6 ms·

GitHub Director of engineering openly encourages racism

25 points by sanguy 6y ago

sanguy 6y ago
The whole BLM movement is important but racial and gender discrimination flows both ways, and what Erica puts forward is exactly that - Discrimination based on gender and color. We really need to move past having gender/color/religion/sexual preference matter in how people are accepted and treated in society, and the workplace. These things should not, and truly do not matter. What she is suggesting does not move us forward. It just encourages an escalation of the tension already present which doesn't end well for anyone. I hope 2021 we figure out how to stop the hate and move forward to focus on problems that should unite us and not divide us.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  > We really need to move past having gender/color/religion/sexual preference matter in how people are accepted and treated in society, and the workplace. These things should not, and truly do not matter. Absolutely. Her 'proposal' is very plainly unacceptable and indeed illegal in Europe (not sure in the US)
  - pelasaco 6y ago
    I'm not sure that's illegal in Europe unless it's driven by native Europeans.
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      Not sure how to interpret your comment, but it is indeed very clearly illegal in Europe where anti-discrimination laws (at EU and national levels) explicitly state that it is illegal to treat people in a worse way on the ground of gender or race, which is exactly what she is calling for. If she really wanted to promote diversity she could simply have called for people to encourage diverse teams.
      - pelasaco 6y ago
        I'm not sure how her 'proposal' will workout for solo white male entrepreneurs (i.e indie game developers).
        Arnt 6y ago
        Big companies like Microsoft or Github don't usually put noticeable effort into helping those, so what difference does that make? I note, though, that among the companies I've known well is one where the first 100+ male employees got an options package and no female employees did in the same period. That company would pass Erica's test. Rightly? I think not, and I don't know many companies, so I'm a bit suspicious about the accuracy of her approximation.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > hope 2021 we figure out how to stop the hate Influential people have spent the last ten years actively working on ways to remove the small progress towards a more colourblind world that was made in the 90s and 00s. Engendering hate and race-based conflict through rhetoric has been their modus operandi, and the rise in violence, protesting, and division is the direct result. I don't think anyone important is going to push for a unification effort that offers White people a way to be part of the fold without having to hate ourselves, which is not something any self-respecting person should accept. White people who push anti-White rhetoric are detestable and nobody really likes them, on either side; they are merely apparatchiks and useful idiots that sow division and damage their own legacy.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    They have nurtured a victim mentality and had nobody honest in their lives to call them out on the stuff they try to peddle. A serious step backwards.
- sanguy 6y ago
  EDIT -- Appears she is no longer with Github although her personal page https://www.ericabaker.com https://www.ericabaker.com still indicates she is the director of engineering.
celticninja 6y ago
This is the dumbest tweet I have seen this year, it's only Jan 2nd but Erica is setting the bar pretty high from the outset.
pelasaco 6y ago
So she works for Microsoft. Kind of inline with https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54449164 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54449164
core-questions 6y ago
This is amazing. As usual, White men continue to be the one group that you can name, insult, actively organize against, and so forth. Rhetorical devices like "racism" that can be used to describe all other racial-based discrimination somehow magically don't apply when White people are the target; in fact, White people only exist as a group when we are targeted. In all other contexts, we are now just a 'social construct', as our emergent group identity is publicly deconstructed to prevent us from having any identity at all. White people have contributed more to the academic commons and to free/open source software than anyone else in the world; we have had an instrumental position in bringing the light of computing to the masses. Doesn't matter, though! Historical injustices not caused by any of the individuals writing software today will be used to judge us, even if we're not American, even if our ancestors never owned slaves, even if our ancestors were slaves themselves; none of that matters when pure tactical context denial is used to establish us as the group to defeat. All of your problems will go away, Erica Joy, when White people can no longer start businesses or develop things. The world will be wonderful when, like crabs in a bucket, everyone has been pulled down to the lowest level possible. Can't wait. Of course, there's no reason to look at the facts: that Ms. Joy herself is an incredibly privileged individual (director of engineering for one of the most prestigious operations going). Her career progression was no doubt aided by the fact that every organization with an HR department is committed to finding as many BIPOC and women as possible to diversify, while dealing with the fact that it's a very small pool of candidates. Get this: I've never even had the opportunity to interview someone like this, despite doing a lot of hiring; turns out that it's just not that common to find them, especially outside of America. Were I a small business, unable to pay the big salaries that big orgs do, I probably wouldn't have a chance at this small and coveted pool of talent; I'd probably be stuck hiring White (and Asian / Middle Eastern) men, because that's who applies for tech jobs around here. It is not my fault nor my obligation to do anything to increase the number of people who are qualified for a job, especially considering that the vast majority of good hires I have made have been people who are in no small part self-taught using the vast amounts of free information out there.... Anyway: 2021 white people challenge: if a product, service, or company is built by people who publicly espouse anti-white positions, you don’t use your platform (social, newsletters, blogs, etc) to champion it, promote it, or help it gain traction (yes, even if it’s a portfolio company, VCs).
shiado 6y ago
How can somebody post that and keep their job? Is that how far gone American culture is?
- pelasaco 6y ago
  What options have Microsoft now? Fire her and be accused of racism?
haunter 6y ago
wtf I never knew there is a Chrome extension like this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diversity-plug-extension/lbmbbclebgdacemmlgfocmdmiecdjkce?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diversity-plug-ext...
jstarfish 6y ago
> "Boycott products made by all-white teams/orgs." (paraphrased) What does this solve, exactly? But it's cute that she thinks she has a leg to stand on, what with her employer being so heavily "diverse." Github looks really progressive, for sure-- they have a remote, multinational workforce. It's a shame that workforce isn't paid evenly. One's value should not diminish based on what geopolitical borders they happen to reside within. "We're providing opportunities to ___." No, you're outsourcing to southeast Asians and homeless Europeans and paying them less than others to do the same job. I hear the same nonsense pitched to interns to get them to work for free. It's exploitation. If an employee provides consistent remote labor to a company, their pay should not be adjusted to their coordinates or "inexperience." It's almost like they think some people are worth less than others and should be exploited based on arbitrary features. If you're going to proselytize about making the world a more equitable place through reverse racism, try not to stand on a soapbox literally built from exploitation of a foreign workforce.
sfuller808 6y ago
"Let the fallacies of the white male ego burn in the fire and let it be reborn in the truth of its eternal humanity."
stevenalowe 6y ago
Just wondering who gets to define “white”? SMH

25 points by sanguy 6y ago

The whole BLM movement is important but racial and gender discrimination flows both ways, and what Erica puts forward is exactly that - Discrimination based on gender and color. We really need to move past having gender/color/religion/sexual preference matter in how people are accepted and treated in society, and the workplace. These things should not, and truly do not matter. What she is suggesting does not move us forward. It just encourages an escalation of the tension already present which doesn't end well for anyone. I hope 2021 we figure out how to stop the hate and move forward to focus on problems that should unite us and not divide us.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
> We really need to move past having gender/color/religion/sexual preference matter in how people are accepted and treated in society, and the workplace. These things should not, and truly do not matter. Absolutely. Her 'proposal' is very plainly unacceptable and indeed illegal in Europe (not sure in the US)
- pelasaco 6y ago
  I'm not sure that's illegal in Europe unless it's driven by native Europeans.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Not sure how to interpret your comment, but it is indeed very clearly illegal in Europe where anti-discrimination laws (at EU and national levels) explicitly state that it is illegal to treat people in a worse way on the ground of gender or race, which is exactly what she is calling for. If she really wanted to promote diversity she could simply have called for people to encourage diverse teams.
    - pelasaco 6y ago
      I'm not sure how her 'proposal' will workout for solo white male entrepreneurs (i.e indie game developers).
      - Arnt 6y ago
        Big companies like Microsoft or Github don't usually put noticeable effort into helping those, so what difference does that make? I note, though, that among the companies I've known well is one where the first 100+ male employees got an options package and no female employees did in the same period. That company would pass Erica's test. Rightly? I think not, and I don't know many companies, so I'm a bit suspicious about the accuracy of her approximation.
core-questions 6y ago
> hope 2021 we figure out how to stop the hate Influential people have spent the last ten years actively working on ways to remove the small progress towards a more colourblind world that was made in the 90s and 00s. Engendering hate and race-based conflict through rhetoric has been their modus operandi, and the rise in violence, protesting, and division is the direct result. I don't think anyone important is going to push for a unification effort that offers White people a way to be part of the fold without having to hate ourselves, which is not something any self-respecting person should accept. White people who push anti-White rhetoric are detestable and nobody really likes them, on either side; they are merely apparatchiks and useful idiots that sow division and damage their own legacy.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  They have nurtured a victim mentality and had nobody honest in their lives to call them out on the stuff they try to peddle. A serious step backwards.
sanguy 6y ago
EDIT -- Appears she is no longer with Github although her personal page https://www.ericabaker.com https://www.ericabaker.com still indicates she is the director of engineering.

celticninja 6y ago

This is the dumbest tweet I have seen this year, it's only Jan 2nd but Erica is setting the bar pretty high from the outset.

pelasaco 6y ago

So she works for Microsoft. Kind of inline with https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54449164 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54449164

core-questions 6y ago

This is amazing. As usual, White men continue to be the one group that you can name, insult, actively organize against, and so forth. Rhetorical devices like "racism" that can be used to describe all other racial-based discrimination somehow magically don't apply when White people are the target; in fact, White people only exist as a group when we are targeted. In all other contexts, we are now just a 'social construct', as our emergent group identity is publicly deconstructed to prevent us from having any identity at all. White people have contributed more to the academic commons and to free/open source software than anyone else in the world; we have had an instrumental position in bringing the light of computing to the masses. Doesn't matter, though! Historical injustices not caused by any of the individuals writing software today will be used to judge us, even if we're not American, even if our ancestors never owned slaves, even if our ancestors were slaves themselves; none of that matters when pure tactical context denial is used to establish us as the group to defeat. All of your problems will go away, Erica Joy, when White people can no longer start businesses or develop things. The world will be wonderful when, like crabs in a bucket, everyone has been pulled down to the lowest level possible. Can't wait. Of course, there's no reason to look at the facts: that Ms. Joy herself is an incredibly privileged individual (director of engineering for one of the most prestigious operations going). Her career progression was no doubt aided by the fact that every organization with an HR department is committed to finding as many BIPOC and women as possible to diversify, while dealing with the fact that it's a very small pool of candidates. Get this: I've never even had the opportunity to interview someone like this, despite doing a lot of hiring; turns out that it's just not that common to find them, especially outside of America. Were I a small business, unable to pay the big salaries that big orgs do, I probably wouldn't have a chance at this small and coveted pool of talent; I'd probably be stuck hiring White (and Asian / Middle Eastern) men, because that's who applies for tech jobs around here. It is not my fault nor my obligation to do anything to increase the number of people who are qualified for a job, especially considering that the vast majority of good hires I have made have been people who are in no small part self-taught using the vast amounts of free information out there.... Anyway: 2021 white people challenge: if a product, service, or company is built by people who publicly espouse anti-white positions, you don’t use your platform (social, newsletters, blogs, etc) to champion it, promote it, or help it gain traction (yes, even if it’s a portfolio company, VCs).

shiado 6y ago

How can somebody post that and keep their job? Is that how far gone American culture is?

pelasaco 6y ago
What options have Microsoft now? Fire her and be accused of racism?

haunter 6y ago

wtf I never knew there is a Chrome extension like this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diversity-plug-extension/lbmbbclebgdacemmlgfocmdmiecdjkce?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diversity-plug-ext...

jstarfish 6y ago

> "Boycott products made by all-white teams/orgs." (paraphrased) What does this solve, exactly? But it's cute that she thinks she has a leg to stand on, what with her employer being so heavily "diverse." Github looks really progressive, for sure-- they have a remote, multinational workforce. It's a shame that workforce isn't paid evenly. One's value should not diminish based on what geopolitical borders they happen to reside within. "We're providing opportunities to ___." No, you're outsourcing to southeast Asians and homeless Europeans and paying them less than others to do the same job. I hear the same nonsense pitched to interns to get them to work for free. It's exploitation. If an employee provides consistent remote labor to a company, their pay should not be adjusted to their coordinates or "inexperience." It's almost like they think some people are worth less than others and should be exploited based on arbitrary features. If you're going to proselytize about making the world a more equitable place through reverse racism, try not to stand on a soapbox literally built from exploitation of a foreign workforce.

sfuller808 6y ago

"Let the fallacies of the white male ego burn in the fire and let it be reborn in the truth of its eternal humanity."

stevenalowe 6y ago

Just wondering who gets to define “white”? SMH