The Woman in the Facebook Frat House • Hacker News Board

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#31

Post by lucisferre » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:52 AM UTC

kaichanvong wrote: post #21

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…

I'm sure being female had some impact on her empathy towards the author. But it sounds like simply being a "grown up" was the more decisive factor here.

Lord of the flies.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#32

Post by lucisferre » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 6:56 AM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #24

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.

I'm sure that's nothing like being discounted because you're a woman.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#33

Post by walrus » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:08 AM UTC

pnmahoney wrote: post #28

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…

Thanks. After reading your comment and rereading the article, I agree with your interpretation (but I can't stand the author's presentation).

It's too bad that the author chose to put the "male" spin on things[1][2][3][4]. I found that offensive enough to distract me from understanding the main point of the article on my first read.

(Also, the bearskin part was far-fetched. As another commenter here said: unless there was more context involved, she was probably reading into that too much.)

  [1] "[...]young, plain-looking guys in T-shirts, gazing at their
  screens, seemed startled—if not displeased—to see a strange new woman
  in the office."

  [2] "[...]it seemed like the kind of thing that suburban boys from
  Harvard would think was urban and cool."

  [3] "[...]or the unrepentantly boyish company culture that it
  represented[...]"

  [4] "As Mark wrote on his business card with boyish hubris[...]"

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#34

Post by walrus » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:30 AM UTC

aheilbut wrote: post #2

I'm hearing a tiny, sad violin.

I understand your viewpoint here, because that's more or less how I interpreted the article on my first read through. However, you likely misinterpreted the article. See pnmahoney's response to my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4150139 (and try to ignore that it's the same pnmahoney who responded angrily to your comment :)

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#35

Post by lclarkmichalek » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:41 AM UTC

kaonashi wrote: post #22

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.

Yes, usually any misogyny on hacker news is at least concealed behind pseudo rational arguments.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#36

Post by geon » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:49 AM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #24

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.

> they can discount you because of your youth.

That doesn't sound very mature and responsible, the top level posts definition of "adult".

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#37

Post by lclarkmichalek » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:55 AM UTC

__float wrote: post #9

pnmahoney wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

god. jesus. NO. you've already set the course for the "here comes another HN thread where people act/get pissy" thread, so we might as well. Here goes: You probably can't imagine what it's like - for a female employee to be aggressively pursued by a supervisor for a sexual act, nor can you fathom - the powerlessness of being one of those women who have all noticed this behavior and, worse, - knowing that they can't d…

Hm. I'm willing to bet your response would have been taken more seriously than his (hint: it wasn't) if you hadn't taken his tone and reduced it to the point of swearing so much. If it is such an important issue, perhaps treat it a bit more professionally.

This is a pure tone argument that is completely useless to this discourse here. The comment brings up a point that everyone has been ignoring, the fact that most of us will be discussing this from a position of privilege, and most of us do not have first hand experience of being in a workplace which has a culture that does not favour your gender. Dismissing his argument for the inclusion of profanity is rude, stupid and incredibly condescending.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#38

Post by geon » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 7:58 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…

> Mark Zuckerberg and those engineers made this customer service representative a millionaire. She repays them by trashing them in the Wall Street Journal.

If you mean she was paid in shares that turned out very valuable years later, thhen she has absolutely no reason to be grateful for them. The only reason she was not paid in cash was that the value of Facebook was uncertain. It could be a success, or it could flop. As with any stock market deals it was a gamble, and she was lucky.

Also, she was apaid employee. She would not have been hired if she didn't contribute to the success of the company. Therefore she made "those engineers" millionaries just as much.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#39

Post by mahyarm » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 8:21 AM UTC

lucisferre wrote: post #32

mahyarm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sure that's nothing like being discounted because you're a woman.

What I was talking about had nothing to do with gender, even though the article was.

Re: The Woman in the Facebook Frat House

#40

Post by tspiteri » Sat, Jun 23, 2012, 9:02 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.

I don't know if it's only me, but I saw the young male stereotyping as a way to justify their behaviour, as in: it's not that bad, it's just boys being boys. The things that were really bad were the things dealt with later.