Live data from Hacker News

Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

itwire.com

251–260 of 345 posts

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That interview was in Chicago; I was in Michigan at the time, thankfully. I see no correlation between company size and occurrence of this stuff. I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and femal…

>Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. how the interviewer would know about the kids to start with? Did he ask about it? That question is already illegal. Or was the fact of having kids brought up by the candidate? Then the candidate got what s/he was asking for. >Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That intervi…

You raise some very sound points. No wait, I meant to say stupid.

Guy says "I have kids". No problem.

Woman says "I have kids". Problem.

Whether it's legal to ask or unnecessary to mention is irrelevant.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've not been on IRC have you...

What IRC channels? I never saw a troll on freenode, for example. Not a very frequent visitor, but still.

#ubuntu and #fedora on freenode are both full of trolling, albeit of a less "harassment" style. And oh god, ##linux....

On the other hand, #vim is absolutely lovely, so the problem is clearly not systemic.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#253
I've worked both in environments that are 10:1 women to men and 1:10 women to men. All of the "oh women just don't understand a good joke/don't ball bust/don't talk dirty" is pure BS, in female dominated environments I've encountered plenty of that. The one thing I've never encountered was anyone who made me feel even slightly out-of-place due to my gender (male). On the other hand I've been in male dominated, tech environments that make me feel uncomfortable even as a man. I've heard men discuss their wives education as a merely something to do so that they could marry a programmer, seen numerous times where women are put on the spot for their gender ("whoa there's a girl in this class"), incredible amounts of misogyny, continual use of the "men"/"girl" dichotomy and the cherry on top of all of this is the "oh women are just being sensitive/can't take a joke/etc" whenever this is brought up. With a background in the humanities I've actually spent a lot of time reading up on gender studies and reading real (ie not the pop culture) feminist writings, and it's frankly embarrassing how regressive even reasonably intelligent tech teams can be (and disgusting how awful the less talented ones are). To refuse to see this issue despite the incredible amount of evidence that it exists if ignorance of the highest order, which of course is to be expected anywhere this type of behavior is a problem.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your public support for woman's rights is undermined by your implication that she is "stupid" for "falling for his shit". It's not like she got duped into giving her bank account information to a Nigerian Prince. She's become a target for bigotry. I also wouldn't call harassing emails, phoning people's work places, and changing an employer's online database as "nothing substantial".

I support equal rights. If a guy fell for troll bait, I say hes stupid for falling for it. If a woman does it, should I not treat her the same way? If I did, I myself would be undermining woman's rights. There is also insufficient proof such things happened. If they did, why has she not gone to the police and legally pursued it? I'm not seeing that she has done so at all.

Quote from one of Skud's blog posts:

We deleted his comments here, of course. At first we did so quietly, not wanting to "feed the troll"

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is people's unwillingness to acknowledge the fact that free speech has boundaries, and that some people abuse their free speech rights in ways that go far beyond being disagreeable. For example: Go to the local women’s group office and liquidate it (kill the feminist women there). Wear a dark suit and drive an expensive car (these are more likely not to be suspect). Continue destroying the people who have…

Ok, I believe I now understand what you believe to be the problem: many people disagree with you on what should be the boundary of free speech. It's a little unkind to categorize disagreement as "the problem", but whatever. If that's what mootothemax and airlocksoftware meant, then I'd suggest they are wrong. Most of the people reading this page do "get it", but disagree because they assign a higher value to free spe…

No, you do not understand. You think my problem is that 'many people disagree with [me] on what should be the boundary of free speech.' This is incorrect.

I am not making a normative argument about what the boundaries of free speech should be. Frankly, I don't know exactly where they should be; where many people see boundaries I tend to see a grey area, and my ideas on this tend to shift around a bit. It is much easier to be like Justice Potter Stewart and say 'I know it when I see it' than to identify and articulate some objective standard for what is an isn't acceptable. For mathematical reasons, I'm not altogether sure that it's possible to define such things consistently.

The argument I'm making is not about where I think boundaries should be, but where boundaries actually are, as drawn in different jurisdiction by statute or precedent. Certain kinds of speech are actually illegal even in the US where speech is sheltered by the 1st amendment and the large legal umbrella that provides. It is not legal for you to incite a riot, or utter threats of imminent physical harm, or carry out blackmail, to name but a few examples. There are conduct laws that limit the freedom of speech but which are nonetheless held to be constitutional. The problem I refer to is the invocation of 'free speech' to dismiss complaints about all undesirable speech, inclusive of that which may qualify as criminal.

We don't really know what kind of communications Skud received via email. Some have asserted that it could not have been so bad, on the bases that the blogger did not explicitly complain about it and that the police did not consider they warranted an investigation. This inference is unjustified. First, the blogger might abstain from citing the content of personal emails from fear, humiliation, or strategic reasons; the assumption that she would have taken such content public is just that, an assumption. Secondly, the police might well feel the complaints warranted an investigation, but be unable to proceed for want of actionable evidence. to the extent that MikeeUSA is able to cover his digital tracks using anonymizing protocols (something that Skud might well have explained to the police as part of her complaint), they may decline to proceed because the time and trouble required to obtain that information might exceed available resources; or because the police themselves are a sexist bunch in Australia; or because they know from experience that prosecuting such a crime across international borders is a non-starter and that the danger is too remote to justify the use of the extradition process.

You stated above that you did not see a problem 'beyond "in a society with free speech, some people will speak in ways that others dislike."' But it is a fact that some speech is not merely dislikeable, but criminal (whether or not we agree on whether it should be); and it is a fact that some kinds of criminal activity are difficult to prosecute because they are forensically obscure (eg by using anonymizing protocols to cover one's tracks); and it is a fact that sexual violence is a risk that disproportionately affects women. While we should not assume that 'sextremism + stalking behavior + fact of rape = proof of mikeeUSA's inherent criminality,' because it most certainly does not amount to that, nor should we assume that 'free speech = no cognizable risk' and casually dismiss incitement to violence and focused personal aggression as mere disagreeability.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. how the interviewer would know about the kids to start with? Did he ask about it? That question is already illegal. Or was the fact of having kids brought up by the candidate? Then the candidate got what s/he was asking for. >Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That intervi…

You raise some very sound points. No wait, I meant to say stupid. Guy says "I have kids". No problem. Woman says "I have kids". Problem. Whether it's legal to ask or unnecessary to mention is irrelevant.

>Guy says "I have kids". No problem.

>Woman says "I have kids". Problem.

Candidate on the interview says "I have kids". It sounds like the candidate is bringing on a condition that the candidate considers as potentially having some relation to the proposed employment (otherwise why would the candidate mention it?). It is only reasonable for the interviewing person to ask how the candidate would manage the condition that the candidate brought on in a manner and situation that strongly suggests that the candidate may consider the condition as potentially related to the proposed employment.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the lack of magnitude of the problem. I don't think the problem is as prevalent in YC, one of the main circle of startups I know. Maybe that's because JL does a good job filtering out jerks, or maybe it's something inherent to the YC-compatible startups. Out of curiosity: was she talking to larger companies or startups? I am curious how prevalent the problem is in the larger startup comm…

Both. Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That interview was in Chicago; I was in Michigan at the time, thankfully. I see no correlation between company size and occurrence of this stuff. I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and femal…

""I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and female. They are all extremely touchy about this subject. They are touchy because crazy shit like this happens to them all the time.""

This is very true. unbelievable crazy batshit stuff happens to me -all the time-. Like "Police report filed" crazy. Like "I no longer open up any letters or packages unless I am positive I know who sent it" crazy. Like "I have to make sure that wherever I live, there is a camera at the doorbell and multiple doors before they can get in" crazy.

Its not a majority of guys, and some even 'mean well' but you only need to have it happen to you once to decide that the stress of knowing something crappy will happen to you if you attend X event, is not worth the benefit of attending X.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#258

Last year at FooCamp I went to a panel about women in tech (I believe I was the only guy) for two reasons: 1) I have no qualms about offending people if I feel my point is valid, and in fact enjoy being in situations where I risk such things (I find it incredibly rewarding to have meaningful discussions about things that are considered taboo). 2) To find out what the problem was Let me clarify #2: I didn't see a prob…

Personally I never saw that problem in all the companies I worked, but I can see how making yourself more prominent in tech can lead to harassment, Would this not be the same in any industry or even worse? We are probably the most vocal community and thus generating more conversations about it, but I don't see a lot of women in the construction fields, and I can picture them having a pretty bad experience there. What…

The construction industry having a sexism problem isn't a reason for another industry to stop striving to be better.

> Like probably no one would start a movement to get more guys in a predominant women profession? frankly who cares?

That kind of wrong-headed, "Why are there no MOWO awards?!!" reasoning doesn't help either. The situations that the different genders find themselves in with regards to employment aren't really comparable.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#259
I wish this kind of thing never appeared on HN. This kind of thing, involving gender/harassment/PC-ness always tends to devolve into flamefests and pedantry, and nothing tangible comes of it. Demonization, stereotypes, extreme generalizations, cherry picking, etc. Over and over and over again.

My take: there are bad people in the world, yes. And we have no control over them. Sometimes bad things happen. And we have no control over that. Knowledge, education, maturity are not equally distributed, and not all people share the same behavior or values as we'd like. News at 11. Let's move on. Please. :)

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raise some very sound points. No wait, I meant to say stupid. Guy says "I have kids". No problem. Woman says "I have kids". Problem. Whether it's legal to ask or unnecessary to mention is irrelevant.

>Guy says "I have kids". No problem. >Woman says "I have kids". Problem. Candidate on the interview says "I have kids". It sounds like the candidate is bringing on a condition that the candidate considers as potentially having some relation to the proposed employment (otherwise why would the candidate mention it?). It is only reasonable for the interviewing person to ask how the candidate would manage the condition t…

The message "I have kids" need not be so direct:

Interviewer asks: can tell me about a situation where you had to improvise?

Interviewee: well, just this morning, my two year old…

Post reply on HN