10 ms·

I work with suicidal physicists and programmers. We're all women. The men aren't doing great either but that's because they're expected to succeed and are giv

I work with suicidal physicists and programmers. We're all women. The men aren't doing great either but that's because they're expected to succeed and are given a disproportionate amount of work. We're expected to fail, left out of meetings relevant to our duties, and wither into obscurity with the excuse "well I asked everybody" time and again, forgotten and excluded. But everybody has good intentions. God forbid I forget that

caseyw 7y ago
I was left out of important meetings, asked questions that no one answered and would get in trouble for not knowing something from a meeting I wasn’t invited to. Super fun.
ng12 7y ago
Who hires someone with the expectation of failure?
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Somebody who knows they're making a diversity hire, generally (regardless of the actual quality of the candidate, which somebody making this decision probably never bothered to consider).
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Project managers in stack ranked companies. edit - there is a vicious little set of incentives in certain corporate environments that almost guarantees bullying and fucked up mind games unless the manager is some kind of a saint. Mix stack ranking and any kind of external weighting on a manager and they will comply with the weighting by hiring the person they can get to fail the stack ranking so as not to screw with their project team. And unless this person is lucky enough to be oblivious, they have just entered hell.
- sodepressed 7y ago
  We get hired because we're undeniably brilliant. But then we aren't actually welcome in the social fabric, which is more than 80% male. I've been on a few hiring panels and contrary to a sibling comment's implication, the hiring process is quite biased. Though progressive, the company doesn't have anything resembling diversity-aware hiring practices. "The best candidate gets the job" is the rule, but when "cultural fit" is a significant consideration in a heavily male dominated department, we continue to hire many more men than women.
  - bubblewrap 7y ago
    And when you were on the hiring panels, you couldn't affect that? Maybe you are not welcome because you advocate "diversity aware hiring practices", not because you are a woman?
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Physicists? Are you by any chance in embedded systems? Where are you, and are you willing to relocate? I know at least one healthy embedded environment in the Salt Lake area. Yeah, we have only one woman programmer on our team of 14. She's also one of the superstars. (In most interviews, we ask questions because we wanted to find out what the candidate knows. In her interview, we asked questions because we wanted to learn things.)
    - sodepressed 7y ago
      Aww, this is really nice of you. I can't relocate at the moment, but this is heartwarming.
t373738 7y ago
What’s gender have to do with this?
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  She’s relating her own experience and how it contrasts with that of the male physicists/programmers.
- sodepressed 7y ago
  At my place of work, a tech company with expressly progressive values, we've done a survey. The statistics show a very sharp distinction between men and women. You should ask my management -- who keeps promoting men and shutting out women. We've got some women rising in the ranks: hr, technical writing, marketing. But never on the R&D side.
  - shrimp_emoji 7y ago
    So I gather that by "expressly progressive values" you mean "disingenuous progressive values".
    - sodepressed 7y ago
      No no, that wouldn't be generous. Remember, they all have good intentions. This might not sound honest, but it's how I'm expected to talk Loving the downvotes. I've literally been reprimanded for pointing out a pattern of sexist behavior -- 'cause apparently, counting to three before bringing it up to management is SO unfair
      - cobbzilla 7y ago
        fwiw, I wouldn't put too much stock in the responses here; you're likely seeing the HN crowd's version some of the same phenomena you are experiencing in the workplace. A sincere statement is picked apart, minimized, and denied. All of it sucks, and while I do not know your situation much, I'd say certainly keep on the lookout for better environments, and very specifically: find good/directional questions to ask in interviews that give you some leading indicators. I've worked for companies that seemed awesome at interview-time and then turned out to be toxic hell-holes. No company will say "we have a toxic culture"; you have to ask the right questions more subtly to get that info. (I wish I knew what those questions are; I haven't had to endure an interview process in many years; yes I realize how lucky I am; maybe others have suggestions?) Not sure how many options you have, but keep them all open, the positive ones anyway, and I wish you the best.
knolan 7y ago
I recently moved back into academia. An internal equipment funding call, and all of the University’s calls, required at least a 40% gender balance. As a new faculty member I had to scramble to find researchers in other departments with similar interests to mine and to join up with on a proposal. I had to trawl through their websites to specifically find women and it felt like stalking and it made me uncomfortable. Emailing these women felt creepy and selfish. However I want to work with anyone I can. Were it not for this specific requirement I would happily had taken the time to contact people and get to know others organically. Ultimately it’s nothing compared to the despondency you describe and I did get in touch with some great people that I hope to work with in the future. Perhaps this experience was necessary if jarring. I cannot offer you anything other than good intentions. I’m an engineer and I work with fluid mechanics. I want to work with the people who do the actual work, not the parasites who do all the talking.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
creato 7y ago
> We're expected to fail, left out of meetings relevant to our duties, and wither into obscurity with the excuse "well I asked everybody" time and again, forgotten and excluded. This sounds like the experience of almost every employee in every industry. Very, very few people get to work on truly influential and interesting problems. And from what I've seen at several big companies, no one simply gets asked to do that kind of work (in a meeting or otherwise). If you want to do that kind of work, you have to find a way to contribute yourself. If you wait for "duties" to be assigned to you, you'll get assigned the work no one else wants to do.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>But everybody has good intentions. God forbid I forget that On one hand I get the idea of trying to assume positive intent because wrongly assuming negative intent can make a situation much worse, but I still hate the idea. First, it gives negative intent the ability to hide and pretend to be positive intent. Not many people will do this, but the ones who do can use it to great effect and cause significant damage they won't be held accountable for. Second, it contradicts our standard actions elsewhere. If a stranger asks a kid if they need a ride, do we tell the kid to assume positive intent? No, we inform them to assume negative intent. We measure the situation of either option on a case by case basis and only then determine what is safe to assume (and in the example I give, it is more prudent to assume negative intent). Third, it has an implicit idea that positive intent is good enough. That isn't always the case. Sometimes it is, but especially when it comes to leaders in an organization, specifically those with power and compensation to match being a leader, the demand is higher than just trying to be positive. We need people who have the knowledge and experience to do more than just having positive intent. When you higher a security expert, do you hire someone who will try to achieve security and count that as good enough, or is the demand for their to be realized results and failing to achieve those results lead to negative consequences unless there is adequate explanation. When someone is parenting a child, is trying good be a good parent enough, or do we demand a certain level of competence in parenting and remove children from those who fail to reach a certain level? Fourth, there is a double standard in application. Every time someone tells me to assume positive intent, they were assuming I didn't already have the positive intent in doing so. And dare you point it out, you will be seen as assuming negative intent about their assuming negative intent. This alone isn't really a major issue, but it generally represents a larger double standard on application of such rules.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- leetcrew 7y ago
  intent matters when you judge a person, but not when you judge their actions. the bad parent is a good example. if someone tries hard to be a good parent, but can't actually take care of their child, it might be necessary to remove the child from that situation, but we might first see if there isn't a way to help that person fulfill their parental duties. on the other hand, if a parent harms their child through malice, not only would we want to place the child in a different home, but we might pursue additional punitive action against the parent. intent can't separate actions from their necessary consequences, but it is important to consider before imposing additional consequences on a person.
jdietrich 7y ago
A man who didn't finish high school is over six times more likely to die by suicide than a college-educated woman. However bad things feel for you and your colleagues, they are vastly worse for working-class men. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28756896 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28756896
- AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
  Do you have access to the article? What's about men vs women with a similar education level?
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    Everyone has access to the article via sci-hub. Men are three to four times more likely to die by suicide than a woman with equivalent educational attainment.
mjfl 7y ago
> The men aren't doing great either but that's because they're expected to succeed and are given a disproportionate amount of work. We're expected to fail... how can you be so dismissive of men? I am a physics graduate student and I spend literally every waking minute of my life in lab. It's really embarrassing to admit, but it's been 3 years since I've had sex or had a social life outside of lab. This is self-imposed - I'm chasing a dream, but surely 3 years of complete isolation, devoid of intimacy of any kind can at least compare to being "left out of meetings"? also as a Phd student you shouldn't expect to be "given work". You make research proposals and execute them, no?
- Balgair 7y ago
  Hey man, as a former STEMy grad student to a current one: Take care of yourself first. Academia is a lot of things, but Feynman's era is long gone, the golden age of physics is in the past now. I don't know you, and I don't know your situation. But I have known a lot of people that may be like you, and I have know a lot of situations that may be like yours. Generally, these days, grad school isn't about the work, it about the network. If you want to stay in the ivory tower, networking is your job. If you want to get out and do something else, go through the classes and just learn that stuff. Get the experience, but do not put your soul in this, you will not find the rewards you are looking for in a lab. Hell is other people, yes, but so is Heaven. From this teeny-tiny bit of a comment that you left, almost nothing to reasonably go on really, it sounds like you need to get out of the lab. It sounds like you want a partner, a girl/boyfriend, and you should probably do that, and it is ok to do that. Save the python script, put down the polarizer, go to ask someone to a dinner. If your advisor freaks, so be it, they aren't a person that you should be trusting if they don't hold your well being above the work. Do not put your advisor's career first, put yourself first. It's ok to do that.
  - mjfl 7y ago
    Yeah, I understand what you are saying. I have a long break scheduled for the end of June where I hope to step back and get a look at the bigger picture...
- sodepressed 7y ago
killjoywashere 7y ago
Would you be willing to move to SD? If so, send me a resume.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Please clarify if that's San Diego or South Dakota.
  - killjoywashere 7y ago
    San Diego
chicob 7y ago
I am a farmer and a physicist by training. Alentejo, the part of the country where I work, has the greatest suicide rate in the country (~28 suicides/100k in the coast region, 19 suicides/100k in the interior region, when the national average is around 10 suicides/100k). Some say isolation, ageing alone, the economic crisis and poverty and unemployment are to blame. I suspect alcohol consumption has a lot to do with it. Just a few days ago someone I knew ended his own life. I was away visiting family, and sadly I could not attend the funeral. He knew my great grandfather. I believe he was sick and didn't want to suffer anymore.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  >ageing alone >I believe he was sick and didn't want to suffer anymore. Just out of morbid curiosity: if you were in this situation -- quite old, quite sick, the very fabric of your body reminding you it's time to go, wouldn't it make sense? With a spouse, there's obvious pressure not to. Without one, I feel like I'd do it. Ideally, I'd go somewhere where assisted suicide's legal so that I can end things neatly -- much bureaucracy, such dignity. uwu Not have aid workers find some messy or creepy corpse and depress the locals. (At $1,500[0], though, that may be a luxury.) 0: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/1023/How-California-could-dramatically-change-assisted-suicide-debate https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/1023/How-Californ...
  - chicob 7y ago
    It could make sense, but I would definitely not do it the way he did. He left a family behind, and his business, and no explanation for his decision. I talked to some local people about it, and it seems his disease was treatable. I don't know if he was in pain, but I do know he was still working as usual until the day he took his life.
bbreier 7y ago
I see you. I hope things get better. Please do not harm yourself, you are valuable and you matter. The people you work with do not define who you are, and neither does their abhorrent behavior.

caseyw 7y ago

I was left out of important meetings, asked questions that no one answered and would get in trouble for not knowing something from a meeting I wasn’t invited to. Super fun.

ng12 7y ago

Who hires someone with the expectation of failure?

microcolonel 7y ago
Somebody who knows they're making a diversity hire, generally (regardless of the actual quality of the candidate, which somebody making this decision probably never bothered to consider).
inflatableDodo 7y ago
Project managers in stack ranked companies. edit - there is a vicious little set of incentives in certain corporate environments that almost guarantees bullying and fucked up mind games unless the manager is some kind of a saint. Mix stack ranking and any kind of external weighting on a manager and they will comply with the weighting by hiring the person they can get to fail the stack ranking so as not to screw with their project team. And unless this person is lucky enough to be oblivious, they have just entered hell.
sodepressed 7y ago
We get hired because we're undeniably brilliant. But then we aren't actually welcome in the social fabric, which is more than 80% male. I've been on a few hiring panels and contrary to a sibling comment's implication, the hiring process is quite biased. Though progressive, the company doesn't have anything resembling diversity-aware hiring practices. "The best candidate gets the job" is the rule, but when "cultural fit" is a significant consideration in a heavily male dominated department, we continue to hire many more men than women.
- bubblewrap 7y ago
  And when you were on the hiring panels, you couldn't affect that? Maybe you are not welcome because you advocate "diversity aware hiring practices", not because you are a woman?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Physicists? Are you by any chance in embedded systems? Where are you, and are you willing to relocate? I know at least one healthy embedded environment in the Salt Lake area. Yeah, we have only one woman programmer on our team of 14. She's also one of the superstars. (In most interviews, we ask questions because we wanted to find out what the candidate knows. In her interview, we asked questions because we wanted to learn things.)
  - sodepressed 7y ago
    Aww, this is really nice of you. I can't relocate at the moment, but this is heartwarming.

t373738 7y ago

What’s gender have to do with this?

AlexandrB 7y ago
She’s relating her own experience and how it contrasts with that of the male physicists/programmers.
sodepressed 7y ago
At my place of work, a tech company with expressly progressive values, we've done a survey. The statistics show a very sharp distinction between men and women. You should ask my management -- who keeps promoting men and shutting out women. We've got some women rising in the ranks: hr, technical writing, marketing. But never on the R&D side.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  So I gather that by "expressly progressive values" you mean "disingenuous progressive values".
  - sodepressed 7y ago
    No no, that wouldn't be generous. Remember, they all have good intentions. This might not sound honest, but it's how I'm expected to talk Loving the downvotes. I've literally been reprimanded for pointing out a pattern of sexist behavior -- 'cause apparently, counting to three before bringing it up to management is SO unfair
    - cobbzilla 7y ago
      fwiw, I wouldn't put too much stock in the responses here; you're likely seeing the HN crowd's version some of the same phenomena you are experiencing in the workplace. A sincere statement is picked apart, minimized, and denied. All of it sucks, and while I do not know your situation much, I'd say certainly keep on the lookout for better environments, and very specifically: find good/directional questions to ask in interviews that give you some leading indicators. I've worked for companies that seemed awesome at interview-time and then turned out to be toxic hell-holes. No company will say "we have a toxic culture"; you have to ask the right questions more subtly to get that info. (I wish I knew what those questions are; I haven't had to endure an interview process in many years; yes I realize how lucky I am; maybe others have suggestions?) Not sure how many options you have, but keep them all open, the positive ones anyway, and I wish you the best.

knolan 7y ago

I recently moved back into academia. An internal equipment funding call, and all of the University’s calls, required at least a 40% gender balance. As a new faculty member I had to scramble to find researchers in other departments with similar interests to mine and to join up with on a proposal. I had to trawl through their websites to specifically find women and it felt like stalking and it made me uncomfortable. Emailing these women felt creepy and selfish. However I want to work with anyone I can. Were it not for this specific requirement I would happily had taken the time to contact people and get to know others organically. Ultimately it’s nothing compared to the despondency you describe and I did get in touch with some great people that I hope to work with in the future. Perhaps this experience was necessary if jarring. I cannot offer you anything other than good intentions. I’m an engineer and I work with fluid mechanics. I want to work with the people who do the actual work, not the parasites who do all the talking.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

creato 7y ago

> We're expected to fail, left out of meetings relevant to our duties, and wither into obscurity with the excuse "well I asked everybody" time and again, forgotten and excluded. This sounds like the experience of almost every employee in every industry. Very, very few people get to work on truly influential and interesting problems. And from what I've seen at several big companies, no one simply gets asked to do that kind of work (in a meeting or otherwise). If you want to do that kind of work, you have to find a way to contribute yourself. If you wait for "duties" to be assigned to you, you'll get assigned the work no one else wants to do.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>But everybody has good intentions. God forbid I forget that On one hand I get the idea of trying to assume positive intent because wrongly assuming negative intent can make a situation much worse, but I still hate the idea. First, it gives negative intent the ability to hide and pretend to be positive intent. Not many people will do this, but the ones who do can use it to great effect and cause significant damage they won't be held accountable for. Second, it contradicts our standard actions elsewhere. If a stranger asks a kid if they need a ride, do we tell the kid to assume positive intent? No, we inform them to assume negative intent. We measure the situation of either option on a case by case basis and only then determine what is safe to assume (and in the example I give, it is more prudent to assume negative intent). Third, it has an implicit idea that positive intent is good enough. That isn't always the case. Sometimes it is, but especially when it comes to leaders in an organization, specifically those with power and compensation to match being a leader, the demand is higher than just trying to be positive. We need people who have the knowledge and experience to do more than just having positive intent. When you higher a security expert, do you hire someone who will try to achieve security and count that as good enough, or is the demand for their to be realized results and failing to achieve those results lead to negative consequences unless there is adequate explanation. When someone is parenting a child, is trying good be a good parent enough, or do we demand a certain level of competence in parenting and remove children from those who fail to reach a certain level? Fourth, there is a double standard in application. Every time someone tells me to assume positive intent, they were assuming I didn't already have the positive intent in doing so. And dare you point it out, you will be seen as assuming negative intent about their assuming negative intent. This alone isn't really a major issue, but it generally represents a larger double standard on application of such rules.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
leetcrew 7y ago
intent matters when you judge a person, but not when you judge their actions. the bad parent is a good example. if someone tries hard to be a good parent, but can't actually take care of their child, it might be necessary to remove the child from that situation, but we might first see if there isn't a way to help that person fulfill their parental duties. on the other hand, if a parent harms their child through malice, not only would we want to place the child in a different home, but we might pursue additional punitive action against the parent. intent can't separate actions from their necessary consequences, but it is important to consider before imposing additional consequences on a person.

jdietrich 7y ago

A man who didn't finish high school is over six times more likely to die by suicide than a college-educated woman. However bad things feel for you and your colleagues, they are vastly worse for working-class men. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28756896 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28756896

AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
Do you have access to the article? What's about men vs women with a similar education level?
- jdietrich 7y ago
  Everyone has access to the article via sci-hub. Men are three to four times more likely to die by suicide than a woman with equivalent educational attainment.

mjfl 7y ago

> The men aren't doing great either but that's because they're expected to succeed and are given a disproportionate amount of work. We're expected to fail... how can you be so dismissive of men? I am a physics graduate student and I spend literally every waking minute of my life in lab. It's really embarrassing to admit, but it's been 3 years since I've had sex or had a social life outside of lab. This is self-imposed - I'm chasing a dream, but surely 3 years of complete isolation, devoid of intimacy of any kind can at least compare to being "left out of meetings"? also as a Phd student you shouldn't expect to be "given work". You make research proposals and execute them, no?

Balgair 7y ago
Hey man, as a former STEMy grad student to a current one: Take care of yourself first. Academia is a lot of things, but Feynman's era is long gone, the golden age of physics is in the past now. I don't know you, and I don't know your situation. But I have known a lot of people that may be like you, and I have know a lot of situations that may be like yours. Generally, these days, grad school isn't about the work, it about the network. If you want to stay in the ivory tower, networking is your job. If you want to get out and do something else, go through the classes and just learn that stuff. Get the experience, but do not put your soul in this, you will not find the rewards you are looking for in a lab. Hell is other people, yes, but so is Heaven. From this teeny-tiny bit of a comment that you left, almost nothing to reasonably go on really, it sounds like you need to get out of the lab. It sounds like you want a partner, a girl/boyfriend, and you should probably do that, and it is ok to do that. Save the python script, put down the polarizer, go to ask someone to a dinner. If your advisor freaks, so be it, they aren't a person that you should be trusting if they don't hold your well being above the work. Do not put your advisor's career first, put yourself first. It's ok to do that.
- mjfl 7y ago
  Yeah, I understand what you are saying. I have a long break scheduled for the end of June where I hope to step back and get a look at the bigger picture...
sodepressed 7y ago

killjoywashere 7y ago

Would you be willing to move to SD? If so, send me a resume.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
Please clarify if that's San Diego or South Dakota.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  San Diego

chicob 7y ago

I am a farmer and a physicist by training. Alentejo, the part of the country where I work, has the greatest suicide rate in the country (~28 suicides/100k in the coast region, 19 suicides/100k in the interior region, when the national average is around 10 suicides/100k). Some say isolation, ageing alone, the economic crisis and poverty and unemployment are to blame. I suspect alcohol consumption has a lot to do with it. Just a few days ago someone I knew ended his own life. I was away visiting family, and sadly I could not attend the funeral. He knew my great grandfather. I believe he was sick and didn't want to suffer anymore.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
>ageing alone >I believe he was sick and didn't want to suffer anymore. Just out of morbid curiosity: if you were in this situation -- quite old, quite sick, the very fabric of your body reminding you it's time to go, wouldn't it make sense? With a spouse, there's obvious pressure not to. Without one, I feel like I'd do it. Ideally, I'd go somewhere where assisted suicide's legal so that I can end things neatly -- much bureaucracy, such dignity. uwu Not have aid workers find some messy or creepy corpse and depress the locals. (At $1,500[0], though, that may be a luxury.) 0: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/1023/How-California-could-dramatically-change-assisted-suicide-debate https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/1023/How-Californ...
- chicob 7y ago
  It could make sense, but I would definitely not do it the way he did. He left a family behind, and his business, and no explanation for his decision. I talked to some local people about it, and it seems his disease was treatable. I don't know if he was in pain, but I do know he was still working as usual until the day he took his life.

bbreier 7y ago

I see you. I hope things get better. Please do not harm yourself, you are valuable and you matter. The people you work with do not define who you are, and neither does their abhorrent behavior.