111–120 of 193 posts
Our founder's response to this article. https://medium.com/@dinah_davis/thanks-for-sharing-your-expe...
Unfortunately, this is the very definition of a straw man.
I think tech represents a good implementation of a meritocracy. You are welcomed to be weird and yourself, as long as you get your work done. Think about your coworkers-- you've got some weird ones. Dyed hair? Check. Burlesque dancing? Check. Gender non-conforming? Check. Goes to Burning Man? Check, check, self-check. Any of these things could get you fired from teaching kindergarten. Let's keep tech inclusive and ac…
I don't think that any of these examples show that Bay Area tech is a meritocracy or inclusive. The truth is the tech community has a culture and almost all the things you mentioned are almost stereotypical parts of it. These all fit within the tech culture: * Going to burning man * Going to SXSW * Working with the LGBT community * Tattoos / Dyed hair * Pole dancing * Wearing Stan Smiths * Being obsessed with high en…
I think there's some subtle definition creep in the word "inclusive" these days. It's starting to mean "cosmopolitan". I recall the recent STEM girl scouts story. One of the commenters called the initiative "inclusive", which isn't quite the right. It's the same girls scouts doing something different, so it's not more inclusive, really. Beneficial? Sure. Eclectic? Yeah. Progressive? OK. Inclusive? I'm not following.
I think tech represents a good implementation of a meritocracy. You are welcomed to be weird and yourself, as long as you get your work done. Think about your coworkers-- you've got some weird ones. Dyed hair? Check. Burlesque dancing? Check. Gender non-conforming? Check. Goes to Burning Man? Check, check, self-check. Any of these things could get you fired from teaching kindergarten. Let's keep tech inclusive and ac…
I don't think that any of these examples show that Bay Area tech is a meritocracy or inclusive. The truth is the tech community has a culture and almost all the things you mentioned are almost stereotypical parts of it. These all fit within the tech culture: * Going to burning man * Going to SXSW * Working with the LGBT community * Tattoos / Dyed hair * Pole dancing * Wearing Stan Smiths * Being obsessed with high en…
You're right, the "tech tribe" does have improvements to make in inclusivity, but at least it's a home for some people who would otherwise be outcasts in socially conservative businesses.
As for a few things:
- I think we're just as accepting of blacks, our high school education system has just utterly failed them so much that we don't have a good pipeline for getting black people into tech.
- There are a different set of values in India that cause some clash between them and Americans/Westerns. There's the culture of following the letter of the request/task, rather than the spirit of the request/task. (Similarly but differently, mainland Chinese suck at asking questions when they don't understand something.) But my overall biggest complaints with outsourced contractors is a culture of "get shit done fast, and do any hacks to get it done". Because contractors don't stay with projects for the long-term, it's not surprising.
- The homeless and lower class are, almost by definition, not people who are achieving a ton. Tech is a meritocracy, we respect getting shit done, and we're not a jobs program.
Ah yes, the "cool tech girl" position. https://code.likeagirl.io/the-myth-of-the-cool-tech-girl-786... I'm glad she has a positive experience. It's far from common. I wish her good luck on the road of discovering empathy.
Are things really that different between here and there?
All the stuff described in your linked piece: I've never seen any of it in tech.
In garages? Sure they are full of what would otherwise be nsfw. But IT? Can't remember ever seing anything. 5 years ago I heard a couple of colleagues discussing the title of an NSFW video that someone had started playing or their computer as a prank after they left it unlocked. And about the same time we had what I consider ann @$$ as manager in the department next to mine.
He would attack girls yes but he would also attack anyone else so I think it was more about being a general @$$.
And I've worked at a few places.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly is wrong with ping-pong tournaments?
Yeah, I don't get this "I'll criticize everything that I think mainly men enjoy!" mentality. I couple interviewees with this idea in their mind criticized a company I was working at a couple years ago, and I was left scratching my head. As a guy, I didn't use the foosball table or the ping pong table all that much. They said it was a "brogrammer" thing, but I don't understand how other people wanting to compete on th…
That is where the problem comes from. You'll be excluded from the "inner circle" unless you participate in a specific kind of activity.
Clearly, this is not limited to foosball tables. Or even typically male activities. The core problem is having only bonding experiences of a specific kind.
The biggest thing is, it's unnecessary. As a European, the US attitude of having entertainment at work continues to puzzle me. I go to work, I put in 8 hours of work, I go home and have fun. Why we need foosball tables (or reading groups, or wine tasting clubs, or whatever) is beyond me.
But if you must do it, you should be sure to offer diversity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem is the opposite. People with fancy degrees often look down on others who DON'T have fancy degrees. Arrogance is not a desirable trait in any person, but doesn't a fancy degree take work? I find it interesting that on HN we seem to hold up startup employees as shining examples but fancy degree holders as corrupt power brokers, when both take quite a bit of effort. > But we need to be aware that the curre…
A fancy degree is certainly an accomplishment and potentially a good path to follow, but it is one path among many. There are lots and lots of other paths that one could follow, and they all have both advantages and disadvantages. One path is not automatically better than any of the others 100% of the time. The problem is that the common, pro-fancy degree perspective comes from a very hierarchical perspective that ju…
Sure but then we're just replacing one form of hierarchy with another, where we replace company tiers with school tiers, and job titles with degrees.
> The problem is that the common, pro-fancy degree perspective comes from a very hierarchical perspective that just isn't true at all.
You don't think there's any truth in that an Ivy League school is more selective than a community college? I'm not saying that it makes sense to say that Harvard > Stanford, in all ways, or even that these schools have a fair selection system, but it seems to me that this has become a black-and-white affair (pro-degree vs. anti-degree, pro-hierarchy vs. anti-hierarchy) rather than a nuanced issue.
Pieces like this sometimes make me wonder if sexism is not actually more rampant in tech, men in tech are just more open to self-criticism and accepting that something is wrong with themselves and their industry. All the things you hear about in tech, you hear about elsewhere. But the men in them don't seem to compete with each other over who can be the most self deprecating and sympathetic with those calling them ou…
"One hackernews points out that the problem in tech isn't endemic sexism, but that male engineers are just so much better than all other men."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really disagree with you in this case. However, to be fair, headline writers have been writing "clickbait" headlines for far longer than there have been clicks. Headlines in magazines and newspapers have never been scientific journal titles.
It's understandable why they do that, but it can put journalists/writers of articles with clickbaity headlines in a tough spot, as they are often forced to defend headlines they never wrote in the first place!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you didn't need a fancy degree to get a job. What's wrong with a fancy degree? I don't understand why fancy degree is used as a pejorative around here. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that most people these days that come from bootcamps make more money than people with "fancy degree"s.
Nothing is wrong with a fancy degree, and I don't think OP is invalidating or shining a negative light on a fancy degree. OP is just saying that you could also get into tech/politics without the necessity of requiring one
Ah yes, the "cool tech girl" position. https://code.likeagirl.io/the-myth-of-the-cool-tech-girl-786... I'm glad she has a positive experience. It's far from common. I wish her good luck on the road of discovering empathy.
It's far from common. Are things really that different between here and there? All the stuff described in your linked piece: I've never seen any of it in tech. In garages? Sure they are full of what would otherwise be nsfw. But IT? Can't remember ever seing anything. 5 years ago I heard a couple of colleagues discussing the title of an NSFW video that someone had started playing or their computer as a prank after the…
As for the "never experienced" - you're lucky. Or just didn't see. I've worked at openly sexist companies, I've worked with teams that had a regular lunch at a strip club, and I've seen a lot of the "oh, girls can't code" bullshit. I've seen black and latinx people completely excluded from team activities.
A lot of the people doing that weren't aware of what they were doing, but that doesn't excuse it. And if you look at things like the Petri Multiplier[1], it will help you understand why minorities are more affected by this than majorities.