6 ms·

Horror Stories From Women in Tech

41 points by yahelc 16y ago

reso 16y ago
Other headlines today from jezebel.com: Pete Wentz Discusses Divorce, Thanks God For Charlie Sheen Woman injured by Dolphin jumping into her boat ABC Casting for "Stem-Cell Face-lift" Show Al-Qaeda Expands into Women's magazines
- biot 16y ago
  And it's another broken hashbang site. It took three page reloads to finally see the content.
  - pasbesoin 16y ago
    For those who no longer trust Gawker even as far as to run their Javascript: http://m.jezebel.com/5781523/horror-stories-from-women-in-tech http://m.jezebel.com/5781523/horror-stories-from-women-in-te... (This is generalizable across their sites -- at least, for the moment.)
- sonoffett 16y ago
  I found the article to be interesting and relevant--ad hominem attacks don't contribute to the discussion and I hope HN will eventually get over its self serving bias and discuss self critical issues at the same level as any other conversation.
- angusgr 16y ago
  Are you trying to make a point apart from refute-by-vague-association? What does a cherry-picked list of headlines have to do with the content of the linked article?
- danilocampos 16y ago
  Oh, well, in that case, let's pack up and go home, guys. There can't possibly be anything to learn here. The only thing that really troubles me about the otherwise excellent Hacker News community is this defensive/dismissive streak that shows up every time the subject of "women in tech" is raised. It's especially mystifying to me given how obvious the problem is: (gross generalizations follow) - Many nerds have a shocking talent for being insular, insecure dicks - Most nerds aren't women - Nerds dominate tech No chance at all this ends poorly for the outsiders, right?
  - peterbraden 16y ago
    I feel like you could make your point in a more constructive way. Let's keep things civil on here.
    - danilocampos 16y ago
      I respectfully disagree and, if I may be frank, resent the parental tone. Except in egregious circumstances, I'd counter that the vote arrows beside each comment are a sufficient mechanism for expressing this view, just as it's frowned upon to post a comment that says nothing more than "I agree." Sometimes irony is the only appropriate way to respond to the absurd. By carrying a remark like this to its logical conclusion, you can expose its absurdity with substantial economy. While I trust my fellow HNers to avoid outright name-calling and ad hominem, I also trust them (occasionally in error) to not have a stick-up-the-ass as we exchange ideas.
      - puredemo 16y ago
        You aren't really exchanging ideas, but rather making repeated, sweeping generalizations.
      - peterbraden 16y ago
        was not meant to be a 'parental' tone. This is a very emotionally charged issue, and making statements such as 'Many nerds have a shocking talent for being insular, insecure dicks' simply adds to the anger in the room, without contributing to the underlying discussion. The vote arrows are for meritous ideas, not to police tone. I only intended to defuse the situation, not to cast aspersions on your point of view.
sp332 16y ago
There are "groups" of people. You don't talk to your family the same way you talk to your friends. You don't talk to older people the same way you talk to younger people. I'm not even talking about the conscious stuff, like maybe trying to watch your language around certain groups. People unconsciously talk louder to older people. It's not because people consciously believe that all older people have hearing problems, it's just a pattern that they picked up by watching other people. Certain things get absorbed unconsciously. There are lots of ways of saying "I'm interested in your project". Sometimes, a person will only mean to say just that, but they will unwittingly couch it in a sexist form that they learned from other people. They don't mean to be sexist, but certain attitudes, vocabulary, phrases, etc can simply be copied from other people without understanding exactly how they affect the listener. This isn't easy to fix. If we treat women like men, many of them will be put off. But apparently a lot of people (possibly including women?) in our "geek" culture don't know how to "be friendly to women", even when they want to be (because they've learned bad habits from other people). We can only fix this if women point out good role models for the rest of us to follow, or give us an itemized list of things that make them feel welcome. Pointing out bad stuff strikes me as ineffective.
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  First of all, _recognizing_ the bad stuff IS a good thing that (many) women like. If you're with a man and a woman and the man tells a sexist joke, and you and the woman recognize that and don't laugh, then she feels like she's in the in-crowd and he feels like the odd man out. Congratulations, you just made a woman feel more comfortable. The reason we talk about the bad stuff is so we can practice in our head steering clear of it. Actually, I think that's about it! Be helpful and friendly just like you would to a male developer and Don't Do Sexist Shit, and you'll be in good shape. Tech is fun. Women are innately drawn to nerding out the same way that men are. If they can do that without having sexism shoved in their faces every five minutes, then that's a pretty welcoming space. The positive is the absence of the negative. As for a list... to some extent, it's not fair to ask women to not only deal with the assholes, but spend even more time teaching the earnestly "want-to-learn" guys what to do. Teach yourself. The internet is full of feminist advice. A good place to start is just to subscribe to the Geek Feminism blog (http://geekfeminism.org http://geekfeminism.org) and read it with an open mind. If you want to go all out, dig through the archives. Feministing (http://feministing.com http://feministing.com) is a great all-purpose feminist primer too. And know that the folks who run those blogs generally Know Their Shit. They've been doing it for a while, and their analysis is mostly spot on, so if you find yourself thinking "this is insanity" just spend some time trying to really dig into their perspective before you go running into the fray with guns blazing. And high five for wanting to learn. That's awesome, I respect that.
edw519 16y ago
First this: "The first half is going to be your pitch, the second will be me hitting on you." Then this: "Honestly, the thing I'm most excited about is the prospect of seeing you naked later tonight." Please don't forget that any pitch must work both ways. We entrepreneurs should be evaluating potential investors with at least as much rigor as they evaluate us. They're not giving away money to lucky lottery winners, they're trading it for something else, something often much more valuable than their money: our blood, sweat, and tears in what could be a once in a lifetime opportunity. It's difficult to find a silver lining in this cloud, but let me give it a try: Anyone spoken to by people like these, no matter who they are, should thank these investors for eliminating themselves. Better to find out what they are like now before wasting any more time (or worse) on them. The only thing that really surprised me about this story was: She said she felt nauseous but pressed on with her pitch. Why bother? Better she should focus her energy on building a great business that will attract investors with professionalism and integrity. They're out there, just harder to find. At least they were until the pigs like this opened their mouths.
- johngalt 16y ago
  Same thing I thought. If a VC started hitting on me during the pitch I'd leave, and frankly I wouldn't deal with a VC that would treat any founder this way. If they will use power to exploit why even consider a partnership with them?
- danilocampos 16y ago
  Pigs indeed — agree completely. No one should do business with such creeps. At the same time, especially when you're starting out, you've got a lot of insecurity already, male or female, about your pitch, about your idea, your business, everything. It's fucked up to ladle on ever more confusion to the process by making the beginner wonder if a rebuke will foul other opportunities. The relationship should be reciprocal, yes, but let's be real, the investor has done this way more than the entrepreneur. The imbalance of power feels real and it's disgusting to see it abused so crassly.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- 16y ago
rubashov 16y ago
> "Who's watching your kids?" She retorted, "Who's watching yours?" Let's be honest. It's a rather valid question, from an investor perspective.
- hmahncke 16y ago
  It's a valid question only if the investor commonly asks it both to men and women.
  - rubashov 16y ago
    Not really. Men and women are different and relate to families differently. Deal with it.
    - BCM43 16y ago
      Not really. Men and women are different and relate to families differently. Deal with it. I'm not really sure what to say to this other than I would prefer not to see such blatant sexism anywhere, but especially not on HN.
    - mithaler 16y ago
      Speak for yourself. I see no need to "deal with" your perceived differences in the way men and women relate to families, if that has not been my experience.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Or if the investor understands Bayes rule (and also knows that women are more likely to care for children than men, forming a prior).
    - hmahncke 16y ago
      That prior might be valuable if it was based on the population under study, which is to say entrepreneurs. As is, based on the population at large, that prior is reasonably likely to be value-destructive.
johngalt 16y ago
No one complains about the lack of female plumbers, sanitation engineers, or electricians. Men are four times more likely to be murdered, and ten times as many are in jail. Why is it that genders are supposed to be equal except when men are considered inherently inferior? Life isn't fair and people with treat you unfairly. No this doesn't entitle you to special treatment. Yes it will limit you if you fixate on it.
- Rariel 16y ago
  I couldn't help but wonder while reading this comment--have you ever experienced any sort of discrimination or are you a member of any minority group (person of color, gay, non-christian, etc.)? "Life isn't fair and people with treat you unfairly. No this doesn't entitle you to special treatment." Who is asking for special treatment? Women just don't want to be discriminated against because of their gender--how do you get special treatment from that? Additionally your logic is flawed--just because you have never heard anybody complain about the lack of women in blue collar jobs (the only jobs you mentioned) doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And please explain how men being four times more likely to be murdered and ten times as many are in jail ( I'd love you to site where you came up with those statistics and their methodology in obtaining them btw) makes men "inherently inferior?"
  - sosuke 16y ago
    A quick Google pulled up the Wikipedia article on Incarceration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration) which actually puts the males at a lower 7 times more likely than women. Here are the stats for 2005 on murder citing men as 4 times more likely to be murdered. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/gender.cfm http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/gender.cfm
    - Rariel 16y ago
      Thanks but I was truly interested in finding out where OP got these stats from, meaning did he also do a quick google search or does he just know these things. I mentioned methodology in my post because that (to me) is the most important part of validating any statistics. My UG education was in a social science so I pay attention to those types of things. Stuff like this "Homicide as defined here includes murder and nonnegligent manslaughter which is the willful killing of one human being by another. The general analyses excluded deaths caused by negligence, suicide, or accident; justifiable homicides; and attempts to murder. " So we're saying vehicular manslaughter and shooting somebody in the head are the same while in reality they are completely different. Would you say that if you accidentally kill hit somebody and they die this is a murder? I wouldn't. But those cases get tacked on and divided and put through algorithms under the auspice of nurder. Additionally this "While many agencies report supplemental data on homicides, much of the data concerning offenders may not be reported because no suspects were identified. The most significant problem in using SHR data to analyze offender characteristics is the sizable and growing number of unsolved homicides contained in the data file. " So they guess based on what they do know, I have a problem with that. "In other words, offender profiles for unsolved crimes are estimated based on the offender profiles in solved cases matched on victim age, sex, and race; circumstances of the homicide; location of the homicide; and gun involvement; as well as year. All offender-based estimates were imputed using this procedure. " Those are only a few excerpts that cast doubt on the true validity of the DOJ stats. We have an obsession in this society with quantifying things, even when they can't really be put in to nice little statistics.
ahoyhere 16y ago
Oh please. Occasionally running into a rude man? THE HORROR! THE HORROR SPECIFIC TO TECH! I found it interesting that the women didn't just walk out of these situations. Why were they willing to submit themselves to such indignities? Surely they weren't forced to continue pitching. But no... they wanted the money. If you want the money more than you want respect, well, you're not going to get respect. As a woman genuinely in tech -- which, coincidentally, means a lot more than "in search of VC" -- I can say that I've been treated ill by just as many women as men over the years. But when a woman is horrible to you, you don't cry sexism, because well, she's got the same equipment as you do. Also, nobody's interested, because "everyone knows" women are catty, shallow, and wield their social abilities like a weapon. Kind of like how "everyone knows" men are uncultured brutes, who look down on noble, long-suffering women, assume they are dumb, and hit on anything that moves. Please. Fact: some people are shitty. By "people" I mean "of any and all genders, equally." If a person is shitty to you in what seems like a gender-specific way, chances are s/he is shitty to people of a different gender but in a different way. Take it personally and you're just telling yourself a story. But in reality, it's not about you. The way a person treats you is very rarely about you. It's about them. So ignore them and move on with your dignity intact, and stop telling yourself lies. By the way, selling cosmetics -- but being in search of VC -- does not a "woman in tech" make. For the love of god, are your cosmetics web-enabled?
- danilocampos 16y ago
  > By the way, selling cosmetics -- but being in search of VC -- does not a "woman in tech" make. For the love of god, are your cosmetics web-enabled? Actually, it would appear that their distribution is entirely web-based. That, to my mind, would make them as much a tech company as is Woot, with its non-web-enabled wine, and Amazon circa 1996, with its non-web-enabled books. Diapers.com? $550 million exit, that one. http://www.birchbox.com/ http://www.birchbox.com/
- dougws 16y ago
  I don't think they're claiming that this problem is specific to "tech"; sexism pretty much pervades our society. And yes, sexism is different and worse than just generic dickery because of the way it exacerbates existing societal problems. Their point is that (contrary to the gut reaction of many of the commenters so far) we as an industry can do better, which would help more women to succeed in the IT world.
anoncon2020 16y ago
The article does a poor job of convincing me that any of these problems are unique to the tech industry. Journalism: http://jezebel.com/#!5738019/where-are-the-women-at-highbrow-magazines http://jezebel.com/#!5738019/where-are-the-women-at-highbrow... Film: http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html Music: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news/e3i3a5fb1561d2145a3761cc5529f5b780c http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news... A more appropriate title would be 'Horror Stories from Women dealing with Wealthy Men in Powerful Positions" Can anyone name an 'Industry' in which is this NOT the case? Otherwise, singling out the tech industry is counterproductive and unfair.
- Apocryphon 16y ago
  It's wrong to single out one industry, yes, but it doesn't mean that the industry itself can't try to improve its own situation even if other ones fail to.
- Apocryphon 16y ago
  It's wrong to single out one industry, yes, but it doesn't mean that the industry itself can't try to improve its own situation even if other ones fail to.
- Rariel 16y ago
  Where in the article does she say it's unique to Tech?
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  I don't work in any other industry. If I was a doctor, I'd want to learn about sexism in healthcare. But I'm not. I'm in tech. I want to know what's happening in my industry.
ja27 16y ago
I had one male coworker ask a female coworker what bra size she was. (He was shopping for implants for his now ex-wife.) Awesome. She went into an empty office and cried.
- puredemo 16y ago
  Sounds a bit over-sensitive to me. I certainly wouldn't cry about being asked what size my chest is.
dasil003 16y ago
I find myself torn between the "assholes are assholes, deal with it" and "woman have to deal with a lot of bullshit in tech" viewpoints. I guess the reason for me is that I recognize that the best course of action for the individual woman is not to spend a lot of time complaining, but to recognize that tech is, for better or worse, a man's world, and the way to get ahead is to simply learn how the game works. On the other hand I don't want to give assholes and their apologists a free pass. If it seems like some women are overly sensitive about this issue, it's important to realize it's because they are dealing with this shit all the time. It's similar to racism, and why reverse-racism claims by whites fall flat—because they already have every advantage, and they don't have the weight of that historical oppression on their shoulder. Does that mean that you have to be a little more sensitive to minorities and women? Sure, but with good reason. It's just basic interpersonal relations to understand that people may be sensitive about stereotypes that they deal with repeatedly. That's where I think a lot of guys in tech go wrong—they want to believe in objective equality, so they trot out some examples of shit that guys have to deal with that women don't, which may be true, but it's irrelevant to the ultimate question of how common dynamics actually make people feel.
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  Who do you think is oversensitive to it? What do you think would be an appropriate amount of talking about it?

41 points by yahelc 16y ago

reso 16y ago

Other headlines today from jezebel.com: Pete Wentz Discusses Divorce, Thanks God For Charlie Sheen Woman injured by Dolphin jumping into her boat ABC Casting for "Stem-Cell Face-lift" Show Al-Qaeda Expands into Women's magazines

biot 16y ago
And it's another broken hashbang site. It took three page reloads to finally see the content.
- pasbesoin 16y ago
  For those who no longer trust Gawker even as far as to run their Javascript: http://m.jezebel.com/5781523/horror-stories-from-women-in-tech http://m.jezebel.com/5781523/horror-stories-from-women-in-te... (This is generalizable across their sites -- at least, for the moment.)
sonoffett 16y ago
I found the article to be interesting and relevant--ad hominem attacks don't contribute to the discussion and I hope HN will eventually get over its self serving bias and discuss self critical issues at the same level as any other conversation.
angusgr 16y ago
Are you trying to make a point apart from refute-by-vague-association? What does a cherry-picked list of headlines have to do with the content of the linked article?
danilocampos 16y ago
Oh, well, in that case, let's pack up and go home, guys. There can't possibly be anything to learn here. The only thing that really troubles me about the otherwise excellent Hacker News community is this defensive/dismissive streak that shows up every time the subject of "women in tech" is raised. It's especially mystifying to me given how obvious the problem is: (gross generalizations follow) - Many nerds have a shocking talent for being insular, insecure dicks - Most nerds aren't women - Nerds dominate tech No chance at all this ends poorly for the outsiders, right?
- peterbraden 16y ago
  I feel like you could make your point in a more constructive way. Let's keep things civil on here.
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    I respectfully disagree and, if I may be frank, resent the parental tone. Except in egregious circumstances, I'd counter that the vote arrows beside each comment are a sufficient mechanism for expressing this view, just as it's frowned upon to post a comment that says nothing more than "I agree." Sometimes irony is the only appropriate way to respond to the absurd. By carrying a remark like this to its logical conclusion, you can expose its absurdity with substantial economy. While I trust my fellow HNers to avoid outright name-calling and ad hominem, I also trust them (occasionally in error) to not have a stick-up-the-ass as we exchange ideas.
    - puredemo 16y ago
      You aren't really exchanging ideas, but rather making repeated, sweeping generalizations.
    - peterbraden 16y ago
      was not meant to be a 'parental' tone. This is a very emotionally charged issue, and making statements such as 'Many nerds have a shocking talent for being insular, insecure dicks' simply adds to the anger in the room, without contributing to the underlying discussion. The vote arrows are for meritous ideas, not to police tone. I only intended to defuse the situation, not to cast aspersions on your point of view.

sp332 16y ago

There are "groups" of people. You don't talk to your family the same way you talk to your friends. You don't talk to older people the same way you talk to younger people. I'm not even talking about the conscious stuff, like maybe trying to watch your language around certain groups. People unconsciously talk louder to older people. It's not because people consciously believe that all older people have hearing problems, it's just a pattern that they picked up by watching other people. Certain things get absorbed unconsciously. There are lots of ways of saying "I'm interested in your project". Sometimes, a person will only mean to say just that, but they will unwittingly couch it in a sexist form that they learned from other people. They don't mean to be sexist, but certain attitudes, vocabulary, phrases, etc can simply be copied from other people without understanding exactly how they affect the listener. This isn't easy to fix. If we treat women like men, many of them will be put off. But apparently a lot of people (possibly including women?) in our "geek" culture don't know how to "be friendly to women", even when they want to be (because they've learned bad habits from other people). We can only fix this if women point out good role models for the rest of us to follow, or give us an itemized list of things that make them feel welcome. Pointing out bad stuff strikes me as ineffective.

erikpukinskis 16y ago
First of all, _recognizing_ the bad stuff IS a good thing that (many) women like. If you're with a man and a woman and the man tells a sexist joke, and you and the woman recognize that and don't laugh, then she feels like she's in the in-crowd and he feels like the odd man out. Congratulations, you just made a woman feel more comfortable. The reason we talk about the bad stuff is so we can practice in our head steering clear of it. Actually, I think that's about it! Be helpful and friendly just like you would to a male developer and Don't Do Sexist Shit, and you'll be in good shape. Tech is fun. Women are innately drawn to nerding out the same way that men are. If they can do that without having sexism shoved in their faces every five minutes, then that's a pretty welcoming space. The positive is the absence of the negative. As for a list... to some extent, it's not fair to ask women to not only deal with the assholes, but spend even more time teaching the earnestly "want-to-learn" guys what to do. Teach yourself. The internet is full of feminist advice. A good place to start is just to subscribe to the Geek Feminism blog (http://geekfeminism.org http://geekfeminism.org) and read it with an open mind. If you want to go all out, dig through the archives. Feministing (http://feministing.com http://feministing.com) is a great all-purpose feminist primer too. And know that the folks who run those blogs generally Know Their Shit. They've been doing it for a while, and their analysis is mostly spot on, so if you find yourself thinking "this is insanity" just spend some time trying to really dig into their perspective before you go running into the fray with guns blazing. And high five for wanting to learn. That's awesome, I respect that.

edw519 16y ago

First this: "The first half is going to be your pitch, the second will be me hitting on you." Then this: "Honestly, the thing I'm most excited about is the prospect of seeing you naked later tonight." Please don't forget that any pitch must work both ways. We entrepreneurs should be evaluating potential investors with at least as much rigor as they evaluate us. They're not giving away money to lucky lottery winners, they're trading it for something else, something often much more valuable than their money: our blood, sweat, and tears in what could be a once in a lifetime opportunity. It's difficult to find a silver lining in this cloud, but let me give it a try: Anyone spoken to by people like these, no matter who they are, should thank these investors for eliminating themselves. Better to find out what they are like now before wasting any more time (or worse) on them. The only thing that really surprised me about this story was: She said she felt nauseous but pressed on with her pitch. Why bother? Better she should focus her energy on building a great business that will attract investors with professionalism and integrity. They're out there, just harder to find. At least they were until the pigs like this opened their mouths.

johngalt 16y ago
Same thing I thought. If a VC started hitting on me during the pitch I'd leave, and frankly I wouldn't deal with a VC that would treat any founder this way. If they will use power to exploit why even consider a partnership with them?
danilocampos 16y ago
Pigs indeed — agree completely. No one should do business with such creeps. At the same time, especially when you're starting out, you've got a lot of insecurity already, male or female, about your pitch, about your idea, your business, everything. It's fucked up to ladle on ever more confusion to the process by making the beginner wonder if a rebuke will foul other opportunities. The relationship should be reciprocal, yes, but let's be real, the investor has done this way more than the entrepreneur. The imbalance of power feels real and it's disgusting to see it abused so crassly.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
16y ago

rubashov 16y ago

> "Who's watching your kids?" She retorted, "Who's watching yours?" Let's be honest. It's a rather valid question, from an investor perspective.

hmahncke 16y ago
It's a valid question only if the investor commonly asks it both to men and women.
- rubashov 16y ago
  Not really. Men and women are different and relate to families differently. Deal with it.
  - BCM43 16y ago
    Not really. Men and women are different and relate to families differently. Deal with it. I'm not really sure what to say to this other than I would prefer not to see such blatant sexism anywhere, but especially not on HN.
  - mithaler 16y ago
    Speak for yourself. I see no need to "deal with" your perceived differences in the way men and women relate to families, if that has not been my experience.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Or if the investor understands Bayes rule (and also knows that women are more likely to care for children than men, forming a prior).
  - hmahncke 16y ago
    That prior might be valuable if it was based on the population under study, which is to say entrepreneurs. As is, based on the population at large, that prior is reasonably likely to be value-destructive.

johngalt 16y ago

No one complains about the lack of female plumbers, sanitation engineers, or electricians. Men are four times more likely to be murdered, and ten times as many are in jail. Why is it that genders are supposed to be equal except when men are considered inherently inferior? Life isn't fair and people with treat you unfairly. No this doesn't entitle you to special treatment. Yes it will limit you if you fixate on it.

Rariel 16y ago
I couldn't help but wonder while reading this comment--have you ever experienced any sort of discrimination or are you a member of any minority group (person of color, gay, non-christian, etc.)? "Life isn't fair and people with treat you unfairly. No this doesn't entitle you to special treatment." Who is asking for special treatment? Women just don't want to be discriminated against because of their gender--how do you get special treatment from that? Additionally your logic is flawed--just because you have never heard anybody complain about the lack of women in blue collar jobs (the only jobs you mentioned) doesn't mean it doesn't happen. And please explain how men being four times more likely to be murdered and ten times as many are in jail ( I'd love you to site where you came up with those statistics and their methodology in obtaining them btw) makes men "inherently inferior?"
- sosuke 16y ago
  A quick Google pulled up the Wikipedia article on Incarceration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration) which actually puts the males at a lower 7 times more likely than women. Here are the stats for 2005 on murder citing men as 4 times more likely to be murdered. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/gender.cfm http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/gender.cfm
  - Rariel 16y ago
    Thanks but I was truly interested in finding out where OP got these stats from, meaning did he also do a quick google search or does he just know these things. I mentioned methodology in my post because that (to me) is the most important part of validating any statistics. My UG education was in a social science so I pay attention to those types of things. Stuff like this "Homicide as defined here includes murder and nonnegligent manslaughter which is the willful killing of one human being by another. The general analyses excluded deaths caused by negligence, suicide, or accident; justifiable homicides; and attempts to murder. " So we're saying vehicular manslaughter and shooting somebody in the head are the same while in reality they are completely different. Would you say that if you accidentally kill hit somebody and they die this is a murder? I wouldn't. But those cases get tacked on and divided and put through algorithms under the auspice of nurder. Additionally this "While many agencies report supplemental data on homicides, much of the data concerning offenders may not be reported because no suspects were identified. The most significant problem in using SHR data to analyze offender characteristics is the sizable and growing number of unsolved homicides contained in the data file. " So they guess based on what they do know, I have a problem with that. "In other words, offender profiles for unsolved crimes are estimated based on the offender profiles in solved cases matched on victim age, sex, and race; circumstances of the homicide; location of the homicide; and gun involvement; as well as year. All offender-based estimates were imputed using this procedure. " Those are only a few excerpts that cast doubt on the true validity of the DOJ stats. We have an obsession in this society with quantifying things, even when they can't really be put in to nice little statistics.

ahoyhere 16y ago

Oh please. Occasionally running into a rude man? THE HORROR! THE HORROR SPECIFIC TO TECH! I found it interesting that the women didn't just walk out of these situations. Why were they willing to submit themselves to such indignities? Surely they weren't forced to continue pitching. But no... they wanted the money. If you want the money more than you want respect, well, you're not going to get respect. As a woman genuinely in tech -- which, coincidentally, means a lot more than "in search of VC" -- I can say that I've been treated ill by just as many women as men over the years. But when a woman is horrible to you, you don't cry sexism, because well, she's got the same equipment as you do. Also, nobody's interested, because "everyone knows" women are catty, shallow, and wield their social abilities like a weapon. Kind of like how "everyone knows" men are uncultured brutes, who look down on noble, long-suffering women, assume they are dumb, and hit on anything that moves. Please. Fact: some people are shitty. By "people" I mean "of any and all genders, equally." If a person is shitty to you in what seems like a gender-specific way, chances are s/he is shitty to people of a different gender but in a different way. Take it personally and you're just telling yourself a story. But in reality, it's not about you. The way a person treats you is very rarely about you. It's about them. So ignore them and move on with your dignity intact, and stop telling yourself lies. By the way, selling cosmetics -- but being in search of VC -- does not a "woman in tech" make. For the love of god, are your cosmetics web-enabled?

danilocampos 16y ago
> By the way, selling cosmetics -- but being in search of VC -- does not a "woman in tech" make. For the love of god, are your cosmetics web-enabled? Actually, it would appear that their distribution is entirely web-based. That, to my mind, would make them as much a tech company as is Woot, with its non-web-enabled wine, and Amazon circa 1996, with its non-web-enabled books. Diapers.com? $550 million exit, that one. http://www.birchbox.com/ http://www.birchbox.com/
dougws 16y ago
I don't think they're claiming that this problem is specific to "tech"; sexism pretty much pervades our society. And yes, sexism is different and worse than just generic dickery because of the way it exacerbates existing societal problems. Their point is that (contrary to the gut reaction of many of the commenters so far) we as an industry can do better, which would help more women to succeed in the IT world.

anoncon2020 16y ago

The article does a poor job of convincing me that any of these problems are unique to the tech industry. Journalism: http://jezebel.com/#!5738019/where-are-the-women-at-highbrow-magazines http://jezebel.com/#!5738019/where-are-the-women-at-highbrow... Film: http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research.html Music: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news/e3i3a5fb1561d2145a3761cc5529f5b780c http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/news... A more appropriate title would be 'Horror Stories from Women dealing with Wealthy Men in Powerful Positions" Can anyone name an 'Industry' in which is this NOT the case? Otherwise, singling out the tech industry is counterproductive and unfair.

Apocryphon 16y ago
It's wrong to single out one industry, yes, but it doesn't mean that the industry itself can't try to improve its own situation even if other ones fail to.
Apocryphon 16y ago
It's wrong to single out one industry, yes, but it doesn't mean that the industry itself can't try to improve its own situation even if other ones fail to.
Rariel 16y ago
Where in the article does she say it's unique to Tech?
erikpukinskis 16y ago
I don't work in any other industry. If I was a doctor, I'd want to learn about sexism in healthcare. But I'm not. I'm in tech. I want to know what's happening in my industry.

ja27 16y ago

I had one male coworker ask a female coworker what bra size she was. (He was shopping for implants for his now ex-wife.) Awesome. She went into an empty office and cried.

puredemo 16y ago
Sounds a bit over-sensitive to me. I certainly wouldn't cry about being asked what size my chest is.

dasil003 16y ago

I find myself torn between the "assholes are assholes, deal with it" and "woman have to deal with a lot of bullshit in tech" viewpoints. I guess the reason for me is that I recognize that the best course of action for the individual woman is not to spend a lot of time complaining, but to recognize that tech is, for better or worse, a man's world, and the way to get ahead is to simply learn how the game works. On the other hand I don't want to give assholes and their apologists a free pass. If it seems like some women are overly sensitive about this issue, it's important to realize it's because they are dealing with this shit all the time. It's similar to racism, and why reverse-racism claims by whites fall flat—because they already have every advantage, and they don't have the weight of that historical oppression on their shoulder. Does that mean that you have to be a little more sensitive to minorities and women? Sure, but with good reason. It's just basic interpersonal relations to understand that people may be sensitive about stereotypes that they deal with repeatedly. That's where I think a lot of guys in tech go wrong—they want to believe in objective equality, so they trot out some examples of shit that guys have to deal with that women don't, which may be true, but it's irrelevant to the ultimate question of how common dynamics actually make people feel.

erikpukinskis 16y ago
Who do you think is oversensitive to it? What do you think would be an appropriate amount of talking about it?