Getting free of toxic tech culture • Hacker News Board

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#201

Post by nostrademons » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #182

malvosenior wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, from Damore’s Google lawsuit: https://twitter.com/mjaeckel/status/950446329603461121

Jesus Christ. Google seems to be infested by wingnuttery on both sides - nearly every example there is an example of left or right crazies. But they do seem to show a pattern of left leaning wingnuts being more accepted than right leaning.

It's a company of 72,000 people where employees are encouraged to speak their minds.

Get any group of 72,000 people together and have them say what they actually believe and you'll find a lot of wingnuttery. Just look at the comment section of any blog, news story, YouTube video, or Internet forum.

The alternative viewpoint is that humanity actually holds far more diversity of thought and ideology than you had ever conceptualized before, and that this is a peek into the minds of many, many of your fellow human beings. It's glorious (and somewhat miraculous that we haven't killed each other yet, knock on wood...)

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#202

Post by adamsea » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:01 AM UTC

zzzcpan wrote: post #148

ryandrake wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I actually abstained from all things that “would bother someone” I would never even be able to leave the house. No matter what you do, I guarantee that there is someone, somewhere, who will be gravely offended by it. This doesn’t even include the people who are out there actively looking for things to take offense to. Trying to please everyone is not a winnable game.

Yeah, the assumption that people leave tech because they are so offended by a behavior doesn't sound like a reasonable assumption. People have jobs because they have to work, not because they would like to do it. If they leave the industry, it's because they don't find jobs in the industry worthy enough to endure. I'm sure more would stay for better rewards.

Susan Fowler didn't leave tech, but she left Uber: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#203

Post by majormajor » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

tlb wrote: post #44

I predict people will claim "our culture isn't that toxic. Some of those things happen, but they don't bother me much." If any non-zero subset of reasonable people are so offended by a behavior that they'd leave the industry because of it, we have to cut it out. So don't ask "would this bother me?" Ask "would it bother someone?" And since you can't predict this from inside your head, you have to rely on firsthand acc…

There's something kinda like a first mover problem here, but that's not quite the right word. I honestly don't know what the next steps should be (individually for me, or for the industry as a whole). It's easy to say "get better" for the latter, but hard to turn that into discrete actions.

I think this linked post is pretty good, specifically with this bit showing a nuance that is lacking in more mainstream-media regurgitations of "tech is bad, news at 11": "We say “toxic tech culture” because we want to distinguish between leaving tech entirely, and leaving areas of tech which are abusive and harmful."

I do understand the sort of "righteousness fatigue" that makes people tired of hearing about how they, their coworkers, their employer, their friends, are so terrible. Lose too much nuance and the reaction gets defensive, which from a purely practical point of view is a problem (this might get labeled as a "privileged" thing to be concerned with, but it's tough to reconcile wanting change but not being concerned with accomplishing it). I think a lot of the mainstream coverage of this is starting to poison the well, and then you end up with "sure, it's not your responsibility as non-white-male to fix the behavior of assholes, but it's not my responsibility to fix that asshole either."

Which leaves me back where I started. If my company seems pretty good in this respect - the ratio isn't great, a factor of our incoming applications/recruiting, but retention is high among the relevant employees, and no complaints have been raised (at least at my level of visibility). We try to broaden our candidate pool, and have widened it a LOT in the last five years, and are definitely hiring more candidates who do great despite not being run through the 5-algorithms-on-a-whiteboard gauntlet, but that doesn't translate directly into women and minorities...

So other than continuing to work at attracting a broaer pool of candidates... What else should we do? Even if only from the "name and shame" perspective of "god, it's annoying seeing the gender ratio published"?

Asking seems like a good first step, since another pervasive issue in tech is too many people who try to solve problems without ever thinking of talking to someone about it. :)

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#204

Post by brucephillips » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #121

wcarron wrote: post #111

I think this was well written. There were a few instances where, upon first reading it, I objected. But rereading it, I thought the language used was chosen well. I have one main gripe, though: The scope limitation to tech. > "Toxic tech cultures are those that demean and devalue you as holistic, multifaceted human beings. Toxic tech cultures are those that prioritize profits and growth over human and societal well b…

In fact, it very probably is a tech-specific problem. Among the STEM fields, CS is almost uniquely imbalanced. STEM fields in general range from ~30-55% women, and those fields include things like Mathematics --- anyone who has gone to an academic cryptography workshop has probably noticed how many more women there are in the room --- which are strong proxies for CS ability. And, of course, among the professions in g…

A more equal gender distribution doesn't mean that women are treated better. Take Hollywood, for example.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#205

Post by shkkmo » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #100

tlb wrote: post #44

I predict people will claim "our culture isn't that toxic. Some of those things happen, but they don't bother me much." If any non-zero subset of reasonable people are so offended by a behavior that they'd leave the industry because of it, we have to cut it out. So don't ask "would this bother me?" Ask "would it bother someone?" And since you can't predict this from inside your head, you have to rely on firsthand acc…

> If any non-zero subset of reasonable people are so offended by a behavior that they'd leave the industry because of it, we have to cut it out. That's a very high demand. People can leave the industry for a very wide variety of reasons, often mutually contradictory - some want to work as much as possible, provided it translates to $$$$, some are ok with earning less provided they can pursue side interests or family…

> But pre-committing to a goal that no non-zero subset of reasonable people ever wanted to leave tech does not seem like a smart thing to do, because it's impossible.

It doesn't matter if that is impossible because it's also not what was proposed. The proposal was to stop reasonable people leaving because the are OFFENDED by a particular BEHAVIOR.

This isn't to say that some solutions offered to reach that goal won't offend even more reasonable people for different reasons. But even that doesn't mean that this isn't the goal we should be aiming towards.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#206

Post by kelnos » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #75

adamsea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) With respect, your experience and the author's experience may vary, for a variety of reasons, so I'm not sure it makes sense to pit one set of experiences against another, so to speak. B) Would you be willing to clarify what was toxic about your experience with SV startups as you described? C) Realistically, without denying the problems which probably do exist with "intersectionaly identity politics", etc, it seem…

The answer is and always has been to judge people by the output of their work and nothing else. As soon as you bring identity politics into to equation, you’ve lost because many people will (rightly) take attacks on white people and men as racist and sexist respectively.

How people treat others in the organization can negatively impact the output of others' work. If firing an asshole (who otherwise has high quality output) increases the quality of the output of others past a certain point, then that's an easy argument from a simple financial/productivity perspective that treating others with respect is a positive for the company.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#207

Post by manfredo » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #183

manfredo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you identify in his memo where he claimed that, "his _coworkers_... are scientifically, inferior to him."

"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." He lays the groundwork for that argument there, and then his rhetoric which builds upon this throughout the memo basically argues that, possibly, men are better biologically suited than women for high status/stress/leadership roles, or roles involving "things", as he…

He argues that biology is, in part, a cause for different preferences and choices between men and women. At no point did he claim any superiority of ability.

"X is worse at Y" is not at all the same thing as "X, on average, will choose to do Y at a smaller rate."

Also, I find the notion that people who choose to not work in tech or work smaller hours are somehow inferior quite demeaning. My brother wasn't very interested in tech, so he went into a different field. Am I (who did go into tech) a superior person to my brother due to our choice of work? Similarly, would I be a lesser person if I worked 30-35 hours instead of my usual 40-45?

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#208

Post by adamsea » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

jrs235 wrote: post #163

doesnt_know wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask what you did in your role as a manager? Where I work, even though there are some titles that have the word "manager" in, the organization refers to anyone that have people report to them as "people leaders". They are responsible for the well being of the those that report to them. If you take away the part where you are responsible for your people, what is left? Even if you take the most clinical and roboti…

>People don't turn off their emotions just because they are getting paid to perform a task !??! Isn't that what we expect professionals to do? I mean yeah professionals still have feelings and emotions but they learn to detach them from their job. Like how we expect police officers to conduct themselves... Like trained professionals.

We expect professionals to manage their emotions; huge difference. As the other poster says, it's a literal impossibility for a human being to not experience emotions.

And police offers have to deal with stuff like PTSD and emotional trauma from their job, because of how intense it is. To a lesser degree than that, our (less intense) jobs have an unavoidable emotional impact on us.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#209

Post by ant_mc » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

> especially the ones that you have been planning to read but never got around to

So um, all of them.

I do try to do stuff unrelated to work. I actually love this stuff though, so other stuff can feel like a chore. Especialyl stuff that takes a lot of investment (e.g. getting good enough at an instrument for it to be fun).

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#210

Post by cutcss » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #199

cutcss wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get this idea that all professions need to be 50%/50%? Just for example 90% of nurses are female but we are as a society are OK with that right?

You wrote this comment a few minutes ago before it was flagged off the site. You then deleted it and reposted it. Please don't do that.

No I didn't, I rewrote it to make it sound less inflammatory because I though that was the reason it got flagged. I still believe its a valid point, you may think otherwise of course.