Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
July 5, 2017 2:00 PM Subscribe
Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub — Coraline Ada Ehmke recounts her experiences as part of GitHub's Community and Safety team (previously). "GitHub touts its values, but has consistently failed to live up to them. Values that are expressed but that don't change behavior are not really values, they are lies that you tell yourself."
Do US corporations really expect you to leaven routine meeting interactions with profuse thanks to anyone you might have had passing contact with in the course of your work?
Frankly, it sounds like they just decided to fire her for whatever reason (probably being difficult about codes of conduct): the PIP on grounds of 'lacks empathy' was exactly the kind of projection you’d expect from an averagely psychopathic SV VC funded startup.
posted by pharm at 2:26 PM on July 5, 2017 [18 favorites]
Frankly, it sounds like they just decided to fire her for whatever reason (probably being difficult about codes of conduct): the PIP on grounds of 'lacks empathy' was exactly the kind of projection you’d expect from an averagely psychopathic SV VC funded startup.
posted by pharm at 2:26 PM on July 5, 2017 [18 favorites]
The hoops they made her jump through! I have never witnessed that kind of detailed checklisty nitpicking in any working environment. It's so bullshit.
posted by suelac at 2:32 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by suelac at 2:32 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
> Frankly, it sounds like they just decided to fire her for whatever reason
It seemed quite clear to me that the reason was (at least initially) her pushing back on the horrible gender form in their survey.
posted by yomimono at 2:36 PM on July 5, 2017 [11 favorites]
It seemed quite clear to me that the reason was (at least initially) her pushing back on the horrible gender form in their survey.
posted by yomimono at 2:36 PM on July 5, 2017 [11 favorites]
I suppose it almost goes without saying, but this was voted up on Hacker News and then flagged to death and removed within an hour.
This is my surprised face.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:38 PM on July 5, 2017 [29 favorites]
This is my surprised face.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:38 PM on July 5, 2017 [29 favorites]
She's also noted on her Twitter feed that GitHub offered her a severance package. It had an NDA attached, presumably to stop her from talking about this blatantly discriminatory bullshit in public where GH wants to cultivate a pro-woman, pro-diversity image. GH is still dealing with the aftereffects of Julie Horvath going public about her mistreatment there and is sensitive to how it's presenting itself, but apparently not so much that it will actually treat its non-male (and particularly trans woman) employees well. It's easier just to get some work and good press out of them, drive them out, and then pay them to shut them up.
I normally try to be a bit more measured in my public commenting, but I'm absolutely sick of organizations (and the men in them) being given chance after chance after chance while women, people of color, trans people, disabled people, and people over 35 are lucky to get just the one.
posted by yomimono at 2:41 PM on July 5, 2017 [66 favorites]
I normally try to be a bit more measured in my public commenting, but I'm absolutely sick of organizations (and the men in them) being given chance after chance after chance while women, people of color, trans people, disabled people, and people over 35 are lucky to get just the one.
posted by yomimono at 2:41 PM on July 5, 2017 [66 favorites]
It's easy to dismiss the reasons she puts forward for her termination but this part is troubling for Github:
In the past several months GitHub has fired at least three transgender engineers and many more cisgender women. Prominent people who were trying to effect positive change in the company culture have quit.posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:47 PM on July 5, 2017 [22 favorites]
Do US corporations really expect you to leaven routine meeting interactions with profuse thanks to anyone you might have had passing contact with in the course of your work?
Women are frequently penalized in reviews for being things like "brusque", "unfriendly", "intimidating", "too direct", and "not a team player" because they leave on time or use sick time to take care of sick children. Men are generally not penalized for those things (more likely "not aggressive enough", "not a team player" usually by not participating in workplace bro culture).
It's easy to dismiss the reasons she puts forward
Not if you believe women when they say things. Additional evidence is not required, though the additional evidence in that case certainly points to many problems in the company.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:53 PM on July 5, 2017 [55 favorites]
Women are frequently penalized in reviews for being things like "brusque", "unfriendly", "intimidating", "too direct", and "not a team player" because they leave on time or use sick time to take care of sick children. Men are generally not penalized for those things (more likely "not aggressive enough", "not a team player" usually by not participating in workplace bro culture).
It's easy to dismiss the reasons she puts forward
Not if you believe women when they say things. Additional evidence is not required, though the additional evidence in that case certainly points to many problems in the company.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:53 PM on July 5, 2017 [55 favorites]
It seemed quite clear to me that the reason was (at least initially) her pushing back on the horrible gender form in their survey.
It also seems to be heavily implied that quite a lot of people at GitHub--quite a lot of men at GitHub--were not precisely on board with the project she was there to work on from day one. The fact that she was hired for a project that specifically had to do with how GitHub was bad at diversity issues...
posted by Sequence at 2:58 PM on July 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
It also seems to be heavily implied that quite a lot of people at GitHub--quite a lot of men at GitHub--were not precisely on board with the project she was there to work on from day one. The fact that she was hired for a project that specifically had to do with how GitHub was bad at diversity issues...
posted by Sequence at 2:58 PM on July 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
Not if you believe women when they say things.
It didn't make sense because why would they go to all that trouble and hire her and then fire her for petty stuff like giving feedback on a survey or because she didn't give her colleagues daily praise falafels. But these paragraphs partly explain why, and I assume that's why she included them:
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:18 PM on July 5, 2017 [11 favorites]
It didn't make sense because why would they go to all that trouble and hire her and then fire her for petty stuff like giving feedback on a survey or because she didn't give her colleagues daily praise falafels. But these paragraphs partly explain why, and I assume that's why she included them:
GitHub has made some very public commitments to turning its culture around, but I feel now that these statements are just PR. I am increasingly of the opinion that in hiring me and other prominent activists, they were attempting to use our names and reputations to convince the world that they took diversity, inclusivity, and social justice issues seriously. And I feel naive for having fallen for it.This changes everything about the story and is much more damning for Github. Most companies suck at being inclusive workplaces but actively hiring social activists for PR reasons and then firing them? That's like Uber level of shittiness.
In the past several months GitHub has fired at least three transgender engineers and many more cisgender women. Prominent people who were trying to effect positive change in the company culture have quit. They canceled a conference when they got called out for having an all-male speaker lineup. In a return to its meritocratic roots, the company has decided to move forward with a merit-based stock option program despite criticism from employees who tried to point out its inherent unfairness. And the widely publicized results of the open source survey show that the company's platform is still not appealing to anyone but straight white guys.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:18 PM on July 5, 2017 [11 favorites]
Values that are expressed but that don't change behavior are not really values, they are lies that you tell yourself.
That quote's a keeper, right there.
posted by darkstar at 3:26 PM on July 5, 2017 [51 favorites]
That quote's a keeper, right there.
posted by darkstar at 3:26 PM on July 5, 2017 [51 favorites]
Where does this repulsive culture come from? Where do men learn that this is how you treat women? Where does it start? At what point in their development do they learn that it's acceptable to treat women, people of colour and other less-privileged people like this?
The whole mindset seems to have seeped into the entire tech industry like a malignant toxin. Where does it start, who nurtures it, and how do we get rid of it?
This stuff does not happen on its own. It requires effort to be this nasty. There must be people out there deliberately indoctrinating young men into this hideous worldview. How can we stop it?
I'd start with mandatory diversity courses, with a written and oral exam, as a pre-requisite for graduating in any gender-biased field.
posted by Combat Wombat at 3:36 PM on July 5, 2017 [4 favorites]
The whole mindset seems to have seeped into the entire tech industry like a malignant toxin. Where does it start, who nurtures it, and how do we get rid of it?
This stuff does not happen on its own. It requires effort to be this nasty. There must be people out there deliberately indoctrinating young men into this hideous worldview. How can we stop it?
I'd start with mandatory diversity courses, with a written and oral exam, as a pre-requisite for graduating in any gender-biased field.
posted by Combat Wombat at 3:36 PM on July 5, 2017 [4 favorites]
This story isn't believable I guess if you haven't lived it. Because for me reading this was like watching a horror movie while living through a horror movie. But believe me it IS unbelievable and hard to understand while you're living through it too. At some point you get the "troublemaker" label put on your face and then that's it, everything you do from there out is wrong in some mysterious way that you find out about later. I don't know how to fix this or if it's even unique to the tech industry, I definitely experienced it in other fields.
posted by bleep at 3:49 PM on July 5, 2017 [39 favorites]
posted by bleep at 3:49 PM on July 5, 2017 [39 favorites]
Where does this culture come from? It comes from everywhere. It's in the toy aisle at the store, where boys get tools and cars and other toys that give them action and agency, while girls get dolls and kitchens and care-taking. This is our culture. This is not some anomaly happening only in tech. It's pervasive.
I'd love to believe that this kind of culture required deliberate indoctrination, because then we could get rid of the bad actors and it would go away. But so much of it comes from a million little things that never seem important. It's all around us, everywhere and every day. It comes from the different ways we see men and women presented in media all our lives. It comes from the same place as the statistic that women are perceived to be "dominating" a conversation if they're doing thirty percent of the talking. It comes from the same place as women being penalized for the same qualities that are seen as "leadership potential" in men.
I don't think mandatory diversity courses are the answer. I've seen that tried at tech companies where I've been working, and the people who already know it's a problem end up frustrated because they had to sit through a bunch of 101-level explanation that they're already all to familiar with, and the people who actually need to hear it just get pissed off that the politically-correct no-fun feminists don't want them to have a good time at work any more.
I don't know what the answer is, in part because I don't think there's any way to answer this in these kind of isolated instances. It's a huge, systemic problem in so, so many parts of our culture. When I talk to my psychiatrist about the discrimination I face as a woman in tech, she knows exactly what I'm talking about because the same thing happens in medicine.
posted by duien at 3:51 PM on July 5, 2017 [76 favorites]
I'd love to believe that this kind of culture required deliberate indoctrination, because then we could get rid of the bad actors and it would go away. But so much of it comes from a million little things that never seem important. It's all around us, everywhere and every day. It comes from the different ways we see men and women presented in media all our lives. It comes from the same place as the statistic that women are perceived to be "dominating" a conversation if they're doing thirty percent of the talking. It comes from the same place as women being penalized for the same qualities that are seen as "leadership potential" in men.
I don't think mandatory diversity courses are the answer. I've seen that tried at tech companies where I've been working, and the people who already know it's a problem end up frustrated because they had to sit through a bunch of 101-level explanation that they're already all to familiar with, and the people who actually need to hear it just get pissed off that the politically-correct no-fun feminists don't want them to have a good time at work any more.
I don't know what the answer is, in part because I don't think there's any way to answer this in these kind of isolated instances. It's a huge, systemic problem in so, so many parts of our culture. When I talk to my psychiatrist about the discrimination I face as a woman in tech, she knows exactly what I'm talking about because the same thing happens in medicine.
posted by duien at 3:51 PM on July 5, 2017 [76 favorites]
In tech, people with serious communication deficiencies, and people who are willing to devote substantial time to improve their communication style are a Venn diagram with no overlap.
I've been asked countless times to improve how I respond to assholes, and I'm a cis man who doesn't face the gendered expectations that Ehmke did.
I feel like it's practically a trap to agree to the kind of communication improvement plan that Ehkme was forced into. It reinforces the notion that the person who's willing to work on improving is the person with the problem.
posted by Banknote of the year at 3:56 PM on July 5, 2017 [31 favorites]
I've been asked countless times to improve how I respond to assholes, and I'm a cis man who doesn't face the gendered expectations that Ehmke did.
I feel like it's practically a trap to agree to the kind of communication improvement plan that Ehkme was forced into. It reinforces the notion that the person who's willing to work on improving is the person with the problem.
posted by Banknote of the year at 3:56 PM on July 5, 2017 [31 favorites]
I'd start with mandatory diversity courses
Can and will be so easily dismissed as "hoops to jump through". What is needed is, a better class of inmates.
posted by thelonius at 3:57 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
Can and will be so easily dismissed as "hoops to jump through". What is needed is, a better class of inmates.
posted by thelonius at 3:57 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
Mandatory diversity/anti-sexual harassment courses did nothing in my workplace. My co-workers weren't 10 feet out of the classroom before they were laughing about how obviously they weren't going to change their behaviour because that would ruin their fun. My heart sank.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 4:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [12 favorites]
posted by Secret Sparrow at 4:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [12 favorites]
It was a no-win situation. Criticised for not doing code reviews, criticised for "actively soliciting invitations to do code reviews". Seriously, what are you meant to do in that situation?
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:10 PM on July 5, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:10 PM on July 5, 2017 [4 favorites]
I don't think this story falls under traditional anti-harassment, anti-discrimination headers that can be managed with a little 3 question quiz. Managers should just stop putting their reports into inescapable Kafka-esque nightmares.
posted by bleep at 4:16 PM on July 5, 2017
posted by bleep at 4:16 PM on July 5, 2017
Coraline is a frequent panelist on a really excellent podcast, Greater than Code. If you're at all interested in the human side of the tech world, it's well worth a listen, and she's great on it.
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:25 PM on July 5, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:25 PM on July 5, 2017 [10 favorites]
It reinforces the notion that the person who's willing to work on improving is the person with the problem.
Yeah, it's totally lowest-fruit management, which just goes back to my constant screeching that "management" should not be the natural promotion path for people who are good at a skill that is not management. I'm in a career corner of my own because I'm quite good at what I actually do and companies want me to not-do-that-job and instead oversee other people doing that job, given my "salary history" and age/experience, because...because! That's where you go! Nobody invented another word higher than "senior" yet, so this is clearly the only choice.
It's like the entire industry has been trained by rumor. Someone heard of a PIP once and decided they knew what that was (because that's what privileged people do, assume their ideas are great because they had them), but nobody wants to face the scary shitlords who are actually the source of the problem and might turn on you, so just do whatever's easiest to make reports of the problem go away.
And all the better if it's someone who, hmmm, just doesn't fit in...doesn't seem to be like the others...can't quite put your finger on it...but you can definitely pick them straight out of an all-hands photo, hard to say why exactly... Like, who would even object if that person didn't like it and left or got fired, amiright? Company culture, whattaya gonna do?
posted by Lyn Never at 4:26 PM on July 5, 2017 [14 favorites]
Yeah, it's totally lowest-fruit management, which just goes back to my constant screeching that "management" should not be the natural promotion path for people who are good at a skill that is not management. I'm in a career corner of my own because I'm quite good at what I actually do and companies want me to not-do-that-job and instead oversee other people doing that job, given my "salary history" and age/experience, because...because! That's where you go! Nobody invented another word higher than "senior" yet, so this is clearly the only choice.
It's like the entire industry has been trained by rumor. Someone heard of a PIP once and decided they knew what that was (because that's what privileged people do, assume their ideas are great because they had them), but nobody wants to face the scary shitlords who are actually the source of the problem and might turn on you, so just do whatever's easiest to make reports of the problem go away.
And all the better if it's someone who, hmmm, just doesn't fit in...doesn't seem to be like the others...can't quite put your finger on it...but you can definitely pick them straight out of an all-hands photo, hard to say why exactly... Like, who would even object if that person didn't like it and left or got fired, amiright? Company culture, whattaya gonna do?
posted by Lyn Never at 4:26 PM on July 5, 2017 [14 favorites]
It was a no-win situation. Criticised for not doing code reviews, criticised for "actively soliciting invitations to do code reviews". Seriously, what are you meant to do in that situation?
Quit.
Anecdotally, including my own experience, getting put on a PIP is one step in the employer covering their ass before firing the employee.
(I remember getting chewed out for continually sending a barrage of disorganized, incomplete emails. When I checked my email archive, I had sent this person one email in the past seven days.)
posted by Lexica at 4:28 PM on July 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
Quit.
Anecdotally, including my own experience, getting put on a PIP is one step in the employer covering their ass before firing the employee.
(I remember getting chewed out for continually sending a barrage of disorganized, incomplete emails. When I checked my email archive, I had sent this person one email in the past seven days.)
posted by Lexica at 4:28 PM on July 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
"The two main areas that I needed to address were empathetic written communication and a target of reviewing 60% of the team's pull requests."
This is a setup, plain and simple.
Being expected to police your written tone so as to remain relentlessly cheerful under scrutiny is exhausting.
Being expected to do your own job while also shouldering more than half of the code reviews for the other four members of the team, while not following up with anyone in the morning standup to make sure they're inviting you do to the reviews, requires a positively superhuman effort.
Putting the two together:
@sarahmei: This is what it looks like when someone fabricates a paper trail to justify an illegal firing.
posted by muchomas at 4:29 PM on July 5, 2017 [35 favorites]
This is a setup, plain and simple.
Being expected to police your written tone so as to remain relentlessly cheerful under scrutiny is exhausting.
Being expected to do your own job while also shouldering more than half of the code reviews for the other four members of the team, while not following up with anyone in the morning standup to make sure they're inviting you do to the reviews, requires a positively superhuman effort.
Putting the two together:
@sarahmei: This is what it looks like when someone fabricates a paper trail to justify an illegal firing.
posted by muchomas at 4:29 PM on July 5, 2017 [35 favorites]
Quit.
Anecdotally, including my own experience, getting put on a PIP is one step in the employer covering their ass before firing the employee.
Yeah, but they're trying to get you to quit so they don't have to pay severance. Sarah Mei had an interesting Twitter response about what you might do in this (impossible) situation
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:31 PM on July 5, 2017 [7 favorites]
Anecdotally, including my own experience, getting put on a PIP is one step in the employer covering their ass before firing the employee.
Yeah, but they're trying to get you to quit so they don't have to pay severance. Sarah Mei had an interesting Twitter response about what you might do in this (impossible) situation
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:31 PM on July 5, 2017 [7 favorites]
I didn't see anything about what you might do in the tweet "This is what it looks like when someone fabricates a paper trail to justify an illegal firing."?
posted by thelonius at 4:34 PM on July 5, 2017
posted by thelonius at 4:34 PM on July 5, 2017
It seems like they hired her as a developer and also expected her to do some kind of community outreach and I feel like they should have created a position for that instead of just dropping her in the same category as every other ruby developer there.
posted by empath at 4:35 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by empath at 4:35 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'd start with mandatory diversity courses, with a written and oral exam, as a pre-requisite for graduating in any gender-biased field.
My cynical side says that anybody who has the +1-2 sigma IQ and/or diligence to succeed in computer science or engineering has the IQ and diligence to cynically check a box and earn their "A" in such a diversity course, while angrily cultivating even greater resentment against the powers that forced them to take "politically-correct indoctrination" instead of another elective in compiler design or machine learning.
(In other words, I think such a requirement could well backfire.)
posted by theorique at 4:35 PM on July 5, 2017 [10 favorites]
My cynical side says that anybody who has the +1-2 sigma IQ and/or diligence to succeed in computer science or engineering has the IQ and diligence to cynically check a box and earn their "A" in such a diversity course, while angrily cultivating even greater resentment against the powers that forced them to take "politically-correct indoctrination" instead of another elective in compiler design or machine learning.
(In other words, I think such a requirement could well backfire.)
posted by theorique at 4:35 PM on July 5, 2017 [10 favorites]
I didn't see anything about what you might do in the tweet "This is what it looks like when someone fabricates a paper trail to justify an illegal firing."?
Sorry, it's a thread starting with that tweet - I'm bad at Twitter.
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:37 PM on July 5, 2017
Sorry, it's a thread starting with that tweet - I'm bad at Twitter.
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:37 PM on July 5, 2017
Sorry, it's a thread starting with that tweet - I'm bad at Twitter.
Oh, I am too - I should have checked for that. Thank you!
posted by thelonius at 4:42 PM on July 5, 2017
Oh, I am too - I should have checked for that. Thank you!
posted by thelonius at 4:42 PM on July 5, 2017
I didn't see anything about what you might do in the tweet "This is what it looks like when someone fabricates a paper trail to justify an illegal firing."?
Sorry, it's a thread starting with that tweet - I'm bad at Twitter.
Some days we're all bad at Twitter!
Further down the thread:
@saramei: you can then decide: is it worth staying, for the severance, or because you're stubborn (hi), or because you want to finish something?
@saramei: Whichever way to decide, please try to remember that _you are good at this._
You are good at this.
You actually are good at this.
Really.
posted by muchomas at 4:43 PM on July 5, 2017 [12 favorites]
Sorry, it's a thread starting with that tweet - I'm bad at Twitter.
Some days we're all bad at Twitter!
Further down the thread:
@saramei: you can then decide: is it worth staying, for the severance, or because you're stubborn (hi), or because you want to finish something?
@saramei: Whichever way to decide, please try to remember that _you are good at this._
You are good at this.
You actually are good at this.
Really.
posted by muchomas at 4:43 PM on July 5, 2017 [12 favorites]
Btw, I've had 'be nicer to people' as feedback in every single one on one with my boss for the last five years, and I got three promotions in that time frame, but I wasn't hired to help create a more inclusive and welcoming environment. I can only imagine how many people said : "I thought you were supposed to improve the working environment, but you're attacking people." All it would take is her getting on the wrong side of a few women/minorities at the company to create an excuse to get rid of her.
I think creating a more welcoming and inclusive environment is a full time job for someone with a particular set of management and people skills and putting that burden on a ruby programmer, while expecting her to code full time, even if she's smart and interested and has good ideas wasn't fair.
posted by empath at 4:48 PM on July 5, 2017 [9 favorites]
I think creating a more welcoming and inclusive environment is a full time job for someone with a particular set of management and people skills and putting that burden on a ruby programmer, while expecting her to code full time, even if she's smart and interested and has good ideas wasn't fair.
posted by empath at 4:48 PM on July 5, 2017 [9 favorites]
Ragged Richard, thanks for the recommendation of Greater than Code. I've stuck it in my podcatcher and am really looking forward to sitting down with the two most recent episodes in particular.
posted by yomimono at 4:51 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by yomimono at 4:51 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
because! That's where you go! Nobody invented another word higher than "senior" yet, so this is clearly the only choice.
FWIW there are companies who have recognized that having management be the eventual destination of every developer career trajectory is a problem. The word is frequently "Principal".
(now IME the reason these companies figure this out is by having such low turnover that they would have too many managers (and if a medium-large corporation is thinking there's too many managers that says something), which can have both good and bad causes)
posted by PMdixon at 5:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [3 favorites]
FWIW there are companies who have recognized that having management be the eventual destination of every developer career trajectory is a problem. The word is frequently "Principal".
(now IME the reason these companies figure this out is by having such low turnover that they would have too many managers (and if a medium-large corporation is thinking there's too many managers that says something), which can have both good and bad causes)
posted by PMdixon at 5:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [3 favorites]
The one time I survived a 90 day Performance Improvement Plan, the entire departement was laid off at the end of the fiscal year. So they're survivable, I guess, but there's really no winning.
posted by pwnguin at 5:09 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by pwnguin at 5:09 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
Most companies suck at being inclusive workplaces ... but actively hiring social activists for PR reasons
This is like the least-surprising recipe for a total trainwreck.
posted by so fucking future at 5:16 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
This is like the least-surprising recipe for a total trainwreck.
posted by so fucking future at 5:16 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
I can only imagine how many people said : "I thought you were supposed to improve the working environment, but you're attacking people."
Very astute. There's a misconception that inclusivity means making everyone more comfortable, when actually it means making privileged people (along whatever axis of privilege you have) less comfortable. You need senior leaders to make that discomfort culturally acceptable.
posted by Banknote of the year at 5:23 PM on July 5, 2017 [38 favorites]
Very astute. There's a misconception that inclusivity means making everyone more comfortable, when actually it means making privileged people (along whatever axis of privilege you have) less comfortable. You need senior leaders to make that discomfort culturally acceptable.
posted by Banknote of the year at 5:23 PM on July 5, 2017 [38 favorites]
Clearly, the only hope is a 15 year moritotium on hiring men in tech jobs. That might kill this fucking cancer.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:25 PM on July 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:25 PM on July 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
I think such a requirement could well backfire.
"It's probably a bad idea because misogynists gonna misogynist" is a poor excuse. And implying that it will radicalize them is just as ridiculous as trying to claim that, say, mandatory sexual harassment training makes harassers want to escalate to assault.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:29 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
"It's probably a bad idea because misogynists gonna misogynist" is a poor excuse. And implying that it will radicalize them is just as ridiculous as trying to claim that, say, mandatory sexual harassment training makes harassers want to escalate to assault.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:29 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm not going to say that this is truly the worst part of it, because I think it's unfair of me to try to quantify it. However, for me personally, the part that is most amazingly frustrating is this:
I 100% believe her that she did not exhibit these behaviors. I also 100% believe that if a man had exhibited the behaviors she was accused of, he would have been showered with praise and promotions.
I used to work with an architect who was so awful that repeatedly people quit the company because of him. Interview subjects on more than one occasion left the building crying after meeting with him, he was so intensely demeaning. What did management do about it? They told everyone else they had to learn to work with him, and literally created an honorific title amounting to "super awesome mega star" and made him the first recipient of it (along with a huge cash bonus).
This industry has what at times feels like an unfixable problem, and not for nothing is "crotchety developer dude who has no social skills but is soooo important because of his skills" a trope.
posted by tocts at 5:35 PM on July 5, 2017 [20 favorites]
I 100% believe her that she did not exhibit these behaviors. I also 100% believe that if a man had exhibited the behaviors she was accused of, he would have been showered with praise and promotions.
I used to work with an architect who was so awful that repeatedly people quit the company because of him. Interview subjects on more than one occasion left the building crying after meeting with him, he was so intensely demeaning. What did management do about it? They told everyone else they had to learn to work with him, and literally created an honorific title amounting to "super awesome mega star" and made him the first recipient of it (along with a huge cash bonus).
This industry has what at times feels like an unfixable problem, and not for nothing is "crotchety developer dude who has no social skills but is soooo important because of his skills" a trope.
posted by tocts at 5:35 PM on July 5, 2017 [20 favorites]
Btw, I've had 'be nicer to people' as feedback in every single one on one with my boss for the last five years, [...]
posted by empath
Heh.
posted by nickmark at 5:38 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by empath
Heh.
posted by nickmark at 5:38 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
"It's probably a bad idea because misogynists gonna misogynist" is a poor excuse.
What I mean is that a mandatory course isn't going to be the source of change. If it's actually going to happen, the change has to come from within the people who make up the industry, or the future members of the industry. Trying to fix people's (well, mostly men's) attitudes when they're 21 year old frat boys is too late.
posted by theorique at 5:41 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
What I mean is that a mandatory course isn't going to be the source of change. If it's actually going to happen, the change has to come from within the people who make up the industry, or the future members of the industry. Trying to fix people's (well, mostly men's) attitudes when they're 21 year old frat boys is too late.
posted by theorique at 5:41 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
"It's probably a bad idea because misogynists gonna misogynist" is a poor excuse. And implying that it will radicalize them is just as ridiculous as trying to claim that, say, mandatory sexual harassment training makes harassers want to escalate to assault.
I dunno about "backfire" but I've also become fairly skeptical that such courses accomplish much besides covering asses. Though I suppose a more positive view is that they do serve to remove a certain kind of ass-cover - i.e. you can't claim you didn't know what was wrong with your behavior if the standards were explicitly laid out when you were hired. A combination of a Code of Conduct and a test to make sure you read the CoC is certainly a good idea. I just increasingly do not believe that a lack of awareness is the issue in most cases of workplace sexism, versus knowing and not caring or not caring to know.
posted by atoxyl at 5:48 PM on July 5, 2017 [14 favorites]
I dunno about "backfire" but I've also become fairly skeptical that such courses accomplish much besides covering asses. Though I suppose a more positive view is that they do serve to remove a certain kind of ass-cover - i.e. you can't claim you didn't know what was wrong with your behavior if the standards were explicitly laid out when you were hired. A combination of a Code of Conduct and a test to make sure you read the CoC is certainly a good idea. I just increasingly do not believe that a lack of awareness is the issue in most cases of workplace sexism, versus knowing and not caring or not caring to know.
posted by atoxyl at 5:48 PM on July 5, 2017 [14 favorites]
Weed out mysogynists by firing them.
It's good that senior leadership told the men to quit piling on Ehmke in the code reviews. The next step that wasn't taken was to see which of those men had a habit of giving harsh critiques to other women (or to POC, or to trans people, etc.). Identify the people contributing to the hostile environment, tell them that's unacceptable, and fire them if they persist.
Until there are real consequences, behaviours won't change.
posted by Banknote of the year at 5:50 PM on July 5, 2017 [27 favorites]
It's good that senior leadership told the men to quit piling on Ehmke in the code reviews. The next step that wasn't taken was to see which of those men had a habit of giving harsh critiques to other women (or to POC, or to trans people, etc.). Identify the people contributing to the hostile environment, tell them that's unacceptable, and fire them if they persist.
Until there are real consequences, behaviours won't change.
posted by Banknote of the year at 5:50 PM on July 5, 2017 [27 favorites]
The general category of "poor communication/attitude" as a performance review subject for women is definitely pervasive. I can't think of a single woman I've ever worked with who's avoided it, but I was recently lucky enough to have a manager who actually approached it well
In my pre-review meeting, my manager has a draft of my review and we discuss it, along with peer feedback and other factors that went into the review. He mentioned that he'd gotten feedback that I was "difficult to work with." but that he wasn't including it in my review because when he compared my behavior to my male co-workers, I was not out of line, and they weren't getting the same kind of feedback. So it wasn't part of my written review, and that was the end of it.
Getting confirmation that others were, in fact, having that reaction was really useful, because it helped keep me from second-guessing my perception. And having my manager make an outside observation before deciding to act on the feedback meant that was actually being treated fairly. I think some managers think collecting feedback can substitute for using judgement and so, even if well-meaning themselves, don't correct for bias in feedback from others.
Sadly, that's one of the only examples I can think of where I've seen bias well-handled in a tech context, but it's nice to at least have a picture of what it could look like.
posted by duien at 5:53 PM on July 5, 2017 [31 favorites]
In my pre-review meeting, my manager has a draft of my review and we discuss it, along with peer feedback and other factors that went into the review. He mentioned that he'd gotten feedback that I was "difficult to work with." but that he wasn't including it in my review because when he compared my behavior to my male co-workers, I was not out of line, and they weren't getting the same kind of feedback. So it wasn't part of my written review, and that was the end of it.
Getting confirmation that others were, in fact, having that reaction was really useful, because it helped keep me from second-guessing my perception. And having my manager make an outside observation before deciding to act on the feedback meant that was actually being treated fairly. I think some managers think collecting feedback can substitute for using judgement and so, even if well-meaning themselves, don't correct for bias in feedback from others.
Sadly, that's one of the only examples I can think of where I've seen bias well-handled in a tech context, but it's nice to at least have a picture of what it could look like.
posted by duien at 5:53 PM on July 5, 2017 [31 favorites]
She had a great job, great team, good projects and left for github ? All I can think of is the "you knew what I was when you picked me up" fable ..
posted by k5.user at 5:55 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by k5.user at 5:55 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
Why can't tech companies just fucking fire the assholes.
Because the people who wield the power to do so don't see them as such.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:00 PM on July 5, 2017 [7 favorites]
Because the people who wield the power to do so don't see them as such.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:00 PM on July 5, 2017 [7 favorites]
Training doesn't work to change a solution, unless the culture is willing to shift to support the new behaviors. If people still receive incentives for acting in the old way, all of the training in the world won't change that. What it does do is provide a convenient cover and a front for issues around fairness and equity, while allowing the current culture to continue unchallenged.
It's possible to galvanize a large-scale cultural shift in an organization, but, IMHO, it has to include the following:
- Leadership endorsement and sign-on, as well as actively modeling the new behaviors
- Actively empowering "change champions" and rewarding them for their role in the change
- Ensuring critical mass of the change agents are in place
- A shift in the reward/compensation structure to reward the new behavior
- A planned-for transition period, as the new norms take effect
- The reward for trying and failing the new behavior is greater than just staying with the old way
- Establishment of a "safe space" for questions, concerns, confusion, and managing the transition. If the organization is healthy, "change cohorts" can be established, where people talk through the issues they are facing.
It's also possible to make small-scale adjustments without going through all of this, of course, and there's always some low-hanging fruit to pick off, but the critical part, as I think someone said above, is that senior management has to embrace the change.
The problem is, effecting real change is time-consuming (and therefore expensive) and difficult work. It's also often viewed as a distractor from the company's "real mission" - i.e. making money. It's far easier to throw training at it, and have an initiative or two that looks great, but doesn't really do anything.
posted by dancing_angel at 6:02 PM on July 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
It's possible to galvanize a large-scale cultural shift in an organization, but, IMHO, it has to include the following:
- Leadership endorsement and sign-on, as well as actively modeling the new behaviors
- Actively empowering "change champions" and rewarding them for their role in the change
- Ensuring critical mass of the change agents are in place
- A shift in the reward/compensation structure to reward the new behavior
- A planned-for transition period, as the new norms take effect
- The reward for trying and failing the new behavior is greater than just staying with the old way
- Establishment of a "safe space" for questions, concerns, confusion, and managing the transition. If the organization is healthy, "change cohorts" can be established, where people talk through the issues they are facing.
It's also possible to make small-scale adjustments without going through all of this, of course, and there's always some low-hanging fruit to pick off, but the critical part, as I think someone said above, is that senior management has to embrace the change.
The problem is, effecting real change is time-consuming (and therefore expensive) and difficult work. It's also often viewed as a distractor from the company's "real mission" - i.e. making money. It's far easier to throw training at it, and have an initiative or two that looks great, but doesn't really do anything.
posted by dancing_angel at 6:02 PM on July 5, 2017 [15 favorites]
Also in fun with techie sexism: the new Apple headquarters has every amenity you can think of - except a child care facility.
What the fuck is wrong with this industry?
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [20 favorites]
What the fuck is wrong with this industry?
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [20 favorites]
I know I'm a little late with this comment, but
She's also noted on her Twitter feed that GitHub offered her a severance package. It had an NDA attached, presumably to stop her from talking about this blatantly discriminatory bullshit in public where GH wants to cultivate a pro-woman, pro-diversity image.
I'm in a non-tech field and the idea that GH has a pro-woman, pro-diversity image is wishful thinking on GH's part.
posted by bile and syntax at 6:05 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
She's also noted on her Twitter feed that GitHub offered her a severance package. It had an NDA attached, presumably to stop her from talking about this blatantly discriminatory bullshit in public where GH wants to cultivate a pro-woman, pro-diversity image.
I'm in a non-tech field and the idea that GH has a pro-woman, pro-diversity image is wishful thinking on GH's part.
posted by bile and syntax at 6:05 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
I mean I'm not a woman and I've gotten "feedback" like this, including that my voice was too deep and manly and it was intimidating and that my body language wasn't friendly enough and that I wasn't asking enough about peoples' feelings and instead I just focused on getting the task done. I absolutely believe a woman who wasn't being lovey dovey and cutesy and gave clear, direct feedback would be too blunt for the poor sensitive menz in the office.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:07 PM on July 5, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:07 PM on July 5, 2017 [8 favorites]
I'm in a non-tech field and the idea that GH has a pro-woman, pro-diversity image is wishful thinking on GH's part.
Well, around /r/programming and /r/javascript especially it has a reputation of being an "SJW haven". So it sounds like everyone's pissed at them.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 6:18 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
Well, around /r/programming and /r/javascript especially it has a reputation of being an "SJW haven". So it sounds like everyone's pissed at them.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 6:18 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
A great place to start would be:
- some official recognition that hounding good people out using performance improvement plans is wrong
- some official recognition that women routinely get dinged for being direct and that it's not going to happen at our organization
- someone to go talk to if you think this is happening to you who can assess the situation without it coming back to bite you in the ass/make you look bad.
posted by bleep at 6:23 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
- some official recognition that hounding good people out using performance improvement plans is wrong
- some official recognition that women routinely get dinged for being direct and that it's not going to happen at our organization
- someone to go talk to if you think this is happening to you who can assess the situation without it coming back to bite you in the ass/make you look bad.
posted by bleep at 6:23 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
SJW haven
I love (by which I mean I hate) that there exists a group of idiots who think this is a bad thing. God forbid there was any social justice.
posted by maxwelton at 6:29 PM on July 5, 2017 [22 favorites]
I love (by which I mean I hate) that there exists a group of idiots who think this is a bad thing. God forbid there was any social justice.
posted by maxwelton at 6:29 PM on July 5, 2017 [22 favorites]
I've seen something similar happen to one person, who happened to be a man. I suspect that he may have been bipolar, too, like the author. Mental illness is another slice of the diversity pie that many workplaces aren't good at. He rubbed people the wrong way, and I think that what Banknote of the year said about the comfort of the privileged may apply also to mental illness.
(That workplace had plenty of racism and sexism, too, and the pay gaps to go with it, but those things weren't involved in firing decisions that I was aware of.)
posted by clawsoon at 6:39 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
(That workplace had plenty of racism and sexism, too, and the pay gaps to go with it, but those things weren't involved in firing decisions that I was aware of.)
posted by clawsoon at 6:39 PM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]
SJW haven
yeah, also less shitty than some other places doesn't actually mean good.
posted by bile and syntax at 6:49 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
yeah, also less shitty than some other places doesn't actually mean good.
posted by bile and syntax at 6:49 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
In case anybody cares, it seems that tech darling Tesla is an equally awful place to work if you're not a bro.
posted by sardonyx at 7:45 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by sardonyx at 7:45 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
This doesn't actually surprise me regarding Github. What shocks me is that 'empathy' is apparently a value of a company that has built their technology on one of the most myopically designed pieces of software that has ever been created. Anyone who's learnt git has had to break their empathy at least a little bit.
Regarding diversity training: it's well established at this point that diversity training doesn't work, for most of the reasons articulated in the thread - people who need it tend to get worse afterwards thanks to the ol' backfire effect, and the people who end up shouldering the burden tend to be people who have got enough on their plate existing in a company hostile to them. (Blind hiring tends not to work either, because a candidate stripped of their humanity tends to find it difficult to build rapport.)
In this case, Github probably needed to have implemented social accountability. Are the demands made on their female, minority or LGBT employees in line with everyone else? Post it everywhere. Embarrass people.
There's other kinds of training that apparently help, maybe empathy training? Can't find the reference. :(
posted by Merus at 8:26 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
Regarding diversity training: it's well established at this point that diversity training doesn't work, for most of the reasons articulated in the thread - people who need it tend to get worse afterwards thanks to the ol' backfire effect, and the people who end up shouldering the burden tend to be people who have got enough on their plate existing in a company hostile to them. (Blind hiring tends not to work either, because a candidate stripped of their humanity tends to find it difficult to build rapport.)
In this case, Github probably needed to have implemented social accountability. Are the demands made on their female, minority or LGBT employees in line with everyone else? Post it everywhere. Embarrass people.
There's other kinds of training that apparently help, maybe empathy training? Can't find the reference. :(
posted by Merus at 8:26 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
She had a great job, great team, good projects and left for github ? All I can think of is the "you knew what I was when you picked me up" fable ..
GitHub explicitly recruited her under a pose of "we want to fix how we've fucked up". Victim-blaming in this situation seems exceptionally unpleasant. "Oh ha ha fucking ha, you thought you could make things better? Nope, and now we'll use this as an excuse to put in some more blows!"
Fuuuuuuuuck that shit.
posted by Lexica at 8:47 PM on July 5, 2017 [37 favorites]
GitHub explicitly recruited her under a pose of "we want to fix how we've fucked up". Victim-blaming in this situation seems exceptionally unpleasant. "Oh ha ha fucking ha, you thought you could make things better? Nope, and now we'll use this as an excuse to put in some more blows!"
Fuuuuuuuuck that shit.
posted by Lexica at 8:47 PM on July 5, 2017 [37 favorites]
Anyone who's learnt git has had to break their empathy at least a little bit.
Having learned git and then had to go to work for a place that's been moving to git any time now but is still on SVN since I got there? I mean, I'd love to see someone come up with even better ways to do all of it, but it certainly didn't break me the way that SVN breaks me.
posted by Sequence at 9:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [7 favorites]
Having learned git and then had to go to work for a place that's been moving to git any time now but is still on SVN since I got there? I mean, I'd love to see someone come up with even better ways to do all of it, but it certainly didn't break me the way that SVN breaks me.
posted by Sequence at 9:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [7 favorites]
Yeah this should probably not become a version control discussion but I don't quite get what the analogy is supposed to be between the software and the company - git has a notably unfriendly interface in some ways but that seems like kind of a glib comparison.
posted by atoxyl at 9:38 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 9:38 PM on July 5, 2017 [5 favorites]
Also in fun with techie sexism: the new Apple headquarters has every amenity you can think of - except a child care facility.
What the fuck is wrong with this industry?
This keeps getting brought up. If we had childcare on site, the thousands upon thousands of people who take Apple provided transportation into work would instead be driving their kids into work with them. Why drop off you kid at the place right near your home when they could spend an extra two hours in a car 5 days a week? The traffic on the 101/280/880 would get incredibly worse overnight.
posted by sideshow at 10:23 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
What the fuck is wrong with this industry?
This keeps getting brought up. If we had childcare on site, the thousands upon thousands of people who take Apple provided transportation into work would instead be driving their kids into work with them. Why drop off you kid at the place right near your home when they could spend an extra two hours in a car 5 days a week? The traffic on the 101/280/880 would get incredibly worse overnight.
posted by sideshow at 10:23 PM on July 5, 2017 [1 favorite]
What shocks me is that 'empathy' is apparently a value of a company that has built their technology on one of the most myopically designed pieces of software that has ever been created.
This is a remarkably bad understanding of things.
I would like to see this stir up some ancillary awareness that we've collectively allowed GitHub to accumulate way too much power within the technical ecosystem, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. Though I do see some people actively seeking alternatives based on this writeup, so I guess that's a start.
posted by brennen at 10:27 PM on July 5, 2017
This is a remarkably bad understanding of things.
I would like to see this stir up some ancillary awareness that we've collectively allowed GitHub to accumulate way too much power within the technical ecosystem, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. Though I do see some people actively seeking alternatives based on this writeup, so I guess that's a start.
posted by brennen at 10:27 PM on July 5, 2017
This keeps getting brought up. If we had childcare on site, the thousands upon thousands of people who take Apple provided transportation into work would instead be driving their kids into work with them.
Seems to me that if you simply schedule an additional bus along the route, and the parents and kids can *both* take "Apple provided transportation" without issue.
posted by mikelieman at 10:57 PM on July 5, 2017 [16 favorites]
Seems to me that if you simply schedule an additional bus along the route, and the parents and kids can *both* take "Apple provided transportation" without issue.
posted by mikelieman at 10:57 PM on July 5, 2017 [16 favorites]
Why can't tech companies just fucking fire the assholes. God. Coders are a dime a dozen these days, and most of them aren't even amazing at their work, they just abide by the stupid bro-code.
Because the tech companies are, by and large, run by assholes of exactly the same kind.
Where does this culture come from? It comes from everywhere. It's in the toy aisle at the store, where boys get tools and cars and other toys that give them action and agency, while girls get dolls and kitchens and care-taking. This is our culture. This is not some anomaly happening only in tech. It's pervasive.
One of the underappreciated facets of the patriarchy is exactly that: it's our culture. It's not "the men's" culture. It's all-pervading.
It's too easy to point at assholes like Travis Kalanick or President Rump and go "fuck men for fucking everything up". I mean sure, fuck those particular assholes for fucking everything up, but they're not fucking things up because they're men; they're fucking things up because they are assholes operating within a patriarchal culture that gives them the opportunity to do that; a culture participated in and perpetuated by people of all genders.
Reacting to horrible things done by horrible men by sheeting home the responsibility for fucking things up to men in general rather than to the web of gendered expectations we all grew up in just bolsters the cultural notion of men naturally being the ones in charge of things that keeps us in this mess.
I am a man. I was born and raised in a patriarchal culture. I have no idea how to fix it. I can make a contribution by using CBT-style internal tricks to dispute and counter the endless irrational gender-related beliefs I've been soaking up in the drinking water for my whole life, and I can rail endlessly against a marketing industry whose primary purpose is to preserve the status quo and keep us all at each other's throats that we may seek comfort in purchasing our properly gendered desirables, and I can wish sincerely that everybody in the world of every gender would do the same tricks and rail against the same things, but they're just not going to.
If there's one thing years of MeFi have taught me, it's that any plan for change that relies on everybody behaving in some more-desirable way is just going to fail.
That said: I wish Coraline Ada Ehmke nothing but the best, and it would please me to see every bro who contributed directly to her misery drowned slowly in a vat of fermenting shit.
posted by flabdablet at 10:58 PM on July 5, 2017 [16 favorites]
Because the tech companies are, by and large, run by assholes of exactly the same kind.
Where does this culture come from? It comes from everywhere. It's in the toy aisle at the store, where boys get tools and cars and other toys that give them action and agency, while girls get dolls and kitchens and care-taking. This is our culture. This is not some anomaly happening only in tech. It's pervasive.
One of the underappreciated facets of the patriarchy is exactly that: it's our culture. It's not "the men's" culture. It's all-pervading.
It's too easy to point at assholes like Travis Kalanick or President Rump and go "fuck men for fucking everything up". I mean sure, fuck those particular assholes for fucking everything up, but they're not fucking things up because they're men; they're fucking things up because they are assholes operating within a patriarchal culture that gives them the opportunity to do that; a culture participated in and perpetuated by people of all genders.
Reacting to horrible things done by horrible men by sheeting home the responsibility for fucking things up to men in general rather than to the web of gendered expectations we all grew up in just bolsters the cultural notion of men naturally being the ones in charge of things that keeps us in this mess.
I am a man. I was born and raised in a patriarchal culture. I have no idea how to fix it. I can make a contribution by using CBT-style internal tricks to dispute and counter the endless irrational gender-related beliefs I've been soaking up in the drinking water for my whole life, and I can rail endlessly against a marketing industry whose primary purpose is to preserve the status quo and keep us all at each other's throats that we may seek comfort in purchasing our properly gendered desirables, and I can wish sincerely that everybody in the world of every gender would do the same tricks and rail against the same things, but they're just not going to.
If there's one thing years of MeFi have taught me, it's that any plan for change that relies on everybody behaving in some more-desirable way is just going to fail.
That said: I wish Coraline Ada Ehmke nothing but the best, and it would please me to see every bro who contributed directly to her misery drowned slowly in a vat of fermenting shit.
posted by flabdablet at 10:58 PM on July 5, 2017 [16 favorites]
It requires effort to be this nasty.
Doing what you love, especially if it's something approved of by those you like, very seldom feels like effort.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [4 favorites]
Doing what you love, especially if it's something approved of by those you like, very seldom feels like effort.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on July 5, 2017 [4 favorites]
Though I suppose a more positive view is that they do serve to remove a certain kind of ass-cover - i.e. you can't claim you didn't know what was wrong with your behavior if the standards were explicitly laid out when you were hired. A combination of a Code of Conduct and a test to make sure you read the CoC is certainly a good idea. I just increasingly do not believe that a lack of awareness is the issue in most cases of workplace sexism, versus knowing and not caring or not caring to know.
That is a good point. Taking away the "ignorance defense" is a plus, and while we may be somewhat suspicious about procedural/bureaucratic solutions changing hearts and minds, they do have a certain procedural usefulness in changing workplace behavior. Having set up a paper trail where a person has "agreed in advance" not to engage in undesirable behaviors like sexism or racism at work, the company has made it a little easier to fire bad actors.
posted by theorique at 2:18 AM on July 6, 2017
That is a good point. Taking away the "ignorance defense" is a plus, and while we may be somewhat suspicious about procedural/bureaucratic solutions changing hearts and minds, they do have a certain procedural usefulness in changing workplace behavior. Having set up a paper trail where a person has "agreed in advance" not to engage in undesirable behaviors like sexism or racism at work, the company has made it a little easier to fire bad actors.
posted by theorique at 2:18 AM on July 6, 2017
This is a remarkably bad understanding of things.
Is it? Let me be clear here: what I am saying is that, at no point along the way did anyone think 'what is this like to learn? What is this like to use? What is this like for people who are just learning, what is their experience like?' I'm saying that this is done out of a sense of elitism - I agree quite a lot with these arguments - and a company like Github, that clearly is part of this world, isn't going to willingly debase themselves. Empathy is not the kind of thing a company like this would actually do.
I'll accept that these are strident opinions, but I don't think this is illogical or ignorant.
posted by Merus at 2:41 AM on July 6, 2017
Is it? Let me be clear here: what I am saying is that, at no point along the way did anyone think 'what is this like to learn? What is this like to use? What is this like for people who are just learning, what is their experience like?' I'm saying that this is done out of a sense of elitism - I agree quite a lot with these arguments - and a company like Github, that clearly is part of this world, isn't going to willingly debase themselves. Empathy is not the kind of thing a company like this would actually do.
I'll accept that these are strident opinions, but I don't think this is illogical or ignorant.
posted by Merus at 2:41 AM on July 6, 2017
Worth remembering that Git does not necessarily mean GitHub. One of the better alternatives out there is BitBucket, and these revelations about GitHub will most likely only serve to send developers in their direction.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:12 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:12 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
Not to contribute to the derail, but I don't agree that the steepness of git's learning curve is a form of class warfare.
posted by rhizome at 4:28 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by rhizome at 4:28 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
Worth remembering that Git does not necessarily mean GitHub. One of the better alternatives out there is BitBucket, and these revelations about GitHub will most likely only serve to send developers in their direction.
Exactly. While GitHub has brand recognition, size, and first-mover incumbency, they don't have an unassailable market position. They are trying to shore up their position with social tools and other functionality surrounding their basic function of hosting and distributing source code, but a lot of companies and individuals can switch to BitBucket, GitLab, or host their own git repositories with a probable effort ranging from a few hours to a few days.
(If, y'know, you wanted to teach GitHub a lesson for being a toxic work environment and all.)
posted by theorique at 5:06 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
Exactly. While GitHub has brand recognition, size, and first-mover incumbency, they don't have an unassailable market position. They are trying to shore up their position with social tools and other functionality surrounding their basic function of hosting and distributing source code, but a lot of companies and individuals can switch to BitBucket, GitLab, or host their own git repositories with a probable effort ranging from a few hours to a few days.
(If, y'know, you wanted to teach GitHub a lesson for being a toxic work environment and all.)
posted by theorique at 5:06 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
This keeps getting brought up. If we had childcare on site, the thousands upon thousands of people who take Apple provided transportation into work would instead be driving their kids into work with them. Why drop off you kid at the place right near your home when they could spend an extra two hours in a car 5 days a week? The traffic on the 101/280/880 would get incredibly worse overnight.
No, they wouldn't. The childcare facility would almost certainly only admit a few dozen students, like any other childcare facility. That's not going to add an appreciable number of cars to the highway. Best Buy has an on-site childcare center that is part of a chain (New Horizons), and although it's certainly fully occupied at any given time, with a waiting list of about 18 months, there aren't a *ton* of employees who require it. Once kids are old enough to go to pre-school, they age out--so it primarily serves parents with babies and toddlers. (Kids who "finish" the program go through a little graduation ceremony each spring in the campus theater, complete with blue or yellow gowns and caps.)
Apple's just running a really big sweatshop. I'm not sure what else you would call a company that expects its employees to spend so many hours at work and makes it actively inconvenient to have a personal life. Well-run companies don't do that.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:15 AM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
No, they wouldn't. The childcare facility would almost certainly only admit a few dozen students, like any other childcare facility. That's not going to add an appreciable number of cars to the highway. Best Buy has an on-site childcare center that is part of a chain (New Horizons), and although it's certainly fully occupied at any given time, with a waiting list of about 18 months, there aren't a *ton* of employees who require it. Once kids are old enough to go to pre-school, they age out--so it primarily serves parents with babies and toddlers. (Kids who "finish" the program go through a little graduation ceremony each spring in the campus theater, complete with blue or yellow gowns and caps.)
Apple's just running a really big sweatshop. I'm not sure what else you would call a company that expects its employees to spend so many hours at work and makes it actively inconvenient to have a personal life. Well-run companies don't do that.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:15 AM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
Having childcare onsite isn't a game changer for most 2-income families because, yes, having your child closer to home is easier when the other parent is coming from a different direction. Plus parents can trade off who does drop off etc.
But it is a game changer for single parents, because then they have options like picking the child up a bit later (I have to leave by 4:45 to make a 6 pm daycare deadline, which I do 2-3x a week, but see I can stay later other nights my husband does pick up)...it helps them be available for important meetings and be visible for 8-6 or whatever. It also means that if there's a traffic issue etc. The parent is with the child, which lowers stress a lot...up here some of my most upset moments have been being stuck in a snowstorm and traffic knowing my kid was yes, safe but with grumpy staff at the end of a long day -- and many daycares have policies to start calling authorities if parents are really late and can't get a designated caregiver there.
Since single parenthood often defaults to women, onsite daycare really is an equity issue.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:57 AM on July 6, 2017 [14 favorites]
But it is a game changer for single parents, because then they have options like picking the child up a bit later (I have to leave by 4:45 to make a 6 pm daycare deadline, which I do 2-3x a week, but see I can stay later other nights my husband does pick up)...it helps them be available for important meetings and be visible for 8-6 or whatever. It also means that if there's a traffic issue etc. The parent is with the child, which lowers stress a lot...up here some of my most upset moments have been being stuck in a snowstorm and traffic knowing my kid was yes, safe but with grumpy staff at the end of a long day -- and many daycares have policies to start calling authorities if parents are really late and can't get a designated caregiver there.
Since single parenthood often defaults to women, onsite daycare really is an equity issue.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:57 AM on July 6, 2017 [14 favorites]
I am at a place right now where I can't talk about some of the shit I've dealt with for the past 7-8 months but yeah this stuff is totally routine for trans women in tech. Gotta be careful though...
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:08 AM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:08 AM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]
Let me be even more explicit: being the person who has to leave at 4:45 to account for a traffic jam, esp as with one income and daycare you may have to live further out, is career limiting in a way that being able to hang out until 5:57 is not...if you're a woman. Studies have shown that women who leave work for child duties are perceived as less career focused where men who do are perceived as wow more responsible. So yes, onsite daycare impacts on women's career growth.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:11 AM on July 6, 2017 [19 favorites]
posted by warriorqueen at 6:11 AM on July 6, 2017 [19 favorites]
I don't agree that the steepness of git's learning curve is a form of class warfare.
I don't either. Command line interfaces in general, and git's in particular, are built for people whose preferred way of working is to research, grapple with and understand the problem space before judiciously choosing reliable tools with which to craft creative solutions. They are not built for people whose preferred way of working is copying and pasting from StackOverflow with their mind on something else.
The idea that "good UX" only exists in products primarily designed for quick mastery by people without much domain knowledge is simply wrong. I am a git user and find much to enjoy and not much to complain about in the experience. It's a pretty tidy set of engineering tradeoffs and it's good at what it does.
at no point along the way did anyone think 'what is this like to learn? What is this like to use? What is this like for people who are just learning, what is their experience like?' I'm saying that this is done out of a sense of elitism
I think it proceeds more from a sense that revision control is actually quite a large and complex problem space, that finding one's way around that space requires practice and experience, that most of the problems git is designed to solve are not problems faced by people taking their first steps into that space, and that sweeping most of the inherent complexity under the rug of a slick UI not only fails to make it go away but actively promotes the Dunning-Kruger effect among tool users.
I don't believe simple recognition that expertise exists, and that some tools are a better fit for those who have already spent the time needed to acquire more of it, amounts to elitism.
Elitism, to my way of thinking, is the notion that expertise is something that properly should be jealously guarded by a small group. Experts building tools for their own benefit and that of other experts does not, in my view, amount to jealous guarding; see also Hole Hawg.
It's been my consistent experience that the overwhelming reason for the deplorable lack of technical expertise we see all around us today is not so much that experts are guarding it and walling it off, as that the general public doesn't on the whole give two shits about acquiring it.
The overwhelming majority of the technical experts I know have been very generous with their time whenever I have displayed a sincere desire to learn from them. And having over the course of my IT career acquired a certain amount of expertise of my own, I've been consistently keen on passing on, in my turn, as much of that as I can. But most people just want to get something else done in a hurry and seem positively hostile to learning enough IT to be able to dig themselves out of the next pitfall it presents to them. People actually interested enough to want to spend a bit of time digging into IT for its own sake are both relatively rare and an absolute pleasure to assist.
To the extent that elitism does exist in IT, it seems to me that slick do-it-all-for-you UX, not arcane do-what-I-ask-for-and-nothing-else engineering tools, are its public face. The magical pick-it-up-in-two-minutes stuff, most of which is well known to have been put together by hugely expensive commercial concerns with the resources to spend on things like focus group UX testing, serves to strengthen and perpetuate the idea that Users and Makers are separate camps and ever more should be so.
posted by flabdablet at 6:13 AM on July 6, 2017 [11 favorites]
I don't either. Command line interfaces in general, and git's in particular, are built for people whose preferred way of working is to research, grapple with and understand the problem space before judiciously choosing reliable tools with which to craft creative solutions. They are not built for people whose preferred way of working is copying and pasting from StackOverflow with their mind on something else.
The idea that "good UX" only exists in products primarily designed for quick mastery by people without much domain knowledge is simply wrong. I am a git user and find much to enjoy and not much to complain about in the experience. It's a pretty tidy set of engineering tradeoffs and it's good at what it does.
at no point along the way did anyone think 'what is this like to learn? What is this like to use? What is this like for people who are just learning, what is their experience like?' I'm saying that this is done out of a sense of elitism
I think it proceeds more from a sense that revision control is actually quite a large and complex problem space, that finding one's way around that space requires practice and experience, that most of the problems git is designed to solve are not problems faced by people taking their first steps into that space, and that sweeping most of the inherent complexity under the rug of a slick UI not only fails to make it go away but actively promotes the Dunning-Kruger effect among tool users.
I don't believe simple recognition that expertise exists, and that some tools are a better fit for those who have already spent the time needed to acquire more of it, amounts to elitism.
Elitism, to my way of thinking, is the notion that expertise is something that properly should be jealously guarded by a small group. Experts building tools for their own benefit and that of other experts does not, in my view, amount to jealous guarding; see also Hole Hawg.
It's been my consistent experience that the overwhelming reason for the deplorable lack of technical expertise we see all around us today is not so much that experts are guarding it and walling it off, as that the general public doesn't on the whole give two shits about acquiring it.
The overwhelming majority of the technical experts I know have been very generous with their time whenever I have displayed a sincere desire to learn from them. And having over the course of my IT career acquired a certain amount of expertise of my own, I've been consistently keen on passing on, in my turn, as much of that as I can. But most people just want to get something else done in a hurry and seem positively hostile to learning enough IT to be able to dig themselves out of the next pitfall it presents to them. People actually interested enough to want to spend a bit of time digging into IT for its own sake are both relatively rare and an absolute pleasure to assist.
To the extent that elitism does exist in IT, it seems to me that slick do-it-all-for-you UX, not arcane do-what-I-ask-for-and-nothing-else engineering tools, are its public face. The magical pick-it-up-in-two-minutes stuff, most of which is well known to have been put together by hugely expensive commercial concerns with the resources to spend on things like focus group UX testing, serves to strengthen and perpetuate the idea that Users and Makers are separate camps and ever more should be so.
posted by flabdablet at 6:13 AM on July 6, 2017 [11 favorites]
flabdablet: Elitism, to my way of thinking, is the notion that expertise is something that properly should be jealously guarded by a small group. Experts building tools for their own benefit and that of other experts does not, in my view, amount to jealous guarding; see also Hole Hawg.
There's contempt in that Hole Hawg story for "the self-delusional tendencies of soft-handed homeowners who want to believe that they have purchased an actual tool." Some programmers have that contempt, too, and that contributes to the unfriendliness of some coding communities. Not all programmers or IT people, and not all the time, but there are enough sour notes to give many people a bad taste.
I've gotten better at this myself as I've gotten older.
People actually interested enough to want to spend a bit of time digging into IT for its own sake are both relatively rare and an absolute pleasure to assist.
Those are the people who generally don't need any assistance anyway. :-) If you see your role as helping people to find a solution for themselves, rather than presenting them with a solution, then it's in the challenging users - uninterested, scared, scornful - where your help-others-learn expertise shows up.
Or you realize that Dunning-Kruger applies to what you think of as your skill at helping others learn...
posted by clawsoon at 7:27 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
There's contempt in that Hole Hawg story for "the self-delusional tendencies of soft-handed homeowners who want to believe that they have purchased an actual tool." Some programmers have that contempt, too, and that contributes to the unfriendliness of some coding communities. Not all programmers or IT people, and not all the time, but there are enough sour notes to give many people a bad taste.
I've gotten better at this myself as I've gotten older.
People actually interested enough to want to spend a bit of time digging into IT for its own sake are both relatively rare and an absolute pleasure to assist.
Those are the people who generally don't need any assistance anyway. :-) If you see your role as helping people to find a solution for themselves, rather than presenting them with a solution, then it's in the challenging users - uninterested, scared, scornful - where your help-others-learn expertise shows up.
Or you realize that Dunning-Kruger applies to what you think of as your skill at helping others learn...
posted by clawsoon at 7:27 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
Coders are a dime a dozen these days,
That may be the case but there are still more coding jobs than there are coders. You don't get salaries in the comfortable six figures when there is a surplus of people in the labor pool.
posted by empath at 7:30 AM on July 6, 2017
That may be the case but there are still more coding jobs than there are coders. You don't get salaries in the comfortable six figures when there is a surplus of people in the labor pool.
posted by empath at 7:30 AM on July 6, 2017
Pretty much a description of every tech company from Apple to Zynga. If you aren't a white guy or wiling to be treated like shit then don't work for these people.
posted by dustsquid at 7:55 AM on July 6, 2017
posted by dustsquid at 7:55 AM on July 6, 2017
You don't get salaries in the comfortable six figures PERIOD unless your company is either a) located somewhere where that is actually average pay because of the cost of living, and/or b) someone is a genius with a demonstrable pedigree of successful work, usually after years of experience. Most programmers don't make anywhere near that much, and why should they? It's not an especially unique skill.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:04 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Autumnheart at 8:04 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
If you aren't a white guy or wiling to be treated like shit then don't work for these people.
Stop.
Blaming.
The.
Victims.
Even a little.
posted by Etrigan at 8:21 AM on July 6, 2017 [21 favorites]
Stop.
Blaming.
The.
Victims.
Even a little.
posted by Etrigan at 8:21 AM on July 6, 2017 [21 favorites]
> Pretty much a description of every tech company from Apple to Zynga. If you aren't a white guy or wiling to be treated like shit then don't work for these people.
"You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try -- even if your livelihood is at stake."
posted by tonycpsu at 8:29 AM on July 6, 2017 [5 favorites]
"You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try -- even if your livelihood is at stake."
posted by tonycpsu at 8:29 AM on July 6, 2017 [5 favorites]
And to bring my point home here: how many people at Github looked at the work Coraline was doing and saw that with the contempt that flabdablet has for pretty UI? How many people at Github associate things like building social protections as for people who "seem positively hostile to learning enough IT to be able to dig themselves out of the next pitfall it presents to them" and not for people like them?
I am sorry to have to tease out people with Git opinions, but the whole point of this thread is that Github violently rejected someone they saw as not like them and programmers will do it at the drop of a hat whilst pretending they're doing it based on merit.
posted by Merus at 8:31 AM on July 6, 2017 [13 favorites]
I am sorry to have to tease out people with Git opinions, but the whole point of this thread is that Github violently rejected someone they saw as not like them and programmers will do it at the drop of a hat whilst pretending they're doing it based on merit.
posted by Merus at 8:31 AM on July 6, 2017 [13 favorites]
If you aren't a white guy or wiling to be treated like shit then don't work for these people.
That's insane. I am a (mixed-race, lady) programmer because I really like being a programmer. It keeps me engaged and interested in ways that no other previous career field (publishing, design) did. I deserve to have the right to work for the best companies in my field should I want to. In the case of Github, I should be able to work on a tool used by the vast majority of my contemporaries, not only for the future vistas it opens but also for the experience of being able to work for a highly respected distributed company.
I will not cede this to the assholes. And shrugging your shoulders is fucking ceding it.
I think sometimes people who don't experience this don't understand the sheer madness and indignity of being unable to do something you love and are good at because of the idiocy of other people — systematic idiocy and underestimation, so you can't even go anywhere else.
It starts with constantly feeling as though you suck at this. As though there is something incredibly wrong with you — and you may spend years getting to the bottom of it (spoiler: it's not actually you but hey you spent your 20s getting totally gaslit). Once you realize that, you wake up to find men who are so fucking mediocre getting promoted and praised all around you. Then you discover that by constantly having to prove yourself as the price of entry, you've been denied the ability to try, be wrong, learn, and try again — a cycle that is required to be anything other than okay at whatever you are doing. I don't know what comes after yet, but it is truly galling to think how much I have lost out, how much I could have done if not stuck on this treadmill of utter shit.
So I won't shrug and say whaddya gonna do. I am so thankful for all the other women who risk blackballing, who risk being unbelieved, doxxed, and mocked for telling their stories because I have to hope that if we keep pushing, someday I, or a younger me, will have the totally unremarkable opportunity to just do their fucking job and grow their career.
Also, I am so frustrated so often and I work for a good company. I work for someone you have definitely heard of, who accept these problems exist and keep trying to make things better (even if sometimes ineptly). But I was so traumatized by other places I worked that I was terrified to even have an opinion for the first few months. I am still scared that every time I stand up for myself I am gonna wake up to a PIP and a new job hunt. Because I know that's easily the risk you take every time you disagree.
Anyways, I hope you have enjoyed these emotional and moderately organized thoughts.
posted by dame at 8:32 AM on July 6, 2017 [61 favorites]
That's insane. I am a (mixed-race, lady) programmer because I really like being a programmer. It keeps me engaged and interested in ways that no other previous career field (publishing, design) did. I deserve to have the right to work for the best companies in my field should I want to. In the case of Github, I should be able to work on a tool used by the vast majority of my contemporaries, not only for the future vistas it opens but also for the experience of being able to work for a highly respected distributed company.
I will not cede this to the assholes. And shrugging your shoulders is fucking ceding it.
I think sometimes people who don't experience this don't understand the sheer madness and indignity of being unable to do something you love and are good at because of the idiocy of other people — systematic idiocy and underestimation, so you can't even go anywhere else.
It starts with constantly feeling as though you suck at this. As though there is something incredibly wrong with you — and you may spend years getting to the bottom of it (spoiler: it's not actually you but hey you spent your 20s getting totally gaslit). Once you realize that, you wake up to find men who are so fucking mediocre getting promoted and praised all around you. Then you discover that by constantly having to prove yourself as the price of entry, you've been denied the ability to try, be wrong, learn, and try again — a cycle that is required to be anything other than okay at whatever you are doing. I don't know what comes after yet, but it is truly galling to think how much I have lost out, how much I could have done if not stuck on this treadmill of utter shit.
So I won't shrug and say whaddya gonna do. I am so thankful for all the other women who risk blackballing, who risk being unbelieved, doxxed, and mocked for telling their stories because I have to hope that if we keep pushing, someday I, or a younger me, will have the totally unremarkable opportunity to just do their fucking job and grow their career.
Also, I am so frustrated so often and I work for a good company. I work for someone you have definitely heard of, who accept these problems exist and keep trying to make things better (even if sometimes ineptly). But I was so traumatized by other places I worked that I was terrified to even have an opinion for the first few months. I am still scared that every time I stand up for myself I am gonna wake up to a PIP and a new job hunt. Because I know that's easily the risk you take every time you disagree.
Anyways, I hope you have enjoyed these emotional and moderately organized thoughts.
posted by dame at 8:32 AM on July 6, 2017 [61 favorites]
the contempt that flabdablet has for pretty UI
I don't have contempt for pretty UI; I just don't think software that lacks it is ipso facto evidence of elitism in its designer(s).
posted by flabdablet at 8:36 AM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
I don't have contempt for pretty UI; I just don't think software that lacks it is ipso facto evidence of elitism in its designer(s).
posted by flabdablet at 8:36 AM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
When developing tools, the process usually goes:
1. Make it do the thing
2. Make it tell you whether it is doing the thing or not
3. Make it handle error conditions while doing the thing
4. Make it easy to use
Unsurprisingly, step 4 is the lowest priority because if it isn't doing the thing in a repeatable and error-free way, being easy to use is of no value whatsoever.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:51 AM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]
1. Make it do the thing
2. Make it tell you whether it is doing the thing or not
3. Make it handle error conditions while doing the thing
4. Make it easy to use
Unsurprisingly, step 4 is the lowest priority because if it isn't doing the thing in a repeatable and error-free way, being easy to use is of no value whatsoever.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:51 AM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]
It starts with constantly feeling as though you suck at this. As though there is something incredibly wrong with you — and you may spend years getting to the bottom of it (spoiler: it's not actually you but hey you spent your 20s getting totally gaslit). Once you realize that, you wake up to find men who are so fucking mediocre getting promoted and praised all around you. Then you discover that by constantly having to prove yourself as the price of entry, you've been denied the ability to try, be wrong, learn, and try again — a cycle that is required to be anything other than okay at whatever you are doing. I don't know what comes after yet, but it is truly galling to think how much I have lost out, how much I could have done if not stuck on this treadmill of utter shit.
Word! Word! Word! Not just in coding BTW.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:17 AM on July 6, 2017 [20 favorites]
Word! Word! Word! Not just in coding BTW.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:17 AM on July 6, 2017 [20 favorites]
Word! Word! Word! Not just in coding BTW.
Yeah, that was something I was curious about. Do people have the sense that this is a particular problem in tech, or just a problem in general, and a lot of us work in tech?
posted by Ragged Richard at 9:59 AM on July 6, 2017
Yeah, that was something I was curious about. Do people have the sense that this is a particular problem in tech, or just a problem in general, and a lot of us work in tech?
posted by Ragged Richard at 9:59 AM on July 6, 2017
Is Atlassian known for being notably better about this kind of thing? Because I could totally move some personal projects to BitBucket, but I remember BitBucket having some notable problems with, for example, the handling of the Feminist Software Foundation "parody" project.
Pretty much a description of every tech company from Apple to Zynga. If you aren't a white guy or wiling to be treated like shit then don't work for these people.
Next up: "Women make less money in software development because they choose not to work for the big software companies and deliberately cripple their careers."
posted by Sequence at 10:01 AM on July 6, 2017 [10 favorites]
Pretty much a description of every tech company from Apple to Zynga. If you aren't a white guy or wiling to be treated like shit then don't work for these people.
Next up: "Women make less money in software development because they choose not to work for the big software companies and deliberately cripple their careers."
posted by Sequence at 10:01 AM on July 6, 2017 [10 favorites]
I mean, obviously it's a problem in general, but is it especially bad in tech?
posted by Ragged Richard at 10:04 AM on July 6, 2017
posted by Ragged Richard at 10:04 AM on July 6, 2017
Yeah, that was something I was curious about. Do people have the sense that this is a particular problem in tech, or just a problem in general, and a lot of us work in tech?
Well tech (but not only tech) is special because of the mythology of it being a great meritocracy that requires a high IQ or a special type of personality. It makes it easier to obscure who is getting ahead or falling behind based on merit vs. social benefits. Combine that with the fact that people who have advanced mathematics degrees get lumped in the same job category as someone who taught themselves a few weeks of javascript after high school. It makes it a field extremely prone to imposter syndrome, which is happily encouraged by the many mediocre men who benefit from it.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:05 AM on July 6, 2017 [8 favorites]
Well tech (but not only tech) is special because of the mythology of it being a great meritocracy that requires a high IQ or a special type of personality. It makes it easier to obscure who is getting ahead or falling behind based on merit vs. social benefits. Combine that with the fact that people who have advanced mathematics degrees get lumped in the same job category as someone who taught themselves a few weeks of javascript after high school. It makes it a field extremely prone to imposter syndrome, which is happily encouraged by the many mediocre men who benefit from it.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:05 AM on July 6, 2017 [8 favorites]
Do people have the sense that this is a particular problem in tech, or just a problem in general, and a lot of us work in tech?
I only work tech-adjacent - first in web-driven editorial (starting way back when that was nerdy) and then in digital marketing and I would say it's definitely something I've observed, especially as I've moved up the ladder.
For me it's been most visible in something like product development or business development - lots of women starting off at the bottom but the men -- mediocre ones -- were promoted or got away with huge, costly mistakes while the women were sidelined for even one or two tough conversations. Not 100% but enough to call it a trend. The gaslit feeling where your ideas are put down faster, harder, more publicly were palpable.
I would suggest that dame's insight about taking risks, making mistakes, learning, without huge professional consequences, is something that is particularly prevalent in tech or anything involving early adoption because you are often breaking ground in one way or another and that's something where men do not face the same failure penalty as women do.
In print editorial I think things had shifted a bit more - numbers of female publishers, etc. were higher - but sometimes I think that was actually a result of print starting to slide in profitability, as well as there being - I will say understood metrics of success, as opposed to people having to champion metrics of success.
I won't get into arts leadership but err ah yah.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:09 AM on July 6, 2017 [5 favorites]
I only work tech-adjacent - first in web-driven editorial (starting way back when that was nerdy) and then in digital marketing and I would say it's definitely something I've observed, especially as I've moved up the ladder.
For me it's been most visible in something like product development or business development - lots of women starting off at the bottom but the men -- mediocre ones -- were promoted or got away with huge, costly mistakes while the women were sidelined for even one or two tough conversations. Not 100% but enough to call it a trend. The gaslit feeling where your ideas are put down faster, harder, more publicly were palpable.
I would suggest that dame's insight about taking risks, making mistakes, learning, without huge professional consequences, is something that is particularly prevalent in tech or anything involving early adoption because you are often breaking ground in one way or another and that's something where men do not face the same failure penalty as women do.
In print editorial I think things had shifted a bit more - numbers of female publishers, etc. were higher - but sometimes I think that was actually a result of print starting to slide in profitability, as well as there being - I will say understood metrics of success, as opposed to people having to champion metrics of success.
I won't get into arts leadership but err ah yah.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:09 AM on July 6, 2017 [5 favorites]
I don't think the issue people have with git is mainly that it's a CLI tool - it's that the commands, options, and feedback are more arcane than usual for a CLI tool. But since a substantial part of GitHub's visible output is software intended to provide a nicer GUI for git (which as an engine is indisputably powerful), I think a better thing to look at is whether they succeed at that. As far as visualizing and making sense of project history they kinda set the bar that I'm used to, though arguably they haven't moved it much in a long time. As far as executing commands... I have to say I don't really use their client. Last time I did it seemed pretty limited.
posted by atoxyl at 10:14 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 10:14 AM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
Bringing up git's shitty UI is pretty tangential- sounds like someone's got an axe to grind. Linus's lack of empathy is much more directly relevant because his abrasive tirades are viewed as admirably direct coming out of his mouth but when someone like Coraline uses considerably gentler language she loses her job for lacking empathy.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:21 AM on July 6, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:21 AM on July 6, 2017 [7 favorites]
Yeah, that was something I was curious about. Do people have the sense that this is a particular problem in tech, or just a problem in general, and a lot of us work in tech?
It's certainly an issue in STEM academia/biology as well, for what it's worth. Ironically, as a woman who is typically direct in a work community but willing to be friendly and support my colleagues and request things softly, the pushback I get and the lack of support I see from colleagues when someone is sexist to me or throws a fit because I am "too mean" makes me more angry, not less, and more likely to engage in blunt, apparently threatening behaviors like smiling tightly and saying "G, that suggestion you just made for how my group should focus is literally the second slide on the presentation I have been using for over a year." Whereupon everyone scrambles to go "oh NO" and make me shut up again.
Why the hell should I soften up to make people comfortable and feel good when no one is going to back me up if I try less blunt ways of pointing out my competence? Why should I be nice when the rewards for 'nice' are so poor? Why not just cheerily take on the mantle of laboratory bitch and start being increasingly "prickly" and "scary" until people start treating me with some goddamn respect? If there's no way to win, why not let my anger at the double standards show? Because hey, now I'm angry, and now if you want me to play nice and friendly and likeable, it's going to be actual work for me on top of everything else.
Sure, it'll create a visibly more tense work environment. And sure, it'll make me less likeable. But as the price of likeability appears to be perceived incompetence, I'm increasingly taking the tack of being blunt and aggressive in my workplace, because the hell with this. Being visibly supportive of my labmates wasn't useful, so let's try being protective of my ideas and sharing a whole lot less.
posted by sciatrix at 10:23 AM on July 6, 2017 [23 favorites]
It's certainly an issue in STEM academia/biology as well, for what it's worth. Ironically, as a woman who is typically direct in a work community but willing to be friendly and support my colleagues and request things softly, the pushback I get and the lack of support I see from colleagues when someone is sexist to me or throws a fit because I am "too mean" makes me more angry, not less, and more likely to engage in blunt, apparently threatening behaviors like smiling tightly and saying "G, that suggestion you just made for how my group should focus is literally the second slide on the presentation I have been using for over a year." Whereupon everyone scrambles to go "oh NO" and make me shut up again.
Why the hell should I soften up to make people comfortable and feel good when no one is going to back me up if I try less blunt ways of pointing out my competence? Why should I be nice when the rewards for 'nice' are so poor? Why not just cheerily take on the mantle of laboratory bitch and start being increasingly "prickly" and "scary" until people start treating me with some goddamn respect? If there's no way to win, why not let my anger at the double standards show? Because hey, now I'm angry, and now if you want me to play nice and friendly and likeable, it's going to be actual work for me on top of everything else.
Sure, it'll create a visibly more tense work environment. And sure, it'll make me less likeable. But as the price of likeability appears to be perceived incompetence, I'm increasingly taking the tack of being blunt and aggressive in my workplace, because the hell with this. Being visibly supportive of my labmates wasn't useful, so let's try being protective of my ideas and sharing a whole lot less.
posted by sciatrix at 10:23 AM on July 6, 2017 [23 favorites]
And hey, the obvious answer is "yeah, fire me." Which just fucking sucks because I am genuinely good at this, could you fucking notice, and that just makes me angrier and angrier and even less inclined or able to focus on the job I'm actually trying to do.
oooh, ooh, and then I get to play with intersectionality--am I more threatening with the buzz cut I've been enjoying, as a gender non conforming lady? do I gotta put in the effort to soften my appearance to be more femme, even though buzz cut aside my standard of dress is absolutely bog-standard nerd t shirt and jeans which wouldn't bat an eye on a dude? do I gotta put more time and effort into dolling myself up and being pretty so I can be less threatening, or can I just hope to christ they unthinkingly slot me into "not really female" and hope their brain confuses that with "male" so I can get away with more? How do I run the perception game? And if I have to do all this other work to make people like me more, how do I then deal with the bubbling rage that they're expecting all this bullshit out of me to cope?
posted by sciatrix at 10:27 AM on July 6, 2017 [15 favorites]
oooh, ooh, and then I get to play with intersectionality--am I more threatening with the buzz cut I've been enjoying, as a gender non conforming lady? do I gotta put in the effort to soften my appearance to be more femme, even though buzz cut aside my standard of dress is absolutely bog-standard nerd t shirt and jeans which wouldn't bat an eye on a dude? do I gotta put more time and effort into dolling myself up and being pretty so I can be less threatening, or can I just hope to christ they unthinkingly slot me into "not really female" and hope their brain confuses that with "male" so I can get away with more? How do I run the perception game? And if I have to do all this other work to make people like me more, how do I then deal with the bubbling rage that they're expecting all this bullshit out of me to cope?
posted by sciatrix at 10:27 AM on July 6, 2017 [15 favorites]
Yeah, that was something I was curious about. Do people have the sense that this is a particular problem in tech, or just a problem in general, and a lot of us work in tech?
I have mostly only worked in tech, though I have customers across many kinds of industries and I will say I believe that this particular set of things a lot of us are talking about, this particular systemic form of structured sexism, is particularly a problem in male-dominated workplaces/departments in male-dominated industries. Like, that's where that structure thrives.
There are other structures that are also not great, but I have customer companies in all kinds of industries that do not seem to play this particular game, and one of the key factors seems to be that if you have a bunch of female employees it's really hard to terrorize and gaslight and break down each one separately. They may be paid less as a whole, they may not get promotion opportunities like the men do, but even if they don't talk directly to each other about it they're sitting in the next cube, they're in the break room while you're getting coffee, they're copied on the email throwing you under the bus, and have ways of letting you know they saw.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:25 AM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
I have mostly only worked in tech, though I have customers across many kinds of industries and I will say I believe that this particular set of things a lot of us are talking about, this particular systemic form of structured sexism, is particularly a problem in male-dominated workplaces/departments in male-dominated industries. Like, that's where that structure thrives.
There are other structures that are also not great, but I have customer companies in all kinds of industries that do not seem to play this particular game, and one of the key factors seems to be that if you have a bunch of female employees it's really hard to terrorize and gaslight and break down each one separately. They may be paid less as a whole, they may not get promotion opportunities like the men do, but even if they don't talk directly to each other about it they're sitting in the next cube, they're in the break room while you're getting coffee, they're copied on the email throwing you under the bus, and have ways of letting you know they saw.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:25 AM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
I too have found that it is the dudeliness which is a factor in many cases. For instance, as a designer, I worked for three agencies: one had a much more balanced design staff and it was less likely to have these shitty problems. (I also had one of the best bosses I ever a had there — a man — who stood up for me and my ideas, and the interesting there is, once someone stands up for you for a while and people listen, they often grow to see you have great ideas and then give you respect of their own accord.)
Of course where women are in the hierarchy also matters. There are men who are totally fine with women as long as the women are junior, so you can find companies that look balanced, but aren't really once you delve into it.
I also think tech and science have problems because culturally they are so wedded to notions of objectivity and rationality that make them completely unhinged when they have to understand social topics and failures. There was an article I can't find now that mentioned an academic whose main work was studying how to get rich people to understand the advantages they have; I wish there was someone also studying how to get men not to totally lose their shit when confronted with competent women.
posted by dame at 11:58 AM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]
Of course where women are in the hierarchy also matters. There are men who are totally fine with women as long as the women are junior, so you can find companies that look balanced, but aren't really once you delve into it.
I also think tech and science have problems because culturally they are so wedded to notions of objectivity and rationality that make them completely unhinged when they have to understand social topics and failures. There was an article I can't find now that mentioned an academic whose main work was studying how to get rich people to understand the advantages they have; I wish there was someone also studying how to get men not to totally lose their shit when confronted with competent women.
posted by dame at 11:58 AM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]
Clearly, the only hope is a 15 year moratorium on hiring men in tech jobs.
Well, sarcastic / defeatist tones aside, one thing that might work better is a Rooney rule: for every filled hire, you must have interviewed at least one woman. When my uni dept hired our most recent vacancy, we had a grand total of zero women even apply. When you consider surveys put the gender balance in open source / linux / devops at something like 1-5 percent, so we'd need between 20 and 100 applicants to get one woman applicant to interview.
It won't necessarily stop the attrition, or fix culture, but recruitment is at least a leading indicator of such problems, and one an individual company can take steps to address.
posted by pwnguin at 12:20 PM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]
Well, sarcastic / defeatist tones aside, one thing that might work better is a Rooney rule: for every filled hire, you must have interviewed at least one woman. When my uni dept hired our most recent vacancy, we had a grand total of zero women even apply. When you consider surveys put the gender balance in open source / linux / devops at something like 1-5 percent, so we'd need between 20 and 100 applicants to get one woman applicant to interview.
It won't necessarily stop the attrition, or fix culture, but recruitment is at least a leading indicator of such problems, and one an individual company can take steps to address.
posted by pwnguin at 12:20 PM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]
Feelin' happier about self-hosting Gitlab at work rather than paying for private Github, which had been under consideration. (There's been one nuisance to Gitlab: minor updates have too frequently gone out the door with bugs that need another minor update to fix -- we've learned to let them settle before updating. Other than that, it's been truly low-maintenance.)
posted by Zed at 12:53 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Zed at 12:53 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think tech is louder about how it's worse. The rise of the idealization of "young white guy" as the ideal founder/employee (see Paul Graham's comment about wanting fund people who look like Zuckerberg), coupled with a culture of "ha ha we're not like those suit people, we can BOOZE IN THE OFFICE AND HAVE FUN, MAAAAAAAN" I think makes it egregiously bad in tech in a way that other industries don't necessarily mirror.
On the flip side, tech is more likely to have a robust feminist backchannel communication network, so there's more women talking to other women about ways that things suck, which means that when women start talking about it in public it's easy to get more women saying "uh, yeah, that happened to me too." Because it's never just one woman.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:20 PM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]
On the flip side, tech is more likely to have a robust feminist backchannel communication network, so there's more women talking to other women about ways that things suck, which means that when women start talking about it in public it's easy to get more women saying "uh, yeah, that happened to me too." Because it's never just one woman.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:20 PM on July 6, 2017 [2 favorites]
Two recent interviews come to mind: one, at a Big Data Innovation spin off of a well-known large finance/insurance company, the other at a HUGE multinational financial institution. Both were for User Experience positions.
At Company One, I was interviewed by 6 people, of them one was a woman. And I was treated to all manner of cleverer-than-thou questions designed to "see how I think", I guess. It was so clearly an interview designed to show off the interviewers, where I was mainly a bystander. There weren't even snacks. I'd say 75% of the interviewers were 10+ years younger than me. I asked about what they've learned from their product failures. Turns out, they haven't killed any products in the year they've been running. (This is, FYI, not good.)
At Company Two, I was interviewed by three people, all men, all either my age or 5-8 years older. And the interviews were like conversations with peers. None of them treated me differently because I was a woman, none of them were trying to show off. Our conversations went off into tangents about how what we studied in college helped our careers. We talked about Agile. We talked about design systems. We talked about building bridges across silos. We talked about their product failures. We talked about the impact of the Financial Crisis on their work. I was treated like an intelligent, experienced professional. I was engaged. I thanked them, and said it was by far my favorite interview.
There are threads of sexism, there are patterns, but they show up -- and, importantly, fail to show up -- unexpectedly.
posted by gsh at 3:01 PM on July 6, 2017 [4 favorites]
At Company One, I was interviewed by 6 people, of them one was a woman. And I was treated to all manner of cleverer-than-thou questions designed to "see how I think", I guess. It was so clearly an interview designed to show off the interviewers, where I was mainly a bystander. There weren't even snacks. I'd say 75% of the interviewers were 10+ years younger than me. I asked about what they've learned from their product failures. Turns out, they haven't killed any products in the year they've been running. (This is, FYI, not good.)
At Company Two, I was interviewed by three people, all men, all either my age or 5-8 years older. And the interviews were like conversations with peers. None of them treated me differently because I was a woman, none of them were trying to show off. Our conversations went off into tangents about how what we studied in college helped our careers. We talked about Agile. We talked about design systems. We talked about building bridges across silos. We talked about their product failures. We talked about the impact of the Financial Crisis on their work. I was treated like an intelligent, experienced professional. I was engaged. I thanked them, and said it was by far my favorite interview.
There are threads of sexism, there are patterns, but they show up -- and, importantly, fail to show up -- unexpectedly.
posted by gsh at 3:01 PM on July 6, 2017 [4 favorites]
Linus's lack of empathy is much more directly relevant because his abrasive tirades are viewed as admirably direct coming out of his mouth but when someone like Coraline uses considerably gentler language she loses her job for lacking empathy.
I think it's hard to overstate the degree to which the late '90s open source culture has led us to where we are, and I think it's therefore fair to highlight Linus in this regard. A lot of the current and past few generations of developers (myself included) came into this community at a time when he was just the most prominent of a nearly unending supply of high profile assholes who were prized as technical geniuses who tell it like it is. I fucking cringe at the degree to which I looked up to him and others I viewed as luminaries, who in retrospect were ... in the best of cases maybe people who didn't mean to be so awful and weren't prepared for the fame they walked into, while in the worst of cases were just absolute garbage humans.
posted by tocts at 3:49 PM on July 6, 2017 [9 favorites]
I think it's hard to overstate the degree to which the late '90s open source culture has led us to where we are, and I think it's therefore fair to highlight Linus in this regard. A lot of the current and past few generations of developers (myself included) came into this community at a time when he was just the most prominent of a nearly unending supply of high profile assholes who were prized as technical geniuses who tell it like it is. I fucking cringe at the degree to which I looked up to him and others I viewed as luminaries, who in retrospect were ... in the best of cases maybe people who didn't mean to be so awful and weren't prepared for the fame they walked into, while in the worst of cases were just absolute garbage humans.
posted by tocts at 3:49 PM on July 6, 2017 [9 favorites]
I think it's hard to overstate the degree to which the late '90s open source culture has led us to where we are, and I think it's therefore fair to highlight Linus in this regard.
To be fair, apparently people measured design reviews at Microsoft by how many times Bill Gates dropped the F-bomb. Must have been something in the air, I guess.
posted by pwnguin at 4:16 PM on July 6, 2017
To be fair, apparently people measured design reviews at Microsoft by how many times Bill Gates dropped the F-bomb. Must have been something in the air, I guess.
posted by pwnguin at 4:16 PM on July 6, 2017
To be fair, apparently people measured design reviews at Microsoft by how many times Bill Gates dropped the F-bomb. Must have been something in the air, I guess.
Not to mention Steve fucking Jobs, who was, by all accounts, a flaming asshole, and who is routinely trotted out by our culture in general as everything to which we should aspire.
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:46 PM on July 6, 2017 [7 favorites]
Not to mention Steve fucking Jobs, who was, by all accounts, a flaming asshole, and who is routinely trotted out by our culture in general as everything to which we should aspire.
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:46 PM on July 6, 2017 [7 favorites]
Steve Jobs could be a flaming asshole, but unlike much of Silicon Valley, he was also a genius.
posted by entropicamericana at 4:53 PM on July 6, 2017
posted by entropicamericana at 4:53 PM on July 6, 2017
Steve Jobs could be a flaming asshole, but unlike much of Silicon Valley, he was also a genius.
Linus is exceptionally good at what he does too, but we certainly do not need any more people borrowing his persona.
Being able to criticize things in a clear and detailed way is good - that's why the double standard in Ehmke's story for what she's allowed to say to people vs. what they're allowed to say to her is important. But there's really no reason you have to be a gratuitous asshole about it.
posted by atoxyl at 5:20 PM on July 6, 2017 [7 favorites]
Linus is exceptionally good at what he does too, but we certainly do not need any more people borrowing his persona.
Being able to criticize things in a clear and detailed way is good - that's why the double standard in Ehmke's story for what she's allowed to say to people vs. what they're allowed to say to her is important. But there's really no reason you have to be a gratuitous asshole about it.
posted by atoxyl at 5:20 PM on July 6, 2017 [7 favorites]
Why should I be nice when the rewards for 'nice' are so poor? Why not just cheerily take on the mantle of laboratory bitch and start being increasingly "prickly" and "scary" until people start treating me with some goddamn respect? If there's no way to win, why not let my anger at the double standards show? Because hey, now I'm angry, and now if you want me to play nice and friendly and likeable, it's going to be actual work for me on top of everything else.
Sure, it'll create a visibly more tense work environment. And sure, it'll make me less likeable. But as the price of likeability appears to be perceived incompetence, I'm increasingly taking the tack of being blunt and aggressive in my workplace, because the hell with this. Being visibly supportive of my labmates wasn't useful, so let's try being protective of my ideas and sharing a whole lot less.
Get over cute
posted by flabdablet at 7:44 PM on July 6, 2017
Sure, it'll create a visibly more tense work environment. And sure, it'll make me less likeable. But as the price of likeability appears to be perceived incompetence, I'm increasingly taking the tack of being blunt and aggressive in my workplace, because the hell with this. Being visibly supportive of my labmates wasn't useful, so let's try being protective of my ideas and sharing a whole lot less.
Get over cute
posted by flabdablet at 7:44 PM on July 6, 2017
there's really no reason you have to be a gratuitous asshole about it
There's also really no reason to cling to a belief that being direct and assertive, in and of itself, automatically marks a person as a gratuitous asshole. The all-pervasive gaslighting is quite bad enough without internalizing it.
As a man in this culture I've long been trained to understand that if I'm direct and assertive and somebody else has a problem with that, it's their problem.
Likewise, it's always been made perfectly apparent to me that carrying on like an entitled asshole is a thing that I can, if I so choose, usually get away with.
I make a conscious effort to live by the first of these principles while discounting the second.
It completely sucks that standards for what kinds of behaviour are acceptably polite are so heavily gendered, and it completely sucks that the only way this is ever going to change involves so many people getting penalized for deliberately behaving in hitherto unacceptable ways.
posted by flabdablet at 8:09 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
There's also really no reason to cling to a belief that being direct and assertive, in and of itself, automatically marks a person as a gratuitous asshole. The all-pervasive gaslighting is quite bad enough without internalizing it.
As a man in this culture I've long been trained to understand that if I'm direct and assertive and somebody else has a problem with that, it's their problem.
Likewise, it's always been made perfectly apparent to me that carrying on like an entitled asshole is a thing that I can, if I so choose, usually get away with.
I make a conscious effort to live by the first of these principles while discounting the second.
It completely sucks that standards for what kinds of behaviour are acceptably polite are so heavily gendered, and it completely sucks that the only way this is ever going to change involves so many people getting penalized for deliberately behaving in hitherto unacceptable ways.
posted by flabdablet at 8:09 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
it'll make me less likeable
So much of likeability rests in the mind of the liker, rather than in the actual attributes of the likee, that tying yourself in knots in pursuit of some Platonic ideal of likeability is, to my way of thinking, a complete waste of your time.
Go for showing respect where it's due and leave it at that. Life is too short to spend much of it working for assholes.
I am keenly aware of the privilege inherent in always having been able to live by this principle. It makes me unhappy. It's such a basic thing; it should not require privilege. If I could wave a magic wand and make it universally applicable tomorrow, I would.
Unfortunately, I have never been able to think of a more effective way to do that than deliberately choosing to deprive assholes of my contributions to their enterprises even when doing so comes at considerable personal financial cost, and encouraging others to do likewise whenever they find themselves in a position that allows it.
posted by flabdablet at 8:23 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
So much of likeability rests in the mind of the liker, rather than in the actual attributes of the likee, that tying yourself in knots in pursuit of some Platonic ideal of likeability is, to my way of thinking, a complete waste of your time.
Go for showing respect where it's due and leave it at that. Life is too short to spend much of it working for assholes.
I am keenly aware of the privilege inherent in always having been able to live by this principle. It makes me unhappy. It's such a basic thing; it should not require privilege. If I could wave a magic wand and make it universally applicable tomorrow, I would.
Unfortunately, I have never been able to think of a more effective way to do that than deliberately choosing to deprive assholes of my contributions to their enterprises even when doing so comes at considerable personal financial cost, and encouraging others to do likewise whenever they find themselves in a position that allows it.
posted by flabdablet at 8:23 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
Steve Jobs could be a flaming asshole, but unlike much of Silicon Valley, he was also a genius.
Exactly like much of Silicon Valley, his particular genius was in marketing.
Personally I have very little respect for practitioners of the Dark Arts.
posted by flabdablet at 8:25 PM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
Exactly like much of Silicon Valley, his particular genius was in marketing.
Personally I have very little respect for practitioners of the Dark Arts.
posted by flabdablet at 8:25 PM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
Such respect as I do have for Apple and all its works rests squarely on the technical beauty of the Apple II.
Wozniak, unlike Jobs, is a Steve whose approach to life in general and engineering in particular are genuinely worth trying to emulate.
posted by flabdablet at 8:31 PM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]
Wozniak, unlike Jobs, is a Steve whose approach to life in general and engineering in particular are genuinely worth trying to emulate.
posted by flabdablet at 8:31 PM on July 6, 2017 [6 favorites]
There's also really no reason to cling to a belief that being direct and assertive, in and of itself, automatically marks a person as a gratuitous asshole. The all-pervasive gaslighting is quite bad enough without internalizing it.
I think you know but just to be clear - I'm accusing Linus Torvalds of this, not her.
posted by atoxyl at 8:40 PM on July 6, 2017
I think you know but just to be clear - I'm accusing Linus Torvalds of this, not her.
posted by atoxyl at 8:40 PM on July 6, 2017
(flabdablet, could you put more comments into one comment or something? That was seriously five comments of yours in a row.)
posted by XtinaS at 8:44 PM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by XtinaS at 8:44 PM on July 6, 2017 [3 favorites]
>There's also really no reason to cling to a belief that being direct and assertive, in and of itself, automatically marks a person as a gratuitous asshole. The all-pervasive gaslighting is quite bad enough without internalizing it.
As a man in this culture I've long been trained to understand that if I'm direct and assertive and somebody else has a problem with that, it's their problem.
>So much of likeability rests in the mind of the liker, rather than in the actual attributes of the likee, that tying yourself in knots in pursuit of some Platonic ideal of likeability is, to my way of thinking, a complete waste of your time.
Go for showing respect where it's due and leave it at that. Life is too short to spend much of it working for assholes.
You are male. It is really, REALLY not helpful for you to come into a thread about the challenges that women and trans people face and start telling people what they should be doing and how they should be responding. I guarantee you that the women and trans people reading this thread have already thought about whatever strategy you're advising, and have taken it up or not, depending on what works for them.
"Just stop giving a shit." gasp Oh my goodness, why didn't any of us think of this? Oh, wait, we did, and it's bullshit.
posted by Lexica at 9:16 PM on July 6, 2017 [26 favorites]
As a man in this culture I've long been trained to understand that if I'm direct and assertive and somebody else has a problem with that, it's their problem.
>So much of likeability rests in the mind of the liker, rather than in the actual attributes of the likee, that tying yourself in knots in pursuit of some Platonic ideal of likeability is, to my way of thinking, a complete waste of your time.
Go for showing respect where it's due and leave it at that. Life is too short to spend much of it working for assholes.
You are male. It is really, REALLY not helpful for you to come into a thread about the challenges that women and trans people face and start telling people what they should be doing and how they should be responding. I guarantee you that the women and trans people reading this thread have already thought about whatever strategy you're advising, and have taken it up or not, depending on what works for them.
"Just stop giving a shit." gasp Oh my goodness, why didn't any of us think of this? Oh, wait, we did, and it's bullshit.
posted by Lexica at 9:16 PM on July 6, 2017 [26 favorites]
The problem with foregoing likability is that if you really rub some people the wrong way or otherwise piss them off, they try to get you fired. Hence why this thread and the originating article exist.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:17 PM on July 6, 2017 [14 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:17 PM on July 6, 2017 [14 favorites]
It is really, REALLY not helpful for you to come into a thread about the challenges that women and trans people face and start telling people what they should be doing and how they should be responding.
If that's the only reasonable interpretation of my contributions above, I apologise for that and will try to find more effective ways to communicate my meaning in future.
"Just stop giving a shit."
I can see how it might be possible to read that into what I wrote, but it's not even close to what I meant when I wrote it and further still from the way I actually behave in the workplace.
posted by flabdablet at 12:40 AM on July 7, 2017
If that's the only reasonable interpretation of my contributions above, I apologise for that and will try to find more effective ways to communicate my meaning in future.
"Just stop giving a shit."
I can see how it might be possible to read that into what I wrote, but it's not even close to what I meant when I wrote it and further still from the way I actually behave in the workplace.
posted by flabdablet at 12:40 AM on July 7, 2017
if you really rub some people the wrong way or otherwise piss them off, they try to get you fired.
This is absolutely true, and remains so regardless of the genders of those involved.
It completely sucks to have to work with people whom it is possible to rub the wrong way simply by existing. Nobody should have to put up with that.
posted by flabdablet at 12:47 AM on July 7, 2017 [1 favorite]
This is absolutely true, and remains so regardless of the genders of those involved.
It completely sucks to have to work with people whom it is possible to rub the wrong way simply by existing. Nobody should have to put up with that.
posted by flabdablet at 12:47 AM on July 7, 2017 [1 favorite]
You know who actually lacks empathy?
Whoever invented the concept of a "performance improvement plan".
posted by floatboth at 3:51 AM on July 7, 2017 [2 favorites]
Whoever invented the concept of a "performance improvement plan".
posted by floatboth at 3:51 AM on July 7, 2017 [2 favorites]
If that's the only reasonable interpretation of my contributions above, I apologise for that and will try to find more effective ways to communicate my meaning in future
You have like a billion comments in a thread about experiences you couldn't possibly know anything about.
Sometimes it is not your turn to talk. It's your turn to listen. When you insist on talking through your thoughts, when you insist on being heard in a thread like this even though it's not about you, it sucks all the oxygen out of the discussion. Rather than have an actual discussion, we get derailed responding to your 101 thoughts. It's like an angry child demanding that we explain everything in their terms and address everything to them. And it happens in almost all of these threads.
What you're doing in this thread -- talking over women and their own experiences, arguing about it, inserting yourself into the center of a conversation that is not about you rather than listening -- is part of of the problem. Nobody at these companies listens to women or takes them seriously, and often that dismissal looks a lot like what you've done here.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:21 AM on July 7, 2017 [27 favorites]
You have like a billion comments in a thread about experiences you couldn't possibly know anything about.
Sometimes it is not your turn to talk. It's your turn to listen. When you insist on talking through your thoughts, when you insist on being heard in a thread like this even though it's not about you, it sucks all the oxygen out of the discussion. Rather than have an actual discussion, we get derailed responding to your 101 thoughts. It's like an angry child demanding that we explain everything in their terms and address everything to them. And it happens in almost all of these threads.
What you're doing in this thread -- talking over women and their own experiences, arguing about it, inserting yourself into the center of a conversation that is not about you rather than listening -- is part of of the problem. Nobody at these companies listens to women or takes them seriously, and often that dismissal looks a lot like what you've done here.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:21 AM on July 7, 2017 [27 favorites]
I have wondered how much of what's now easily identifiable as part of tech culture -- the way that the default mode of discussion is one of dominance, how people interact with the goal of winning an argument / being most right, rather than with the goal of listening and learning from each other, and contempt is often expressed -- is traceable to the degree that toxic masculinity has invaded the place. It wasn't always this way, and it's a pattern that I see in other industries that have a major sexism problem. Like there is nothing more exhausting than a Hacker News thread, except possibly a discussion amongst brokers or traders.
It's so poisonous to innovation.
ETA: I forgot to say that I wonder if dealing with that aspect of the culture itself might help, but...I mean. Chicken, egg, etc.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:43 AM on July 7, 2017 [6 favorites]
It's so poisonous to innovation.
ETA: I forgot to say that I wonder if dealing with that aspect of the culture itself might help, but...I mean. Chicken, egg, etc.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:43 AM on July 7, 2017 [6 favorites]
Jesus christ--I'm like twenty comments up going "well fine maybe I will just embrace being a bitch", flabdablet, and I'm going to just join in on the chorus that you need to sit down and listen to what women and trans folk are saying here. Quit posting five comments at once and sit down and really think about what people are saying and why.
Look. I'm okay with being direct. Fuck knows it's something that comes naturally to me. I'm even okay with being direct and forceful. I talk all the time and I'm bright and fast and I know what I'm worth, just like you seem to think we ought to do. Do you know why I put the effort to be gentle and indirect and palatable in my conflicts when it's not even my natural style? Even when they're rude to me first?
Because if I don't, it professionally costs me. I did note that my boss views me as scary and a potential source of conflict, right, not the asshole who thinks it's a great idea to explain my entire thesis to me as though it's magically novel? Not the asshole who thought that if he just whined enough, he could get me to do my job and his? Did I not note that I've been passed over for opportunities because I wasn't fucking likeable enough, and that likeability fucking matters to a professional? Did you know that when I do something, I get smacked down--going, I might add, back to early childhood--but when my male colleagues and fellow students engage in precisely the same ways, they get praised for it? Do you have any idea how often I've been told literally to shut up in professional spaces while dudes who are just as loud and just as obnoxious in their enthusiasm are fawned on for their brilliance?
And then my boss has the gall to smile at me when I gently try to ask him to back me up in conflicts that I'm not starting or insults that I field in my work place, and say that have I maybe considered that I have a lot in common with Captain Mansplainer on the level of basic personality? Well, no fucking shit; I have exactly the kind of overbearing, obnoxious, enthusiastically overexplaining basic temperament that he does. The main difference is that no one lets me get away with it and while that's probably good for my development as a human being, it rather fucking hurts my development in my career. Which is, by the way, something that keeps me up at nights, because I'm my household's best shot at financial stability right now and anything I do to rock the boat is more likely to hurt us than help us.
Schadenfrau is right, by the way; I am a much better scientist when I can relax and lean into colleagues who respect me and whom I respect right back. There are absolutely male scientists in my lab and outside it--admittedly, nonwhite ones, but still--who treat my ideas and my work with respect. Their critiques are actively helpful to me and their support is invaluable. This is also the case for many female scientists I know. When I'm outside an environment where I'm not constantly waiting for someone to insult me or denigrate my position, when I don't have to worry about status and I can focus on my actual job, unsurprisingly I do much better work. Surprisingly, focus on work rather than petty status games actually is more effective and efficient than bullshit posturing!
I am really sick of being this angry. I am really tired of feeling this threatened, and I am tired of bracing myself for careful questions about whether I'm being honest about the experiences that have lead me to expect--correctly--those small threats to appear. I would like to go back to being the self I am around colleagues who are good at listening, who maybe prod me and go "hey shut up I wasn't done" if I talk during their turn but let me have my head when it's mine. I do better work that way, for sure, and the lack of the ability to have that environment is part of why I'm so aggravated.
posted by sciatrix at 6:28 AM on July 7, 2017 [27 favorites]
Look. I'm okay with being direct. Fuck knows it's something that comes naturally to me. I'm even okay with being direct and forceful. I talk all the time and I'm bright and fast and I know what I'm worth, just like you seem to think we ought to do. Do you know why I put the effort to be gentle and indirect and palatable in my conflicts when it's not even my natural style? Even when they're rude to me first?
Because if I don't, it professionally costs me. I did note that my boss views me as scary and a potential source of conflict, right, not the asshole who thinks it's a great idea to explain my entire thesis to me as though it's magically novel? Not the asshole who thought that if he just whined enough, he could get me to do my job and his? Did I not note that I've been passed over for opportunities because I wasn't fucking likeable enough, and that likeability fucking matters to a professional? Did you know that when I do something, I get smacked down--going, I might add, back to early childhood--but when my male colleagues and fellow students engage in precisely the same ways, they get praised for it? Do you have any idea how often I've been told literally to shut up in professional spaces while dudes who are just as loud and just as obnoxious in their enthusiasm are fawned on for their brilliance?
And then my boss has the gall to smile at me when I gently try to ask him to back me up in conflicts that I'm not starting or insults that I field in my work place, and say that have I maybe considered that I have a lot in common with Captain Mansplainer on the level of basic personality? Well, no fucking shit; I have exactly the kind of overbearing, obnoxious, enthusiastically overexplaining basic temperament that he does. The main difference is that no one lets me get away with it and while that's probably good for my development as a human being, it rather fucking hurts my development in my career. Which is, by the way, something that keeps me up at nights, because I'm my household's best shot at financial stability right now and anything I do to rock the boat is more likely to hurt us than help us.
Schadenfrau is right, by the way; I am a much better scientist when I can relax and lean into colleagues who respect me and whom I respect right back. There are absolutely male scientists in my lab and outside it--admittedly, nonwhite ones, but still--who treat my ideas and my work with respect. Their critiques are actively helpful to me and their support is invaluable. This is also the case for many female scientists I know. When I'm outside an environment where I'm not constantly waiting for someone to insult me or denigrate my position, when I don't have to worry about status and I can focus on my actual job, unsurprisingly I do much better work. Surprisingly, focus on work rather than petty status games actually is more effective and efficient than bullshit posturing!
I am really sick of being this angry. I am really tired of feeling this threatened, and I am tired of bracing myself for careful questions about whether I'm being honest about the experiences that have lead me to expect--correctly--those small threats to appear. I would like to go back to being the self I am around colleagues who are good at listening, who maybe prod me and go "hey shut up I wasn't done" if I talk during their turn but let me have my head when it's mine. I do better work that way, for sure, and the lack of the ability to have that environment is part of why I'm so aggravated.
posted by sciatrix at 6:28 AM on July 7, 2017 [27 favorites]
You know who actually lacks empathy?
Whoever invented the concept of a "performance improvement plan".
I can see how it was well-intended when first invented. Like, "hey, some of these people we're firing could be saving their jobs if they just knew they had to turn shit around. So let's give them specific criteria and metrics so they know exactly what to do!" And it could probably be a good thing, if it were actually used to save people from being fired. In practice, however, it just seems to end up making the last month at a job even more miserable before the inevitable firing.
posted by Ragged Richard at 9:21 AM on July 7, 2017 [1 favorite]
Whoever invented the concept of a "performance improvement plan".
I can see how it was well-intended when first invented. Like, "hey, some of these people we're firing could be saving their jobs if they just knew they had to turn shit around. So let's give them specific criteria and metrics so they know exactly what to do!" And it could probably be a good thing, if it were actually used to save people from being fired. In practice, however, it just seems to end up making the last month at a job even more miserable before the inevitable firing.
posted by Ragged Richard at 9:21 AM on July 7, 2017 [1 favorite]
I can see how it was well-intended when first invented. Like, "hey, some of these people we're firing could be saving their jobs if they just knew they had to turn shit around.
I'm pretty sure the PIP was a structured response to EEOC laws and regulations -- immediate firing of protected minorities looks bad in courts without documentation, so here's a reliable way to fire people for performance reasons. I don't think it was ever intended as a performance management tool -- we already have annual goals for this purpose. It's intended to make it clear to the courts you made it clear to the employee what your expectations are, and how they did not meet them.
Which is pretty self-interested and thus not what I think of when I hear the words "well-intended," but quickly became a shit sandwich of bad intentions layered between loaves of 'But HR won't let me fire them yet.' About the only saving grace here is that you get 90 days notice instead of zero.
posted by pwnguin at 9:50 AM on July 7, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm pretty sure the PIP was a structured response to EEOC laws and regulations -- immediate firing of protected minorities looks bad in courts without documentation, so here's a reliable way to fire people for performance reasons. I don't think it was ever intended as a performance management tool -- we already have annual goals for this purpose. It's intended to make it clear to the courts you made it clear to the employee what your expectations are, and how they did not meet them.
Which is pretty self-interested and thus not what I think of when I hear the words "well-intended," but quickly became a shit sandwich of bad intentions layered between loaves of 'But HR won't let me fire them yet.' About the only saving grace here is that you get 90 days notice instead of zero.
posted by pwnguin at 9:50 AM on July 7, 2017 [4 favorites]
The whole mindset seems to have seeped into the entire tech industry like a malignant toxin. Where does it start, who nurtures it, and how do we get rid of it?
Some relevant history
posted by flabdablet at 11:58 AM on July 7, 2017
Some relevant history
posted by flabdablet at 11:58 AM on July 7, 2017
July 3: Silicon Valley Reels Over Sexist Culture as Another Venture Capitalist Falls
July 7: Another Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Apologizes for Sexual Harassment
Not the same guy, by the way.
posted by Lexica at 5:05 PM on July 7, 2017 [2 favorites]
July 7: Another Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Apologizes for Sexual Harassment
Not the same guy, by the way.
posted by Lexica at 5:05 PM on July 7, 2017 [2 favorites]
Kelly Ellis, with whom some of you will be familiar, created a bingo card after Canter and his wife decided to speak out.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:00 AM on July 8, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:00 AM on July 8, 2017 [1 favorite]
Holy shit he calls her a userer. I'm pretty sure a guy named Canter knows exactly what that means and why it is offensive.
posted by bq at 9:11 AM on July 8, 2017
posted by bq at 9:11 AM on July 8, 2017
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i hate to be a wet blanket, but this pretty much true of nearly every place i have i worked
posted by entropicamericana at 2:14 PM on July 5, 2017 [34 favorites]