4 ms·

Its a prop for being low social status. If they wanted masculinity instead of low social status, they would have used football posters and GQ magazine for prop

by VLM 11y ago

Its a prop for being low social status. If they wanted masculinity instead of low social status, they would have used football posters and GQ magazine for props in their thought experiment. I'm not quite sure what a prop would be for low social status women.

hueving 11y ago
>Its a prop for being low social status. Its a prop for having a functioning brain. Other than the star wars and science fiction stuff (which I haven't seen at any tech companies I've worked at here in the bay), the rest of the props indicate that you have a genuine intellectual interest in the field. We don't make fun of NASA for decorating their offices with space paraphernalia or claim it means a low social status. Frankly I'm not interested in people coming into this field who are stupid enough to think that people genuinely excited about what they do have a "low social status".
gaius 11y ago
Do you mean "prop" as in holds something up or "prop" as in, a thing from a scene in a movie? Because I am having some difficulty in parsing your comment.
- coke12 11y ago
  A "prop" as in a piece of scenery used in a play or movie. In this case nerdy posters are used as props to give a certain vibe.
bjacks 11y ago
Probably trashy women's gossip magazines, lots of pink etc. That would do it for me.
- majormajor 11y ago
  This is probably it, there's even movies about it (Legally Blonde, etc). What's different there is customer-facing vs non-customer-facing roles, a lawyer who shows up in court in non-professional attire is going to get flak, and I don't know what the immediate female-heavy analogue for a back-of-office, not-customer-facing male-dominated engineer department. The usual examples of female-dominated professions like nursing and teaching don't fit that comparison. But it's very disingenuous to call engineering low social status these days. Wearing Star Wars t-shirts or talking about computer parts and technology 24/7, yes, that will still receive at least some ribbing, if not more, but that's not the same as being an engineer by day. In my recent social experience, reaction after someone asks "what do you do?" is pretty uniformly somewhere on the positively-neutral-to-impressed spectrum.

by VLM 11y ago

hueving 11y ago

>Its a prop for being low social status. Its a prop for having a functioning brain. Other than the star wars and science fiction stuff (which I haven't seen at any tech companies I've worked at here in the bay), the rest of the props indicate that you have a genuine intellectual interest in the field. We don't make fun of NASA for decorating their offices with space paraphernalia or claim it means a low social status. Frankly I'm not interested in people coming into this field who are stupid enough to think that people genuinely excited about what they do have a "low social status".

gaius 11y ago

Do you mean "prop" as in holds something up or "prop" as in, a thing from a scene in a movie? Because I am having some difficulty in parsing your comment.

coke12 11y ago
A "prop" as in a piece of scenery used in a play or movie. In this case nerdy posters are used as props to give a certain vibe.

bjacks 11y ago

Probably trashy women's gossip magazines, lots of pink etc. That would do it for me.

majormajor 11y ago
This is probably it, there's even movies about it (Legally Blonde, etc). What's different there is customer-facing vs non-customer-facing roles, a lawyer who shows up in court in non-professional attire is going to get flak, and I don't know what the immediate female-heavy analogue for a back-of-office, not-customer-facing male-dominated engineer department. The usual examples of female-dominated professions like nursing and teaching don't fit that comparison. But it's very disingenuous to call engineering low social status these days. Wearing Star Wars t-shirts or talking about computer parts and technology 24/7, yes, that will still receive at least some ribbing, if not more, but that's not the same as being an engineer by day. In my recent social experience, reaction after someone asks "what do you do?" is pretty uniformly somewhere on the positively-neutral-to-impressed spectrum.