5 ms·
Nearly all of the top-level comments thus far are disgusting and shameful. What is wrong with this place?
by davexunit 9y ago
Nearly all of the top-level comments thus far are disgusting and shameful. What is wrong with this place?
- devopsproject 9y agoIt's summertime and the alt-right kids have a lot more free time now
- araglia 9y agoFatigue of the subject possibly.
- davexunit 9y agoThe subject will be brought up again and again until the issues are addressed.
- araglia 9y agoYou mean perpetually then? This is not a problem that will ever go away in general. So people get tired of it. I could share some stories my mom told me about her workplace experiences from the 70s to the 90s. They're much more disturbing than being passed over for promotion. So perhaps things have gotten better.
- kevincrane 9y ago> This is not a problem that will ever go away in general. So people get tired of it. If you're tired of reading about it, imagine how exhausting it must be for women who have to actually live with it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- unholywars 9y agoI have to deal with douchebags and people I don't like on a daily basis, people who make my job hard and people who I'd like to vanish off the face of the earth. I don't write blog posts about it, because 1. nobody cares 2. this is what life is like and some people just need to toughen up a bit. Assholes exist, don't try to shield yourself from them, learn how to fight back and they'll respect you.
- araglia 9y agoWhile sitting in his open office with another employee next to me my boss, the owner of the company, bellowed at me "If I were 30 years younger, I'd jump over this table and fuck you!" I laughed. Two months later I received my bonus; the day after that I gave notice. That comment wasn't the worst thing he had said or done to me. That also wasn't the first time I had been harassed at work. In the beginning it was a little exhausting because I felt I should stick it out - perhaps as some sort psychological rite of passage. However, I eventually learned the easy way to deal with it. Don't fight. Don't argue. Just leave. There are men and women who deal with harassment everyday gracefully. The tech industry is so expansive and filled with opportunity that the moment I feel an employer doesn't have my back, I know I can split and not care. I don't know why more people don't see it the same way.
- kevincrane 9y ago> Don't fight. Don't argue. Just leave. There are men and women who deal with harassment everyday gracefully. That's a horrifically regressive view on this. Why should the person being harassed have to leave? Why can't the person doing the harassing be forced out? And saying that leaving quietly is "handling it gracefully" puts the entire burden on the victim, as if not just graciously accepting someone's sexual advances is causing a nuisance to the rest of the company. If you expect all women who are the victims of sexual harassment to leave their jobs without making a fuss, you can't be surprised when people write long thinkpieces on the software industry is lacking in female representation.
- araglia 9y agoNo, it's a self-efficacious view. I never see myself as a victim. There is no burden. And that's where I can't see eye-to-eye with you on your thoughts. I've gotten tired of the thinkpieces and the people who write them. They're not doing anything but writing sanctimonious bullshit from their ivory tower. I take action. Whether you think leaving a toxic workplace quietly is not an acceptable response, then that's your opinion.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
- gdulli 9y ago> So perhaps things have gotten better. Yes, because of the actions and attitudes of people who give the subject its due attention, not the people who write it off as fatiguing.
- araglia 9y agoNo, it's the fatigue and lack of attention that improves it. That is to say, the course of action that the actual affected individual takes. They stop taking the shit and leave. If this happens enough, then shitty employers go out of business.
- Sohcahtoa82 9y agoYou think the employers give a shit? They certainly don't, unless there's a lawsuit against them. Just leaving doesn't make a statement to them. They don't care. They'll find someone else to fill that job, and if it's another women, they'll get treated just the same. They won't learn anything as long as there are people able to fill the seat, which there always will be. You're naive if you think they'll go out of business just because you left. You're replaceable. Nearly everyone at every company is replaceable.
- convolvatron 9y agoThese kinds of problems aren't really being solved by having a mandatory seminar. There are broad cultural issues at play, and certainly quite a bit of corporate ass covering. However, I don't think its reasonable for anyone in an employment situation to have to suffer because of the psychological problems of their peers and especially their superiors. Sexual harassment is just one egregious example. If you are really worried about litigation, stop putting narcissistic sociopaths in your management structure. I know that sounds hard. At least you can try?
- abiox 9y agowell, there are other possibilities; such as the philosophical-political underpinnings establishing the existence of 'the issues' (whatever that is) being countered.
- awinder 9y agoWhat's wrong with this place? What's wrong with this world is the question you should be asking, it's not a mistake that sexual harassment has flourished among a population that (clearly -- read the posts in this thread) also discounts it's very legitimacy. Y'alls parents didn't raise you right.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tbabb 9y agoThe topic of women and minorities in tech really provokes HN to display its neckbeard plumage. Really, I don't know why I click on the comments of these articles. People in tech-- nerdy or socially insecure men in particular-- often tie their self worth to their jobs or their skills. A mere whiff that the reason that they have their position isn't because they're innately better than everyone else threatens that sense of self worth, and a lot of them handle it by getting angrily defensive.
- beepboopbeep 9y agoNot just defensive, but like...totally devoid of a human perspective. It's the weirdest thing but it's very consistent
- npiazza83 9y agoIt is a community that curates discussion based solely on technical discourse of technical subject matters. When the matter is subjective people lose their minds because the only moderation standard is "off topic, subjective discussion. Detach thread!"
- caseydurfee 9y ago"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
- bsder 9y agoAn article about someone found to have produced a false accusation is unlikely to provoke enlightening debate.
- novia 9y agoThis satirical article kinda nails it: http://reductress.com/post/man-in-male-dominated-field-says-being-a-woman-is-actually-an-advantage/ http://reductress.com/post/man-in-male-dominated-field-says-...
- Klockan 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised if that exact conversation have actually happened.
- village-idiot 9y agoArt imitates real life.
- greglindahl 9y agoActually there were several HN commenters on recent postings who had that sort of opinion.
- dang 9y agoI have to stick up a bit for the community as a whole. There have been at least three relatively (emphasis on relatively—in absolute terms still pretty bad) substantive discussions of sexual harassment on HN recently. This one is certainly much worse, but the trend can't be monotonic; the community is far too large and divided for that. If we judge by all the data points, the trend seems positive. But it's slow.
- zimpenfish 9y agoI've only been on HN a few years but yeah, the recent threads - whilst still largely cesspools - have had encouraging signs.