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

GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#571

Post by proc0 »

anotherc wrote: post #432
proc0 wrote: post #379

I would expect more from a tech company that is supposed to be by programmers for programmers. Programmers are abstract thinkers, and it's disgusting to see them lower themselves and adopt the semantics and memes of obvious cultural constructs like race. What does it even mean to be "white"? Who exactly are they talking about and what is it about this group of people that is so bad? There's no need to bring in this g…

> Programmers are abstract thinkers, and it's disgusting to see them lower themselves and adopt the semantics and memes of obvious cultural constructs like race. You have to be joking. This is sarcasm, right?

Nope. But I don't know what you're getting at.

As a programmer, I just care that you write good code. In fact, I might as well be interacting with your mind across the internet, and don't even have to look at you in the face, and we will be collaborating just fine.

Why does it matter for someone who deals with 0's and 1's what the color of the skin of your coworker is? Once again, if you're a programmer and you're swimming in abstractions and code, my coworker might as well be a robot, and I could give two shits.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#572

Post by pkinsky »

beatpanda wrote: post #378
iza wrote: post #15

> "We’re trying to build a new kind of enterprise company where the playbooks of old won’t always work" By replacing flat meritocracy and remote work with traditional top-down management? > "don't think we'll succeed teaching white, male middle managers empathy and compassion anytime soon, so let's limit their scope of damage" So the technical director and member of the social-impact team is a blatant racist.

How is it 2016 and an audience mostly based in California still needs a remedial critical race theory class

What falsifiable predictions does critical race theory make?

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#573

Post by 13thLetter »

knn wrote: post #525
blueflow wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my view, race seems arbitrary. You could also split people into blue-eyed and brown-eyed or something. It still doesn't say anything about that person. Its just that many normal persons act like its a huge difference.

Many people would agree with you that race doesn't say that much about a person. However, it's quite naive to argue that racial issues are not a part of every day life. We live in a world built on racial divides and conflicts. It's obviously venerable to strive towards a non-racist society, but to do so one needs to understand the issues at hand.

Sure, but that emphatically does not mean abandoning principles of merit and equality and letting bullies and shakedown artists run your companies, as Github and too many others are doing.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#574

Post by Lazare »

proc0 wrote: post #379

I would expect more from a tech company that is supposed to be by programmers for programmers. Programmers are abstract thinkers, and it's disgusting to see them lower themselves and adopt the semantics and memes of obvious cultural constructs like race. What does it even mean to be "white"? Who exactly are they talking about and what is it about this group of people that is so bad? There's no need to bring in this g…

> People CANNOT be categorized based on skin color at all, AT ALL.

People are categorized in that manner every day. Perhaps you're trying to say that's regrettable and inaccurate?

> To identify even yourself as belonging to a distinct "color" is just a fabrication of American culture

Certainly, but it's a culture which still exists. It doesn't go away just because you announce that it's illogical and unfortunate. I think you may be falling prey to the is-ought problem[1].

(To be clear, I'm not expressing a view on Github's actions, but I think it's somewhat naive to suggest that there aren't real problems out there.)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#575

Post by mikegioia »

tehbeard wrote: post #318
mikegioia wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can, avoid Bitbucket. We used them for a few years and it just wasn't good, through and through. I've been really impressed with Gitlab and we use that as a backup right now but I really think I'll be moving all of our repos over to them. Plus, you can even host your own Gitlab server.

Why avoid Bitbucket? We switched to it from github at work and haven't encountered any major issues.

For us it was a combination of things. It was never really service/uptime related, but I can't count the number of in-app Javascript errors or weird UI decisions they made. The issues were just not good enough and the web pages were continually slow/bloated to load.

Every time I'd open a support ticket I felt like I was a second-class citizen or that the issue I raised wasn't important to them. Continual, multiple years or bad support from them. I get that we were paying $25/mo but I just couldn't deal with it anymore.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#576

Post by pas »

rotw wrote: post #481
audessuscest wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like they trade "structure based purely on meritocracy" by "promote diversity". I don't see how this can go well. Meritocracy is important among dev and open source. And they don't care about political diversity. I can only imagine this new "culture of fear" where you can't hire white people (even woman). Skills and experiences should be the only way to choose who you hire, not race or gender. Anyway, looks lik…

The entire point of diversity initiatives is that the meritocracy in theory doest not translate into a meritocracy in practice, due to unconscious bias: https://library.gv.com/unconscious-bias-at-work-22e698e9b2d#... as well as other factors. You're totally right that skills and experiences should be the only way to choose, but right now, tech firms in this society are fundamentally incapable of actually implementing…

What if there are other ways to overcome those biases other than stuffing the office full of people from every kind of (oppressed) minority?

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#577

Post by justinclift »

jdbernard wrote: post #559
justinclift wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to point out... the US is the western only country on the planet which cares, or even mentions, people's skin colour/race AT ALL. Literally every other western country calls people... people. A man is "a man" not "a green/blue/pink/red/etc man". A women is "a women" not "a green/blue/pink/red/etc woman". Continuously giving skin colour qualifiers in descriptions of people... is (to non-US people) bizarre, and se…

You haven't been paying much attention then. Especially with all of the refugees coming into Europe, there is absolutely racism and discrimination based on race. There is also a long history of racism in Australia towards the indigenous population, and more recently towards immigrants. Pretty much everywhere you have two different cultures meeting you have racism. The modern western cultures are no exception.

That's not at all what I said. I'm saying the US is the only country which prefaces descriptions of people with info about their skin colour. It seems (to someone not from the US) a truly strange cultural behaviour.

[note - edited for clarity]

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#578

Post by ElComradio »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #523
ElComradio wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you lose all your chips at the "black table" and I lose mine at the "white table", as we cry over our beers it would be ridiculous for you to assert that I should feel privileged compared to you when our outcomes have turned out to be identical.

If we look around the bar, and see that the vast majority of people crying over the beers are black, would it be a reasonable thing for me to assert that the white folk that are here (you included) must've gotten extra unlucky? I think that's a reasonable thing to assert. That's what privilege is: the number of times you can fuck up (self-inflicted bad things) or be unlucky (externally inflicted bad things) before yo…

As a fellow loser at the bar, how is the knowledge that I am extra unlucky supposed to make me feel towards you? Am I supposed to consider myself fortunate that I had a greater chance at winning even as we both sit there with no chips? Am I supposed to buy you a beer because you had less of a chance?

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#579

Post by proc0 »

mikerichards wrote: post #569
proc0 wrote: post #379

I would expect more from a tech company that is supposed to be by programmers for programmers. Programmers are abstract thinkers, and it's disgusting to see them lower themselves and adopt the semantics and memes of obvious cultural constructs like race. What does it even mean to be "white"? Who exactly are they talking about and what is it about this group of people that is so bad? There's no need to bring in this g…

American culture is such a bummer when it comes to how it shoves people into categories. We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about race, and NOT MENTION IT. There is simply no excuse at all to mention it. People CANNOT be categorized based on skin color at all, AT ALL. People cannot be categorized based on culture either. Virtually everyone is multi-ethnic and multi-racial at some level. To identify eve…

Yes, I'm mostly a liberal, but I agree that it fails completely to see certain truths if the truth even remotely violate political correctness.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#580

Post by 13thLetter »

reitanqild wrote: post #478
codyps wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was interested in your comparison in #1, wrt "HN community overreacted". I've been searching through old HN stories about Eich, but can't seem to find any where the comments generally supported firing him due to supporting Prop 8 (banning gay marriage). Is there a particular thread you had in mind? Or are you stating the overreaction was being angry that he might have been fired over that support?

I haven't bookmarked those threads but I'm certain I saw a lot of comments here saying things along the lines of "the right to free speak only protects you against the government", strongly implying that what happened to him was fair game because it wasn't the government who staged it.

I don't recall hearing that much in the context of Eich, but it certainly is a common go-to argument more recently among those who want to see people punished for having incorrect political views. It came up a lot when Strangeloop kicked out Curtis Yarvin, for example.
Post reply on HN