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My First Hand Experience With Sexism

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Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#21

Post by [deleted] »

untog wrote: post #11
mynameisasdf wrote: post #7

This article is incredibly badly written and lacks any real thought about the matter. So he had one interview with some douche CEO and now jumps to the conclusion that: >"Sadly, sexism is alive and well in my industry. " >"Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape." Fucking really? I've been a developer for now over 11 years and must have met thousands of other devs from countless…

Only once, ONCE, have I ever met someone who made a women-bashing comment similar to what he is talking about. I'm guessing you're not a woman. Now, I'm not trying to make judgement on the article either way, but I don't think you can really say "I've only ever seen sexism in tech once" when you aren't someone that actually experiences it.

[deleted]

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#22

Post by mmatants »

facepalm wrote: post #6
fleshweasel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of silly shit is much easier to say when you're a member of that racial or gender group that more people want to hire.

The reverse exists, too, and I am pretty sure there are enough companies who want to hire women to give all women in IT sufficient choices. What do you suggest - should the CEO be imprisoned? Disallowed from doing business? Go to brainwashing camp to set his brain right? It's easy to get angry about such cases, but think about what you want to achieve. Perhaps he had some bad experiences with women. It's unfortunate,…

This may not be about changing that particular CEO's attitudes but about sharing the experience with the rest of us, so that we all may extract something out of it. It's a statement that "this happened" - we make of it what we will.

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#23

Post by facepalm »

tbrownaw wrote: post #15
facepalm wrote: post #3

Jerks exist in the world. Frankly I don't see the big deal. It's clearly not a company he (or many other people) would like to work for. That happens a lot. Interviewing is a two sided process - the company has to like the candidate, and the candidate has to like the company. So it's a case of the candidate not liking the company. Surprisingly, even among men, not every man likes every other man. While I don't agree…

While I don't agree with the CEOs statement, I think people should be allowed to hire whoever they want. The trouble with this is that a set of biases can become near-universal. I have the right to associate (or not) with whoever I choose. But if everyone (or nearly everyone) choose not to associate with people from a particular group, that is harmful to society[1]. So, there are exceptions made to your freedom of as…

I know there are such laws - not sure if I agree with them, but OK (literally not sure - maybe it is good, maybe not - to be sure I wouldn't like it if it were my own company). But how are they being enforced, with so many possible candidates? Disabled people, women, different ethnic backgrounds, different schools, ex-convicts... One you go over 50, you have to have at least one of each of them? Or if you hire employee 51 and the candidate is an ex-convict, you have to hire him?

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#24

Post by tomp »

draugadrotten wrote: post #17

> “Women are incapable of making the tough decisions necessary to run a profitable company on low margins.” - CEO of a Women’s Product Retailer Frankly, I think the CEO was pulling this guys leg and wanted to see how he reacted when his buttons are pushed. That is a situation that frequently occurs in customer meetings and you don't want your rep to blow up in the customer's face. That said, did you see the recent Sw…

> you see the recent Swedish study of 125.000 companies that proved

Just a minor nitpick, studies don't prove anything. Even experiments (in Physics) don't prove anything unless different people can reproduce them repeatedly. But (statistical) studies prove nothing at all, they merely hint at a correlation.

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#25

Post by epistasis »

draugadrotten wrote: post #17

> “Women are incapable of making the tough decisions necessary to run a profitable company on low margins.” - CEO of a Women’s Product Retailer Frankly, I think the CEO was pulling this guys leg and wanted to see how he reacted when his buttons are pushed. That is a situation that frequently occurs in customer meetings and you don't want your rep to blow up in the customer's face. That said, did you see the recent Sw…

Acting like a total asshole but not being one is a silly way to interview someone, but if true the interviewer should have made the deception clear before letting the interviewee leave. Anything else reflects too poorly on the interviewer and the company.

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#26

Post by masklinn »

mynameisasdf wrote: post #7

This article is incredibly badly written and lacks any real thought about the matter. So he had one interview with some douche CEO and now jumps to the conclusion that: >"Sadly, sexism is alive and well in my industry. " >"Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape." Fucking really? I've been a developer for now over 11 years and must have met thousands of other devs from countless…

> Only once, ONCE, have I ever met someone who made a women-bashing comment […] The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists

Next up, Hiram Wesley Evans explains he's only ever once seen a lynching as a child and how MLK is the real racist.

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#27

Post by facepalm »

pessimizer wrote: post #20
facepalm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reverse exists, too, and I am pretty sure there are enough companies who want to hire women to give all women in IT sufficient choices. What do you suggest - should the CEO be imprisoned? Disallowed from doing business? Go to brainwashing camp to set his brain right? It's easy to get angry about such cases, but think about what you want to achieve. Perhaps he had some bad experiences with women. It's unfortunate,…

>I am pretty sure there are enough companies who want to hire women to give all women in IT sufficient choices. Why are you sure of that? Is it because you have to be to overcome the cognitive dissonance of supporting the right to discriminate against women but not feeling like you yourself are a sexist, or because you have information that I'm not privy to? edit: Maybe the "law of averages" tells you that for each g…

I am sure because every week there are stories on HN about companies paying extra to lure women into IT. So apparently there are not enough IT women on the market to satisfy the demand of companies.

And even the companies who don't make a public announcement about it - many of them will probably also want to hire women, because it just seems slightly weird if an office is all-male. It's like a party without women.

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#28

Post by tomp »

arbutus wrote: post #12
mynameisasdf wrote: post #7

This article is incredibly badly written and lacks any real thought about the matter. So he had one interview with some douche CEO and now jumps to the conclusion that: >"Sadly, sexism is alive and well in my industry. " >"Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape." Fucking really? I've been a developer for now over 11 years and must have met thousands of other devs from countless…

"The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists setting up endless, patronizing, segregated "coding for girls" meetups." It's easy for this kind of thing to be completely invisible when this is your attitude. Sexism in the tech industry is alive and well, and there are a lot of good reasons to have meet-ups for both girls and women. When you immediately start lashing out abou…

I don't understand his post the same way. He said that the only sexism prevalent in this industry is the "girls code"-type sexism. Sure, sexism exists everywhere and always, as does racism and other -isms. Simply said, people will be jerks. However, it is unreasonable to draw conclusions for the whole industry based on the behaviour of one such jerk, that just happens to be a male sexist (I'm sure you'd find female sexists and black racists as well).

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#29

Post by Paul_S »

Fomite wrote: post #2

You did the right thing, IMO. Silence is tacitly condoning the status quo. Be the change you want to see, and when you're in a relative position of power (like being able to turn down a job), do something.

> You did the right thing, IMO. Silence is tacitly condoning the status quo.

But that is what the author did - he didn't confront the CEO, nor did he name the company.

Re: My First Hand Experience With Sexism

#30

Post by aidenn0 »

tomp wrote: post #24
draugadrotten wrote: post #17

> “Women are incapable of making the tough decisions necessary to run a profitable company on low margins.” - CEO of a Women’s Product Retailer Frankly, I think the CEO was pulling this guys leg and wanted to see how he reacted when his buttons are pushed. That is a situation that frequently occurs in customer meetings and you don't want your rep to blow up in the customer's face. That said, did you see the recent Sw…

> you see the recent Swedish study of 125.000 companies that proved Just a minor nitpick, studies don't prove anything. Even experiments (in Physics) don't prove anything unless different people can reproduce them repeatedly. But (statistical) studies prove nothing at all, they merely hint at a correlation.

Minor nitpick of your minor nitpick:

Statistical studies do measure something. The parent comment didn't claim the study proved causation, just correlation.

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