Getting free of toxic tech culture • Hacker News Board

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#271

Post by dang » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:56 AM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #250

nostrademons wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a company of 72,000 people where employees are encouraged to speak their minds. Get any group of 72,000 people together and have them say what they actually believe and you'll find a lot of wingnuttery. Just look at the comment section of any blog, news story, YouTube video, or Internet forum. The alternative viewpoint is that humanity actually holds far more diversity of thought and ideology than you had ever c…

> encouraged to speak their minds. Damore was fired though.

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. That's an abuse of the site—it kills the spirit we want here—so we ban accounts that do it, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#272

Post by legostormtroopr » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:58 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #225

cutcss wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get this idea that all professions need to be 50%/50%? Just for example 90% of nurses are female but we are as a society are OK with that right?

I think the difference is that when a man does want to be a nurse, he isn't treated like shit by female nurses to the point where he wants to leave the profession. The main reason for the lack of men in nursing is because it's viewed by most men as not being a masculine profession, not because of discrimination.

> when a man does want to be a nurse, he isn't treated like shit by female nurses to the point where he wants to leave the profession

Yes. They do.

Source: Was a male nursing student, changed degrees because every lecturer, student and nurse was clearly biased against men being nurses. This happened to multiple men in my year.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#273

Post by Aloha » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #263

Aloha wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The well defined Fortune 500 culture prevents identity politics from coming into play - the nebulous SV culture does not, there is no line other than 'be yourself' so the out of line issues can violate peoples concept of self, which is clearly bad, and therefor the punishments must be harsh. To explain further - in F500 Culture, only a narrow band of self expression is possible - but what is and isnt is clearly defin…

That's an interesting narrative but, again, how do you explain nobody is complaining about these apparent frequent and wanton harsh punishments and firings? My guess is because nothing of the sort really happens, statistically speaking.

I think many of us attribute it to being socially awkward geeks - we just presume we violated another one of those unspoken rules that have been tripping us up our whole lives - it wasn't until I started working around F500 companies that I realized that, that while yes, I'm a socially awkward geek - the cultures I was in before were of little help to me in understanding the unspoken rules.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#274

Post by dang » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #224

What I would be interested in is how many people look for images of Valerie Aurora that would not look for images if the article would be from a male author. +1 if you did look but wouldn't in case of a male author, -1 otherwise.

Please don't do this here.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#275

Post by tptacek » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 3:00 AM UTC

walterclifford wrote: post #255

tptacek wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that breakdown, "web developer" very likely includes a large number of designers and marketing specialists. We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%.

> We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%. Is it possible that a "concerted effort to recruit and retain women" perhaps does more harm than good? Med schools in this country are now very nearly 50/50[1] and law schools are very slightly over 50% female[2]. Did medicine and law achieve this by the same type of concerted effort…

Yes, that is what law firms did. Use the search bar at the bottom of the page to search author:rayiner for more information. Rayiner is an appellate lawyer (married to a corporate lawyer) and former/part-time compiler hacker, and he's written at length about how law fixed this problem deliberately.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#276

Post by bloaf » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #86

I wonder if a lot of toxicity in tech culture is that it is billed as a lifestyle and identity more than just a job. One of the big drivers for civil rights came from the experience in WWII. In war, there is an overarching purpose. You want to achieve your mission, and survive the war to make it home to your family. The identity of those who help you achieve those goals doesn't matter as much (very few people care ab…

“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”

--Solzhenitsyn

I think there's probably more to your observation than meets the eye. Specifically, there is a kind of dilemma that faces most workers these days. They can either A) get a nice, safe, "boring" career, or B) do something on their own (which is risky).

The people who choose A) are the kind of people who want stability and comfort while the people who choose B) typically do so because they have some kind of goal or motivation that they're willing to endure some resistance and risk to achieve. I personally suspect lots of programmers are joining startups expecting A, when the culture is closer to that of B (since the founders of any given startup have, almost by definition, chosen B.)

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#277

Post by kodablah » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 3:07 AM UTC

ant_mc wrote: post #198

> Early on, Valerie realized that she unconsciously thought of literally every single job other than software engineer as “for people who weren’t good enough to be a software engineer” – and that she thought this because other software engineers had been telling her that for her entire career. Just want to add that the "lets teach everyone to be programmers" idea that constantly gets paraded around is just another fo…

Not that I completely disagree, but I wonder if this was once said about reading and writing.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#278

Post by itronitron » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #227

fphhotchips wrote: post #141

> Early on, Valerie realized that she unconsciously thought of literally every single job other than software engineer as “for people who weren’t good enough to be a software engineer” – and that she thought this because other software engineers had been telling her that for her entire career. This spoke to me for two reasons. 1) Plenty of professions are like this. Lawyers, consultants, doctors, bankers, stock broke…

Not just for dev. I went to NIPS last year (and am in DS at startups in SF) and about 80% of the time as you introduce yourself the other person just stares at your affiliation on your tag. I went to a company (nameless) afterparty where the host DS literally stared at my tag for 2 seconds with a look of some serious disgust of how did I happen to get in without Google/FB/Apple/etc. or MIT/Stanford affiliation.

similar experience here, I'm actually glad that the schools don't coach their students to tone down the arrogance as it makes interviewing them a lot easier

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#279

Post by majormajor » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 3:15 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #165

codinghorror wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce... For web developers, it's 34%, which is roughly the same as dentists. Computer "science" is kinda BS as a field.

In that breakdown, "web developer" very likely includes a large number of designers and marketing specialists. We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%.

Is Google's process for women different than their one for white men? I only have direct experience of the latter, but the 2017 and 2011 versions were pretty similar. Their hiring process, as I saw it, was dominated by algorithmic college-course-type questions (as if nothing else I'd done in the last 6 years mattered at all) and years-of-experience type stuff (e.g. the message I got was good luck getting a manager job there unless you've got 5-10 years already doing it - don't try it if you're an up-and-comer with less than that). And apparently I was good enough to pass it in 2011 but not in 2017 :|.

All of that is stuff that I think is highly tilted towards a certain profile of devs, and going to be hostile towards anyone who didn't follow the typical CS undergrad route. And that undergrad route is very unbalanced, as is the profile of e.g. established tech managers.

If you're not willing to do much more training than most big companies, I don't see good steps to fix it outside of fixing the high school and college pipelines.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#280

Post by Consultant32452 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 3:16 AM UTC

walterclifford wrote: post #255

tptacek wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that breakdown, "web developer" very likely includes a large number of designers and marketing specialists. We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%.

> We have firsthand numbers from companies like Google; after years of concerted effort to recruit and retain women, they just hit 20%. Is it possible that a "concerted effort to recruit and retain women" perhaps does more harm than good? Med schools in this country are now very nearly 50/50[1] and law schools are very slightly over 50% female[2]. Did medicine and law achieve this by the same type of concerted effort…

We definitely do NOT treat female doctors as just doctors. Women are the big spenders for medical care. Women greatly outspend men in medical care and women have a strong statistical preference for same gender care, especially for areas like gynecology where 90% of residents in training are female. It's quite easy to find a women's clinic, and while it's fairly easy for a man to find a male GP there are basically no men's clinics whatsoever.

Further, for more "general care" men basically have no option but to have a female nurse, since 90% of nurses are female. On the off-chance that a male nurse needs to do something like insert a catheter for a female patient, they will almost always ask if the patient would prefer a female nurse. This option of a same gendered caregiver is not offered to male patients.

When a woman goes to a gynecologist to talk about potentially embarrassing issues related to her reproductive system, basically everyone she sees is going to be a woman, including the front staff. Compare that to a man's experience going to a Urologist. Sure, most urologists are men, but the man will still have to tell the front staff person or nurse, who is almost certainly female, that he has ED, or some other problem.