8 ms·

I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not that these things don't exist, or didn't exist for her -- of course they do. The point seems, to me a

I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not that these things don't exist, or didn't exist for her -- of course they do. The point seems, to me at least, to be that in order to attempt to actually solve these problems you can't actively (or passively) try to exclude yourself from the people causing them. It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution?

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Sort of. The point of the article seems to be more along the lines of "Different people are different. Please don't force your labels onto me." I didn't get the sense that she's trying to change anything. She's just trying to be a person.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- djsumdog 9y ago
  It kinda makes me thing of the "Millennials Don't Exist" talk by Adam Conover. He talks about how generational terms are just made up by authors who want to get rich and they're almost always condescending (those entitled baby boomers, those lazy millennials, those gen x-ers) and how people don't liked to be talked down to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s Are millennials attached do their cellphones? Yes .. so are mothers, fathers, grandparents and some dogs. It's literally the most compact and powerful communication and computational device we've ever had. When you break down all the labels, all you really have is people. Talk to them like people.
  - imjlu 9y ago
    It's almost as if segregation adds unnecessary constraints to the lives of the people involved. You'd think people would have figured this out centuries ago, yet we still self-segregate and divide ourselves wherever possible. Shame.
    - Retric 9y ago
      There is utility in being part of an in group be that people from country X, religion Y, or just credential Z. The trade off is worse global performance, but MBA's networking with other MBA's can be good for people with MBA's and eff anyone else. On top of that their are cognitive biases like I got an CS degree so getting a CS degree must be a good idea. Therefore I will give preference to others with a CS degree. PS: Men do face discrimination in female dominated fields, and being white can often hurt your chances for various things. But, while dead weight losses exist the incentives often favor discrimination even if it's called networking.
      - TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
        That is something I also see. All sorts of discrimination gets put under the umbrella of networking. It's a lot harder to apply to a CS job through Indeed, Dice, Monster, et cetera, but my current part time job I got through an industry networking event, which I was only able to go to because I have the luxury of free time to search for a job. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts to what might change this.
    - drspacemonkey 9y ago
      Tribalism seems to be encoded in the genes of every primate species on the planet, so it's not that surprising. In our past, every time a line dividing tribes was erased, we drew a different line. This is just speculation on my part, but the only way we'll achieve cohesion as a species is if/when we encounter intelligent alien life. We'll still be tribal, but at an interplanetary level.
      - majewsky 9y ago
        Those damn Japanese ^W Mexicans ^W Martians ^W Klingons ^W Cardassians ^W Borg!
        nindalf 9y ago
        Hey you leave the Borg out of this. They're the most inclusive group out there!
nollbit 9y ago
The women who report these issues has no obligation to solve the problems, they're simply pointing out that they exist (since for a long time, people wouldn't believe them).
- iamatworknow 9y ago
  You're right, there is no obligation to help. Likewise there's no obligation for me as a straight, white man in tech to help either. But the more people working along side me who I can collaborate with, the better. That only makes both our jobs easier. It doesn't matter what you label yourself as. If labels are getting in the way of our mutual increased success by arbitrarily keeping you from working with me as an equal, why wouldn't I want to help?
alistproducer2 9y ago
But you also can't solve a problem if everyone pretends it doesn't exist.
- iamatworknow 9y ago
  Right. And I've never said that it didn't.
- belorn 9y ago
  And others say that you can't solve the problem of exclusion by having exclusivity. You can instead lead by example, which is not the same as pretending that the problem don't exist. Then there are alternatives solutions which don't include either inclusivity nor exclusivity. Instead you address underlying issues that create the unwanted behavior. That too would not be people pretending that the problem don't exist, but rather a indirect way to solve the problem. Different solutions have different drawbacks and benefits. Criticism of one don't mean the denial of the problem.
bbulkow 9y ago
I think you're missing the point of the discussion. When you have women who are excluded and hit on and passed over simply because they are women, they come up with all kinds of solutions, including raising awareness that there are great women who are WOMEN and you should listen to "women in tech". The stage of creating women-only and women-focused groups ( and buying into the diminutive labeling the original author hates ), is what happens after you have a bunch of really, really, really shitty interactions. Thus, I think it is likely the author simply hasn't had the kind of really poor interactions & groping & whatnot, and she doesn't mention it in her post. I am passionate about this because my significant other is a woman, and she's in tech. I know plenty of other women in technology. Most of them aren't deeply involved in "women-in-tech" and prefer a low-key evangelizing of the great women that have been in tech, combined with fleeing from companies that employ ... jerks ... who harass and ignore. I was very happy that, in my startup under my leadership, we had a 50% male-female ratio. Subsequently, as CTO without much staff, that ratio has steadily decreased, and we are now down to 0% women in engineering. While that can be sampling error ( we don't have a 1000 member engineering staff ), it does give me pause. The women technologists I know don't specifically slag the "women-in-tech" movement as the author did, I suspect because they do realize the magnitude of the problem is great enough that multiple points of pressure are required. Simply being great isn't enough, and the problem is getting worse not better - but there are likely other reasons.
- Klockan 9y ago
  Is there any evidence that these movements actually get any results? To me it just seems like tokenism.
  - and0 9y ago
    Did you even try looking before asking this? I can think of a bunch in just the couple months, mainly in regards to Uber and other SV companies taking concrete steps to fix their culture.
    - Klockan 9y ago
      Doubling down on sexual harassment and other abhorrent behavior is very different from having stuff like women-in-tech awards and women only tech meetups. Also we have more initiatives than ever trying to get women into tech yet the numbers are at an all time low, shouldn't we admit that we need to change our approach?
eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
Different and opposing groups work together to find a common solution all the time. You can be different and work in a group and it not be antagonistic. This "us v. them" mentality is fostered by people who don't want to contribute with people who are different, they want everyone to assimilate into "their way." Take the "black lives matter" movement. If we followed the OPs advice, they should just protest that "all lives matter" instead, which is precisely what their opposition is doing (e.g. blue lives matter, all lives matter), to diminish their campaign. I understand how it can be annoying to be labeled or be associated with a group, even if you don't want to, but this problem is not going to be solved if it's not identified and that is what is going on. I think she's just reading too much into it.
- hosh 9y ago
  This is something my friends and I were talking about privately for a while now. One of the things that came out of it was something summed up by one of my friends -- stop founding movements, start founding communities. Modernism (and I'm talking as far back as the early 1900s, and arguably, even earlier than that) has eroded our sense community. Our communication tech has, over the past few centuries, have allowed people to talk to each other at greater physical distance while at the same time, created more emotional distance from each other. While modernism might have produced great advancement in science and technology and challenged traditional dogmas, it also threw out a lot of what we needed from those traditions. Community-building is one of them. Movements that are trying to raise awareness on problems and change don't always have a clear idea on what happens after the fight is over: can you imagine still living, working, and playing with those people after all is said and done? Take "Black Lives Matter", or even "All Lives Matter". People voice their deep concerns, the ugly things get aired out. And after all of that, can you see yourself living next door? Your children playing and going to school together? Going to the pub after a town hall meeting? Barbecue at the park on a summer day? Borrow each other's tools? Asking each other for advice? Taking in one of the kids after school because your neighbor is busy that day? Or do you get a sense of fear, disgust, resentment, contempt, or despair?
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
agentultra 9y ago
> It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution? It's not like that at all. Ideologies exist on a spectrum. And there are some on the extreme ends that are so reprehensible that there's no good reason to find a way to include them in any reasonable dialog. I don't care how hurt someone feels if they can't find a safe space to talk about their racist ideas. If you're a little racist on the inside, fine, just be uncomfortable and don't be racist on the outside. We're not here to police how people think but you better watch how you behave. I won't feel sorry for you if someone punches you in the face. The real problem is that centuries of oppression have made sexism normal. It's part of the institution. It's invisible to most people. There isn't a clear label you can apply to people to sort out whose sexist. It's everywhere. How do you fight something like that? I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). I don't look at programs that give people recognition or assistance as a pity-party or somehow makes them less. I see it as evening the playing field... but it's only treating a symptom. The harder battle is curing the disease.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  > I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). it seems like diversity and inclusion are at odds. id like to feel okay with my unfasionable identity, too. highlighting how different i am from others helps to discourage inclusion by them-ing my peers.
  - agentultra 9y ago
    The intention of "normal as hell," is not to make us all brothers and sisters. Variety is the spice of life and it takes all kinds to make good software. The spirit is one where we're not living in a system that encourages to sub-consciously bias ourselves against others. I'd like it if my friends didn't have to succeed in spite of all the time whereas I get a (pretty much) free ride.
- JSONwebtoken 9y ago
  Why do these discussions always devolve into talks about punching people or getting punched? I can't get through a day without somebody suggesting violence is the only response to get somebody to think like them. If you don't want these "programs" to exist at the professional level, you have to go all the back to college and high school. You can only continue to treat symptoms through affirmative action, because that is the cycle we're stuck in. That is the disease you are identifying. People who are propped up by outside assistance will naturally continue to depend on those props and leech resources at a disproportionate rate. When these props are removed, the whole thing comes crashing down and we'll be forced to face the reality that these issues can't be fixed from a top down approach. Hiring more women or minorities into tech won't trickle down into incentivizing more women/minorities to major in Computer Science. Accepting more women/minorities into CS programs won't encourage more women/minorities to become interested in nerdy stuff in high school. The real disease is third party intervention. Thinking all the world's problems can be solved as long as it looks like somebody's doing something for a long enough period of time. All that does is allow under-qualified individuals to shit the pool for the demographic that they represent and reinforce negative perspectives until people who pay for productive work can't turn a blind eye and then get punched in the face I suppose.
and0 9y ago
I've been in enough of these conversations to know replies like this are just trolling and/or white-noise. Why NOT separate yourselves into an "us" vs "them"? Why should oppressed people try to "work together" with their oppressors? If you're so interested the effectiveness of social movements, why haven't you looked at cases like Susan Fowler's to see how little it accomplishes to "work together", or within the system, "to find a solution"? What rulebook, exactly, should people consult when organizing to stop awful shit from happening? Let us know so we can tell which methods are kosher with you. In the meantime maybe start holding the perpetrators to the same rigorous standard of moral behavior.
- iamatworknow 9y ago
  We live in a society. If we don't work together to solve our issues then we'll languish and die apart.
  - and0 9y ago
    This is meandering, meaningless point. I have no idea what you actually mean here. How exactly do support groups for women in STEM tear at the fabric of society? How does it do so in such a way that actively excluding them doesn't (via harassment and other boundaries), and why aren't you equally critical of those people?

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Sort of. The point of the article seems to be more along the lines of "Different people are different. Please don't force your labels onto me." I didn't get the sense that she's trying to change anything. She's just trying to be a person.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
djsumdog 9y ago
It kinda makes me thing of the "Millennials Don't Exist" talk by Adam Conover. He talks about how generational terms are just made up by authors who want to get rich and they're almost always condescending (those entitled baby boomers, those lazy millennials, those gen x-ers) and how people don't liked to be talked down to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s Are millennials attached do their cellphones? Yes .. so are mothers, fathers, grandparents and some dogs. It's literally the most compact and powerful communication and computational device we've ever had. When you break down all the labels, all you really have is people. Talk to them like people.
- imjlu 9y ago
  It's almost as if segregation adds unnecessary constraints to the lives of the people involved. You'd think people would have figured this out centuries ago, yet we still self-segregate and divide ourselves wherever possible. Shame.
  - Retric 9y ago
    There is utility in being part of an in group be that people from country X, religion Y, or just credential Z. The trade off is worse global performance, but MBA's networking with other MBA's can be good for people with MBA's and eff anyone else. On top of that their are cognitive biases like I got an CS degree so getting a CS degree must be a good idea. Therefore I will give preference to others with a CS degree. PS: Men do face discrimination in female dominated fields, and being white can often hurt your chances for various things. But, while dead weight losses exist the incentives often favor discrimination even if it's called networking.
    - TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
      That is something I also see. All sorts of discrimination gets put under the umbrella of networking. It's a lot harder to apply to a CS job through Indeed, Dice, Monster, et cetera, but my current part time job I got through an industry networking event, which I was only able to go to because I have the luxury of free time to search for a job. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts to what might change this.
  - drspacemonkey 9y ago
    Tribalism seems to be encoded in the genes of every primate species on the planet, so it's not that surprising. In our past, every time a line dividing tribes was erased, we drew a different line. This is just speculation on my part, but the only way we'll achieve cohesion as a species is if/when we encounter intelligent alien life. We'll still be tribal, but at an interplanetary level.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Those damn Japanese ^W Mexicans ^W Martians ^W Klingons ^W Cardassians ^W Borg!
      - nindalf 9y ago
        Hey you leave the Borg out of this. They're the most inclusive group out there!

nollbit 9y ago

The women who report these issues has no obligation to solve the problems, they're simply pointing out that they exist (since for a long time, people wouldn't believe them).

iamatworknow 9y ago
You're right, there is no obligation to help. Likewise there's no obligation for me as a straight, white man in tech to help either. But the more people working along side me who I can collaborate with, the better. That only makes both our jobs easier. It doesn't matter what you label yourself as. If labels are getting in the way of our mutual increased success by arbitrarily keeping you from working with me as an equal, why wouldn't I want to help?

alistproducer2 9y ago

But you also can't solve a problem if everyone pretends it doesn't exist.

iamatworknow 9y ago
Right. And I've never said that it didn't.
belorn 9y ago
And others say that you can't solve the problem of exclusion by having exclusivity. You can instead lead by example, which is not the same as pretending that the problem don't exist. Then there are alternatives solutions which don't include either inclusivity nor exclusivity. Instead you address underlying issues that create the unwanted behavior. That too would not be people pretending that the problem don't exist, but rather a indirect way to solve the problem. Different solutions have different drawbacks and benefits. Criticism of one don't mean the denial of the problem.

bbulkow 9y ago

I think you're missing the point of the discussion. When you have women who are excluded and hit on and passed over simply because they are women, they come up with all kinds of solutions, including raising awareness that there are great women who are WOMEN and you should listen to "women in tech". The stage of creating women-only and women-focused groups ( and buying into the diminutive labeling the original author hates ), is what happens after you have a bunch of really, really, really shitty interactions. Thus, I think it is likely the author simply hasn't had the kind of really poor interactions & groping & whatnot, and she doesn't mention it in her post. I am passionate about this because my significant other is a woman, and she's in tech. I know plenty of other women in technology. Most of them aren't deeply involved in "women-in-tech" and prefer a low-key evangelizing of the great women that have been in tech, combined with fleeing from companies that employ ... jerks ... who harass and ignore. I was very happy that, in my startup under my leadership, we had a 50% male-female ratio. Subsequently, as CTO without much staff, that ratio has steadily decreased, and we are now down to 0% women in engineering. While that can be sampling error ( we don't have a 1000 member engineering staff ), it does give me pause. The women technologists I know don't specifically slag the "women-in-tech" movement as the author did, I suspect because they do realize the magnitude of the problem is great enough that multiple points of pressure are required. Simply being great isn't enough, and the problem is getting worse not better - but there are likely other reasons.

Klockan 9y ago
Is there any evidence that these movements actually get any results? To me it just seems like tokenism.
- and0 9y ago
  Did you even try looking before asking this? I can think of a bunch in just the couple months, mainly in regards to Uber and other SV companies taking concrete steps to fix their culture.
  - Klockan 9y ago
    Doubling down on sexual harassment and other abhorrent behavior is very different from having stuff like women-in-tech awards and women only tech meetups. Also we have more initiatives than ever trying to get women into tech yet the numbers are at an all time low, shouldn't we admit that we need to change our approach?

eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago

Different and opposing groups work together to find a common solution all the time. You can be different and work in a group and it not be antagonistic. This "us v. them" mentality is fostered by people who don't want to contribute with people who are different, they want everyone to assimilate into "their way." Take the "black lives matter" movement. If we followed the OPs advice, they should just protest that "all lives matter" instead, which is precisely what their opposition is doing (e.g. blue lives matter, all lives matter), to diminish their campaign. I understand how it can be annoying to be labeled or be associated with a group, even if you don't want to, but this problem is not going to be solved if it's not identified and that is what is going on. I think she's just reading too much into it.

hosh 9y ago
This is something my friends and I were talking about privately for a while now. One of the things that came out of it was something summed up by one of my friends -- stop founding movements, start founding communities. Modernism (and I'm talking as far back as the early 1900s, and arguably, even earlier than that) has eroded our sense community. Our communication tech has, over the past few centuries, have allowed people to talk to each other at greater physical distance while at the same time, created more emotional distance from each other. While modernism might have produced great advancement in science and technology and challenged traditional dogmas, it also threw out a lot of what we needed from those traditions. Community-building is one of them. Movements that are trying to raise awareness on problems and change don't always have a clear idea on what happens after the fight is over: can you imagine still living, working, and playing with those people after all is said and done? Take "Black Lives Matter", or even "All Lives Matter". People voice their deep concerns, the ugly things get aired out. And after all of that, can you see yourself living next door? Your children playing and going to school together? Going to the pub after a town hall meeting? Barbecue at the park on a summer day? Borrow each other's tools? Asking each other for advice? Taking in one of the kids after school because your neighbor is busy that day? Or do you get a sense of fear, disgust, resentment, contempt, or despair?
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago

agentultra 9y ago

> It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution? It's not like that at all. Ideologies exist on a spectrum. And there are some on the extreme ends that are so reprehensible that there's no good reason to find a way to include them in any reasonable dialog. I don't care how hurt someone feels if they can't find a safe space to talk about their racist ideas. If you're a little racist on the inside, fine, just be uncomfortable and don't be racist on the outside. We're not here to police how people think but you better watch how you behave. I won't feel sorry for you if someone punches you in the face. The real problem is that centuries of oppression have made sexism normal. It's part of the institution. It's invisible to most people. There isn't a clear label you can apply to people to sort out whose sexist. It's everywhere. How do you fight something like that? I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). I don't look at programs that give people recognition or assistance as a pity-party or somehow makes them less. I see it as evening the playing field... but it's only treating a symptom. The harder battle is curing the disease.

mr_spothawk 9y ago
> I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). it seems like diversity and inclusion are at odds. id like to feel okay with my unfasionable identity, too. highlighting how different i am from others helps to discourage inclusion by them-ing my peers.
- agentultra 9y ago
  The intention of "normal as hell," is not to make us all brothers and sisters. Variety is the spice of life and it takes all kinds to make good software. The spirit is one where we're not living in a system that encourages to sub-consciously bias ourselves against others. I'd like it if my friends didn't have to succeed in spite of all the time whereas I get a (pretty much) free ride.
JSONwebtoken 9y ago
Why do these discussions always devolve into talks about punching people or getting punched? I can't get through a day without somebody suggesting violence is the only response to get somebody to think like them. If you don't want these "programs" to exist at the professional level, you have to go all the back to college and high school. You can only continue to treat symptoms through affirmative action, because that is the cycle we're stuck in. That is the disease you are identifying. People who are propped up by outside assistance will naturally continue to depend on those props and leech resources at a disproportionate rate. When these props are removed, the whole thing comes crashing down and we'll be forced to face the reality that these issues can't be fixed from a top down approach. Hiring more women or minorities into tech won't trickle down into incentivizing more women/minorities to major in Computer Science. Accepting more women/minorities into CS programs won't encourage more women/minorities to become interested in nerdy stuff in high school. The real disease is third party intervention. Thinking all the world's problems can be solved as long as it looks like somebody's doing something for a long enough period of time. All that does is allow under-qualified individuals to shit the pool for the demographic that they represent and reinforce negative perspectives until people who pay for productive work can't turn a blind eye and then get punched in the face I suppose.

and0 9y ago

I've been in enough of these conversations to know replies like this are just trolling and/or white-noise. Why NOT separate yourselves into an "us" vs "them"? Why should oppressed people try to "work together" with their oppressors? If you're so interested the effectiveness of social movements, why haven't you looked at cases like Susan Fowler's to see how little it accomplishes to "work together", or within the system, "to find a solution"? What rulebook, exactly, should people consult when organizing to stop awful shit from happening? Let us know so we can tell which methods are kosher with you. In the meantime maybe start holding the perpetrators to the same rigorous standard of moral behavior.

iamatworknow 9y ago
We live in a society. If we don't work together to solve our issues then we'll languish and die apart.
- and0 9y ago
  This is meandering, meaningless point. I have no idea what you actually mean here. How exactly do support groups for women in STEM tear at the fabric of society? How does it do so in such a way that actively excluding them doesn't (via harassment and other boundaries), and why aren't you equally critical of those people?