6 ms·

Stupid people are everywhere. I want to think that there is a big amount of people that is not like that. As a male I was told something similar in an intervie

Stupid people are everywhere. I want to think that there is a big amount of people that is not like that. As a male I was told something similar in an interview at Google: if I would mind to work in a company where most people are men? And as the girl you cite I found the question stupid. I have worked in tech I already know how is this. Instead of diversity program to hire women we should create tolerance programs for everybody.

nyxtom 9y ago
Wishful thinking unfortunately :/ Hence the exodus.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
That, or employers should up their professionalism. Bring back the 9-5 job, the clean desk policy, the grumpy boss that will chew you out if you come to work wearing shorts.
- pas 9y ago
  How does that signal for professionalism? How does that make a healthier workplace culture? It just becomes a management minefield. People can commit crimes in suits too.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    Developer cultures in the 60s and 70s were more corporate, but some of them managed to be more diverse, because the default expectation was "professional adult", not "funky post-student", and "professional adult" is a bigger space that supports access by a broader range of people. Women started finding it harder to get into CS in the 80s. Until then, the historical record is that diversity was better than it is now. But generally hiring-process solutions to this problem are hopeless. You either have a diverse culture, in which case markers for age, gender, attractiveness, charm, ethnicity, extraversion, and so on, are irrelevant... or you don't. Tech generally doesn't - and that starts at school, not during hiring. Adding a few extra women won't change that. It's a small improvement at best, not a revolution in accessibility. Because the reality is that even with a 50:50 gender split startup culture would still be primarily white-or-asian, young, attractive, middle class, and motivated by a very small selection of possible ethical positions - and a lot of possible talent would still be excluded. Age, race, and class discrimination is far more obvious to outsiders than gender discrimination. You could make the "Well it's still an improvement" argument, and that's true - up to a point. There's still a bigger conversation to be had about inequality in general, and I'm not sure how many people in tech of any gender are interested in having it.
    - kamaal 9y ago
      Ageism happens for more or less same reasons. Perceived bias that older people can't work hard enough, or change fast enough with the fast changing time. Tech is a very fast moving space with a lot of premium attached to entrepreneurship, moving fast enough, failing often etc. This sort of an environment is very hard for almost everybody to survive through.
      - shados 9y ago
        The funny part to me was that when I graduated, in the early 2000 after the crash, the meme about getting a job in tech was "You need 10 years of experience to get an entry level job". There was a strong bias for older workers. Eventually people said "fuck it", made their own startups, hired their newly graduate colleagues, and started making a big push about why younger tech workers were better. Since the pipeline is growing (more and more people are going in tech), new grads around that time easily outnumbered the older ones, and thus the situation we're in now. It's almost a backlash to what happened back then.
    - dijit 9y ago
      Anecdatum: My grandfather always shares his stories about leading the development team at Lewis (an old English insurance corporation) and British Gas. In his view, they were slothenly, unkempt, often unwashed and unsuited nerds. They were allowed to be because they did a job nobody else at the time could do- and while the rest of the office was suite/tie/polished shoes- they showed a flagrant and blatant disregard for that. Because they knew that they could get away with it because they were "needed". This is why he has a respect for me being clean/polite/respectful while "having the same skills" in his mind. So I don't fully buy that tech was previously more professional; it might be a different culture in SV, but generally tech is as professional as anything outside of finance in the cities I've worked (in europe)
      - holtalanm 9y ago
        And my counter-argument to that is: Why does it matter what the employee dresses or looks like, if they produce the same results? I have never understood the reason for people forcing their views of how people should dress onto others. It is absurd. Granted, there are levels of what is 'appropriate' for the workplace, but I think generally having a flexible dress code is important for employee morale.

nyxtom 9y ago

Wishful thinking unfortunately :/ Hence the exodus.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

That, or employers should up their professionalism. Bring back the 9-5 job, the clean desk policy, the grumpy boss that will chew you out if you come to work wearing shorts.

pas 9y ago
How does that signal for professionalism? How does that make a healthier workplace culture? It just becomes a management minefield. People can commit crimes in suits too.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  Developer cultures in the 60s and 70s were more corporate, but some of them managed to be more diverse, because the default expectation was "professional adult", not "funky post-student", and "professional adult" is a bigger space that supports access by a broader range of people. Women started finding it harder to get into CS in the 80s. Until then, the historical record is that diversity was better than it is now. But generally hiring-process solutions to this problem are hopeless. You either have a diverse culture, in which case markers for age, gender, attractiveness, charm, ethnicity, extraversion, and so on, are irrelevant... or you don't. Tech generally doesn't - and that starts at school, not during hiring. Adding a few extra women won't change that. It's a small improvement at best, not a revolution in accessibility. Because the reality is that even with a 50:50 gender split startup culture would still be primarily white-or-asian, young, attractive, middle class, and motivated by a very small selection of possible ethical positions - and a lot of possible talent would still be excluded. Age, race, and class discrimination is far more obvious to outsiders than gender discrimination. You could make the "Well it's still an improvement" argument, and that's true - up to a point. There's still a bigger conversation to be had about inequality in general, and I'm not sure how many people in tech of any gender are interested in having it.
  - kamaal 9y ago
    Ageism happens for more or less same reasons. Perceived bias that older people can't work hard enough, or change fast enough with the fast changing time. Tech is a very fast moving space with a lot of premium attached to entrepreneurship, moving fast enough, failing often etc. This sort of an environment is very hard for almost everybody to survive through.
    - shados 9y ago
      The funny part to me was that when I graduated, in the early 2000 after the crash, the meme about getting a job in tech was "You need 10 years of experience to get an entry level job". There was a strong bias for older workers. Eventually people said "fuck it", made their own startups, hired their newly graduate colleagues, and started making a big push about why younger tech workers were better. Since the pipeline is growing (more and more people are going in tech), new grads around that time easily outnumbered the older ones, and thus the situation we're in now. It's almost a backlash to what happened back then.
  - dijit 9y ago
    Anecdatum: My grandfather always shares his stories about leading the development team at Lewis (an old English insurance corporation) and British Gas. In his view, they were slothenly, unkempt, often unwashed and unsuited nerds. They were allowed to be because they did a job nobody else at the time could do- and while the rest of the office was suite/tie/polished shoes- they showed a flagrant and blatant disregard for that. Because they knew that they could get away with it because they were "needed". This is why he has a respect for me being clean/polite/respectful while "having the same skills" in his mind. So I don't fully buy that tech was previously more professional; it might be a different culture in SV, but generally tech is as professional as anything outside of finance in the cities I've worked (in europe)
    - holtalanm 9y ago
      And my counter-argument to that is: Why does it matter what the employee dresses or looks like, if they produce the same results? I have never understood the reason for people forcing their views of how people should dress onto others. It is absurd. Granted, there are levels of what is 'appropriate' for the workplace, but I think generally having a flexible dress code is important for employee morale.