Is it ever a good idea to mix shipping products with social activism?
What are some examples where this has ever gone well?
GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
311–320 of 1001 posts
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but we're talking about white women, which make up about 33% of the population of the US. Are you arguing that it's ok that 79% of the publishing industry is white and 78% is female?
I'm not really trying to make a judgement on the moral aspects, I'm just a fan of accurately representing the situation. What if a disproportionate amount of the applications are from women? That'd be a societal thing and not necessarily the direct fault of hiring managers. There are a lot of important factors that need sussed out to make good decisions here.
There are plenty of women of color applying for editor positions. Yet you go to the National Book Awards and the audience is predominantly white women and Daniel Handler makes jokes about watermelon on stage [1].
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/21/365707391/...
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually written into GitHub's Open Code of conduct. (The 'Open' Code has not accepted any changes for quite some time even though this particular issue was under discussion [1].) The Open Code expressly excuses discrimination against some races and genders, specifically by explicitly ignoring any critique which might fall under a 'reverse'-ism; 'reverse-racism' or 'reverse-sexism' [2]. This line in the Open Cod…
I wasn't aware of this history. One thing to note is the sentence that precedes 'reverse'-ism: >Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding: > ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’ Coded language for sanctioned discrimination.
I'm okay with it, because I can get a job elsewhere. Some minorities can't. I don't need to be able to get a job at GitHub, because for some stupid reason, society has a general bias in favor of me. I can work anywhere, but the folks they're giving a shot are folks who don't have it as good as I do.
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#314> With plenty of competitors, including Atlassian, GitLab, and even Google, one thing is certain: If GitHub does stumble, there are plenty of companies that want to pick up its slack. Atlassian? Oh god. Their software might be ideal for corporate beancounters and expensive consultants, but for everyone else it's a nightmare. GitLab? A pile of memory leaks and other weirdness. Google? Not so much, I highly doubt they'…
They aren't talking Google Code. If you read the linked article, they are talking a new thing Google "Cloud Source Repositories". https://cloud.google.com/source-repositories/ Haven't had a change to review it yet but seems to be they retired Google Code in preparation for this, not because they were acquiescing the market to Github.
They describe it as "fully-featured private Git repositories" so not a replacement for Google code. Also it's pretty inconceivable they'd retire Google Code early, forcing repos to move to a competitor, then introduce a new public service.
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you paste your bitbucket link into the github field.
Yes but many employers want to look at how many stars and forks your repo got on github. It's a nice metric to filter repos from candidates, it is not enough for sure but usually repos with tons of stars are considered a good signal and it allows employers to save time before they start looking at your code. Bitbucket doesn't have enough users to offer these kinds of interesting metrics unfortunately.
Wow, I've never seen that. I mean, people often like to see some kind of evidence of something you've worked on, and looking at someone's Github profile is an easy way to do that. But I've never heard of stars and forks being used as a crude filtering mechanism.
There are so many factors that go into whether or not a repo becomes popular, which aren't necessarily related to anything that reflects on the creator's merits as an engineering hire. I think you'd skew your candidate pool in a weird way if you leaned on these metrics too heavily. Honestly, I'd be curious to hear more about how it's used in hiring.
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#316> "We’re trying to build a new kind of enterprise company where the playbooks of old won’t always work" By replacing flat meritocracy and remote work with traditional top-down management? > "don't think we'll succeed teaching white, male middle managers empathy and compassion anytime soon, so let's limit their scope of damage" So the technical director and member of the social-impact team is a blatant racist.
Flat != Meritocracy
Hierarchy != Non-meritocracy
You can have hierarchy and still be based on productivity and merit.
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if you even need to see the whole presentation. A few of the full sentences on that one slide are more than enough to project a strong us vs them attitude of hatred and victim versus oppressor, especially the following bullets: - "This is not work for white folks to lead" - "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women" - "we need solidarity with our Asian friends and colleagues" This is blat…
- "This is not work for white folks to lead" Well, it's not. It's kind of missing the point if your diversity initiative is being run by white people. - "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women" Second wave feminism, largely led by white women, often leaves out women of color. I mentioned this below, but the publishing industry is 79% white and 78% female. This has a huge impact on the types of stori…
Diversity does not just mean skin color. You might as well try to empty the ocean with a spoon then pat yourself on the back for "doing your best."
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#318This is just gross. I've spent the last 10 years of my life listening to various minority leaders discriminate against whites with no consequence. I hope someone stands up for themselves and sues GitHub for this type of behavior. First off, this is very irrational and not based in any facts. Second off, it's blatant racism and sexism. I will probably migrate my repos to GitLab or even BitBucket shiver . We need to vo…
If you can, avoid Bitbucket. We used them for a few years and it just wasn't good, through and through. I've been really impressed with Gitlab and we use that as a backup right now but I really think I'll be moving all of our repos over to them. Plus, you can even host your own Gitlab server.
Why avoid Bitbucket? We switched to it from github at work and haven't encountered any major issues.
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
- "This is not work for white folks to lead" Well, it's not. It's kind of missing the point if your diversity initiative is being run by white people. - "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women" Second wave feminism, largely led by white women, often leaves out women of color. I mentioned this below, but the publishing industry is 79% white and 78% female. This has a huge impact on the types of stori…
>>It's kind of missing the point if your diversity initiative is being run by white people. How can anybody who advocates equality say no white person can lead a diversity movement? Just because somebody is white doesn't mean they aren't an oppressed minority (female, transgender, Jewish or some other oppressed group like a furry). I think we collectively need to declare it's not okay to say "people with skin color _…
Race is a goofy power structure which puts certain people ("whites") on top of others.
Whiteness changes with political needs. Hilariously, Irish-Americans, Jews, etc weren't always considered white. They had to become white. Nowadays, certain Asians are held up as model minorities and may get some honorary whiteness.
With children getting murdered by the state for being black, it's obvious race is about white supremacy. (Analogously, sexism is about male supremacy, also known as patriarchy.)
Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a young white male with no money, no job and bad health. Can I please have some of this mysterious magic power I am supposed to have?
"white" people's power is not that they are given money, a job, or great health. their power is that they are the ones given those opportunities. Being white doesn't remove you from being poor, jobless, or in poor health, you just have a lot more options to get out of it. Being poor and white is a lot better than being poor and black or poor and because you're not fighting additional problems that come with being a m…
Not in the UK though.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34667100/poor-white-bo...
> If you're white, male and poor enough to qualify for a free meal at school then you face the toughest challenge when starting out in life.
> That's what the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has said in "the most comprehensive review ever carried out on progress towards greater equality in Britain".
Frankly the debate should really be "How do we give everyone the best start in life" rather than "how do we cripple some groups so everyone gets an equal start in life".