Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#391

Post by garethadams » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:43 AM UTC

ninjaboy2 wrote: post #333

acobster wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To play devil's advocate: ------------------------------ > As a senior engineer she was in a mentor role. Being in a mentor role does not mean you have to right to mentor. Assuming you have a superior position, and deciding to use it to explain something obvious to someone else as "educating" them is not a good social interaction for the other person, and may make them feel trapped and uncomfortable. The author never…

> The article starts by complaining about "drive-by issue comments", then described opening what might be considered a drive-by issue. That could be construed as contradictory.

The article is reasonably clear that "drive-by issues" are ones where people leave comments uninvited, and it's also explicit that Caroline was specifically asked to review the survey in question. So it's hard to read that as contradictory.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#392

Post by rmc » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:45 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #49

The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. My employer does a good job of thi…

> it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary.

This sounds good, but I think to some people in tech "professional" and "political neutral" are contradictory goals. And your company has to choose which to take.

For example a professional workplace might say "You can't display photos of scantily clad women in the office" or "We're not hiring (female) strippers for our office party" (or "We have reprimanded $MANAGER for taking their team to a strip club") or "You can't use that word in the office to refer to a co-worker because it's mildly/very insulting and has political baggage". And all of those decision are derided by some as "political correctness" or taking political stances.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#393

Post by blockmeamadeus » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:47 AM UTC

CJefferson wrote: post #4

Obviously this article is a single personal viewpoint, but I have heard similar stories from two other github employees (one of whom still works for github). Their interpretation was that github is upset they are viewed as sexist, so they want to figure out how to change their public reputation, without actually changing anything.

Hire more SJWs with a history of publicly calling out their employers, what could possibly go wrong?

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#394

Post by verinus » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:49 AM UTC

LordHumungous wrote: post #362

> My team was 5 women and one man: two of us trans, three women of color Keep in mind that her team helps writes her performance reviews. > For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I had written. Oh no people were reviewing a new engineer's code. (male employees. you know what that means) > The post was submit…

And I wonder where the hate in this comment comes from- I can not draw the same conclusions from the blog post and imho your comment tells a lot more about yourself that the case at hand.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#395

Post by blockmeamadeus » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:53 AM UTC

rnprince wrote: post #300

How many large tech companies decide to fire programmers because they communicate directly? For male programmers, that's actually a stereotype. The reason they gave for firing her is just bizarre, making me wonder if there was a different reason that they didn't want to admit.

I think perhaps GitHub has already hired too many snowflakes who then couldn't handle such a communication style anymore.

For example the data scientist from the story who got offended about being lectured about transgender issues. Was it a man? In my mind I picture a sensitive SJW woman on her first job out of university, who was hired to increase diversity at GitHub. Sorry, that is just how it is...

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#396

Post by LordHumungous » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:56 AM UTC

verinus wrote: post #394

LordHumungous wrote: post #362

> My team was 5 women and one man: two of us trans, three women of color Keep in mind that her team helps writes her performance reviews. > For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I had written. Oh no people were reviewing a new engineer's code. (male employees. you know what that means) > The post was submit…

And I wonder where the hate in this comment comes from- I can not draw the same conclusions from the blog post and imho your comment tells a lot more about yourself that the case at hand.

No hate. I see a self-absorbed person who is unable to see their own flaws and who blames everyone but themselves for their own failings. It's sad actually.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#397

Post by louithethrid » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:57 AM UTC

blockmeamadeus wrote: post #380

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meritocracy is actually a very damaging thing, the way we tend to implement it in tech. Without concrete and public metrics of "merit", it becomes a buzzword for reinforcing the biases (conscious or not) of the evaluators. Particularly in tech, those biases tend to favor white, upper middle class, males. This kind of bias is demonstrated over and over in studies, even (and in some cases, especially) among people who…

It's true that Meritocracy alone overlooks the differences in opportunity people have starting out. Still, I think the criticism is somewhat misguided. I like to think about Neurosurgery to illustrate: if you need a tumor removed from your brain, would you rather have the surgeon be a privileged, elite surgeon from Harvard, or some random dude from the streets? We should be happy that we are able to produce elite Neu…

If that random dude from the street has a 100 % succes rate, and the other has a printed out paper diploma and 50 % succes rate, guess where im going.

Academia usually garants a minimum of performance - i will give you that, it is no indicator for a maximum.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#398

Post by gerbal » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 9:04 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #8

I've seen this a few times. People with a naturally terse way of communicating eventually end up offending someone with the power to retaliate.

It's also much worse for women and people of color who are assumed to be rude for acting in ways white men wouldn't think twice about.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#399

Post by keithpeter » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 9:05 AM UTC

sgt wrote: post #376

avenoir wrote: post #94

> "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender". I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly opened an issue referencing the question. The body of my issue read: > "'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…

Maybe she is right, but I've never in my life seen a form that explicitly asks "Are you transgender". So I don't agree that this is a 101 mistake. Most forms ask "Male" or "Female", and that's it. The fact that Github asked "Transgender" in addition to this shouldn't be seen as offensive, as I am sure they were doing this simply to make sure transgendered people felt included too. Sadly a good deed is not always appr…

UK perspective: it may depend on why the data is being collected.

UK government guidelines [1] for general forms to do with benefits/services &c are fairly thin

Organisations that have to maintain equality metrics in some form [2] have a more complex approach. This second approach seems like the nearest to the Github situation. The example I have cited (third or fourth in goog search results) maps directly to 'protected characteristics' in diversity legislation in UK.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/gender-or-sex

[2] http://www.ecu.ac.uk/guidance-resources/using-data-and-evide...

Meta comment: Survey questions are tricky to formulate. Kicking ideas round in a group on a whiteboard with reference to external advice/exemplars seems to help get wording sorted and clarify the taxonomy. Genuine question (I don't work in the software world) is it normal for a lone web developer person to be left just making up the questions as they are coding them?

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#400

Post by romanovcode » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 9:14 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

This is the main issue right there.

If anyone is reading this and wants to have a lot of HR/PR related problems in his/her company - start doing this and problems will pile up.