6 ms·

There's definitely some sexism in how we in tech treat women as more junior if they talk like that. But I'm a woman and I'd love that kind of candid feedback f

There's definitely some sexism in how we in tech treat women as more junior if they talk like that. But I'm a woman and I'd love that kind of candid feedback from my manager. If I'm doing something that limits my career I want to know, regardless of what it is or if it's "fair". I absolutely think we should be having discussions about how women are treated and calling out bad behavior from companies, but from a selfish, personal perspective I worry that news reports like this are going to make managers less likely to give me useful feedback.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arcticbull 5y ago
There is definitely sexism in tech. No doubt. I've seen it, and I push back when I do. With that disclaimer out of the way, I would have serious concerns about a male employee with 'valley girl' rising terminals in meetings. According to Wikipedia [1] while there are differences between the way men and women 'valleyspeak' it does in fact apply to both. I would address both the same way, seeking to understand - in open dialogue - whether there was a basis in (lack of) confidence and trying to find ways to support them further in their career development. Maybe suggest public speaking classes, especially if available through work. [edit] further to [2] I found the way the feedback was communicated around the rising intonation friendly, positive and when addressed, the progress was kindly affirmed and remarked on. I saw no negativity in this. I did see someone who was indignant about receiving criticism, however, and took it to a level rarely seen in a professional setting. To call this the 'nuclear option' would be a bit of an understatement. Reading the back and forth documented in [2] is an absolute train wreck. Once I got a few pages in, I started to empathize deeply with Apple ER. That's not an easy job some days. One tweet the author posted said: > "... when #Apple just tried I said 'No thx, Mr Suicide Nets.' If you're going to create a nervous breakdown you get to watch it unfold in real time & now I'm on Twitter again." Referring to Tim Cook as 'Mr Suicide Nets' on Twitter seems like an insta-fire. That's one spicy meatball of a tweet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl [2] https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html
- arcticbull 5y ago
  ... am I misreading [2] or did Ashley file an office Nerf war under an "Assault and Battery" complaint to HR? I'm not saying there aren't some legitimate potential instances of concern documented here, or at least grey areas (director inviting Ashley to drinks alone, 'looking sad' when she brought a friend and talking about his ex-wife) - but they are glossed over, and instead the focus is on sensationalizing some things I would consider trivial. The things I would consider particularly concerning are deemphasized in Ashley's narrative [2]. I suspect some of her 2015 concerns amounted to her manager and team really just not liking her very much. I suspect the behavior Ashley is pointing to wasn't sexism (from her female manager) but rather that she went over her manager's head to the director and shit-talked her. Naturally this was filed under a "Quid-pro-quo" complaint to HR. It appears she had an open conversation with HR for almost six years complaining about many of the folks she'd ever worked with.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Holy moly she wants to get Apple on a RICO Racketeering charge and a two year long false imprisonment?! da fuq?! [2]
  - naravara 5y ago
    If seen this pattern happen where people get into little gossip circles where they ruminate on slights and offenses so much that they become magnified in their minds. Looking at it from outside that circle things seem pretty mild or not like anything to be concerned about, but when you dwell on them constantly and surround yourself with people consistently reinforcing the validity of dwelling on them, it takes on a life of its own. Then when the seed is planted everything the gossip target says it does gets put under a microscope to confirm the suspicion that they hate you or are discriminatory or are retaliating over something or other. I don’t really know what the fix is. I think the basecamp furore recently might be the way. Just discourage this sort of clique formation around airing grievances. But then that has the effect of not giving space for valid grievances.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    > It appears she had an open conversation with HR for almost six years complaining about many of the folks she'd ever worked with. Some people think they are hated because they are in $OpressedGroup, when in reality they are just insufferable.
ratww 5y ago
Yeah, regardless of it being fair or not, or the bias being wrong or not, everyone still deserves to know if their career is being limited by those things. Even if the person who got the feedback doesn't want to change, at least take the opportunity to educate the person that gave you the feedback, rather than reporting them. Reporting it to HR doesn't address anything, and only sets things back.
heresie-dabord 5y ago
> There's definitely some sexism in how we in tech treat women as more junior if they talk like that. This speaking habit is present among men too. It's also a bad speaking habit when men do it. This is someone crying "oppression" when given simple criticism. There is oppression for sure, but it is not of people who can't take criticism.
- burnished 5y ago
  If there was, say, a correlation between women speaking that way and people interpreting it as less professional/authoritative I think that would be an interesting conversation and one worth having, and it would be about sexism/oppression. Thats kind of a zoomed out view though, zoomed in on this situation (living in the world as we find it) I largely agree with the chain of replies.
  - heresie-dabord 5y ago
    > it would be about sexism/oppression. But the phenomenon, "unnecessary querying tone", is not a dialect and it is not exclusive to female English speakers. It is not as widespread as the habit of injecting the phrase "Oh my god" or the word "like" into sentences in English. But consider these habits. They too are something that many English-speakers do, regardless of gender or orientation or social status. If we were to tell a speaker that injecting "Oh my god" and "like" into sentences is distracting and reduces the effectiveness of a presentation, we would be right. Presenting is an important skill. The healthy response to constructive criticism is to reflect and improve.
kodah 5y ago
> There's definitely some sexism in how we in tech treat women as more junior if they talk like that. I used to receive the same feedback, though I don't have what commenters or the person in the complaint describes. My voice deviates in tone a lot, sometimes for no reason at all. The deviations sound like inflections. Additionally, I also have body language that is quite off from what people might expect. On top of that, I have a perma-scowl. I attribute it to time in the military. I've had someone in authority (two levels above me) give me this feedback fairly bluntly. I don't know if there's ever a good way to give this feedback but I would not describe that meeting as pleasant much less positive. I subsequently was not awarded a raise I was promised despite delivering on numerous advancements technologically (and monetarily), the program I was involved with was dissolved, and there was talk of reassigning me. I quit within the month and did not regret it. A couple notes I have, some dissonance included: - Critiquing tone and body language is straight up junk. Society has an expectation of what various things look or sound like, however, in a neuro-divergent field you should expect deviation from these things. Maybe even celebrate it. - I did follow that directors advice. I wear thick frame glasses to cover up my scowl instead of wearing contacts. I don't cross my arms. I don't look up at the ceiling when I'm drawing on information. When I'm excited or engaged I don't let the pitch of my voice change. Does it work? Sure, but work also gets a very shallow clone of me in front of people I won't have a beer with. Edit: if it's not clear, I'm a man.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  > Critiquing tone and body language is straight up junk. Society has an expectation of what various things look or sound like, however, in a neuro-divergent field you should expect deviation from these things. Maybe even celebrate it. This is all fine and good, until you have to communicate with people who are not engineers. Not being able to communicate effectively with non-tech people, whatever the reason is, is certainly going to be a career-limiting factor. You can celebrate it all you want, but you also need to acknowledge the reality of the situation.
  - kodah 5y ago
    Personally speaking, I think people nannying each other on communication is a real drag. Whether it's language, tone, or body language policing it's highly subjective, rarely constructive, and fairly useless outside of filling some imaginary mold society would like us to fill at a given moment in time.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

arcticbull 5y ago

There is definitely sexism in tech. No doubt. I've seen it, and I push back when I do. With that disclaimer out of the way, I would have serious concerns about a male employee with 'valley girl' rising terminals in meetings. According to Wikipedia [1] while there are differences between the way men and women 'valleyspeak' it does in fact apply to both. I would address both the same way, seeking to understand - in open dialogue - whether there was a basis in (lack of) confidence and trying to find ways to support them further in their career development. Maybe suggest public speaking classes, especially if available through work. [edit] further to [2] I found the way the feedback was communicated around the rising intonation friendly, positive and when addressed, the progress was kindly affirmed and remarked on. I saw no negativity in this. I did see someone who was indignant about receiving criticism, however, and took it to a level rarely seen in a professional setting. To call this the 'nuclear option' would be a bit of an understatement. Reading the back and forth documented in [2] is an absolute train wreck. Once I got a few pages in, I started to empathize deeply with Apple ER. That's not an easy job some days. One tweet the author posted said: > "... when #Apple just tried I said 'No thx, Mr Suicide Nets.' If you're going to create a nervous breakdown you get to watch it unfold in real time & now I'm on Twitter again." Referring to Tim Cook as 'Mr Suicide Nets' on Twitter seems like an insta-fire. That's one spicy meatball of a tweet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl [2] https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html

arcticbull 5y ago
... am I misreading [2] or did Ashley file an office Nerf war under an "Assault and Battery" complaint to HR? I'm not saying there aren't some legitimate potential instances of concern documented here, or at least grey areas (director inviting Ashley to drinks alone, 'looking sad' when she brought a friend and talking about his ex-wife) - but they are glossed over, and instead the focus is on sensationalizing some things I would consider trivial. The things I would consider particularly concerning are deemphasized in Ashley's narrative [2]. I suspect some of her 2015 concerns amounted to her manager and team really just not liking her very much. I suspect the behavior Ashley is pointing to wasn't sexism (from her female manager) but rather that she went over her manager's head to the director and shit-talked her. Naturally this was filed under a "Quid-pro-quo" complaint to HR. It appears she had an open conversation with HR for almost six years complaining about many of the folks she'd ever worked with.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Holy moly she wants to get Apple on a RICO Racketeering charge and a two year long false imprisonment?! da fuq?! [2]
- naravara 5y ago
  If seen this pattern happen where people get into little gossip circles where they ruminate on slights and offenses so much that they become magnified in their minds. Looking at it from outside that circle things seem pretty mild or not like anything to be concerned about, but when you dwell on them constantly and surround yourself with people consistently reinforcing the validity of dwelling on them, it takes on a life of its own. Then when the seed is planted everything the gossip target says it does gets put under a microscope to confirm the suspicion that they hate you or are discriminatory or are retaliating over something or other. I don’t really know what the fix is. I think the basecamp furore recently might be the way. Just discourage this sort of clique formation around airing grievances. But then that has the effect of not giving space for valid grievances.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  > It appears she had an open conversation with HR for almost six years complaining about many of the folks she'd ever worked with. Some people think they are hated because they are in $OpressedGroup, when in reality they are just insufferable.

ratww 5y ago

Yeah, regardless of it being fair or not, or the bias being wrong or not, everyone still deserves to know if their career is being limited by those things. Even if the person who got the feedback doesn't want to change, at least take the opportunity to educate the person that gave you the feedback, rather than reporting them. Reporting it to HR doesn't address anything, and only sets things back.

heresie-dabord 5y ago

> There's definitely some sexism in how we in tech treat women as more junior if they talk like that. This speaking habit is present among men too. It's also a bad speaking habit when men do it. This is someone crying "oppression" when given simple criticism. There is oppression for sure, but it is not of people who can't take criticism.

burnished 5y ago
If there was, say, a correlation between women speaking that way and people interpreting it as less professional/authoritative I think that would be an interesting conversation and one worth having, and it would be about sexism/oppression. Thats kind of a zoomed out view though, zoomed in on this situation (living in the world as we find it) I largely agree with the chain of replies.
- heresie-dabord 5y ago
  > it would be about sexism/oppression. But the phenomenon, "unnecessary querying tone", is not a dialect and it is not exclusive to female English speakers. It is not as widespread as the habit of injecting the phrase "Oh my god" or the word "like" into sentences in English. But consider these habits. They too are something that many English-speakers do, regardless of gender or orientation or social status. If we were to tell a speaker that injecting "Oh my god" and "like" into sentences is distracting and reduces the effectiveness of a presentation, we would be right. Presenting is an important skill. The healthy response to constructive criticism is to reflect and improve.

kodah 5y ago

> There's definitely some sexism in how we in tech treat women as more junior if they talk like that. I used to receive the same feedback, though I don't have what commenters or the person in the complaint describes. My voice deviates in tone a lot, sometimes for no reason at all. The deviations sound like inflections. Additionally, I also have body language that is quite off from what people might expect. On top of that, I have a perma-scowl. I attribute it to time in the military. I've had someone in authority (two levels above me) give me this feedback fairly bluntly. I don't know if there's ever a good way to give this feedback but I would not describe that meeting as pleasant much less positive. I subsequently was not awarded a raise I was promised despite delivering on numerous advancements technologically (and monetarily), the program I was involved with was dissolved, and there was talk of reassigning me. I quit within the month and did not regret it. A couple notes I have, some dissonance included: - Critiquing tone and body language is straight up junk. Society has an expectation of what various things look or sound like, however, in a neuro-divergent field you should expect deviation from these things. Maybe even celebrate it. - I did follow that directors advice. I wear thick frame glasses to cover up my scowl instead of wearing contacts. I don't cross my arms. I don't look up at the ceiling when I'm drawing on information. When I'm excited or engaged I don't let the pitch of my voice change. Does it work? Sure, but work also gets a very shallow clone of me in front of people I won't have a beer with. Edit: if it's not clear, I'm a man.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
> Critiquing tone and body language is straight up junk. Society has an expectation of what various things look or sound like, however, in a neuro-divergent field you should expect deviation from these things. Maybe even celebrate it. This is all fine and good, until you have to communicate with people who are not engineers. Not being able to communicate effectively with non-tech people, whatever the reason is, is certainly going to be a career-limiting factor. You can celebrate it all you want, but you also need to acknowledge the reality of the situation.
- kodah 5y ago
  Personally speaking, I think people nannying each other on communication is a real drag. Whether it's language, tone, or body language policing it's highly subjective, rarely constructive, and fairly useless outside of filling some imaginary mold society would like us to fill at a given moment in time.