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Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

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Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#431

Have you considered working remotely? It's what I'm doing now and I don't have any regrets. As a hispanic, gay guy, dealing with white straight people is exhausting and, since I can't just make them go away, this is the best arrangement for me.

Interesting. I can understand the gay part being difficult, sometimes, although tech people seem to be pretty liberal, but straight white people being somehow more exhausting that straight....Asian people? How so?

I was actually being sarcastic on the "white and straight" people being exhausting. Not like I had much of a bar: there're few non-hispanic white people in my country.

I hoped that a post blindly supporting the demonizing narrative at face value would be downvoted. Sitting at +3 right now and now I'm not sure about coming back to HN, if bigoted talk like what I wrote is supported.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#432

I'd go to LinkedIn (or their About page if they are small enough) and just look at the people. The more diversity you see, the more they are walking the walk. You can also look thru past employees via LinkedIn (might require premium account) and reach out to diverse folks who've left the companies you're considering. Funny thing about the beer-- we got draft cold brew coffee at work and went out of our way to design…

Side note: I find it funny that 9/10 of Textio's software engineers are men, but they do have two "customer success engineers" who are both women. No women in senior technical roles.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#433
post #381
post #114

I look for existing diversity, and of underrepresented minorities not just gender diversity (IME this is often a better signal.) Especially in upper levels: the % of Software Engineer 1s matters a lot less than the % of architects and tech leads. Second (and I kind of hate to give this one away), I ask "what do you sacrifice when recruiting to ensure diversity?" The answer should be either "it takes us longer to recr…

> Especially my boss: if my boss is going to be a white dude, he had better have publicly condemned sexism in a way that feels constructive and genuine to me. This is such a weird statement to me. If it works for you, fine, but I think it's bad advice: to demand that not only your boss be active on social media, but to actively pursue your preferred topics on same.

As David Morrison said, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. "How to signal you are on the side of non-sexists instead of the sexists" is probably a different thread, though: the original poster wanted to know what strategies marginalized developers had found effective and I shared mine.

It is unsurprising to me that effective strategies end up rubbing people the wrong way. The reason social media posts work as a filter is because they are a minorly-costly signals to send, and the suggestion that people be expected to do extra work to appear trustworthy, rather than being assumed to be trustworthy even though probability isn't on their side, is going to feel threatening. Privileged men feel entitled to the benefit of the doubt, even when it is women who bear the costs when they fail to live up to it.

This isn't just "my preferred topic": this is my life. This is whether I have a fair shot at promotion. It's whether I have to be 150% sure with a giant pile of citations by dudes before I say anything, or people trust my technical judgement. It's whether I can be most productive at my job, or I have to waste a bunch of time managing the anxieties and insecurities of the dudes I work with instead. It's about whether I have to spend time and energy sending Comey-like memos every week to document the sexual harassment against my female coworkers until they all quit or are fired anyway. It's about whether my coworkers will refuse to speak to me for six months because I made work "not fun" by not wanting to hear about his pick up artistry, and still get promoted. After that last one, now I only work places that don't prioritize catering to sexist developers over catering to me. There are plenty of options out there; there is no reason to settle for anything less than an actively anti-sexist workplace.

Many men treat this like an intellectual exercise: it's not. These days, I only work for the ones who already understand that.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#434
post #405

>I check the social media profiles of their prominent engineers and search with keywords like "feminism", "women" and "she". See how they talk about women in the field, whether they follow women on Twitter, whether they posted angry anti-Hillary memes. By diversity you (and many others) actually mean "people who are followers of/subservient to my ideology and preferably in a different shade than male and pale". The w…

This comment is an excellent example of why screening for racism is helpful in avoiding working for sexists like this.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you have generated and extraordinary amount of opinion given that this post was not for you and given your ignorance of the topic. I understand you don't see why these things are problems. What is extraordinary to me is that you have confused "I don't see X" with "X does not exist". And then gone on to blather extensively based on this confusion. I get it. You're a paragon of self control. Congrats. Have a coo…

>this post was not for you >your ignorance of the topic >blather extensively >Have a cookie. >Irrelevant to you, as a financially comfortable white man. >ignorantly proclaiming on the topic is not fine >You are part of the problem This isn't meaningful discussion. It's just insults, assumptions, and aggressive dismissal of another person's opinion.

Whether sexism is acceptable in the workplace is not up for discussion. So the parent is totally right to educate the grandparent about this. You may not like the tone, but substantively wpietri is right on the mark.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#436
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Step out to where exactly? Generally it's not just you in your own office, everyone else is too.

Step out and walk around? Where I work, we have private offices, but people have self segregated into a chatty end of the hallway, and "Siberia."

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#437
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is true at all. Human social behavior is incredibly sensitive to perceived norms and paths of least resistance; this can be observed all the time in online games where minor changes to UI or reward structures have drastic ramifications on player social behavior. A lot of interaction simply will never come about if it isn't fostered organically by the environment. This isn't to dispute that the bene…

Yes, but online games are a collective. Consider the case of open spaces where you have one team per aisle. Team 1 can be as noisy as they wish - there is no penalty most of the time from the unrelated Team 2. I was in such a predicament at a large e-commerce company - I was seated the aisle over from a very noisy team that ran in debug mode. They and their manager thought this was the way a good team works so my com…

I shudder. Your loud chewer story triggered a flash back to a coworker clipping their nails (talons) next to me.

About the noise pollution...

Like decision fatique, I think we all have a stimulation budget (buffer). Most of the time, I'm fine. Until I'm not. And my budget (buffer) gets smaller as I age.

Nowadays, I'm completely content to be facing a wall, with earbuds in, so I can tune out and get some real work done.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does help though. It doesn't need to be overly formal, but putting on nice slacks and a nice shirt with dress shoes helps you go "I am at work. This is different than when I wear my casual clothes. These people are my colleagues and not my friends/family." I'm not saying that it is solely down to the clothes, but that small bit of separation helps.

I do agree with you on a personal level (I wouldn't wear shorts or jeans with holes in them to work, but I do on my own time); but I feel strict company-enforced dress codes are unnecessary for this. People tend to self-adjust to the norms of their workplace. More than once I have had a male colleague ask me how to address a female employee who wore clothing that they considered too provocative (too short of skirt /…

Oh for sure. (I am a woman, btw.) I don't mean specific instances like that. I more mean business casual vs casual as a whole. I went from a business casual to a casual environment. In the winter especially, I wear the same sweaters just with different bottoms (jeans instead of slacks or skirts) and shoes (casual boots or sneakers vs dress boots or heels).

My larger point was that a dress code tends to establish those norms. In addition, a dress code tends to create a floor for what is acceptable. There is always that one person who pushes the minimum. Finally, to me, it helps create a differential mindset. Work is different than home. It is part of the reason I put on real clothes while working from home instead of my PJs.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#439
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Step out to where exactly? Generally it's not just you in your own office, everyone else is too.

Maybe a hub-and-spoke type of setup like Bell Labs had?

Cal Newport wrote a bit about it in Deep Work [1] and I think it sounds like a potential way to get the best of both worlds.

[1] https://medium.com/@GrandCentralPub/excerpted-from-deep-work...

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#440
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] and having to take it with her to the bathroom (feeling somewhat self conscious about how her more frequent trips appeared to her younger, generally male coworkers) Get one of these kitchen timers [1]. Set it to about 25 minutes. When it goes off get up from your desk and spend a few minutes walking around the office. Return to your desk, reset the timer, and go to prior step. When you wish to visit the bathr…

If I had someone sitting in an open office with one of those tomatos ticking all day, and buzzing every 30 minutes I'd punch them. By all means, do a pomodoro, but don't use a ticking, vibrating noisy kitchen clock.

or do because open offices are stupid, maybe the ticking is soothing to me! if you value your control over the sounds that surround you, maybe you should push for a more private office setup?
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