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"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well
- chrisbennet 13y agoMy wife (a software engineer) has complained of this - guys that would just interrupt, ignore or talk over her in a meeting like she is wasn't there.
- lallysingh 13y agoI'm a guy and people interrupt, ignore, or talk over me all the time. It's got more to do with the communications protocol. E.g., I usually make a small sound before I start talking, as a form of reservation. Usually just a loud intake of breath. That fails with some people. They just keep going.
- kevingadd 13y agoThe culture in software discussions in my experience is simply that the loudest, most assertive person dominates the conversation. I don't know if this affects women more negatively than it affects men, but it wouldn't shock me. It certainly harms the quality of the discussion and how fast you can arrive at the right conclusions.
- pnathan 13y ago> simply that the loudest, most assertive person dominates the conversation. This is very true. I watch quiet men get rolled over quite a lot. It's also true that in the US, women are socialized to be quiet and non-assertive. Well. You can figure the sad story out from there.
- gehar 13y agos/software/group/
- coolsunglasses 13y agoI don't think this is exclusive to women, I've known soft-spoken male engineers that I would need to speak up for and say, "I think $X has something to say about this" or "I'd like to hear what $Y thinks about this" in meetings. Part of a manager or leader's job is making meetings constructive and inclusive. I'm not speaking as a particularly experienced leader of teams, I've only had one year-long go as a startup CTO and a previous stint as a team lead. Very strange that this isn't practiced more consistently.
- temphn 13y agoThis woman is just an extremely negative and hostile personality. She's technically competent, so she can justify her behavior in her own head, but she's basically a female bully who thinks people don't like her because she's female. No, they don't like her because she is an unpleasant and caustic personality. After leaving Google, for years she writes stories about how smart she was, how irrationally they discriminated, how dumb they all were, and so on. Yet last I looked Google was still standing up on its own hind legs without her. Just a little more than that, in fact. Maybe they just didn't want to work with a smart asshole with a perpetual chip on her shoulder.
- mikeash 13y agoDo you have additional knowledge beyond this article to back this up, or are you getting all of this just from this one thing?
- GhotiFish 13y agoLooking through her logs[1], Some of her posts are a little off. one[2] ,for example, berates other programers for stupid solutions to a simple problem, then uses sin and cos for simple discrete calculations. That's well within acceptable hacker irritability levels, however. In fact I think it might be a bit lower than normal, so I'm not seeing what the parent post is talking about. 1. http://rachelbythebay.com/w/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/ 2. http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/03/06/rover/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/03/06/rover/
- aeontech 13y agoYou're trolling, right?
- nailer 13y agoI think it's fair enough for you to say these things but only if you fill out your profile and put your name to your accusations.
- greenyoda 13y agoI've never met Rachel, but I read her blog fairly regularly and have never gotten the impression that she's unpleasant. On the contrary, she sounds like she'd be a fun person to work with.
- pwf 13y agoI've never been asked if I was an engineer, but I've definitely experienced the latter of your two anecdotes. Sometimes it just depends on the person you're talking to. At one point I learned that the best way to get a certain coworker of mine to finally get what I was saying was to pull another person in front if them, explain myself to the third party, let them acknowledge that I'm right, and then finally ask the original coworker once more if their plan was reaaally the right way to go. Only then would they realize that I had a point. It sucks, but if you have to get someone they trust to repeat what you're saying, you might as well have a reliable backup ready. As for speaking up in meetings, I was recently told in my review that I needed to be more assertive, because I feared I'd experience the same thing you did. Hopefully I can find a good middle ground between meekly watching people march down the wrong road, and shouting about crack pipes... I haven't found it yet, though.
- jawnb 13y agoAs a dude, I experience the latter two scenarios frequently. To bring the topic to a more constructive angle, does anyone have any techniques that might help in these cases? My default is either extreme ambivalence, or raging hard ass. It's hard to find the middle ground.
- nailer 13y agoI've had very similar situations to the poster. It's incredibly frustrating. This week I tried: "I'm sorry, I don't understand. We just saw a demo showing the Facebook JS SDK was taking X minutes to load, and then masonry took a second. My understanding is that you want to concentrate on optimising masonry. I certainly agree with you that we can and should make masonry as fast as possible. However it seems to me that resolving the thing that's taking minutes rather than seconds would benefit us more." In other words: - restate the situation as you see it - highlight the areas in which you believe common values exist - rather than saying 'you're not listening to me' - even when it seems like they're really not listening to you - ask what their opinion of the matter is in light of what you've just stated. This at least got us further: my colleague thought that resolving FB JS SDK performance wasn't possible. I disagreed and thought that with the massive amount of Facebook apps FB either have to know about the performance degradation or we were specifically doing something to interfere with the JS SDK performance.
- redcircle 13y ago(1) Part of it is about choosing whom you work with. Be careful about choosing a job that might have fun work, but is with repressed people. (2) If they are ignoring you in a meeting, there is a good chance that they have their self-image caught up in the conversation, and don't want to back down, and are getting emotional. The emotion behind rationality is humility. Our interview process tries to filter out people that can't collaborate.
- NewAccnt 13y agoThis is exactly what it is. I don't understand why people working in technical environments can't put their ego aside. Oh yeah, it's the pay.
- yoster 13y agoWell, being ignored is something that should never be done in a business model, be it a coffee shop or the biggest tech company in the world. However, that statement was completely out of line.
- mikeash 13y agoSometimes a minor offense needs to be committed to avoid a larger problem.
- dwyer 13y agoOR you could try a simple "excuse me" first. I try reserve the unprovoked belligerence for Plan B, but I guess I'm just classy like that.
- yoster 13y agoWell, a more neutral response is always better if you are being ignored. Even if you have to stand on the table, then yell, "TIME OUT EVERYONE", then proceed.
- RyJones 13y agoI made a crack in a leads meeting about another team needing to stop smoking crack. Later that afternoon, my boss came in and said, "Ry, you don't know what other people are going through in their lives." The lead of the other team (who was in the meeting) had been to rehab for his crack addiction.
- switch007 13y agoNot sure what to think of this. To me, it's a well-used expression that does not imply that you actually smoke crack. What other expressions should we not speak in case they literally might offend someone?
- textminer 13y ago"Did you fall off a space elevator or something?!" Only because it might compel some contrarian to build a space elevator. And I really want a space elevator.
- pyre 13y agoObviously the more PC phrase would be, "Time to put down the 'peace pipe' kemosabe." </sarcasm>
- gpcz 13y agoThat expression already indicates an ad-hominem rebuttal, and ad-hominems can offend by definition ("against the person"). By using a higher DH-level (src: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html ) in argumentation, you can avoid a lot of problems and have more meaningful discussions.
- incision 13y agoI'm a man, I can't claim to have experienced the first example specifically, but I've faced no shortage of stereotypical assumptions about my role and abilities. I've experienced the second two examples more times than I can count. In place of gender, I could easily chalk most of these things up to ethnic discrimination and be done with it, but that would be doing myself a huge disservice. Likewise, I think the author is doing herself a disservice by seemingly looking for bias as a first and only explanation in each case. It's exactly this kind of hasty generalizing [1] that is surely the root of much discrimination. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization
- ameister14 13y agoI've never performed interviews, but I've definitely experienced the latter two examples many times. Perhaps it's more common because of gender, but it's certainly not the only factor, or even the most important. It IS the most fixable, though; if it's a factor.
- brudgers 13y agoThe above comment questions Rachel's expertise and judgment in regard to her own experience on the basis of the commenter being a man.
- tunesmith 13y agoThat second example - not being listened to until it comes from an outside source as well - happens frequently. Not saying the gender angle couldn't exacerbate it, but it really is common.
- benjohnson 13y agoMy wife suffers from this - she does DB administration. Successful strategies: * Dress nicely - like a force to be reckoned with. * Stop holding back and seek a bit of glory. * Let others know the importance of what you do - "Oracle DB Admin for company's product line" vs "I just fix the database" * Don't help jerks - if a jerk asks for a problem to be solved, solve it but report the solution to the jerk's boss so that they don't get the glory. * Don't train jerks - keep your domain knowledge close to the vest. * Wear heals - there's an odd correlation with hight and perceived stature.
- famousactress 13y agoWhat exactly does a force to be reckoned with wear? I'm being serious. The more posturing with clothing, the more I assume someone isn't good enough at what they do not to bother.
- shardling 13y agoPresumably this is only true when you notice that they're posturing. Someone adept at it will do so in a way that conveys the message they're aiming for on a more subtle level.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- MartinCron 13y agoA force to be reckoned with might be just one notch above the average of the environment. Not so overdressed as to be distracting, but polished enough to create a "don't dismiss me" unconscious message.
- famousactress 13y agoI hold my own opinion here at least a little bit suspect. I certainly wouldn't pass it off as truth or even good advice... but my tendency is to think that by the time you're considering dress, you've already lost the battle you're fighting. Once you've gotten past doing whatever it is that you deserve respect for in the first place, playing these kinds of games for it establishes weakness and enters into a social negotiation of sorts that I haven't seen won from this position very often. The spoils here tend go to the person who's earned them, and doesn't give a fuck about whether any particular other person thinks that's true.
- YuriNiyazov 13y agoI'm a dude, and I can't even count the number of times that I have demonstrated my technical ability, and was subsequently ignored. Happened all the time.
- lallysingh 13y agoYes. Actually I recently experienced something very odd. I was recently quite angry with someone, and I told them. I was noticeably, noticeably angry at the time. Ever since then, that person's taken my professional opinion more seriously. I suspect that people don't take rational data (like observed technical competence) and apply it to their subconscious reasoning and attention systems. It's a failing of theirs for mis-prioritizing input. To get across it, you've gotta get priority on other planes.
- YuriNiyazov 13y agoWhat you are basically saying is that they can observe you knowing your shit plenty of times, but they don't actually put a little checkbox in their head next to "this dude know what they are talking about" until you yell at them and say "I have demonstrated plenty of times that I know my shit, and you need to put that checkbox in your head" ?
- lallysingh 13y agoActually I was pissed at them for something else. I think the act of chastising was what changed our interactions, not the content of said chastization.
- ritchiea 13y agoI've asked both men and women that have interviewed me if they are engineers. The OP's anecdote sounds genuinely sexist and in a really bad way, but I can also imagine a situation where someone says he has never been asked if he's an engineer because the question was not confrontational e.g. casually at the beginning of an interview "So what's your role at COMPANY X, engineer?"
- sophacles 13y agoI've gotten that question, but I've never gotten it until I ask if the interviewee has questions. And it's never been in the form of questioning my credentials.
- voronoff 13y agoIn my experience, all a man needs to do in order for someone to ask if they are, in fact, an engineer, is to dress well. Nice leather shoes and a well fitting suit worn casually will instantly create doubt about engineering interest and capability. That being said, it's pretty common for the female engineers I know to not be taken seriously, especially at the start of their careers.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoBeen there, done that, got the perf review to prove it :-) A small anecdote. An acquaintance related a story of fixing the 'drainage' in their back yard. They were trying to grow some plants that were sensitive to excessive moisture, and the plants were dying. Not watering them, watering them a little, didn't seem to change. They died. A professional gardner suggested that their problem was drainage. So they dug down about 3' (where the soil was very very wet) and tried to build in better drainage. As they were on the side of a hill, water table issues were not considered. It turned out their "problem" was that the water main that fed their house and the houses up the hill, was so pressurized at their property (because it had maintain pressure at the top of the hill too) that the pipe seams were leaking and it was pumping gallons of water into the ground underneath their property. The problem wasn't their garden, the problem was that the city water supply was poorly designed. While I have never been asked if I was an engineer on the phone, I have experienced similar things to Rachel in meetings and with regard to suggestions. Co-workers will create an internal assessment of your value and then respond based on that assessment. If they have written you off they will ignore you, if you prove their assessment wrong in a public forum they will attack you. These are management issues, and something which was sorely lacking in the stories. If you are the "owner" of a meeting, and someone is trying to be heard and isn't. It is incumbent on you to let them be heard. By your position power as "the boss" you can naturally interrupt a discussion to collect more data from other members. Its also important to ask questions like "does anyone have any concerns?" to draw out people who have valid input but are too timid to share it. In a highly political environment there are two ways to create change, one is through overt manipulation, which is to collect political power to yourself and then exert it to enact change, and the other is covert manipulation, which is to enact change subtly enough that the political organism doesn't react. (sometimes called "triggering the antibodies"). The problem with the latter is that if you help make positive change while keeping everyone not pissed off, no one attributes it to you (which is good for the change agent because if they knew the anti-bodies would react, but bad if your manager doesn't recognize it). I asked my manager what change he wanted to be 'true' yet he (or others) had been unsuccessful making true, he gave me one, and 18 months later that change was in place. He didn't believe that I was the one who had made the change. I suggested he pick a change he wanted to happen and not tell me, then in 18 months we could see if that one happened :-). But he also didn't understand enough about organizational dynamics to know that making change without having the source of that change point back at you was even possible. The point is that one of the very important jobs of managers is to make sure that people who work for them are contributing as much positive to the company as they can, and when they are being held back from that contribution by people who are oblivious, willful or otherwise, they jump in and fix that. Just another way that "managing" is different than "engineering" I suspect.
- codex 13y agoYelling "PUT DOWN THE CRACK PIPES!", while effective perhaps the first time, is not a sustainable means of interacting with people, even problematic people. Once you've done something like this a few times, people will begin to associate you with negative outcomes in group discussions, and will thereafter try to ignore you so as not to encourage you. This is a subconscious reaction to shocking behavior.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoI have a hard time with these examples. I fully accept that sexism could be driving all of the incidents laid out. But ... If one person tells you r=2 is a bad idea, maybe you listen. If two people say it, then three. Well at some point you are an idiot if you keep ignoring. And Google(?) is not known for employing idiots. If you have to interrupt your co-workers discussion with "put down the crack pipes", I would like to suggest that it might be worth considering that being blanked in the aggressive and frustrating way described is really unprofessional. I mean deeply revealing of a lot of anger and problems. Which means her team is made of of men who have some serious issues, life-crippling levels of sexism. Or Well, maybe being prepared to shout that the team is so wrong they are smoking crack, indicates that it is worth looking at the glass house around us. Getting on with others is hard. In a high pressure work environment it's very hard, in one where Aspergers is just next door for most of the industry, then its even harder. Running good technical teams is hard and we get it wrong more often than not. Which is why "don't flip the bozo bit" is a vital piece of advice. But I would also suggest that don't flip the -ism bit without looking deeply at our own behaviour is important. We live and we die. I was born in 1971, the year of a sitcom called "Love thy neighbour" where the 'joke' was a black family moved in next door. The range of deep seated -isms in my head is vast. But it is a fallacy to think that my head is the only broken one on the planet. I take my steer from a man with a truly broken head - John Nash was right - we live in a Game Theory world, where actions breed reactions and re-reactions. In some egregious cases the -ism is so bad it is clearly offensive, and clearly intolerable. Let's say it's order of magnitude out of whack. In other cases, less so. Women, ethnic minorities, LBGTG and others are at disadvantages because of who they are thats got to be wrong. But we are in a ever shifting game. And the secret of winning the game is not winning, it's improving - changing us. Want my opinion on the best path to business success. Therapy. Seriously. I have met billionaires and tramps, people who sold all their possession dn people who have ten of everything, the ones I am jealous of are the ones who have peace. They were not the ones with the money. There is sexism, racism and every other ism around. It seeps into every day life and it is never acceptable to just let it lie. But just as challenging something there and then is cause for for ing those responsible to look at and question their base assumptions about how they behave, there is always room to look at our own assumptions, for we are all playing a game called life, there is no umpire, no final score, no second round play offs. Sometimes other people's problems are an opportunity for us. Sometimes just move on. Edit: I got a bit carried away sorry
- smsm42 13y agoSo wait, somebody asks you for an advice, you give advice that they don't like, they don't believe you, go around for more advice and then when everybody says them the same advice they finally realize the advice was right in the first place - you then assume that they didn't accept the advice in the first place because you are "women in industry", not because it is common for people to resist advice they don't like? Well, I don't even know where to start with it...
- zorpner 13y agoMaybe you could start by dismissing their experience (provided as an example, not as a sum total of the problem) and asserting that they need to provide more data and evidence? It's a pretty good way of marginalizing women in tech if that's what you're shooting for.
- smsm42 13y agoI don't "dismiss" anything. Dismiss is defined by Merriam Webster as "to reject serious consideration of" (among other, irrelevant, meanings). I am doing quite the contrary - I seriously considered it and arrived to the conclusion that attributing a common, if unfortunate, occurrence in human interactions as a proof of special, discriminatory treatment of "women in industry" is wrong. Just as wrong as assuming anybody disagreeing with you just didn't consider your arguments - instead of entertaining the possibility they did seriously consider them and found them lacking. I see lately more and more of examples where common problems - from petty nuisances to serious problems between people - are harvested to find various "isms" in them instead of treating them just as problems between humans - and I personally don't like it. >>>> It's a pretty good way of marginalizing women in tech if that's what you're shooting for. Of course that's what I am shooting for. Marginalizing women in tech is my lifelong dream, and every step takes me a bit closer to it. No way it could be I actually want to discuss the particular article and share my thoughts about it - you can easily see thought this ruse and reveal my true and terrible goal. Me pointing out it is a common experience not suggesting any "ism" is just a wheel in the huge oppression mechanism I am constructing. Now you have subverted my plans to oppress women everywhere, but I will retire to my dark fortress and come back with even more evil plan of marginalizing women in tech by pointing out maybe not everybody actually tries to marginalize women in tech. Watch out!
- CurtMonash 13y agoYelling AND saying something insulting at the same time was overkill. Just repeating "Hold on here" or something similar at increasing volumes until other people finally shut up would have had the same benefits. Still insulting, but less so. I interrupt people all the time, male and female alike. (Hey -- if you're paying my rates, you might want to actually hear what I have to say. :D) It does seem more necessary to then go back and ask the women afterwards what they were trying to say; the men generally don't need that kind of prompting.
- DannoHung 13y agoWhat sort of chickenshit operation dings people for getting a bunch of bickering morons to listen to reason? Fuck them. And fuck you if you think there's some sort of more workplace appropriate way to get someone to pay attention when you're being ignored.
- polarix 13y agoIn this case, presumably, Google.
- smsm42 13y agoGoogle is big. Big companies are usually run by bureaucracy and policies. Leave and go work in startup, which are usually run by people. I know, working in Google is cool and pays well. But there's no free lunch. I've always preferred smaller companies where you can actually talk to the CEO (and all people in between) and it's not that bad a place to be.
- michaelhoffman 13y agoI thought all the food at the Googleplex was free, breakfast, dinner, and lunch.
- smsm42 13y agoTurns out, you pay for it, just not in money.
- derefr 13y ago> Leave and go work in startup, which are usually run by people. Keep in mind that, in full cynicism, the "CEO" of an SV startup is the VC; the guy who calls himself "CEO" is a product manager. If you actually want to work at a place where you have any chance of influencing things, make sure you can talk to the investors, not just the folks in your own office. (In a bootstrapped startup, the CEO is the investor, so this just becomes tautological.) [1] http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-principle-questioned-macleods-hierarchy-the-technocrat-and-vc-startups/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-princ... (there's 19 of these; I'd cite them all here, along with the previous Gervais Principle posts)
- tmoertel 13y agoHere's a potentially troubling question: Is it considered Xist, for whatever variable X you're concerned about, to infer anything about some proposition Y based on the observation that X = x? That is, is it Xist to rely upon prior knowledge that X and Y are correlated? Or is it just Xist to make stronger predictions about Y than are supported by the data? Another way of asking the question: If we constructed a perfectly unbiased Bayesian robot and fed it the true distributions of X and Y, would we observe its predictions about Y based on given values of X and conclude that the robot is Xist?
- catshirt 13y agomy take is that this is definitively the case. to correlate Y with X, regardless of context or validity, makes you Xist. yes, this is troubling.
- rsingel 13y agoThe preponderance of comments that "this has happened to me and I'm a guy so the world's not sexist" is so discouraging. It's logically inconsistent and a giant sign of a defense mechanism. It's a problem and you might do some of these things inadvertently, so maybe listen a bit more and figure out how to keep yourself from not doing things like assuming women at a tech conference are in marketing instead of engineering. The fact this thread is filled with a bunch of guys mansplaining how this wasn't sexist behavior is very telling.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nandemo 13y agoIn the first part she asks male co-workers if the same thing had ever happened to them. It seems to me that she's prepared to consider if phenomenon X happens due to sexism or it happens to everyone. It seems that out of the 3 episodes she mentioned, the first one rarely happens to men here, while #2 and #3 happens sometimes do. Of course it might as well be that #2 and #3 happen more often to women, but I don't think anybody is doing a scientific investigation here.
- craigyk 13y agoMaybe she just dresses much better than the average SE. Some people might be equally confused if they walked into the room and where greeted (without introduction) by a guy who was better dressed than they expected.
- mkmkmmmmm 13y agoRegardless of whether they are wrong or not, the fact that you would use a gender-specific word to tell us why all men who disagree are incorrect is very telling.
- craigyk 13y agoUh, but why is it so terrible to make these assumptions? Stereotypes are a major part of how the human species has gotten as far as it has, or even how, as individuals, anyone of us efficiently navigates the society of strangers. What really matters is what happens AFTER sufficient introduction, ie. how quickly mental crutches are thrown out the door. I'm sorry, nothing in her story, except the HR bit, sounded sexist. Even the HR bit is more an observation about how tactless some people are when re-evaluating mistaken preconceptions. I'm done mansplaining now.
- seany 13y agoI'm male, and have had all of these things happen to me. To me this just screams "I'm looking for a reason to espouse my reasoning for my feminism at people". yawn
- wellboy 13y agoThe reason why she got pulled aside was because she wasn't coming across as alpha. Sounds stupid? Having to use drastic measures such as saying: "Put down the crack pipes" shows insecurity. If she had simply stood up, maybe consistently told the guys:"Hey, hey we don't have these...EXCUSE ME!" and then explained in a calm manner what was wrong, she would have earned respect. However, this way she more looked like a hysteric, loose cannon. You have to really be confident (full) of yourself as a woman with a massive personality to guide men in a male-dominated environment and that takes lots of practice and time. Marissa Mayer I'd say is an alpha.
- gehar 13y ago> "This is materially affecting your perf score." No one said which direction the effect went.
- cheald 13y agoBeing pulled aside by your boss after rocking the boat is not likely to be interpreted as anything but negative.
- kolektiv 13y agoWell, another depressing comment thread. A huge pile on of comments essentially of the form "I'm male/white/straight and have ALSO suffered some of these things, therefore you probably haven't experienced discrimination and you should just lighten up". Honestly? This is the best you can do? It would be fantastic if people would take a step back for a moment and try and deeply consider why your initial reaction is not disappointment and anger, but an attempt to deflect or belittle the problem, regardless of whether you made a conscious decision to do so. Of course you're not all sexists/racists/homophobes, but tending towards trusting people would probably benefit us all.
- MartinCron 13y agoOne way to read the "this happens to me too!" comments is that they're not belittling her experience, but validating it. All of us have been disrespected. We all hate it. That's a very shallow understanding of her point. If something is annoying when it happens, it's also extra annoying when it happens just a bit more often because the people around might be just a little bit sexist. Once this community can realize that, without it feeling like an existential threat, we'll all be better off.
- grownseed 13y agoAs a man, I can say I've experienced all the issues described by the OP. Regarding the first one, I was made senior when I was very young, having clients and even certain co-workers at the time respect my opinion was very tough. I got where I was in no small part because of my hard work and my choices, and that was pretty frustrating at first. The other issues I think are relatively common and apply to most people, at least at some point in their careers. Having constructive arguments and listening to others' is a pretty rare skill, generally speaking. Now the article seems to present these issues as if they were solely caused by misogyny. I think it's more about general stereotyping, but also about affected people not knowing how to stand their ground. I got pushed around and ignored for a while, like most people will endure at some point. Getting bitter won't resolve anything, it'll just give people around you a wrong justification for their behavior, making you even more frustrated and bitter. Standing your ground in my opinion is being able to show you didn't get where you are by mistake. And if you happen to be the victim of stereotyping or any kind of discrimination, making a firm point of it will make people think that's all you're about, not your skills or your hard work. It's sad but I guess you can only rise above the bickering, and that in itself can be quite empowering. And if that sort of behavior is common-place in your workplace (as opposed to isolated in which case simply ignoring it works wonders), then you most definitely aren't working for the right people. I despise ignorant discrimination but I can't support people who make it the source of all their problems either.
- davidroberts 13y agoI'm a guy, and while I've never been mistaken for HR, the other things have happened to me from time to time. The guy that listened to someone else before accepting the OP's opinion might have done so because he knew the other person better or respected him more for a non-gender based reason. Or maybe the idea didn't sink in until he heard it twice. Getting attention in a meeting where several loud confident people are pontificating can be difficult if you are not a loud, self-confident person, or if they don't already respect you. But I don't think the OP needed to escalate to crack pipes right away, although it's a great line. A "Guys, we don't use type-two data!" loud enough to be heard over everybody else's voices and repeated until it worked probably would have done the trick without affecting perf scores. It depends on the culture of the group. There is usually some accepted way in a group to interrupt conversations that are going nowhere. My guess is that anyone would have been dinged by that boss for the crack comment, just because that's his way of dealing with things. Also, filling unappreciated and oppressed can become a self-fulfilling prophesy in men as well as women. If you go in there unsure they will pay attention to you, they probably won't. If you go in there thinking, "I'm not going to say much, but when I do, they had better pay attention, because I know what I'm talking about," they will sense it and listen, no matter who you are. One thing I think isn't understood by the women who post things like this is that men are always in competition. It's like a wolf pack where a pecking order must be established. In any meeting some guys who are trying to be alpha are going talk over or ignore other people they perceive as beneath them, or who they want to put beneath them, men as well as women. It's not a gender thing as much as it's a power thing. The way to overcome it is stand up for yourself and to establish your competence in whatever the group respects whether it be fisticuffs in the Army or technical skill in a company. I suspect that the crack pipes remark, coupled with her obviously correct understanding of the problem at hand, won her respect points with her co-workers that will make them more likely to listen to her later on, no matter what the boss thought. In the same way, having her opinion confirmed by another respected person probably made the coworker in the second example more likely to accept her opinion without confirmation the next time. Basically, nobody gets respect right away. It doesn't come with a title, or even because you are a man. If you don't have the type of personality that immediately commands respect, you'll have to earn it step-by-step. Even if you do immediately command it, you can lose it very quickly if you don't show yourself worthy of it. Also men test each other and especially newcomers by teasing or pointed jokes. The ability to "take a joke" is highly respected. It's not an attractive trait, but it happens. You can just ignore it (recommended), or you can do it better than they do. Depends on your personality. It usually stops after a while. Complaining about it usually makes it worse. In one sense, if men are doing this to a woman among them, it means they have accepted her to some extent. Now all she has to do is start working her way up the pecking order. A sardonic smile and a comeback (even a dumb one) can work wonders in this situation. None of this, however should be taken as a reason to accept actual sexual harassment by word or deed. If that happens, a clear, sharp "I'm sorry, what did you just say???" or "Get your hands off me!" is called for, followed by a trip to that person's supervisor or higher until the matter is resolved.
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- HunterV 13y agoFor some reason whenever I read something like this I always imagine the workplace being like the environment in Office Space. I mean, what's a perf score? Why does everyone bureaucratize everything? We have such finite lives, why are we putting ourselves through this? Join a startup, go freelance, take the pay cut and enjoy life. You have a skill that is highly sought after, you'll find a job where you're happier, if you don't, move on. I swear, I know of so many notable startups (that are real companies with real revenues, with real benefits, great locations) that are dying to have more tech talent. What I'm saying is that if you're going to be miserable in your work place, move on with your life!
- kstenerud 13y agoYes, yelling out "put down your crack pipes!" will reduce your perf score, and rightfully so. You are a PROFESSIONAL. A professional does not lose her cool or insult others. When two people have entered into an increasingly intense discussion, they WON'T notice anyone else unless actively interrupted. Once you understand this, the solution to stopping the recursive loop is to force a non-maskable interrupt, like so: "Uh, guys... Guys. Guys! Hey! Stop! Listen!" You raise your voice just enough to ensure that they hear you, with no irritation present in your voice. Once they're interrupted, you tell them the news. Insulting them with the quip about crack pipes is absolutely the wrong thing to do, and your boss is right in chastising you.
- MartinCron 13y agowith no irritation present in your voice If people are being irritating, showing some irritation should be expected, no?
- kstenerud 13y agoIt's far better not to add emotion to an already emotional situation. Be the defuser, not the catalyst.
- MartinCron 13y agoI'll agree that it's better, but it's not entirely realistic to expect (let alone require) everyone to react in a non-emotional way. I don't agree that the crack pipes comment is exactly wise or tactful, but it's at least understandable in context.
- catshirt 13y agoit was advice, not an expectation.
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- trustfundbaby 13y agoThat whole thing where your opinion is overlooked for a second (usually white male) opinion happens to you if you're not white or Asian or ridiculously gifted in programming too. The first few time it happened, I thought it was just kind of odd and my fault in someway, but after 10 years in the industry, I can tell you categorically that its not a fluke. Reminds me of this quote ... "White men have to prove their incompetence. Everyone else has to prove their competence" --- Mike Perham That is not to say that everyone in tech is racist and/or sexist, I think its more of an unconscious bias, much the same way someone (even women) might walk into a car parts store and walk right past the female attendant to a male one to ask a question about car parts or how a white kid on a basketball court might be picked last because there are black kids on the court. I think it is pretty insidious and eventually I think we will figure out a way to help our industry get rid of these unconscious biases
- DenisM 13y agoI'm a fairly loud guy, and my input used to get ignored all the time. I know it's gut-wrenching to see things going down the drain where you could stop them if only anyone would listen. In my experience it's not a curse of being a woman or even being a quiet person, it's a curse of being the most competent person in the room. Congrats on that.
- MartinCron 13y agoI think Rachel's point is not that it only happens to her because she's a woman, but that she feels that it happens to her more often or more acutely because she's a woman. I don't dare presume to know her life enough to tell her she's wrong about that feeling. Saying that it happens to you as well doesn't exactly work as a refutation.
- jerrya 13y ago"Did IQs drop sharply while I was away?" So I've said this in meetings, hasn't everyone? (And I bet I would say something like "Put down the crack pipe") I can certainly believe there would be managers (and companies) that might take exception to this, but it would be justified only if their meetings were exceedingly well run. I'd hate to work for a manager or a company that took exception to that though to the point of dinging me on a performance review. Most people work at their company's location 8, 10, 12 hours per day. It's one thing to ask employees to not harass other employees. It another thing to demand of all employees they act like robots or be accused of unprofessional behavior.
- jholman 13y agoIf you want to convince someone who doubts the existence of the "cat food factory", these examples suck. Okay, the assuming the woman is from HR but that the guy is from Eng, yeah, we all believe that one. It hasn't happened to us guys, maybe we can imagine making that mistake (and regretting it), etc. But the other two stories? That shit happens to guys all the time. Yeah, sometimes people won't believe you. And then they'll ask someone else. And eventually they'll believe someone else, maybe. And that someone else will probably be a guy.... because almost everyone in tech is a guy. I'm constantly getting ignored, and then some guy gets listened to (I'm a guy). And as for the "crack pipes" story, we don't really have enough details, but it's VERY easy to read that story and think "damn right you screwed up". And I've been ignored and talked over (I'm a loud guy). So, yeah, that stuff happens to men. Of course, the real question is not "do these things happen to women and not men". That's like saying "[all] men are taller than [all] women", it's obviously false, because sometimes I meet women over 6' tall. But of course we know that both mean and median female heights are lower than male... the whole curve is offset by like 5" in the USA. It's totally plausible that the distribution of respect at technical skill discriminates in favour of males. It's plausible that it doesn't, or that the effect is pretty small. If you want to convince an unbeliever, a few examples of moderate disrespect are like pointing out a few examples of 5'6" guys (taller than the median US female). It's just not persuasive! And, in fact, in my opinion, it's worse than non-persuasive. It gives the people who don't believe you (and don't want to) a straw man to fixate on. "That shit happened to me too [and it did!] and therefore her claim about privilege is wrong [wait, what]." If you want to advance a cause, you would do well to make sure you only emit Grade-A arguments. I don't know whether there is a "cat food factory" chopping up "fish" in the tech industry. I would guess rachelbythebay knows better than me (she's closer to the issue, and IIRC she's logged more time in the industry), but I am skeptical about whether or not she really knows either. Maybe I'm wrong and she has attempted to do science on the subject. But if she has only her own experience (as I have only my own), then her interpretive bias will be a huge factor in her conclusions (as mine is in mine). Just as my ego benefits when I fool myself into believing that my privilege plays only a tiny role in my success (mock me here, please), her ego would benefit if she were to fool herself into overstating the benefits of the privilege that she does not have (and understating the benefits of the privileges she does have).
- erikpukinskis 13y agoIt's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has a great depiction of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvSx7-CTTl4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvSx7-CTTl4 One of the funniest moments in the whole series.
- johngalt 13y agoWhen I'm being interviewed I ask everyone involved where they are coming from. It's de rigueur for a number of reasons. First, one of the best ways to understand someone is to listen to their perspective. Second, it's good etiquette and people will like you more if you listen to them talking about themselves. Third, how am I supposed to sell to you if I don't know you? How could you not ask this question of your interviewer and expect it to go well? edit: looking back on how many interviews where I've done this. I hope I've not offended anyone by not assuming they were a certain <status_jobtitle>. Frankly, I just don't know enough about them to guess. So I have to ask. If they're the type that gets bent out of shape because I couldn't tell job title from their halo then perhaps we aren't a good fit anyway.
- lsiebert 13y agoOP is trying to do her job, and prevent issues. They ignore her to the point where she has to do something extreme to pay attention, and then have the nerve to be offended? Seriously, if you want your company to do well, you don't punish people who speak up to prevent problems. I don't care if it's discrimination, because of her gender, whatever. It's bad for the business. In general, discrimination is bad for business because it means people do things they shouldn't, like ignore engineers who know their shit, or take extra time to get a second opinion when the first was from a knowledgeable source. Discrimination costs your business money, and not because of some theoretical lawsuits. Now, sure people will get ignored when they shouldn't be. People will get second opinions for a variety of reasons when they don't need to. There is no perfect company. But we know logically, WE KNOW, that it's stupid to discount someone because of their gender. So while we may not be able to prevent all such screwups where smart people aren't heeded, here is an obvious case where this shit shouldn't happen. And that's the lesson to take away from this. Here is something that is fixable that hurts the business, leads to pointless meetings and the cause is known. If it was an engineering problem in your stack, you'd be fixing it by now. This is probably going to get buried, sadly. Maybe it deserves it's own post.
- Evbn 13y agoSeriously, get together with Michael OChurch and do a YouTube/podcast show "Everyone in Tech is Evil and Dumb". It would be super entertaining, and you could sell premium ad space for those techie eyeballs.
- rdl 13y agoIt should have materially affected the perf score; you saved them how much trouble by eventually getting them to notice this? That should be a 10-20% bump at least.