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The PyCon Incident

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Re: The PyCon Incident

#511

Post by fatjokes »

tiredofcareer wrote: post #236
throwawayhooray wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think all of us would agree that technology has a sexism problem." I'm working in an office without any African American males or Hispanic American males. Does technology have a racist problem?

I think it does, but that's not necessarily the reason why you don't work with diverse races. If I hire five white people, that doesn't mean I'm racist. If I hire five white people in preference to five black people, that means I'm racist. The sexism angle here is similar. I also disagreed with shaming the conference that scheduled all white male speakers, as it was very likely unintentional and indicative of nothing…

> If I hire five white people in preference to five black people, that means I'm racist.

Only if the five black people were at least as competent as the five white people.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#512

Post by lclarkmichalek »

djcapelis wrote: post #337
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They taught me this in primary school; when you're in public wearing the school uniform, you are representing the school. As such, any misbehaviour (i.e. smoking in the nearby underpass) will be punished by the school.

I am super thankful I never went to your school and I really wish we didn't inculcate kids with views like that.

Why? As a member of an organisation, you represent it, willingly or not. It's no different in the "real world", as this case highlights. What do you find so repulsive about it?

Re: The PyCon Incident

#513

Post by reeses »

shardling wrote: post #399
Zarathust wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also relevant finger pointing to the company that fired his employee less than 24 hours after the incident. Now that is a company that I never want to deal with!

Psst. Do you have any information about the actual firing? I don't see any such links in this thread, which makes it hard to judge what's going on.

Googling the incident returns all kinds of responses, including that they were both fired. I think you're right to wonder.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#514

Post by katbyte »

mturmon wrote: post #341
rhizome wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of fact, if you read her blog post about all of this, she recommends the same thing: What has to change is that everyone must take personal accountability and speak up when they hear something that isn’t ok. It takes three words to make a difference: “That’s not cool.” However, she appears to have not followed her own advice. I think it probably would have turned out differently if she had, though.

The conference organizers ask you to not handle it yourself: see https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/harassment-i... , where it says: "Report the harassment incident (preferably in writing) to a conference staff member" If she had asked them to quiet down, it could have turned into a pissing match. Or maybe they would have complied. You never know how it's going to play out.

yes, report it to the conference staff, not post it to twitter for the world to see. a world of difference there.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#516

Post by tn13 »

djcapelis wrote: post #447
tn13 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is why cant we expect the women to adjust to the realities of the world? Wherever there are girls they are going to talk about other girls and their shoes and that sorta stuff which I might find offensive and wherever there are men they are going to talk about sex. I don't see why women take an offense to that. No one is cracking a joke on her or asking her to participate in the joke. I would rather have a…

> The point is why cant we expect the women to adjust to the realities of the world? Why can't you adjust to the realities of the world where the view that women should just deal with whatever crap that exists in tech seems like a pretty terrible idea? Why can't you adjust to the reality that this means tech loses out on a lot of talent? Why can't you adjust to the reality that if you want to hire good talent, you ne…

>you need to provide an environment where they'll actually feel comfortable instead of demanding/expecting them to "adjust"

You are only repeating what I said but from the other side of the shore. I have an all male team that is working perfectly fine for me. I have provided them an environment where they feel comfortable and they are productive. If a women enters the team AND she is not comfortable with my rest of the team's habits I would rather ask her to leave than to ask the rest of the team to adjust. For two reasons 1. It is the most optimal solution. 2. Secondly, because I don't even know if the girl I have hired is good enough for that.

>whatever crap that exists in tech

Just because you think something is crap does not make it crap.

> tech loses out on a lot of talent The PyCon had only 20% women folks that too after a lot of efforts taken especially to increase that number. Is 20% really lot of talent for you ? (I am only using PyCon figures as a rough estimate here).

All my arguments are perfectly applicable when you juxtapose the genders. I will not ask my all female team to adjust because the newly hired male member might feel uncomfortable.

We should optimize out work environments for productivity and not gender equality.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#517

Post by tiredofcareer »

fatjokes wrote: post #511
tiredofcareer wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does, but that's not necessarily the reason why you don't work with diverse races. If I hire five white people, that doesn't mean I'm racist. If I hire five white people in preference to five black people, that means I'm racist. The sexism angle here is similar. I also disagreed with shaming the conference that scheduled all white male speakers, as it was very likely unintentional and indicative of nothing…

> If I hire five white people in preference to five black people, that means I'm racist. Only if the five black people were at least as competent as the five white people.

Well, in preference being the key phrase there, which is why I left out the part about capability or qualification. I suppose my original point was missing an implied "due to race". You are correct, though.

Regardless of the white person being more competent or less competent, preferring him due to color is a no-no.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#518

Post by jwhitlark »

wpietri wrote: post #101
crag wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS. I'm getting sick and tired of people not taking responsibility for their actions. Now I do agree with you somewhat. I doubt she saw this "joke" as an opportunity to screw someone over (at least I hope so. If she did, then all bets are off); but that doesn't excuse her wrong. Her actions caused this guy to be fired. She needs to own it. Apoligize, Offer amends and move on.

Note where you stop in the causal chain: with the woman. You could blame the millennia of sexism that set up the situation. You could blame the gender-imbalanced context: it's easy for humans to be insensitive to minority views. You could blame the guy's parents and teachers for not raising him right. You could blame the guy for saying something inappropriate. You could blame his friends for not reigning him in. You…

I think the focus is on her because it seems like she's the one with the most power in this situation. Like telling a teacher "Tommy hit me", at that point, the authority figure has to treat it as a worst case scenario.

It could be she didn't realize how much juice she had, but with 9k followers, that seems a little far fetched.

At a guess, it appears that sexism is a specific instance of "People with power wielding it against people who don't have it, in a manner which the community finds morally questionable." Which seems to be what people are judging her for; not that she retaliated, but her escalation. Perhaps it's a good thing, the whole situation brings to mind the saying about "An armed society is a polite society."

In the end, I'd guess every party involved is going to wish this had never happened, and spend years carefully watching every word they say, and learning the first rule of InfoSec; Never Say Anything.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#519

Post by katbyte »

wpietri wrote: post #101
crag wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS. I'm getting sick and tired of people not taking responsibility for their actions. Now I do agree with you somewhat. I doubt she saw this "joke" as an opportunity to screw someone over (at least I hope so. If she did, then all bets are off); but that doesn't excuse her wrong. Her actions caused this guy to be fired. She needs to own it. Apoligize, Offer amends and move on.

Note where you stop in the causal chain: with the woman. You could blame the millennia of sexism that set up the situation. You could blame the gender-imbalanced context: it's easy for humans to be insensitive to minority views. You could blame the guy's parents and teachers for not raising him right. You could blame the guy for saying something inappropriate. You could blame his friends for not reigning him in. You…

he was an idiot and said something idiotic. She was vengeful and out to get someone in trouble, publicly.

If she had reported it to the conference staff and just tweeted what she had done, without identifying them i don't think anyone would be focusing on her, and it would be a non-story.

There is a world of difference between the actions.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#520

Post by obstacle1 »

djcapelis wrote: post #465
obstacle1 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all know that you can't provide any evidence to back this up. What is your agenda? Why do you think we are stupid?

Try using google: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=single+gender+teams+perf... I grabbed a couple citations while I was there because I was also curious: * http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0432.00129/a... - "Although generalizations from student-based studies to the workplace is problematic, the results indicate that groups may be more effective when women outnumber or equal men, especially in compl…

From the first paper:

>This study has four limitations. First, the sample comprised students only working within fictitious enterprises in hypothetical industries and, as such, may not represent what actually happens in reality.

>Second, the sample size was smaller than ideal.

>Third, ethnic minorities were not identified among group members ... non-European individuals were present, but comprised less than 10% of the total sample.

>Finally, no all-women groups were included within the study.

>The use of student subjects is problematic, however, they remain one of the few sets of participants who are readily accessible

And regarding the second study, I have no idea what that concluding sentence even means. Because in the discussion, the authors state:

>As expected the task was oriented toward males. Consequently, as the male gender ratio increased, decision quality improved. However, the lone-female teams outperformed the all-male teams.

Further the study is based on asking groups of undergraduates to carry out the winter survival task (i.e. if your plane crashed in a forest, rank these 12 items in order of importance for survival). It is beyond ridiculous to extrapolate anything from these results and apply it to group productivity in extremely technical professional fields.

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