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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

where.coraline.codes

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Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#411

Post by hasenj »

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.

It's pretty obvious from the OP's tone.

Very self absorbed and childish. Just reading it makes me feel like working with that person would be really annoying.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#412

Post by KaiserPro »

HelloWorldInWS wrote: post #328
nojvek wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so much sugarcoating? Feedback was straightforward. I didn't see any aggressive words. Most of out PRs are to the point. Sometimes the big problem I find is that in some companies people are just scared of each other that they fail to communicate. Best places where I worked: people were to the point, they had healthy debates even with strong opinions.

> Why so much sugarcoating? Because empathy is important to communicating effectively. You're looking at the words, but you're not looking at phrasing and tone, which are just as important. Try this exercise: read the sentence out loud to yourself. Taking a line out of Myers-Briggs, does it sound more perceptive or judging, to you, when read aloud? To me it sounds judging, as if Coraline already has pre-conceived not…

Sugarcoating is not empathy. Its misdirection and imprecision masquerading as empathy.

I really don't see that much wrong with it as a comment.

its to the point and precise.

There are perhaps two failing:

o No offer to help o No opening for conversations

Is that a reason to block someone? I doubt it. However I'm not the data scientist, so who knows

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#413

Post by Danihan »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #401
romanovcode wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The reasoning behind that is (probably) that unless they hire for diversity, it will remain a highly merit-based environment. Have to start somewhere.

God forbid

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#414

Post by Danihan »

throw201707 wrote: post #70

This is not a comment on the experiences described in the article, but it makes me extremely sad that the word "meritocratic/meritocracy" is used pejoratively, almost as if it were damning in itself. To me, meritocracy is something to be cherished, being far preferable to the systems that came before it, and being inherently anti -discriminatory. (Yes, people's hardships which prevent them achieving their full potent…

>have no bearing on your intrinsic value as a human being

What makes you so sure of that..

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#415

Post by hasenj »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #75
problems wrote: post #12

Isn't this the person who ran a code of conduct that has a website which includes things like "thoughtless use of pronouns" and mentions meritocracy as an evil, not a goal to strive for? Can't really say I'm expecting someone like that to be low friction.

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…

No one knows whether you are a white male or a green apple if all that identifies you is a screen name.

Good code speaks for itself, and competent programmers will quickly recognize you.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#416

Post by phlakaton »

HelloWorldInWS wrote: post #328
nojvek wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so much sugarcoating? Feedback was straightforward. I didn't see any aggressive words. Most of out PRs are to the point. Sometimes the big problem I find is that in some companies people are just scared of each other that they fail to communicate. Best places where I worked: people were to the point, they had healthy debates even with strong opinions.

> Why so much sugarcoating? Because empathy is important to communicating effectively. You're looking at the words, but you're not looking at phrasing and tone, which are just as important. Try this exercise: read the sentence out loud to yourself. Taking a line out of Myers-Briggs, does it sound more perceptive or judging, to you, when read aloud? To me it sounds judging, as if Coraline already has pre-conceived not…

- I think issues of diplomacy get magnified online because intent is so easy to misjudge. Whatever I write seems to come off twice as rude as I intended.

- I was taught etiquette, to a large extent, in an online fiction workshop called Critters. There, critiques are all peer reviews, and diplomatic critiques are essential. I try to keep some of that friendly peer spirit in every review and issue I make.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#417

Post by hasenj »

gerbal wrote: post #403

How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man? There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'. If a white guy behaves the same way no one thinks twice about it. To me it sounds like management at Github is uncomfortable with her perspectives. We often see women and minorities censured for not trying to conform to the model of a de…

> How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man? There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'.

Did you just assume my reaction? (partly sarcastic).

If you know anything about tech and blogging and HN, you should know that most posts get flamed and dissected very quickly. People have very strong opinions and have very low tolerance for BS.

The only difference is, people from the "social justice" community always make it personal.

"What? You criticize me? It must be because of my race/skin/gender/religion/orientation, you bigoted monster!".

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#418

Post by _nalply »

The OP is a part of a marginalised group of people. Marginalisation means that some people who aren't part of that group feel they have to resist. This means that the issues of the marginalised people are perceived as less important or even annoying. Sometimes this effect is subtle but can be severely damaging.

One example is that the post needed several attempts here at Hacker News to be not flagged.

As a Deaf programmer I also experience this marginalisation. Of course the causes are different. One thing is exactly the same: I need to fight for my own power. And this fighting is sadly already enough to tick people off.

Edit: Clarified language.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#419

Post by phlakaton »

nostrademons wrote: post #290
Shank wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never worked anywhere that I felt the need to start critiquing the code of people from other teams who were working on systems that I might not even have experience with. This is probably a side effect of how GitHub evolved. Watching some of their earlier talks and comparing that with how they function now, the introduction of managers was a recent addition. It probably didn't change how past engineers operate…

It was common in early Google as well...I knew someone fairly high up that used to leave drive-by code reviews for people on other teams. It wasn't done much by the time I joined in 2009, and became explicitly taboo by 2010 or so. I think it's actually because when you're in a young fast-growing company, the success of the company is literally everyone's responsibility. You have both the means (because the company ha…

Even at a larger size, though, it can still work – but the need for effective communication and diplomacy is even greater. You also want to be sensitive that you probably do not have all the context you might need when reviewing another project's code, so humility is important. When I do this, it's usually in the form of clarifying questions, suggestions, or requests.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#420

Post by StrangeOrange »

gerbal wrote: post #403

How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man? There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'. If a white guy behaves the same way no one thinks twice about it. To me it sounds like management at Github is uncomfortable with her perspectives. We often see women and minorities censured for not trying to conform to the model of a de…

This. Exactly this.

And half the comments I've read in this thread just add weight to the idea that the tech world is ruled by bigots who don't even know they're bigots.

I see the words "Devil's Advocate" come up a lot when the person in question is not an average white man.

I'm a straight white man, and some people in here make me really hate straight white men.

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