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I'm not a Woman in Tech

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Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#231

Post by JustSomeNobody »

sotojuan wrote: post #17

There's an interesting dichotomy on the "women in tech" question between "SV tech" and non-SV tech. I briefly worked at a tech company making oil industry software in .NET in a Houston suburb. Not trendy, cubicles, but they paid fine (and unlike my current job the office was quiet). I quickly noticed that half of my coworkers were not only women, but a lot were people of color and older (I actually think I was the on…

One of the things "SV Tech" broke first in their rush to move fast and break stuff was what was traditionally known as "professionalism".

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#232

Post by ams6110 »

Latty wrote: post #136
CM30 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, agreed. I still remember seeing a bunch of college students pushing for 'segregation' at university because it would 'help minorities' and thinking "Wasn't that exactly what we got rid of because it was horribly racist 50 years or so ago?" It feels like all these 'minority only' events and clubs and what not are going straight back to the bad old days. Just from the opposite 'side' of the political spectrum.

Then you don't understand the core problem. You know what, I think people, in general, should be allowed to discriminate. The whole "right to refuse service" shtick - people shouldn't be forced to do things they don't want to do, even if they are following stupid beliefs. That said, I recognise there are things that have to beat that. Just like free speech doesn't include shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, we have…

> If everyone won't provide wedding services for you, or everyone won't let you attend a class, or everyone won't sell you food, you can't live your life.

True, but socially, we've moved past that. There might be the rare individual baker who would not want to bake a cake for a gay wedding, because he's a devout Christian or Muslim or whatever and thinks homosexuality is a sin. But 98% of businesses won't care, as long as you can pay the bill.

We'll never be rid of all discrimination. It's just a flaw in human nature. We should keep educating and working against it. But I think we're largely past the institutionalized (to say nothing of codified) discrimination of the past centuries.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#233

Post by Mz »

fruzz wrote: post #14

There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is. I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. Take my previous job. Women were objectified on Slack. A woman was groped, though she didn't report it out of concern for the repercussions. In meetings execs, male execs would only address/look at the m…

There is zero reason to believe that this piece is suggesting that women who get groped shouldn't call it out. Part of her point is that having awards specifically for women implicitly agrees that women are second rate and can't compete with the guys, so should not bother and should just accept their pink collar ghetto status and stop bothering to try to escape it and actually get taken seriously.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#234

Post by mistermann »

angersock wrote: post #101
booleandilemma wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing opinions is just not "safe" anymore Free speech is dead.

I'm not sure that free speech is dead so much as people's ability to think critically is dead, or at the very least their ability to deal with the idea that sometimes people who are great in every other respect advocate a position they don't.

I think this is more correct, but I'm not sure there's really any point in differentiating between the two. The end result either way is: either keep your mouth shut or parrot what the crowd is saying, even if it's the opposite of what they were saying yesterday.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#235

Post by imjlu »

djsumdog wrote: post #59
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. The point of the article seems to be more along the lines of "Different people are different. Please don't force your labels onto me." I didn't get the sense that she's trying to change anything. She's just trying to be a person.

It kinda makes me thing of the "Millennials Don't Exist" talk by Adam Conover. He talks about how generational terms are just made up by authors who want to get rich and they're almost always condescending (those entitled baby boomers, those lazy millennials, those gen x-ers) and how people don't liked to be talked down to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s Are millennials attached do their cellphones…

It's almost as if segregation adds unnecessary constraints to the lives of the people involved.

You'd think people would have figured this out centuries ago, yet we still self-segregate and divide ourselves wherever possible. Shame.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#236

Post by dang »

yeslibertarian wrote: post #119

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aUcOP6Iqo4 The Sociobiological Truth About Women

Single purpose accounts, and/or accounts that use HN primarily for ideological battle, aren't allowed here because they violate the mandate of the site (described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We've banned this account.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#237

Post by Latty »

ams6110 wrote: post #220
Latty wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Only white people" doesn't mean "no racism". As an Englishman, let me assure you my ancestors managed racism against white Irish people extremely well, and - somewhat ironically - plenty of the less educated people around me today are extremely racist to eastern Europeans (who are supposedly "takin' er jerbs"). Your point is "I don't do racist things, therefore there isn't a problem", which is just not true - there…

Is Irish a race? I'm thinking you mean discrimination.

I mean racism. It's commonly accepted that race is a fuzzy term when it comes to this kind of thing and encompasses discrimination against people based on background, nationality and ethnic groups. However you want to define racism, the discrimination against Irish people in England fits the same pattern and has largely the same problems as racism in other forms.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#238

Post by toufka »

emsy wrote: post #58
aphextron wrote: post #2

>I want inclusivity, not exclusivity. Thank you. I find myself feeling the exact same way as a black man in this industry, and cringe at "minority only" events and clubs. We don't need token inclusion and separate praise for being "brave" and "fighting against the odds". We need a world where those things are irrelevant.

I recently watched an answer on this by Steven Pinker as to why this "re-segregation" is happening. He basically says that legitimate movements don't stop as soon as they've reached their goal and at that point, they start to become regressive. Interestingly he provides an example that hasn't to do with any ism: child protection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFnP5UUXuTk

I think it was Joe Rogan who mentioned a similar point where, until a goal is reached those who want equity and those who just want a position of power are pointed in the exact same direction. It is only once the goal is reached that the difference between the two ideals becomes apparent.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#239

Post by ams6110 »

swampangel wrote: post #210
DamnYuppie wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it is my understanding that it was a whites-only back in the day. Now it is a not-whites only which really doesn't seem as different to me as you comment indicates it really is. It is just a different group of people telling others what they can and can't do.

If you were white in 60's America, you didn't have to check ahead of time if a given restaurant would serve you food. If you're white now, you still don't have to check. If you're not white, things are different. Can you think of some examples of when you were unexpectedly forbidden from participating in an event/group/etc? Did you have access to alternatives?

The 1960s were 50 years ago. You won't experience that today (with very rare exceptions), and that's a good thing. But we can't be forever fixated on things that we've moved past.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#240

Post by aembleton »

icebraining wrote: post #6

As in some many things regarding politics (in a broad sense of the word), my favorite take on this is by Yes, Minister , specifically the "Equal Opportunities" episode, which overall goes much in the same line as this article. Of course, the irony being that it was written by a man. By the way, if you're interested, I beg you not to read the synopsis. Unlike most, this show has actual actors playing the parts, and th…

Here's the Equal Opportunities episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7KCB6cRruc
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