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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

#681

Post by ryan-allen »

cooper12 wrote: post #601
striking wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wasn't meant to be serious but to point out how absurd it is how seriously everyone here is taking themselves and viewing everything as a personal affront or a call to war. They see this as a war with "SJWs" and "PC police". You're right that I could have written a more serious reply, but when HN goes to shit the best thing to do is shitpost :).

I guess you missed the bit where Github is both promoting university campus diversity and looking to engage in enterprise sales.

The two things are so far from compatible it boggles the mind. How can they keep a straight face? I have no idea.

Business ultimately is about making money, politics is brought in to it as late stage PR.

Founders of their own company being ousted is nothing short of combative. Are you 'allowed' to work for Github if you support Donald Trump? It's OK to have ideas and opinions as long as they're the 'right' ideas.

This whole diversity crap is so hypocritical it makes me sick, and I can't call it how I see it, and that is a power play, without being chided like I'm a bloody kid?

Yeah, real diverse...

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

#682

Post by lerpa »

wildmusings wrote: post #462
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…

I think we can both acknowledge race, which often goes hand-in-hand with different cultures, and treat people as individual human beings. You can make all sorts of statistical inferences based on race, but they're not really useful when you're dealing with individual people. There's so much individual variation, that a judgment based on race is silly. Let's treat people as individuals, not as faceless members of some…

Best comment here.

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

#683

Post by EvanPlaice »

argonaut wrote: post #635
EvanPlaice wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if somebody self identifies as trans-racial. All jokes aside, some white people grow up dirt poor in predominantly black neighborhoods and identify more with black Anerican culture then their own skin color. Do they get better access to schools, scholarships, government jobs, funding for small businesses? Etc... What about the black kid who grew up in the suburbs with a stable family and all whote friends. Should…

The problem is that white kid could dress up in a suit and tie, go into an interview, and be totally free of racial judgment (also dropping any obvious mannerisms). A black man can do that, including dropping any mannerisms, but they will still be black.

Under most circumstances you're right and that's sad.

So what's the alternative? Systematically killing off all the old white guys who still cling to their anachronistic perceptions? Their children are still going to inherit their wealth and the 1% will continue to be the 1%.

Hand the power over to militant feminists who happen to be as -- if not more -- biased based on race and/or gender? IMHO, that's just trading one class of terrible people for another.

Tech is a the perfect place to foster a diverse working environment. I wish there were more people from varied backgrounds rather then 50/50 white/asian males in development and mostly white women and men in design.

But I don't know how to rewind the clock 10-15 years and teach inner city kids that all of their idols are frauds and that being a computer is the path to being a real success in life.

The kids I knew from the inner city who were into computers and tech didn't start in college. They got deeply involved in tech in their teens partly to stay out of trouble and fell in love with learning and creating things.

My own path wasn't much different except I grew up in thr suburbs and had more resources. I had my own bad influences to get away from and I didn't need to go to school to be taught what I was happy to learn on my own.

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

#684

Post by raquo »

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…

No thanks.

I'll talk about race the same way I talk about eye color.

I'll talk about culture the same way I talk about TV preferences.

Without hysteria.

Fuck racists.

Fuck spineless "don't you dare mention race" bullshit.

Both are equally cowardly.

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

#685

Post by azth »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #293
obelisk_ wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what are the alternatives? Hosted: Bitbucket, GitLab Self-hosted: GitLab, Gogs None of these come close to GitHub in my experience.

We've been using self-hosted Phabricator at work for building nuclear reactor design software and it has been pretty darn amazing. It's quite easy to get going and has been very low-maintenance. http://phabricator.org/

Bentley?

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

#686

Post by lightlyused »

lightlyused wrote: post #296
briholt wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of anti-white, anti-male racism is poisoning Silicon Valley. Honest, meritocratic people can't idly stand by while self-serving idiot racists take over. I'm now cancelling my GitHub account and moving to BitBucket.

The above comment makes me like github more.

I see the brogrammers don't like the truth.

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

#687

Post by Lazare »

proc0 wrote: post #598
Lazare wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Everything you said is factually correct. Race is a social construct with just as much meaning as society chooses to give it, which ideally should be none, because it's inherently nonsensical.

The problem is, society chooses to give it a significant amount of meaning.

> 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".

Yes, but they're generally treated by society as "black". And since race is construct rather than a scientific or genetic reality, that's all that really matters.

Racial categories ought not to matter, but the cold truth is they do.

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

#688

Post by imfine-ok »

jhou2 wrote: post #340

This articl was a bit of a hit job. GitHub is changing as revenue and staff increase. That makes sense. There are always growing pains. A flat, so-called meritocratic structure only works in a few situations. GitHub makes the majority of its revenue from enterprise. It only makes sense to mirror the structure of your most valued customers. A VP of important corporate enterprise customer expects to talk to another VP…

This has nothing to do with growth or even sexism/racism. This is a political takeover and shakedown of a valueable company. Moving out of a meritocracy to a hierarchy like this is to move away from performance based influence to political based influence.

The SJWs behind this just want money and they are importing their people into the company to increase their control. The use of discrimination is part of the mechanism to increase their numbers. Once they get a lot of people below them, they'll demand larger and larger paychecks and stock options. That's it, it's a fairly simple plan. Find a valuable company and raid it. All this inclusion/sexism talk is just dressing. Even githubs ceo's motivation is pretty clear. If he grows the org, he'll argue that he deserves more money because he's managing more people. Then when he exits he can position himself as the manager of a much larger org of thousands instead of this insanely profitable 70 person org.

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

#689

Post by pkinsky »

dracht wrote: post #616
pkinsky wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always fun and games: I'm Assyrian (a middle eastern, ethnically Christian ethnicity). When the first news reports of ISIS ethnically cleansing Assyrians in areas under their control came out, prominent members of social justice tumblr started joking about it being 'karma' because white-passing Christian-ish people were on the receiving end of genocide.

Very progressive indeed. These kinds of expressions show their veil is thin and their agenda nefarious.

Personally I think it's just a consequence of overly simple models of the world, not something more nefarious.

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

#690

Post by rednerrus »

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…

Isn't the problem that the majority of the pool of qualified applicants is mostly white/Asian males. Hiring initiatives aren't going to fix the pipeline problem.

If you work at a truly diverse tech company you can assume discriminatory hiring practices are in order.

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