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On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

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Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#71

Post by mnglkhn2 »

kristianc wrote: post #27

The major elephant in the room here, which the memo doesn't seem to address, is that as late as the 1960's, computer programming was seen as a natural career for young women. Has biology changed that much in the last fifty years?

In the sixties you would type punch cards and make sure you typed correctly so that you don't mess the batch run.

EDIT: it was more of a secretarial type of job. And women would socialize with other women on the job.

The point is that aside from the title, the IT industry then is in no way what we understand by IT industry now.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#72

Post by losteverything »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #57
losteverything wrote: post #37

This is called growing up. We dont need to know how everyone thinks. We dont want to know either. We tailor our words to our audience. We avoid saying or typing dumb things. We only say what we really feel to our confidante. These outwardly stupid writings are simply that: bad childish judgement.

> We dont need to know how everyone thinks. We dont want to know either. So ignore it? You must hate graffiti.

I need to know how my relative thinks, not my neighbor's sister.

Yes. Tuning out people what i do.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#73

Post by cm2187 »

dudul wrote: post #62
artursapek wrote: post #45

Why are people so outraged at this guy? I read what he wrote and it honestly sounds like he's trying to be helpful. It's at least polite. The knee-jerk "SEXIST!" reactions to him come off extremely self-righteous and immature. There are a hundred other male-dominated careers and I never, ever hear women complain about not being equally represented in them. Why? Because they're not attractive careers.

In addition to career attractiveness, the thing is tech is an easy target for the modus operandi. Companies in tech deeply need to have a good image and reputation. When your business model is B2C and you're targeting growth at all cost you can't afford a boycott campaign on Twitter, or a few blog posts on medium about sexual harassment, etc. Other mostly male-dominated industries do not have this characteristic. Do…

I am not sure Uber users really care about sexism at Uber when it's 2am, they are outside of a bar and need to find a cab. I don't think users will switch away from gmail or google.com en masse because of the male/female ratio in this company. In fact outside of the microcosm of the Silicon Valley and its satellites, I don't think these issues are drawing that much attention.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#74

Post by walru »

losteverything wrote: post #37

This is called growing up. We dont need to know how everyone thinks. We dont want to know either. We tailor our words to our audience. We avoid saying or typing dumb things. We only say what we really feel to our confidante. These outwardly stupid writings are simply that: bad childish judgement.

I tend to refer to Chistopher Hitchens on this topic. >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#75

Post by kristianc »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #71
kristianc wrote: post #27

The major elephant in the room here, which the memo doesn't seem to address, is that as late as the 1960's, computer programming was seen as a natural career for young women. Has biology changed that much in the last fifty years?

In the sixties you would type punch cards and make sure you typed correctly so that you don't mess the batch run. EDIT: it was more of a secretarial type of job. And women would socialize with other women on the job. The point is that aside from the title, the IT industry then is in no way what we understand by IT industry now.

Women clearly aren't cut out for the brave new world of statically typed languages.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#76

Post by shaftoe »

s73ver wrote: post #31
Quarrelsome wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it okay to campaign towards the goal of firing someone for expressing an opinion they feel outraged about?

Let's be frank, here. This is not someone merely "expressing an opinion." This is someone rallying against diversity, using pseudoscience to back up claims that women and minorities are inferior, and thus shouldn't have been hired. On top of that, they ranted about how Google had not done enough to make conservatives feel they have a safe space, when the only thing Google has done on the subject is to make others fee…

He didn't rail against diversity, he railed against what are effectively affirmative action policies. Several times he went to pains to point out he wasn't against diversity of people, just the initiatives at Google.

He railed against the idea that pay and hiring gaps must be caused by biases and, once you rule out bias, what you're left with must be some combination of cultural, biological, and personal factors. Better to discuss and address real issues and not perpetually pretend that everyone is a closet racist and sexist.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#77

Post by blablabla123 »

untog wrote: post #66
blablabla123 wrote: post #15

The thing is, the guy wrote what many people think - outside of tech. It just so happens that techies happen to be very open oftentimes. I mean, what this person wrote, I heard it on various occasions in different formulations from various people. Even a woman (a Psychologist student at that time) once told me she'd rather have a male dentist and a male president. I imagine tech industry to be brutal for woman, but s…

> The thing is, the guy wrote what many people think - outside of tech. I agree, but that's also at the core of my (internal) confusion about it. His arguments are not new, at all. As far as I could tell he doesn't present any new evidence to back up his argument, either. So, to those who say "it is important that he spoke out, and that we have this debate": when does this debate end? Assuming we have the debate and…

As said before, every now and then I involuntary get sucked into this debate, most of the time the other person is drunk or feels safe enough "to speak up". (haha - of course when there are no women around)

When I'm at work, I'm always surprised how they manage to hire 0 women for pure engineering jobs. (This is not my first job by the way.) Even more why there is no real discussion about that, rather: "yeah we found no woman who fits". On the other hand there is an occasional complaint about the gender inequality. Sorry, but you cannot make progress by not talking about the topics or by talking about it but not speaking your mind.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#78

Post by cm2187 »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #34

Silicon Valley controls a lot of the world's communication and we should be really worried if silencing of unpopular opinions is the order of the day. As a "minority" I perhaps disagree with a lot of what this person has written but my reaction to it will be to counter his arguments with a better one rather than go on to silence him. -- I have already written about this somewhat during the past elections. https://med…

And calling "fake news" any opinion they disagree with. I find it pretty problematic that Facebook wants to police the political debate. Kind of like if gmail started blocking emails sent to a gmail account if it disagrees with its content.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#79

Post by drewrv »

amazingman wrote: post #42
s73ver wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be frank, here. This is not someone merely "expressing an opinion." This is someone rallying against diversity, using pseudoscience to back up claims that women and minorities are inferior, and thus shouldn't have been hired. On top of that, they ranted about how Google had not done enough to make conservatives feel they have a safe space, when the only thing Google has done on the subject is to make others fee…

I looked for claims in the manifesto that women and/or minorities are inferior, and I failed to find them. Would you mind providing an example of what I seem to have missed?

Believing that diversity requires "lowing the bar" means believing "diverse" candidates are inferior.

Re: On managing outrage in Silicon Valley

#80

Post by fireflash38 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #21

> He is one individual in a company that employs more than 72,000 people. Why has Silicon Valley spent the weekend talking about him Because we're not talking about a memo posted by one random engineer that got the reaction it deserved for declaring a large fraction of his co-workers sub-standard engineers (among the myriad broken things in that memo). That would have been a story for all of five minutes. Instead, we…

If you have an environment where anything contrary to the prevailing viewpoint is either stifled or decried as sexist/racist, you drive people to the only people who accept them: the extreme fringe.
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