17 ms·

Subtle -isms at Hacker School

67 points by nqureshi 12y ago

jordigh 12y ago
Mostly unrelated, but I wanted to say that I really enjoyed Kaptur's analysis of Python's import statement during this year's Pycon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS5kXzbsLLQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS5kXzbsLLQ
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jraines 12y ago
What's the difference between a "well, actually" and correcting someone's misunderstanding -- or rather, when is it not welcome? My understanding is that it's when someone parachutes into a conversation uninvited to correct someone, but if I was in a learning setting like Hacker School, I feel like I would welcome that from fellow students or instructors.
- floil 12y ago
  A well-actually occurs when someone's understanding is 90% correct, and someone comes along and says, heroically, "you're entirely wrong, because of this missing 10%". When iterated this kind of grandstanding erodes the confidence of someone who's working with a partial understanding, which in truth is all of us.
  - mcguire 12y ago
    Particularly if the missing 10% is completely unrelated to the situation under discussion. "Ok, so the client contacts the server and receives the result, but half of the result is missing, so...." "Well, actually, the client uses DNS to look up the server's address first." "Ok, thanks. Now I know." A well-done well-actually is a brilliant demonstration of superiority.
- antics 12y ago
  I was in the Summer 2013 batch. There is no hard-and-fast rule for figuring out what is and is not a well-actually, but the biggest factors (at least for me) are (1) did it derail the conversation, (2) did my correcting someone make it less acceptable to not know something, and (3) was my motivation to do something like show off? I've been guilty of all 3. Anecdotally, I found that the effect of this lightweight rule was that at HS it was very much ok to not know something, and let me tell you, adjusting to the real world, where that is subtly untrue, is a trial. As for the "parachuting in" problem, that's essentially the gist of a different lightweight social rule, "no backseat driving". :)
  - mcguire 12y ago
    "(1) did it derail the conversation, (2) did my correcting someone make it less acceptable to not know something, and (3) was my motivation to do something like show off?" Hallelujah! Someone who understands! :-) [1] I've done it as well, and I hate it when I realize I am. I suspect the worse part of HS' policies is exactly that "adjusting to the real world, where [it was very much ok to not know something] is subtly untrue, is a trial." In the typical business environment, appearing not to know something is a very unsubtle weakness. [1] I'm completely unrelated to Hacker School.
- diminoten 12y ago
  It just seems like in order to get the most out of Hacker School one has to act with positive intent but otherwise entirely ignore the rules. It looks immensely easy to fall into a trap of caring too much about the rules and not caring enough about the code, and I can imagine a large group of people trying to play along rather than try to become better "hackers". "Ohh, I'm sorry, you did actually just save us from three hours of bashing our head into a wall by recommending a specific algorithm, but you also broke the rules. For shame!"
  - mcguire 12y ago
    I suspect that to get the most out of Hacker School one has to act with positive intent and otherwise entirely ignore the rules, but be prepared to admit that one's behavior is not already perfect.
- sp332 12y ago
  http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html As a child, I wondered why my sister could make friends and keep them so easily, while I could not. It would take me years to discover this. And now, as a public service I am sharing with you, my fellow geek friends, what I learned. Whoever pulls a "well, actually" almost always shifts the conversation to himself.
- daffodil2 12y ago
  A "well actually" occurs when a person is splitting hairs. This can be desirable, for example when you're trying to obtain a complete understanding of something. But in normal conversation, such pedanticism is often annoying. The "well actually" policy, as I understand it, is an attempt to make such hair splitting "opt-in" rather than "opt-out".
HarrietJones 12y ago
Well today's my day to be the not-so-subtle-ist asshole at Hacker News. It's one thing to recognise that systemic forms of bias and discrimination can be subtle and invisible to those trying to fix them, but all this sort of thing does is hand more keys over to a small subset of people who are less interested in making the world more equal and more interested in grabbing, holding and exercising social power. Shaming rituals, however light in touch they are, rarely improve things. They're just another small-p political tool to be used by politically minded people to exert social control.
- Zikes 12y ago
  The ban on debates is particularly jarring. I get the idea, a debate could easily turn into a heated argument, but if someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not then I'm certainly not going to apologize for it. If they want to maintain a civil environment that's able to call out subtle -isms, then they should simply accept "no, it wasn't" just as freely as "oops, sorry".
  - mcguire 12y ago
    "...someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not" It's good that you can recognize that you are being offensive and honest enough not to let embarrassment prevent you from reacting appropriately when you are. [Yes, I rather expected this to be down-voted.]
  - davorak 12y ago
    > The ban on debates is particularly jarring. That does not mean you would not be able to ask for clarification, concrete examples, how it has a negative effect. > if someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not then I'm certainly not going to apologize for it. It has not thing with being or having intent to be homophobic, sexist, etc. It is about some phrases being much more likely to have such intent and meaning in society in general. It is unrealistic to expect a N random someones hearing a subtl-ism to understand the speaker's internal meaning of a phrase or word. While those N random people should endeavor to not jump to conclusions about the speakers internal meaning, for the most part all they can go off of is how society uses the word/phrase.
api 12y ago
I ask this as a general question to all of tech culture, not to just this particular setting: What about subtile elitism? It's one of the biggest subtile -isms I've run into. If you didn't go to a top ten university, you're sort of in a lower echelon in the tech world. In practice this subtilely selects for people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and/or people who have an "academic-oriented" learning style as opposed to an autodidact or self-directed learning style. It also contributes to America's regional class system... the top ten schools are by and large on the coasts. If you're from, say, Kansas or Ohio you are less likely to attend one of them than if you're from California or Massachusetts. My impression for a long time has been that a significant chunk of the tech world is a top ten universities only club full of Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc. graduates hiring, funding, and promoting other top university graduates. You could play a drinking game on sites like AngelList: take a shot every time someone lists "attended MIT" or "graduated from Stanford" as their sole qualification for being a founder or seeking a job. Racism and sexism definitely exist, but from what I've seen socioeconomic elitism is the most powerful discriminatory -ism in the tech world. It's not an either-or thing of course. It just adds yet another barrier that outsiders must overcome. Barriers are kind of additive... each barrier reinforces the other pre-existing barriers by adding another point of resistance. I've got to admit that this is a personal gripe. I'm from the flyover country, and I'm also not an academic type. I hated school for the most part. I just don't learn that way. But for some reason listing things like "has single-handedly conceived, designed, implemented, and shipped the following products..." or "taught myself 6502 assembly language at the age of ten using only the appendix of the Commodore 64 extended manual" just doesn't carry the same weight as "graduated from Stanford." Even if I could say "graduated with honors from the University of Cincinnati," I doubt this would carry near as much oomph as "attended MIT" even if my grades at MIT were poor. I can't imagine being female or black/hispanic and not having the top ten degree. I feel like without "MIT" or "Stanford" I have to be twice as smart and work twice as hard. It feels like it's exponential. If I were not white and male I'd have to work... what... sixteen times as hard? Edit: HN won't let me comment on this thread any more, so I'll put my responses here: Re: elite universities equalizing admissions: no, it doesn't matter. There are 300+ million people in America and 7+ billion on Earth. Your odds of getting "tapped" by one of these kingmakers is vanishingly small regardless of how smart you are or how hard you work. Tweaking the selection bias of a tiny choke point does not change the overall size of that gate. Re: the thread in general: whenever these kinds of threads come up, I find myself disagreeing with both the PC police and the hordes of right-wingers that materialize out of the ether. I really say a pox on both their houses. The wingers are hopelessly naive about the realities of discrimination. The PC police sort of have their hearts in the right place, but the problem is that PC stuff addresses the wrong causes. Women don't find it uncomfortable to work in tech because of phrases like "man up" or "hey guys." They find themselves excluded for more subtile reasons of cliquishness and in-group selection. These cliquish mechanisms are the same ones that give rise to top ten university bias, racial bias, cultural bias, etc. It's a microcosmic manifestation of what on the larger social stage is called the "old boy network." Playing language police is a lot easier than trying to really break up the cliques. The latter is incredibly difficult, as humans are tribal and cliquish by nature. Still unable to post. I'm not going to forcefully assert some kind of soft-banning since as far as I know I'm being fooled by randomness, but I have noticed that "you are posting too fast" tends to appear in a way that seems uncorrelated to how fast I'm actually posting. Maybe it's just a strange algorithm with weird edge case behaviors. But... I did want to post this: http://www.broadstreetreview.com/cross-cultural/Demise_of_Antioch_College http://www.broadstreetreview.com/cross-cultural/Demise_of_An... It is highly relevant, as I think it illustrates how PC policing can lead to a kind of "Animal Farm" scenario. While the rhetoric might be all about diversity, the reality is that diversity rhetoric can be used as another mechanism for the real power clique to maintain its dominance.
doctorstupid 12y ago
Sounds like a cult-ism.
PeterGriffin 12y ago
I'm sorry, but I'm starting to get a bit sick of Hacker Schools constant whining about rules. If you want to encourage a specific culture you do this by starting with a small set of people who have this culture in their bones, then growing slowly and assimilating more people into that culture, addressing deviations swiftly and letting people get back to their work afterwards, without skipping a beat. Not by writing manuals, and then stressing everyone with looooong, reaaaaally long and exhausting "we need to talk" style posts, where we hold hands, talk about how it's so difficult to open your mouth and say something that's not offensive, and how we're far from perfect, and in fact, we're all sinners. It's not that the intent is wrong. But this way of going about it is so extremely taxing on everybody, creating an atmosphere where everything people say is judged on the "-isms" scale. It means when you talk, you're terrified of what you're saying. When you listen, you listen for someone to say something so you can point your finger at them.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  What's the difference between your proposal and a policy of starting as a closely knit monoculture, and only accepting people that share that culture? Isn't that exactly what you should be trying to avoid?
  - PeterGriffin 12y ago
    No, why would this be something to try to avoid? Sexism and racism is a kind of cultural trait, I hope you realize that. A culture may be selective on very different criteria. It can easily be blind to gender, race, age, religion, nation and many more, yet have certain very specific values. And letting people in who have the opposite values are toxic to that culture. You can't have a culture that's "open to everything". It means you have no culture, you just adopt the zeitgeist unmodified. Everything goes. If this was the goal, this thread wouldn't exist.
    - mcguire 12y ago
      I'm sorry, I don't understand your comment. Are you trying to say that the field of technology development in general or programming specifically would be toxicly harmed if certain groups of people, identified by "gender, race, age, religion, nation and many more", are allowed in to it? Or are you trying to say that objecting to people attacking others on the basis of gender, race, age, religion, nationality, etc., would be toxic to the culture of the field?
pbreit 12y ago
Really, there has to be a rule about not debating what an "-ism" is?? This seems a little much for a coding seminar. How about "Don't be a Jerk" or nothing at all.
- mcguire 12y ago
  True, 'cause, after all, the last thing jerks want is to spend an hour or so presenting arguments and evidences that they aren't really jerks, after such as been pointed out to them.
invadedby 12y ago
This is a throwaway account. I feel we are being invaded. The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them. It developed through text were it hardly matter who was on the other side of the connection, only skills and thoughts mattered. Those were the good old days, when we were free. Now we are being invaded. We, like every other culture in the world, are ask to not use certain language and not have certain thoughts. If we do not comply, we are heretics. Only they don't use that term, they rather use some ism. The wheel of history is repeating. The control freaks still want to control, they just changed one set of sins for another.
- resu_nimda 12y ago
  The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them. This reads like a 4chan teenager's manifesto. Alright, a bunch of nerds in their basements who are just so edgy and can say whatever they want. Badass! Well, you might be pleased to know that you're totally free to carry on the misanthropy club in plenty of areas of the internet. But here on Hacker News, and apparently especially at Hacker School, a lot of people that are actually coming from within the culture would like to see some change. When I read this article, I too was annoyed. I felt it was over the top, way too politically correct. But then I read the comments here, and it's basically all these people coming out of the woodwork and vaulting right over the spirit of understanding in their haste to defend their right to be acerbic assholes. They're not trying to silence you, they're just trying to implement guidelines that foster inclusion and collaboration. Is that really so awful?
  - invadedby 12y ago
    This reads like a 4chan teenager's manifesto. a bunch of nerds in their basements How can you talk that way and the next moment talk about fostering inclusion?
    - rev_bird 12y ago
      The guy calling "let's strive for inclusive language" an invasion by thought police probably doesn't get to drive the hypocrisy bus.
cjf4 12y ago
At a certain point don't you have to trust people to be adults? If someone's being a "subtle" racist, they're just being racist, and you can deal accordingly (likewise for the rest of the "subtlisms"). Beyond that, if you want people to act with maturity, you have to treat them like adults, which these rules certainly don't do.
- nawitus 12y ago
  The problem is that it's there's no objective definition of racism, instead there are wildly different (and well-reasoned) positions. Some people think that even "believing" 'races' exist is racist, for starters. Perhaps even believing that someone could be justified in "believing" 'races' exist is racist in someone's mind. Then there's the whole debate about whether positive discrimination is racist or not, or if it's racist to prefer to have a relationship with one's "own race" etc. I guess the point thing is that racism is an extremely complex social issue with a lot of (well-argued) positions on a large number of questions. On top of this, there's this idea of "subtle racism", which could include things that should be allowed if "suble racism" is defined by extremely politically correct people, or which could include only things that actually are racist according to some decent arguments.
- davidbalbert 12y ago
  I'm one of the founders of Hacker School. We care tremendously about treating people like adults[1]. If you think the social rules don't treat people like adults, you're fundamentally misunderstanding them. The purpose of the rules is to make us all aware of the ways that we can unintentionally frustrate and hurt each other, not to shame people. The rules are not enforced top down, nor do you get in trouble if you break one. The way you treat a person like an adult is by being honest with them when they make you feel frustrated or uncomfortable and having an adult conversation about it. Our job is to build an environment where everyone at Hacker School feels safe to focus on becoming a better programmer. I don't think you could find a single Hacker Schooler who would disagree that the social rules made for a better environment, and there've been well over 350 so far. [1] cf. https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/28-treating-people-like-adults https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/28-treating-people-like-ad...
fred_durst 12y ago
I think Hacker School's own words about why they no longer give feedback is a great example of what happens when one hyper analyzes the context and connotation of everything a person says and does. https://www.hackerschool.com/feedback https://www.hackerschool.com/feedback Eventually, everyone stops communicating and just says nothing to avoid the possibility of saying the wrong thing.
- mmcwilliams 12y ago
  I think it merely emphasizes that doing something "right" is hard and that sometimes over promising leads to less-than-ideal interactions for two parties at once. The page you links to essentially says, "we didn't like doing it and people didn't like receiving it." There is nothing wrong with wanting to give quality feedback rather than a hasty response that communicates dismissal.
ojbyrne 12y ago
I thought the significant absence of "age-ism" in the lists of biases to be a somewhat unsubtle "-ism." Because, you know old white men can't be the victim of bias, they're the enemy.
pessimizer 12y ago
This is an impossible rule to enforce, even lightly, when large portions of the population don't even recognize that those classes of prejudice exist, especially within them or their friends, their family (except their grandparents, which I hear about a lot), their class, their culture, or even their country. As everybody knows on the internet: The real bigotry is pointing out bigotry. A real solution is to have an opinion as an organization about specific classes of offense, and a process to deal with them. Not saying what an "-ism" is seems like the opposite of that plan. Instead of creating a minefield, build a path. Kick out anyone who doesn't follow it after having been warned. Will you be reprimanded for saying something about Libertarians? If not, how about Democrats or Republicans? If not, how about war spending, religion, oil pipelines, or Social Security? Be specific about what the policy prohibits, and why the organization has drawn its particular line.
bshimmin 12y ago
It's really heartening that this has gone down like a lead balloon here. Seriously, anyone who manages to take offence at a mixed group being greeted with "you guys" really needs to find something better to do. It doesn't consciously or unconsciously make anyone's life worse. It's just a couple of words that are a convenient greeting.
- Zikes 12y ago
  I once had a foreign friend comment on the unfortunate lack of a plural form for "you" in English. We Southerners tried to solve that problem ages ago with "y'all" but the rest of the country apparently doesn't care for it.
  - bshimmin 12y ago
    Well, going back a few centuries further, we used to have thou/thee (nominative/objective singular) and ye/you (nominative/objective plural). For some reason we ended up with the plurals being used as the singulars and no proper plurals at all.
  - colomon 12y ago
    Around here we use "you guys" for the second person plural, with the exact same amount of inherent gender reference as "y'all" has. (My wife's all-female college friends routinely refer to themselves as a group as "you guys", for instance.) Frankly, I sometimes use "y'all" in print, but as a non-Southerner feel like a poser saying it out loud.
streptomycin 12y ago
Although our employees are diverse on some axes, we're 90% white. There are also class barriers to attending Hacker School - while Hacker School is free, living in New York for three months is not. I can't help but laugh sometimes. Good thing all the rich white women feel comfortable! But seriously, how is it possible to have so few Asians? Usually the "problem" is that there are far too many. Maybe we need affirmative action for Asians, for once?
- dfxm12 12y ago
  And implying they can't find people from a diverse set of races in NYC is ridiculous as well.
- thumbtackthief 12y ago
  The employees--of which there are 7 or 8, I believe--are 90% white. Hardly a decent sample size. The attendees are much more diverse.
  - streptomycin 12y ago
    Good catch. That should be an easier problem to solve. If a few of them just volunteer to give their jobs to minorities, that will do wonders for diversity.
wmj 12y ago
The right to accuse someone without giving the accused the right to self defense is most certainly not a subtle -ism. It's fascism.
ssfrr 12y ago
It's really hard to predict the effect of social rules like these, which is why Hacker School does their best to actually test them empirically and change them if they're negatively impacting the environment. A lot of people seem to be concerned about the chilling effects that these policies could have. This is a valid concern, as nobody wants to be in a place where they're constantly second-guessing everything they say. The nice thing is that we don't just have to speculate, and we can look at what has actually happened at Hacker School, and the feedback from those who have actually experienced the environment seems overwhelmingly positive, both for people who have been traditionally marginalized and for those who have been unintentional marginalizers. disclosure: I'm not a Hacker Schooler but I know Nick and Dave well. I've seen first hand how deeply and genuinely they care about making Hacker School both extremely inclusive and also free for open discussion and transparency.
- wmj 12y ago
  How is banning the right to defend yourself against a baseless accusation in any way "free for open discussion and transparency"?
whiskypeters 12y ago
"we've been trying to stop using "you guys" to refer to mixed-gender groups." Am I the only one that finds this over the top? "No 'subtle -isms' is about recognizing the ways we're unconciously [sic] making our friends' lives a little worse." I'm sorry, if your life is made worse by a completely benign (and friendly) statement like "ok guys, have a nice weekend" then you are naive and irrational. Creating an environment that indulges every childish sensitivity does not do those individuals any favors and makes a mockery of their cause. "For the last year, the 'No subtle -isms' rule has carried some implementation guidelines. One of these is asking people not to debate whether or not something is an -ism." Accusing someone of (even subtle) sexism or racism is not to be taken lightly—this rule forces the accused to apologize (affirming the alleged bias) without defending or explaining themselves. This is unethical and dilutes legitimate complaints. A proverb that comes to mind: "Those who speak most about misfortune will find it. Those who speak most about success will find it."
- cfqycwz 12y ago
  The "you guys" instance seems a bit silly at first but is a good example of the way our language promotes the idea of male as the default. Note that there are no feminine words which we gender-neutralize in a similar way--we refer to a collective as "guys" or humanity as "mankind," but never use "gals" or "womankind" to refer to a mixed-gender group. In this way we construct women as an other, in opposition to men: the expected members of the workplace are guys, we expect history-makers to be men, and women are the odd exception to that rule. It is important to note that very few of the people who use these linguistic constructs are being intentionally sexist in doing so, and as such nobody is taking hurt or offense away from the use of "guys" to refer to a mixed-gender group or anything like that. This is not an exercise in respecting others' sensitivities so much as an effort to recognize the way our actions subtly reinforce the problematic and undoubtedly biased power structures that exist in our current culture. As others have pointed out in this thread, the participants in Hacker School share a common interest refusing to reinforce said power structures, and as such put rules in place to codify that commitment to helping one another change the way they interact with the world. As others have noted, these are not accusations--which would certainly not be appropriate or productive to whip out in the middle of a meeting--but gentle reminders amongst like-minded people to watch the way their words impact the world around them.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Seems to me that if you say something racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc, then there are a couple possibilities. Either (a) you meant it or (b) you didn't mean it. If (b), a gentle nudge from a Hacker School pal is good, in the same sense of a friend telling me my fly is open. If (a), well, fuck you.
- wmj 12y ago
  Or (c) what the other person claims to be racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc. isn't, at all, and this is simply the other person's way of "Well, actually."'ing you, except not even pedantically, but completely baselessly.
thumbtackthief 12y ago
I'm going to say one last thing and then move on with my life. It seems that most of the dissent revolves around asking that debates about when these things are pointed out be kept private. So, I got almost no work done today, and I'm all sorts of grouchy and irritable because of this discussion. I probably didn't convince anyone, and no one convinced me. So what did this debate accomplish? Who feels better now? All HS wants to do is keep this sort of nonsense from happening. Person A says something, Person B objects, Person A either apologizes or doesn't, and they move on. If they really need to discuss, they don't bring in People C through Z and ruin their days and productivity as well. Whichever side you're on, that seems like a pretty good idea to me. Furthermore, we all make innocuous comments that are ignorant of another group's situation. When someone asks me about my wife, I don't flip out and call them a homophobe for assuming I'm straight. But if they fight me when I point it out and refuse to acknowledge the fact that maybe they could stand to broaden their experience, I start to wonder why they're fighting me so much and what prejudices they're hiding. These rules work in Hacker School. They work because they're lightweight and no one feels like a terrible person for breaking them. If other communities are organically adopting them because the structure has been successful, I don't understand why you'd fight it so much.
j-m 12y ago
Good God, this is why I changed my OkCupid profile to omit the fact that I work at a tech startup. A bit dishonest, to be sure, but I just want to have a chance to demonstrate in person that I'm not the kind of insensitive, entitled dickbag that makes comments like the ones in this thread. Downvote away, guys, because hey, I'm engaging in some SHAMING here. Frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
- drz 12y ago
  > I just want to have a chance to demonstrate in person that I'm not the kind of insensitive, entitled dickbag You demonstrated the exact opposite just now.
thesz 12y ago
"First, we want marginalized people to feel welcome, not like they have to defend their presence." I believe this is wrong. Catering to marginalized people do not make those people less marginalized. In fact, it can make situation worse: http://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Affirmative-Students-Intended-Universities/dp/0465029965 http://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Affirmative-Students-Intended... I think that one should provide insistence on some important criteria evaluation instead of banning something outright. This is from basic psychology - provide positive idea to focus on.
lackbeard 12y ago
It seems almost abusive to foster an environment wherein one can accuse another openly but that other cannot respond openly.

67 points by nqureshi 12y ago

Mostly unrelated, but I wanted to say that I really enjoyed Kaptur's analysis of Python's import statement during this year's Pycon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS5kXzbsLLQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS5kXzbsLLQ

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

jraines 12y ago

What's the difference between a "well, actually" and correcting someone's misunderstanding -- or rather, when is it not welcome? My understanding is that it's when someone parachutes into a conversation uninvited to correct someone, but if I was in a learning setting like Hacker School, I feel like I would welcome that from fellow students or instructors.

floil 12y ago
A well-actually occurs when someone's understanding is 90% correct, and someone comes along and says, heroically, "you're entirely wrong, because of this missing 10%". When iterated this kind of grandstanding erodes the confidence of someone who's working with a partial understanding, which in truth is all of us.
- mcguire 12y ago
  Particularly if the missing 10% is completely unrelated to the situation under discussion. "Ok, so the client contacts the server and receives the result, but half of the result is missing, so...." "Well, actually, the client uses DNS to look up the server's address first." "Ok, thanks. Now I know." A well-done well-actually is a brilliant demonstration of superiority.
antics 12y ago
I was in the Summer 2013 batch. There is no hard-and-fast rule for figuring out what is and is not a well-actually, but the biggest factors (at least for me) are (1) did it derail the conversation, (2) did my correcting someone make it less acceptable to not know something, and (3) was my motivation to do something like show off? I've been guilty of all 3. Anecdotally, I found that the effect of this lightweight rule was that at HS it was very much ok to not know something, and let me tell you, adjusting to the real world, where that is subtly untrue, is a trial. As for the "parachuting in" problem, that's essentially the gist of a different lightweight social rule, "no backseat driving". :)
- mcguire 12y ago
  "(1) did it derail the conversation, (2) did my correcting someone make it less acceptable to not know something, and (3) was my motivation to do something like show off?" Hallelujah! Someone who understands! :-) [1] I've done it as well, and I hate it when I realize I am. I suspect the worse part of HS' policies is exactly that "adjusting to the real world, where [it was very much ok to not know something] is subtly untrue, is a trial." In the typical business environment, appearing not to know something is a very unsubtle weakness. [1] I'm completely unrelated to Hacker School.
diminoten 12y ago
It just seems like in order to get the most out of Hacker School one has to act with positive intent but otherwise entirely ignore the rules. It looks immensely easy to fall into a trap of caring too much about the rules and not caring enough about the code, and I can imagine a large group of people trying to play along rather than try to become better "hackers". "Ohh, I'm sorry, you did actually just save us from three hours of bashing our head into a wall by recommending a specific algorithm, but you also broke the rules. For shame!"
- mcguire 12y ago
  I suspect that to get the most out of Hacker School one has to act with positive intent and otherwise entirely ignore the rules, but be prepared to admit that one's behavior is not already perfect.
sp332 12y ago
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html As a child, I wondered why my sister could make friends and keep them so easily, while I could not. It would take me years to discover this. And now, as a public service I am sharing with you, my fellow geek friends, what I learned. Whoever pulls a "well, actually" almost always shifts the conversation to himself.
daffodil2 12y ago
A "well actually" occurs when a person is splitting hairs. This can be desirable, for example when you're trying to obtain a complete understanding of something. But in normal conversation, such pedanticism is often annoying. The "well actually" policy, as I understand it, is an attempt to make such hair splitting "opt-in" rather than "opt-out".

HarrietJones 12y ago

Well today's my day to be the not-so-subtle-ist asshole at Hacker News. It's one thing to recognise that systemic forms of bias and discrimination can be subtle and invisible to those trying to fix them, but all this sort of thing does is hand more keys over to a small subset of people who are less interested in making the world more equal and more interested in grabbing, holding and exercising social power. Shaming rituals, however light in touch they are, rarely improve things. They're just another small-p political tool to be used by politically minded people to exert social control.

Zikes 12y ago
The ban on debates is particularly jarring. I get the idea, a debate could easily turn into a heated argument, but if someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not then I'm certainly not going to apologize for it. If they want to maintain a civil environment that's able to call out subtle -isms, then they should simply accept "no, it wasn't" just as freely as "oops, sorry".
- mcguire 12y ago
  "...someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not" It's good that you can recognize that you are being offensive and honest enough not to let embarrassment prevent you from reacting appropriately when you are. [Yes, I rather expected this to be down-voted.]
- davorak 12y ago
  > The ban on debates is particularly jarring. That does not mean you would not be able to ask for clarification, concrete examples, how it has a negative effect. > if someone told me I am being sexist or homophobic when I am not then I'm certainly not going to apologize for it. It has not thing with being or having intent to be homophobic, sexist, etc. It is about some phrases being much more likely to have such intent and meaning in society in general. It is unrealistic to expect a N random someones hearing a subtl-ism to understand the speaker's internal meaning of a phrase or word. While those N random people should endeavor to not jump to conclusions about the speakers internal meaning, for the most part all they can go off of is how society uses the word/phrase.

api 12y ago

I ask this as a general question to all of tech culture, not to just this particular setting: What about subtile elitism? It's one of the biggest subtile -isms I've run into. If you didn't go to a top ten university, you're sort of in a lower echelon in the tech world. In practice this subtilely selects for people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and/or people who have an "academic-oriented" learning style as opposed to an autodidact or self-directed learning style. It also contributes to America's regional class system... the top ten schools are by and large on the coasts. If you're from, say, Kansas or Ohio you are less likely to attend one of them than if you're from California or Massachusetts. My impression for a long time has been that a significant chunk of the tech world is a top ten universities only club full of Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc. graduates hiring, funding, and promoting other top university graduates. You could play a drinking game on sites like AngelList: take a shot every time someone lists "attended MIT" or "graduated from Stanford" as their sole qualification for being a founder or seeking a job. Racism and sexism definitely exist, but from what I've seen socioeconomic elitism is the most powerful discriminatory -ism in the tech world. It's not an either-or thing of course. It just adds yet another barrier that outsiders must overcome. Barriers are kind of additive... each barrier reinforces the other pre-existing barriers by adding another point of resistance. I've got to admit that this is a personal gripe. I'm from the flyover country, and I'm also not an academic type. I hated school for the most part. I just don't learn that way. But for some reason listing things like "has single-handedly conceived, designed, implemented, and shipped the following products..." or "taught myself 6502 assembly language at the age of ten using only the appendix of the Commodore 64 extended manual" just doesn't carry the same weight as "graduated from Stanford." Even if I could say "graduated with honors from the University of Cincinnati," I doubt this would carry near as much oomph as "attended MIT" even if my grades at MIT were poor. I can't imagine being female or black/hispanic and not having the top ten degree. I feel like without "MIT" or "Stanford" I have to be twice as smart and work twice as hard. It feels like it's exponential. If I were not white and male I'd have to work... what... sixteen times as hard? Edit: HN won't let me comment on this thread any more, so I'll put my responses here: Re: elite universities equalizing admissions: no, it doesn't matter. There are 300+ million people in America and 7+ billion on Earth. Your odds of getting "tapped" by one of these kingmakers is vanishingly small regardless of how smart you are or how hard you work. Tweaking the selection bias of a tiny choke point does not change the overall size of that gate. Re: the thread in general: whenever these kinds of threads come up, I find myself disagreeing with both the PC police and the hordes of right-wingers that materialize out of the ether. I really say a pox on both their houses. The wingers are hopelessly naive about the realities of discrimination. The PC police sort of have their hearts in the right place, but the problem is that PC stuff addresses the wrong causes. Women don't find it uncomfortable to work in tech because of phrases like "man up" or "hey guys." They find themselves excluded for more subtile reasons of cliquishness and in-group selection. These cliquish mechanisms are the same ones that give rise to top ten university bias, racial bias, cultural bias, etc. It's a microcosmic manifestation of what on the larger social stage is called the "old boy network." Playing language police is a lot easier than trying to really break up the cliques. The latter is incredibly difficult, as humans are tribal and cliquish by nature. Still unable to post. I'm not going to forcefully assert some kind of soft-banning since as far as I know I'm being fooled by randomness, but I have noticed that "you are posting too fast" tends to appear in a way that seems uncorrelated to how fast I'm actually posting. Maybe it's just a strange algorithm with weird edge case behaviors. But... I did want to post this: http://www.broadstreetreview.com/cross-cultural/Demise_of_Antioch_College http://www.broadstreetreview.com/cross-cultural/Demise_of_An... It is highly relevant, as I think it illustrates how PC policing can lead to a kind of "Animal Farm" scenario. While the rhetoric might be all about diversity, the reality is that diversity rhetoric can be used as another mechanism for the real power clique to maintain its dominance.

doctorstupid 12y ago

Sounds like a cult-ism.

PeterGriffin 12y ago

I'm sorry, but I'm starting to get a bit sick of Hacker Schools constant whining about rules. If you want to encourage a specific culture you do this by starting with a small set of people who have this culture in their bones, then growing slowly and assimilating more people into that culture, addressing deviations swiftly and letting people get back to their work afterwards, without skipping a beat. Not by writing manuals, and then stressing everyone with looooong, reaaaaally long and exhausting "we need to talk" style posts, where we hold hands, talk about how it's so difficult to open your mouth and say something that's not offensive, and how we're far from perfect, and in fact, we're all sinners. It's not that the intent is wrong. But this way of going about it is so extremely taxing on everybody, creating an atmosphere where everything people say is judged on the "-isms" scale. It means when you talk, you're terrified of what you're saying. When you listen, you listen for someone to say something so you can point your finger at them.

pessimizer 12y ago
What's the difference between your proposal and a policy of starting as a closely knit monoculture, and only accepting people that share that culture? Isn't that exactly what you should be trying to avoid?
- PeterGriffin 12y ago
  No, why would this be something to try to avoid? Sexism and racism is a kind of cultural trait, I hope you realize that. A culture may be selective on very different criteria. It can easily be blind to gender, race, age, religion, nation and many more, yet have certain very specific values. And letting people in who have the opposite values are toxic to that culture. You can't have a culture that's "open to everything". It means you have no culture, you just adopt the zeitgeist unmodified. Everything goes. If this was the goal, this thread wouldn't exist.
  - mcguire 12y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't understand your comment. Are you trying to say that the field of technology development in general or programming specifically would be toxicly harmed if certain groups of people, identified by "gender, race, age, religion, nation and many more", are allowed in to it? Or are you trying to say that objecting to people attacking others on the basis of gender, race, age, religion, nationality, etc., would be toxic to the culture of the field?

pbreit 12y ago

Really, there has to be a rule about not debating what an "-ism" is?? This seems a little much for a coding seminar. How about "Don't be a Jerk" or nothing at all.

mcguire 12y ago
True, 'cause, after all, the last thing jerks want is to spend an hour or so presenting arguments and evidences that they aren't really jerks, after such as been pointed out to them.

invadedby 12y ago

This is a throwaway account. I feel we are being invaded. The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them. It developed through text were it hardly matter who was on the other side of the connection, only skills and thoughts mattered. Those were the good old days, when we were free. Now we are being invaded. We, like every other culture in the world, are ask to not use certain language and not have certain thoughts. If we do not comply, we are heretics. Only they don't use that term, they rather use some ism. The wheel of history is repeating. The control freaks still want to control, they just changed one set of sins for another.

resu_nimda 12y ago
The culture we used to have didn't cared about isms or whatever you want to call them. This reads like a 4chan teenager's manifesto. Alright, a bunch of nerds in their basements who are just so edgy and can say whatever they want. Badass! Well, you might be pleased to know that you're totally free to carry on the misanthropy club in plenty of areas of the internet. But here on Hacker News, and apparently especially at Hacker School, a lot of people that are actually coming from within the culture would like to see some change. When I read this article, I too was annoyed. I felt it was over the top, way too politically correct. But then I read the comments here, and it's basically all these people coming out of the woodwork and vaulting right over the spirit of understanding in their haste to defend their right to be acerbic assholes. They're not trying to silence you, they're just trying to implement guidelines that foster inclusion and collaboration. Is that really so awful?
- invadedby 12y ago
  This reads like a 4chan teenager's manifesto. a bunch of nerds in their basements How can you talk that way and the next moment talk about fostering inclusion?
  - rev_bird 12y ago
    The guy calling "let's strive for inclusive language" an invasion by thought police probably doesn't get to drive the hypocrisy bus.

cjf4 12y ago

At a certain point don't you have to trust people to be adults? If someone's being a "subtle" racist, they're just being racist, and you can deal accordingly (likewise for the rest of the "subtlisms"). Beyond that, if you want people to act with maturity, you have to treat them like adults, which these rules certainly don't do.

nawitus 12y ago
The problem is that it's there's no objective definition of racism, instead there are wildly different (and well-reasoned) positions. Some people think that even "believing" 'races' exist is racist, for starters. Perhaps even believing that someone could be justified in "believing" 'races' exist is racist in someone's mind. Then there's the whole debate about whether positive discrimination is racist or not, or if it's racist to prefer to have a relationship with one's "own race" etc. I guess the point thing is that racism is an extremely complex social issue with a lot of (well-argued) positions on a large number of questions. On top of this, there's this idea of "subtle racism", which could include things that should be allowed if "suble racism" is defined by extremely politically correct people, or which could include only things that actually are racist according to some decent arguments.
davidbalbert 12y ago
I'm one of the founders of Hacker School. We care tremendously about treating people like adults[1]. If you think the social rules don't treat people like adults, you're fundamentally misunderstanding them. The purpose of the rules is to make us all aware of the ways that we can unintentionally frustrate and hurt each other, not to shame people. The rules are not enforced top down, nor do you get in trouble if you break one. The way you treat a person like an adult is by being honest with them when they make you feel frustrated or uncomfortable and having an adult conversation about it. Our job is to build an environment where everyone at Hacker School feels safe to focus on becoming a better programmer. I don't think you could find a single Hacker Schooler who would disagree that the social rules made for a better environment, and there've been well over 350 so far. [1] cf. https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/28-treating-people-like-adults https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/28-treating-people-like-ad...

fred_durst 12y ago

I think Hacker School's own words about why they no longer give feedback is a great example of what happens when one hyper analyzes the context and connotation of everything a person says and does. https://www.hackerschool.com/feedback https://www.hackerschool.com/feedback Eventually, everyone stops communicating and just says nothing to avoid the possibility of saying the wrong thing.

mmcwilliams 12y ago
I think it merely emphasizes that doing something "right" is hard and that sometimes over promising leads to less-than-ideal interactions for two parties at once. The page you links to essentially says, "we didn't like doing it and people didn't like receiving it." There is nothing wrong with wanting to give quality feedback rather than a hasty response that communicates dismissal.

ojbyrne 12y ago

I thought the significant absence of "age-ism" in the lists of biases to be a somewhat unsubtle "-ism." Because, you know old white men can't be the victim of bias, they're the enemy.

pessimizer 12y ago

This is an impossible rule to enforce, even lightly, when large portions of the population don't even recognize that those classes of prejudice exist, especially within them or their friends, their family (except their grandparents, which I hear about a lot), their class, their culture, or even their country. As everybody knows on the internet: The real bigotry is pointing out bigotry. A real solution is to have an opinion as an organization about specific classes of offense, and a process to deal with them. Not saying what an "-ism" is seems like the opposite of that plan. Instead of creating a minefield, build a path. Kick out anyone who doesn't follow it after having been warned. Will you be reprimanded for saying something about Libertarians? If not, how about Democrats or Republicans? If not, how about war spending, religion, oil pipelines, or Social Security? Be specific about what the policy prohibits, and why the organization has drawn its particular line.

bshimmin 12y ago

It's really heartening that this has gone down like a lead balloon here. Seriously, anyone who manages to take offence at a mixed group being greeted with "you guys" really needs to find something better to do. It doesn't consciously or unconsciously make anyone's life worse. It's just a couple of words that are a convenient greeting.

Zikes 12y ago
I once had a foreign friend comment on the unfortunate lack of a plural form for "you" in English. We Southerners tried to solve that problem ages ago with "y'all" but the rest of the country apparently doesn't care for it.
- bshimmin 12y ago
  Well, going back a few centuries further, we used to have thou/thee (nominative/objective singular) and ye/you (nominative/objective plural). For some reason we ended up with the plurals being used as the singulars and no proper plurals at all.
- colomon 12y ago
  Around here we use "you guys" for the second person plural, with the exact same amount of inherent gender reference as "y'all" has. (My wife's all-female college friends routinely refer to themselves as a group as "you guys", for instance.) Frankly, I sometimes use "y'all" in print, but as a non-Southerner feel like a poser saying it out loud.

streptomycin 12y ago

Although our employees are diverse on some axes, we're 90% white. There are also class barriers to attending Hacker School - while Hacker School is free, living in New York for three months is not. I can't help but laugh sometimes. Good thing all the rich white women feel comfortable! But seriously, how is it possible to have so few Asians? Usually the "problem" is that there are far too many. Maybe we need affirmative action for Asians, for once?

dfxm12 12y ago
And implying they can't find people from a diverse set of races in NYC is ridiculous as well.
thumbtackthief 12y ago
The employees--of which there are 7 or 8, I believe--are 90% white. Hardly a decent sample size. The attendees are much more diverse.
- streptomycin 12y ago
  Good catch. That should be an easier problem to solve. If a few of them just volunteer to give their jobs to minorities, that will do wonders for diversity.

wmj 12y ago

The right to accuse someone without giving the accused the right to self defense is most certainly not a subtle -ism. It's fascism.

ssfrr 12y ago

It's really hard to predict the effect of social rules like these, which is why Hacker School does their best to actually test them empirically and change them if they're negatively impacting the environment. A lot of people seem to be concerned about the chilling effects that these policies could have. This is a valid concern, as nobody wants to be in a place where they're constantly second-guessing everything they say. The nice thing is that we don't just have to speculate, and we can look at what has actually happened at Hacker School, and the feedback from those who have actually experienced the environment seems overwhelmingly positive, both for people who have been traditionally marginalized and for those who have been unintentional marginalizers. disclosure: I'm not a Hacker Schooler but I know Nick and Dave well. I've seen first hand how deeply and genuinely they care about making Hacker School both extremely inclusive and also free for open discussion and transparency.

wmj 12y ago
How is banning the right to defend yourself against a baseless accusation in any way "free for open discussion and transparency"?

whiskypeters 12y ago

"we've been trying to stop using "you guys" to refer to mixed-gender groups." Am I the only one that finds this over the top? "No 'subtle -isms' is about recognizing the ways we're unconciously [sic] making our friends' lives a little worse." I'm sorry, if your life is made worse by a completely benign (and friendly) statement like "ok guys, have a nice weekend" then you are naive and irrational. Creating an environment that indulges every childish sensitivity does not do those individuals any favors and makes a mockery of their cause. "For the last year, the 'No subtle -isms' rule has carried some implementation guidelines. One of these is asking people not to debate whether or not something is an -ism." Accusing someone of (even subtle) sexism or racism is not to be taken lightly—this rule forces the accused to apologize (affirming the alleged bias) without defending or explaining themselves. This is unethical and dilutes legitimate complaints. A proverb that comes to mind: "Those who speak most about misfortune will find it. Those who speak most about success will find it."

cfqycwz 12y ago
The "you guys" instance seems a bit silly at first but is a good example of the way our language promotes the idea of male as the default. Note that there are no feminine words which we gender-neutralize in a similar way--we refer to a collective as "guys" or humanity as "mankind," but never use "gals" or "womankind" to refer to a mixed-gender group. In this way we construct women as an other, in opposition to men: the expected members of the workplace are guys, we expect history-makers to be men, and women are the odd exception to that rule. It is important to note that very few of the people who use these linguistic constructs are being intentionally sexist in doing so, and as such nobody is taking hurt or offense away from the use of "guys" to refer to a mixed-gender group or anything like that. This is not an exercise in respecting others' sensitivities so much as an effort to recognize the way our actions subtly reinforce the problematic and undoubtedly biased power structures that exist in our current culture. As others have pointed out in this thread, the participants in Hacker School share a common interest refusing to reinforce said power structures, and as such put rules in place to codify that commitment to helping one another change the way they interact with the world. As others have noted, these are not accusations--which would certainly not be appropriate or productive to whip out in the middle of a meeting--but gentle reminders amongst like-minded people to watch the way their words impact the world around them.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

Seems to me that if you say something racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc, then there are a couple possibilities. Either (a) you meant it or (b) you didn't mean it. If (b), a gentle nudge from a Hacker School pal is good, in the same sense of a friend telling me my fly is open. If (a), well, fuck you.

wmj 12y ago
Or (c) what the other person claims to be racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc. isn't, at all, and this is simply the other person's way of "Well, actually."'ing you, except not even pedantically, but completely baselessly.

thumbtackthief 12y ago

I'm going to say one last thing and then move on with my life. It seems that most of the dissent revolves around asking that debates about when these things are pointed out be kept private. So, I got almost no work done today, and I'm all sorts of grouchy and irritable because of this discussion. I probably didn't convince anyone, and no one convinced me. So what did this debate accomplish? Who feels better now? All HS wants to do is keep this sort of nonsense from happening. Person A says something, Person B objects, Person A either apologizes or doesn't, and they move on. If they really need to discuss, they don't bring in People C through Z and ruin their days and productivity as well. Whichever side you're on, that seems like a pretty good idea to me. Furthermore, we all make innocuous comments that are ignorant of another group's situation. When someone asks me about my wife, I don't flip out and call them a homophobe for assuming I'm straight. But if they fight me when I point it out and refuse to acknowledge the fact that maybe they could stand to broaden their experience, I start to wonder why they're fighting me so much and what prejudices they're hiding. These rules work in Hacker School. They work because they're lightweight and no one feels like a terrible person for breaking them. If other communities are organically adopting them because the structure has been successful, I don't understand why you'd fight it so much.

j-m 12y ago

Good God, this is why I changed my OkCupid profile to omit the fact that I work at a tech startup. A bit dishonest, to be sure, but I just want to have a chance to demonstrate in person that I'm not the kind of insensitive, entitled dickbag that makes comments like the ones in this thread. Downvote away, guys, because hey, I'm engaging in some SHAMING here. Frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

drz 12y ago
> I just want to have a chance to demonstrate in person that I'm not the kind of insensitive, entitled dickbag You demonstrated the exact opposite just now.

thesz 12y ago

"First, we want marginalized people to feel welcome, not like they have to defend their presence." I believe this is wrong. Catering to marginalized people do not make those people less marginalized. In fact, it can make situation worse: http://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Affirmative-Students-Intended-Universities/dp/0465029965 http://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Affirmative-Students-Intended... I think that one should provide insistence on some important criteria evaluation instead of banning something outright. This is from basic psychology - provide positive idea to focus on.

lackbeard 12y ago

It seems almost abusive to foster an environment wherein one can accuse another openly but that other cannot respond openly.