71–80 of 145 posts
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This. The point of these policies is that we might be missing some fucking amazing talent and not know just because of historical reasons.
Is something that happened in 1864 or 1964 going to prevent you from identifying a good engineer in front of you?
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This breaks the site guidelines. Could you please do a better job of following them? "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive," and this is a divisive topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Half this post's comments breaks the site guidelines as per that rule, but I will try harder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. The point of these policies is that we might be missing some fucking amazing talent and not know just because of historical reasons.
Is something that happened in 1864 or 1964 going to prevent you from identifying a good engineer in front of you?
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
I've also had a boss in tech that refused to hire women engineers. And another boss that lied to the state department to get someone here on asylum (who coincidentally was the hardest worker I've met) sent back, because "Mexicans should go back to where they came from". Spoiler, the guy wasn't even Mexican, just brown.
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While it is true that many white men come from a background where, for any number of reasons, they are not afforded the same opportunities as, say, a white boy from Cupertino, they are still given opportunities and privilege because they were lucky enough to be born a white man. I know this first-hand because I grew up in a rural farming community in Vermont that was more than 95% white and poverty-stricken. Of cours…
Were you part of the poverty stricken population? My experience has been poor white people are not accepted by our professional community.
Edit: and I can totally affirm that being a white man from a poor family absolutely afforded me more privilege than being a woman or a minority. I can pass as middle class by losing my accent and picking up a nice suit on the cheap.
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I do not know how that looks to other people but to me these rules look both sexist and racist.
Pretending that racism and sexism don't exist and never existed is a nonsensical stance to take and is usually a stance taken by someone who feels that they never have to worry about them. Programs like AA exist because it still is a problem. There are still a lot of people in power with those disgusting ideas. When it was argued that voting rights act was antiquated because racism was no longer a major issue, North…
The community change I cannot take is how the social injustice movement has permeated it. When I joined llvm no one asked or cared about my religion or political view. We all seemed committed to just writing a good compiler framework. This makes me sad.
This comment made me think that someone had disparaged them for their political beliefs or religion, but after reading that doesn't seem to have happened, unless they left it out for some reason, but that would be odd. In fact, if I understand the letter correctly, the straw that broke OP's back was this: > https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/ To which I say... really? Ok, that's too bad that you don't want t…
The community change I cannot take is how the social injustice movement has permeated it. When I joined llvm no one asked or cared about my religion or political view. We all seemed committed to just writing a good compiler framework. This makes me sad.
This comment made me think that someone had disparaged them for their political beliefs or religion, but after reading that doesn't seem to have happened, unless they left it out for some reason, but that would be odd. In fact, if I understand the letter correctly, the straw that broke OP's back was this: > https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/ To which I say... really? Ok, that's too bad that you don't want t…
That's what's in the CoC that's objectionable.
> made me think that someone had disparaged them for their political beliefs
Funny how you do that in a post that disparages him for his political beliefs. But your post is nothing compared with the attacks elsewhere in this thread. Scroll down and read a bit, and you'll see plenty of that happening.
Before you say "but it's not about excluding people", let me remind you about James Damore and Brendan Eich. Those were valuable people, attacked and damaged because of their (in Damore's case PERCEIVED, not real) political beliefs. We all know that the majority of Hacker News supported those actions (although how many supported them because they were afraid to be attacked, and how many actually supported those actions is not clear).
And why do people do this ? Attack others for political reasons ? Most, of course, because they're afraid of SJWs. Because of what happened to Damore and Eich and many others. But SJWs, ostensibly, do this for tolerance of course ! THAT's why they're EXCLUDING people for their political views. For tolerance.
Alaternative view: the SJWs are just socialites looking to exclude others, that's all. Aggressive and ... not interested in the only thing that matters : technically interesting work.
I commend this person for speaking up.
Yet another thread that demonstrates the social justice movement's harmful influence is flagged into invisibility.
Time to cite Fredrik DeBoer I guess:
>“Social justice” is an awkward term for an immensely important project, perhaps the most important project, which is to make the world a more equitable, fair, and compassionate place.
>But the project for social justice has been captured by an elite strata of post-collegiate, digitally-enabled children of privilege, who do not pursue that project as an end, but rather use it as a means with which to compete, socially and professionally, with each other.
>In that use, they value not speech or actions that actually result in a better world, but rather those that result in greater social reward, which in the digital world is obvious and explicit. That means that they prefer engagement that creates a) outrage and b) jokes, rather than engagement that leads to positive change.
>In this disregard for actual political success, they reveal their own privilege, as it’s only the privileged who could ever have so little regard for actual, material progress. As long as they are allowed to co-opt the movement for social justice for their own personal aggrandizement, the world will not improve, not for women, people of color, gay and transgender people, or the poor.
Remember when node.js forked into ayo.js? Well, maybe not, because you weren't allowed to see it:
Here’s something I don’t understand. If all you want is to contribute code, why not do that? How does it harm you if someone tries to increase diversity? LLVM is a big project; there’s surely enough space for different people. Some people will focus on the technical bits; others will focus on legal issues, and others can focus on social issues. What’s the problem with that? Why do so many people become defensive when…
That would be only one objection, but as always happens, the rules are not actually what is written, as the OP rightly pointed out.
Another recent example was the Rod Vagg drama in node.js... he became the target of ire for tweeting an article about Neurodiversity and Free Speech. Does that sound like something that should go against any code of conduct that aims to be more welcoming and create diversity? Of course not, unless you subscribe to Social Justice, where everything is a dogwhistle and an opportunity to name and shame others.
The person who was leading this charge was then discovered to have a tirade filled twitter stream full of spiteful and hateful language aimed at white people and men. Which apparently did not violate any CoC.
The hypocrisy is obvious to anyone who digs past the surface, and the fact that well-meaning bystanders are effortlessly recruited into defending this petty and destructive behavior is what makes it so pernicious.