I'm not a Woman in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#361

Post by shados » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

Dove wrote: post #318

fruzz wrote: post #14

There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is. I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. Take my previous job. Women were objectified on Slack. A woman was groped, though she didn't report it out of concern for the repercussions. In meetings execs, male execs would only address/look at the m…

> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they wind up in jobs they need , in a way we never wi…

:slow clap:

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#362

Post by throwanem » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:38 PM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #315

mpweiher wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er...not really, no. Some speech is freer than others. I already posted the link earlier, but here it goes again: https://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-beg...

I read the link. Please elaborate on how this demonstrates that "some speech is freer than others"?

Creating an environment in which some people are justifiably afraid to speak, for fear not of counterargument but of very substantial punishment merely for dissenting from, or even seeking more clearly to understand, the permissible range of opinion, seems like a pretty clear problem to me. No doubt some feel otherwise.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#363

Post by agentultra » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:39 PM UTC

mr_spothawk wrote: post #356

agentultra wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution? It's not like that at all. Ideologies exist on a spectrum. And there are some on the extreme ends that are so reprehensible that there's no good reason to find a way to include them in any reasonable dialog. I don't care how hurt someone feels if they can't find a safe space to talk…

> I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). it seems like diversity and inclusion are at odds. id like to feel okay with my unfasionable identity, too. highlighting how different i am from others helps to discourage inclusion by them-ing my peers.

The intention of "normal as hell," is not to make us all brothers and sisters. Variety is the spice of life and it takes all kinds to make good software.

The spirit is one where we're not living in a system that encourages to sub-consciously bias ourselves against others.

I'd like it if my friends didn't have to succeed in spite of all the time whereas I get a (pretty much) free ride.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#364

Post by ahartman00 » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

Dove wrote: post #305

That's how I feel about it, too. There is no war. Women are not oppressed, men are not oppressors. We're all just people with problems who need support and compassion. Besides being morally wrong, a tribal approach is limiting. If you can't learn from, if you can't make friends and allies with people from all walks of life, if you must sit in your little castle with the few you count as your tribe -- are you not obvi…

"If you can't learn from, if you can't make friends and allies with people from all walks of life, if you must sit in your little castle with the few you count as your tribe -- are you not obviously much poorer for it"

Exactly, see this article from two days ago about how men and women are afraid to be alone with one another. Considering how often networking comes up in any job related thread, I think we are much poorer for it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685873

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#365

Post by dang » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

mr_spothawk wrote: post #348

vxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fresh US immigrant from the middle of Europe yet visually passing as an average white man, I haven't even shared the style of upbringing that people assume I did, and yet I lean closer to the opinion expressed above because I fear that a determined person with an agenda can find a way to use my story or opinions to illustrate their point and paint me and broad classes of people as problematic in the process. I e…

this comment speaks my own views in many ways. thanks for sharing. i'm still bothered by the active censorship of comments and discussion that occurred earlier in the week, and i hope this discussion is informative for the moderators, who are hopefully having discussions about how best to handle similar situations in the future.

You may be misunderstanding how HN moderation works. The overwhelming majority of 'censorship' of comments (if by that you mean flagging and downvoting) is done by HN users. That includes the recent threads on sexual harassment.

Mods are not trying to optimize HN for opinion but for intellectual curiosity, and that requires substantive discussion. That's pretty much the whole story, though of course there are a thousand details.

This thread is different from the other ones because the OP is different. Mods are doing the same thing here as in any other. That's devilishly hard for people to see because everyone interprets moderation through the filter of their own pre-existing opinions and there's little we can do about it. I wrote about this here if anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14693348.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#366

Post by shados » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:46 PM UTC

problems wrote: post #55

booleandilemma wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing opinions is just not "safe" anymore Free speech is dead.

Not dead - you can speak your mind - just you pay a social price to do so. Free speech, even in the most libertarian concept I have doesn't prevent other people's right to criticize your speech - in fact, I'd say it encourages just that. Speak out against stuff you don't like rather than censoring it. Ultimately it's an effect of large, diverse communities and deep political divisions. If you want to have political d…

Realistically, being in a blue state, if i were to say anything but the most politically popular thing about this topic on Twitter or Facebook, and a colleague got wind of it, I'd get fired, and be essentially unemployable in any of the big tech hubs. Unless I wanted to work for the next Uber-like company that will inevitably get destroyed online (even if its for good reasons).

The social price is extremely high now. It's very nearly as bad as being tossed in jail.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#367

Post by exodust » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:49 PM UTC

mcfunk wrote: post #192

I mean, how nice for you? This article seems to be very much about how there isn't a problem for people like the OP, because people who don't feel they benefit from all-women's tech groups are perfectly free not to go to them. I attend both all-women(/trans/femme) tech meetups and broader meetups. I get different benefits from each. I don't think anyone advocates for a world in which women in tech don't ever have to…

> "oh, a women's python group? Can I come? I'm into that kind of woman"

But that's funny, depends on who said it and how well you know them. Between friends or close colleagues, VERY crass and 'vulgar' things are said for laughs. Or maybe they were being honest? Or... it's offensive and representative of sexism in tech. The choice is yours.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#368

Post by JSONwebtoken » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:53 PM UTC

agentultra wrote: post #344

iamatworknow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not that these things don't exist, or didn't exist for her -- of course they do. The point seems, to me at least, to be that in order to attempt to actually solve these problems you can't actively (or passively) try to exclude yourself from the people causing them. It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to…

> It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution? It's not like that at all. Ideologies exist on a spectrum. And there are some on the extreme ends that are so reprehensible that there's no good reason to find a way to include them in any reasonable dialog. I don't care how hurt someone feels if they can't find a safe space to talk…

Why do these discussions always devolve into talks about punching people or getting punched? I can't get through a day without somebody suggesting violence is the only response to get somebody to think like them.

If you don't want these "programs" to exist at the professional level, you have to go all the back to college and high school. You can only continue to treat symptoms through affirmative action, because that is the cycle we're stuck in. That is the disease you are identifying. People who are propped up by outside assistance will naturally continue to depend on those props and leech resources at a disproportionate rate.

When these props are removed, the whole thing comes crashing down and we'll be forced to face the reality that these issues can't be fixed from a top down approach. Hiring more women or minorities into tech won't trickle down into incentivizing more women/minorities to major in Computer Science. Accepting more women/minorities into CS programs won't encourage more women/minorities to become interested in nerdy stuff in high school.

The real disease is third party intervention. Thinking all the world's problems can be solved as long as it looks like somebody's doing something for a long enough period of time. All that does is allow under-qualified individuals to shit the pool for the demographic that they represent and reinforce negative perspectives until people who pay for productive work can't turn a blind eye and then get punched in the face I suppose.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#369

Post by jd75 » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

I like having events where women can get together without getting hit on or talked down to and where you've often encountered the same kinds of problems.

However. At my last job, there was just constant pressure from HR to go to these "Women in Tech" things that had nothing to do with writing code. I have three kids and a full-time job -- if I'm missing time with my kids and making my husband do more than his share, I need to be learning something both new and awesome.

One day, I may have time to mentor or help recruit or just mingle for free hummus (it's always goddamn hummus at the women's things). That day is so not now.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#370

Post by Klockan » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

bbulkow wrote: post #242

iamatworknow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not that these things don't exist, or didn't exist for her -- of course they do. The point seems, to me at least, to be that in order to attempt to actually solve these problems you can't actively (or passively) try to exclude yourself from the people causing them. It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to…

I think you're missing the point of the discussion. When you have women who are excluded and hit on and passed over simply because they are women, they come up with all kinds of solutions, including raising awareness that there are great women who are WOMEN and you should listen to "women in tech". The stage of creating women-only and women-focused groups ( and buying into the diminutive labeling the original author…

Is there any evidence that these movements actually get any results? To me it just seems like tokenism.