11 ms·

If a journalist with no experience learned to code on the side and built something interesting we would applaud. We wouldn't make them an SRE at Google or Uber.

• smt88 9y ago
  > built something interesting This is really under-selling what Susan Fowler did. She exposed and reformed a massive, multibillion-dollar company with a single essay. How many journalists have done that? Some, certainly. But not many.
  • wand3r 9y ago
    It is an analogy. It breaks down. I clearly admire her but am trying to point out that there is someone just like her aiming at a Pulitzer.
  • nxsynonym 9y ago
    She should be recognized for the work she did, but awarding the pulitzer to this is a reach. I see this as a media-train hop. If this same situation had happened in a multibillion-dollar financial company that didn't have as many subsequent PR issues, would we be praising her as high? I'm not trying to take any thing away from her. I want Uber to crash and burn and be forgotten. I want her to receive as much as possible in terms of justice. What I DON'T want is for this to be spun into click-bait PR for the pulitzer, and tangentially - Uber. What about the millions of women who get harassed daily but work for less "important" companies? Shouldn't they be considered potential pulitzer winners for their blog posts and facebook statuses? The only reason anybody cares is because Uber is A Big Name. This will not change her life for the better. Uber will continue doing as it has been doing. The issue will not be solved. But these articles will get clicked on.
    • ameister14 9y ago
      I don't know if you are aware of who Pulitzer was, or what the award is about, but 'a media-train hop' often describes what wins the pulitzer pretty well.
      • nxsynonym 9y ago
        So just keep on keeping on then?
  • cakedoggie 9y ago
    She didn't reform it at all. She wrote about her experience, which was incredibly brave and hard to do. She put her future career on the line. And she was the right person at the right company at the right time (or wrong, depending on how you look at it). She didn't investigate much at all. She didn't uncover much at all. She certainly hasn't reformed uber, but caused a spotlight on uber that has caused reform to happen.
  • dkarapetyan 9y ago
    It was very brave of her to do what she did but I can't help but feel like her courageous act is being squandered by the rest of us. Uber is certainly the most egregious example of blatant sexism and just general aggressive incompetence but certainly not the only one. Google just recently refused to release salary numbers across their workforce because it "would be too expensive" which is really another way of saying the truth would paint them in a very harsh light. Going further back the big three were colluding to keep engineer salaries low with non-poaching agreements. The industry as a whole is unhealthy and it is important to continue calling out all the bullshit and not becoming complacent with the status quo. For every Susan Fowler there are a few thousand that suffer in silence or worse yet they speak up and are punished.
• jimjimjim 9y ago
  Why an SRE? Did you mean to choose a job title that has an implied stability/reliability focus rather than a general software developer? Counter point: If an indie game dev makes a non-aaa game that enthralls people, would that not be a contender for a game-of-the-whatever award?
  • aaronbrethorst 9y ago
    I'd assume because she was an SRE at Uber.
    • jimjimjim 9y ago
      Good point, I had forgotten that. Obviously I need a minimum amount of coffee before I keyboard.
  • SilasX 9y ago
    My intuition is similar to the GP's -- Fowler deserves an award for this essay (like a Profiles in Courage award), but its seems out of scope of the Pulitzer award (that the author is referring to), which mentions investigative journalism -- when you probe some issue in depth and put together a coherent picture of what happened. A personal account -- however valuable -- is not that kind of investigative journalism; at most, it might feed into someone else's investigative work, where they go in and get access to documents, get other sources (including people) to corroborate the information, etc. That kind of thing is what the Pulitzer organization is trying to recognize. To adapt your analogy: >Counter point: If an indie game dev makes a non-aaa game that enthralls people, would that not be a contender for a game-of-the-whatever award? If the award were for groundbreaking new games, then no, they shouldn't discriminate against someone merely for being a low budget indie. But if it were merely a mod to some existing game that keeps the core functionality, then the award would be inappropriate. Another category could still be merited, though.
• accountyaccount 9y ago
  There's already precedence for non-journalists winning pulitzers, so this argument is a bit of bunk. Anyone who can write is (and should be) eligible.
  • creepydata 9y ago
    Can you give examples of non-journalist winning Pulitzers?
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • twoodfin 9y ago
      JFK won for Profiles in Courage, though in all likelihood it was largely ghost-written by Ted Sorensen.
• pzh 9y ago
  I think giving the SRE title to a journalist who learnt to code and built something interesting is not the right analogy. It would be more like giving them the Turing award.
• robotresearcher 9y ago
  Let's reward achievement, not provenance. Every Google SRE started out not a engineer. Every Pulitzer winner started out not a journalist.
• inmygarage 9y ago
  She is currently running a magazine at Stripe (as in, she is the EIC). She was hired for this job in January, before publishing her blog post. She is represented by InkWell, a well-respected, elite, non-technical literary agency. She published a book through O'Reilly, arguably the number one firm for tech-related publications, in November of 2016. And she is the founder of a monthly book club (seemingly, for fun).
  • halflings 9y ago
    RE:publishing through O'Reilly, that's hardly a proof of anything. There are some horrible books published through O'Reilly. Here's an example, from internet deep learning celebrity Siraj Raval: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Decentralized-Applications-Harnessing-Blockchain-Technology/dp/1491924543#reviewBucketHeader https://www.amazon.co.uk/Decentralized-Applications-Harnessi... (not denying any of the credentials you quoted in your comment though, just responding to that particular point)
    • inmygarage 9y ago
      (edited w last sentence) It is proof that she wrote a book. To present an analogy about Susan Fowler with "if a journalist with no experience..." is to present an analogy that is factually incorrect regarding her experience. If a person created an open-source project on nights and weekends that received industry-wide acclaim, regardless of day job, he/she would most certainly be getting job offers.
      • aaron-lebo 9y ago
        Writing a book does not make you a journalist. It makes you an author. Not that it's not impressive, but it's not proof of experience as a journalist. They are different jobs. You can write a book without doing any investigative reporting, but it would be hard for a journalist to do so. Siraj Raval might be a published author, but he still has next to no experience being a journalist. Here's the link in case anyone is interested: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Production-Ready-Microservices-Standardized-Engineering-Organization/dp/1491965975/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1497482050&sr=1-1&keywords=fowler+susan https://www.amazon.co.uk/Production-Ready-Microservices-Stan...
• Johnny555 9y ago
  If a journalist with no experience learned to code on the side and built something interesting we would applaud. We wouldn't make them an SRE at Google or Uber She didn't just build something "interesting", but something that was so compelling it launched a large investigtion that affected the executive management structure at a $50B company. If this journalist turned programmer did the same, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were hired by Google.
  • subway 9y ago
    Or more likely thrown in jail under some strained interpretation of the CFAA...
• pavement 9y ago
  Is that what we're calling Software Pulitzers now? Day jobs?
• harry8 9y ago
  If a programmer with no entrepreneurial experience founded a company we wouldn't let them keep ownership and money when there are people for whom finance is their life's work! Gates has no degree Torvalds did not get first class honours from an Ivy League institution! DMR is not an MIT grad! If we start giving Turing awards to lesser tech institutions like Harvard... FFS, merit dude. Merit. That's the thing, the only thing. If a rank amateur who is 14 years old and looks funny does superlative work and you are recognising superlative work ... Is this work good enough for a pulitzer? Other considerations are utter crap and should be made fun of in a cruel fashion. After all, as nerds, that's what we /do/ in life.
  • groby_b 9y ago
    Speak for yourself. Most of us don't make fun of others in a cruel fashion, even if they are wrong. After all, as nerds, we should have an idea what it's like to be bullied.
    • photojosh 9y ago
      > Other considerations are utter crap and should be made fun of in a cruel fashion > Most of us don't make fun of others in a cruel fashion Highlights mine. I think you missed that rather important distinction.
    • mehrdada 9y ago
      > After all, as nerds, we should have an idea what it's like to be bullied. Nerds being bullied seems to be a predominantly US phenomenon that is generalized far too often.
• mc32 9y ago
  I feel she fits easier into the whistleblower ex-post category than reportage -although I can imagine her essay fitting into the criticism or commentary categories.
• onion2k 9y ago
  If a journalist with no experience learned to code on the side and built something interesting we would applaud. We wouldn't make them an SRE at Google or Uber. The obvious counter to this argument is that Google, Uber, etc frequently acqui-hire companies founded by people with no professional experience. That's the very definition of hiring someone because they made something interesting.