331–340 of 512 posts
Funny how women are never pushing to equalize the "diversity problem" in things like garbage truck driver, or oil rig worker. It's an amazing coincidence that the only push for "equalization" is for kush jobs that pay well and allow you to sit on your ass in an air conditioned room. Where is the feminist outrage at the lack of women working on oil rigs or in alaska as a crab fishermen?
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My point, which I made a little snarkily, is that these aggressive responses to the concern, which judge the concerned person simply for asking the question, are part of what creates the perception that SFBA is hostile.
Hrm, I don't see it quite the same. OP is not from SF. I am also not from SF and find the OP's slant on the issue to be characteristic of a victim trope which doesn't reflect reality (through my subjective experience). I don't know the OP from anyone, so would not expend energy attacking the OP (as others have done in this thread), but that doesn't mean the slant itself isn't worth calling out. In my experience worki…
There are plenty of studies demonstrating the reality of sexism, if dudes are unwilling to believe what women tell them. Ongoing willful denial of this reality contributes to a hostile atmosphere where women are intimidated into silence about their experiences, which in turn lets men pretend they have no idea that there could ever be gambling in this es... I mean, sexism in tech.
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I'd say it's much more influenced by one's gender or race.
Yes, though the truth of your statement doesn't detract from the truth of my statement. We can't change our gender or race but we can change our outlook.
The implication that oppressed peoples who have been genuinely wronged merely need to put on a happy face and change their attitude is pretty horrendous. It ignores the fact that smooth social skills take time and opportunity to develop. It ignores the fact that if you are "the wrong kind of people" you do not get the benefit of the doubt that "the right kind of people" get. (This is a thing I have gotten to experience firsthand from both sides of the equation. Being homeless has been a huge education in just how much that benefit of the doubt greases the wheels of polite society. When that lubrication is missing, your life can grind to a painful halt.) And a thousand other factors here.
I am a woman and I try to tell other women what they can do differently in the face of living in a sexist world. I am routinely accused of blaming the victim for trying to empower women. I find that very frustrating because I do my level best to provide solid data and practical how-tos. I do my best to avoid suggesting that women merely have an attitude problem.
So while I am sympathetic to the idea that wherever you go, there you are and I am also sympathetic to the idea that it makes vastly more sense to focus on changing the things within your own control, given the larger context of life, I think this point you are trying to make about "just change your attitude" is a really crappy message to put out there. It is akin to telling someone maimed by abuse "It's in the past -- it doesn't matter!" and overlooking the very real legacy of impairment those past actions have left behind.
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I recommend not blaming individual women for the structural inequalities they face. The consequences for men and women negotiating (particularly "aggressively") are different. At the very least, someone perceived as a woman has to be prepared for backlash in a way that people perceived as men don't experience if they negotiate.
Negotiation is a part of capitalism. I dont think I want to live in another system. I agree that no one should be denigrated for negotiating, but irrespective of current denigration women are eventually going to have to negotiate. Therefore recommending negotiating has nothing to do with the current structural inequalities, but rather is sound advice regardless.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/women-n...
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/lean-out-th...
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Yes, though the truth of your statement doesn't detract from the truth of my statement. We can't change our gender or race but we can change our outlook.
The problem here is that "outlook" hardly does justice to a very complex situation. The implication that oppressed peoples who have been genuinely wronged merely need to put on a happy face and change their attitude is pretty horrendous. It ignores the fact that smooth social skills take time and opportunity to develop. It ignores the fact that if you are "the wrong kind of people" you do not get the benefit of the d…
Funny thing about the beer-- we got draft cold brew coffee at work and went out of our way to design and laser-cut a tap handle that says "Coffee" so candidates wouldn't think it was a beer keg.
Other ideas: run their job post through Textio (https://textio.com/ ).
Disclaimer: I am a white dude, but my company of 65 (in Seattle) is about half women on the engineering side of things. It was a lot of work.
Woman at a ~100 person startup here - Wanted to comment because there are a lot of posts on here that seem to promote some idea that the company has to really push for women-friendly policies/activities to be a great place for women to work, which I happen to completely disagree with (save for policies that could be classified as human-friendly such as leave and flexible hours). I work at a mediocre startup (first en…
Just to provide some balance to this discussion and to confirm your perception that this might not be sexism... the behavior you're describing here really isn't inherently misogynistic. Talking down to your coworkers is perhaps more likely to happen from a man, to a female, but certainly isn't restricted to that domain.
I've experienced basically the same thing as you, where a female colleague was excessively aggressive in treating me as a pupil, and regularly talked down to me. She was new at the company, and immediately took to treating me like a pupil of hers (despite my 5 years, and an MS on her, which in fairness, she didn't know about due to vague company titles).
I'll spare you all the details, but suffice it to say, there were many "1+1 = 2" instances where she asserted that "1+1 = 3", despite clear, undeniable 3rd party documentation to the contrary.
Needless to say, she was fired.
Silicon valley culture used to be that way, and is still that way. The cube farms was the prevailing best practice. Then the pendulum swung to the other side with the new kids entering the workforce and wanted open office, work families, and all that. Which then created the cargo culting from others entering the process. Now we're on the bubble of the pendulum swinging back. So it goes.
Bullshit. nobody wanted open floor plans, or if they did, they had immediate buyers remorse. Open floor plans became a fad that turned into a way for cheap ass companies to slash costs and brag about it on linkedin about how trendy they were being.
Even if I had a private office I would have my headphones on 80% of the time.
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Or they don't want to feel like I'm [0] locked in a room alone for absolutely no reason. [0] Oops, we were using "they."
But if you want to kill the alone-ness, all you have to do is step out. Heck, people used to pair program in cubes long before this open space disease (sorry, my opinion). For those of us that are unable to function in the cage-free farm, our only option is to destroy our hearing with headphones to try to get some work done.