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Getting free of toxic tech culture

blog.valerieaurora.org

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Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#211

Post by kelnos »

malvosenior wrote: post #108
geofft wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer is and always has been to judge people by the output of their work and nothing else. Should it not be to judge people by the output of their work relative to their working conditions? I'm much more interested in hiring someone who operated 5 servers in a culture of manual configuration over ssh by introducing automation than someone who operated 500 servers by following existing procedures and using Ansi…

> Should it not be to judge people by the output of their work relative to their working conditions? No we shouldn’t look at that. I only care how you can produce in the role you occupy. To clarify by “output” I mean work output, not public display output.

If you can increase an employee's output by $X by spending $Y to improve their working conditions (where $X > $Y), shouldn't you do it? Isn't it then worthwhile to examine not just an employee's output, but their working conditions as well?

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#212

Post by Aloha »

tptacek wrote: post #193
Aloha wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been around F500's and tech companies - one accusation of violating norms at a tech company can be a career ender - one accusation of same violation of norms at a Fortune 500, is usually deal with thru a discipline process.

You've worked at a company that had a "must wear ties to the office" requirement (yes, those still exist) and came out thinking that their employees were less "docile" than those of the median SFBA startup?

Just my observations and opinion..

but, worked with, not at, but generally about equal in raw numbers - it really depends where the docility comes out - in fortune 500's being weird in general is strongly discouraged, but the penalties for stepping out of line are small usually, the big benefit is, cultural norms are clearly established, and generally followed - in a SV company, being weird is strongly encouraged, cultural values are somewhat more nebulous, and the penalties for stepping out of line are often much more harsh.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#213

Post by xor1 »

illumin8 wrote: post #196
oceanghost wrote: post #8

I've written software for Intel, Nintendo, Samsung, LG, DirecTV, Applied Materials, Microsoft, and Apple to name a few. My last project was the basis for an entire business line at a 500m/yr company. I am unemployable because I'm a white male whose in his 40s, has a family, and because somehow, in this industry experience is a bad thing. It amazes me how intolerant of age and differing opinion tech culture is.

White male, 44 years old. I'm a principal engineer at a big tech company and could get a job at a moments notice paying really well any time I choose. I'm not sure ageism really exists, outside of some toxic startups with a "bro" culture, and in my experience, those are the types of places that nobody wants to work anyway.

Do you mind me asking what languages/stack you're currently working with? Just out of curiosity.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#214

Post by adamsea »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #178
malvosenior wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i guess i feel like letting one great programmer drive away 25 good programmers isn't actually a very savvy move

Agreed. Or even worse, 1 great programmer drive away several other great programmers and several other good ones.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#216

Post by ant_mc »

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.

But reasonable people were offended by Brandon Eich donating to an anti-gay marriage proposition, and other reasonable people were offended that he got ousted from Mozilla.

Some people are offended by Damore and been quite vicious towards him, others are saying he's right about things (including you pretty much can't be a conservative in Silicon Valley).

Isn't reality more complex than this idea? Its easy enough to say "don't comment on a coworkers physical appearance" or something equally stupid, but "any non-zero subset" offended by any particular behavior doesn't seem reasonable.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#217

Post by finnthehuman »

tptacek wrote: post #128
finnthehuman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I used to think like this. After years and years of refining my own behavior, a non-work, non-"tech" friend let it slip that my fiends though I had turned into a non-confrontational, lawyer-sounding, people-pleaser. He wasn't wrong, I had gotten in the habit of always walking…

As a consultant whose client portfolio used to include F500's in health, insurance, and NY finance, and whose portfolio now includes nothing but startups, and having had the pleasure of whiling away many languorous afternoons in the cube farms of those companies, I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that the average startup tech employee is "walking on eggshells" and being performatively docile compared to the d…

OK. Then why not be more specific. If "tech" and "the industry" means one corner, of one business domain, with one financing model, on one peninsula... maybe I just haven't landed any jobs with the boorish worklife yet. But I certainly feel the blowback from what apparently happens there.

Reading posts here often feels like I'm in bizzaro world where I've never actually worked in "tech". Yes, my current job is more laid back when I'm not on site at a multinational client's office, but it's not that much. It's still a desk job in software. The scale I use to judge workplaces extends into back into my time in restaurants, retail, admin, music, and mechanics' shops. Now, if you want to talk culture, I could tell some stories about those places (and pardon that expression, I could obviously never tell those stories here).

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#218

Post by majormajor »

manfredo wrote: post #207
adamsea wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 intere…

So let's take that "biological difference in choices" as premise A, and then take premise B to be the company professing a policy to want a more even split.

The result of that might be an action C, where you lower the standards required to hire people who are in one group to get the numbers more even - otherwise A will cause there to be not enough people of your usually quality for the numbers you want in B.

And that was what he alleged: that the women hired didn't have as high a bar to pass.

And that's where, if you're a woman in the same job as him, you take offense, because the implications of his argument are inescapable: a lot of those women are inferior.

So if you're a Google higher-up who doesn't believe that their diversity/outreach programs are a lowered standards (say, you think they're a different approach to compensate for preparation differences in readiness for certain interviews), then you pretty much have to get rid of the guy who insists on shouting from the rooftops that a bunch of his coworkers aren't as good as he is.

Damore sealed his own fate because he either (a) didn't think through this all, sabotaging his own credibility in the process, or (b) evil-genius arranged it to give himself a platform for a lawsuit and a bunch of conservative media fawning.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#219

Post by ant_mc »

Aloha wrote: post #212
tptacek wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've worked at a company that had a "must wear ties to the office" requirement (yes, those still exist) and came out thinking that their employees were less "docile" than those of the median SFBA startup?

Just my observations and opinion.. but, worked with, not at, but generally about equal in raw numbers - it really depends where the docility comes out - in fortune 500's being weird in general is strongly discouraged, but the penalties for stepping out of line are small usually, the big benefit is, cultural norms are clearly established, and generally followed - in a SV company, being weird is strongly encouraged, cu…

This is how you wind up with "dongle" jokes that get pretty much everyone involved fired.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#220

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

The problem with defining toxic tech culture, as the authors have done, as "those that demean and devalue you as holistic, multifaceted human beings, (...) those that prioritize profits and growth over human and societal well being, [and] (...) those that treat you as replaceable cogs within a system of constant churn and burnout" is that it captures a wide range of behaviors that are undeniably unpleasant, but widely occur in other labor markets, and as such, aren't exclusively attributable to tech. Nor do they single out populations that the authors (and others) would consider to be 'marginalized'.

In fact, reading the essay from beginning to end, it's difficult to pinpoint a specific complaint; the cult mentality, the intentionally-skewed work-life balance, the flare-ups of self-awareness amidst lingering self-doubt identified as warning signs and symptoms are the tradeoffs of a lifestyle that everyone in tech self-selects. What, then, is the abuse here, the toxicity, when participation in this environment is a labor transaction?

There are numerous instances of awful, toxic behavior that has occurred in the field of tech, and exacerbated by this environment that could have been called out position this essay against behaviors that are abhorrent and should never be tolerated. But conjecturing an equivalence between a driven, but self-selecting labor environment and the plight of marginalized groups is a stretch, but the writing suggests that that link is self-evident to their target audience. If that's true, the conversation has already lost its nuance, and can't be refuted without collateral damage, making it a rhetorical trap.

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