Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

where.coraline.codes

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 572 posts

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#261

Post by eqdw »

pyre wrote: post #231
eqdw wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading between the lines a lot, and therefore am probably wrong, but I suspect what happened was one of the two following scenarios: 1. (Less likely) She did a lot of work, but it was not high priority work. It was good engineering but on things that the company did not consider important. She was given this freedom and then, in the company's eyes (fairly or unfairly) considered to have wasted it. 2. (More likel…

> This could be because she is an unpleasant person, or because they are > unpleasant people, or it could be an honest misunderstanding or personality > conflict, but in every case it detracts from the productivity of everyone, > generally. This could also become a "Tyranny of the Majority" type situation though. If all of the other people are unpleasant, and they are being unpleasant because the new hire is a minori…

This is a good point, and one I didn't consider.

But

> I'm not saying that it's necessarily the case here, but the behaviour of "well let's just fire this one person, no matter who was in the wrong" is only good from a "anything for the company's bottomline" perspective.

Regardless of one's opinions on ethics, this is the attitude your employer _will_ take and it will _never_ change unless they are forced to do so. Tech companies are the shepherds of billions of dollars worth of assets, and they are going to protect those assets over you, when push comes to shove. Consequently, it is important to always keep this in mind, to expect it, and to proceed accordingly. Ignoring this doesn't make it untrue

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#262

Post by true_religion »

kybernetikos wrote: post #193
openmosix wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[...] For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I had written. [...] Shortly after this happened to me, the code review feature was prioritized. This functionality was rolled out internally pretty quickly. From that point on I didn't get dogpiled anymore [...] Re: who cares if they were all male? If I open a PR…

I took it to indicate that she believes that she is getting so much 'feedback' specifically because of what she is and what she's trying to do. The fact that all of the people offering feedback were male is weak evidence in favour of this (consider that much of her immediate team is female). She offers as another piece of evidence that she compared notes with a colleague with a similar background who was male and who…

For purposes of neutrality, she shouldn't mention the gender or race of the reviewers. In many places that I have worked, I do not even know the ethnicity of my coworkers. As an aside, I am not white and honestly believe there is more to ethnicity than skin color.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#263

Post by true_religion »

kevintb wrote: post #253
YorickPeterse wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agreed. This is a very sensible answer. It boggles my mind that instead of ah "Other" field, they added a "Transgender" option.

They could have simply put a text box instead of giving any options. Then the report can display a histogram of the results.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#264

Post by drewmol »

kevintb wrote: post #253
YorickPeterse wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agreed. This is a very sensible answer. It boggles my mind that instead of ah "Other" field, they added a "Transgender" option.

Keep in mind an employer is usually trying to follow compliance and reporting standards set by OPM, OSHA, IRS, etc. when selecting the allowable answers to this question.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#265

Post by invalidfunction »

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- "…

Sure, we just have to reword it - something like this may be less confrontational:

> "Hi! I have a suggestion on question #14. I think we can improve this to be more inclusive by replacing the options w ith "male", "female", "gender queer" "non-binary", (...) Since transgender people may or may not associate with a gender, we have be a little careful when asking for a gender. Hope this helps!"

When I write emails, I always pretend to "YELL" the email in the most dramatic way possible. If it sounds potentially confrontational yelling what I am saying, it could be intimidating for some people.

By defusing the way you talk to others, you make them feel more comfortable around you. The more comfortable people feel around you, the more they trust you and listen to what you say. It's a win-win :)

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#266

Post by ryan-allen »

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…

Because it's obvious that white males have all the power and are part of the patriarchy which oppresses all non white males.

It's so obviously correct that you can't even argue about it, and if you do (and you're white and male) you are mansplaining, and if you're not, you have internalized self hatred (which is the patriarchy fault, no less).

It's OK to promote Democrats internally at a company but if you're a Trump supporter you are EVIL. This is also obvious and requires no explanation and cannot be argued.

/s

In all seriousness, this stuff needs to stay out of the professional sphere. It's a swing back in the other direction of toxicity.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#267

Post by dang »

kaffee wrote: post #216
jitl wrote: post #87

This should not be flagged.

I agree. The article was welcome and well-written. I only found out about this post because the alternative (unofficial) interface https://hckrnews.com/ manages to surface this given the number of votes it has received. I appreciate HN's moderation, on average. It's a shame the process of moderation isn't more transparent. I have no idea why this was flagged.

[flagged] means users flagged it.

Since a lot of people are disagreeing about that and we always try to take guidance from the community, I've turned the flags off on this submission and reduced the software penalty formerly known as the flamewar detector. But FWIW this goes against my better judgment—this thread isn't as civil or substantive as several of the recent ones on related issues have been (I mean in relative terms—they still weren't that great overall) and I super don't like the negative focus on one individual. That's not what substantive discussions are made of.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#268

Post by Mz »

kaffee wrote: post #216
jitl wrote: post #87

This should not be flagged.

I agree. The article was welcome and well-written. I only found out about this post because the alternative (unofficial) interface https://hckrnews.com/ manages to surface this given the number of votes it has received. I appreciate HN's moderation, on average. It's a shame the process of moderation isn't more transparent. I have no idea why this was flagged.

The moderation is plenty transparent and if you just pay attention to what mods say, you figure out how things work around here. They are happy to explain lots of things. They just don't like to moderate in a manner that makes the moderation overly center stage. I consider that to be a feature, not a bug.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#269

Post by wutbrodo »

ryan-allen wrote: post #266
openmosix wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because it's obvious that white males have all the power and are part of the patriarchy which oppresses all non white males. It's so obviously correct that you can't even argue about it, and if you do (and you're white and male) you are mansplaining, and if you're not, you have internalized self hatred (which is the patriarchy fault, no less). It's OK to promote Democrats internally at a company but if you're a Trump…

It's not a swing _back_: it's just a different axis altogether. Being narcissistic enough to insist that your ideological opponents are evil and that every forum is an excuse to root out wrongthink is an ancient tendency. It's pretty ideology neutral.

Fifty years ago people were doing it for not being a good enough Christian. Now it's for not buying into every detail of an incredibly specific (and quite flawed, imo) political philosophy, or even just claiming that perhaps it's counter productive to fight every battle simultaneously in every forum.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#270

Post by nojvek »

specialist wrote: post #182
cholantesh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Why so much sugarcoating? Feedback was straightforward. I didn't see any aggressive words. Most of out PRs are to the point.

Sometimes the big problem I find is that in some companies people are just scared of each other that they fail to communicate.

Best places where I worked: people were to the point, they had healthy debates even with strong opinions.

Post reply on HN