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

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

#591

Post by douche »

justinclift wrote: post #577
jdbernard wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

I dunno if Europe is really recent, or just a bigger problem now. My experience of Berlin circa 2009 was that the natives were as racist towards Turkish immigrants as my hillbilly folk back in the states were towards Mexicans. There were also waves around that time about North African and Muslim immigrants in France.

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

#592

Post by susan_hall »

Way back in 2005, Shelley Powers made the argument that a diverse workforce helped a company deal with crisis. The inverse was also implied, that a rejection of diversity was an indicator of some kind of resistance, which would make it difficult to deal with crisis.

Powers wrote:

"When jobs are plentiful, diversification within the job pool is not seen as a threat. In fact, diversification can be seen as a way of extending one’s power over a larger base of people. Book companies see more people buying books, conference organizers hope for more butts in seats, industries have less stressed and healthier, happier workers. However, when jobs are threatened, any change in the status quo will be seen as a risk–even those in an industry populated by people who consider themselves free of bias. It is a natural inclination to want to pull in, like the turtle into its shell, when threatened. Except in the tech industry, this ‘pulling in’ materializes as a resistance to difference."

http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/2005/07/19/when-we-ar...

My interpretation of this is that the problems that Github has had with diversity in its teams was a leading indicator of the wider management problems that we now see.

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

#593

Post by generic_user »

ploxiln wrote: post #557
DanBC wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meritocracy Meritocracy is a lie. Look how broken interview processes are - definitely not meritocratic. Meritocracy is a rationalisation for "I hire people I like so long as they don't say anything idiotic during the interview". You'd get better results from having some kind of bar that candidates have to meet and then just selecting one at random and giving that person the job.

Oh yes. No one is any better than anyone else at anything. In fact, github isn't a better hosted SCM/code review/issue tracking platform than any other. Which makes sense, because none of their employees are better at doing anything than anyone else. It's all just a rationalization, and a lie. Old boys club all the way down. But why didn't the old boys club decide to have microsoft's hosted team foundation server win…

Some have speculated Silicon Vally hood men are the decedents of an ancient extraterrestrial race of reptiles with IQ >= 388. If true no wonder there logic is incomprehensible to the feeble non hood men mind. All the more reason to topple there sinister 'meritocracy'.

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

#594

Post by antjanus »

I think this article pretty much shakes all the confidence in Github and for several (good) reasons:

Whenever a new CEO steps in and starts making big changes like that to the company, it usually results in big changes in the product. Whereas before, the product was controlled by programmers, now it will be controlled by CEO, his inner circle, and VCs that have the most influence. That means a product that's more "money-friendly" toward investors rather than users.

The fact that a lot of high-ranking people left and possibly, many remote developers will stop working there is yet another sign that Github as we know it will change. Maybe for the better, maybe not.

One thing that really disappoints me is killing off the remote option. I've always looked up to Github and would use it as the perfect example of how "remote can work, even at scale". Facebook recently (a year or two) implemented the same thing which is a shame.

I won't address the leadership thing but that last quote in the paragraph summed it up perfectly.

Anyways, from the looks of it, Github will become an enterprise-friendly place with less of a focus on ordinary developers and smaller businesses. This makes me think that there is growing space for a new company to take up that "developer-friendly" social network/code repository.

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

#595

Post by proc0 »

exolymph wrote: post #440
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…

"We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about race, and NOT MENTION IT." We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism.

I agree it may be idealistic, especially because part of the problem is people thinking themselves into a category, and adopting it as an identity. It is however the right direction, because all this "racial" problems are caused by categorization of people in the first place.

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

#596

Post by b6 »

dasil003 wrote: post #549
yulaow wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well tumblerinas says you can't be racist against white because patriarchy. /s No really, just read reddit.com/r/tumblrinaction and realize wtf people are saying these days shielding behind (false)feminist propaganda and some very confused idea of oppression.

Well to be fair, a white man's opinion on racism or sexism is sort of like a Pacific Islander's idea of how cold it is in Siberia. But on the other hand being ignorant does not make you less-than-human which seems to have become a common opinion in the age of Twitter lynch mobs.

> a white man's opinion on racism or sexism is sort of like a Pacific Islander's idea of how cold it is in Siberia

This sentiment is racist and sexist.

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

#597

Post by hartpuff »

dang wrote: post #526
hartpuff wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if he does have an arrest record? Got any other stats instead to conclusively demonstrate his undeniable white magic? Where does a black person with no arrest record fit on your magic powers scale? Oh, never mind, I forgot for a second you're addressing something/someone specific with generalisations that are meaningless to him and have nothing to do with his life or status. Your argument is piss poor; that'…

This comment breaks the HN guidelines, as do several other of the comments you've posted, including in this thread. We ban accounts that do this, and it's the last thing this angry thread needs more of. Kindly reread the HN guidelines and follow them when posting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

The poster I replied to was whining about being downvoted in order to score upvotes ("Please resist commenting about being downvoted."), when in fact their argument was just a bad one. In another post he made a stupid and offensive reference to the Nazis because someone said they were from Germany. So either he was trolling or he's an idiot.

I'm not sure if pointing that out was what violated the guidelines or just the way I did it, but in future, assuming this has not been banned, I'll try to keep my opinion of someone's argument or intellect to myself. Thanks for the heads up.

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

#598

Post by proc0 »

Lazare wrote: post #574
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 t…

Yes, I'm saying it's a wrong categorization, and inaccurate. People inaccurately categorize themselves as well. It would be more accurate to not refer to those categories as race, but as sub-cultures, because then it becomes something that isn't inherent to someone's identity. People of mixed race, for example, half "black", half "white", will often choose to be "black", and identify as such, when in fact, their race is a mix, yet they see themselves as "black". This is clear proof it's all fabricated, but most people can't see this.

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

#599

Post by striking »

cooper12 wrote: post #590

They targeted programmers. Programmers. We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a successful build saying we did. We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun. We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the runtim…

The points you made about programmers aren't invalid, but are taken to an absurd level and also imply the existence of the "other side." I mean, you could have written a feelgood snippet about programming, but I guess a meme is okay too.
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