Sexting, rainbow parties, jenkem, and brogrammers. All of a piece.
What, pray tell, is jenkem?
"Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
31–40 of 375 posts
Re: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#32This is not sexism--it's bad taste. A marketing guy that can only use sex to sell sucks as a marketing guy and I'd expect more people to jump on that aspect of the story. (I realize I'm probably jumping the gun, and he could have instances of marketing brilliance).
What Sqoot did was kind of sexist--implying that women were only good for getting beer. What most of these other instances have been are just bad taste.
Re: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#33Interesting and well-written article, but one big problem: why throw in the Siri abortion thing? It wasn't needed to legitimize the author's point, and if anything comes across as technically naive. While Siri contains easter eggs that were manually added by programmers, the vast majority of searches would have to be algorithmic. Siri fails to find an answer to many basic queries, so to say that the lack of a respons…
Yeah, I agree. The results Siri returns are from Google or WolframAlpha, so a lack of information on one subject is not necessarily Apple's oversight. I think that the abortion-directions issue was later attributed to Google's SafeSearch filter.
Re: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#34What I find particularly disconcerting about this Van Horn story is not that he wanted to present it (which is terrible in and of itself), but that this guy is 28, went through Digg (who never struck me as a company of idiots), already presented a sexist presentation, and still appears at SXSW either by invitation of him or Path. Why would Path or SXSW allow it? Did he not practice this presentation at Path before he…
I think you need to be careful on that line of thinking. We don't want conferences censoring presenters because of reputation issues. That said, certainly in context the humor wasn't funny -- and SXSW certainly could have asked him to rework the presentation to be less needlessly controversial.
I guess what I'm most confused by is why a talk titled "Adding Value as a Non-Technical No Talent Ass-Clown." got accepted in the first place. Really? I know SXSW isn't a hard science conference, but that seems awfully fluffy for an event that clearly has no trouble filling seats. Maybe it's one more sign we're in a bubble...
Edit: lots of folks are picking on the second sentence above and I think taking it out of context. It was a specific reply to the idea of banning a presenter based on the notion that he "already presented a sexist presentation" -- a fact offered without support. That's just bad thinking. If the guy deserves a career ban, then make that case. Don't throw it out as a tangential point in another post.
Re: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#35The brogrammer meme is JUST A JOKE! It's the very opposite of a stereotypical programmer. It's simply taking a stereotype, flipping it around, and poking fun at it. Instead of being disgusted by jokes about nudie calendars, do something about it. Go give your own presentation. Recruit more women at your company. Turn the boys club into an everyone club. I'm not saying that everything people are doing is okay, I'm jus…
Trying to tell people pulling this crap is wrong isn't doing something?
Not really. How often does telling someone they're wrong change their mind?
Re: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#36Do these companies not have HR departments? Occasionally idiotic things slip out from employees at bigCo's too, but they're swiftly dealt with. (Which is not to say that there aren't plenty of examples of hideous sexism at big companies, but I haven't ever had a job that didn't present a very clear sexual harassment policy on the first day.) I'd have to think that the very words "uncomfortable work environment" would…
Of course they don't, they're a fucking startup. They don't have pointy haired bosses or 900 page corporate manuals outlining when it's OK to take bathroom breaks.
Re: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#37> To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity. This is very PC, but BS nonetheless. At the stage when people can be profitably hired by start-ups, the male/female ratio is nowhere near 50% among technical candidates. I'm not saying that frat culture isn't harmful, nor would I dare to guess why women are underrepresented among development professionals; but defending a thesis with such grossly false asser…
there are a hell of a lot more girls in frat culture than there are in programmer culture.
Re: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#38> To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity. This is very PC, but BS nonetheless. At the stage when people can be profitably hired by start-ups, the male/female ratio is nowhere near 50% among technical candidates. I'm not saying that frat culture isn't harmful, nor would I dare to guess why women are underrepresented among development professionals; but defending a thesis with such grossly false asser…
I would dare to guess that women are underrepresented among developers PRECISELY because of this culture and the underlying assumptions and attitudes.
Gender is irrelevant to logical analysis, which is the foundation of programming. If you don't have parity in your pool of candidates, there's a cause, and it's probably social.
Nursing and teaching used to be men's work. Women weren't thought to be capable of it. Too weak. Too sensitive. Too illogical.
Women aren't going into software development? Then there's a problem. Don't be part of it.
Re: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#39The brogrammer meme is JUST A JOKE! It's the very opposite of a stereotypical programmer. It's simply taking a stereotype, flipping it around, and poking fun at it. Instead of being disgusted by jokes about nudie calendars, do something about it. Go give your own presentation. Recruit more women at your company. Turn the boys club into an everyone club. I'm not saying that everything people are doing is okay, I'm jus…
This [1] was a joke.
This [2] was for real.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qi_AAqi0RZM#%21
[2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/03/how-casual-sexism-put-sqoot-in.phpRe: "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
#40How often do speeches like this actually happen? My guess would be that it's pretty low, but that people have nothing better to blog about, so I have hear about it like it's an epidemic. Are there any real statistics?