The Woman in the Facebook Frat House • Hacker News Board

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#21

Post by kaichanvong » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:02 AM UTC

Interesting article. Some people have questioned what the point of it was. I saw it as this:

  A. Enter male to female ratio of 1:50
  B. Experience some things that felt wrong/daunting
  C. New manager entered scene and "fixed things"

I wonder if the fact the manager (Sheryl Sandberg) was female made a big impact on the resulting fixes.

Would a different manager have done the same? Possibly not unless either they thought about it from reading about an article or having been in a similar position at say Froogle.

Really interesting and I think it brings up the something that we as people should start doing more. Ask questions if something seems wrong or potentially off. Even if we're not a "manager" or not female. To at the very least try to promote `good`.

It's good for stories such as these to circulate as hopefully it will speed up the dilution of sexist issues we keep hearing of. And by dilution I mean the hopeful removal of this problem entirely.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#22

Post by kaonashi » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:04 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #19

Mark Zuckerberg and those engineers made this customer service representative a millionaire. She repays them by trashing them in the Wall Street Journal. There is nothing wrong with something "unrepentantly boyish", anything more than there is something wrong with women's only schools. Working class men don't go around apologizing for doing difficult construction jobs, white collar men need to stop apologizing for do…

No offense, but that comes off as extremely conceited.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#23

Post by ryguytilidie » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:14 AM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #20

One useful point to take away from this is it helps to have an "adult"[1] in a high level position, to whom sensitive concerns can be brought to and dealt with in a discreet, sober, and careful fashion. [1] i.e., someone mature, responsible, sober-minded.

Yeah, last startup I worked at was two founders in their 20s with a head of operations who wanted to bang every chick who came in the office. Couldn't exactly make HR complaints to the head of HR when there was no one responsible around. Never working somewhere without a "responsible adult" honestly.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#24

Post by mahyarm » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:15 AM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #20

One useful point to take away from this is it helps to have an "adult"[1] in a high level position, to whom sensitive concerns can be brought to and dealt with in a discreet, sober, and careful fashion. [1] i.e., someone mature, responsible, sober-minded.

Somebody like Sheryl sounds scary. The article makes it look like she handles private complaints she agrees with by stealth and doesn't even let the offending parties know the reason they were attacked.

Also when you work in a place that has too many 'adults', they can discount you because of your youth.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#25

Post by pnmahoney » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:16 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #19

Mark Zuckerberg and those engineers made this customer service representative a millionaire. She repays them by trashing them in the Wall Street Journal. There is nothing wrong with something "unrepentantly boyish", anything more than there is something wrong with women's only schools. Working class men don't go around apologizing for doing difficult construction jobs, white collar men need to stop apologizing for do…

I'm calling bull. Contributing to a company's success is NOT the exclusive purchase of programmers, nor (as some appear to conflate it) men who program.

And, to be clear, there is something unambiguously wrong for a male supervisor to roam the workplace trying to push lesser-ranked employees into sexual acts;

worse, for the behavior to go on long enough until SOMEONE (again, by your analysis, a 'woman on tech') thought it was worth fixing. Even if she had to use all that dreaded 'political operations-ing' to make it right.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#26

Post by vamsee » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:25 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #19

Mark Zuckerberg and those engineers made this customer service representative a millionaire. She repays them by trashing them in the Wall Street Journal. There is nothing wrong with something "unrepentantly boyish", anything more than there is something wrong with women's only schools. Working class men don't go around apologizing for doing difficult construction jobs, white collar men need to stop apologizing for do…

Wow. Is this the attitude that people in SV usually have/tolerate towards women? No wonder there are so many complaints. Somehow 'doing difficult programming jobs' entitles you to act shabbily towards women? And somehow she needs to be thankful for all this? Wow, just wow.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#27

Post by lucisferre » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:26 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #19

Mark Zuckerberg and those engineers made this customer service representative a millionaire. She repays them by trashing them in the Wall Street Journal. There is nothing wrong with something "unrepentantly boyish", anything more than there is something wrong with women's only schools. Working class men don't go around apologizing for doing difficult construction jobs, white collar men need to stop apologizing for do…

Honestly when it comes to the subject of women's issues in frat boy tech cultures I've seen people on this site post (and vote up) some stupid f'ing shit, but you may have just won the triple crown with this absolute sexist entilted load of crap. I love how you ended it with "male and female" just so you could feel a bit better about yourself in the morning.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#28

Post by pnmahoney » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:35 AM UTC

walrus wrote: post #18

Can someone explain to me what the author is trying to say? I see two things in the article: 1. In the author's eyes, the majority of early Facebook employees acted in a juvenile masculine manner[1]. 2. Some of those early Facebook employees weren't nice people. Am I missing something more subtle? [1] I.e., the manner young males are stereotyped[2]. [2] I'm not accusing the author of stereotyping.

It's easy to miss the point with the bearkskin rug thing. It's worth spelling out: a workplace which tolerates sexual harassment (senior supervisor known to proposition all the women at the company), or forces its female employees to go through backchannels to deal with sex-driven workplace hostility?

It's less that the 'employees weren't nice people' and more that this employee was powerless to reign in patterns of offensive/illegal/errant behavior.

Still it wouldn't be so necessary to focus on, _except_ for all the crap being thrown in here to accept/defend it.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#29

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:38 AM UTC

lucisferre wrote: post #27

temphn wrote: post #19

Mark Zuckerberg and those engineers made this customer service representative a millionaire. She repays them by trashing them in the Wall Street Journal. There is nothing wrong with something "unrepentantly boyish", anything more than there is something wrong with women's only schools. Working class men don't go around apologizing for doing difficult construction jobs, white collar men need to stop apologizing for do…

Honestly when it comes to the subject of women's issues in frat boy tech cultures I've seen people on this site post (and vote up) some stupid f'ing shit, but you may have just won the triple crown with this absolute sexist entilted load of crap. I love how you ended it with "male and female" just so you could feel a bit better about yourself in the morning.

[deleted]

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#30

Post by jbigelow76 » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:44 AM UTC

gmrple wrote: post #16

mcantelon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a pretty straightforward account. Neither condemning not lauding.

Indeed, and because of that I was rather confused. Was there a point to the article other than to give an account to her experience? Maybe I'm just too used to reading articles with obvious bias.

> Was there a point to the article other than to give an account to her experience?

Depending on your level of cynicism you could consider the article an "advertorial" seeing as how these are few anecdotes from her book coming out next week.