightmares where we are most ourselves?

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#29

Post by ljk » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 7:28 PM UTC

fredophile wrote: post #27

ljk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely thought the two examples of unprofessional behavior unacceptable, but those happen to people of all professions. It's good that these behaviors are getting called out but it seems like people are unnecessarily harsh on the cs field on these issues(almost feels like it's a trend to complain everything about this field, maybe that's what happens when it gets popular)

Just because there is also unacceptable behavior in other professions doesn't mean we should ignore it in ours. Change needs to start somewhere and creating awareness of the issue helps to encourage change. Hopefully more people in all professions will speak out against this sort of behavior.

Agree that we shouldn't ignore it, just feels like cs is made the scapegoat sometimes

Re: You May Have Seen My Face on BART

#30

Post by trav4225 » Tue, Aug 04, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #15

> "I am a passionate self-taught engineer, extreme introvert, science-nerd, anime-lover, college dropout" Is engineering not a profession? How can you be an engineer without completing your education in an accredited engineering school?

Yeah, there's a fair bit of controversy on this topic. In California at least, I believe that the use of the title "engineer" is regulated by the so-called PE act:

  http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/laws/pe_act.pdf

Regarding public opinion, I myself have a degree in "Computer Science and Engineering" and have worked as a "software engineer" for 21 years, but my engineer friends don't consider computer engineering to be "real engineering", and my scientist friends don't consider computer science to be "real science". :)