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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

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Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#461

Post by hasenj »

hiyou102 wrote: post #450
hasenj wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 toleran…

This is easily disprovable. See for example this post about being fired from the exact same company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158913 Despite the post having less details,there is less negativity and uncertainty. For reference as to why that might be, refer to the post you are responding to.

Really? "Look, someone else wrote a post about leaving github and it wasn't received as negatively! It must because one was a white male and the other was transgender."

No. How about, the tone of the post is completely different?

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#462

Post by eddieroger »

readittwice wrote: post #408
ninjaboy2 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Being in a mentor role does not mean you have to right to mentor. Exactly. For what we know, the junior could have actively complained to the manager (wrongly or rightly) about her mentoring. OTOH the junior dev might have appreciated it. We can't say for sure. Some people (myself included) prefer to get a general direction and then later to come back for further questions. Too much information in a short amount of…

> Some people (myself included) prefer to get a general direction and then later to come back for further questions. Too much information in a short amount of time can be overwhelming, I need some time to absorb and read it up in the internet. A few keywords might be good enough to get someone going and figure it out themselves.

I'm in a senior role on my team, and this is exactly how I'd describe the support I try to give my teammates when they ask (and hopefully, they'd agree). Unless someone is going down the significantly wrong path, I'll generally leave them alone until they ask for assistance. Sometimes, they ask for a direction, sometimes they ask for the type of "pair programming" described in the post (screensharing via video calls), but how much or little they get is up to them, and they drive.

In this case, you're right that we don't know the context of the story from the more junior developer's perspective, and it's completely plausible that they weren't happy with the mentorship they were receiving, but also didn't feel comfortable giving that feedback themselves, all of which is a shame.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#463

Post by onli »

hiyou102 wrote: post #450
hasenj wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 toleran…

This is easily disprovable. See for example this post about being fired from the exact same company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158913 Despite the post having less details,there is less negativity and uncertainty. For reference as to why that might be, refer to the post you are responding to.

Context matters. Someone who opens https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 (read the tweets that she references, it is ridiculous to be upset about them) should not be surprised not to be welcomed by people doing actual work. And having his texts interpreted accordingly.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#464

Post by Chris2048 »

myko wrote: post #79
azinman2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The maintainers instant reply was super flippant and worthy of retort. Never really wanted to use opal before, but if this is who is behind it...

Wow. That particular maintainer is really off the deep end - here is their writeup on the incident (which is pretty fucked up reading IMO): http://meh.schizofreni.co/random/lulz/2016/01/08/tales-from-...

The only fucked up thing I see is use of the word "faggot" (and possibly "cuck"), what else?

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#465

Post by hiyou102 »

hasenj wrote: post #461
hiyou102 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is easily disprovable. See for example this post about being fired from the exact same company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158913 Despite the post having less details,there is less negativity and uncertainty. For reference as to why that might be, refer to the post you are responding to.

Really? "Look, someone else wrote a post about leaving github and it wasn't received as negatively! It must because one was a white male and the other was transgender." No. How about, the tone of the post is completely different?

One Github issue is not sufficient to gain a understanding of what it would be like work with someone. Any blanks that are being filled in here are being done by yours and others baises.This a proven effect in other cases: https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/are-succes...

So many devils advocates in this thread you'd think Github hired his law firm

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#467

Post by Chris2048 »

jwr wrote: post #62
Dirlewanger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She went on a tirade against an Opal contributor a couple years back: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

A "tirade"? I read her statements in that thread. I'd say they were very measured.

A dev contributes to open-source, also personally expresses (in an entirely different context) views about Trans that she dislikes. Demands the dev be forcibly removed from the project, invites others into thread to say how terrible it is one of the developers has the wrong political views. Suggests (prescribes) this will put people off contributing, but while borderline threatening to spread the news of said dev's views in order to make sure this happens.

She doesn't care about said project, but to promote the idea of political cleansing in open source.

Meh's comments, while to course, are correct in the sentiment that she isn't really contributing anything, but is instead attacking. HOWEVER, he should of said "because you won't" rather than "can't", since that's just an unjustified attack on her competence as a dev.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#468

Post by jancsika »

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…

> Translation: Your mentee is complaining about you being a huge asshole.

That seems too harsh a conclusion given the scant evidence provided.

That said, this part stood out to me as potentially troubling:

> mentoring is an essential part of being a senior engineer, and this teammate seemed to be benefiting from it

Learning by way of a mentorship is an essential part of being a junior engineer. That doesn't imply that all senior engineers must mentor junior engineers. And it definitely does not require or even suggest that senior engineers should seek out junior engineers for potential mentorship (nor even make casual offers for informal mentorship for that matter).

Further, the language the author uses in the description is vague as to who requested the mentorship in the first place. It's also vague as to whether the company actually approved or encouraged such a formal mentorship.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#469

Post by Chris2048 »

rmc wrote: post #385
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.

> mentions meritocracy as an evil, not a goal to strive for? I think the main objection to "meritocracy" is that often there is no real meritocracy, and people use it as a way to ignore claims that the place isn't a meritocracy. Organisation: We're a meritocracy! Member: I'm getting unfairly treated based on race/gender/etc. Org: That's impossible, we're a meritocracy!

That's "the false premise of meritocracy", not "meritocracy"; It's an important distinction that should be made. There is nothing wrong with democracy, even if some people don't like the word anymore due to it's widespread misuse.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#470

Post by Chris2048 »

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.

If you accuse a post of being hateful, back them up.

Unsubstantiated, folk-lorish Ad-homs like "tells a lot more about yourself" shouldn't be made.

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