Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#151

Post by ScottBurson » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 9:39 PM UTC

thorell wrote: post #70

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, and with limited supply, as more bigger richer companies strongly focus on gender diversity, it will make it worse than it was before for the rest of the industry. The problem will have to be corrected in the universities before it is in the industry. Many higher end CS programs are making great strides here, so I think it will happen in a couple of generations.

But you're presupposing a problem. It's possible that women don't enter CS due to personal preference. Not because CS is hostile to women but because the subject matter isn't interesting to them. I heard somewhere that there are just as many women in undergrad math as men, but the ratio dramatically decreases in graduate math because so many women leave... to teach.

Yet somehow we don't see the same self-sorting phenomenon in other cultures. Russia, for instance. Maybe the one good thing communism accomplished was to create a culture in which everyone knows women can be technical. (Maybe that was part of the culture before -- I wouldn't know -- but the Soviets certainly encouraged it.)

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#152

Post by zeveb » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 9:41 PM UTC

thorell wrote: post #90

ixacto wrote: post #48

This is pathetic. Either don't hire women to be there or just hire a bunch of strippers. I say this as someone who is irritated by both sexism and political correctness run amok.

Their job isn't just to be attractive. Their job is to help schmooze people who don't seem to be having fun. There are social skills involved, whether or not you value or believe in them.

This is honestly the most valuable comment on this page, and ironically it's the very last one that I see.

The models in this case really are performing a valuable job.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#153

Post by dwaltrip » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 9:41 PM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #127

jordigh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not comparable. A programmer spent a lot of time honing their craft, faces every day challenges, has growth opportunities, can aspire to higher salaries through tough work, has growth opportunities, can influence the world around them and create new things. Coding yields power. While modelling may require difficult labour, it's mostly just "congratulations for your face".

Let's see you put on a bikini on the beach during winter and pretend you're not freezing your ass off to shoot the catalog for next summer. Now do it for 12 hours straight. Yes, it's just a pretty face, no skill required.

I would argue this angle is irrelevant.

It's not about whether it is difficult or not, it is more about what type of culture do such things foster and what values does it signal (referring to "SV roller skate models").

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#154

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 9:43 PM UTC

I wouldn't mind this at all. Given the choice between a meaningless conversation with a model, one with what's-his-name-again from Accounting, or a generic work conversation with the coworkers I spend most of my life talking with, I'd choose the model.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#155

Post by juicyfroot » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

twobyfour wrote: post #131

jasode wrote: post #8

Yes, this practice of models at parties brings back memories. In 2000, a very well-known enterprise software company (Northeast not Silicon Valley) hosted a conference for customers and had a night party for the attendees. The most memorable thing I remember was the group of extremely pretty women on roller skates mingling with the crowd. E.g. they'd skate up and ask random attendees, "Hey where are you from? Are you…

That's great for the (straight) men. But it's extremely uncomfortable for the female employees at the events, who are now not only spending the evening outnumbered by male colleagues at an alcohol-lubricated event, they're now spending the evening outnumbered by male colleagues who are ogling other women who are there explicitly as objects of sexual attraction (even if it's deflected into "engaging them in conversati…

Those "models" are human beings and are employed for work.

Don't you think the same models are saying, about people like you:

"Yuck, now I have a gig to go to a holiday party and the women there will be whiny about my presence"

In both cases you and the model are employed by the company.

You are free to start your own company and create jobs for other people and alao pay more taxes for the betterment.

Women may complain that men look at them as sex objects.

But men complain that women look at them as work/providee objects

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#156

Post by ScottBurson » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

RangerScience wrote: post #31

Huh. Seems like a better way to do it would be to just invite / hire a BUNCH of artists. No need to pretend; support an important part of why the Bay is the Bay, and expose your peeps to people they might not otherwise meet.

That's a brilliant idea!

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#157

Post by jasode » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

twobyfour wrote: post #131

jasode wrote: post #8

Yes, this practice of models at parties brings back memories. In 2000, a very well-known enterprise software company (Northeast not Silicon Valley) hosted a conference for customers and had a night party for the attendees. The most memorable thing I remember was the group of extremely pretty women on roller skates mingling with the crowd. E.g. they'd skate up and ask random attendees, "Hey where are you from? Are you…

That's great for the (straight) men. But it's extremely uncomfortable for the female employees at the events, who are now not only spending the evening outnumbered by male colleagues at an alcohol-lubricated event, they're now spending the evening outnumbered by male colleagues who are ogling other women who are there explicitly as objects of sexual attraction (even if it's deflected into "engaging them in conversati…

>, they're now spending the evening outnumbered by male colleagues who are ogling other women who are there explicitly as objects of sexual attraction

Unfortunately, it was my limited recollection of the event that's prompted some replies about it marginalizing female employees. To clarify, it was a vendor conference and not a company party. Employees from different companies would attend. (Think of it like Google I/O or Apple WWDC Developers Conference).

There were very likely male models there as well for the female attendees to interact with. I just happened to be standing with a group of all males so understandably, the only models that skated up to us were female. My single-gender sample set distorts what I remember and how I tell the story which then gives you, the reader, the wrong impression that it was quasi strip club event.

I'd have to seek out some female colleagues who went to the same 2000 conference and ask them what they thought of it. I'm curious if they'd reply that they were disgusted and outraged by the male models there. I really don't know. (Or similarly, we can ask today's female employees at SV companies what they thought of male models at recent corporate parties.)

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#158

Post by mmanfrin » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 10:04 PM UTC

"Silicon Valley is" is real lazy and dumb reporting.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#159

Post by UMadBreaux » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 10:06 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #18

When attendance is so important to leadership theyre willing to do anything to insist their holiday parties are somehow different than any other corporations awkward, two drink ticket catered navel gazing event. 'non mandatory employee engagement' is generally how HR describes these sterile lifeless get-togethers. This inevitably gets translated into "i strongly encourage my team to attend" by management, which in tu…

My previous employer had the best Christmas parties I have ever seen. We rented out a restaurant, open bar, and it was fun as hell. We worked our asses off, generally 50+ hours a week, and everyone got a chance to blow off steam together. I got a chance to really know executive management I would have been way too intimidated to ever approach.

Today I work for a different company, and we had one of these events you are talking about. I actually had just as much fun, if not more fun, than the previous lavish parties I was used to. I feel like I have a much more personable relationship to at least a half-hour other people I normally don't interact with on a day-to-day basis.

It's what you make of it. If not showing up for you is working, rock on man. If enjoy an opportunity to get to know everyone I work with and find out what we have in common.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#160

Post by natecavanaugh » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #68

natecavanaugh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too think this is pretty crass and as artificial as so much else in SV. But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical. And why shouldn't those women be able to work? For me, I don't mind anyone being hired or contracted for skills in guest relations, market…

> But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical. The issue is the gender disparity in _software_engineering_, which is actually made worse by this, because hiring someone because they look pretty (they're not asking agencies for, like, conversationalists with…

I dunno, I struggle with the area of what constitutes objectification here. On the one hand, yes they're hired first because they're pretty, but assuming that's the only quality they bring, or that it's somehow baser or less valuable than technical skills seems to me still degrading to an entire group of people who do put a lot of work into both their presentation and ability to navigate socially.

The other part is that I don't think it's wrong to allow the GUI of a person to be the initial draw towards someone else. If that's all someone wants, then they're shallow and objectifying someone.

But for as many guys in SV who are pervs only out for one thing, I'm willing to wager that there are just as many, if not more, introverted SE's who actually don't mind a more personal connection, however momentary, than to just get their rocks off. Sometimes it's nice to have a short, if meaningful, or at least interesting conversation with someone so far out of your league in traditional social contexts.

I'm not trying to be an apologist for this practice, I just feel that while it has its own innocent value, it could be implemented in a way that is a bit more transparent and helpful long-term to what is behind some of the motivations for this.