Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–56 of 56 posts

Re: The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside

#51

Post by ViktorRay »

zackmorris wrote: post #50
knighthack wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of that was due to the bro culture of the software business, part of it was that I receded to support my husband in a partnership where he was effectively the lesser partner, and part of it was that women, especially in tech, often seem to disappear when the story gets told. Why is sexism being conflated with cutthroat business decisions? She and her husband didn't make the cut - doesn't mean that she was spec…

I just want to clarify that I was the one who said "privilege of being a white middle class male", not her. There's a lot of room for misinterpretation in long articles and comments, and risk of ragebaiting, as you pointed out. But the reason I came down hard on the parent commenter is that after reading the whole article, they basically said that her being a woman had nothing to do with her treatment. I've heard tha…

But maybe the parent commentator was right. Maybe her treatment was not the result of her being a woman.

Someone might say something happened in their life because of sexism but that doesn’t mean it’s “veiled sexism” to disagree. We should be able to disagree or be critical with someone’s assertions on anything.

The stuff about politics you bring up like the election is not relevant to this. It’s essentially rage bait that would essentially derail the thread when you bring up stuff like that.

You also never actually addressed the specific things that people in the thread said. The fact that her husband’s contributions were also mostly ignored and that we mainly know him just as a cofounder. Or the fact that the work she did was in marketing and people generally don’t know the names of marketers.

“ What the parent may not realize is that by writing off her story so dismissively, they made her point. It's clear for the rest of us to see.”

When you say things like this you imply that disagreeing with someone when they say something happened to them because of an “ism” then you are automatically being “ist”. That’s silly. Sometimes people are right. Sometimes people are wrong. You should be able to disagree with people when you think they’re wrong. About this or anything else. Without automatically being labeled as an “ist” or promoting a veiled “ism.”

Re: The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside

#52

Post by nox101 »

ofrzeta wrote: post #36
nox101 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, how many marketing people can you name from Hollywood? Me, zero. But you can probably name some of the people who created the movie (actors, directors, producers, musicians, etc....)

I don't know many producers, maybe with the exception of the Broccoli family who are producing James Bond :) I know some directors of photography, though, because their work is defines an aesthetic characteristic of movies. However I was/am a film buzz for a long time and don't think the layman will know any directors of photography. Related it's also interesting that in German the directory of photography is only ca…

I knew of Jerry Bruckheimer, Joel Silver, and Kathleen Kennedy. They were realtively famous in the past. Not sure if there are any famous producers now

Re: The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside

#53

Post by fennecbutt »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #49
stubish wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She makes no claim about being wiped 'because she's a woman'. Her anecdote is that another woman 'essentially said that the only other woman during her tenure there was an office manager'. She is citing, with video evidence, a case where her omission seemed an almost deliberate wipe, rather than an accidental or deliberate omission.

> I’m also proud of the work I did while recognizing that my biggest contributions to Valve’s business went largely unnoticed and unrecognized within the industry. Part of that was due to the bro culture of the software business, part of it was that I receded to support my husband in a partnership where he was effectively the lesser partner, and part of it was that women, especially in tech, often seem to disappear w…

Don't worry dude, some of us totally get you. There's defo bias in parts of the industry, but to cry wolf about it and use it as a crutch is lame for her to do.

If there was more evidence to support her point then sure, but otherwise it's the protected class effect kicking in; she can be called out and her claims can be called out, just as we would call out any man. To give someone concessions for race, gender, sexuality, etc is actually playing into biases, not helping dissolve them.

As a gay dev, I'd hate it if I was treated different. Diversity hires...I'd be horrified if I was ever hired over someone better than me because "eh good enough, plus he hits our x quota". Granted, I haven't ever seen a company with an lgbt quota, only race and sex.

Re: The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside

#54

Post by Hikikomori »

gibbetsandcrows wrote: post #33
Dwedit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gabe Newell was on the Windows 1.0 team.

An Easter egg of his was recently found in an old Windows 1.0 file. https://www.techradar.com/news/almost-37-years-after-its-lau...

Doesn't say that Gaben did it?

Re: The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside

#55

Post by Hikikomori »

zackmorris wrote: post #43
rPlayer6554 wrote: post #31

The author has the conclusion that she was wiped from the history books because she's a woman. But her husband worked almost the exact same amount (if not more - because he was always a full time employee.) and he got equally erased from the history books. Competitive environments can be cutthroat and she and her husband let Gabe become the face of the company because they left.

Yours is an off-color take that does a disservice to the HN readership. I'm saddened that it's currently the top comment. Here's what I saw: As the months went on and Valve's costs continued to escalate, it became clear that Mike and I were maxing out on our financial commitment. Rather than renegotiate the contract with Sierra, Gabe, who had started at Microsoft much earlier than Mike and me, began funding the ongoi…

The Amazon deal was never signed. But it seems like it formed the foundation of what became Steam.

Re: The Early Days of Valve from a Woman Inside

#56

Post by zackmorris »

ViktorRay wrote: post #51
zackmorris wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to clarify that I was the one who said "privilege of being a white middle class male", not her. There's a lot of room for misinterpretation in long articles and comments, and risk of ragebaiting, as you pointed out. But the reason I came down hard on the parent commenter is that after reading the whole article, they basically said that her being a woman had nothing to do with her treatment. I've heard tha…

But maybe the parent commentator was right. Maybe her treatment was not the result of her being a woman. Someone might say something happened in their life because of sexism but that doesn’t mean it’s “veiled sexism” to disagree. We should be able to disagree or be critical with someone’s assertions on anything. The stuff about politics you bring up like the election is not relevant to this. It’s essentially rage bai…

I've been trying to understand why I got triggered by the comment(s). I was in college in the 90s and it was very similar to the movie PCU:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110759/

Back then, sexism was blatant and rampant. The ratio of men to women in my engineering classes was roughly 30:1. It was almost unheard of for women to reach prominent positions in tech or any other male-dominated field for that matter. Yet we all had a sense that sexism and racism were finally on the verge of becoming a thing of the past.

Fast forward 30 years and I can't believe what's tolerated today, especially in politics:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/stat...

On a personal level, bigotry may be lower today than in the 90s. But on the national stage it remains as polarizing as ever.

The saddest part about that for me is that it's creating division that was almost healed. Many women feel threatened after the Roe v. Wade rollback and countless other affronts, so masculinity is often portrayed as toxic. Then men, many of whom are struggling and unheard under patriarchy as well, feel like they are being lumped in with chauvinists and turn towards the Andrew Tates and Jordan Petersons and Joe Rogans of the world for validation. Which feeds their egos in ways that many women find insulting, creating a vicious cycle.

So when I see comments that being a woman has nothing to do with it, I think that sentiment feeds into the division. Whether it's true or not is beside the point, what matters is the intentional avoidance of empathy.

Unfortunately objective takes are given more credibility in these times than the subjective ones that I believe hold the insights. So even though this is a hill I'm dying on, there's no way for me to really win the debate. Which to me is the very essence of what the Harris/Trump presidential race is getting at.

Post reply on HN