5 ms·

> This community is pretty small relative to the overall community of technologists, and it has some biases with respect to places, people, and concepts. I beli

> This community is pretty small relative to the overall community of technologists, and it has some biases with respect to places, people, and concepts. I believe you are simply seeing one of those biases emerge as a side effect of the conversation. I don't think so. I think the tech community is pretty much up its own arse and thinks it is god-like and precious. Techies really buy into the 'we are pure', 'we only deal with evidence', 'we are the best', blah-blah. All the great myth of meritocracy and guff like that. Anything that points out this is not true and that Joe Coder might not be perfect and it just kicks off. Oh, yeah and plain sexism as well.

geekagirl 15y ago
"It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists." -- Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash
cousin_it 15y ago
First you must stop making offensive blanket generalizations about techies. Even if you're a techie yourself, that doesn't give you license. But honestly, to me it doesn't sound like you're a techie. Or maybe you're just not very self-aware? Because you're exhibiting a very familiar thought pattern: "bluuuuh, those guys over there think they're so smart, let's whoop them". Every nerd who's ever been bullied for being a nerd can recognize this sort of person from a mile away. One of the dreams of the original nerd community was to get away from people like you, yet here you are, fresh as ever.
- 5hoom 15y ago
  What on earth are you talking about? Parent was making some general observations about the nature of sexism in the tech industry and its causes. How did you get from that to this 'you're not a real techie' nonsense and jocks beating up nerds in school? I'll tell you that I am a 'real techie' (but not a true Scotsman) and I am pretty much in agreement with what gordonguthrie said.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- jaggederest 15y ago
  So great, you're exemplifying the shoot-the-messenger style under discussion. Well done.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- manicdee 15y ago
  Truth hurts. If you took offence to the characterisation of the IT community as generally self-absorbed and sexist, you really need to look around. How many women do you work with? It's not the type of work that drives women out of IT, it's the people they have to work with.
  - cousin_it 15y ago
    Truth isn't the only thing that can hurt, though. Ignorance and malice can hurt too, especially when combined... Let me try to explain how I understand this issue. When some subgroup is underrepresented in some area even though there's no statistical difference in innate ability, many people tend to automatically blame discrimination. I don't see how that can be right. For example, you could notice that Asians are overrepresented in US universities. The theory concludes that either all US universities are racist in favor of Asians (obvious bullshit), or Asians are innately smarter than whites (more obvious bullshit). Hmm. Isn't it more likely that the theory is mistaken and there can be other factors at work? Same goes for the small number of women programmers. Sorry, you don't get to attack me for sexism until you have data proving sexism is the real culprit. Otherwise it's like blaming witchcraft.
    - bmcleod 15y ago
      There is an interesting issue in the philosophy of science regarding the "hard center" of theories. Basically any prediction about a reasonably complicated situation will rely on a large number of premises. If you happen to be committed to one premise more than the others, you will always blame one of the other premises when an observation doesn't fit your hypothesis. In the case of sexism there are so many confounding factors that you'll never be able to say with certainty that sexism is the root cause, only that there is a good chance that it is. If there is a good chance that something bad is happening then it seems like you could reasonably be expected to produce a non-zero amount of effort in avoiding it.
    - roguecoder 15y ago
      We have data. A brief sampling: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1508924 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1508924, http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/fall2002/FERREIRA/FERREIRA.html http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/fall2002/FERREIRA/FERREIRA..., http://www.scribd.com/doc/18370009/Sources-of-Financing-for-New-Technology-Firms-A-Comparison-by-Gender http://www.scribd.com/doc/18370009/Sources-of-Financing-for-... There is plenty more out there, all suggesting that women are promoted differently, treated differently, more likely to experience active gender-based harassment and are more likely to be excluded from the camaraderie and informal networking that leads to job satisfaction. Don't assume that just because you are ignorant everyone else is too. Some of us have been engaging with, measuring, quantifying and attempting to change these destructive culturally-sanctioned behaviors for a very long time.
- gordonguthrie 15y ago
  > First you must stop making offensive blanket generalizations about techies. Even if you're a techie yourself, that doesn't give you license. But honestly, to me it doesn't sound like you're a techie. I started programming in 1979. Prior to that people used to beat me up big style. I can techie-you up anyway you like. What we had here was a group of people beating up Rachel By The Bay, and I don't like it because I was a bullied nerd.
pyre 15y ago
> Techies really buy into the 'we are pure', 'we only deal with evidence', > 'we are the best', blah-blah. All the great myth of meritocracy and guff > like that. This whole thing seems like a strawman. You're stating that all (or most) 'techies' believe that we're in some sort of utopia where it's impossible for another 'techie' to do any wrong? Really? So no one that qualifies as a 'techie': * Hates Bill Gates and rails against proprietary software? * Hates Steve Jobs and rails against propietary/close platforms? * Trolls online forums just for the 'lulz?' * Has every commited a 'morally wrong' crime (dodging the "hacking shouldn't be a crime if I don't really mean it"-type arguments)? > Anything that points out this is not true and that Joe Coder might not be > perfect and it just kicks off. Oh, yeah and plain sexism as well. Again, really? Who here thinks that 'Joe the Coder' is perfect? Aren't we as a tech community filled with 'colorful' personalities? Don't we constantly have people bickering to the point of ridiculousness over the most trivial thing possible in forums/mailing lists? Personally, I think that the reactions here boil down to: 1) Nothing in that post comes off as out-right sexism. None of the dialog even refers directly to the fact that she's a woman. 2) Posts like this rail against 'males in the tech community' as a group. If you're a male in the tech community, you read a post like this. Maybe you see some dialog in the post. Dialog that is claimed to be sexist. Dialog that you could see yourself saying to a woman, while in no way trying to be sexist (e.g. "you're being a little hard on person A"). You feel the need to push back against this becuase it seems like it could just be a mis-understanding. This seems likely to be the simplest (and more probably right) explanation of the behaviour.
- gordonguthrie 15y ago
  You are entirely missing the point. I haven't commented on her post. I have only summarised the responses to it - which is a stream of ad hominem (or indeed ad feminam) invective. A respected blogger makes an observation about the industry and is howled down. The idea that her post 'rails against males in tech community' is supported by what evidence? She left that team for another team. She has a long set of blog posts. Find the railing thing please, with evidence.
  - pyre 15y ago

geekagirl 15y ago

"It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists." -- Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash

cousin_it 15y ago

First you must stop making offensive blanket generalizations about techies. Even if you're a techie yourself, that doesn't give you license. But honestly, to me it doesn't sound like you're a techie. Or maybe you're just not very self-aware? Because you're exhibiting a very familiar thought pattern: "bluuuuh, those guys over there think they're so smart, let's whoop them". Every nerd who's ever been bullied for being a nerd can recognize this sort of person from a mile away. One of the dreams of the original nerd community was to get away from people like you, yet here you are, fresh as ever.

5hoom 15y ago
What on earth are you talking about? Parent was making some general observations about the nature of sexism in the tech industry and its causes. How did you get from that to this 'you're not a real techie' nonsense and jocks beating up nerds in school? I'll tell you that I am a 'real techie' (but not a true Scotsman) and I am pretty much in agreement with what gordonguthrie said.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
jaggederest 15y ago
So great, you're exemplifying the shoot-the-messenger style under discussion. Well done.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
manicdee 15y ago
Truth hurts. If you took offence to the characterisation of the IT community as generally self-absorbed and sexist, you really need to look around. How many women do you work with? It's not the type of work that drives women out of IT, it's the people they have to work with.
- cousin_it 15y ago
  Truth isn't the only thing that can hurt, though. Ignorance and malice can hurt too, especially when combined... Let me try to explain how I understand this issue. When some subgroup is underrepresented in some area even though there's no statistical difference in innate ability, many people tend to automatically blame discrimination. I don't see how that can be right. For example, you could notice that Asians are overrepresented in US universities. The theory concludes that either all US universities are racist in favor of Asians (obvious bullshit), or Asians are innately smarter than whites (more obvious bullshit). Hmm. Isn't it more likely that the theory is mistaken and there can be other factors at work? Same goes for the small number of women programmers. Sorry, you don't get to attack me for sexism until you have data proving sexism is the real culprit. Otherwise it's like blaming witchcraft.
  - bmcleod 15y ago
    There is an interesting issue in the philosophy of science regarding the "hard center" of theories. Basically any prediction about a reasonably complicated situation will rely on a large number of premises. If you happen to be committed to one premise more than the others, you will always blame one of the other premises when an observation doesn't fit your hypothesis. In the case of sexism there are so many confounding factors that you'll never be able to say with certainty that sexism is the root cause, only that there is a good chance that it is. If there is a good chance that something bad is happening then it seems like you could reasonably be expected to produce a non-zero amount of effort in avoiding it.
  - roguecoder 15y ago
    We have data. A brief sampling: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1508924 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1508924, http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/fall2002/FERREIRA/FERREIRA.html http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/fall2002/FERREIRA/FERREIRA..., http://www.scribd.com/doc/18370009/Sources-of-Financing-for-New-Technology-Firms-A-Comparison-by-Gender http://www.scribd.com/doc/18370009/Sources-of-Financing-for-... There is plenty more out there, all suggesting that women are promoted differently, treated differently, more likely to experience active gender-based harassment and are more likely to be excluded from the camaraderie and informal networking that leads to job satisfaction. Don't assume that just because you are ignorant everyone else is too. Some of us have been engaging with, measuring, quantifying and attempting to change these destructive culturally-sanctioned behaviors for a very long time.
gordonguthrie 15y ago
> First you must stop making offensive blanket generalizations about techies. Even if you're a techie yourself, that doesn't give you license. But honestly, to me it doesn't sound like you're a techie. I started programming in 1979. Prior to that people used to beat me up big style. I can techie-you up anyway you like. What we had here was a group of people beating up Rachel By The Bay, and I don't like it because I was a bullied nerd.

pyre 15y ago

> Techies really buy into the 'we are pure', 'we only deal with evidence', > 'we are the best', blah-blah. All the great myth of meritocracy and guff > like that. This whole thing seems like a strawman. You're stating that all (or most) 'techies' believe that we're in some sort of utopia where it's impossible for another 'techie' to do any wrong? Really? So no one that qualifies as a 'techie': * Hates Bill Gates and rails against proprietary software? * Hates Steve Jobs and rails against propietary/close platforms? * Trolls online forums just for the 'lulz?' * Has every commited a 'morally wrong' crime (dodging the "hacking shouldn't be a crime if I don't really mean it"-type arguments)? > Anything that points out this is not true and that Joe Coder might not be > perfect and it just kicks off. Oh, yeah and plain sexism as well. Again, really? Who here thinks that 'Joe the Coder' is perfect? Aren't we as a tech community filled with 'colorful' personalities? Don't we constantly have people bickering to the point of ridiculousness over the most trivial thing possible in forums/mailing lists? Personally, I think that the reactions here boil down to: 1) Nothing in that post comes off as out-right sexism. None of the dialog even refers directly to the fact that she's a woman. 2) Posts like this rail against 'males in the tech community' as a group. If you're a male in the tech community, you read a post like this. Maybe you see some dialog in the post. Dialog that is claimed to be sexist. Dialog that you could see yourself saying to a woman, while in no way trying to be sexist (e.g. "you're being a little hard on person A"). You feel the need to push back against this becuase it seems like it could just be a mis-understanding. This seems likely to be the simplest (and more probably right) explanation of the behaviour.

gordonguthrie 15y ago
You are entirely missing the point. I haven't commented on her post. I have only summarised the responses to it - which is a stream of ad hominem (or indeed ad feminam) invective. A respected blogger makes an observation about the industry and is howled down. The idea that her post 'rails against males in tech community' is supported by what evidence? She left that team for another team. She has a long set of blog posts. Find the railing thing please, with evidence.
- pyre 15y ago