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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

where.coraline.codes

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Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#181

Post by emodendroket »

superplussed wrote: post #99
emodendroket wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it though. Didn't they want to bring her on specifically because her political profile gave them cachet with people they wanted to make overtures to?

Top-down hirings for the sake of culture change don't really work, though do they? It seems like the inevitable outcome is exactly this, a bright-eyed, and then soon-disenfranchised new hire, butting up against an resistant and entrenched culture.

I don't know the answer to that; it just seems odd to say she should have refrained from politicizing her work if that's exactly what they hired her for.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#182

Post by specialist »

cholantesh wrote: post #168
specialist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Coraline's feedback, from the article: "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female, gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question." For contrast, this reminds me of Gene Wilder's feedback about his Willy Wonka costume: https://www.bustle.com/articles/181340-this-letter-gene-wild... I now try to emulate…

Was there really something wrong with that phrasing? How would you improve it? Genuinely curious; I think I'd have phrased it the same way (though at every place I've worked we'd have done a review like this face to face), and I find it pretty non-confrontational. Enjoyed the letter you shared. Gene is truly missed.

"Hi cholantesh! Just saw your new survey. Looks great!

Hey, have you seen the HRC's recommendations for surveying gender? I've used their guidelines in the past. Very helpful! http://www.hrc.org/resources/collecting-transgender-inclusiv...

TLDR: They suggest splitting the gender question into two parts.

As you know, this is a super important issue for me. Progress! Exciting! If you're busy, I'll make a pull request. Please let me know if I can help in any way. Thank you, Specialist"

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#183

Post by tyingq »

thex10 wrote: post #121
cloverich wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point but I think under-discussed. Ultimately what separates a well intentioned person with terse communication, (perhaps) poor empathy skills (i.e. lots of programmers), etc, from an asshole, is intentions. If we could read minds, it would be easier. But we can't, so we read words (and facial expressions, when available). If those signals line up with "asshole", whether or not its true, the person wil…

Terse communication style seems like an awfully low bar to establish "asshole" to me. (But then.. I have a terse style myself. But I'm glad we're discussing this.)

It's usually a few specific interactions where the terseness is combined with some other set of factors.

Like there's a spectacular outage and the terse person is updating someone important that's already irritated. Then, sometime later, another interaction with the same person...but they now have some bias.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#184

Post by nunobrito »

DanBC wrote: post #60
nunobrito wrote: post #19

The person in question was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and considers herself as a social justice warrior. Worse is the antipathy she directs to "white males", which destroys the goal of an inclusive environment. Every story has two sides, would certainly wait for hearing what her team mates would have to say, but I suspect they will say nothing out of fear from the repercussion by SJW when expressing how it was…

> was diagnosed with bi-polar Nice bit of stigma there.

Unfortunately one of my little brothers is bipolar and will soon turn 27 years old. It is awful, I love him so much and yet we are unable to help him more.

If nobody in our family is there to talk with him immediately when he demands, then something drastic happens such as burning parts of his body (e.g. nipples) or anything that forces our attention to focus on him.

Every week is a struggle, he dreams on becoming a world-known DJ and music is all he cares, but he is always on the edge of becoming a homeless because he is simply unable to hold a job (focus) or simply be nice to others, more often than not he becomes arrogant without real reason, which isolates him further.

Now that brother of mine is saying that he dreams about committing suicide like Kurt Cobain, because he considers himself a musician of the same level/type and I had to dismiss that thought by telling him that he first needs to have a world-wide hit. It's not good.

So, when reading the blog post with that description of the world against her (persecution), the mood swings, the clinical diagnosis of being bipolar. These are things I've had to endure for many years, because this is my brother and I care deeply for him.

But I'd certainly not be able to work side-by-side with a bipolar person as it would be affecting me emotionally and then professionally. At least with my brother I just see him on the weekends and through Facebook chat, not every single day and having to ask her things while the mood is not helping one bit.

This is why I've mentioned that we should wait to hear what her team mates will say (if saying anything at all).

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#185

Post by cholantesh »

roywiggins wrote: post #66
Dirlewanger wrote: post #13

While GitHub seemingly handled her employment poorly, this person sounds horrible to work with: >Was politely calling out a data scientist on a problematic and transphobic survey answer a demonstration of lack of empathy? How presumptuous. Ever thought that maybe the person putting it together didn't know any better? What does framing oneself as the victim accomplish here? In addition, this is hilariously ironic give…

> I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly opened an issue referencing the question. The body of my issue read: > "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female, gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question." She was disappointed. She explained her problem with the survey in a non-judgmental way- "…

Thought I was alone on this. I think she read it poorly, and to call it a 101 mistake that she 'sadly' had to correct seems a bit unfair to the data scientist. But none of that comes across in her comment, which is extremely professional.

EDIT: Just saw your comment below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14704575). Makes perfect sense, and I see her point now.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#186

Post by foota »

specialist wrote: post #180
foota wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit OT, but I've somewhat always had a desire to work in a software developer role at Starbucks because I drink a lot of their coffee and i like how they seem to treat their regular partners (in an externally facing role, not internal IT). I'm not searching for a new position now, but can I ask what you didn't like there?

Circa 1992, during the first hyper growth period. I was in Store Planning, a particularly stressful, dysfunctional group. I know many others who've had great jobs, careers there. I was just unlucky, immature, naive, etc.

I'm sorry you had a negative experience. Thank you for your response! :)

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#187

Post by dropstickle »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #75
problems wrote: post #12

Isn't this the person who ran a code of conduct that has a website which includes things like "thoughtless use of pronouns" and mentions meritocracy as an evil, not a goal to strive for? Can't really say I'm expecting someone like that to be low friction.

Meritocracy is actually a very damaging thing, the way we tend to implement it in tech. Without concrete and public metrics of "merit", it becomes a buzzword for reinforcing the biases (conscious or not) of the evaluators. Particularly in tech, those biases tend to favor white, upper middle class, males. This kind of bias is demonstrated over and over in studies, even (and in some cases, especially) among people who…

Do you have any sources on this bias in tech? Genuinely curious.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#188

Post by throwaway8800 »

RangerScience wrote: post #154
throwaway8800 wrote: post #128

There's a couple of issues that stand out to me: Github is engaging in risky behaviour by reaching out to individuals (specifically activists) for hire explicitly on the basis of "diversity" and trying to incorporate those individuals in a highly merit-based environment. Secondly, Coraline seems to think that human relationships are a one way street: that she is entitled to be direct and even confrontational or insen…

I didn't get the one-way street at all. In my (limited) experience, one-way streets like this happen because the other party either never starts talking to you, or because they shut down the conversation at some point.

> or because they shut down the conversation at some point.

That's the vibe I got from her post (that the conversation just stopped at a certain point), but that's really my point; in adult, human interactions, if you behave in ways that people find unacceptable, people can and will at one point simply say, "I've had enough" and shut down further dialogue because they do not find communicating with you to be constructive or productive. They are within their rights as human beings to do so.

Some people seem to have a "I have a certain approach and you must accept it and deal with me" attitude and that's just not how the world works. You can try to push a bad, combative attitude on other people, but there's just nothing that says that they have to accept it.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#189

Post by kthejoker2 »

phoe-krk wrote: post #7
sethrin wrote: post #6

Am I reading this correctly? Fired for lack of empathetic communication? Is that really a thing?

"Give me a man, I'll find a paragraph for them." Old Polish [0] saying, back from the days when Poland was a communist country. [0] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dajcie_mi_cz%C5%82owieka,_a_pa...

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. - Cardinal Richelieu (apoc.)

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#190

Post by ivraatiems »

rndmwlk wrote: post #152
ivraatiems wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider if the situations were reversed. What if some white male engineer was simply being terse in an email to her. Might she attribute it to rudeness, sexism, or transphobia? If the company fired the engineer would you be arguing that she should be a bit more charitable in her interpretations? These are good questions, and I don't know the answers. I'd like to tell you how I'd react, but I think given the curren…

>I can see how her comments could be perceived as rude, or "unempathetic." I cannot see how - especially at Github, a place not known for cultural sensitivity - they were firable. I agree, I think this is where the "fishy"-ness I spoke of earlier comes in. Giving the benefit of the doubt to Coraline, there is definitely more at play than being rude in a few emails. I just feel uncomfortable jumping from an individual…

I respect that. Personally, I feel that Github has a long enough history of mismanagement and poor culture that sexism and the kinds of issues this post describes aren't difficult to imagine at all.
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