I'm not a Woman in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#521

Post by phlakaton » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 3:58 AM UTC

larsiusprime wrote: post #428

rectang wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Civil War begat the Reconstruction. Two steps forward, one step back.

Now imagine if we could have ended slavery and found a way to resolve things peacefully without escalating into a brutal war that killed 2% of the population, with massive suffering on both sides.

I'm personally convinced we couldn't. The blood was already on our hands when we decided to start counting slaves as 3/5 of a non-voting person.

Of course, those who passed this compromise may have been thinking: well let's not rock the boat or we won't have a Constitution! So maybe let's wait a year or five and revisit...

How did that work out for them? Or the slaves?

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#522

Post by unidentified103 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 3:59 AM UTC

meej wrote: post #509

unidentified103 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand how a corporate policy like an "intern buddy" can be compared to a ghetto or even how it remotely hurts you in the same way that an unspoken "boys club" office setting would. A corporate policy like that is pretty clearly an impersonal management-type fluff program that does not solve every problem that could possibly arise from sexism, but that serves a resource for a few people desperately…

I'm not sure "corporate policy" is the right way to characterize it. This wasn't a policy adopted by HR or anything like that. An internal employee group took this upon themselves, and in the years before I did my internship it was completely voluntary. They changed that the summer I was there. As for the word ghetto, that is what came to mind when I read the part in Maria's post about special awards for women in tec…

Yeah, I can see how such an e-mail wouldn't exactly feel so welcoming if your participation was assumed and suddenly thrust upon you. But I don't necessarily think that it makes sense to believe that they wrote the e-mail that way because they thought you were helpless. Whoever wrote it could have been excited about the program and assumed everyone else would be too.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#523

Post by Mithorium » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:02 AM UTC

unidentified103 wrote: post #443

tomc1985 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere offering of assistance to people who do not need it, and feel they should not need it, can be construed as insulting. EDIT: As mentioned to in another comment, "Special treatment feels condescending."

Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a ghetto ? Is your pride really so hurt that someone wanted to help you out around the office that you refuse to believe that you could have learned anything useful from it? You can't even come out of it with another friend, a future business contact, an interpersonal skill, deeper knowledge of a workplace tool? It's great if some people don't think they…

I wish more people were like you. If everyone tried to assume the best of others until proven otherwise instead of assuming the worst we would all be much happier as a group

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#524

Post by dang » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:07 AM UTC

koaladevops wrote: post #499

Dove wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they wind up in jobs they need , in a way we never wi…

edit : clearly hackernews is not my audience.

I don't think it's fair to blame the audience for what happened there. (Not to pick on you; people diss the HN community left and right all the time and say all sorts of things that aren't true, and I sometimes feel like standing up for what's good in it.)

By far the best thing about this thread is how many women have been posting their thoughts. That's excellent for the same reason that a systems programming thread with lots of systems programmers would be.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#525

Post by Mithorium » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:07 AM UTC

lotharbot wrote: post #500

koaladevops wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit : clearly hackernews is not my audience.

Dove is a woman. (Source: I'm her husband.) EDIT: the issue isn't the Hacker News audience; the issue is that you were wrong in your assumption that Dove was male, and your entire comment depended on that assumption. There is no audience for which you could write that comment where it would have been correct (though some audiences might have cheered it, that would be a fault, not a virtue, of theirs.) One of the beau…

>lotharbot

Confirmed, robots are replacing men

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#526

Post by unidentified103 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:09 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #506

unidentified103 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a ghetto ? Is your pride really so hurt that someone wanted to help you out around the office that you refuse to believe that you could have learned anything useful from it? You can't even come out of it with another friend, a future business contact, an interpersonal skill, deeper knowledge of a workplace tool? It's great if some people don't think they…

> Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a ghetto? Man, it's beyond irritating to see this kind "what's the big deal? just chill" type rhetoric used in this context. Particularly because it's a hard-fought (and ongoing) battle to stop this _same exact logic_ from being used to deflate complaints about what it's like for underrepresented minorities in the workplace.

The argument here was that being offered assistance is personally insulting. In this case, I think the "same exact logic" holds. Yes, the line of questioning is a bit of an abrasive way of putting someone on the defensive, but I wanted to have a clear and direct answer for why the ghetto comparison held.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#527

Post by araes » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:13 AM UTC

RealityNow wrote: post #354

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…

You're not addressing the article at hand. The article is not claiming that sexism doesn't exist. > I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female peers discuss Though since we're on the topic - I can't speak for your specific anecdotes, but I'll say this: men may not face obstacles to the same extent of women, but they definitely face their own obstacles, and sexism against men even i…

Being an engineering hiring manager for a few years, I will say that if your work environment is semi-pro (ie, no lewd jokes, no groping, ect..) being a woman or minority is a huge advantage.

I felt kind of bad for single white males sometimes. Between them and an equally competent black or Hispanic female...no contest. There don't even have to be quotas. Mgr's just love to be able to post a chart with a huge pie slice showing how awesome their minority representation is. Note the "my office is 50/50 male/female" comment from higher up implying that is somehow a measure of workforce quality.

Plus there are a Lot of women on the flipside who realize how easy it is to manipulate an all male environment when your one of like 3 females. Those are the clever ones. And men fall for it in droves.

Women are great. So are men. So are GLBTQIA and all the other versions of rainbow alphabet soup. As long as when you are at work you Get. Shit. Done.

Well, that and keep your knowingly hurtful comments and touching to yourself. This world is hellish enough as is. Lord help us when mind reading tech gets pervasive. "6 of 8, your thoughts are out of compliance with Newspeak, prepare for 'reorientation'." Damn you Orwell. All my nightmares are made manifest.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#528

Post by tuna-piano » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:17 AM UTC

meej wrote: post #267

"You’re victimising me when you do that. You’re indicating that it’s most likely I need special, extra support. Just because I’m female." This is exactly how I felt during my Microsoft internship in 1998 when the internal women's organization, HOPPERS, decided to change their successful "intern buddy" program from opt-in to opt-out. (Well, not really opt-out, because until I got upset with them about it they clearly…

I was on a United flight a year or two ago, and before the flight they showed a video that was all female United employees talking about how United cared about women, and how women at United were pilots, and women were maintenance people, and how women made United work!

If I had a daughter I wouldn't want her to see that video. I think I would literally cover her eyes and ears. Sure, it's helpful for a little girl to know that there are female pilots. But I think that a kid seeing that kind of propaganda just helps build a complex for thinking women are less than men and need to make videos like that.

I'm a short guy, within the bottom few percentile of male height in the US. Being this short has been highly correlated with decreased wages and significant decreases in attractiveness. Can you imagine a video with a lot of short people saying "X company values short people. You short people can do whatever you want. Us short people are strong together. See, short people can become executives!" Makes me sick just thinking about it.

How do any women at all support this kind of thing?

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#529

Post by meej » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:23 AM UTC

unidentified103 wrote: post #522

meej wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "corporate policy" is the right way to characterize it. This wasn't a policy adopted by HR or anything like that. An internal employee group took this upon themselves, and in the years before I did my internship it was completely voluntary. They changed that the summer I was there. As for the word ghetto, that is what came to mind when I read the part in Maria's post about special awards for women in tec…

Yeah, I can see how such an e-mail wouldn't exactly feel so welcoming if your participation was assumed and suddenly thrust upon you. But I don't necessarily think that it makes sense to believe that they wrote the e-mail that way because they thought you were helpless. Whoever wrote it could have been excited about the program and assumed everyone else would be too.

Well I'm paraphrasing and omitting details for reasons of brevity and memory (this was almost 20 years ago, after all). I do recall the email was lengthy and made the point more than once that I needed extra support because I was a woman. I was at least halfway through my internship, which had been going very well, when I got it. It wasn't my first intern-like role, either, I'd done an 8-month co-op at another company the year before, which also went very well. The word that Maria used in her post, and that I quoted above, really does match how I felt -- I felt like I was being told I was a victim when that didn't mesh at all with my experience.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#530

Post by Animats » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:28 AM UTC

I was discussing this today with a woman who works in tech in SF. She's had people try to harass her, but it doesn't bother her much; she's comfortable with pushing back. She's more upset about the startup she worked for tanking because the people running it were in their 40s and 50s and too slow-moving.

Another woman I know works for a large software company that acquired her software startup. She does a lot of public speaking, despite being under 5' tall with a mousy voice. She hasn't had much harassment. But she's mostly in the US northeast, not SF.

Another is a lawyer with a big law firm in Silicon Valley. She's had problems, but not really serious ones. She was originally not too comfortable with confrontation, and was a back-room lawyer drafting contracts. But once she started doing trial work, she became used to dealing with confrontation regularly, which improved her success at work.

All three women are horse owners. That seems to help. Women who own horses are used to dealing with huge, powerful animals with strong personalities. The skills to deal with this seem to transfer. Bullies don't seem to be a major problem for horse people.

(Years ago, when I had a horse at the Stanford barn, one of the high-school girls showed up after school and announced, in frustration, "I just do not understand teenage boys". I told her "watch the rooster for fifteen minutes and you'll figure it out." The barn had a rooster and several chickens. The rooster made a lot of noise, chased the chickens around, and didn't accomplish much. A rooster is testosterone driving a brain the size of a peanut. The girl came back later and said "Now I get teenage boys.")