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An open letter on feminism in tech

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Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#281

Post by chc »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #119
taybin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare that with http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/ , which is linked to in the OP in which he criticizes Jeff Atwood for doing it wrong. So wrong that he won't even link to him, even though he acknowledges that his intentions are good. Edited to fix pronoun.

I think this is fine. If you make a bad mistake, even with good intentions, it is reasonable for others to be angry at you. "I was trying" is not a universal defense. "I was trying, I see what I did wrong, thank you for the correction and I'll try to do better next time," however, goes a long way. If Jeff acknowledges his mistakes -- supposing he is convinced they are mistakes -- and makes an honest attempt to be bet…

Is using the same title as somebody else on a piece about the same topic as the other one really a "bad mistake"?

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#282

Post by jugglingcode »

jugglingcode wrote: post #14

From the stories that have come out it sounds that avoiding this behaviour is practically impossible to avoid if you are woman. That's a terrible working env. This also appears to be an American problem. I find this difficult to imagine happening as pervasively ( not saying it doesn't happen at all) in London or Berlin or any of the other European tech hubs. The problem may be more evident in America because it has t…

It looks like I may have unwittingly offended a few people with an idea that wasn't expressed as eloquently as I would have liked. Some may have read the post and thought I was voicing a common male position of it not being a problem or something that should be swept under the rug and dismissed.

There are indeed many explanations for the appearance of what I described and some have rightly mentioned that it may just be under-reported in Europe due to culture differences. I don't pretend to know what those may be but can only offer my experience and anecdotal evidence, just like most have done here.

Sexism does exist in Europe and I have not said in my post that it doesn't I think we are all talking specifically about tech culture here and let's not conflate this to sexism in Europe across all industries. I've had friends experience inappropriate male attention at work but it's frequently in Law or Finance, and more recently in Education. Friends (more than a handful) in London and in Brussels have experienced this directly. That's a lot considering that 1 in 10 women experience some form of harassment at work. I've rarely ever heard it happen in tech over here. Not to say that it doesn't happen, from my experience I've heard a lot less.

I'd understand better some of the reactions to my post if it was clearly and strongly entrenched in a dismissive or an unsympathetic position but the post is littered with words like 'may' and 'appears' and suggests the problem requires a deeper exposition than what can be stated in an HN comment.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#283

Post by jamesaguilar »

chc wrote: post #281
jamesaguilar wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is fine. If you make a bad mistake, even with good intentions, it is reasonable for others to be angry at you. "I was trying" is not a universal defense. "I was trying, I see what I did wrong, thank you for the correction and I'll try to do better next time," however, goes a long way. If Jeff acknowledges his mistakes -- supposing he is convinced they are mistakes -- and makes an honest attempt to be bet…

Is using the same title as somebody else on a piece about the same topic as the other one really a "bad mistake"?

That is not the only thing that was criticized about what Atwood said.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#284

Post by jamesaguilar »

chc wrote: post #281
jamesaguilar wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is fine. If you make a bad mistake, even with good intentions, it is reasonable for others to be angry at you. "I was trying" is not a universal defense. "I was trying, I see what I did wrong, thank you for the correction and I'll try to do better next time," however, goes a long way. If Jeff acknowledges his mistakes -- supposing he is convinced they are mistakes -- and makes an honest attempt to be bet…

Is using the same title as somebody else on a piece about the same topic as the other one really a "bad mistake"?

That is not the only thing that was criticized about what Atwood said.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#285

Post by gamacodre »

optimusclimb wrote: post #3

It makes me sad to read this stuff, but a genuine question for other male readers. Have you heard of, or come into contact with any of this abhorrent behavior that's mentioned? I have never seen it anywhere I worked, or heard of that sort of thing through word of mouth, but obviously that's a terrible sample set. My experiences related to women in tech: * Everywhere I've worked, it's been a boys club, but we'd LOVE t…

I've seen some milder forms of it. As a team lead about 20 years ago, one of my guys started going on about the virtues of the "cheesecake" in the game we were working on. In the middle of a meeting between him, myself and our other coder who happened to be female. She got really quiet, and I said something to him along the lines of, "Oh, come on, man," and moved the meeting along. Didn't really address it beyond that; my own social skills weren't up to taking it further, and I didn't notice any more like that for the remainder of the project.

Mostly, though, the shops I've worked in haven't had these issues, at least not anywhere that I could see them. Women seem to have been well integrated into our teams when there were any.

I think that a lot of the behavior mentioned in the letter is stuff that no-one wants to work with. Guys who will act weird with a co-worker because they're (female/minority/disabled/whatever) are good people to avoid for professional reasons; it implies numerous faults in character and understanding, and no good excuse for them.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#286

Post by fred_durst »

anuleczka wrote: post #276
fred_durst wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I understand your logic here. It does make some sense to use the harassment of a marginalized group as a sort of "tell" that this person is a jerk. I do worry though that it is a bit divisive. A lot of terms like "white male" and "feminist" are very loaded at this point and it feels to me like focusing on specific groups might be a distraction. For example if I were to say that one of the most arrogant and ag…

Yeah, it's sad how those terms ("white male", "feminist") have become loaded. But again, I think it's because of perceived power differences. For some reason, the term "feminist" has come to mean, in some circles, "person who wants to take away my power". When in reality, promoting an egalitarian world benefits both women and men, since it reduces jerk behavior. Promoting equal rights for women does not take away rig…

Personally speaking, I think feminism is a benefit to the world. I think it has helped, and will continue to help make the world more inclusive place and increase the understanding of the unique issues women face in society. I hope I am not coming off as saying that I think feminism should go away or that I'm speaking generally about the world at large. I was only using the self described feminist as an example to show that it might distract. I've met plenty of jerks, only a couple of them considered themselves feminists. ;)

I was more specifically talking about tech, especially the more app/web side of things as that is my personal zone of experience. There just seems to be a lot of jerks in general. That said, there are also a lot of inspiring, compassionate and incredibly intelligent people that I feel so lucky to have worked with and learned from. I only brought that aspect up as I wonder if maybe some of the issues with tech is that some women and other people who might typically face discrimination and harassment in other aspects of their life, do not realize that in a lot of ways its just a jerky place. That they might not realize that plenty of tech workers are made fun of, talked down to and even sometimes outright yelled at. For example all of these things I've just mentioned have happened to me personally on multiple occasions. The yelled at was only once a long time ago fortunately.

So maybe we might focus on making tech less jerky in general? Because there are plenty of people, not just a few specific groups that are treated pretty poorly in this industry.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#287

Post by gress »

mreiland wrote: post #277
gress wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't care about injustice you witness and you don't want others to either? Women already have less power because they are in a minority. It seems as though you want them to take responsibility for all cultural change. It sounds as though you don't think there is a problem.

I think expecting a male to put himself at personal risk for a women who won't put herself at personal risk is unfair. We have no context, we don't know if the person in question doing the injustice was superior in the company, or not. All we know is person A did something bad to person B, and person C did nothing about it. Why shouldn't we ask my person B did nothing either?

Because there is a power imbalance.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#288

Post by gress »

mreiland wrote: post #277
gress wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't care about injustice you witness and you don't want others to either? Women already have less power because they are in a minority. It seems as though you want them to take responsibility for all cultural change. It sounds as though you don't think there is a problem.

I think expecting a male to put himself at personal risk for a women who won't put herself at personal risk is unfair. We have no context, we don't know if the person in question doing the injustice was superior in the company, or not. All we know is person A did something bad to person B, and person C did nothing about it. Why shouldn't we ask my person B did nothing either?

Because there is a power imbalance.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#289

Post by angersock »

taybin wrote: post #172
angersock wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaaand your lack of foresight makes both you and your gender/orientation/race look worse, and helps mean that the next time somebody tries to bring this up as a valid concern they'll be taken a bit less seriously.

It doesn't make her gender/orientation/race look worse. I've been critical of the article, but you're being ridiculous trying to blame a group for her comment and deletion. In fact, I suspect you already don't like those groups and this is just some confirmation bias on your part.

There are very valid arguments to be made about exclusionary practices. There are also a lot of people who bandy about "checking your privilege" and "cis scum" and whatnot, and hence make it very hard to take their (usually legitimate) grievances seriously.

I'm not trying to blame a group for her comment--I'm point out that the comment made her group (by her voluntary self-association) look bad.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#290

Post by freerobby »

mreiland wrote: post #226
freerobby wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that was a dig at Jeff Atwood, who initially refused to link to Shanley's piece on the grounds that it was hateful.

That isn't actually what he said, and this is the sort of thing that hurts relations rather than helps them. What he said is that he doesn't link to Shanley in general because all of her stuff is so vitriolic. He then went on to post links to twitter posts of her's showing where she has been extremely vitriolic. He stated that his reasoning is that he does not want to send people to such a place. He didn't simply ref…

I appreciate the clarification of Jeff's position and rationale. The only point I was making is that the non-linking struck me as a reference to Jeff not linking to Shanley.
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