5 ms·

Pax Dickinson is still unemployed a year later. People's names become toxic. Note that the Donglegate guy wouldn't let his name be used, and another woman in t

by tjic 12y ago

Pax Dickinson is still unemployed a year later. People's names become toxic. Note that the Donglegate guy wouldn't let his name be used, and another woman in the article wouldn't do a followup interview.

ForHackernews 12y ago
To be fair, Pax Dickinson wasn't one stupid tweet, it was a pattern of awful shit over years. At some point, it's not a careless lapse anymore, you're just a d-bag. A few examples: "In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers. It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though." "aw, you can't feed your family on minimum wage? well who told you to start a fucking family when your skills are only worth minimum wage?" "Who has more dedication, ambition, and drive? Kobe only raped one girl, Lebron raped an entire city. +1 for Lebron." And arguably the worst, for a freaking CTO: "Tech managers spend as much time worrying about how to hire talented female developers as they do worrying about how to hire a unicorn." Would you hire that guy to represent your company?
- cheald 12y ago
  The first tweet, which seems to be the one that people reacted most strongly to, is pretty clearly a lampooning of Mel Gibson. I suspect most people missed that, though. It's distasteful, but it's not exactly Dickinson himself expressing racist, victim-blaming sentiments; it's a mockery of them. The second is a pretty standard libertarian talking-point (which is more "personal responsibility rah rah rah" than "yay, starving poor people!"). The third I don't really get (but I don't really follow basketball), and the fourth I suspect you're misinterpreting as "Tech managers don't want to hire women", when I think it's more "Tech managers don't care about the gender of their developers"; the truth of the statement is debatable, but I do think it takes some willful effort to read that and be offended by it. I think Dickinson made unwise choices in how he chose to tweet, but I also think the backlash he's suffered has been orders of magnitude worse than the offense. He has been made persona non grata to the point of being unemployable over a handful of ill-considered tweets - he's unemployable now because of the extent to which people have gone to associate him and anyone associated with him with racism, rape, and sexism - regardless of the reality of his actions. On one hand, he's suffering the consequences of his decisions (see tweet #2 for some schadenfreude). On the other, because the internet loves a shitstorm, it seems that the magnitude of the consequences are way out of line with the original offense.
  - ForHackernews 12y ago
    > the fourth I suspect you're misinterpreting as "Tech managers don't want to hire women", when I think it's more "Tech managers don't care about the gender of their developers" You're giving that the most contorted, charitable reading possible. In your reading, the reference to a "unicorn" is nonsensical. I would argue the accurate reading is: "Tech managers don't spend time worrying about hiring talented women because [like unicorns] they are mythical and don't exist." Now, the further implications behind that statement might be: a) Talented female developers are rare--we need to make serious efforts to improve the educational pipeline and get more young girls interested in programming. b) Talented female developers are rare, but it's not the tech industry's job to worry or care about that. c) Talented female developers aren't rare, but [usually male] hiring managers are too blinded by sexism to recognize them. > regardless of the reality of his actions. That's the thing. We don't know the reality of his actions. Based only on his tweets (I don't know him personally), he certainly sounds like he might be the kind of guy who would discriminate in his hiring. He might not even do it consciously, he'd just think "Well, I only hire the best" and in his mind, "the best" does not include women.
    - cheald 12y ago
      If you take that tweet in isolation and read it as a comparison of female developers to unicorns, then sure, I can see how you arrive at that conclusion. I think it's a faulty conclusion, and I think that its faultiness is further illustrated by his response to the whole drama, in which he explicitly clarified his stance of female developers. My reading of it is based on what I know of him, which does not consist solely of a Valleywag article and four tweets. You're exemplifying the worst of the Twitter lynchmob problem here; you took a tweet, extrapolated it into a full sum of a person, and then don't bother to establish any further context and have decided that the author is a racist, sexist psychopath based on a context-free reading of a one-sentence statement. That's great for feeling superior to people, but it's pretty awful for useful dialog.
      - ForHackernews 12y ago
        > illustrated by his response to the whole drama, in which he explicitly clarified his stance of female developers. I mean, obviously he's going to say that. I'm not sure how much stock you want to put into after-the-fact PR damage control. I think actions speak louder than words, and I'd reserve judgment before hearing from some of the women developers who he's hired (he has hired women, right?) about how he was to work under, what he was like as a boss (not as a co-founder). You accuse me of "exemplifying the worst of the Twitter lynchmob problem" but I'm trying hard to be as neutral and generous as possible. I listed three possible implications of that tweet, only one of which is explicitly negative, and you claim I've "decided that the author is a racist, sexist psychopath". If anyone is guilty of twitter-like hyperbole in this conversation, it's you.
jackmaney 12y ago
Didn't he create a startup? If so, he is not unemployed.
- tjic 12y ago
  He bowed out of that after 6 months, as I recall.
ElissaShevinsky 12y ago
I'm saddened that Pax's work at Glimpse didn't help to redeem his reputation. Pax showed excellent judgment on social media for the entire time that he was my cofounder. And we did excellent work together (we consistently had 10 - 18% week over week traction, app had five star reviews, well known security experts pen tested our app and found it was well designed etc.) For what it's worth, some VCs did want to fund Glimpse. We didn't follow up on that while Pax was on board, for various reasons. A significant A raise would likely have helped Pax rebrand positively in a mainstream way. Pax is now publicly pro-gamer gate (as you can see on his Twitter feed and with his most recent startup ExposeCorrupt.) I understand why that would have an impact on marketability. As much as we talk about diversity in technology, there are some ideas and some kind of people that are simply not welcome. I worry about this a bit because I think it hurts a lot of people, not just neo-reactionaries.
ElissaShevinsky 12y ago
Also - Pax apologized and then spent over a year being an excellent citizen of the startup community and on social media. I worry about an ecosystem that is so unforgiving. I believe that ostracizing people - without the possibility of giving them second chances - is ultimately bad for everyone. It takes folks who have messed up and disenfranchises them so that they no longer have a stake in their reputation and participation in the community.

by tjic 12y ago

ForHackernews 12y ago

To be fair, Pax Dickinson wasn't one stupid tweet, it was a pattern of awful shit over years. At some point, it's not a careless lapse anymore, you're just a d-bag. A few examples: "In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers. It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though." "aw, you can't feed your family on minimum wage? well who told you to start a fucking family when your skills are only worth minimum wage?" "Who has more dedication, ambition, and drive? Kobe only raped one girl, Lebron raped an entire city. +1 for Lebron." And arguably the worst, for a freaking CTO: "Tech managers spend as much time worrying about how to hire talented female developers as they do worrying about how to hire a unicorn." Would you hire that guy to represent your company?

cheald 12y ago
The first tweet, which seems to be the one that people reacted most strongly to, is pretty clearly a lampooning of Mel Gibson. I suspect most people missed that, though. It's distasteful, but it's not exactly Dickinson himself expressing racist, victim-blaming sentiments; it's a mockery of them. The second is a pretty standard libertarian talking-point (which is more "personal responsibility rah rah rah" than "yay, starving poor people!"). The third I don't really get (but I don't really follow basketball), and the fourth I suspect you're misinterpreting as "Tech managers don't want to hire women", when I think it's more "Tech managers don't care about the gender of their developers"; the truth of the statement is debatable, but I do think it takes some willful effort to read that and be offended by it. I think Dickinson made unwise choices in how he chose to tweet, but I also think the backlash he's suffered has been orders of magnitude worse than the offense. He has been made persona non grata to the point of being unemployable over a handful of ill-considered tweets - he's unemployable now because of the extent to which people have gone to associate him and anyone associated with him with racism, rape, and sexism - regardless of the reality of his actions. On one hand, he's suffering the consequences of his decisions (see tweet #2 for some schadenfreude). On the other, because the internet loves a shitstorm, it seems that the magnitude of the consequences are way out of line with the original offense.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  > the fourth I suspect you're misinterpreting as "Tech managers don't want to hire women", when I think it's more "Tech managers don't care about the gender of their developers" You're giving that the most contorted, charitable reading possible. In your reading, the reference to a "unicorn" is nonsensical. I would argue the accurate reading is: "Tech managers don't spend time worrying about hiring talented women because [like unicorns] they are mythical and don't exist." Now, the further implications behind that statement might be: a) Talented female developers are rare--we need to make serious efforts to improve the educational pipeline and get more young girls interested in programming. b) Talented female developers are rare, but it's not the tech industry's job to worry or care about that. c) Talented female developers aren't rare, but [usually male] hiring managers are too blinded by sexism to recognize them. > regardless of the reality of his actions. That's the thing. We don't know the reality of his actions. Based only on his tweets (I don't know him personally), he certainly sounds like he might be the kind of guy who would discriminate in his hiring. He might not even do it consciously, he'd just think "Well, I only hire the best" and in his mind, "the best" does not include women.
  - cheald 12y ago
    If you take that tweet in isolation and read it as a comparison of female developers to unicorns, then sure, I can see how you arrive at that conclusion. I think it's a faulty conclusion, and I think that its faultiness is further illustrated by his response to the whole drama, in which he explicitly clarified his stance of female developers. My reading of it is based on what I know of him, which does not consist solely of a Valleywag article and four tweets. You're exemplifying the worst of the Twitter lynchmob problem here; you took a tweet, extrapolated it into a full sum of a person, and then don't bother to establish any further context and have decided that the author is a racist, sexist psychopath based on a context-free reading of a one-sentence statement. That's great for feeling superior to people, but it's pretty awful for useful dialog.
    - ForHackernews 12y ago
      > illustrated by his response to the whole drama, in which he explicitly clarified his stance of female developers. I mean, obviously he's going to say that. I'm not sure how much stock you want to put into after-the-fact PR damage control. I think actions speak louder than words, and I'd reserve judgment before hearing from some of the women developers who he's hired (he has hired women, right?) about how he was to work under, what he was like as a boss (not as a co-founder). You accuse me of "exemplifying the worst of the Twitter lynchmob problem" but I'm trying hard to be as neutral and generous as possible. I listed three possible implications of that tweet, only one of which is explicitly negative, and you claim I've "decided that the author is a racist, sexist psychopath". If anyone is guilty of twitter-like hyperbole in this conversation, it's you.

jackmaney 12y ago

Didn't he create a startup? If so, he is not unemployed.

tjic 12y ago
He bowed out of that after 6 months, as I recall.

ElissaShevinsky 12y ago

I'm saddened that Pax's work at Glimpse didn't help to redeem his reputation. Pax showed excellent judgment on social media for the entire time that he was my cofounder. And we did excellent work together (we consistently had 10 - 18% week over week traction, app had five star reviews, well known security experts pen tested our app and found it was well designed etc.) For what it's worth, some VCs did want to fund Glimpse. We didn't follow up on that while Pax was on board, for various reasons. A significant A raise would likely have helped Pax rebrand positively in a mainstream way. Pax is now publicly pro-gamer gate (as you can see on his Twitter feed and with his most recent startup ExposeCorrupt.) I understand why that would have an impact on marketability. As much as we talk about diversity in technology, there are some ideas and some kind of people that are simply not welcome. I worry about this a bit because I think it hurts a lot of people, not just neo-reactionaries.

ElissaShevinsky 12y ago

Also - Pax apologized and then spent over a year being an excellent citizen of the startup community and on social media. I worry about an ecosystem that is so unforgiving. I believe that ostracizing people - without the possibility of giving them second chances - is ultimately bad for everyone. It takes folks who have messed up and disenfranchises them so that they no longer have a stake in their reputation and participation in the community.