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I don’t belong in tech

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Re: I don’t belong in tech

#131

Post by wycats »

s_q_b wrote: post #95
scilro wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race wasn't the focus of the story, but it was an element of the prelude to it. My understanding of the purpose of that paragraph was to underscore that it wouldn't come up again. And frankly, if you break out in hives at the briefest mention of race especially when you're specifically asked not to pay attention to it I don't think that's a failing on the part of the author.

Pretending omission in order to emphasize something is a core element of classical rhetoric dating back as far as ancient Athens. It is a parlor trick that has been taught to children for two millennia, and an inherently flawed line of argument. If you punched someone in the face, and then specifically asked her not to pay attention to it , would you be shocked if she failed to carry on as if nothing had happened? Wh…

Where did the author deem anyone a bigot? Your pattern matching algorithm has severe bugs if it identifies this post as deeming families as bigots.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#132

Post by davidf18 »

Software, standard engineering (e.g., EE, Civil, Mechanical), and clinical medicine are fields in which in order to understand and learn requires an iterative process of attempting to understand, trying something out (coding and debugging, designing and trying out a hardware or a building or mechanical apparatus or attending to patients) and learning.

When it comes to these sorts of applied fields it is important to do both.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#133

Post by wycats »

s_q_b wrote: post #113
karmajunkie wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My goodness, I didn't realize there were so many Black Friday sales on self-righteous indignation. Giving it out for Christmahannukwanzakah, are we? Personally I felt quite a bit of sympathy for the author. Some of us are builders. Some of us are growers. Some of us are finishers. Unfortunately the former two often unintentionally conspire to make life difficult for the latter, whether by poor architecture, bad code,…

It is never right to attribute negative characteristics to an entire race or gender. Anyone who does so under any circumstances will find me speaking in opposition. -------------- EDIT in Reply: 1. Your comment is, however unintentionally, quite interesting. Never have I seen someone so self-righteously accuse another of self-righteousness. The closest analogy I can devise is an infinite regression of ignorance, a pe…

That hasn't happened here, so your opposition is, itself, raising spectres.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#134

Post by s_q_b »

wycats wrote: post #131
s_q_b wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretending omission in order to emphasize something is a core element of classical rhetoric dating back as far as ancient Athens. It is a parlor trick that has been taught to children for two millennia, and an inherently flawed line of argument. If you punched someone in the face, and then specifically asked her not to pay attention to it , would you be shocked if she failed to carry on as if nothing had happened? Wh…

Where did the author deem anyone a bigot? Your pattern matching algorithm has severe bugs if it identifies this post as deeming families as bigots.

This piece literally begins with a person screaming a racial insult in the middle of Broadway.

No logical person would conclude that outburst was free of gender or racial bias.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#135

Post by wycats »

s_q_b wrote: post #48

I apologize if you assumed this was a story about a difference rooted in race and gender, because it is not. That’s not where we are going. That's not an apology. You deliberately manipulated your audience by playing on their fears of being deemed discriminatory, their anxiety over real ethnic tensions, and perhaps most egregiously, you intentionally encouraged gender stereotyping of women for your own purpose of obt…

"I offended everyone" is not defacto evidence that you're doing something right.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#136

Post by imagist »

hartator wrote: post #109
imagist wrote: post #101

I think about problem solving and code a lot like the author. But I don't think that means she and I don't belong in tech. I think that means we don't belong in the get-rich-quick scheme that is the present tech startup industry. Or put another way: we belong just fine in tech; we don't belong in business . It's not tech that says "move fast and break things", it's business. Business is the reason the Internet of Thi…

"CRUD web apps bring no one joy"?

If you aren't bored of writing CRUD apps, you haven't worked as a Web developer very long.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#137

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

That wasn't the article I was expecting. Which is good. Because I was expecting the, "I am a woman in tech" article. You know the one. What I got instead was a very well written article about something that I can actually identify with.

And it's something that a lot of people in tech complain about. Maybe not your coworkers, or your boss, or your friends on the internet. But the people doing major work. People like Joe Armstrong and Alan Kay.

I don't know if you'll stay with tech. But if you stay, I'm confident you'll find people who think like you do. Eventually.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#138

Post by johnnydoebk »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #106
thro32 wrote: post #74

I agree. As someone with wrong gender, I strugle to find good job in tech. With right gender my chances would be twice better.

If you come across in real life the way you do in your posts, I wouldn't want to hire you either.

And if I were to make a decision based on HN comments, I'd hire @thro32, no joke. I've read all the comments and their author makes an impression of an interesting person with a broad outlook.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#139

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

Kenji wrote: post #103
str33t_punk wrote: post #99

'I'm not a white male!' Seriously? This felt incredibly out of place in the article, it seems like its just pandering for clicks (lets talk about how women, minorities, and 'non-tech' people don't have a place in tech for the millionth time!). Not to mention the quote could have worked similarly with 'asian male' and 'indian male'. Why are you erasing the identities of other overrepresented people in tech?

Because otherwise the article has no substance. Better write a couple of preposterous lines and then back off and turn the subject to something completely different. I know exactly why a person who writes like that does not belong in tech. Imagine code written like that. Just the imagination is the pure horror.

>Because otherwise the article has no substance.

Not true. And trust me, I hate substanceless articles as much as the next person. But once you get past the opening, the article is about mindsets, which are much more interesting.

>Imagine code written like that. Just the imagination is the pure horror.

People don't write code the way they write prose. If they did, Steve Yegge and Yossi Kreinin would have been fired years ago (what makes for good prose doesn't make for good code).

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