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Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

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Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#341

Post by Frondo »

throwanem wrote: post #100
Frondo wrote: post #28

Personal story time...I was at a recent conference, listening to men, women given talks. One of the women, in her talk, uses an interaction with her daughter as the framing narrative for the talk (imagine Socrates and Glaucon, only this woman and her daughter). Almost immediately, three guys to my right start making fun of the speaker, sotto voce, making all manner of little jokes to themselves, that are becoming inc…

> I also don't think they'd have sat there, chattering away, if a man had used the same framing story (father and son, father and daughter). What would you have said if they had?

I'm sure I would have said the same thing. Thing is, they didn't do that for the previous male speaker. (And they didn't make a sound for the remainder of her talk, or at all through the following talk, which I got up and left from halfway through.)

I get it, there's no air-tight way to prove that these guys were talking shit just because it was a woman on stage, and rudeness is rudeness no matter who it's directed at. I just saw it directed at a female speaker talking about her daughter, using language that is hostile to women, called it out, and it stopped.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#342

Post by xupybd »

RGamma wrote: post #283
goshx wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to look for the best talk you've mentioned. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRiV_b3WsoY Very good talk indeed.

What's that? "Hey, this is how we quickly engineer simple, yet inaccessible, websites whose drop-down menus break without Javascript? Look!: Your browser only needs 500MB of RAM and 2 seconds of CPU time of your laptop executing the jumbled piece of Javascript that outputs this otherwise trivial HTML and CSS without regard to what these standards actually are intended for!" "Loading..."

Inaccessible? Very large markets have access to Javascript and 500MB of ram. If you can reduce costs and time to market you have created value. Even if the result doesn't match some unobtainable technical perfection.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#343

Post by btilly »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #179
btilly wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argue for your limitations, and surely they're yours. To the extent that you can focus on what is under your personal control, you are likely to be happier and more productive. To the extent that you focus on things that are not under your control and can't be changed, you will be unhappy, unproductive, and will have a built-in excuse for your failures. This is not an either-or choice, it is a spectrum. And the farth…

I'd argue that there are other reasons for seeking a group of one's similarly disadvantaged peers than 'focusing on things that are not under your control'. Simply being in the presence of individuals with similar experiences offers solidarity, which is not equivalent to focusing on the negatives of those experiences. Nor would I agree that 'seeking reassurances' (quote from grandparent) necessarily leads to lowered…

There are plenty of reasons why one might choose to investigate such groups. And would hope that such groups might have positive things to offer.

However experience suggests that you are likely to wind up around people who are quick to explain all failures as discrimination. Because they do this for themselves, they are unlikely to be successful. If you adopt this attitude, your odds of success are also hurt.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#344

Post by cloudjacker »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #328
cloudjacker wrote: post #43

I agree Now for the counterpoint, there are a lot of people in the marginalized group that actually do look up to people that advertise their marginalization. Everyone that doesn't advertise that they are a "woman in tech" or a "black executive" flies completely under the radar. There are literally groups I've been invited to where people make lists of these inspirational characters, because they want to support thei…

I don't think the founder of Zipcar or VMWare got to their success by going to conferences and talking about "women in tech". They built stuff that people want. Period.

its not about their success, it is about other women looking for inspiration from people that may have encountered the same adversity as them, and only finding the people that talk about being women

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#345

Post by btilly »

peeb wrote: post #314
btilly wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argue for your limitations, and surely they're yours. To the extent that you can focus on what is under your personal control, you are likely to be happier and more productive. To the extent that you focus on things that are not under your control and can't be changed, you will be unhappy, unproductive, and will have a built-in excuse for your failures. This is not an either-or choice, it is a spectrum. And the farth…

While I understand where you come from, this is the kind of advice I would give a friend or family if they came to me and said “hey, I am having a hard time in the industry and I think it’s because I am a minority”. Do your best, try to grow a thick skin, etc. However, I believe you can’t possibly extend that (positive and helpful) feeling to an outside “political” statement. If our aim is to make the industry welcom…

Yes you can.

If you have a minority that has every disadvantage but believes that they CAN succeed by their own effort, that minority will succeed and it will reduce bigotry against them. Indeed the history of the USA supports this - we have had wave after wave of disadvantaged immigrants. They have nothing, have trouble with the language, and are widely discriminated against. But a generation or two later you have seen Italians, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian Jews, Afghans, and many other minorities integrate into the mainstream and do well.

But get a victim culture established in a minority, and things won't improve for them. They are unlikely to actually face more discrimination than, say, Cambodians did when they arrived here penniless and not speaking the language about 40 years ago. But they will have a worse future.

Look at it a different way. If you're from a disadvantaged minority, you've likely got a strike against you for having a bad background, and another for current discrimination. Add a victim mentality, and you're out. It doesn't matter how good the evidence is that you're an actual victim, it is the mentality that you can't afford.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#346

Post by prodigal_erik »

onetwotree wrote: post #258
prodigal_erik wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a lot of my teenage years hunched over a Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide. The "environment" was me and a computer that didn't care about my sex. Certainly nobody encouraged me, least of all my friends and family. Where were the teenage girls who shared my obsession? For that matter, where are the women who hack for fun and ignore the shit the industry is up to?

I want you to help me understand something. Why do you feel the need to rationalize away the fact that getting involved in tech is something that was easier for you because you're a dude? It seems like there's this sense in which people like you believe that by admitting to being privileged will somehow diminish your accomplishments. I've got news for ya: it won't. You seem to feel as though there's a zero sum game,…

In part I'm pointing out a problem with the frequent claim "girls are equally interested until school and work deters them", because they had years beforehand to exhibit the obsession.

In part I don't think we should encourage anyone to write software because it's damn near impossible to do well. The industry's salaries are already luring in entirely too many sloppy blub programmers who don't care about or even understand quality work. I would much prefer to only work with the minority who have always known this is what they have to do and could never have been deterred. Even if the industry were completely inhospitable for some reason, I would still be writing code as a hobby, and I see very little use for anyone who does not.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#347

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

cloudjacker wrote: post #344
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the founder of Zipcar or VMWare got to their success by going to conferences and talking about "women in tech". They built stuff that people want. Period.

its not about their success, it is about other women looking for inspiration from people that may have encountered the same adversity as them, and only finding the people that talk about being women

You would be right if the narrative was "It was super hard, it was unfair, but I worked my ass off and I succeeded regardless."

But that's not the case. The narrative is "There are less women in tech. The companies should be ashamed, and they should hire more women."

There's a big difference. The former is actually inspirational because the it lets people know they can succeed despite the hard reality.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#348

Post by iamdave »

mpweiher wrote: post #311
iamdave wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not exactly sure the point you're making Some women choose to openly identify as (for example) feminist and embrace all of the connotations and reactions that come with that. Some women choose to identify as feminist more privately and live their life being fair with others and only discussing their group association among certain circles they feel allow them to do so free from worry of being ostracized or criticize…

> just because I am a member of the black community > doesn't automatically mean I desire to constantly > be the spokesperson for position n that impacts > the black community. Sure. But again, everyone has something like that. I am German. When I lived in the US, do you know how many times I had to give my opinion on Hitler? Or dissuade people from the notion that because I am German I must obviously be a fan? When…

>That's life.

And that's my point. We agree more than you think we do, we're just using different ways of arriving at the exact same nexus. It's life, it doesn't however mean I have any obligation to indulge those curiosities, and I for my part, have no desire to. There's no more wrong with me understanding and acknowledging the position some people are in and their willingness to engage than there is with my own position and my tendency to go "No thanks" when asked to give some explanation on the black experience.

It's life. Absolutely. I don't have anything to say to the contrary.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#349

Post by kelukelugames »

dang wrote: post #282
skylan_q wrote: post #188

If there is no gender parity, there is a problem. No, there isn't. We don't have a "gender parity problem" in nursing, pre-k education, garbage collection, nor boilermaking. Just because it isn't 50/50 doesn't mean it's a problem.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12131077 and marked it off-topic.

I am curious what goes through the mind of a mod as he wades through these comments. Many unpleasant comments stayed in the positive. Do you see their vote totals?

BTW, I flagged a bunch. Hope that helps.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#350

Post by runeks »

rhizome wrote: post #303
runeks wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are a member of a disadvantaged group, you often do > not have the ability to identify as a professional first and > a group member second. That is the effect of being disadvantaged. > Other people will make your life seem primarily about being a group > member. The only power other people have over you is the ability to alter your thoughts. Thoughts, however, can be ignored. Some thoughts are just harder to…

This doesn't account for the fundamental attribution error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

The "fundamental attribution error" is a symptom of the very issue it itself is trying to solve: too much thinking. Thinking about why we think too much won't get us closer to a solution.

The fundamental problem is believing every thought that pops into your mind. We do that when we're not conscious of thought. Whether a compulsive thought concerns "internal characteristics of a person" or "external factors of a situation" is not relevant.

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