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Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#51

Post by trhway »

Lammy wrote: post #49
trhway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

definitely a double standard. If a guy was writing all that, nobody would give a damn about what would be qualified in such a case as a whining of such a self-entitled special snowflake. "For the huge tech salary they make me do stupid things!" I remember there was another post of this author, and it was pretty obvious that a guy behaving that way would be immediately and unquestionably labeled "toxic person". I mean…

“— but when a woman shares an experience she disliked she's "whining"!”

you missed my point. The people here seriously discuss the experience shared by a woman when a guy sharing the same experience in the same way would be immediately dismissed as whining.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#52

Post by mikorym »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #21

Reading this made me think why there are so few middle-aged engineers in tech. There have been several theories for this, such as ageism and the field's rapid expansion. Reading this made me wonder if they just get sick of it and leave. Friends had reached out to me. "We need a director for our reliability software engineering stuff". They asked for my help. They wanted to build something good, like the early days of…

I told my manager (yes, it is a generalisation): There are two people in life, those who think you solve problems with technology and those that believe you solve problems with humaneness.

It's funny to me that people think the first options "sounds good". The second option didn't even sound like it was an option at all (to tech people). My silent reaction was along the lines of: "Do you really think I am kidding about the second option?"

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#53

Post by mikorym »

stavros wrote: post #39
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #21

Reading this made me think why there are so few middle-aged engineers in tech. There have been several theories for this, such as ageism and the field's rapid expansion. Reading this made me wonder if they just get sick of it and leave. Friends had reached out to me. "We need a director for our reliability software engineering stuff". They asked for my help. They wanted to build something good, like the early days of…

I can relate, I'm in my late thirties and I hate tech. I love technology , mind you, I hate "tech", the SV culture of "we're changing the world" (when it's very often for the worse) and all the patronizing stuff Rachel describes in the article. Sure, it's not like that in every company, but I don't really care enough to try and find one that's fun. I'd rather hang out with my family, and make outlandish devices and s…

I think the only thing saving me at this point is that I am obsessed with mathematics, not with tech.

I have a lot of other hobbies that save me, but the math vs. tech mindset is very real to me in the workplace context. I am not saying all mathematicians are good, or good people, but it helps to have something more real to hold onto.

I think the same holds for hacker culture. If you are a hacker more than a "techy" (Edit: I think there should be a better word here.), sometimes that distinction is what saves you.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#54

Post by dehrmann »

_bxg1 wrote: post #15
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #10

It's weird how what I consider the same kind of story can seemingly trigger universal empathy or universal derision. If the story is of the oft-posted, "My nightmare dealing with a legacy codebase" or "My nightmare delivering a project for an inept client" flavor, there's no shortage of people jumping in the comments to echo the sentiment and reinforce with their own stories. You change a few details, however, to the…

I generally enjoy Rachel's posts and I never support vitriol, but I read the first couple paragraphs of the original post just now and my impression was, "all of this sounds very normal". I don't know if that holds for the entire thing or not, but I would guess that many of us have gone through much of this stuff and barely even been annoyed by it. So I think maybe that's the difference. Now, whether that comes down…

> after the dev env stuff things got a bit weirder

I kept going, and it wasn't worth the read. The seven paragraphs on the internal tool training were only a bit weird. I could see a company spending an hour or two having new hires answer contrived questions with internal tools.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#55

Post by StavrosK »

mikorym wrote: post #53
stavros wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate, I'm in my late thirties and I hate tech. I love technology , mind you, I hate "tech", the SV culture of "we're changing the world" (when it's very often for the worse) and all the patronizing stuff Rachel describes in the article. Sure, it's not like that in every company, but I don't really care enough to try and find one that's fun. I'd rather hang out with my family, and make outlandish devices and s…

I think the only thing saving me at this point is that I am obsessed with mathematics, not with tech. I have a lot of other hobbies that save me, but the math vs. tech mindset is very real to me in the workplace context. I am not saying all mathematicians are good, or good people, but it helps to have something more real to hold onto. I think the same holds for hacker culture. If you are a hacker more than a "techy"…

I'm much more of a hacker, but that's the problem for me, I'm not doing anything interesting. It's all the same things I've done a billion times before, again and again. I guess my problem is that nobody wants to promote a remote developer who lives in Greece to anything other than code monkey, so eh, these are my choices.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#56

Post by amiantos »

ken wrote: post #36

> What's odd is that at some point, I managed to stumble onto the Google spreadsheet (yep) they were using to track feedback for the process. There were dozens of entries, and they were all gushing about it, like oh it was so good, and so fun! Please do more! > Part of me wonders if this is genuine, like these people actually enjoyed being gaslit 100%, yes. I once took a class from someone who was, let's say, not my…

People forget to address power dynamics. New hires at a company are often grateful to have a job and nervous to make a good first impression. If you immediately ask for feedback from these people they are going to do everything they can to show that they’re (insert all the positive adjectives you can here) so that they get to keep their job and impress anyone who may be watching. On top of that, this effect continues indefinitely for some people, who never stop feeling so grateful for having a job at all (or they’re just that type of person, or they’re playing a game) that they have to be super effusive indefinitely over every little thing. Some people also just like to be butt kissers.

People like Rachel (and myself) who speak up from the very start and never stop speaking up are unfortunately very rare. Employers who can recognize how valuable we are, are luckily not that rare, so long as the truth-teller can maintain their composure.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#57

Post by dehrmann »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #9

To OP: I wish you all the best. I didn't read or comment on the original article. One thing to consider is to not engage with the critics. It's hard, I know -- really I know. An engineering mind set might make you not want to "flip the bozo bit", and to learn as much from your detractors as possible. There may be strategic reasons to get your story out -- e.g. if your co-workers or potential clients are getting a dis…

After reading the first post, my thought was "is this really the hill you want to die on?" Dropping the always-awkward HR onboarding bits and focusing on signs that the system you just signed up to work on might be beyond repair would be more interesting.

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Lammy wrote: post #20
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #10

It's weird how what I consider the same kind of story can seemingly trigger universal empathy or universal derision. If the story is of the oft-posted, "My nightmare dealing with a legacy codebase" or "My nightmare delivering a project for an inept client" flavor, there's no shortage of people jumping in the comments to echo the sentiment and reinforce with their own stories. You change a few details, however, to the…

> What's the secret sauce here? Age? Reputation? Subject matter? Being a woman. The dogpilers are most likely cluing in on her name. https://i.imgur.com/Kowemhz.jpg

[deleted]

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#59

Post by [deleted] »

maest wrote: post #30
Lammy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the secret sauce here? Age? Reputation? Subject matter? Being a woman. The dogpilers are most likely cluing in on her name. https://i.imgur.com/Kowemhz.jpg

Her gender does seem to cause divisiveness, but it affects both sides of the debate. _Anyone_ who criticises anything in articles coming from these domains is downvoted and _all_ arguments are hand waved away on the grounds that they're made because OP is a woman. What this means is that no measured discussion can be had either way and the comments are almost always a disaster (at least here, on HN). It's weird, I do…

[deleted]

Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues

#60

Post by munchbunny »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #28

As a manager/lead who has personally fielded similar concerns from new hires, I understand where Rachel's frustrations come from, specifically with painful onboarding processes. I'm not commenting on Rachel's specific experience, but just in general for those that might feel empowered by her response; I just don't think it's generally appropriate. The process was surely designed with good intentions, perhaps by commi…

While I definitely agree with the "you don't know what you don't know" point, I also think there should be a healthy dose of judgement for what should be considered "mandatory up front" as opposed to "you can learn it when you need it."

My last on-boarding, for example, I thought was approximately the right balance. Bootstrap the most basic credentials, set up MFA that covers 90% of your needs, get your access badge, take care of HR stuff, get walked through the HR stuff you will need to set up in the next month or so (health insurance, etc.), get handed a list of resources you will probably find useful, sit through a talk about company principles, and then you're off to meet your team where the remaining 80% of your on-boarding that is more specific to your division/team/role will happen. Your laptop will be waiting for you at your desk.

I think, for example, being made to walk through exercises querying the company org chart app is superfluous, but handing you a cheat sheet that includes the URL to get to the org chart app is a great idea.

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