601–610 of 1001 posts
Ouch. What a terrible situation. I'm holding out for the other side of the story, but unless you're willing to assume the entire thing is invented this is a major fuckup for GitHub. I think this is a classic problem with companies making the transition from small startup to regular business. Break down the barriers! Flat management! Kill bureaucracy and embrace no-politics DIY organisation! The article reads like an…
Get a freaking life, go sit somewhere else if you see her sitting close to you. And are you a mind-reader? What if she wasn't being "passive aggressive" and just wanted to sit there! Unbelievable how as soon as a woman is involved in tech industry everything blows out of proportion.
Again no one is winning, when a woman "stands for her rights", because when you stand up for your rights that means you have to be standing up against someone, that is a male or a female. If you're standing up against a female well you're not helping the women cause. If it's a male you make the industry look even worse than it is by portraying men as monster bullies who will do and say anything to destroy a "woman". The argument against men can only win if we keep repeating the same fairytales that we keep hearing from the likes of her.
Geeks building an amazing platform like Github are different than the sexy attractive guys that you see on TV. Their passion lies with technology they are not here to gossip or put anyone down intentionally. We simply have better things to focus on than caring about your petty feelings. We're men building shit! Unless what women see men as changes drastically I don't see how men in positions like this would take women as seriously as other men. And by that I mean you can't think the guy must have a six-pack, not be nerdy, talk to you about your feelings when you're down. This is not reality but this is what women are brainwashed to expect from men in order to even truly respect them as human beings. This is mainly the effects of watching TV and other media, etc.
Change your perspective about your enemy (stop calling men your enemies) and see if there is still such huge gender imbalance in tech.
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After reading the article, it became pretty clear to me that whatever manner of "culture" github appears to be permeating internally, she was very far from it. This indicates she was a bad hire from the get-go. Hiring isn't just about talent, it's also about cultural fit, and while it's difficult to know with precision who fits a cultural dynamic, 1) such an issue is bound to arise as a company grows and 2) there had…
Isn't the point she's making that she didn't fit the culture primarily because of her gender? And that any work culture where one's gender matters is a toxic culture in itself? A workplace just filled with happy young male developers is not necessarily a healthy environment, or one that necessarily has a good culture.
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Yeah this section really damaged her credibility for me. She says the guys were "gawking", so they were not saying anything inappropriate, just "staring openly and stupidly". I can picture a professional business environment where gawking would be inappropriate, but I have a hard time picturing that environment with women hula hooping to music. Plus is gawking a crime? Yes, those random employees were being unprofess…
Same. This just makes it look like she's overly sensitive and perceiving things in a very skewed and unfair light.
I'd caution against taking any single event in isolation and without context.
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Can I ask a question about phrasing for a minute? What's inherently wrong with an unwanted advance? Advances have an unknown state until they're responded to. If she had accepted it, it would've been a welcomed advance. There's no way to know that until you walk up to a woman and say "Hey, I think you're pretty cool. Want to go get a drink sometime?" If she says no, that's unwanted, but I don't see how it's inappropr…
As she described it, there were at least 4 problems. 1. Its generally polite to only make advances on unattached people. 2. Going to her home to ask makes it awkward to say no. 3. Not leaving immediately compounded 2. 4. Subsequent behaviour was bad, thus showing bad faith all along.
I'm saying as a general concept, the very phrase "unwanted advance" has lots of implications of sexual misconduct, when it really can just be as simple as a guy asking a girl out, and her saying no. I don't see what's inappropriate there.
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... doing things that might be nice to look at is not an invitation to check them out doing it Then why do any of those things in a non-private setting with reasonable expectation of gawkers being present?
because in an office environment you can at least expect your coworkers to show a bit of respect?
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There does seem to be some truth to what you're suggesting. For whatever reason, there's a propensity for this sort of drama to occur within organizations and at events where Ruby and Ruby on Rails, or users of such technologies, are involved in some way. Off hand, I can think of that controversial presentation at GoGaRuCo a few years ago, the controversy about the diversity of the presenters at the BritRuby conferen…
On the other hand, the ruby community just seems to have more women in it than a lot of other programming communities. Many technical communities simply don't have as many opportunities for these sorts of situations to arise. Other communities may also have less opportunities for truly great pro-women-in-coding projects to emerge. Last year the 3 people who started Rails Girls were honoured with Ruby Hero awards at R…
I think that manifests itself in both positive and negative ways.
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You are not alone. I blame PC, overprotective upbringing and "I am offended by that" trend. As soon as some subject becomes taboo to discuss people lose the understanding why something is bad and start to treat everything related as bad and unacceptable. Reminds me of this: http://i.snag.gy/kdu77.jpg (doesn't matter if experiment was real or not). This is very prominent with sexism and racism—these words are losing t…
>Imagine that black person says: "I am proud to be black!". >Now imagine that the white person says "I am proud to be white". >Now throw away you knee-jercky reaction and think about it. I thought about it, and here's what I found: The different reactions which those two assertions may elicit depend crucially on different shades of meaning of the word "proud" which come into play, depending on the colour of the perso…
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"PC, overprotective upbringing, and I'm offended by that" are not some new horrible plague - they are attempts to let underprivileged voices and opinions survive. When a black person says that they are proud to be black, they are expressing that they feel a certain pride in their race, which exists in this country thus far as a marginalized and underprivileged set of humanity. Saying you are "Proud to be white" kind…
> because white people have crafted a society to let them have more advantage. Thinking of 'white' as a single group of people who are always middle class is a fantastically ignorant thing to do. Does the white kid whose parents are Ukrainian janitors deserves a leg up less than the black kid whose parents are an English professor and a photographer?
Nope, but he's going to get one as a white person who lives in America.
I'm curious about the "hula hoop" issue that Julie is referring to. As a male nerd, I will admit that my social skills are a bit lacking. However: I don't see the problem with staring at women who are putting on a show which is clearly unrelated to their work. If 2 women started making out in the break room, I'm ashamed to say that I might just linger longer than usual.
I don't blame you at all for having those natural reactions. I do too.