Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#471

Post by srbl » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #227

geebee wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part about ping pong and beer vs a more formal workplace is really interesting. I've been reading more about this lately. One story that struck me was about a journalist whose newspaper was purchased by a tech company, and the culture changed. She went from having a private office to working in a huge, open office environment. I'm putting this together from memory, but I remember her talking about how strange it…

Ugh. Why must things always coalesce at one end of an extreme or another? Formality is bad. It is another layer of separation between you and the work. Way back when the original meaning of 'informal' simply meant your employer didn't care about non-work-related stuff like attire -- but its morphed into a culture of its own, destroyed perceptions towards those who really are results-oriented, and sent a lot of people…

I think you should re-examine the notion that toxic workplaces in tech (particularly w/r/t sexism) result from forces entirely unrelated to the behavior of "actual" computer nerds.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#472

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

bethly wrote: post #434

dracht wrote: post #405

>I check the social media profiles of their prominent engineers and search with keywords like "feminism", "women" and "she". See how they talk about women in the field, whether they follow women on Twitter, whether they posted angry anti-Hillary memes. By diversity you (and many others) actually mean "people who are followers of/subservient to my ideology and preferably in a different shade than male and pale". The w…

This comment is an excellent example of why screening for racism is helpful in avoiding working for sexists like this.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#473

Post by scott_karana » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

Baeocystin wrote: post #294

jmcgough wrote: post #52

Non-binary queer woman here. I can usually get a vibe at interviews about the company culture, from the people I talk to (my questions and their general personalities). The only team I've ever felt "normal" at was one where one of the interviewers was gay. My boss there had hired a bunch of really talented queer developers from his network, so half the team was queer. I guess I really liked the personalities of the p…

Aren't you essentially making the argument that you are most comfortable working with people similar to yourself? Which is not a criticism. It's completely understandable. But how, then, do we get all of us (you, me, etc...) to feel comfortable working together, despite any particular differences? (I don't have any easy answers, and I may not even be someone whose opinion means much on this subject. I honestly got so…

You might find this fascinating:

http://ncase.me/polygons/

It's an interactive thought exercise that posits:

Given a mild preference to be near similar people, segregation will occur, unless there's also an explicit desire to be near dissimilar people too.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#474

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:18 PM UTC

csorrell wrote: post #459

bethly wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As David Morrison said, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. "How to signal you are on the side of non-sexists instead of the sexists" is probably a different thread, though: the original poster wanted to know what strategies marginalized developers had found effective and I shared mine. It is unsurprising to me that effective strategies end up rubbing people the wrong way. The reason social media p…

It seems to me that in an attempt to avoid one type of toxic environment, you've gone to another extreme. What you're really screening for is an environment where everyone is similar to yourself.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#475

Post by opo » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

NamTaf wrote: post #344

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open office is more than elbow-to-elbow with headphones on. out of the 8 people who sit in my immediate vicinity, rarely are more than one or two wearing headphones. While it's definitely distracting, there is a type of conversation that occurs which I have never experienced in all my years as a cube farmer. If I want isolation, I can go sit somewhere else or work from home or a cafe. It feels like the default being…

While it's definitely distracting, there is a type of conversation that occurs which I have never experienced in all my years as a cube farmer. If I want isolation, I can go sit somewhere else or work from home or a cafe. It feels like the default being not isolation makes all the difference. You're lucky, I can't. I agree that an open office has its benefits but when you can't treat its downsides with the methods yo…

>...I'm forever distracted and even just the cubicle farm (not fully sealed offices) was a much better environment for me.

Yea for those whose work requires some concentration, the best environment might be where workers have offices with open areas available to them when they want to discuss issues with other team members. It is very sad that companies can't be flexible in this area and instead like to pretend that only upper management needs to concentrate, have a private conversation, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#476

Post by bethly » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

csorrell wrote: post #459

bethly wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As David Morrison said, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. "How to signal you are on the side of non-sexists instead of the sexists" is probably a different thread, though: the original poster wanted to know what strategies marginalized developers had found effective and I shared mine. It is unsurprising to me that effective strategies end up rubbing people the wrong way. The reason social media p…

It seems to me that in an attempt to avoid one type of toxic environment, you've gone to another extreme. What you're really screening for is an environment where everyone is similar to yourself.

In that they don't think women should have to deal with sexism: damn skippy. Existing in an environment where some people think women should have to deal with sexism sucks. You don't get to be inclusive of both sexists and me, because their "beliefs" are about my actual life. My life is significantly better if the dudes around me will step up when sexism happens and deal with it without me having to even be involved. And it doesn't work if they are only objecting because "this will alienate women!"; it needs to be because they, personally, are hurt by sexism and don't want to be around it.

We also exclude programmers who insist on using nothing but GOTOs to structure their code, and sexism is way more annoying for me to work with than GOTO-filled code. You don't really think I should be inclusive of everyone: you just don't think sexism should be allowed to be a deal-breaker. Don't worry, if you want to work at a company that's inclusive of sexists that's way easier to find.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#477

Post by dagt » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

bethly wrote: post #434

dracht wrote: post #405

>I check the social media profiles of their prominent engineers and search with keywords like "feminism", "women" and "she". See how they talk about women in the field, whether they follow women on Twitter, whether they posted angry anti-Hillary memes. By diversity you (and many others) actually mean "people who are followers of/subservient to my ideology and preferably in a different shade than male and pale". The w…

This comment is an excellent example of why screening for racism is helpful in avoiding working for sexists like this.

Why bother addressing your incoherent and contradicting beliefs when you can assassinate the opponent with magic words and finger pointing.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#478

Post by apervez82 » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

Great question. Ask about age diversity. What is the average age of employees. You can ask for a range to give you a better idea. Also ask about maternity and paternity leave - this will tell you how much thought has been put into the care and personal lives of the people that are working for the company.

Ask about their core values, but ask for examples of how employees embody those values in their daily interactions and their work. How are those values reflected in a manager's leadership style? Ask if they have a public harassment policy. Ask if staff has gone through bias and/or harassment training, or has there been any company-wide discussion around such things. Also ask if you'd be able to speak to other women at the company (someone who is not interviewing you) about their experience working at the company. Equally as important, ask to meet other members of the team you will be working with and see how they are with you (especially male colleagues) to get a sense of if they speak to you or treat with you respect. Have a technical conversation with them (outside interview so the power dynamic is equalized). Remember, you are interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you. A good recruiter will treat this like a two way sell, because that's what it is.

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#479

Post by stefmonge » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:39 PM UTC

apervez82 wrote: post #478

Great question. Ask about age diversity. What is the average age of employees. You can ask for a range to give you a better idea. Also ask about maternity and paternity leave - this will tell you how much thought has been put into the care and personal lives of the people that are working for the company. Ask about their core values, but ask for examples of how employees embody those values in their daily interaction…

Great suggestions!

Re: Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments?

#480

Post by dagt » Tue, Jun 06, 2017, 6:44 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #470

dracht wrote: post #405

>I check the social media profiles of their prominent engineers and search with keywords like "feminism", "women" and "she". See how they talk about women in the field, whether they follow women on Twitter, whether they posted angry anti-Hillary memes. By diversity you (and many others) actually mean "people who are followers of/subservient to my ideology and preferably in a different shade than male and pale". The w…

This comment breaks the HN guidelines badly to begin with ("incredibly infantile") but this is beyond the pale: > If my boss is going to be a black woman, she had better publicly condemned theft No one gets to comment like that here, so we've banned this account. Since we warned you before, it shouldn't come as a surprise. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14492191 and marked it off…

Did you deliberately take that out of context so you could impose a ban? It's the exact same sentence OP said but with the subject replaced to highlight its utter ridiculousness. Either all of it's bad or none of it. Remind me which guidelines are being broken by calling infantile behaviour infantile.