25 ms·

For an Inclusive Culture, Try Working Less

330 points by itsdrewmiller 9y ago

creepydata 9y ago
>Yesterday, I had a wide-ranging Slack conversation with some very nice people who patiently allowed this privileged white male to repeatedly touch the third rail of diversity and inclusion. Read this three times and I can't understand what it means. Can anyone "translate?" On the overall topic, it seems really obvious in retrospect that removing formalities in the workplace turns the office into a social club and those who don't want to socialize are excluded. Its certainly an unintended consequence though. I can certainly see the benefits of formality in the office now that I'm older.
- lsy 9y ago
  The term "third rail" comes from underground subway systems where there is a third, electrified rail to provide power to trains. There are usually warnings in the subway not to touch the rail due to the risk of electrocution. "The third rail" is used colloquially to describe a topic that is socially or politically difficult to discuss because of the reactions it can bring up. In this context, I think the author is describing conversations he had with people who were patient with him as he asked (possibly naive or hurtful) questions about a hot-button and loaded topic that they had more experience with than he did.
  - pacaro 9y ago
    These topics can be particularly tough to ask about because it isn't an oppressed persons job to be an "oppression explainer". I thought his recognition of this was very respectful. FWIW in other parts of the world an electrified third rail is the norm on overground railroads too.
    - naravara 9y ago
      >These topics can be particularly tough to ask about because it isn't an oppressed persons job to be an "oppression explainer". I thought his recognition of this was very respectful. If you leave it up to the oppressors to decide for themselves how to make the world a more inclusive space for you without your input, I don’t think you can expect better results than what we’ve had thus far.
      - tangent128 9y ago
        However, if it's the oppressed's responsibility to educate every person they interact with, it becomes trivial to DoS them through willful ignorance. There can't be a social expectation that the privileged are entitled to cognitive labor from already-oppressed individuals, because that can and has been abused. (That said, people are more likely to be open to a person that they can sense has already done the basic research.)
        naravara 9y ago
        This isn't a question of ought, it's just a matter of is. People with power will act in their own interests always. The only way to make them act in your interests is to make their interests align with yours. If nobody is willing to do that, they will appeal to your interests only in the most perfunctory way that never threatens their privileged position. Thus, you get a lot of "diversity panels" that are full of old White men speculating as to what makes you tick. Fairness and "problematicness" don't enter into it. That's just how the world works. It's easy enough to differentiate ignorance born out of good faith from malicious sea-lioning without having to assume bad faith on everyone's parts simply because of how they present to the world.
        haltingthoughts 9y ago
        OP was expressing frustration at having to deal with explaining third rail topics and the lack of awareness of the asker of how annoying it can be. It doesn't need to be in bad faith to be annoying. To illustrate the problem, I had a visible medical problem that didn't resolve quickly and had to deal with constant questions about how it was going. While I appreciated the sympathy, it was a bit annoying after answering the same question to tens of people.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    > The term "third rail" comes from underground subway systems where there is a third, electrified rail to provide power to trains. There are usually warnings in the subway not to touch the rail due to the risk of electrocution. "The third rail" is used colloquially to describe a topic that is socially or politically difficult to discuss because of the reactions it can bring up. An older metaphor for the same thing: minefield.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Slack = javascript-based IRC chat system privileged = in posession of advantages, or lacking disadvantages, that some other people experience "touch the third rail" = in this context, discuss a difficult topic which often blows up into hostility diversity = the property of having people of different appearance and background in the same social context inclusion = work done to bring in people to share the same social context.
  - Animats 9y ago
    Keeping up can be a problem. The US State Department has some off-line resources on political correctness for the use of people returning from a few years outside the US. After a few years in Djibouti or Bangkok, some readjustment is necessary. These are even offered for kids of foreign service officers. ("Transgender bathroom rights? Waat?")
  - FT_intern 9y ago
    In most tech contexts, diversity means racial and gender appearance-only diversity. There is very little to no thought put into background or cultural diversity. The different groups (immigrants and 2nd generation children of immigrants) that offer the most cultural and background diversity are flagged as a monolithic group based on appearance, completely ignoring the cultural diversity that they bring.
- blackbagboys 9y ago
  Current social norms require a degree of self-abasement before it's socially acceptable for certain types of people to offer an opinion on certain cultural topics. This is a ritualized phrase designed to fulfill this norm. It's not intended to convey any information.
  - stickfigure 9y ago
    I wish to subscribe to a newsletter in which you annotate, line by line, speeches by politicians and other popular figures.
  - lacampbell 9y ago
    That's a cultural norm only among groups of political extremists, and peddlers of left-wing conspiracy theories. Any well-adjusted individual should reject any attempts to have this imposed upon them in order to be a good "cultural-fit".
  - AcerbicZero 9y ago
    I think I basically understood this concept, but having it explained so succinctly made me pause and re-read it. Thank you for summing it up so well.
- ygaf 9y ago
  That line is how people write when they're trying to signal something to a minority of people at the expense of the normal reader. What's really strange is the following "I'll thank them by not naming them".
  - skybrian 9y ago
    It's an assumption that they're not comfortable discussing hot-button topics publicly.
Kinnard 9y ago
I'm looking for an alternative framework to work-life balance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538411 I bet there's more than one out there. Work/life balance doesn't "work" for a lot of people, a lot of types of work and a lot of lives. Astronauts, Presidents, Prophets . . . startup ceo's . . .
- exelius 9y ago
  Work/life balance is often a cyclical thing: during certain periods in your life, you will have more time available and desire to work than others. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution, which is why giving employees the flexibility to figure out what it means for their life is the right approach. As an employer, you're going to find that giving people the flexibility to manage this for themselves is ideal. The alternative is you get to manage high turnover, which is exactly what happens when companies demand "only the top engineers" and then work them to death with 6 months of unnecessary 100-hour weeks.
Sir_Substance 9y ago
Am I the only one who gets the niggling feeling that anyone who uses the words "males" and "females" in their public dissertations like it's normal to refer to people the same way one does cable connectors must have a tenuous and possibly weakening grip on the real world?
- pjc50 9y ago
  It is often a bit of a red flag, but he only does it in one sentence. Overuse of "females" in particular is usually a bad sign.
  - ashark 9y ago
    I continue to find the use of "woman" or "women" as an adjective to be really grating. "Women firefighters", for example—we don't say "men nurses", ya know? Reads/sounds awful to me, like we're referring to someone who only fights fires for (on?) women, or does nursing stuff for men. To take dictionary.com's adjectival example, "woman plumber" seems like a gross euphemism for a gynecologist. Imagine "man teacher". Wow is that an ugly and misleading construction. It seems like we only started doing it because someone decided "female" was suddenly a word to be avoided regardless of context, for reasons that elude me. "Male" seems to still be fine, fortunately.
    - biggc 9y ago
      I think the point is that using "male/female" as a noun is clinical and dehumanizing, but there aren't any issues with using the words as an adjective.
    - thatwebdude 9y ago
      I think women find most of these clarifiers (that's how I see it, anyway) as a title worth being proud of. They've overcame social and potentially physical adversity to obtain this position (Female Firefighter, etc.) I've probably heard Male Nurse vs. Nurse (who's a male) about 50/50 at this point. As the world learns that gender is not a prerequisite for nearly every job title, then these gender qualifiers will probably diminish. Language is a slippery slope though. I don't think it should be read into too much.
panoptispeech 9y ago
People who crusade for diversity and inclusion usually start with innocuous measures, but after these approaches fail to bring about Utopia, these people always end up crudely 1) attempting to destroy any fun the workplace, and 2) imposing a limit on how much strong contributors can contribute. The end state for a D&I-focused workplace is one full of frowns and formal business attire and promotion by seniority and endless paranoia about innocuous comments landing people in HR. Nature did not spread human talent evenly among her people. Terrible things happen when we try to force nature to conform to our ideological preferences.
jankotek 9y ago
Remote work is even more inclusive.
- slaunchwise 9y ago
  Remote work, in my experience, also tends to be managed/ rewarded largely on the basis of productivity.
exelius 9y ago
Yes, yes, yes. This was brought up in a thread last week about "As a female, how do I identify a good employer?" The best answers basically said "work somewhere that has as boring a corporate culture as possible". Basically, work for a place where you are rated on your production and nothing else. Work elsewhere and things like "how late did you work?" -- a metric that is far easier for people without children to meet -- cease to matter. Working late isn't the only thing (though it is a big one), but it tends to correlate with "immature HR practices" in general. Inclusivity is about recognizing that people have life configurations that differ from your own, and creating the space for those differences to exist.
- blablabla123 9y ago
  Damn, all this corporate bashing during the last years... It sounded so right. Having worked at several startups in these years, and also co-founded one, I realized the culture is often borderline insane. Working now at a more or less corporate startup, I'm so much happier.
  - exelius 9y ago
    Yeah, for as much as people hate on being corporate, it really does keep a lid on a lot of the bad behavior you see at startups that gets swept under the table because of the informal nature of record keeping and decision making.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - Joeri 9y ago
    I wouldn't call it corporate, I'd call it professional.
  - nightski 9y ago
    Not only that, I personally found out I was fooling myself. Sure I was working until 8PM-9PM many days but found that I wasn't getting much at all done in the mornings. I'd hit my productivity stride around 1-2 PM after lunch. Getting in and starting early, finishing up early/mid afternoon and then enjoying the evenings either working on my own thing or just spending time with the SO has significantly increased quality of life.
panoptispeech 9y ago
Counterexample: big parts of fintech have workplace cultures straight out of the 50s, dress codes and all. They're much less diverse than regular tech. SJW remedies for social ills never work, and they usually have extremely undesirable side effects.
lmm 9y ago
> It’s so comfortable and nice to lead an integrated life where your colleagues are your friends and vice versa, where your conversations over beers solve problems encountered over keyboards. > But maybe that comes at a cost. If we set aside that desire and focus on what we’re really trying to do here — make good software — then maybe we’ll open up some different possibilities. By constraining the number of things we have to agree on, and the number of hours we have to spend agreeing on them, we naturally open ourselves to a diverse world of talented people. Much as we might wish otherwise, I think this article is right that informality and diversity are in tension (though I think it's massively wrong to conflate informality with long hours; it's very much possible to have a culture where you drink alcohol, play Rock Band, play board games, but still go home after your 35 hours/week). But having to give up informality would be a very heavy price. For me a comfortable life is the end and making good software is the means. But even if your goal is good software, looking at the past couple of decades of big professional companies being displaced by scrappy startups, informal organizations seem a lot better at producing good software.
- exelius 9y ago
  > informal organizations seem a lot better at producing good software I don't think the formality has anything to do with the quality of software; I think it has more to do with VC-funded companies operating lean, and HR is overhead.
  - lmm 9y ago
    Maybe. But can see how it would affect it: informality leads to much more effective communication, within-team but especially across-team, and that removes a huge class of the mistakes that cause businesses to fail. Even just reducing the barrier for people at the bottom to tell people at the top when something's completely broken makes a huge difference to the organization's effectiveness.
    - creepydata 9y ago
      I think it's the opposite, I think informality leads to much less effective communication, not more. It's hard to have "tough conversations" when personal relationships are on the line. Telling Steve he needs to start carrying his weight is much more difficult if it means endangering your friendship with Steve.
jblow 9y ago
This is all fine, but there are side-effects. If you only work a minimum number of hours within your field, you are unlikely to emerge as one of the peak achievers or thought leaders in your field. That's just because you learn more from experience, and working more hours gives you more experience. You can extrapolate from there what this means for companies and individuals. I am not at all saying that companies should ask people to work long hours. (I run a software company, and we are super-lax about hours, people showing up at the office, etc). But I am saying that if an individual wants to be an expert in a particular field, that person should probably work a lot (and probably wants to work a lot anyway, due to interest in the subject). This doesn't necessarily have to be at the company; it could be at home, on personal projects, whatever. But the deeper and more challenging the project is, the better you learn, and it's easier to have one project that is deep and challenging than somehow to have two in parallel. And if only one is deep and challenging, then you are sort of idling with half your time. So there are basically two paths to this kind of deep work: work for a company, make sure you get a project that's really good, and then work hard on it; or go do your own thing, make sure you have enough money somehow, and work hard on what interests you. This also means that "work-life balance" is not a thing for experts the way it is for normal people. But that's fine, because for these kinds of experts their work is a serious part of their life and the two things are inseparable. Of course if you don't feel this way about what you're working on, that it is a serious part of your life, then this strategy doesn't make sense; and I would not encourage people who don't feel this way (who are the majority of the population) to work that hard. I am just pointing out that there are some of us for whom a different life strategy is best.
- blablabla123 9y ago
  YMMV but in my experience the most challenging projects were personal ones. Why not in the job? Because all the stake holders are interested in making the projects not too difficult or experiment, so they get realized. For my own projects I can make them as unrealistic as I wish. So of course the failure rate is also much higher than for my professional work. That way I got unusually proficient in certain technologies.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  "This also means that "work-life balance" is not a thing for experts the way it is for normal people. " I have seen quite a few experts in their field and they didn't work long hours but everything they did counted. The problem is that most of us are being overloaded with repetitive, trivial stuff and never get the opportunity do deep thinking and solving difficult challenges. This can't be solved by working more. You pretty much wrote this but I just want to emphasize that long working hours won't get you ahead but challenging work.
vedranm 9y ago
If you are not familiar with this modern lingo, I suggest checking out the following resource: https://www.mises.org/blog/cultural-marxism-explained-7-minutes https://www.mises.org/blog/cultural-marxism-explained-7-minu...
- mallaidh 9y ago
  "Cultural Marxism" is nothing more than a fringe-right conspiracy theory that develops into antisemitism at its worst. [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20040217231449/http://www.splcenter.org:80/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=53 https://web.archive.org/web/20040217231449/http://www.splcen...
  - aexq36 9y ago
    Cultural Marxism is not a conspiracy theory. It's simply a name for a strategy of advancing leftist political causes by using cultural institutions such as academia and the media; undeniably, there are leftists who do this, and they have openly stated that they do this. It would be a category error to refer to a strategy of political action as a "conspiracy theory", since no organized conspiracy is being proposed. Saying that using the term "Cultural Marxism" is "antisemitism at worst" is nothing more than an attempt to preemptively scare off people from investigating the idea.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Cultural Marxism is not a conspiracy theory. It's simply a name for a strategy of advancing leftist political causes by using cultural institutions such as academia and the media Were that true, it would still be poisoning-the-well through guilt-by-association in naming, since Marxism and leftism are not equivalent, and Marxism (largely, though not entirely, as a result of guilt-by-association with Leninism) has strong emotional loading in most of the West, particularly the US. It would be like calling the same thing on the Right (which absolutely does exist, also: everyone with a viewpoint they are trying to advance uses cultural institutions in that effort to the extent they are able) cultural Fascism.
to_bpr 9y ago
There's no shortage of corporate environments to work in for those who want it.
thegayngler 9y ago
So by forcing everyone to work strict 9-5 schedules you can create diversity. Ok. Hmmmm... I agree at least in principle that one shouldn't be required to always hangout late nights after work. However, admittedly occasionally I think it's useful and it's helpful to understand your co-worker's motivations and spending a bit more time with co-workers sometimes is certainly reasonable and helps to build trust and respect amongst other co-workers. Maybe people should be working only 30 hours a week and spending the other 10 hours just on team building. I also think its useful to understand the social aspect of things because understanding motivations can help the team solve problems in a way that everyone will agree to.
- creepydata 9y ago
  10 hours a week on teambuilding seems extremely excessive. The thing is, many people don't want personal relationships with their co-workers, they want business relationships with their co-workers. Forcing employees to socialize with each other means you are excluding those people who don't want to socialize with their co-workers and those who don't have much in common with their co-workers, or even those who don't like their co-workers on a personal level. This seems pretty obvious, but only in retrospect. I also don't understand what "understanding motivations" means.
  - thegayngler 9y ago
    I would love to be in agreement with you but my experience has taught me differently. Social relationships are business relationships. There isn't a way to separate the two. If you don't like someone you work with directly eventually one of you will leave if you both are working two closely together. The tension could also cause other business problems in some form or another over time. 9 to 5 doesn't work for everyone. For some people working different schedules is what works for them. What about that type of inclusion? Inclusion of those who don't want to do the standard 9 to 5 and those who do want to socialize with each other. I think there is a tendency for individuals to do 180 on business-related processes every time a new article comes out about some business is doing X and it appears to be successful for now. When times are rough having a social relationship will help keep the business part of the relationship in tact. Things will not always be easy and there will be rough patches and stressful situations. It's also helpful to meet and get to know people in other departments before you need them for something. If you work in any kind of large organization with lots of departments and moving parts you will need to know now to navigate the organization. Social situations allow you a chance to build relationships with people working on other parts of the business that you may or may not need help with later on down the line. People have to socialize with each other to get work done. It's not an option to not have at least a somewhat social relationship with someone you work with closely. It's not realistic. Yes, I think it's helpful to understand someone else's point of view(and/or motivations) and where it comes from. Knowing these things can stop you from being offended by something that may be said or done that wouldn't otherwise be considered offensive. Many times you will already know how someone will react to certain situations and decisions as well as figure out ways to effectively navigate that. Its easier to get a co-worker to care about and help you with your problem if you have some common ground with a co-worker or some social capital. A "business only non-social" environment means you have a whole bunch of people working who ultimately undermine each other. You wind up with duplication of effort etc... I've had people tell me flat out tell me they don't want me to tell them the solution to the problem they were having that was already solved because they wanted to figure it out by themselves. This type of "business-only" competitive attitude is wasteful of the businesses time and money. This happened at one company I worked at who was steadily laying folks off while this sort of wasteful behavior was happening. All in all trying to take the people out of the people in my almost 10 years of experience doesn't actually work out well and can actually be wasteful and hurt the business.
nashashmi 9y ago
I am going to wrap this article around a bigger more general concept. I might be going off topic but bear with me. The difference between a startup culture and a corporate culture is the difference between a creative company and a disciplined company. "Discipline" is like a swiss knife, something that can work anywhere and everywhere. Creativity only works in some places, in places that are desperate, in places that are still making basic decisions, in places where the problems are high and the solutions are few. A disciplined company has no problem being acquired by a creative company. But a creative company has many problems when they start masquerading in a disciplined company. (Read: Microsoft acquires Company X and writes it off 5 years later.) Working in a disciplined company is easy for most people. No manual required. Working in a creative company is difficult for most people but easy for creative people. Most foreigners or people with diverse minority backgrounds have a difficult time adapting to very social environments. They would rather stay strictly professional and confined to their work. But here is the problem: what is the point of having diversity if social interaction is nil? How messed up is your social world if it does not include unsocial minorities? There is a balance that is needed. Google started as creative and became more corporate and also became more "boring". (Sergey Brin's word)
- blablabla123 9y ago
  I very much agree to most part. So regarding your question, that's really a problem I guess. The obvious bottom line is that for obscure reasons diversity works well in these mega boring environments. But in the very lively places not. So the irony is that in the private life it tends to be vice versa. In the super conservative world you find males only hanging out with males - not sure what the women do to be honest. On the other hand really chaotic people tend to have much more diverse friendships. (Just stating the obvious ;)) But back to the companies: yes it's much tougher to get the chaotic work place right. I had pretty much given up on that to be honest. I still believe in it, but probably you must be suuuper careful who you work with. What if the secret to 'success' is a top notch HR? Most startups have virtually no real HR people.
- brixon 9y ago
  "Most foreigners or people with diverse minority backgrounds have a difficult time adapting to very social environments. They would rather stay strictly professional and confined to their work." Maybe rephrase this sentence, this reads like anyone not like you cannot do creative work. It sounds extremely racist and other 'ists.
adventist 9y ago
> That’s because the culture was mostly about the business of software, how you build it, how you sell it, how you support it. If you were excited about that, you automatically belonged. You didn’t need to stay late, or drink alcohol, or play Rock Band, or play board games, or not have kids to pick up, or go to church, or not go to church, or do anything except show up 9-to-5 and care a lot about good software. Yes! Yes! Yes! I don't drink, and its kind of sad that I get to miss out sometimes because I don't go to the bar. Because I like to bike instead, why can't I not feel pressure to go to the bar and do my own thing after work? Handling work stuff at Work I feel is the way to go.
- lmm 9y ago
  > I don't drink, and its kind of sad that I get to miss out sometimes because I don't go to the bar. Because I like to bike instead, why can't I not feel pressure to go to the bar and do my own thing after work? Because having a liminal zone where people feel allowed to step outside the hierarchy and say things that might otherwise be unacceptable (e.g. "this framework we're using is totally fucked") is really important and valuable? It's not about the alcohol per se, but alcohol is a particularly effective way of creating that atmosphere.
  - ABCLAW 9y ago
    If your organization can't encourage frank discussion about workplace issues without a venue for employees to drug themselves, you probably have more important problems to dive into. More importantly, if you lean on off-site drinking as your method to get real feedback and communication, you probably have less incentive to fix your workplace culture in the first place.
    - asdqwwwww 9y ago
      Congratulations on missing OPs point. Completely. A bar is a pretty standard watering hole where you go to complain about things you'd like to complain about off the record. Maybe the problem is annoying and not fixable, e.g. "this framework sucks", or the problem is with with the industry, e.g. "diversity shouldn't be priority over merit". Both of these problems don't really belong in a "realtime feedback and communication" system because they can't be fixed through the proper channels. The second one especially, where voicing that opinion in SV will get you hung on a cross outside Google HQ. The bar provides a cathartic release so you don't explode at work on problems you can't fix. Why do you think people stop at the bar before going home? Most of them aren't alcoholics, they just don't want to bring unfixable problems home, and face it, complaining _feels_ good.
alexashka 9y ago
I think he's taking the surface level and assuming if we copy the surface level, we are going to get the rest. No. The reason Fog Creek works well, is because it's very smart people, who care about what they're doing. They care because it's a product company - they get to make decisions that impact the product. They feel a sense of ownership. Contrast that with a sweat, uh sorry, I mean dev shop. Contrast that with doing contract work for big companies where you come in, leave 6 months later. Contrast that with start-ups that only exist because someone got free money. Contrast that with shit maintenance work at big corps. Does that about cover 95%, if not more, software jobs out there? There is no fixing shit workplaces because the foundation is rotten. When you have no say, when you don't care about the product, when you move around every few years - yeah, it's shit culture. There is no fixing that - most people long for a stable group of people they can make something happen with. Most people are confused about how much work and dedication it takes to make something great. Most people's actions create what most people complain about and they don't even know it. There is no fixing it, there is only becoming good enough to either start your own Fog Creek, or be good enough to join one.
Animats 9y ago
Maybe this is more about drinking than dress code. Companies of Japanese salarymen have the same problem - too much group drinking, and a very uniform culture.
Mz 9y ago
Overall good post, but: Yesterday, I had a wide-ranging Slack conversation with some very nice people who patiently allowed this privileged white male to repeatedly touch the third rail of diversity and inclusion. That conversation led me to the realizations in this post. I’ll thank them by not naming them, and by promising never to bring this up in their Slack channel again. In other words, people openly hated on him for wanting to discuss something with them and get informed -- a white male in a position of power that few women or poc occupy. And all they can do is make him scared to bring it up again and act like the abuse they heaped upon him is some sort of privilege he didn't deserve or something. Wow. I am so sick of women and people of color being openly hateful to people who were born the "wrong" gender and color to be part of the unfortunate many. Hello? Whining about how "it isn't my job to explain this stuff to you!" instead of being all "OMG! An opportunity to have a useful conversation with a white male who is actually curious about how the so-called other half live!" is part of the problem, not part of the solution. (Before you auto-downvote this on the assumption that I am some overprivileged asshole man, please note I am a woman.)
- cname 9y ago
  How did you get from "very nice people" to "hateful" and "whiny"?
- alew1 9y ago
  You're making a lot of assumptions for someone who hasn't seen that Slack conversation.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Straw feminists are frightening.
    - Mz 9y ago
      I don't self identify as a feminist. So if you mean me, you are in error.
      - 9y ago
temp-dude-87844 9y ago
This approach finds its parallels in other collaborative spaces where meritocracy is valued; open source software development comes to mind. In that arena, this approach was widely deployed, but is at odds with the more recent trend of explicitly stating to promote inclusion and diversity. Staunchly meritocratic online interaction and collaboration, from software development to messageboards, allows people to cultivate identities largely defined by their contributions, which is often distinct, or even at odds, from the identity they wish to demonstrate in their real life. In online spaces where individual contributors aren't restricted from speaking out against the leadership, this disconnect will manifest instead of being suppressed. While I don't disagree with the author's recommendations and rationale, it's unfortunate that the OP's argument essentially reduces down to the fact that the less casual interaction between people, the more inclusivity will result. It's also re-framing the implied problem: the equality vs. equity debate. In the OP's view, the solution is to cultivate a minimalist, work-focused culture that solves the inclusivity question by avoiding it entirely. This is very much at odds with the approach that receives a lot more press these days, which seeks to prescriptively address inclusivity within its own problem-space.
- ch4s3 9y ago
  How are you defining "meritocratic online interaction"?
  - temp-dude-87844 9y ago
    A contribution defined by its payload's self-contained substance and value-add to a core mission of the effort, e.g. a block of code for a requested feature, documentation to accompany a feature, an insightful on-topic post, or a stimulating exchange. It's an artifact whose value is derived from its content, and not from its provenance.
    - ch4s3 9y ago
      OK, I'll bite. In principle, this makes sense, but I think if we poke at it a little you may agree that there are some holes. >A contribution defined by its payload's self-contained substance and value-add to a core mission Let's discuss the core mission. How is this mission decided? Is there a process that includes multiple stakeholders? Who picks these stakeholders? I would presume that most open source projects are started by 1 person, or a few people who work together, but recognize that other arrangements exist. At some point either they must set these goals or expand the core group that makes such decisions. So to start with, the first person(s) setting the mission are as arbitrary as having been there when it started. Are they the best at setting goals once a project is in full swing? Perhaps, perhaps not. But, I think you can agree that at the outset, merit is defined by those who start a project or are arbitrarily close to it's start. > It's an artifact whose value is derived from its content, and not from its provenance. How does a project determine the "value" of a piece of content. What is the process for derivation? Is it simply the fulfillment of a feature request with accompanying tests and docs? I would suggest that for any non-trivial code, it will be difficult to determine if a pull request will do exactly what it is purported to do with no negative externalities. What is you have competing contributions for the same feature request? How do you determine which one to choose? Let's say for example that concurrently an issue is addressed by a core contributor and a first time contributor and both arrive at equivalently good solutions. Which implementation should you choose to maintain "meritocracy"? How do you justify that decision? You may be interested to look to the origin of the word meritocracy[1]. It was intended as satire. [1]The Rise of the Meritocracy https://books.google.com/books?id=QelNAQAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=QelNAQAAQBAJ
andrewfong 9y ago
The takeaway for me is less about minimum hours and more about minimum culture. Or put another way, "keep your identity small". http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
golemotron 9y ago
I wish I could up-vote this more. It is a problem that corporate America tries to optimize function by getting everyone closer and closer together with team building exercises and alignment of values. Values are deeply personal and we should recognize that people are going to differ. Freedom of conscience is as basic as freedom of religion and important for the same reason. If we keep work a professional space we maximize diversity of thought and life experience, which are ostensibly what the large push toward ethnic and gender diversity are a proxy for.
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Humjob 9y ago
Why is having a company consisting mostly of white people a 'bad thing'? It's a scientific fact that groups vary in their propensity towards institution building, cooperativeness, IQ, etc. When America was 90%+ white (before ~1965), it experienced a huge surge of productivity, along with much higher levels of social trust and cooperation. We've seen a concomitant decline in all those variables as the country has become more 'diverse,' and as the smartest/most capable women have abandoned motherhood to become cogs in the capitalist machine, only to end up in their 40s with lots of cats, lots of money, no husband, and no family. Anyway, I find it interesting that cultural Marxism has infected mainstream tech to the point that this article has 172 upvotes. Thankfully, people are beginning to wake up,
- mnm1 9y ago
  "When America was 90%+ white (before ~1965), it experienced a huge surge of productivity" Yes, by enslaving blacks and exploiting non-whites, women, and children, something that any population with a workforce of slaves could easily do in a country as big as the US thus making the "huge surge of productivity" hardly impressive and definitely not something to ever be repeated again.
  - Humjob 9y ago
    I hate to break it to you, but non-whites, women and children (for the most part) didn't put a man on the moon or discover the scientific breakthroughs which created the vast wealth that enables you to sip your latte and whine about white male privilege on an complex, fantastic global network. Slaves (along with low-skill immigrants) are actually anti-technological in nature. In the economic equation of labor vs capital, they bring down the wage required to achieve certain goals and weight the scales massively in favor of using labor to solve problems. When you have fewer people, automation, capital and 'smart solutions' to business problems become more incentivized.
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platz 9y ago
It is also known that casual dress is somehow connected to less social mobility. > But above all I didn’t have the cultural and social capital to know how to dress casual in the right way. My casual dressing was made of nerdy, unfashionable and cheap clothes: you could immediately say that I haven’t accomplished anything. And I didn’t even know that there was a “rich” way to dress casual. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/informal-dress-social-mobility-sicilian-perspective.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/inf... there’s more art to looking sharp in casual attire than in a suit and tie! > Tyler Cowen: Well, being a casual person myself, I'm very glad being casual is in vogue, and probably will stay in vogue. But what I find striking is societies with a lot of upward mobility often tend to have strict dress codes. So you see this today with Mormons, at Mormon businesses. You see it in Japan in its heyday years--you know, the businessman or journeyman suit, they more or less all looked the same. There's something about upward mobility where actually clothing is not that casual and one is being more formal in trying to impress; and that is a [?]. But the thing about being casual is it actually makes it harder for people to prove themselves. So, Bill Gates goes to a meeting and he may show up dressed very casually; but he's still Bill Gates--either everyone knows or if you really needed to, you could Google him. So there's a code of casual that's actually very difficult for, say, people from other cultures in America to master or demonstrate that's actually made signaling harder. Just that right way of looking casual is in a funny way more conformist than like the blue suit and tie, which you could do and then innovate around and try to climb to the top. So I find this disturbing, the more I think about it. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/05/tyler_cowen_on_1.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/05/tyler_cowen_on_1.ht...
- elgenie 9y ago
  I listened to that podcast, and I think the money quote is this one: > Russ Roberts: […] I do think it's--instead of getting a very highly tailored and expensive suit, now you have to know exactly how to match your tee-shirt with your running shoes in a way that doesn't make you look the wrong kind of geek or whatever it is. > Tyler Cowen: Yes, so say you are an immigrant to this country and you show up at a workplace and they tell you, 'Look, put on a blue suit jacket and a tie, and burgundy shoes.' I mean, don't you feel immense relief at that, actually?
lacampbell 9y ago
Read this three times and I can't understand what it means. Can anyone "translate?" Sure. "I'm a spineless human being who publicly hates my race and gender in order to try and give the appearance of being a good human being without actually doing anything". I'm white and male and I'll talk about whatever subject I want. If anyone wants to escape 'white privilege' there are plenty of countries where we are thin on the ground.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Why so spiteful? You don't see any value in recognizing and trying to be respectful of the disproportionate difficulties and hardship that certain groups have experienced in the past? Especially as such things have been somewhat overlooked or ignored until recently? This isn't a dynamic that will continue indefinitely. Similar to how individuals move on from events where they were wronged in years past, society will move on regarding many of the hot button issues today. For example, you don't see people hawing and hemming about women's suffrage these days.
  - lacampbell 9y ago
    It is not spite, it is contempt. A healthy well-adjusted individual doesn't talk that way about their own race and gender. It's toxic and I steer clear of such people. You don't see any value in recognizing and trying to be respectful of the disproportionate difficulties and hardship that certain groups have experienced in the past? Especially as such things have been somewhat overlooked or ignored until recently? It's not my responsibility, concern, or problem. I reject any attempt by anyone to insinuate that it should be. I also reject anything that is against my interests as a member of any demographic group I am a part of. My position is universal and logically consistent (I expect the same of any other human being, no matter what groups they belong to). Is yours?
    - qb45 9y ago
      To be honest, this time it may have been a kind of joke or irony, not actual self-hatred. But of course there are people who really mean it.
anothercomment 9y ago
The assumption seems to be that companies culture is driving women away. Is that even true, as in, are there really hundreds of thousands of female software developers in waiting who would jump at a job at a company with the appropriate culture? It seems very unlikely to me - more likely, the pipeline dries out long before the hiring stage. That some companies with great effort manage to compete over the few female developers on the market doesn't prove every company could hire lots of female developers if only they changed their culture. To be honest, personally, even if there were those hundreds of thousands of female developers supposedly driven away by bro culture, I would still maintain that people should have a right to create companies they enjoy working in. If some people want to work in T-Shirts and get drunk every night, it is their right to do so (if they can earn the money to sustain it). Luckily not all companies are the same, so that people can apply to companies that suit their tastes. If it weren't so, there wouldn't even be a need for hiring or job seeking to begin with. People could just apply to the next best company and be hired, likewise, companies could hire the next best applicant - because there would be no such issues as cultural fit or whatever. Not very realistic (source: I am not friends with everybody and not everybody is friends with me).
323454 9y ago
Sometimes, to solve really difficult problems, you have to make big personal sacrifices. Sometimes, to evolve, adapt and gain the edge, you have to be loose and unprofessional. Sometimes, to survive a famine or a drought, you have to ruthlessly cut what isn't absolutely necessary. These are the other phases of the business cycle that the author neglects. Professionalism, openness, and work life balance belong to a certain phase of the cycle. That phase does not come from nothing and it does not last forever.
tomaff 9y ago
I feel like the goal if diversity isn't worth sacrificing so much fun. I love my work because I can relate to so many of my colleagues. We have interesting conversations, we joke and tease each other. It is a great feeling to be looking forward to going to work. Many software engineers were not socialites at school, many are shy around opposite sex. I suspect most haven't had a great social life prior to work. They were often bullied, neglected and misunderstood. Finally come 20-something and they get to experience... Life as it is taken for granted by normal people. They get to have fun and don't feel bad about it. Well until posts like this show up. If all of this has to vanish for diversity to take place - then screw the diversity. Diversity on it's own means nothing to me if I can't have a good time. I spend considerable amount of my life at work, and I have also made some financial sacrifice to be where I am, and if all of it is for nothing, if all of it gets converted into this dull and grey workspace - then I am out. Might as well work for a bank and get more money for it if that's the only option. If having such a culture is genuinely off-putting to women[1], I see no reason why they could not establish their own companies with their counter-culture. Given that all the talented women will want to work there - this company will be destined to succeed, right? And they will be happy doing their jobs there and I get to have fun at work too. Don't ever forget that diversity is not the terminal value of humanity. We want people to be happy. [1] big if. Out of 3 billion women there will be some that enjoy such subculture, just like there are some men who don't
trustfundbaby 9y ago
For all the noise tech startups make about meritocracy, they sure do a poor job of separating the work from personal issues which spells doom for minorities in a lot of instances. I lost count of how many times, something innocent like not going to lunch with the team regularly (I'm a picky eater), or participating in whatever game the team was nuts about (foosball, or various exotic board games) turned into personnel issues where all of a sudden I was "unavailable to the team", or "distant and aloof" etc, even though my professional contributions were just fine or even stellar. You can imagine how stressful it is to show up to work everyday wondering what bullshit non-work related nonsense is going to come up that day and require another stupid chat with your manager. And in the midst of that you're expected to keep up a cheerful demeanor and work well with the same assholes that keep bringing up this irrelevant crap because the fault in these interactions couldn't possibly be with them. The day it becomes about the work, and not personal discomfort with new and differing points of view about communication and interaction, diversity at tech companies will become an after thought ... in a good way.
- navalsaini 9y ago
  Ps... did you do anything to become less unavailable to the team? Like standup meetings or scrum. Or any other interesting strategy.
  - trustfundbaby 9y ago
    I was never unavailable in the first place, thats kinda the point of the story.
mnm1 9y ago
The whole article is brilliant. I'd argue one great way to make this happen is remote work. Agree on some basic tools for text and voice chat and you're good to go. No stupid bro culture. No having to be seen working late. No dress codes. No bullshit. Either you create the product or you don't and get fired. Been working for years for my company and many others.
voidr 9y ago
Why does racial and gender diversity matter in tech? I have worked in teams of all white guys and teams of mixed race and gender and I have seen no difference in productivity. The only thing that ever mattered was the skill level of the people. I see nobody complaining that most successful basketball players are tall black people. I don't see a problem with having companies with corporate culture and companies with startup culture side by side, just because I dislike the suite and tie culture doesn't mean I want it gone, however from reading the article I get the impression that the author wants the more liberal companies gone just because he doesn't like them.

330 points by itsdrewmiller 9y ago

>Yesterday, I had a wide-ranging Slack conversation with some very nice people who patiently allowed this privileged white male to repeatedly touch the third rail of diversity and inclusion. Read this three times and I can't understand what it means. Can anyone "translate?" On the overall topic, it seems really obvious in retrospect that removing formalities in the workplace turns the office into a social club and those who don't want to socialize are excluded. Its certainly an unintended consequence though. I can certainly see the benefits of formality in the office now that I'm older.

lsy 9y ago
The term "third rail" comes from underground subway systems where there is a third, electrified rail to provide power to trains. There are usually warnings in the subway not to touch the rail due to the risk of electrocution. "The third rail" is used colloquially to describe a topic that is socially or politically difficult to discuss because of the reactions it can bring up. In this context, I think the author is describing conversations he had with people who were patient with him as he asked (possibly naive or hurtful) questions about a hot-button and loaded topic that they had more experience with than he did.
- pacaro 9y ago
  These topics can be particularly tough to ask about because it isn't an oppressed persons job to be an "oppression explainer". I thought his recognition of this was very respectful. FWIW in other parts of the world an electrified third rail is the norm on overground railroads too.
  - naravara 9y ago
    >These topics can be particularly tough to ask about because it isn't an oppressed persons job to be an "oppression explainer". I thought his recognition of this was very respectful. If you leave it up to the oppressors to decide for themselves how to make the world a more inclusive space for you without your input, I don’t think you can expect better results than what we’ve had thus far.
    - tangent128 9y ago
      However, if it's the oppressed's responsibility to educate every person they interact with, it becomes trivial to DoS them through willful ignorance. There can't be a social expectation that the privileged are entitled to cognitive labor from already-oppressed individuals, because that can and has been abused. (That said, people are more likely to be open to a person that they can sense has already done the basic research.)
      - naravara 9y ago
        This isn't a question of ought, it's just a matter of is. People with power will act in their own interests always. The only way to make them act in your interests is to make their interests align with yours. If nobody is willing to do that, they will appeal to your interests only in the most perfunctory way that never threatens their privileged position. Thus, you get a lot of "diversity panels" that are full of old White men speculating as to what makes you tick. Fairness and "problematicness" don't enter into it. That's just how the world works. It's easy enough to differentiate ignorance born out of good faith from malicious sea-lioning without having to assume bad faith on everyone's parts simply because of how they present to the world.
        haltingthoughts 9y ago
        OP was expressing frustration at having to deal with explaining third rail topics and the lack of awareness of the asker of how annoying it can be. It doesn't need to be in bad faith to be annoying. To illustrate the problem, I had a visible medical problem that didn't resolve quickly and had to deal with constant questions about how it was going. While I appreciated the sympathy, it was a bit annoying after answering the same question to tens of people.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  > The term "third rail" comes from underground subway systems where there is a third, electrified rail to provide power to trains. There are usually warnings in the subway not to touch the rail due to the risk of electrocution. "The third rail" is used colloquially to describe a topic that is socially or politically difficult to discuss because of the reactions it can bring up. An older metaphor for the same thing: minefield.
pjc50 9y ago
Slack = javascript-based IRC chat system privileged = in posession of advantages, or lacking disadvantages, that some other people experience "touch the third rail" = in this context, discuss a difficult topic which often blows up into hostility diversity = the property of having people of different appearance and background in the same social context inclusion = work done to bring in people to share the same social context.
- Animats 9y ago
  Keeping up can be a problem. The US State Department has some off-line resources on political correctness for the use of people returning from a few years outside the US. After a few years in Djibouti or Bangkok, some readjustment is necessary. These are even offered for kids of foreign service officers. ("Transgender bathroom rights? Waat?")
- FT_intern 9y ago
  In most tech contexts, diversity means racial and gender appearance-only diversity. There is very little to no thought put into background or cultural diversity. The different groups (immigrants and 2nd generation children of immigrants) that offer the most cultural and background diversity are flagged as a monolithic group based on appearance, completely ignoring the cultural diversity that they bring.
blackbagboys 9y ago
Current social norms require a degree of self-abasement before it's socially acceptable for certain types of people to offer an opinion on certain cultural topics. This is a ritualized phrase designed to fulfill this norm. It's not intended to convey any information.
- stickfigure 9y ago
  I wish to subscribe to a newsletter in which you annotate, line by line, speeches by politicians and other popular figures.
- lacampbell 9y ago
  That's a cultural norm only among groups of political extremists, and peddlers of left-wing conspiracy theories. Any well-adjusted individual should reject any attempts to have this imposed upon them in order to be a good "cultural-fit".
- AcerbicZero 9y ago
  I think I basically understood this concept, but having it explained so succinctly made me pause and re-read it. Thank you for summing it up so well.
ygaf 9y ago
That line is how people write when they're trying to signal something to a minority of people at the expense of the normal reader. What's really strange is the following "I'll thank them by not naming them".
- skybrian 9y ago
  It's an assumption that they're not comfortable discussing hot-button topics publicly.

Kinnard 9y ago

I'm looking for an alternative framework to work-life balance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14538411 I bet there's more than one out there. Work/life balance doesn't "work" for a lot of people, a lot of types of work and a lot of lives. Astronauts, Presidents, Prophets . . . startup ceo's . . .

exelius 9y ago
Work/life balance is often a cyclical thing: during certain periods in your life, you will have more time available and desire to work than others. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution, which is why giving employees the flexibility to figure out what it means for their life is the right approach. As an employer, you're going to find that giving people the flexibility to manage this for themselves is ideal. The alternative is you get to manage high turnover, which is exactly what happens when companies demand "only the top engineers" and then work them to death with 6 months of unnecessary 100-hour weeks.

Sir_Substance 9y ago

Am I the only one who gets the niggling feeling that anyone who uses the words "males" and "females" in their public dissertations like it's normal to refer to people the same way one does cable connectors must have a tenuous and possibly weakening grip on the real world?

pjc50 9y ago
It is often a bit of a red flag, but he only does it in one sentence. Overuse of "females" in particular is usually a bad sign.
- ashark 9y ago
  I continue to find the use of "woman" or "women" as an adjective to be really grating. "Women firefighters", for example—we don't say "men nurses", ya know? Reads/sounds awful to me, like we're referring to someone who only fights fires for (on?) women, or does nursing stuff for men. To take dictionary.com's adjectival example, "woman plumber" seems like a gross euphemism for a gynecologist. Imagine "man teacher". Wow is that an ugly and misleading construction. It seems like we only started doing it because someone decided "female" was suddenly a word to be avoided regardless of context, for reasons that elude me. "Male" seems to still be fine, fortunately.
  - biggc 9y ago
    I think the point is that using "male/female" as a noun is clinical and dehumanizing, but there aren't any issues with using the words as an adjective.
  - thatwebdude 9y ago
    I think women find most of these clarifiers (that's how I see it, anyway) as a title worth being proud of. They've overcame social and potentially physical adversity to obtain this position (Female Firefighter, etc.) I've probably heard Male Nurse vs. Nurse (who's a male) about 50/50 at this point. As the world learns that gender is not a prerequisite for nearly every job title, then these gender qualifiers will probably diminish. Language is a slippery slope though. I don't think it should be read into too much.

panoptispeech 9y ago

People who crusade for diversity and inclusion usually start with innocuous measures, but after these approaches fail to bring about Utopia, these people always end up crudely 1) attempting to destroy any fun the workplace, and 2) imposing a limit on how much strong contributors can contribute. The end state for a D&I-focused workplace is one full of frowns and formal business attire and promotion by seniority and endless paranoia about innocuous comments landing people in HR. Nature did not spread human talent evenly among her people. Terrible things happen when we try to force nature to conform to our ideological preferences.

jankotek 9y ago

Remote work is even more inclusive.

slaunchwise 9y ago
Remote work, in my experience, also tends to be managed/ rewarded largely on the basis of productivity.

exelius 9y ago

Yes, yes, yes. This was brought up in a thread last week about "As a female, how do I identify a good employer?" The best answers basically said "work somewhere that has as boring a corporate culture as possible". Basically, work for a place where you are rated on your production and nothing else. Work elsewhere and things like "how late did you work?" -- a metric that is far easier for people without children to meet -- cease to matter. Working late isn't the only thing (though it is a big one), but it tends to correlate with "immature HR practices" in general. Inclusivity is about recognizing that people have life configurations that differ from your own, and creating the space for those differences to exist.

blablabla123 9y ago
Damn, all this corporate bashing during the last years... It sounded so right. Having worked at several startups in these years, and also co-founded one, I realized the culture is often borderline insane. Working now at a more or less corporate startup, I'm so much happier.
- exelius 9y ago
  Yeah, for as much as people hate on being corporate, it really does keep a lid on a lot of the bad behavior you see at startups that gets swept under the table because of the informal nature of record keeping and decision making.
  - deleted 9y ago
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- Joeri 9y ago
  I wouldn't call it corporate, I'd call it professional.
- nightski 9y ago
  Not only that, I personally found out I was fooling myself. Sure I was working until 8PM-9PM many days but found that I wasn't getting much at all done in the mornings. I'd hit my productivity stride around 1-2 PM after lunch. Getting in and starting early, finishing up early/mid afternoon and then enjoying the evenings either working on my own thing or just spending time with the SO has significantly increased quality of life.

panoptispeech 9y ago

Counterexample: big parts of fintech have workplace cultures straight out of the 50s, dress codes and all. They're much less diverse than regular tech. SJW remedies for social ills never work, and they usually have extremely undesirable side effects.

lmm 9y ago

> It’s so comfortable and nice to lead an integrated life where your colleagues are your friends and vice versa, where your conversations over beers solve problems encountered over keyboards. > But maybe that comes at a cost. If we set aside that desire and focus on what we’re really trying to do here — make good software — then maybe we’ll open up some different possibilities. By constraining the number of things we have to agree on, and the number of hours we have to spend agreeing on them, we naturally open ourselves to a diverse world of talented people. Much as we might wish otherwise, I think this article is right that informality and diversity are in tension (though I think it's massively wrong to conflate informality with long hours; it's very much possible to have a culture where you drink alcohol, play Rock Band, play board games, but still go home after your 35 hours/week). But having to give up informality would be a very heavy price. For me a comfortable life is the end and making good software is the means. But even if your goal is good software, looking at the past couple of decades of big professional companies being displaced by scrappy startups, informal organizations seem a lot better at producing good software.

exelius 9y ago
> informal organizations seem a lot better at producing good software I don't think the formality has anything to do with the quality of software; I think it has more to do with VC-funded companies operating lean, and HR is overhead.
- lmm 9y ago
  Maybe. But can see how it would affect it: informality leads to much more effective communication, within-team but especially across-team, and that removes a huge class of the mistakes that cause businesses to fail. Even just reducing the barrier for people at the bottom to tell people at the top when something's completely broken makes a huge difference to the organization's effectiveness.
  - creepydata 9y ago
    I think it's the opposite, I think informality leads to much less effective communication, not more. It's hard to have "tough conversations" when personal relationships are on the line. Telling Steve he needs to start carrying his weight is much more difficult if it means endangering your friendship with Steve.

jblow 9y ago

This is all fine, but there are side-effects. If you only work a minimum number of hours within your field, you are unlikely to emerge as one of the peak achievers or thought leaders in your field. That's just because you learn more from experience, and working more hours gives you more experience. You can extrapolate from there what this means for companies and individuals. I am not at all saying that companies should ask people to work long hours. (I run a software company, and we are super-lax about hours, people showing up at the office, etc). But I am saying that if an individual wants to be an expert in a particular field, that person should probably work a lot (and probably wants to work a lot anyway, due to interest in the subject). This doesn't necessarily have to be at the company; it could be at home, on personal projects, whatever. But the deeper and more challenging the project is, the better you learn, and it's easier to have one project that is deep and challenging than somehow to have two in parallel. And if only one is deep and challenging, then you are sort of idling with half your time. So there are basically two paths to this kind of deep work: work for a company, make sure you get a project that's really good, and then work hard on it; or go do your own thing, make sure you have enough money somehow, and work hard on what interests you. This also means that "work-life balance" is not a thing for experts the way it is for normal people. But that's fine, because for these kinds of experts their work is a serious part of their life and the two things are inseparable. Of course if you don't feel this way about what you're working on, that it is a serious part of your life, then this strategy doesn't make sense; and I would not encourage people who don't feel this way (who are the majority of the population) to work that hard. I am just pointing out that there are some of us for whom a different life strategy is best.

blablabla123 9y ago
YMMV but in my experience the most challenging projects were personal ones. Why not in the job? Because all the stake holders are interested in making the projects not too difficult or experiment, so they get realized. For my own projects I can make them as unrealistic as I wish. So of course the failure rate is also much higher than for my professional work. That way I got unusually proficient in certain technologies.
maxxxxx 9y ago
"This also means that "work-life balance" is not a thing for experts the way it is for normal people. " I have seen quite a few experts in their field and they didn't work long hours but everything they did counted. The problem is that most of us are being overloaded with repetitive, trivial stuff and never get the opportunity do deep thinking and solving difficult challenges. This can't be solved by working more. You pretty much wrote this but I just want to emphasize that long working hours won't get you ahead but challenging work.

vedranm 9y ago

If you are not familiar with this modern lingo, I suggest checking out the following resource: https://www.mises.org/blog/cultural-marxism-explained-7-minutes https://www.mises.org/blog/cultural-marxism-explained-7-minu...

mallaidh 9y ago
"Cultural Marxism" is nothing more than a fringe-right conspiracy theory that develops into antisemitism at its worst. [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20040217231449/http://www.splcenter.org:80/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=53 https://web.archive.org/web/20040217231449/http://www.splcen...
- aexq36 9y ago
  Cultural Marxism is not a conspiracy theory. It's simply a name for a strategy of advancing leftist political causes by using cultural institutions such as academia and the media; undeniably, there are leftists who do this, and they have openly stated that they do this. It would be a category error to refer to a strategy of political action as a "conspiracy theory", since no organized conspiracy is being proposed. Saying that using the term "Cultural Marxism" is "antisemitism at worst" is nothing more than an attempt to preemptively scare off people from investigating the idea.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Cultural Marxism is not a conspiracy theory. It's simply a name for a strategy of advancing leftist political causes by using cultural institutions such as academia and the media Were that true, it would still be poisoning-the-well through guilt-by-association in naming, since Marxism and leftism are not equivalent, and Marxism (largely, though not entirely, as a result of guilt-by-association with Leninism) has strong emotional loading in most of the West, particularly the US. It would be like calling the same thing on the Right (which absolutely does exist, also: everyone with a viewpoint they are trying to advance uses cultural institutions in that effort to the extent they are able) cultural Fascism.

to_bpr 9y ago

There's no shortage of corporate environments to work in for those who want it.

thegayngler 9y ago

So by forcing everyone to work strict 9-5 schedules you can create diversity. Ok. Hmmmm... I agree at least in principle that one shouldn't be required to always hangout late nights after work. However, admittedly occasionally I think it's useful and it's helpful to understand your co-worker's motivations and spending a bit more time with co-workers sometimes is certainly reasonable and helps to build trust and respect amongst other co-workers. Maybe people should be working only 30 hours a week and spending the other 10 hours just on team building. I also think its useful to understand the social aspect of things because understanding motivations can help the team solve problems in a way that everyone will agree to.

creepydata 9y ago
10 hours a week on teambuilding seems extremely excessive. The thing is, many people don't want personal relationships with their co-workers, they want business relationships with their co-workers. Forcing employees to socialize with each other means you are excluding those people who don't want to socialize with their co-workers and those who don't have much in common with their co-workers, or even those who don't like their co-workers on a personal level. This seems pretty obvious, but only in retrospect. I also don't understand what "understanding motivations" means.
- thegayngler 9y ago
  I would love to be in agreement with you but my experience has taught me differently. Social relationships are business relationships. There isn't a way to separate the two. If you don't like someone you work with directly eventually one of you will leave if you both are working two closely together. The tension could also cause other business problems in some form or another over time. 9 to 5 doesn't work for everyone. For some people working different schedules is what works for them. What about that type of inclusion? Inclusion of those who don't want to do the standard 9 to 5 and those who do want to socialize with each other. I think there is a tendency for individuals to do 180 on business-related processes every time a new article comes out about some business is doing X and it appears to be successful for now. When times are rough having a social relationship will help keep the business part of the relationship in tact. Things will not always be easy and there will be rough patches and stressful situations. It's also helpful to meet and get to know people in other departments before you need them for something. If you work in any kind of large organization with lots of departments and moving parts you will need to know now to navigate the organization. Social situations allow you a chance to build relationships with people working on other parts of the business that you may or may not need help with later on down the line. People have to socialize with each other to get work done. It's not an option to not have at least a somewhat social relationship with someone you work with closely. It's not realistic. Yes, I think it's helpful to understand someone else's point of view(and/or motivations) and where it comes from. Knowing these things can stop you from being offended by something that may be said or done that wouldn't otherwise be considered offensive. Many times you will already know how someone will react to certain situations and decisions as well as figure out ways to effectively navigate that. Its easier to get a co-worker to care about and help you with your problem if you have some common ground with a co-worker or some social capital. A "business only non-social" environment means you have a whole bunch of people working who ultimately undermine each other. You wind up with duplication of effort etc... I've had people tell me flat out tell me they don't want me to tell them the solution to the problem they were having that was already solved because they wanted to figure it out by themselves. This type of "business-only" competitive attitude is wasteful of the businesses time and money. This happened at one company I worked at who was steadily laying folks off while this sort of wasteful behavior was happening. All in all trying to take the people out of the people in my almost 10 years of experience doesn't actually work out well and can actually be wasteful and hurt the business.

nashashmi 9y ago

I am going to wrap this article around a bigger more general concept. I might be going off topic but bear with me. The difference between a startup culture and a corporate culture is the difference between a creative company and a disciplined company. "Discipline" is like a swiss knife, something that can work anywhere and everywhere. Creativity only works in some places, in places that are desperate, in places that are still making basic decisions, in places where the problems are high and the solutions are few. A disciplined company has no problem being acquired by a creative company. But a creative company has many problems when they start masquerading in a disciplined company. (Read: Microsoft acquires Company X and writes it off 5 years later.) Working in a disciplined company is easy for most people. No manual required. Working in a creative company is difficult for most people but easy for creative people. Most foreigners or people with diverse minority backgrounds have a difficult time adapting to very social environments. They would rather stay strictly professional and confined to their work. But here is the problem: what is the point of having diversity if social interaction is nil? How messed up is your social world if it does not include unsocial minorities? There is a balance that is needed. Google started as creative and became more corporate and also became more "boring". (Sergey Brin's word)

blablabla123 9y ago
I very much agree to most part. So regarding your question, that's really a problem I guess. The obvious bottom line is that for obscure reasons diversity works well in these mega boring environments. But in the very lively places not. So the irony is that in the private life it tends to be vice versa. In the super conservative world you find males only hanging out with males - not sure what the women do to be honest. On the other hand really chaotic people tend to have much more diverse friendships. (Just stating the obvious ;)) But back to the companies: yes it's much tougher to get the chaotic work place right. I had pretty much given up on that to be honest. I still believe in it, but probably you must be suuuper careful who you work with. What if the secret to 'success' is a top notch HR? Most startups have virtually no real HR people.
brixon 9y ago
"Most foreigners or people with diverse minority backgrounds have a difficult time adapting to very social environments. They would rather stay strictly professional and confined to their work." Maybe rephrase this sentence, this reads like anyone not like you cannot do creative work. It sounds extremely racist and other 'ists.

adventist 9y ago

> That’s because the culture was mostly about the business of software, how you build it, how you sell it, how you support it. If you were excited about that, you automatically belonged. You didn’t need to stay late, or drink alcohol, or play Rock Band, or play board games, or not have kids to pick up, or go to church, or not go to church, or do anything except show up 9-to-5 and care a lot about good software. Yes! Yes! Yes! I don't drink, and its kind of sad that I get to miss out sometimes because I don't go to the bar. Because I like to bike instead, why can't I not feel pressure to go to the bar and do my own thing after work? Handling work stuff at Work I feel is the way to go.

lmm 9y ago
> I don't drink, and its kind of sad that I get to miss out sometimes because I don't go to the bar. Because I like to bike instead, why can't I not feel pressure to go to the bar and do my own thing after work? Because having a liminal zone where people feel allowed to step outside the hierarchy and say things that might otherwise be unacceptable (e.g. "this framework we're using is totally fucked") is really important and valuable? It's not about the alcohol per se, but alcohol is a particularly effective way of creating that atmosphere.
- ABCLAW 9y ago
  If your organization can't encourage frank discussion about workplace issues without a venue for employees to drug themselves, you probably have more important problems to dive into. More importantly, if you lean on off-site drinking as your method to get real feedback and communication, you probably have less incentive to fix your workplace culture in the first place.
  - asdqwwwww 9y ago
    Congratulations on missing OPs point. Completely. A bar is a pretty standard watering hole where you go to complain about things you'd like to complain about off the record. Maybe the problem is annoying and not fixable, e.g. "this framework sucks", or the problem is with with the industry, e.g. "diversity shouldn't be priority over merit". Both of these problems don't really belong in a "realtime feedback and communication" system because they can't be fixed through the proper channels. The second one especially, where voicing that opinion in SV will get you hung on a cross outside Google HQ. The bar provides a cathartic release so you don't explode at work on problems you can't fix. Why do you think people stop at the bar before going home? Most of them aren't alcoholics, they just don't want to bring unfixable problems home, and face it, complaining _feels_ good.

alexashka 9y ago

I think he's taking the surface level and assuming if we copy the surface level, we are going to get the rest. No. The reason Fog Creek works well, is because it's very smart people, who care about what they're doing. They care because it's a product company - they get to make decisions that impact the product. They feel a sense of ownership. Contrast that with a sweat, uh sorry, I mean dev shop. Contrast that with doing contract work for big companies where you come in, leave 6 months later. Contrast that with start-ups that only exist because someone got free money. Contrast that with shit maintenance work at big corps. Does that about cover 95%, if not more, software jobs out there? There is no fixing shit workplaces because the foundation is rotten. When you have no say, when you don't care about the product, when you move around every few years - yeah, it's shit culture. There is no fixing that - most people long for a stable group of people they can make something happen with. Most people are confused about how much work and dedication it takes to make something great. Most people's actions create what most people complain about and they don't even know it. There is no fixing it, there is only becoming good enough to either start your own Fog Creek, or be good enough to join one.

Animats 9y ago

Maybe this is more about drinking than dress code. Companies of Japanese salarymen have the same problem - too much group drinking, and a very uniform culture.

Mz 9y ago

Overall good post, but: Yesterday, I had a wide-ranging Slack conversation with some very nice people who patiently allowed this privileged white male to repeatedly touch the third rail of diversity and inclusion. That conversation led me to the realizations in this post. I’ll thank them by not naming them, and by promising never to bring this up in their Slack channel again. In other words, people openly hated on him for wanting to discuss something with them and get informed -- a white male in a position of power that few women or poc occupy. And all they can do is make him scared to bring it up again and act like the abuse they heaped upon him is some sort of privilege he didn't deserve or something. Wow. I am so sick of women and people of color being openly hateful to people who were born the "wrong" gender and color to be part of the unfortunate many. Hello? Whining about how "it isn't my job to explain this stuff to you!" instead of being all "OMG! An opportunity to have a useful conversation with a white male who is actually curious about how the so-called other half live!" is part of the problem, not part of the solution. (Before you auto-downvote this on the assumption that I am some overprivileged asshole man, please note I am a woman.)

cname 9y ago
How did you get from "very nice people" to "hateful" and "whiny"?
alew1 9y ago
You're making a lot of assumptions for someone who hasn't seen that Slack conversation.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Straw feminists are frightening.
  - Mz 9y ago
    I don't self identify as a feminist. So if you mean me, you are in error.
    - 9y ago

temp-dude-87844 9y ago

This approach finds its parallels in other collaborative spaces where meritocracy is valued; open source software development comes to mind. In that arena, this approach was widely deployed, but is at odds with the more recent trend of explicitly stating to promote inclusion and diversity. Staunchly meritocratic online interaction and collaboration, from software development to messageboards, allows people to cultivate identities largely defined by their contributions, which is often distinct, or even at odds, from the identity they wish to demonstrate in their real life. In online spaces where individual contributors aren't restricted from speaking out against the leadership, this disconnect will manifest instead of being suppressed. While I don't disagree with the author's recommendations and rationale, it's unfortunate that the OP's argument essentially reduces down to the fact that the less casual interaction between people, the more inclusivity will result. It's also re-framing the implied problem: the equality vs. equity debate. In the OP's view, the solution is to cultivate a minimalist, work-focused culture that solves the inclusivity question by avoiding it entirely. This is very much at odds with the approach that receives a lot more press these days, which seeks to prescriptively address inclusivity within its own problem-space.

ch4s3 9y ago
How are you defining "meritocratic online interaction"?
- temp-dude-87844 9y ago
  A contribution defined by its payload's self-contained substance and value-add to a core mission of the effort, e.g. a block of code for a requested feature, documentation to accompany a feature, an insightful on-topic post, or a stimulating exchange. It's an artifact whose value is derived from its content, and not from its provenance.
  - ch4s3 9y ago
    OK, I'll bite. In principle, this makes sense, but I think if we poke at it a little you may agree that there are some holes. >A contribution defined by its payload's self-contained substance and value-add to a core mission Let's discuss the core mission. How is this mission decided? Is there a process that includes multiple stakeholders? Who picks these stakeholders? I would presume that most open source projects are started by 1 person, or a few people who work together, but recognize that other arrangements exist. At some point either they must set these goals or expand the core group that makes such decisions. So to start with, the first person(s) setting the mission are as arbitrary as having been there when it started. Are they the best at setting goals once a project is in full swing? Perhaps, perhaps not. But, I think you can agree that at the outset, merit is defined by those who start a project or are arbitrarily close to it's start. > It's an artifact whose value is derived from its content, and not from its provenance. How does a project determine the "value" of a piece of content. What is the process for derivation? Is it simply the fulfillment of a feature request with accompanying tests and docs? I would suggest that for any non-trivial code, it will be difficult to determine if a pull request will do exactly what it is purported to do with no negative externalities. What is you have competing contributions for the same feature request? How do you determine which one to choose? Let's say for example that concurrently an issue is addressed by a core contributor and a first time contributor and both arrive at equivalently good solutions. Which implementation should you choose to maintain "meritocracy"? How do you justify that decision? You may be interested to look to the origin of the word meritocracy[1]. It was intended as satire. [1]The Rise of the Meritocracy https://books.google.com/books?id=QelNAQAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=QelNAQAAQBAJ

andrewfong 9y ago

The takeaway for me is less about minimum hours and more about minimum culture. Or put another way, "keep your identity small". http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

golemotron 9y ago

I wish I could up-vote this more. It is a problem that corporate America tries to optimize function by getting everyone closer and closer together with team building exercises and alignment of values. Values are deeply personal and we should recognize that people are going to differ. Freedom of conscience is as basic as freedom of religion and important for the same reason. If we keep work a professional space we maximize diversity of thought and life experience, which are ostensibly what the large push toward ethnic and gender diversity are a proxy for.

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Humjob 9y ago

Why is having a company consisting mostly of white people a 'bad thing'? It's a scientific fact that groups vary in their propensity towards institution building, cooperativeness, IQ, etc. When America was 90%+ white (before ~1965), it experienced a huge surge of productivity, along with much higher levels of social trust and cooperation. We've seen a concomitant decline in all those variables as the country has become more 'diverse,' and as the smartest/most capable women have abandoned motherhood to become cogs in the capitalist machine, only to end up in their 40s with lots of cats, lots of money, no husband, and no family. Anyway, I find it interesting that cultural Marxism has infected mainstream tech to the point that this article has 172 upvotes. Thankfully, people are beginning to wake up,

mnm1 9y ago
"When America was 90%+ white (before ~1965), it experienced a huge surge of productivity" Yes, by enslaving blacks and exploiting non-whites, women, and children, something that any population with a workforce of slaves could easily do in a country as big as the US thus making the "huge surge of productivity" hardly impressive and definitely not something to ever be repeated again.
- Humjob 9y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but non-whites, women and children (for the most part) didn't put a man on the moon or discover the scientific breakthroughs which created the vast wealth that enables you to sip your latte and whine about white male privilege on an complex, fantastic global network. Slaves (along with low-skill immigrants) are actually anti-technological in nature. In the economic equation of labor vs capital, they bring down the wage required to achieve certain goals and weight the scales massively in favor of using labor to solve problems. When you have fewer people, automation, capital and 'smart solutions' to business problems become more incentivized.
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platz 9y ago

It is also known that casual dress is somehow connected to less social mobility. > But above all I didn’t have the cultural and social capital to know how to dress casual in the right way. My casual dressing was made of nerdy, unfashionable and cheap clothes: you could immediately say that I haven’t accomplished anything. And I didn’t even know that there was a “rich” way to dress casual. http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/informal-dress-social-mobility-sicilian-perspective.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/inf... there’s more art to looking sharp in casual attire than in a suit and tie! > Tyler Cowen: Well, being a casual person myself, I'm very glad being casual is in vogue, and probably will stay in vogue. But what I find striking is societies with a lot of upward mobility often tend to have strict dress codes. So you see this today with Mormons, at Mormon businesses. You see it in Japan in its heyday years--you know, the businessman or journeyman suit, they more or less all looked the same. There's something about upward mobility where actually clothing is not that casual and one is being more formal in trying to impress; and that is a [?]. But the thing about being casual is it actually makes it harder for people to prove themselves. So, Bill Gates goes to a meeting and he may show up dressed very casually; but he's still Bill Gates--either everyone knows or if you really needed to, you could Google him. So there's a code of casual that's actually very difficult for, say, people from other cultures in America to master or demonstrate that's actually made signaling harder. Just that right way of looking casual is in a funny way more conformist than like the blue suit and tie, which you could do and then innovate around and try to climb to the top. So I find this disturbing, the more I think about it. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/05/tyler_cowen_on_1.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/05/tyler_cowen_on_1.ht...

elgenie 9y ago
I listened to that podcast, and I think the money quote is this one: > Russ Roberts: […] I do think it's--instead of getting a very highly tailored and expensive suit, now you have to know exactly how to match your tee-shirt with your running shoes in a way that doesn't make you look the wrong kind of geek or whatever it is. > Tyler Cowen: Yes, so say you are an immigrant to this country and you show up at a workplace and they tell you, 'Look, put on a blue suit jacket and a tie, and burgundy shoes.' I mean, don't you feel immense relief at that, actually?

lacampbell 9y ago

Read this three times and I can't understand what it means. Can anyone "translate?" Sure. "I'm a spineless human being who publicly hates my race and gender in order to try and give the appearance of being a good human being without actually doing anything". I'm white and male and I'll talk about whatever subject I want. If anyone wants to escape 'white privilege' there are plenty of countries where we are thin on the ground.

dwaltrip 9y ago
Why so spiteful? You don't see any value in recognizing and trying to be respectful of the disproportionate difficulties and hardship that certain groups have experienced in the past? Especially as such things have been somewhat overlooked or ignored until recently? This isn't a dynamic that will continue indefinitely. Similar to how individuals move on from events where they were wronged in years past, society will move on regarding many of the hot button issues today. For example, you don't see people hawing and hemming about women's suffrage these days.
- lacampbell 9y ago
  It is not spite, it is contempt. A healthy well-adjusted individual doesn't talk that way about their own race and gender. It's toxic and I steer clear of such people. You don't see any value in recognizing and trying to be respectful of the disproportionate difficulties and hardship that certain groups have experienced in the past? Especially as such things have been somewhat overlooked or ignored until recently? It's not my responsibility, concern, or problem. I reject any attempt by anyone to insinuate that it should be. I also reject anything that is against my interests as a member of any demographic group I am a part of. My position is universal and logically consistent (I expect the same of any other human being, no matter what groups they belong to). Is yours?
  - qb45 9y ago
    To be honest, this time it may have been a kind of joke or irony, not actual self-hatred. But of course there are people who really mean it.

anothercomment 9y ago

The assumption seems to be that companies culture is driving women away. Is that even true, as in, are there really hundreds of thousands of female software developers in waiting who would jump at a job at a company with the appropriate culture? It seems very unlikely to me - more likely, the pipeline dries out long before the hiring stage. That some companies with great effort manage to compete over the few female developers on the market doesn't prove every company could hire lots of female developers if only they changed their culture. To be honest, personally, even if there were those hundreds of thousands of female developers supposedly driven away by bro culture, I would still maintain that people should have a right to create companies they enjoy working in. If some people want to work in T-Shirts and get drunk every night, it is their right to do so (if they can earn the money to sustain it). Luckily not all companies are the same, so that people can apply to companies that suit their tastes. If it weren't so, there wouldn't even be a need for hiring or job seeking to begin with. People could just apply to the next best company and be hired, likewise, companies could hire the next best applicant - because there would be no such issues as cultural fit or whatever. Not very realistic (source: I am not friends with everybody and not everybody is friends with me).

323454 9y ago

Sometimes, to solve really difficult problems, you have to make big personal sacrifices. Sometimes, to evolve, adapt and gain the edge, you have to be loose and unprofessional. Sometimes, to survive a famine or a drought, you have to ruthlessly cut what isn't absolutely necessary. These are the other phases of the business cycle that the author neglects. Professionalism, openness, and work life balance belong to a certain phase of the cycle. That phase does not come from nothing and it does not last forever.

tomaff 9y ago

I feel like the goal if diversity isn't worth sacrificing so much fun. I love my work because I can relate to so many of my colleagues. We have interesting conversations, we joke and tease each other. It is a great feeling to be looking forward to going to work. Many software engineers were not socialites at school, many are shy around opposite sex. I suspect most haven't had a great social life prior to work. They were often bullied, neglected and misunderstood. Finally come 20-something and they get to experience... Life as it is taken for granted by normal people. They get to have fun and don't feel bad about it. Well until posts like this show up. If all of this has to vanish for diversity to take place - then screw the diversity. Diversity on it's own means nothing to me if I can't have a good time. I spend considerable amount of my life at work, and I have also made some financial sacrifice to be where I am, and if all of it is for nothing, if all of it gets converted into this dull and grey workspace - then I am out. Might as well work for a bank and get more money for it if that's the only option. If having such a culture is genuinely off-putting to women[1], I see no reason why they could not establish their own companies with their counter-culture. Given that all the talented women will want to work there - this company will be destined to succeed, right? And they will be happy doing their jobs there and I get to have fun at work too. Don't ever forget that diversity is not the terminal value of humanity. We want people to be happy. [1] big if. Out of 3 billion women there will be some that enjoy such subculture, just like there are some men who don't

trustfundbaby 9y ago

For all the noise tech startups make about meritocracy, they sure do a poor job of separating the work from personal issues which spells doom for minorities in a lot of instances. I lost count of how many times, something innocent like not going to lunch with the team regularly (I'm a picky eater), or participating in whatever game the team was nuts about (foosball, or various exotic board games) turned into personnel issues where all of a sudden I was "unavailable to the team", or "distant and aloof" etc, even though my professional contributions were just fine or even stellar. You can imagine how stressful it is to show up to work everyday wondering what bullshit non-work related nonsense is going to come up that day and require another stupid chat with your manager. And in the midst of that you're expected to keep up a cheerful demeanor and work well with the same assholes that keep bringing up this irrelevant crap because the fault in these interactions couldn't possibly be with them. The day it becomes about the work, and not personal discomfort with new and differing points of view about communication and interaction, diversity at tech companies will become an after thought ... in a good way.

navalsaini 9y ago
Ps... did you do anything to become less unavailable to the team? Like standup meetings or scrum. Or any other interesting strategy.
- trustfundbaby 9y ago
  I was never unavailable in the first place, thats kinda the point of the story.

mnm1 9y ago

The whole article is brilliant. I'd argue one great way to make this happen is remote work. Agree on some basic tools for text and voice chat and you're good to go. No stupid bro culture. No having to be seen working late. No dress codes. No bullshit. Either you create the product or you don't and get fired. Been working for years for my company and many others.

voidr 9y ago

Why does racial and gender diversity matter in tech? I have worked in teams of all white guys and teams of mixed race and gender and I have seen no difference in productivity. The only thing that ever mattered was the skill level of the people. I see nobody complaining that most successful basketball players are tall black people. I don't see a problem with having companies with corporate culture and companies with startup culture side by side, just because I dislike the suite and tie culture doesn't mean I want it gone, however from reading the article I get the impression that the author wants the more liberal companies gone just because he doesn't like them.