4 ms·

The rockstar shit is a filter for me. If a company advertises itself as wanting rockstars, ninjas, "hardcore" people, or whatever brogrammer bullshit of the wee

The rockstar shit is a filter for me. If a company advertises itself as wanting rockstars, ninjas, "hardcore" people, or whatever brogrammer bullshit of the week is, I put that job advert to the bottom of my list. The thought of working around the sort of people who would apply because they consider themselves a hardcore ninja rockstar puts me off. (I spent more than enough time with homophobic macho fuckwits when I was at school, I'd rather not have to deal with them at work.) There are gendered problems in tech: social bugs, really. There's the putting-yourself-forward problem. I was at an event a while back and ran a birds-of-a-feather session on open source geo stuff (I'm an OpenStreetMap editor). At the session was a woman who is involved with a startup in the same area, but she didn't seem to have the confidence to run the session, even though her involvement in open source geo is much higher than mine (I just piss around editing maps). Ensuring that our community institutions invite women in is a good step: they don't have to accept the invitation, but many will. And that's good. Another problem some women I know face: social expectations. They have to dress more masculine in order to be taken seriously at real-life gatherings. We as hackers like to say we don't judge people based on their appearances but based on their code. Then at the same time, we like to judge the "suits". I know women who have said they have to go home and change out of feminine wear (of all levels of formality) into jeans and a t-shirt in order for the hacker crowd to take them seriously. If a guy turns up to an event in a suit, people will just naturally assume he needs to wear it because he's doing coding in some kind of corporate environment. But if women turn up in a dress, they just get the presumption that they are in sales or PR or something. That's bullshit. (This stems from the geeky hackery idea that dressing nice makes someone untrustworthy. Sorry, no, I've worked with utter assholes who come to work in jeans every day, and I've worked with people who are awesome, ethical and never fuck people over who–gasp!–wear formal or dressy clothing.) Is there an endemic problem of malicious deliberate sexism? No. That exists in some companies, sure, but I don't think that's the primary problem. Instead, there's lots of little nagging bugs, some of which stem from unconscious attitudes perpetuated by geek culture. The sexism problems such as they are consist of lots of little nagging bugs that taken together exclude women. Unless you are some kind of hardcore misogynist, fixing them will have generally positive side effects for everybody.

jbattle 14y ago
If I see a guy in a suit I think he is probably a recruiter or a PHB. I wonder how much of the macho stuff you point out is unique to tech. I see way more aggressive posturing in sales for example, and all the sales departments I've seen are very well balanced gender-wise
- tommorris 14y ago
  Ah, it depends on context: in my mind, I was thinking about some of the user groups I go to where there's often a fair few enterprise devs who turn up in suits. But the point stands: for a group of people who take pride in judging people on their code and skills, we seem to quite like judging people on their appearance.
prodigal_erik 14y ago
We judge people who dress to manipulate, whether it's "trust me" or "pay attention to me". The fact that a cheap costume might influence others' decisions is a social bug, and I kind of resent anyone knowingly exploiting it.
- tommorris 14y ago
  Okay, so consistency question. A male friend of mine recently testified before a parliamentary committee on computer security. He wore a suit, as one might expect. If he hadn't dressed formally, the committee wouldn't have trusted him, even if he'd said exactly the same things (which consisted of being highly critical of a proposed government technology policy). A female software developer friend of mine has gone home after work and changed into a less formal outfit before going to a developer event in order so that people don't assume that she is a marketing or sales person or just there to accompany her boyfriend. Both of these are uses of dress to influence other people's decisions and attitudes. Are either one, or both of them, worthy of the resentment you describe? And why do we pick, say, dress out as something where manipulation for social ends is bad but, say, typography isn't? If someone is preparing a resume for a job and uses an inappropriate font (Comic Sans, maybe), I'll tell him not to do so. But if he wears a tie during the interview, is he trying to emotionally manipulate people?

jbattle 14y ago

If I see a guy in a suit I think he is probably a recruiter or a PHB. I wonder how much of the macho stuff you point out is unique to tech. I see way more aggressive posturing in sales for example, and all the sales departments I've seen are very well balanced gender-wise

tommorris 14y ago
Ah, it depends on context: in my mind, I was thinking about some of the user groups I go to where there's often a fair few enterprise devs who turn up in suits. But the point stands: for a group of people who take pride in judging people on their code and skills, we seem to quite like judging people on their appearance.

prodigal_erik 14y ago

We judge people who dress to manipulate, whether it's "trust me" or "pay attention to me". The fact that a cheap costume might influence others' decisions is a social bug, and I kind of resent anyone knowingly exploiting it.

tommorris 14y ago
Okay, so consistency question. A male friend of mine recently testified before a parliamentary committee on computer security. He wore a suit, as one might expect. If he hadn't dressed formally, the committee wouldn't have trusted him, even if he'd said exactly the same things (which consisted of being highly critical of a proposed government technology policy). A female software developer friend of mine has gone home after work and changed into a less formal outfit before going to a developer event in order so that people don't assume that she is a marketing or sales person or just there to accompany her boyfriend. Both of these are uses of dress to influence other people's decisions and attitudes. Are either one, or both of them, worthy of the resentment you describe? And why do we pick, say, dress out as something where manipulation for social ends is bad but, say, typography isn't? If someone is preparing a resume for a job and uses an inappropriate font (Comic Sans, maybe), I'll tell him not to do so. But if he wears a tie during the interview, is he trying to emotionally manipulate people?