Subtle -isms at Hacker School • Hacker News Board

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#41

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:27 PM UTC

nicholasjbs wrote: post #22

HarrietJones wrote: post #4

Well today's my day to be the not-so-subtle-ist asshole at Hacker News. It's one thing to recognise that systemic forms of bias and discrimination can be subtle and invisible to those trying to fix them, but all this sort of thing does is hand more keys over to a small subset of people who are less interested in making the world more equal and more interested in grabbing, holding and exercising social power. Shaming…

Shaming rituals, however light in touch they are, rarely improve things. This is in no way a "shaming ritual." It isn't intended to be one, and it hasn't become one in practice. I'm one of the founders of Hacker School. I can't stand politics. If these rules actually created the environment you're imagining, we'd get rid of them immediately. Thankfully, we have several years of experience now and we've found that hav…

[deleted]

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#42

Post by dfxm12 » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:27 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #38

Although our employees are diverse on some axes, we're 90% white. There are also class barriers to attending Hacker School - while Hacker School is free, living in New York for three months is not. I can't help but laugh sometimes. Good thing all the rich white women feel comfortable! But seriously, how is it possible to have so few Asians? Usually the "problem" is that there are far too many. Maybe we need affirmati…

And implying they can't find people from a diverse set of races in NYC is ridiculous as well.

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#43

Post by mcguire » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

floil wrote: post #8

jraines wrote: post #3

What's the difference between a "well, actually" and correcting someone's misunderstanding -- or rather, when is it not welcome? My understanding is that it's when someone parachutes into a conversation uninvited to correct someone, but if I was in a learning setting like Hacker School, I feel like I would welcome that from fellow students or instructors.

A well-actually occurs when someone's understanding is 90% correct, and someone comes along and says, heroically, "you're entirely wrong, because of this missing 10%". When iterated this kind of grandstanding erodes the confidence of someone who's working with a partial understanding, which in truth is all of us.

Particularly if the missing 10% is completely unrelated to the situation under discussion.

"Ok, so the client contacts the server and receives the result, but half of the result is missing, so...."

"Well, actually, the client uses DNS to look up the server's address first."

"Ok, thanks. Now I know."

A well-done well-actually is a brilliant demonstration of superiority.

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#44

Post by PeterGriffin » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:29 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #36

PeterGriffin wrote: post #11

I'm sorry, but I'm starting to get a bit sick of Hacker Schools constant whining about rules. If you want to encourage a specific culture you do this by starting with a small set of people who have this culture in their bones, then growing slowly and assimilating more people into that culture, addressing deviations swiftly and letting people get back to their work afterwards, without skipping a beat. Not by writing m…

What's the difference between your proposal and a policy of starting as a closely knit monoculture, and only accepting people that share that culture? Isn't that exactly what you should be trying to avoid?

No, why would this be something to try to avoid? Sexism and racism is a kind of cultural trait, I hope you realize that.

A culture may be selective on very different criteria. It can easily be blind to gender, race, age, religion, nation and many more, yet have certain very specific values. And letting people in who have the opposite values are toxic to that culture.

You can't have a culture that's "open to everything". It means you have no culture, you just adopt the zeitgeist unmodified. Everything goes. If this was the goal, this thread wouldn't exist.

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#45

Post by hyperpape » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:30 PM UTC

pgbovine wrote: post #16

api wrote: post #5

I ask this as a general question to all of tech culture, not to just this particular setting: What about subtile elitism? It's one of the biggest subtile -isms I've run into. If you didn't go to a top ten university, you're sort of in a lower echelon in the tech world. In practice this subtilely selects for people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and/or people who have an "academic-oriented" learning style as op…

If you're from, say, Kansas or Ohio you are less likely to attend one of them than if you're from California or Massachusetts. While that might be true, there's also a population density issue. CA, NY, and MA have large urban populations, so more students are likely to attend those elite colleges. That said, I know for a fact that admissions officers and student volunteers from these schools literally spend months dr…

I find your optimism surprising: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/elite-colleges-are.... The evidence is still there that underprivileged students don't go to elite colleges at the rates that they could qualify or afford them.

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#46

Post by davidbalbert » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:31 PM UTC

cjf4 wrote: post #15

At a certain point don't you have to trust people to be adults? If someone's being a "subtle" racist, they're just being racist, and you can deal accordingly (likewise for the rest of the "subtlisms"). Beyond that, if you want people to act with maturity, you have to treat them like adults, which these rules certainly don't do.

I'm one of the founders of Hacker School. We care tremendously about treating people like adults[1].

If you think the social rules don't treat people like adults, you're fundamentally misunderstanding them. The purpose of the rules is to make us all aware of the ways that we can unintentionally frustrate and hurt each other, not to shame people. The rules are not enforced top down, nor do you get in trouble if you break one. The way you treat a person like an adult is by being honest with them when they make you feel frustrated or uncomfortable and having an adult conversation about it.

Our job is to build an environment where everyone at Hacker School feels safe to focus on becoming a better programmer. I don't think you could find a single Hacker Schooler who would disagree that the social rules made for a better environment, and there've been well over 350 so far.

[1] cf. https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/28-treating-people-like-ad...

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#47

Post by invadedby » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:34 PM UTC

resu_nimda wrote: post #35

invadedby wrote: post #14

This is a throwaway account. I feel we are being invaded. The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them. It developed through text were it hardly matter who was on the other side of the connection, only skills and thoughts mattered. Those were the good old days, when we were free. Now we are being invaded. We, like every other culture in the world, are ask to not use certain la…

The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them. This reads like a 4chan teenager's manifesto. Alright, a bunch of nerds in their basements who are just so edgy and can say whatever they want. Badass! Well, you might be pleased to know that you're totally free to carry on the misanthropy club in plenty of areas of the internet. But here on Hacker News, and apparently especially a…

This reads like a 4chan teenager's manifesto. a bunch of nerds in their basements

How can you talk that way and the next moment talk about fostering inclusion?

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#48

Post by Zikes » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:34 PM UTC

beering wrote: post #29

Zikes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ban on debates is particularly jarring. I get the idea, a debate could easily turn into a heated argument, but if someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not then I'm certainly not going to apologize for it. If they want to maintain a civil environment that's able to call out subtle -isms, then they should simply accept "no, it wasn't" just as freely as "oops, sorry".

Perhaps not the most subtle example: I may tell someone to "man up and crank through the work". I didn't intend on being sexist, but someone points it out. And then I proceed to get into an irrelevant shouting match about how, in German, "mensch" is gender neutral. If you didn't intend on being sexist or whatever, then maybe there's a better way of phrasing what you said. Or, you can find faculty later, in private, a…

You can manufacture as many straw-man examples as you like, but it won't matter. My comment did not say that I said anything specific or anything that could or should be construed as offensive.

Is it really so hard to believe that I did not say something offensive? Is it impossible to think that the person doing the call-out can be in the wrong, that they might be imagining or even willfully manufacturing an emotional distress?

Are we all now to be beholden to the whims and fancies of those that continually reshape the landscape of political correctness in an effort to exercise a modicum of control or power over their peers?

My proposed solution is simple: if someone tries the call-out method and they are in the wrong, you reply in a manner that is just as direct and non-confrontational. "No, it wasn't."

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#49

Post by wmj » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:35 PM UTC

The right to accuse someone without giving the accused the right to self defense is most certainly not a subtle -ism.

It's fascism.

Re: Subtle -isms at Hacker School

#50

Post by thumbtackthief » Mon, Jul 07, 2014, 5:36 PM UTC

HarrietJones wrote: post #4

Well today's my day to be the not-so-subtle-ist asshole at Hacker News. It's one thing to recognise that systemic forms of bias and discrimination can be subtle and invisible to those trying to fix them, but all this sort of thing does is hand more keys over to a small subset of people who are less interested in making the world more equal and more interested in grabbing, holding and exercising social power. Shaming…

I went to Hacker School, and I need to clarify: The 'no debate' really should read 'no public debate'. I have been on both sides of the subtle -ism 'violation', and when I was the one called out, I had a lengthy private discussion with the person who called me out on it. I believe that was fine: The goal of not having public debate is to remove the defensiveness as well as to keep innocent bystanders from being drawn in and making a big issue out of something small.