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I think you misunderstand. Acceptance is the only rational response when you lack sufficient power to effect change. When crude behavior persists even in the fa
by mhartl 15y ago
I think you misunderstand. Acceptance is the only rational response when you lack sufficient power to effect change. When crude behavior persists even in the face of a draconian legal environment, complaining about it or writing frustrated blog posts certainly won't fix it.
Your situation is slightly different. As a CTO, you have the power to prevent this behavior in your sphere of influence. But fixing the tech industry in general is beyond your reach.
You should also be aware that you face the other end of the cannon here. If a woman feels maltreated on your watch, you could be held liable even if you are not culpable. In a small startup, this could be enough to sink the ship. Perversely, this gives you an incentive not to hire women. Indeed, posts such as the OP also provide an incentive not to hire women. There's no defending boorish jerks, but beware of unintended consequences when you propose ways to punish them.
- wpietri 15y agoYour notion of "rational" is weak. It's the small-minded, self-interested, narcissistic version of the term. Fixing this problem in the tech industry may or may not be beyond my reach. We'll see. But I will try as long as I'm involved in software. Hopefully I will have made a difference. But if I don't, that's still ok, because then I won't have been one of those assholes who stands around ignoring (or profiting from) injustice. If that's "irrational", then fine, I'm happy to be "irrational". And personally, I think that blog posts like this are absolutely a part of fixing the problem. Women's suffrage didn't happen because a bunch of old white men suddenly noticed the issue one day. It happened through an immense amount of communication, activism, and education. The original post is a fine contribution to that sort of activity.
- mhartl 15y agoI think that blog posts like this are absolutely a part of fixing the problem. I hope you're right. You're far more optimistic than I am. In particular, I've seen an awful lot of hand-wringing about this subject in the Ruby community over the past five years—most of it similar in content and tone to the OP—and it doesn't seem to be having any effect.
- wpietri 15y agoThis is one tiny facet of a society-wide problem that goes back millennia. How much progress can you expect in a few years? In the broader scope of things, I'd say we're making great progress. But that progress has come through continuous effort, not from people saying, "Oh, honey, you should just accept that you can't vote. You'll never change it, so it's not rational to try."
- mhartl 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history
- wpietri 15y agoI differ with that line of thought in that I don't think it's inevitable. Which is why I think it's so important to push for it. As the US Republican primary shows, there are plenty of people who'd like to roll back things from decades to centuries.