Reddit Chief Engineer Quits After Less Than Two Months on the Job

Are you saying you need to be a crazy/malicious person to follow the above logic? Are all the 250K people who signed the petition crazy or malicious?

If you think this is a change in attitudes that is isolated to just reddit and hipmunk then you haven't been paying attention.

There is someone with whom I work with or worked that often states/stated how much she hates|dislikes white guys|males|bros|dudes. Yes, those exact words or combination thereof. This happens/happened at least once a week if not more often. It is/was not even subtle or discrete. Sometimes these statements would be uttered aggressively in meetings with a bunch of people present. The culture in SV is such that everyone pretty much tolerates/accepts these statements. If the racial adjective where switched with any other to describe a different race and/or the gendered plural noun were switched for one that described women or anyone else on the gender spectrum, that person would already be talking to HR if not out the door already. Furthermore, this person is/was involved in hiring, which means it's likely gender is a consideration in hire / no hire decisions made. If this isn't toxic, then I don't know what qualifies as toxic.

Another example of the toxicity of this was when I saw Rena Kopelman (of the Kopelman Foundation) giving a talk about how to increase diversity and opportunity for under-privileged groups. I was totally on board with a lot of the talk until she start railing against efforts to making it easier for talented individuals with the right skills to emigrate to the US in search of better opportunities in the US technology industry. I don't see how an anti-immigration position does anything but further reinforce barriers that discriminate against those that didn't have the privilege of being born in the right country.

In terms of privileges, my gender and race have been very very minor advantages. By far the number one privilege I enjoy is having had the opportunity to become a native English speaker despite the fact that English was not my first language. I moved to the states when I was four years old speaking another language, but I moved here early enough that no one can tell I'm not American. Speaking English and not having and accent is many times more advantageous than my gender. After that the privilege of having moved to and grown up in the US comes next (growing up in Western Europe would have also been advantageous, but not nearly as much as growing up in the US for the career I have). Next up comes growing up relatively affluent. Far behind those three would be being mixed race, but mostly caucasian (I got enough Anglo-Saxon genes to dominate the South American genes). Well behind my racial makeup is my gender. I actually can't think of a situation where it was a factor in why I have the jobs I had. In my current job, I was referred to the recruiting department by a well known open source developer who works at the company. I got to know him and earned the recommendation by contributing to open source projects of his under a pseudonym.

If you are a US citizen (or Australian citizen because of the E-3 visa) and speak English natively, you are already far more privileged than most of the white males in the world in terms of getting a job in Silicon Valley.

Like I said in my other comment, my position here isn't about me or any privileges I personally benefit from, but about the environment that is being fostered that my children will inherit once I decide to have a family. If I were about 50-55 years old today, that could be my daughter that gets a position in academia due to her gender or it could be my son that is turned down for position in Academia due to his gender. My position isn't about "us having a good run" and trying to maintain that for my gender. I agree with the goals, but oppose the means being used to achieve it.

If you want to see other first hand examples of this toxicity in action, just go look up some op-ed pieces from The Advocate discussing the discourse around "white male privilege" from the perspective of a gay or bisexual white male. It's entirely possible to be a white male and know what it is like to be discriminated against. If you happen to experience discrimination for other reasons besides your race and gender, you become aware of how the current attitudes of trying to solve discrimination with discrimination is toxic and counter productive as it breeds resentment and opposition from those who would otherwise be allies.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/commentary/2011/01/20/im-wh...

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/12/08/op-ed-privileg...

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/tyler-curry/2014/04/25/op...

I'm an ally of equality, but I am not an ally of those that adopt tactics to achieve equality like those being promoted by Steve Huffman.

So then there is no reason to believe that her leaving has anything to do with gender.

> and I object to the argument that I said anything of the sort. If you want to debate things with me, please don't start by imposing inflammatory and stupid positions on me.

I'm not the one that started by posting an inflammatory comment that suggested Bethanye left because of gender issues. If you didn't mean to suggest that Bethanye left because of gender issues, your comment should be corrected.