Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

861–870 of 1001 posts

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

#861

Post by Globrazu »

droopybuns wrote: post #494

The current dominant themes in certain feminism & diversity cliques in our community are openly hostile towards me. I'm a male. I'm white. I'm middle class. I'm heterosexual. I'm also a leader. I'm a parent of two daughters. My mother had to fight sexism issues in her career. I am supportive of inclusion & diversity. I am trying to raise my girls to be empowered, confident & curious. But the dominant themes in curren…

This kind of racist "gender politics", along with a level of self-hatred and loathing for certain classes of people is a wider problem with GitHub employees and has been manifesting for a while, for example: https://github.com/todogroup/opencodeofconduct/pull/17

https://twitter.com/rachelmyers/status/629981737121021953 (also see some of her late Tweets about this very thread)

https://twitter.com/agelender/status/629080326736773120 https://twitter.com/agelender/status/573560084837498880

I think it started around the time they threw out their "meritocracy rug" back in early 2014 or somewhat before: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug

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

#862

Post by StevePerkins »

douche wrote: post #729
adriand wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GitHub's pricing model makes NO sense for established companies with lots of projects Totally agree with this assessment. When we were with Github, we actually ended up on a custom plan, negotiated with them directly, because we had too many projects to fit within their normal pricing structure. We eventually moved to Bitbucket two or three years ago and it's far more cost-effective for us. At this point we have 50…

What do you do with that many different projects? Genuinely curious.

I suspect that the "microservices" craze will soon have reach a "MongoDB moment". Where everyone has gotten burned from jumped in too quickly and blindly, and the pendulum swings back in the opposite direction.

However, right now microservices are blowing up. The new greenfield project that I'm working on right now started out a year ago as a monolith with one repo. It now has microservice components scattered across several DOZEN repos, with dev teams finding excuses to refactor into smaller and smaller granularity each month.

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

#863

Post by Globrazu »

rotw wrote: post #492
verylongaccount wrote: post #345

It seems that a large number of posters believe that discriminating against white men is okay because they enjoy "white privilege", whatever that is. Either you believe it is okay to discriminate against someone on the basis of their skin color or you don't. Attempts to redefine the word notwithstanding, those who subscribe to the former philosophy are known as racists. It is hard to distinguish the anti-white vitrio…

> believe that discriminating against white men is okay because they enjoy "white privilege", whatever that is > It is hard to distinguish the anti-white vitriol I see on this page from the antisemitism of yesteryear. It was often said that Jews were over-represented in various occupations not because their industriousness, intelligence or other virtues, but because of devious trickery (they plot together to deprive…

Who exactly are you reffering to when you talk about "white people"? Anglo-Saxons/Saxons? Franks/Gauls? Celts? Slavs? Greco-Romans? Nordic people?

You're talking and generalizing an awful lot of people.

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

#864

Post by ghyu66 »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #512
brianzelip wrote: post #471

Christ, the wonderful platform for learning, sharing, and doing that is GitHub is potentially under threat and the majority of discussion here is consumed with questions and accusations of racism?! Of course white privilege exists. Next. Onto real shit like how do we not lose yet another bastion of web awesomeness.

It's embarrassing that you don't think this is something worth having a discussion about. You're basically suggesting we abandon critical thought. There's clearly more to this than white privilege.

>You're basically suggesting we abandon critical thought

socjus political correctness in a nutshell.

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

#865

Post by rotw »

green7ea wrote: post #776
rotw wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This sentence seems like an oxymoron to me: >> True meritocracy can only come through promoting diversity. If you are taking diversity into account, you are taking things other than merit into account and so it isn't a 'true' meritocracy. Not only that but it also suffers from the no true Scotsman fallacy. The best way to promote meritocracy is to base your decisions on merit and nothing else. To avoid unconscious bi…

> If you are taking diversity into account, you are taking things other than merit into account and so it isn't a 'true' meritocracy.

Well, no. The point is that due to inherent unconscious biases (see my link for scientific papers documenting this), it's impossible to only take merit into account without social norms biased towards white men skewing the process. Diversity initiatives seek to eradicate this bias, in order to truly measure merit and compensate for the interfering factors.

> Not only that but it also suffers from the no true Scotsman fallacy.

I really don't see what that's got to do with anything here.

> To avoid unconscious bias, you would have to hire someone without knowing their age, sex, sexual orientation or anything else that you could consider discriminatory. That would mean hiring someone that you haven't and that's a little extreme.

Presumably you mean "you haven't met"? Well exactly. Hence, diversity initiatives that seek to compensate in practical ways.

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

#866

Post by malandrew »

mc32 wrote: post #810
malandrew wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A perfect example of this is DaShan (Henry Mark Roswell). That said, mainstream Chinese society is basically Han Chinese, which is largely eastern China. There's a lot more to China than just the eastern areas. Xinjiang and Tibet are two areas of the PRC that are essentially occupied countries experiencing ethnic cleansing via dilution. The ethnicities that are the majority (or used to be the majority) in these regio…

I think the question about how wide the net of diversity should cover geographically is an interesting one. Some people will say that because the users are a worldwide audience that the demographics of the product/service producer should reflect that demographic (so reflect the demographics of the user base rather than the more traditional local talent pool or population, regional talent pool or population, etc. But…

I don't even know if a company necessarily needs to even hire people representative of the people that use their products. Some user testing, focus groups and great analytics to discover how a product might be used elsewhere should be sufficient to make sure a product meets the needs of people elsewhere. If they are doing a good job of meeting those needs then they will be successful. If they don't a competitor can be founded that does better understand and cater to that audience.

TBH, I find it positively weird to concern myself in any way about the identity of the people that make products I use. I am a human being after all and that is most important for the overwhelming majority of product decisions. Gender and body size may also be important depending on the product. For example, the only trait I wish more product designers understood and catered to is my height (I'm 6'5" (196cm)), but it's insane for me to demand a firm to employ someone my height or even design products for me when I'm well past the 99th percentile (I guess that makes me part of that 1%, right?). Accommodating people of my height may not be cost effective for most firms, especially if it raises the price enough to make them less competitive. If I can't use their product, then I won't and hopefully I'll find a product that caters specifically to me or solve my own problem.

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

#867

Post by untog »

tzs wrote: post #644
untog wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- "This is not work for white folks to lead" This one I actually don't think is so bad, in context. The title of the slide is "Diversity and Inclusion in Tech". It is difficult for someone that is not part of a minority to spearhead efforts to outreach to one, because they don't experience the same issues. Literally, they don't have the right experience for the job. It's a stretch as a comparison, but no-one gets sue…

> It is difficult for someone that is not part of a minority to spearhead efforts to outreach to one, because they don't experience the same issues. Literally, they don't have the right experience for the job. We've invented tools to deal with this: language and literature. Almost everyone has experienced some form of discrimination, even if for many it is only occasional and minor, and that's enough to give a good w…

I really don't think that reading about racism is the same as experiencing racism. For a start, it's quite easy to put a book down.

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

#868

Post by zzzeek »

proc0 wrote: post #819
vinceguidry wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are saying there is no excuse to treat Neil deGrasse Tyson as a shoplifter because of his race If that's really what he's saying, then that's even dumber. You can change how you think. You can help to change the thinking of the people you come in contact with. You can't change anyone you've never met, particularly the people who treated Tyson as a shoplifter. I'd love it if racism were to just disappear too. B…

I acknowledge it seems I'm dismissing and even excusing people who are racists. This is definitely not the case. Let's pretend there are no races for a second. What would racist people do? They would probably still hate on "others". They would probably not have the vocabulary or the knowledge to group people, but they would still hate "others". The fact that racist hate other races is just incidental to the fact that…

You're wrong because you're making the assumption that diversity programs are intended to promote hatred of anyone. That is the opposite of what they are intended for.

We are sadly forced to "categorize" people of certain "races" because when you in fact meet an enormously successful astrophysicist who is African American, that person almost certainly had to achieve that status in the face of many completely intractable obstacles put up by society, compared to an enormously successful astrophysicist who is white and had no such obstacles.

Now, any person that achieves anything had to overcome obstacles; however if you met a successful scientist who was say, an injured Iraq war veteran, or someone who went through struggles above and beyond what most of us go through, you'd likely give that person some credit for achievement in the face of very great obstacles. Looking at the plight of African Americans in this country in a critical fashion would reveal that they also are subject to significant struggles that should be acknowledged.

Nowhere in that above sentiment lies any notion of spreading hatred towards white people. Only that, since I'm not an Iraq war veteran, I don't get to run up on stage and claim a purple heart.

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

#869

Post by malandrew »

samps wrote: post #410
colmvp wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally it irks me that tech has excellent representation of diversity in the forms of people of colour, specifically Asians from different a diverse set of backgrounds, yet they don't count in the tally of diversity.

Yes, that's worth celebrating! But we also have to remember that, to someone not in those well-represented groups, it's not a huge consolation. Diversity isn't a floating-point number between 0.0 and 1.0.

True, but we need to ask valid questions like "Why do we have a bunch of diversity in this vector, but not this other vector? If tech was fundamentally intolerant of diversity in general like many claim, wouldn't we lack diversity in all vectors? Why causes might contribute to the disparity between these two diversity vectors with different representations?

Overall, I rarely if ever see anyone arguing for diversity asking hard questions like "Why are there many Asians and Indians even though there aren't many Women, Hispanics/Latinos and Black people?". What are these successful identity groups doing differently that is affording them much success in being well represented or even over represented? How might the under represented groups adopt the same approaches to achieve the same success?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't solve unconscious bias as well, but I'm less inclined to first consider solutions that address unconscious bias if those solutions are proposed by someone who hasn't also considered other explanations and solutions because they aren't applying the null hypothesis in their thought process.

Also, how about some multi-variate analysis to determine which factors most greatly contribute to the diversity gap for each underrepresented group? We can't adequately fix what we don't measure and I really don't see a lot of measurement going on. For example, all successful startups understand and apply concepts of a user acquisition funnel and pipeline, but then people complain loudly in simplistic terms that the "pipeline problem is a myth". I don't understand how you can the former technique with great success and hold the latter incongruous thought in your head at the same time.

https://medium.com/life-tips/the-null-hypothesis-loves-you-a...

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

#870

Post by malandrew »

brighteyes wrote: post #359
malandrew wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asian people are highly overrepresented, much more than white people, relative to their percentage in the country. But not relative to California. This is important to note because the base rates of the state in which a company is located or an industry is concentrated matter. Very very few people move farther than 500 miles from the place where they are born. This means that the overwhelming majority of the people i…

No, even relative to California, their overrepresentation is far larger. Your link shows 14.4% for Asian people in California, but in the tech industry, they are at least twice that. Whereas in California white people are 73.2%, which is about equal or even less than their ratio in tech. And about most people not moving more than 500 miles - is that true for tech jobs in California? See for example http://www.silicon…

Thanks for this thought/argument about mobility. It's extremely valid and not one someone has yet made when I bring up base rates.

With this in mind, I'm very curious if we're asking the question of what these overrepresented groups are doing differently and if there are lessons to be learned by and applied by underrepresented groups.

As someone born in Brazil, when I meet a Brazilian in SF, we get to talking about where in Brazil we're both from at some point and one thing I've discovered is that Brazilians from the state of Goias are very much overrepresented in SF despite the fact that São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are typically more represented globally with Brazilian expats. Why are Brazilians from Goias over-represented in the Bay Area? Near as I can tell from the numerous conversations is that there is a strong network of weak ties, à la Granovetter, at play and that this is the same phenomena that can be see among Asian and Indian communities in SF.

In fact, the only Indian-Brazilian person I know in the Bay Area (and in the world, since there isn't much cultural exchange between Brazil and India) is a VC and he has commented that he wishes there was as much community and support on the Brazilian side of the Silicon Valley as there is on the Indian side, because he has seen that as one of the greatest external factors (i.e. outside what the individual himself is capable of) helping Indians move to the region in the first place and be successful once they arrive and establish themselves. Perhaps more efforts to establish professional and social networks of weak ties would be an effective strategy within identities group that are underrepresented. I'm curious how effective directing energy towards helping those within your identity in-group is versus fighting for your identity in-group as a whole relative to other identity in-groups?

Post reply on HN