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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

where.coraline.codes

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Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#451

Post by specialist »

dragonwriter wrote: post #202
specialist wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Continuing to quibble... She said what was wrong, but did not say what was right. Explicitly. To me, it's an example of "Guess what I'm thinking!" Or more famously, that UI designer who said "Don't make me think!" Granted, a "data scientist" should already know how to survey, be open to constructive criticism. I personally would have no idea how to ask the question. Though I'm not a data scientist, I can use go…

> She said what was wrong, but did not say what was right. Explicitly. She explicitly stated both that including “transgender” as a gender identity option was wrong, and that the right way was to ask about transgender status as a seperate question.

Then I apologize for being a dullard.

Belated personal story. I know multiple transgendered persons (friends, family, at work). So I'm at least partially familiar with the issues. Many of my friends work on LBGTQ policy issues, to which I've given money. I've even marched in our local Gay Pride parade.

My bestie recently told me she's now dating a transman. I looked askance. I had never heard that term before. I wondered if she meant transvestite, transgender, transexual... She got upset. She thought I was judging.

Nope. I just didn't know what transman meant. Oh. She explained and everything was cool again.

Though this is not my cause, I am here to help. I'm an ally for equal rights, justice, responsibility, and so forth.

Just tell me what words you want me to use.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#452

Post by [deleted] »

kevintb wrote: post #243

> "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender" I have low expectations for tech companies understanding these kind of issues, but to separate _transgender_ as an option completely misses the point of what "transgender" actually means.

[deleted]

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#453

Post by tmnvix »

kevintb wrote: post #243

> "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender" I have low expectations for tech companies understanding these kind of issues, but to separate _transgender_ as an option completely misses the point of what "transgender" actually means.

My dictionary's definition:

transgender: adjective denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender.

Though I agree that it clearly isn't a gender, it does seem like a sensible option to be included in a survey when asking about gender. Maybe they should have kept the options but rephrased the question?

Edit: On second thought, I get it; you can be transgender and identify as male or female.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#454

Post by csdreamer7 »

nojvek wrote: post #270
specialist wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hi cholantesh! Just saw your new survey. Looks great! Hey, have you seen the HRC's recommendations for surveying gender? I've used their guidelines in the past. Very helpful! http://www.hrc.org/resources/collecting-transgender-inclusiv... TLDR: They suggest splitting the gender question into two parts. As you know, this is a super important issue for me. Progress! Exciting! If you're busy, I'll make a pull request.…

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? Feedback was straightforward. I didn't see any aggressive words.

I disagree; mostly because of this last part.

> you need to explicitly ask that question.

This last part feels like a demand and is too forceful. Suggestion is more persuasive then demands. I agree with you the comment you replied too is a little too sugarcoated for my taste, but the basic structure seems good, suggesting an authoritative source to back up your concern is a good idea. Especially when you are commenting on something (the data scientist may not have known about her LGBT work) outside your field to someone who is in the field (making a survey).

With that said, I get like this too when I am deep in coding. This may not be an issue for technical topics where it can be proved that x would cause a crash. But, I would handle this differently for non-tech issues that are subjective.

But... the data scientist should have been used to this at a company full of programmers. Maybe she was the first to actually comment on the content of the work.

Still, the data scientist overreacted and should have handled it better. Assuming this is more or less the details we need to know.

> I find is that in some companies people are just scared of each other that they fail to communicate.

Keep in mind OP said she got hundreds of comments on her earlier work from all over the company. Maybe instead the female data scientist was very defensive because she got similar treatment in the past.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#455

Post by thehardsphere »

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…

I think if this were a man, the HN reaction would actually be far more negative.

As it stands right now, the discussion here is basically a debate over whether or not Coraline was discriminated against in some way, or if she was fired for some legitimate reason. Even if you dispute the facts of this case, there's a potential larger issue about inclusivity and discrimination in tech there that is worth talking about at least somewhat, regardless of what you think of it.

If Coraline were a man, then all that entire larger issue goes away and this post would be nothing more than a man whining about being fired. There's nothing much worth discussing about a man being fired. If anything, I'd expect that they would be censured for acting in an unseemly way for a man.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#456

Post by GlqDsLL1HLFLElr »

azinman2 wrote: post #368
TheLilHipster wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it's only brass if you don't get "lulz" humor/culture.

The blog post only further confirms what a self-righteous jerk ‘meh’ is... it’s clearly not a joke but some strange mini-achievement in “freedom” and upsetting the “cucks” (meanwhile getting an F in human decency).

I can confirm that blog post is a joke, going lengths to have a "safe" version of it (which is actually funnier than the original) should have been a good tell.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#457

Post by zimpenfish »

TaizWeb wrote: post #330

>tell data scientist their poll is flawed because it only includes "transgender" instead of "transgender female" and that makes them transphobic. >data scientist is upset and tells management. >management tells you to stop being a jerk. >proceed to be toxic in all your PRs and on Slack. >management tells you to stop being a jerk. >they put you under review. >start getting emotional and say you have emotional trauma.…

Where does it mention transphobic?

> "'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."

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#458

Post by mvindahl »

kybernetikos wrote: post #240
eqdw wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without concrete and public metrics of "merit", it becomes a buzzword for reinforcing the biases (conscious or not) of the evaluators. I wish we could have discussions like this in the wider community without people going knee-jerk against the idea of it, itself. I'd be willing to accept that a lot of companies here are nepotistic. I'd even be willing to accept that they cloak their nepotism in the rhetoric of meri…

> Don't you want the best people, at least in principle? Maybe not. In many situations you want the best team, and the best team is not necessarily the team that has the most top flight individual contributors. The best teams I've been on seem stronger than the sum of their individual members, and I've definitely been on teams I rate less highly that had some very strong individual contributors. Along these lines, I…

The best person form the job is the person who will make the team perform at its best. Which in IT would probably mean a technically savvy, creative person with good social skills and some domain knowledge. Those would be the merits upon which to build our meritocracy.

So you can be a productive coder or a good presenter or whatever but by themselves, these are incomplete metrics. If you happen to also be an a*hole, you are probably an overall liability.

An even more useless metric, though, is your specific flavour of sexuality or your skin colour. None of these count as qualifications in any sense, and if management if measuring these things I'd be wary of their sense of judgement.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#459

Post by revmoo »

dang wrote: post #201
Diamons wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main takeaway should be a company has one obligation to you: a job to do and money to be paid. You as an adult bring your services to fix the problem in exchange for said compensation. Personal tesponbility is everything and Im glad she was fired. Individuals like her should be fired and removed from any workplace where they act as a menace to their coworkers.

> Im glad she was fired. Individuals like her should be fired You can't comment like this here regardless of how strongly you feel or how wrong you think someone else is. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14704439 . Edit: since you've done this repeatedly and we warned you before, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reas…

This is ridiculous. If you're not going to allow dissenting opinions then you shouldn't be hosting discussions like this at all.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#460

Post by JCharante »

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.

I read it and got the exact same vibe that LordHumungous and hasenj got.
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