71–80 of 218 posts
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
>One of the ways that people slow down progress, in startups or in society, is by resisting unreasonably at every step in a series of steps in an argument. They key here is _unreasonable_. I do not believe it unreasonable to demand evidence to the extend and nature of sexism in tech (as I have seen no formal study on it at all). Frankly all I am seeing here are the very methods described in What you can't say being u…
>I do not believe it unreasonable to demand evidence to the extend and nature of sexism in tech (as I have seen no formal study on it at all). I'm trying to not be rude here, but my inclination is to tell you to just go look for such studies or run such a study yourself. Nobody owes you a spoon-fed version of reality on your terms when they make their own decisions. What is unreasonable is saying that normal business…
I am not the one who is asserting things, they are. Custom demands that the person asserting something is the one who is to bring evidence.
>HN has decided to move the conversation forward, and I give them kudos for that.
If we run around on hearsay and feelings, how do we really know what is forwards? You could end up damaging the very goal you are trying to get to.
On some level, the tech world isn't living up to its own principles, as it relates to diversity and inclusion (D&I). Many seem to view D&I as being somewhat external to the tech space--it's an issue that other industries have been discussing and is becoming more prominent in tech. I would posit that the underlying principles of the tech world share a number of core values with D&I. Think about the open source softwar…
While licenses may have clauses that deal with some kinds of discrimination, OSS communities are not inclusive and may actually be outright hostile to groups of people. The last Model View Culture had an article about this [1]. Suffice it to say that there is no common community behavior that appears in all OSS groups and what is exceptable in one group vs. another varies quite a bit.
> Or is it the open air bazaar, with all kinds of people talking (softly or loudly) in a place known for public discourse. A place where anyone can walk by and join in and become part of what's going on?
Well this come back to the very common myth of meritocracy in tech, that tech only looks at merit and thus avoids discrimination, personal and institutional. However, meritocracy in tech often simply functions as a way for people to avoid talking about bias or pretending like bias doesn't exist. Moreover, what it means to look for merit is often defined as those statuses and symbols that are comfortable to the dominant group of people in tech, white men of middle or higher class backgrounds.
> So this isn't really about embracing D&I. Instead, the tech community needs to start living up to its own rhetoric--it's own values. This isn't about adopting an external issue, it's about a community fully aligning with its own values.
Again, there is no consensus on values and often people actively advocate that there should be little criticism or reflection on what people and groups in tech value. Without that kind of introspection and discussion, little will change.
[1] http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/leaving-toxic-open-source...
1) I suspect that the bias against girls is "I don't think she'll be effective" rather than "I am sexist and don't want girls to succeed". 2) The bias doesn't seem to be that strong to me. This is a simplification, but I'd guess that girls start with about a 10% handicap. Meaning that in close cases, girls lose out. But in the cases of girls who clearly have ability, I don't see the bias against them as something tha…
"Girls" is probably not the word you want to be using, by the way.
> Specifically, we’d like the community to help by downvoting comments that make HN an unwelcoming place to anyone. That's only a solution for half of the problem on Hacker News. The other half is that most submissions about gender/diversity get flagged to death very consistently, which make it difficult to have any meaningful discussion about these topics.
We have no way to tell if they're being flagged by users or setting off the automated system for detecting flamewars. One of the problems with the topic is that essentially every Hacker News reader feels as though they're qualified to comment on the topic. This translates into massive nested threads that blow up with people arguing the same points. I'm not convinced that discussion of these issues on Hacker News does…
This is the fundamental problem. No matter how a story gets made invisible, once it gets in that state nobody knows how it got there and whether or not it was justified. Not to mention that no matter how those stories vanish, HN (by community or systems) is not facilitating discussion on diversity, sexism, racism, etc. in tech.
http://youtu.be/FTOgm_EMgVI?t=12m8s
These statements always seem really empty to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the evidence that sexism is a more tractable problem than racism? Just curious...
If someone doesn't want to consider women for a job, it probably means that they think women have some inherent unsuitableness for that particular job. They aren't aggressive enough for sales, or don't have the upper body strength for landscaping, or some such. They don't mind hiring women for jobs that they think women can do (secretary). They probably have women friends, date or marry women, and so on. If someone d…
They very much do didn't like black people.
What about class? Ivy League Parents -> Private School -> SAT tutoring -> Ivy League College -> Investment by Ivy League VC -> Acquired by Ivy League Tech Company vs Poor parents -> Shitty Public School -> High School Drop Out -> Programmer at Ivy League Tech Company (maybe) There's a reason most of the big tech companies are from Ivy League graduates. And you can't ignore how many successful startups only happened b…
Ivy League is an athletic conference, or at best a collection of prestigious schools from the north east: The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. I don't think this is what you mean.
I knew exactly what the OP was driving at even if the details were off, and only after you point out that Ivy League is an athletic conference did it occur to me that that would be where the current colloquialism came from.
What about class? Ivy League Parents -> Private School -> SAT tutoring -> Ivy League College -> Investment by Ivy League VC -> Acquired by Ivy League Tech Company vs Poor parents -> Shitty Public School -> High School Drop Out -> Programmer at Ivy League Tech Company (maybe) There's a reason most of the big tech companies are from Ivy League graduates. And you can't ignore how many successful startups only happened b…
It's great that YC has taken steps towards gender equality, but I don't think they have much of a say when it comes to inequality in education.
On some level, the tech world isn't living up to its own principles, as it relates to diversity and inclusion (D&I). Many seem to view D&I as being somewhat external to the tech space--it's an issue that other industries have been discussing and is becoming more prominent in tech. I would posit that the underlying principles of the tech world share a number of core values with D&I. Think about the open source softwar…
> Think about the open source software movement (OSS). One crucial perspective that the OSS shares with D&I is that both view discrimination as an impediment to progress. OSS licenses include several non-discrimination clauses (economic, field of endeavor, other restrictions). The licenses go to great lengths to ensure the technology is available to everyone. While licenses may have clauses that deal with some kinds…