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This should be an event put on by a women's organization, sponsored by github. As a github event, it is alienating, off putting, sexist, and creepy. Male prog

This should be an event put on by a women's organization, sponsored by github. As a github event, it is alienating, off putting, sexist, and creepy. Male programmers need public speaking skills just as much as female programmers do. What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly have quotas favoring women developers. Edit: It's a shame downvotes do not require that a comment in reply first be made.

chc 13y ago
OK, here's a comment: This is neither sexist nor creepy, and nobody said that male programmers don't need public speaking skills. There are already lots of events that primarily attract male programmers. Do you know what they call those? "Events." It doesn't even need to be stated that men will be vastly overrepresented compared to the general population — that is simply the way it is. Men are already served quite well in the tech world. It is one of the most man-heavy fields in existence. You are not being persecuted here. More generally, this is not a zero-sum game being played between the sexes. It is possible to hurt one sex while helping the other, but the existence of something that benefits women does not automatically threaten us as men. And even worse, this kind of angry opposition to things that benefit women do take from them without conferring any benefit to you. This kind of hostile negativity is not a good thing.
- __pThrow 13y ago
  I appreciate the response. So you're telling me there are more public speaking workshops for male developers than female developers? I'm not sure I believe that. I think ALL developers could benefit from this workshop. And that inviting all developers would still provide women the skills they need to become successful public speakers. I agree, this is not a zero sum game, but github just turned it into one. If you are a github employee and now have public speaking skills on your resume as well perhaps as a speech or two at a conference, your career will probably do better than the male github employee without, who, contrary to your claims, is underserved with public speaking workshops and the networking opportunities they will provide.
  - chc 13y ago
    I'm telling you that there is no shortage of events for developers where you can go and see very few if any women at all. Go look at any picture from any local programming meetup if you would like to confirm this. And no, Github did not turn anything into a zero-sum game. And no, male Github employees are not now forbidden from gaining public speaking skills. That is just needlessly dramatic. Take a step back and ask yourself, "Does the landscape I see in the field of software development really look like one where women have a large advantage over me and I need to defend my sex from them?" I posit that the answer is "No, male programmers are doing just fine for themselves and Github is not endangering them in any way through this workshop."
    - __pThrow 13y ago
      An interesting question might be what percentage of male developers are public speakers? And what percentage of female developers are public speakers? I am certainly not in a position to make an educated guess, do you want to make any sort of estimate?
      - chc 13y ago
        It's easier to answer if we frame the question a bit differently: What percentage of public speakers are male developers and what percentage of public speakers are female developers? Looking at tech conference schedules, it appears that either female speakers are systematically discriminated against or there just aren't very many of them.
        __pThrow 13y ago
        So an outreach program for women speakers can't address systematic discrimination -- you have to fix the conferences themselves for that. You can reach out to more women, and invite them to apply, but it is sexist discrimination to offer women only training in public speaking on the basis that a certain group of conferences is under-represented. You would reach the same outcome, more qualified women speakers, if you offer that training to anyone who wants it. Same outcome, but one approach is sexist, and one approach is inclusive of everyone. What you are trying to do is guarantee an outcome. Some ratio of women speakers at conferences that satisfies your requirement. Approaches like that usually lead to sexism and discrimination. A better approach is to a) ensure there is an ample supply of well qualified people for your conferences and then b) encourage conferences to perform better outreach to the kinds of speakers they are seeking. Approaches like that are non-sexist and inclusive. As I said, github, an employer, should not be seen directly giving women, even non-employees, preferential treatment. If they want to donate to a women's group putting on such a workshop, that would be a different matter. Edit to add: chc, we have run out of thread reply. What is HN etiquette on that? I will say I disagree with your reply that somehow women are disadvantaged in public speaking. Having fewer women at conferences is not evidence of any disadvantage that merits a discrimination based remedy. And even if so, such a disadvantage! We're not talking job discrimination, income equality, firing policies, etc., we're talking about public speaking something that applies to very very few people across the IT world. A remedy to that does not require sexist discriminatory approaches.
vacri 13y ago
It's a shame downvotes do not require that a comment in reply first be made. Since it looks like you're going for a rather fake attempt at gender equality, one wonders why you aren't also requesting that any upvoters also equally justify themselves with a comment.
king_jester 13y ago
> What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly have quotas favoring women developers. I like how you mix affirmative action quotas, sexism, and having an agenda all together as though Github is orchestrating some anti-male conspiracy. 1) Putting on a workshop for women on public speaking != hiring quotas based on gender 2) Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way 3) There is nothing wrong with having an agenda, people and organizations have them all the time
- __pThrow 13y ago
  If I see a company engaging in any discriminatory activity, I have a reason to suspect that sort of discriminatory attitude runs rampant throughout the company right through the executive offices.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    In this case discrimination means a company that is willing to put on events to help women participate more in a community where they are the minority and face unique difficulties because of that. This kind of choice for Github doesn't harm men, men are still the dominant group and will continue to be so even after this workshop is over.
- Nursie 13y ago
  >> Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way I am not a dominant group, I am an individual and I am excluded based on my genitals. This does not seem right.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    First of all, genitals != gender. Second, if you are a cisgender man, then yes you are a part of the dominant group in tech. Lastly, this one public speaking workshop doesn't change anything about gender balances and dynamics in tech and conferences, so this really doesn't threaten men in a any way unless you consider extra participation from women in the tech community to be a threat.
jacalata 13y ago
I suspect that if anyone at GitHub cares, they are chalking up '__pThrow will never work for us' as another benefit of putting on this workshop. It's a convenient signalling device, which not only achieves something they value, but advertises their culture and helps prospective employees know whether or not they'd be a 'good culture fit' and self cull. Pretty impressive of them!

chc 13y ago

OK, here's a comment: This is neither sexist nor creepy, and nobody said that male programmers don't need public speaking skills. There are already lots of events that primarily attract male programmers. Do you know what they call those? "Events." It doesn't even need to be stated that men will be vastly overrepresented compared to the general population — that is simply the way it is. Men are already served quite well in the tech world. It is one of the most man-heavy fields in existence. You are not being persecuted here. More generally, this is not a zero-sum game being played between the sexes. It is possible to hurt one sex while helping the other, but the existence of something that benefits women does not automatically threaten us as men. And even worse, this kind of angry opposition to things that benefit women do take from them without conferring any benefit to you. This kind of hostile negativity is not a good thing.

__pThrow 13y ago
I appreciate the response. So you're telling me there are more public speaking workshops for male developers than female developers? I'm not sure I believe that. I think ALL developers could benefit from this workshop. And that inviting all developers would still provide women the skills they need to become successful public speakers. I agree, this is not a zero sum game, but github just turned it into one. If you are a github employee and now have public speaking skills on your resume as well perhaps as a speech or two at a conference, your career will probably do better than the male github employee without, who, contrary to your claims, is underserved with public speaking workshops and the networking opportunities they will provide.
- chc 13y ago
  I'm telling you that there is no shortage of events for developers where you can go and see very few if any women at all. Go look at any picture from any local programming meetup if you would like to confirm this. And no, Github did not turn anything into a zero-sum game. And no, male Github employees are not now forbidden from gaining public speaking skills. That is just needlessly dramatic. Take a step back and ask yourself, "Does the landscape I see in the field of software development really look like one where women have a large advantage over me and I need to defend my sex from them?" I posit that the answer is "No, male programmers are doing just fine for themselves and Github is not endangering them in any way through this workshop."
  - __pThrow 13y ago
    An interesting question might be what percentage of male developers are public speakers? And what percentage of female developers are public speakers? I am certainly not in a position to make an educated guess, do you want to make any sort of estimate?
    - chc 13y ago
      It's easier to answer if we frame the question a bit differently: What percentage of public speakers are male developers and what percentage of public speakers are female developers? Looking at tech conference schedules, it appears that either female speakers are systematically discriminated against or there just aren't very many of them.
      - __pThrow 13y ago
        So an outreach program for women speakers can't address systematic discrimination -- you have to fix the conferences themselves for that. You can reach out to more women, and invite them to apply, but it is sexist discrimination to offer women only training in public speaking on the basis that a certain group of conferences is under-represented. You would reach the same outcome, more qualified women speakers, if you offer that training to anyone who wants it. Same outcome, but one approach is sexist, and one approach is inclusive of everyone. What you are trying to do is guarantee an outcome. Some ratio of women speakers at conferences that satisfies your requirement. Approaches like that usually lead to sexism and discrimination. A better approach is to a) ensure there is an ample supply of well qualified people for your conferences and then b) encourage conferences to perform better outreach to the kinds of speakers they are seeking. Approaches like that are non-sexist and inclusive. As I said, github, an employer, should not be seen directly giving women, even non-employees, preferential treatment. If they want to donate to a women's group putting on such a workshop, that would be a different matter. Edit to add: chc, we have run out of thread reply. What is HN etiquette on that? I will say I disagree with your reply that somehow women are disadvantaged in public speaking. Having fewer women at conferences is not evidence of any disadvantage that merits a discrimination based remedy. And even if so, such a disadvantage! We're not talking job discrimination, income equality, firing policies, etc., we're talking about public speaking something that applies to very very few people across the IT world. A remedy to that does not require sexist discriminatory approaches.

vacri 13y ago

It's a shame downvotes do not require that a comment in reply first be made. Since it looks like you're going for a rather fake attempt at gender equality, one wonders why you aren't also requesting that any upvoters also equally justify themselves with a comment.

king_jester 13y ago

> What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly have quotas favoring women developers. I like how you mix affirmative action quotas, sexism, and having an agenda all together as though Github is orchestrating some anti-male conspiracy. 1) Putting on a workshop for women on public speaking != hiring quotas based on gender 2) Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way 3) There is nothing wrong with having an agenda, people and organizations have them all the time

__pThrow 13y ago
If I see a company engaging in any discriminatory activity, I have a reason to suspect that sort of discriminatory attitude runs rampant throughout the company right through the executive offices.
- king_jester 13y ago
  In this case discrimination means a company that is willing to put on events to help women participate more in a community where they are the minority and face unique difficulties because of that. This kind of choice for Github doesn't harm men, men are still the dominant group and will continue to be so even after this workshop is over.
Nursie 13y ago
>> Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way I am not a dominant group, I am an individual and I am excluded based on my genitals. This does not seem right.
- king_jester 13y ago
  First of all, genitals != gender. Second, if you are a cisgender man, then yes you are a part of the dominant group in tech. Lastly, this one public speaking workshop doesn't change anything about gender balances and dynamics in tech and conferences, so this really doesn't threaten men in a any way unless you consider extra participation from women in the tech community to be a threat.

jacalata 13y ago

I suspect that if anyone at GitHub cares, they are chalking up '__pThrow will never work for us' as another benefit of putting on this workshop. It's a convenient signalling device, which not only achieves something they value, but advertises their culture and helps prospective employees know whether or not they'd be a 'good culture fit' and self cull. Pretty impressive of them!