781–790 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are better and worse ways to communicate, sure. But fundamentally, you cannot control how people interpret the words that you say.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to be sure you're communicating thoughtfully.
I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…
If I'm sexist then I could choose to make such a remark only if it happens to be a female colleague. If male then sleep(). Sexism achieved. If you're not from the U.S. you have to understand the background of mendacity that flows through nearly the entire culture. That's a big part of the backdrop for fairly deep levels of distrust, whether it's of a company, one's colleague, the gov't, etc. For example-- I was watch…
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. That's the last thing we need on top of the flamewar we already have here.
I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…
Remember that you are on an American website with a heavy, American audience. You have to learn to dissociate European (in your case German) discussions and experiences from American ones. Don't "import" their problems, ideologies, opinions, etc. It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow non-Americans), they talk about American topi…
Please let's not make this about a specific group. That way lies flamewar, and I can assure you that cross-cultural misinterpretation is a huge problem here in all directions.
Why would you talk to women at all professionally, unless there are reliable witnesses or video recordings? As we increasingly see, witch hunts are already possible by deliberately misinterpreting written statements like mails or bug tracker messages. I would not want to get into a he-said-she-said real life situation. Mike Pence understood this early.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won’t even pretend to know enough to be able to solve this problem. But does your social circle not include other female friends that you could discuss the optics of this situation with? Or better yet, be honest with the female friend that you wanted to advice, pointing out what she had done before and expressing your apprehension in providing critical feedback?
This is a fair question - not sure why you are getting down votes. Background - I'm actually on the left a fair bit. So one issue - you are not supposed to really ask minorities / women to explain / teach you / help you deal with these issues because it in fairness burdens them. I'm not looking for that either. In terms of my colleague who I'd mentored in past (before things had gotten more extreme). I think others h…
Thank you for pointing this out. You’re absolutely right on this one, and I would retract my suggestion if HN allowed me to edit the previous comment.
I'm reading a whole lot of frustrated comments here and totally get where the frustration is coming from. But in a different direction, I wanted to offer a thought for how to improve: Rule #1: Always ask people if they want feedback before you give it. Do it for men, women and non-binary folks. If you can, give hints about the topic ("hey, would you like feedback about your skills alignment with the problem?"). I've…
As a counter-point, I've known people that would take this as condescending right off the bat, so YMMV.
Sadly, the current direction in the industry is: “let’s cover our ass”. Which eventually ends up with: less mentoring for women, less promotion, etc. The problem is that our system and society will not reward companies which do right things (hire, promote, etc.) but it will punish companies for slight irregularities.
Every big company I see is promoting female mentorship and promotion, and nearly every big company is bigtime CYA.
This reminds me of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. I have to wonder how she may have received criticism of her ideas if there was a baseline of equality of ideas from men and women. Basically, to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective. It would be a bridge too far to link it to the cheating.
> I’m not going to suggest a solution to the problem of men clamming up. I find this a little frustrating, they’ve noticed a pattern of behaviour that concerns them in an area they are clearly invested in - yet they have no thoughts or suggestions on how to address this? Is it possible they are not offering such thoughts because of the same issue they have highlighted in the article?
Why does someone need to have a solution in order for their observation of a problem to be considered valid? Maybe the problem is real but they just don’t have as solution?
Thinking of _just one_ potential solution would be evidence that they are acting in good-faith.