8 ms·
Open letter to the Mac/iOS dev community regarding conduct
- hackermom 15y agoNo need to freak out. Let people be people, and learn to just shrug your shoulders once in a while.
- kstenerud 15y agoActually, that's just plain unprofessional behavior, and reflects poorly not only on the speakers, but on the organizers as well. Though I hear the organizers were equally concerned over what transpired, so I expect it was naivety on the part of the organizers in their lack of firm communication that professional conduct was a requirement in order to be a speaker at the event.
- rimantas 15y agoWhy should anything professional be sterile, humourless, polit-correct to the point of being lifeless? Why is any mention of sexuality "inappropriate"? It is so sad that we degnerate to primitive knee-jerk reaction—spekear mentions anything sexuality related—I must by offended. WHY? We are _wired_ to pay attention to this stuff, this is a reason why we are there and I really don't get this trend to pretend we are all cold, sexless robots.
- sp332 15y agoI'm not sexless. On the contrary, I'm physically uncomfortable in a room full of people talking about sex. People like me are not a tiny minority, and so it is considered counter-productive to inject unnecessary sexually-charged content into a professional conference. We are _wired_ to pay attention to this stuff Yes, it's a huge distraction and again, counter-productive if you're trying to pay attention to anything else. I'm not saying that you have to be offended. I'm telling you that I am uncomfortable here, please stop.
- gojomo 15y agoI respect your discomfort. But if there is also a roomful of people who want to talk about sex, who maybe even enjoy the discomfort of sprinkling often-taboo subjects into their discussion, can we as a community accommodate both them, and people who are discomforted? Can we just go to separate rooms?
- sp332 15y agoSure, but it seems out of place at a tech conference, and I'm not sure it was clear that this was for a subset of the community. In fact I think it was pitched as a general survey of the API, so people seem to have confused it for something the whole community is into, or stands for or something.
- kstenerud 15y agoBecause it's offensive to women, as many have stated time and time again, and offending 50% of the population in a manner completely unrelated to the subject of conversation neither makes you clever nor witty nor funny. When you're in polite mixed company, you don't make tits & ass jokes. Nor do you go around tackling people, or belching the star spangled banner, or peeing in the water fountain. The same applies to speakers at a conference. There are expectations of minimally acceptable behavior in any social context. Racy humor is racy because it rides the fine line between the titillating and the vulgar. But that line is different depending on the social context, which makes it even more important to either get it right or not bother trying, because getting it wrong offends people and makes you look like an ass.
- sp332 15y agoIf it's just some guy making jokes with his friends, no big deal. But at a conference, that's not cool.
- dreamdu5t 15y agoOne speaker at a developer conference does not represent the community. If anything it reflects the organizer's choice of speakers.
- recoiledsnake 15y agoThis trend needs to stop now. I guess this does not happen much in company-based events where such behavior would be grounds for firing or a warning from HR(or a ban from other company events for outsiders.) The open hacker community needs to step up a little and not let things be too casual to a fault. Diversity is very beneficial to the industry and if a speaker has to resort to crass humor to attract or entertain attendees, that doesn't reflect too well on their skills.
- drcube 15y agoI supposed "diversity" doesn't include diverse standards of humor? "Let's not offend anybody" is a losing game. Somebody WILL be offended, so my advice is to ignore the offenderati and communicate your own way. People will listen or not, but that's on them.
- jarrett 15y agoThe OP isn't saying "let's not offend anybody." She's asking conference speakers and organizers to maintain a minimal level of professionalism and respect as is standard in pretty much any other industry. Dirty/sexist jokes in professional conferences do not count as "diverse standards of humor." They just make our industry look immature and unwelcoming.
- dextorious 15y ago"""The OP isn't saying "let's not offend anybody." She's asking conference speakers and organizers to maintain a minimal level of professionalism and respect as is standard in pretty much any other industry.""" So basically make it as boring as an insurance convention...
- cosgroveb 15y agoSo not being sexist makes an industry boring? Maybe we need to throw in some racism and make things even more edgy!
- paxswill 15y agoThis isn't just a Mac/iOS community problem, as evidenced by a post like this popping up every week or two. It's a programming/hacker community problem.
- rb2k_ 15y agoI'm not 100% sure, but I think that this kind of stuff also happens in most other communities? At least I've met a few people in the banking community that had their fair amount of crude jokes.
- cooldeal 15y ago> At least I've met a few people in the banking community that had their fair amount of crude jokes. Sure, but how many banking conferences do you see jokes as crass as the ones that were mentioned here? No one is getting hot and bothered here how people talk privately or to their buddies.
- ender7 15y agoNo offense to the banking...actually, you know what, fuck those guys. I'm sure there are a lot of nice people working there (I have two friends who do so), but the average level of juvenile bro-tude and that passes for normal behavior among young ibankers is embarrassing. We are better than that.
- eropple 15y agoApparently we're not. But we should be.
- JonnieCache 15y agoIf we're holding investment bankers up as our moral benchmark, then we're screwed. Not that ibankers are necessarily the worst of the worst, they obviously aren't, but c'mon people, aim high?
- jonhendry 15y agoI'm pretty sure banking, as a whole (not just hot-shot traders), has a higher proportion of women than programming does. When I was at First Chicago working on a fed funds trading system, there were plenty of women around, in tech-related positions, including my boss. The proportion of women is even higher in retail consumer-facing banking. Some traders are certainly gross, especially on Wall St, but that isn't true across the industry.
- ryandvm 15y agoThe world would be a better place if people spent less time figuring out ways to be offended.
- recoiledsnake 15y agoMaybe, but it would be an even better place if developer conferences are kept free of dorm-room-level jokes.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- weeksie 15y agoLet me guess, you're white and male? Me too, and for a long time I thought to myself "Gee, I can't believe people get offended at stuff like that." Then after a bit, I really put myself into other people's shoes. How would you feel if your credentials were constantly being second-guessed just because of how you looked, talked, or your gender? The thing is, as white (or white-looking arab or jewish) dudes, we _never_ have to run into that. The closest I ever came was immigrating to a different country and constantly getting singled out over my accent — so much so that I changed it.
- sneak 15y agoI'm white and male and live somewhere I can't speak the native language very well. I'm singled out all the time. I agree with the parent post - people should stop trying so hard to be offended about stuff. Being singled out or second-guessed doesn't harm one.
- ljf 15y agobut the singled out that you will get as being white and male aboard is very different to that that most others, who are female and black for example, experiance. the fact you see both types of 'otherness' as being the same speaks more of the hegemony of your viewpoint.
- fbuilesv 15y agoAm I experiencing some bug here or is the author of this really expecting us to read something like this: http://cl.ly/0Q1b0i2t191F0R2L0B0t http://cl.ly/0Q1b0i2t191F0R2L0B0t ?
- recoiledsnake 15y agoThe contrast looks a bit better on my browser(Opera). Maybe the blog software wants to deemphasize comments(like HN does for selfpost text and downmodded comments)?
- wizzard 15y agoYes, this font is a terrible choice for white-on-black. And as for the dark-dark-dark-suede-on-black portions, forget about it.
- Aramgutang 15y agoThis is what I see (Firefox on left, Chrome on right): http://i.imgur.com/RBs0E.png http://i.imgur.com/RBs0E.png Not sure if she's changed the style since you visited, but it's quite readable. I was tempted to put it down to me using a dark theme in KDE, but Chrome, unlike Firefox, doesn't inherit the OS default colours for web pages.
- tux1968 15y agoOpen letter to open-letter writers. If you're not the kind of person who has empathy for people with different tastes in humour, there's no need to write anything further.
- phillmv 15y agoOpen letter to dipshits: Stop being a dipshit, you dipshit. Love,
- recoiledsnake 15y agoThis was a Mac/iOS developer conference, not a adult standup comedy show in Vegas.It's a conference meant to showcase different development methodologies and paradigms, not awkward base humor.
- tux1968 15y agoIndeed, but there is a place for fun even at serious conferences. Some of my favourite talks at conferences have been filled with humour. Usually they're informative at the same time, which the talk in question apparently lacked, but such is life. The actual point I was making was slightly different, but i'll leave it to the reader to figure out what it was.
- alex_c 15y ago>maybe the Mac community doesn’t want people like me to be comfortable? Perhaps they would rather keep this a boy’s club forever, and it’s simply irritating when people like me disrupt that. I find this kind of generalization or assumption pretty much as distasteful as the author found the presentation.
- nupark2 15y agoI've been in the Mac (and now iOS) and UNIX development communities for decades, and I've never come across this sort of "rockstar" immaturity. I have, however, come across this in other fields. I assume this is likely due to how small the Mac community has been, as well as -- and this may be a stretch -- the kind of professionalism that Apple has themselves demonstrated. The fact that this sort of conduct may be becoming more prevalent in the iOS/Mac space is disappointing, but not entirely surprising.
- king_jester 15y agoThe full line from that quote you pulled is: > However, what this experience and other similar encounters I have had in the last three years as a Mac developer have started to suggest is, maybe the Mac community doesn’t want people like me to be comfortable. The author of the post isn't implying that this singular incident leads to the conclusion that the Mac community is a boy's club. Rather, a series of experiences had while working in the Mac community leads the author to that feeling. It's been my experience working in computer and programming communities in general that there is a huge blind spot for privilege among members of those communities, esp. given how many professional programmers are white, cisgendered men. The author is stating that her experience has show there to be a problem in the way professionalism and gender is approached by the Mac community, and its up to those of us that do have a lot of privilege to listen, take a step back, and think about that person's experience and examine our role in that community.
- scott_s 15y agoI had to look this up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender
- protomyth 15y agoIs there any specific information on what conference this was and who were the speakers mentioned? I find it hard to gauge what I should think based on no information.
- jarjoura 15y agoI am curious what conference and also what session this was?! Word of advice to anyone reading these comments, when presenting, ALWAYS take the moral high ground. People are easily offended period, and for all sorts of reasons you may not care about. The last thing the developer community needs is to offend people. We're all here to make the future a better place to live in, so lets act like we care too.
- enra 15y agoI'm not supporting this kind of behavior, but I think least think any community needs is to be too scared about offending people. Like others have commented, author makes pretty _offensive_ generalizations of the whole community and people in it, which I think is even worse and untrue, than some guy having an offending talk.
- snorkel 15y agoI'm surprised the leading providers of mobile fart noise applications would be so immature.
- zyb09 15y agoWell some people say if you are getting offended by "inappropriate" jokes that's basically your problem, not the problem of the majority of people there having fun. After all its just jokes, as in having humour. At a developer conference you shouldn't be so critical about it.
- georgieporgie 15y agoWell some people say if you are getting offended by "inappropriate" jokes that's basically your problem, not the problem of the majority of people there having fun. Do you honestly not see any problem with that line of thought? I'm curious, how old are you?
- dextorious 15y agoI'm 35 and I honestly don't see any problem with that line of thought. But then again, I'm not a WASP, and I'm not into political correctness either.
- georgieporgie 15y agoYou seem to be employing exactly the same line of thinking that is used by people to justify harassment of all sorts. It's fundamentally selfish and entitled. I see that you're going to deploy the "political correctness" strawman, though, so I don't think I'll make any headway here.
- dextorious 15y ago"""You seem to be employing exactly the same line of thinking that is used by people to justify harassment of all sorts. It's fundamentally selfish and entitled. """ No, forbidding people to make jokes because some tiny minority might find it offensive is "fundamentally selfish and entitled". Forbidding people to make jokes because you feel offended by them, even more so. And, btw, you failed to even define what that "line of thinking" is, you just accused me of "employing" it. """I see that you're going to deploy the "political correctness" strawman, though, so I don't think I'll make any headway here.""" What is this, your personal Godwin's law? Since when "political correctness", especially in a situation where it exactly applies, is a "strawman"? It's true though, you won't make any headway here. Not with this kind of crap arguments.
- funkah 15y agoDaniel Jalkut has posted his own take on the situation [1]. I appreciate it, because whenever these situations pop up, they quickly devolve into "tech is full of unprofessional assholes" versus "stop being such a baby". He also provides some background for why the session was done that way in the first place. [1] http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/2266/how-to-talk-dirty http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/2266/how-to-talk-dirty
- JonnieCache 15y agoHere are the slides from the talk: http://www.mactech.com/sites/default/files/Lee-Ten_Dirty_Words_and_How_to_Use_Them.pdf http://www.mactech.com/sites/default/files/Lee-Ten_Dirty_Wor... Based on this more specific info, I don't actually think this is offensive at all, and it's actually rather funny. However, as with all jokes, it's how you tell 'em. I can imagine this all being done in a family friendly way. I can also imagine it being delivered in a wholly inappropriate drooling-pervert manner. We can't know unless we see a video. As jalkut says in the blogpost, the jokes write themselves. You could deliver this entire talk in a deadpan manner, reading out all the "dirty words" as if they're perfectly normal, and all the dirtyness is in the minds of the audience. This is the beauty of innuendo and double entendre, it allows you to be dirty without actually being dirty. There is a long tradition of this on BBC radio going back to the 60s, where unbelievably, unutterably filthy things have been talked about at 6:30pm, when children are having their dinner, via the potent medium of deadpan innuendo. The key is that everything should have be able to be parsed perfectly innocently, so if your children ask what it means you can tell them with no embarrassment. There have been things said at dinner time in this manner that would likely otherwise never have been allowed to be broadcast, at any time of day or night. In this case however, based on the OP reaction, I think it's more likely that the presenter was gurning his way through the talk, giving suggestive "LOL DICKS!" messages through his speech mannerisms and body language. These were likely the root cause of the uncomfortableness. But as I say, all this is speculation without video of the session.
- ceol 15y ago>Based on this more specific info, I don't actually think this is offensive at all, and it's actually rather funny. Really? It's just a collection of crude jokes. I can't imagine how you could present those slides in anything other than a perverted manner.
- FuzzyDunlop 15y agoWhile the description of the conference from the author's perspective certainly shows a stark lack of professionalism, it seems to be quite a jump to then attribute it to a lack of diversity in the field. That lack of professionalism can't or shouldn't be defended, but neither can the hypocrisy in the post about it. For a thinly veiled post about sexism and male dominance in an industry, the author makes no effort to avoid making some sexist remarks of her own (as highlighted by alex_c[0]). At risk of going off on a tangent, diversity is a good thing. Discrimination isn't. By extension, positive discrimination isn't a good thing. And the sooner everyone realises that the solution to the issue of poor diversity isn't even more discrimination, the better. This in its simplest form means not using your own race, gender, religion, age etc. to make a point in favour of your own demographic, and also not allowing other people to do the same against you. Because real diversity is when none of that actually matters. I have a slight feeling this may not be a popular point of view, but I find some of the popular thinking to be rather illogical. But the author makes a good point when taken solely on the merits of professionalism. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3217306 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3217306
- jonhendry 15y ago"it seems to be quite a jump to then attribute it to a lack of diversity in the field." Oh? What would you attribute it to? It's quite likely that it is because of a lack of women. Some immature people get accustomed to working in a boy's club environment, and don't grow up, don't know how to act professionally. Note that you're making the error of assuming that attributing the cause to lack of diversity implies some kind of quota system to remedy the lack of diversity. More women would be great. Better would be for immature developers to grow up.
- FuzzyDunlop 15y agoIs it not a quota system that's typically used to remedy the lack of diversity? In the UK it hasn't been uncommon to do this quite openly as if it's a good thing. Territorial Army posters used to say they would only consider women and minorities for application. At best attributing it to diversity and playing the sex card oversimplifies things such as the individual's upbringing and his personality. People are all different, so I find it unfair to say that this is not the product of a person being a person, but a person who works in a male dominated environment. Is the implication thus that an industry needs more women for it to be more mature? That without diversity men (note how the article emphasises this is a male problem) will resort to making dick jokes and chatting about celebrities they'd bang all the time? And how is that implication any less offensive than the lack of professionalism the speaker exhibited? So to answer the question, I attribute this not to diversity or anything such, but to an individual who was, as you've said, immature. He alone does not make the entire development community immature, nor is he exemplary of a male dominated profession.
- jonhendry 15y agoI wish posts like that would just name names. It would have made it easier to figure out what, exactly transpired. Having looked at the slides, and Daniel Jalkut's post linked elsewhere, it appears to be tame double-entendre humor that wouldn't be out of place on NPR. I'm inclined to be on the complainant's side, but the complaint makes it seem much worse than it appears to have actually been. I'm left thinking the woman involved went to a session that gave every indication of being very slightly off-color, and was shocked and offended that it was.
- JulianMiller520 15y agoI agree with you entirely but found your use of the terms "tits and ass" a bit jarring given your topic. I’m assuming it’s an attribution but was unable to glean that directly from the text. You may want to include quotation marks so we know who’s speaking, lest we find your post as offensive as the conference you are mentioning. "Auto-releasing" is offensive when double entendre is applied, "tits and ass" need no further implications.
- sp332 15y agoNot defending the inappropriate nature of the talk, but these doesn't look like "boy's club" kind of jokes. I mean "autorelease" and "NSInsertionPosition" don't seem like they're demeaning to women somehow. I think men and women are equally likely to be offended by this?
- bdonlan 15y agoIndeed. While one can make an argument that the tone of the talk is inappropriate for a professional conference, arguing that these particular examples in some way single out women for denigration is absurd. Do men not engage in sexual acts as well as women? Why should a sexual joke - one which, apparently, implies an act that could involve both genders - be automatically assumed to be harmful to women more than it is for men? Naturally, I have not heard the entire talk, so it's possible there were segments which would indeed be considered demeaning for women specifically - and if so, then indeed that is another problem. But as a society, is it really healthy to keep around this attitude that women are delicate creatures who would be forever harmed by hearing anything with the slightest hint of sexual connotations? Is it really the case that only men can laugh at and enjoy the occasional sex joke?
- scott_s 15y agoSexual jokes are naturally divisive if the crowd is gender imbalanced. It's not an issue of being demeaning. It's an issue of people from a minority group being very uncomfortable when the majority is talking as if they're not there.
- sp332 15y agoYou mean that guys don't usually tell these jokes when women are around, and therefore just the fact that a guy told this joke was dismissive of the women in attendance? If so, would the exact same jokes be dismissive of men, if the gender of the speaker and audience were reversed? Or is there something about the jokes which have an anti-women bias?
- scott_s 15y ago
- sneak 15y agoA conference I can't hear dick jokes at is a conference I don't want to attend. I'll just leave this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ISil7IHzxc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ISil7IHzxc
- georgieporgie 15y agoThat's a great video (Frank Zappa on Crossfire, 1986), but first amendment issues have absolutely nothing to do with standards of professional conduct at a conference.
- sneak 15y agoIt's not the first amendment thing I posted it for - but for the part where he points out that... "THEY'RE JUST WORDS." Yes, words have meaning, and that meaning can change the world, but if someone making dick jokes causes you to get hyper-uncomfortable, maybe you have some personal sensitivity issues to work through before you start worrying about the level of professionalism at a conference that you obviously don't want to be at. In short: "Yes Virginia, the world has dick jokes in it."
- georgieporgie 15y agoYou seem to be arguing against professionalism. Blaming someone who is offended by your words is really a selfish way to look at the world. Again, this isn't about freedom of speech, it's about professionalism at a conference.
- pyre 15y agoOther things that are just a bunch of words: - Defamation - Slander - Sexual Harassment - Non-sexual Harassment - Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater Someone wants to spread untrue rumors about you? Get over it! It's just a bunch of words! Sticks and stones, man! Someone wants to making constant sexual advances towards you? Get over it! It's just a bunch of words! Sticks and stones, man! Someone wants to make constant threats of violence against you? Get over it! It's just a bunch of words! Sticks and stones, man! The basic logic that you're using is that the perception is in the eye of the beholder. If the beholder perceives something as bad, then they just need to change their perception. From the perspective of the individual struggling to deal with the world, it may make sense to apply this logic to try and change perceptions to better deal with the world. From the perspective of the world as a whole, it makes less sense. For example, a rape victim may wish to find some way to view the rape in a less negative light in order to move on with their lives. Does this mean that rape isn't bad, but just an issue with how the victim perceives it?
- luigi 15y agoAs the number of developer conferences increases for a given technology, the probability of a sexually inappropriate talk approaches 1.
- thoradam 15y agoI'd understand this post if it were just a cry for more professionalism, which is welcomed, but how can sexual innuendo be construed to slight women in particular? Because the speaker mentioned breasts? Is this the '50s?
- maw 15y agoSome empathy for those of us who don't like reading grey text over a black background wouldn't go astray.
- bgramer 15y agoI had to copy/paste because it was too hard to read in dark reversed style of the blog's design. Here it is so you can read. "A Letter to the Developer Community Dear Mac/iOS Developer Community, Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who may be different from yourself and attempt to understand/have compassion towards that person’s feelings, especially if their feelings are different from your own. If you do not consider yourself to be a particularly empathetic person, there’s no need to read any further. I attended a Mac developer conference recently and overall had a great experience. I had the opportunity to meet and get to know many great developers while learning a few things too. Unfortunately, I left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. This feeling I attribute to a lack of conduct standards, and a failure by many of us to understand the changes in the industry that have been occurring, like it or not, over the years. Here is what happened. I sat down to listen to a talk that I could tell by the title of the talk, was going to be inappropriate. I thought to myself, I’m at a respectful Mac conference, the organizer is walking around in a suit and conducting himself very professionally, I’m sure it will be ok. This was, in fact, a poor assumption. The speaker prefaced his talk by basically stating there was a little substance, but that most of the topics were being presented simply because of the sexual or otherwise inappropriate jokes that could be formed from the topics. For instance, jokes that can be made about “autoreleasing”. I’ll let you think about that for a second and you basically understand how this went. About ten minutes in, I was thoroughly disappointed in the immaturity and inappropriateness and walked out of the room. As others informed me later, it did not get any better. There were tidbits of information weaved in, but the overarching theme remained the same. Sadly, this was not the only offensive point in the week. The highly respected keynote speaker managed to weave in a reference to a female celebrity’s tits and ass in his discussion, which I found awfully distasteful. Now, I know that being one of the handful of women in attendance at the conference, I am in a serious minority in terms of the way I experience and react to things such as this. I also know that it’s quite possible that others would not be offended as they may have the same, in my opinion immature, sense of humor. Yet, in discussing with others, including members of my team, I found that I was not alone in finding these references uncomfortable. Why is it that an inappropriate talk would even be permitted on a stage at any respectable conference? How does this in any way further the advancement of the software industry at large, and the Mac community especially? In my opinion, it sets us back quite a bit. During one of the much more informative and respectable talks of the week, the topic of diversity was brought up. The speaker pointed out the fact that the Mac community is full of mostly men from an educated and higher income background. The context was in discussion of how we tend to gravitate towards like minded people. And in fact, it’s impossible to argue that this is a truly diverse field by any means because women and minorities are grossly underrepresented as I’m sure you know. However, what this experience and other similar encounters I have had in the last three years as a Mac developer have started to suggest is, maybe the Mac community doesn’t want people like me to be comfortable? Perhaps they would rather keep this a boy’s club forever, and it’s simply irritating when people like me disrupt that. Wow, does that thought scare me. Coming from a different industry where diversity is praised and encouraged, could it be that software developers want the exact opposite? Clearly not all of us. But, perhaps some of the organizers of this particular conference gravitate toward that mindset. The Mac development community has changed a lot over the years. There are new iOS consulting companies popping up all the time. Macs are in more homes than ever before in history. Mac developers are hiring business partners, even donning suits sometimes, and prancing into major corporations to work on exciting applications. It’s a new world, folks. And as a result, there will likely be growing pains. All I ask is this… First, if you are in a position where you can control the conduct and standards at a software event that is intended to be in any way professional, you are therefore obligated to do so. Or at least warn people who may be attending otherwise, so we may steer clear. Second, before you start to defend this kind of inappropriate behavior in a professional setting, think about how you would feel if I were your daughter or your sister. I’m not against inappropriate humor by any means, I just think there’s a time and a place. This was not it. Do we want the Mac community to be a place where anyone, regardless of gender, race, religion, etc. feels uncomfortable? Diversity is great. It shows that our field is growing up. But diversity can only happen with acceptance, tolerance, and the ability to empathize with those who may feel uncomfortable, even if you yourself do not. I sincerely hope that at future Mac community events, I will not be similarly offended. Thank you to the wonderful guys who provided support and feedback in preparation for this article. It’s nice to know we have some gentlemen out there in the Mac community! Sincerely, Brit Update: After getting in touch with the conference organizers, I have a lot of hope regarding this issue. They were very concerned, apologetic, and acknowledged that this should not happen at a professional event. Thank you!
- siavosh 15y agoI had the same experience when watching the Startup School video on the office hours when there was an innocent comment by PG regarding the mic and the female founders, and the whole audience laughed. I felt embarrassed at the immaturity of the audience and how much this was normal behavior for engineers. I think the whole cs/hacker field needs to reach for higher standards of professionalism.
- spaznode 15y agoWe wouldn't be having this discussion on the Internet if it weren't for our love of "tits and ass". Why are we acting so prudish about sexuality? I know my wife wouldn't care about a reference to celebrity t&a. What kind of girls do take offense? I'll tell you what kind, ugly girls. Had to be said.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- fleitz 15y agoWho the fuck goes to a talk titled: "The Ten Dirty Words and How To Use Them." and is surprised that there are jokes of an offensive nature? It basically screams this talk is going to be unprofessional. Exactly what could the presenter have done to more fully communicate the nature of the talk? Put up a green first slide that says "This talk is rated "O" for offensive by the Tech Conference Association of America."?
- spaznode 15y agoFuckin god damn right. Use some common sense m-fers. ;)