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GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

businessinsider.com

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Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#351

Post by alextgordon »

Laaw wrote: post #313
hitekker wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What a load of tosh. Are there no disadvantaged people in America with light coloured skin?

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#352

Post by samps »

malandrew wrote: post #130
hitekker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me sad. I thought you were being over the top about the racism but then I saw the slides in the article: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2462e526543008... My first reaction is that the language of "us" vs "them", victims vs oppressors, reeks of hatred. Hatred undermines productive conversation, which undermines any attempt at building a good culture. I would have to listen to the whole presen…

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…

I'm honestly shocked at the lack of empathy on display in this comment thread. The technology world has a diversity problem—why not assume that this is a good-faith effort to address it, just expressed in words you don't like? Why instead flip directly into Internet Outrage Status?

This kind of outpouring of rage, to be frank, is why Hacker News has such a bad reputation. Look around at the comments here: there are people complaining about the very notion that there might be something wrong with how hiring and promotion happens in technology. There are people, like @yoodenvranx, equating their own anecdotal problems with the victimization of white men. There are countless comments asserting that we are capable of "pure meritocracy," a notion that is invalidated by research on implicit bias.

The overwhelming consensus here is that (a) there is no problem, and (b) GitHub's attempts to address it are unjust. This is why Hacker News looks to the outside world like a self-affirming bubble with no grounding in reality.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#353

Post by verylongaccount »

It seems that many posters here believe that it is okay to discriminate against white men because they enjoy "white privilege," whatever that is. There are those who believe that it is okay to discriminate on the basis of skin color and those who do not. The former are called racists, attempts to redefine the term notwithstanding.

What I find most interesting is that the comments about white men are roughly equivalent to commonly heard antisemitic statements. It is often said that Jews are over represented in various occupations not because of any virtue on their part, but rather because of devious trickery. I don't see much distinction between such sentiments and those being expressed here.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#354

Post by hoorayimhelping »

chc4 wrote: post #61
krisdol wrote: post #46

I wonder which startup will chomp off this new sourcefor-- I mean, Github. I know, totally different companies at this point, but this shift marks me seeing GH as a completely different entity from what it used to be, and I don't look forward to what kind of company they'll become in the future. Kind of disappointing to read about the changes. None of them sound good.

I already use GitLab for my personal projects, since I don't care about the networking effects and it's open-source. Since it's still just git, there's nothing stopping people from switching: it has inheritably less lock-in than Twitter or Facebook. GitLab even scrapes issues and other GitHub metainfo if you migrate.

There is one-click repo import functionality that is great also.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#355

Post by gyardley »

What an utter mess of a thread.

Look, social experiments of the sort taking place at GitHub are good things - they can teach us something. If their policies make the organization stronger, that's awesome - we get a stronger GitHub. If their policies end up damaging the organization, that's also awesome - because it'll become evident they're bad policies, and companies will stop implementing them.

Everyone just sit back, let the market do its job, and be sure to take note of the results when it's time for you to do your own company-building.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#357

Post by mercurial »

fweespeech wrote: post #333
warfangle wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reverse racism is a myth.

Given they are publicly singling out white women, I'm not really sure that is true. You shouldn't be generalizing on race if you want me to believe that.

So, as far as I'm aware, there is "racism-as-defined-in-some-academic-circles", where it's only racism when it's systematic and directed by a privileged ethnic group against an unprivileged ethnic group. Which is (IMHO) different from what non-academic people understand racism. Maybe that's what parent means?

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#358

Post by malandrew »

rhizome wrote: post #256
malandrew wrote: post #130

Earlier 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…

"Racial" is not the same as "racist." I don't think it helps the conversation to conflate them, and it's anti-intellectual criticism that inhibits even speaking about race.

Please explain:

- what you mean by racial?

- how what I read on that slide is racial, not racist

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#359

Post by brighteyes »

malandrew wrote: post #344
brighteyes wrote: post #277

Earlier 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. On the one hand, sure, it would be odd if it were entirely led by a group of people that the initiative is not meant to directly benefit. But on the other, 1. The title implies it is white people that must be left out of leadership there. It does not mention Asian…

Asian people are highly overrepresented, much more than white people, relative to their percentage in the country. But not relative to California. This is important to note because the base rates of the state in which a company is located or an industry is concentrated matter. Very very few people move farther than 500 miles from the place where they are born. This means that the overwhelming majority of the people i…

No, even relative to California, their overrepresentation is far larger.

Your link shows 14.4% for Asian people in California, but in the tech industry, they are at least twice that. Whereas in California white people are 73.2%, which is about equal or even less than their ratio in tech.

And about most people not moving more than 500 miles - is that true for tech jobs in California? See for example

http://www.siliconvalleyindex.org/index.php/people/talent-fl...

which indicates that your general rule might not apply, as over a third of Silicon Valley people are foreign-born. That means even from outside of the US, not just outside of California. And it's obvious the valley is full of people from the rest of the US, in fact tech workers that grew up in the area are a clear minority.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#360

Post by swang »

noir_lord wrote: post #320
swang wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 sh…

What you're citing is how well academically poor kids did in school. That is not because of discrimination or racism, that is merely what occurred. I think a further study about how well each group does in terms of say, getting a job or getting to university would be more valuable.

Poor students have an immensely huge problem already (being poor), the problem is how do they climb out of poverty? There is no easy path but being "white" is easier in that (for ex.) looking for a job, there won't be people who discriminate against you because you're black, asian or latino. The same minority applying to the same job now also has to deal with any preconceived discriminatory outlooks of the hiring manager. that is the _out_ that white people get.

I agree that we should, "we give everyone the best start in life", but you act as though whites don't already get that or are being penalized now by your, "how do we cripple some groups so everyone gets an equal start in life" statement. White people have always been unequal from other minorities in that they've always had an advantage. Your view of "crippling" is everyone else's view of a level playing field.

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