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Most guys I know in the tech industry see it rather differently. The way they (we) see it is simple: there is rampant illegal discrimination in tech, and it's a

Most guys I know in the tech industry see it rather differently. The way they (we) see it is simple: there is rampant illegal discrimination in tech, and it's all against straight white guys like us. That's Europe. In the USA you'd probably include Asians too. Nonetheless I don't know a single guy who argues for affirmative action in favour of straight white guys: everyone argues for simply caring only about who does good work and damn the rest. That's not a position of indifference of course, it's a strongly held belief. Look at this very thread. Just a few posts above this one is a guy who says he works at a firm where 40% of all recruitment efforts have to be for female engineers. Those sorts of policies are everywhere. That's actual, concrete discrimination. Firms put bonus pots aside for women, they set up competitions and career opportunities from which men are banned. Men are being barred from board positions and top executive roles all over the place. At the last place I worked, after firing the head of sales the CEO announced at a company all hands that the next head of sales had to be a woman, and that's why the firm had been without one for so many months. It's of course illegal but the agencies that enforce these laws are run by people steeped in identity politics, so they aren't enforced. When one was finally located she turned out to be wildly incompetent. In the first management offsite she got up and said she had no idea why anyone bought our product. She didn't mean this in a "the product is bad, I'll shock them out of denial" way. She meant it in the sense that she really didn't understand what the product actually did (it was a rather obscure product for software developers). In a sales meeting with a customer she started trying to convince the customer not to use our product, apparently without realising she was doing so. The prior male head of sales had been fired simply for displaying low energy, this woman is of course un-fireable despite demonstrating repeatedly she has zero understanding of the companies products! That same company invited a third party training company to use the offices at the weekend to run programming classes. These classes were open to everyone except straight, white men. I kid you not, that was the actual rule. If you were a white male you were expected to bring social media evidence that you were gay. Like, photos of you making out with other men or something like that. The justification for this was to keep the lessons "safe". Myself and my (gay) manager went to HR to complain, the head of HR spent 30 minutes trying to defend it. There was no apology and nothing was done about it. This stuff is routine, it is daily life. It passes by without notice. If even one of these things happened in the reverse direction at a large company it'd make international news. It's this kind of poisonous ideology that Basecamp are trying to expunge from their firm with this announcement, and what can the average man do but applaud? Who doesn't want to just come to work and have peaceful relations with their co-workers, regardless of race or gender? Only leftist activists, and which firms really need them? They're far more trouble than they're worth.

koonsolo 5y ago
> where 40% of all recruitment efforts have to be for female This is a huge insult to any woman that is good at their job. In my team we hire the best. That means that any woman in my team is on average as good as any man in my team. If we had quotas, that would mean that the men in my team are on average better than the women, since they pick the best of both segments, but one segment has way less candidates. How do those women feel to be places into the bucket of "filling seats"? How do project managers select who they want on their team? And then they cry that people are getting discriminated. Self fulfilling prophecy.
PleaseIgnacio 5y ago
The examples you’ve mentioned are quite egregious and I understand how you would hold a negative opinion about such efforts. However, I’d argue they come from leaders in a lot of organizations not understanding why inclusivity is actually important, let alone how to implement it. The scope of creating a workforce with more representation is not small and probably requires long term planning, constant feedback, and buy-in from stakeholders on all fronts. Companies who only want to appear inclusive are bound to take unilateral, drastic measures in order to meet an observable target without considering the higher order effects. Basecamp’s approach is just avoiding the problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. Employees who felt unwelcome at work won’t suddenly be happy when they can’t even talk about it. Power to make changes will be concentrated at the top with people apparently determined to keep the status quo.

koonsolo 5y ago

> where 40% of all recruitment efforts have to be for female This is a huge insult to any woman that is good at their job. In my team we hire the best. That means that any woman in my team is on average as good as any man in my team. If we had quotas, that would mean that the men in my team are on average better than the women, since they pick the best of both segments, but one segment has way less candidates. How do those women feel to be places into the bucket of "filling seats"? How do project managers select who they want on their team? And then they cry that people are getting discriminated. Self fulfilling prophecy.

PleaseIgnacio 5y ago

The examples you’ve mentioned are quite egregious and I understand how you would hold a negative opinion about such efforts. However, I’d argue they come from leaders in a lot of organizations not understanding why inclusivity is actually important, let alone how to implement it. The scope of creating a workforce with more representation is not small and probably requires long term planning, constant feedback, and buy-in from stakeholders on all fronts. Companies who only want to appear inclusive are bound to take unilateral, drastic measures in order to meet an observable target without considering the higher order effects. Basecamp’s approach is just avoiding the problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. Employees who felt unwelcome at work won’t suddenly be happy when they can’t even talk about it. Power to make changes will be concentrated at the top with people apparently determined to keep the status quo.