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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

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Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#241

Post by kevintb »

opportune wrote: post #49

The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. My employer does a good job of thi…

You are so sadly mistaken to think that you can "stay away from social justice sphere". Taking the example of a survey question in the blog post,

> What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender"

What would a "professional and politically neutral as possible" company, in your definition, do in this case? I would think, at the very least, an "Other" field would be a 1000x improvement from a "Transgender" option.

> I would be skeptical that we are getting the full story here

People like you (and the kind of reaction you are describing here) are the reason why more people don't report discrimination and harassment issues.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#243

Post by kevintb »

> "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender"

I have low expectations for tech companies understanding these kind of issues, but to separate _transgender_ as an option completely misses the point of what "transgender" actually means.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#244

Post by Jare »

tptacek wrote: post #228
DannyBee wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But I am saying that in making that decision, HR at those places exhibited incompetence: they left a reasonable developer with significant professional experience in a position to wonder whether continuing to work on that team was rational." I'm going to strongly disagree with this one, but it's clear you and i will not agree about this. "More on-point for the thread: I don't think it's reasonable to argue that some…

Fair enough! You've forgotten more about managing devs than I ever plan to know. Just don't be surprised that there's a pretty big chunk of the profession that will make this assumption about PIPs.

I imagine most seasoned professionals placed on a PIP will probably already have a reasonable guess if it's a BS posture or honest attempt to fix a problem. If not from the get go, definitely by the first 1:1.

I guess, it doesn't really matter what the company calls this process or how it's presented, only how it is conducted. If you even mildly agree with the reasons presented for it, and you get positive feedback soon, it may work out, otherwise it most surely won't, regardless of the honesty behind it.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#245

Post by hypatiadotca »

CJefferson wrote: post #4

Obviously this article is a single personal viewpoint, but I have heard similar stories from two other github employees (one of whom still works for github). Their interpretation was that github is upset they are viewed as sexist, so they want to figure out how to change their public reputation, without actually changing anything.

> Their interpretation was that github is upset they are viewed as sexist, so they want to figure out how to change their public reputation, without actually changing anything.

Good ol' Diversity Theatre :/

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#246

Post by YorickPeterse »

kevintb wrote: post #241
opportune wrote: post #49

The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. My employer does a good job of thi…

You are so sadly mistaken to think that you can "stay away from social justice sphere". Taking the example of a survey question in the blog post, > What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender" What would a "professional and politically neutral as possible" company, in your definition, do in this case? I would think, at the very least, an "Other" field would be a 1000x imp…

    > What would a "professional and politically neutral as possible" company, in your definition, do in this case?
* "Male"

* "Female"

* "Other (feel free to specify in the text field below)"

Or something along those lines, it's not that hard.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#247

Post by s73ver »

specialist wrote: post #179
dragonwriter wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever the perceived tone, what Caroline didn't do was suggest improvements, provide examples. It was a teachable moment. Seems to me she directly suggested the improvement, after explaining both the reason the existing version was bad and the reason the improvement was better (the two reasons being the same): Quoting directly from the issue she raised, which was not merely quoted but emphasized as a pull-quote i…

Okay. Continuing to quibble... She said what was wrong, but did not say what was right. Explicitly. To me, it's an example of "Guess what I'm thinking!" Or more famously, that UI designer who said "Don't make me think!" Granted, a "data scientist" should already know how to survey, be open to constructive criticism. I personally would have no idea how to ask the question. Though I'm not a data scientist, I can use go…

She exactly said what was right. She said EXACTLY what to do. There was absolutely no guesswork involved. She said that you should ask if one is transgender as a separate question. How is that not explicit?

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#248

Post by s73ver »

openmosix wrote: post #125
opportune wrote: post #49

The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. My employer does a good job of thi…

Reading the full article, it strikes me how you can be "inclusive" if you are constantly highlighting the differences. The fact, for example, she dismisses PRs or code reviews because made by white males. Or the blog post on her first deliverable, rewritten by a white male. I don't see what could be the benefit to point that out in every sentence: that all of that is made in malice because of gender and race? If I ha…

She wasn’t saying they should be dismissed because they were made by men. She was pointing out that they were extremely nit picky, and those who did so were men. And that her male colleagues had nowhere near that amount of nit pickiness on their requests.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#249

Post by thehardsphere »

pyre wrote: post #227
thehardsphere wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's addressed later by her boss: > I brought up the fact that we had been actively working on improving that over the past several months and that I had been tracking well against the goals we agreed to, but she said that the review period was only through January so that progress didn't count. So, the "tracking well" was in a 4 month span not in the review period. Here's another question: Why were weekly one-on-o…

I guess the other issue is why was the review happening 4 months after the period ended, especially if they had started working on improvements in the meantime. What was the point of all that work / those improvements, if they were just going to ignore it because it wasn't in the "correct period?" Shouldn't the review have happened closer to the end of the period, so that all of that progress could be part of improve…

Those are good questions. I guess I didn't find it implausible on its face, because I've never known any company to do reviews in a prompt and timely fashion.

It would help if we had an inside perspective on how their reviews work from someone who isn't invested in this specific story.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#250

Post by thehardsphere »

majewsky wrote: post #194
twerkmonsta wrote: post #72

"The same day that I had this review, I got some devastating personal news. I have bipolar depression and was already in a bad place mentally, so I found myself feeling crushed and hopeless. In an attempt to deal with things I ended up taking a dangerously high dose of my anti-anxiety medication." I'm all for being compassionate and helping people through tough times, but does this sound like a stable person?

She does literally say "I have bipolar depression". Assuming that the company knew this when hiring her, it would be very surprising that they would not be compassionate at this point. I don't know if that assumption holds, though.

I think the story was that she learned about the depression on the same day or just after the negative performance review.
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