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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

where.coraline.codes

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Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#311

Post by Sone7 »

dang wrote: post #267
kaffee wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relati…

It mightn't be as substantive or civil, but I've learned more from this HN thread than most.

Reading some of the comments here confirmed for me that this woman is on to something. People are claiming that there's more to the story, or that she must be a bitch/bad at social interactions (with no evidence worth mentioning and despite a respectful and genuinely empathetic writing style).

In fairness to GitHub, there may indeed be more to the story. However, I think if the tech community didn't have the issues she's talking about, the comment section here would be very different. Nothing she said sounds remotely unbelievable, nor is she selling us something, but people here read that she was forced into a mental health institution and felt free to jump to wild conclusions and publicly speculate on her job performance.

I'd have liked to see more discussion of BI, merit strategies, ideas on humanising large organisations, commiseration, maybe job offers and suggestions. And in fairness to this thread, there is a bit of that too. But experience has shown me that when people react this defensively to polite and well though out criticism, there is a measure of projection / delusion going on.

Now, I'm not saying that all non-substantive discussions should always be deemed kosher, but I feel like it's worth pointing out the irony here - the poor quality discussion has verified the quality of the OP.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#312

Post by abiox »

jwr wrote: post #62
Dirlewanger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She went on a tirade against an Opal contributor a couple years back: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

A "tirade"? I read her statements in that thread. I'd say they were very measured.

they opened with 'Transphobic maintainer should be removed from project'. hard for me to see that as measured.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#313

Post by HelloWorldInWS »

s73ver wrote: post #277
eqdw wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word games. "Best people" can mean the best team. I mean like honestly, if you don't care _in principle_ about the quality of your staff, how are you deciding who to hire?

Then define "Best". The problem is, you can't come up with an objective metric for it.

Defining "best" need not imply an objective definition in the same way that describing the "best" database architecture for a given set of requirements isn't entirely objective: "our programmers like to work with SQL more than MongoDB" is a subjective but sufficient argument to tip the scales.

Defining the "best people" is _obviously_ subjective. _People_ are subjective. There isn't just one "best"-- there is a set of "bests" that you can strive for. Just like the above example, it depends on your requirements, your priorities, etc.-- but most importantly, it doesn't need to be objective to work well, which brings us full circle to:

> "Best people" can mean the best team.

If you prioritize teamwork among individual contributors, this is what best people would imply.

The awesome part about a capitalist system is that companies have the freedom to experiment with these configurations of how they define "best". GitHub may define it differently from you, but that doesn't make their definition less valid.

Meritocracy is an idea, not a specification-- there is no one true meritocracy implementation. The discussion needs to start from there.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#314

Post by sethrin »

pfooti wrote: post #251
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.

One could imagine just putting a text entry field for gender, so as to not other any gender identity that doesn't align with the male-female binary. One could also imagine putting other fields in for respondents to self-identify as trans, should they want. That said, it seems a very neutral approach to gender self-reporting is self-defeating (consider that, at least for bathroom laws in some US states), the very noti…

Right, the problem of the gender binary is that it never existed. What we have is trans-erasure. More generally it seems to me to prove that, with respect to Mr Burke, all that is necessary for evil to be done to a person is for good people to do nothing.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#315

Post by overgard »

cholantesh wrote: post #168
specialist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Coraline's feedback, from the article: "'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." For contrast, this reminds me of Gene Wilder's feedback about his Willy Wonka costume: https://www.bustle.com/articles/181340-this-letter-gene-wild... I now try to emulate…

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.

Its the terseness -- I think its ok to be terse with people you know, but in a context where you're interacting with someone who doesnt know you well, manners can be pretty important for relaying that you're on the same team. Directness can come across as aggressive when you cant see a persons expression or hear their tone. Especially if its a sensitive subject.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#317

Post by Shank »

dang wrote: post #267
kaffee wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relati…

I think in relative respects, there needs to be more thought to the flagging system in general. A thread shouldn't be penalized if flagged a lot -- it should be brought to the attention of the moderation staff and then decided upon. These should all be transparent notes, e.g., [flag submitted], [flag rejected], [flag accepted].

On the content of this story in particular: it's not a win/win. But there's an inherent risk in becoming too insular by letting a majority of users decide the outcome on posts the are about minorities. The flag button looks a lot more like a "censor this" button or a "down vote" button than it does a "this doesn't fit the guidelines" button. Maybe that's the goal, but if it is, it should be made clear that's what it is.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#318

Post by fenomas »

wutbrodo wrote: post #273
opportune wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason my employer is successful at recruiting women is actually precisely because they stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. You think that entails "giving up on that crew entirely", when in reality it does the exact opposite. I think a lot of women/transgender/POC employees don't want to be thought of as an X software developer, just to be thought of as a developer who happens…

> They've pissed off "broflakes" What does this mean? I've never heard the term. Tbh,i don't really understand the "brogrammer" thing either. I got my CS degree, then was at Google, and then the first employee at a tiny startup and none of those experiences gave me any inkling of what the brogrammer stereotype might be. Isn't the programmer stereotype literally the opposite of a "bro"?

> "broflakes"

It's meant to be a portmanteau of "bro" and "snowflake" (implying more or less that someone sees themselves as a special snowflake, and gets upset when not treated that way).

Like both the words it comprises, I find it's more of a disparaging name for people the speaker dislikes, than a label for a discernible subgroup of people.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#319

Post by throwaway8800 »

acobster wrote: post #305
throwaway8800 wrote: post #128

There's a couple of issues that stand out to me: Github is engaging in risky behaviour by reaching out to individuals (specifically activists) for hire explicitly on the basis of "diversity" and trying to incorporate those individuals in a highly merit-based environment. Secondly, Coraline seems to think that human relationships are a one way street: that she is entitled to be direct and even confrontational or insen…

She was right, and as a senior engineer she was in a mentor role. I don't think that directly communicating a relevant fact - that trans is not a gender - to someone contributing to a survey intended to collect data about marginalized people is the same as expecting her peers to walk on egg shells. That's just asking them to get their facts straight. Where you see an instance of her co-workers being accused of attack…

> She was right, and as a senior engineer she was in a mentor role.

Apparently not?

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#320

Post by maxxxxx »

overgard wrote: post #315
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.

Its the terseness -- I think its ok to be terse with people you know, but in a context where you're interacting with someone who doesnt know you well, manners can be pretty important for relaying that you're on the same team. Directness can come across as aggressive when you cant see a persons expression or hear their tone. Especially if its a sensitive subject.

I just got reported to HR because I told somebody that a component they developed for us was badly designed. Turns out everybody agreed and it was changed but I still have to deal with HR.

Being ultra sensitive keeps people around you on their toes and makes them think twice about everything they say.

I think running to a manager and complaining about being offended is the new way of bullying people.

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