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I'm replying to my own comment to attach an opinion to it (I want the original comment to remain neutral). But, maybe we can't have women in IT because people l

I'm replying to my own comment to attach an opinion to it (I want the original comment to remain neutral). But, maybe we can't have women in IT because people like Bryan Cantrill can't avoid attaching themselves and company to even the most trivial gender issues and posting inflammatory blog posts about it? I'd wager that there are less women in IT because of behaviour like Bryan's and a company like Joyent that will host his views than there are because of declined pull requests.

waterlion 13y ago
From what I've seen, this is the result of polarised thinking. There are lots of issues upon which campaigners are unwilling to accept any compromise on any level. Case in point feminism. Women have put up with a lot over the years and I can understand someone being angry and having the courage of their convictions as a result. In a way, I respect that. It's their prerogative to try and bring about change. Refusing to enter into dialogue over certain issues will certainly not win anyone over who isn't already on their side, but admitting that things aren't black and white is admitting that they could be wrong. But mixing take-no-prisoners thinking with the workplace and you can end up with a very poisonous atmosphere. You always need some flexibility of thought, however strong your views, because sooner or later a situation will come up which requires clarification and discussion. Not everything is black and white, and sometimes there are mistakes and misunderstandings. I think the error bars on that github activity are wide enough that we can't be certain. This blog rant reflects very badly on Joyent. I think it shows that Bryan Cantrill has exceptionally poor judgment. Bryan says "we believe that empathy is a core engineering value". That seems a bit hypocritical given his behaviour.
ben0x539 13y ago
That seems like a really silly notion...

waterlion 13y ago

From what I've seen, this is the result of polarised thinking. There are lots of issues upon which campaigners are unwilling to accept any compromise on any level. Case in point feminism. Women have put up with a lot over the years and I can understand someone being angry and having the courage of their convictions as a result. In a way, I respect that. It's their prerogative to try and bring about change. Refusing to enter into dialogue over certain issues will certainly not win anyone over who isn't already on their side, but admitting that things aren't black and white is admitting that they could be wrong. But mixing take-no-prisoners thinking with the workplace and you can end up with a very poisonous atmosphere. You always need some flexibility of thought, however strong your views, because sooner or later a situation will come up which requires clarification and discussion. Not everything is black and white, and sometimes there are mistakes and misunderstandings. I think the error bars on that github activity are wide enough that we can't be certain. This blog rant reflects very badly on Joyent. I think it shows that Bryan Cantrill has exceptionally poor judgment. Bryan says "we believe that empathy is a core engineering value". That seems a bit hypocritical given his behaviour.

ben0x539 13y ago

That seems like a really silly notion...