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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#21

Post by zephyrthenoble »

I'm frankly quite surprised by the initial wave of comments disparaging this message.

The facts are that women are poorly represented in the tech community[1], and do make less than men[2]. Any attempt to let women feel more accepted and bring about much needed change should be championed, not picked apart and belittled because you feel like you are personally being attacked when people are just asking for help.

1. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/28/google-release...

2. https://www.cnet.com/news/biggest-pay-gap-in-america-compute...

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#22

Post by and0 »

dijit wrote: post #15
and0 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Susan Fowler and/or stop being dishonest.

Susan Fowlers case is harrowing and disgusting and shows that sometimes there bad people in powerful positions who are sexist. I don't think the tone of "the world is sexist" is genuine or fair, Susan Fowlers case is notable because it's definitely the exception, not the norm. Of course I will be glad when things like that _never- happen_, but if you take the example of murders.. There is usually a huge murder proble…

Susan Fowler's case was not unique, I know women in tech who can confirm this. These are systematic issues. Why are you so desperate to downplay them, and why do you get so nervous when you're not allowed to frame the issues or control how they're addressed?

Also, your murder analogy is.. absurd.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#23

Post by TeMPOraL »

and0 wrote: post #9
curyous wrote: post #3

The whole premise of this article as espoused in the first sentence, seems rather divorced from reality, to me.

Google Susan Fowler and/or stop being dishonest.

Single biggest asshole of a company in SV behaving like they always do isn't an argument against the whole industry worldwide.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#24

Post by ubernostrum »

dijit wrote: post #6

Virtue Signalling and attempting to divide the genders in the opening, before the quotes from women in tech. I expect better from The Practical Dev, you don't have to paint men in a derogatory light to bring up women.

PSA: at this point, making comments complaining about "virtue signalling" is virtue signalling. And I suggest investing in new talking points -- "this is just as (insert -ism) as what they're fighting against" has been retired.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#25

Post by dijit »

I'm desperate to push the "women aren't victims" narrative.

If we tell them they're victims enough then they'll believe it. There is evidence of this in other things for instance refugees who are told that they're victims are less likely to integrate.

I'm more focused on pointing out that we're all equal. If you're a woman on my team, I'm incredibly sorry but I'm not going to celebrate your feminity any more than I'd celebrate my other colleagues manliness. You do your job and I'll reward everyone with good pay, a bonus and a cake or two.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#26

Post by yodon »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #12
proaralyst wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you see that? What do you disagree with?

It's the little things. For example, the inclusion of Elizabeth Warren and McConnell's line. What McConnell did (attempt to shut down resistance of the opposite party) was wrong-headed and undemocratic, but the only thing it had to do with gender was the use of a pronoun (edit: yodon is right). Nobody would have paid much attention to it if he'd said "nevertheless he persisted", but a partisan attack was made into so…

King is not "on camera praising sessions." She was a speaker at a public event where she was expected to acknowledge the other headliners in the room. She acknowledged his physical presence, nothing more, and if you watch the tape it's fairly clear she isn't happy about doing so and left him to the end of the list because of it.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#27

Post by [deleted] »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #12
proaralyst wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you see that? What do you disagree with?

It's the little things. For example, the inclusion of Elizabeth Warren and McConnell's line. What McConnell did (attempt to shut down resistance of the opposite party) was wrong-headed and undemocratic, but the only thing it had to do with gender was the use of a pronoun (edit: yodon is right). Nobody would have paid much attention to it if he'd said "nevertheless he persisted", but a partisan attack was made into so…

[deleted]

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#28

Post by prepend »

zephyrthenoble wrote: post #21

I'm frankly quite surprised by the initial wave of comments disparaging this message. The facts are that women are poorly represented in the tech community[1], and do make less than men[2]. Any attempt to let women feel more accepted and bring about much needed change should be championed, not picked apart and belittled because you feel like you are personally being attacked when people are just asking for help. 1. h…

This is a really good point, but I think for me it's more of a visceral response to falseness or inaccuracy that was developed by programming actually.

It is good to encourage women and other underrepresented groups to enter tech-just imagine how many awesome programmers we are missing out on- but I feel we can do this by being objectively accurate.

I'm with you on the underrepresented story, this is very common. But the glassdoor study has many major flaws and I don't think is really that useful. The biggest flaw is that it's only using self-reported data for location, gender, salary and job title; and it has a very broad comparison by job title that doesn't really fit when you are comparing "programmer" with "qa engineer"

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#29

Post by [deleted] »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #12
proaralyst wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you see that? What do you disagree with?

It's the little things. For example, the inclusion of Elizabeth Warren and McConnell's line. What McConnell did (attempt to shut down resistance of the opposite party) was wrong-headed and undemocratic, but the only thing it had to do with gender was the use of a pronoun (edit: yodon is right). Nobody would have paid much attention to it if he'd said "nevertheless he persisted", but a partisan attack was made into so…

[deleted]

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#30

Post by prepend »

and0 wrote: post #22
dijit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Susan Fowlers case is harrowing and disgusting and shows that sometimes there bad people in powerful positions who are sexist. I don't think the tone of "the world is sexist" is genuine or fair, Susan Fowlers case is notable because it's definitely the exception, not the norm. Of course I will be glad when things like that _never- happen_, but if you take the example of murders.. There is usually a huge murder proble…

Susan Fowler's case was not unique, I know women in tech who can confirm this. These are systematic issues. Why are you so desperate to downplay them, and why do you get so nervous when you're not allowed to frame the issues or control how they're addressed? Also, your murder analogy is.. absurd.

I don't think anyone is claiming that Susan Fowler's case is unique, it is not. Her case is rare, like murder. Of course murder is a terrible crime and is in no way equivalent to sexual harassment, but is useful as an example of a terrible, but rare case.

I sincerely hope the problem isn't systemic or systematic within tech, but I need to see data to believe this. Your anecdotes of multiple women who have, unfortunately, suffered, is not evidence of a systemic element of tech company culture.

I'm not worried about framing issues, I'm worried about being accurate and precise. One of the parts of programming that I like the most is the procedural accuracy that comes from coding.

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