8 ms·

Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing we can expect a lot more of in the coming months and perhaps years as the "tech media" continue to attack it from the f

by borgia 11y ago

Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing we can expect a lot more of in the coming months and perhaps years as the "tech media" continue to attack it from the fringes. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. There is no satiating the thirst from the "tech media" for faux outrage driven clicks. This is a woman in tech, but more specifically she is a techie in tech. She has been assimilated into the normality of the modern tech industry and is participating in a highly competitive, skill driven arena. Make no mistake, any company that does not behave as the organisers of this hackathon here - not actively displaying an organised, certainly biased, effort to promote the "Women in Tech" narrative - are open to being squatted on from above from the "moral highground" occupied by the tech media. This is what happens when you attack meritocracy in the name of making people feel good. It is what happens when you create an unrelenting narrative that continually assaults an industry over how many or few people with a penis or vagina they have in it. It is what happens when you've an industry surrounded by "journalists" who've never spent an actual day in it, ready to fire out articles shaming you for your lack of, or apparent abundance of, penises or vaginas in your company. The author here is simply another bystander to the continued assault on the technology industry.

hedgew 11y ago
The media loves gender-related news because they are so divisive. They provoke our emotions and pull us into wasteful and hateful arguments. Such news are almost always the most read ones - the most profitable ones.
- beat 11y ago
  The article was an individual's blog post, not the mainstream media.
  - saint_fiasco 11y ago
    Replace money with attention and their point stands.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    The article is critical of the pandering he's talking about above.
beat 11y ago
So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually gotten worse since the 1980s, not better. There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry. Most of us would agree that it's the latter. So the question is, what do we do about it? Whinging about how terrible it is that we are even talking about this isn't it - that's just wrapping bias in silence. Any good engineer can tell you that a problem doesn't go away just because you stop acknowledging it. The author makes an excellent point... that "Thanks for showing up" awards aren't a solution, either. We love our craft because it's hard, because it measures us against hard reality rather than the soft vagaries of social politics. We cannot bring gender equality into software engineering by trying to turn it into social rather than technical victories. But complaining about the "assault on the technology industry" in the form of pointing out that we have a sexism problem? That's not good engineering, bro.
- jseliger 11y ago
  So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from It's not at all obvious that it exists: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14.... More men may work in tech because on average men are more interested in the subject. The key word in the preceding sentence is "may." "Bias" is complex and hard to prove and in the case of the tech industry there may be bias or there may not be. Even the phrase "tech industry" is odd. Does that include academic scientists? Where does tech end and other industries start? See also e.g. http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science.
  - beat 11y ago
    The WP article dances around a problem... that the reason there are fewer women in STEM is because they avoid it from childhood. Which begs the genetics vs socialization question. Are women not as good, or are they discouraged at an early age? A lack of good candidates is a serious problem (this even more obvious racially than by gender - where are the black and latino engineers?). But the way women are treated relative to their male peers is a massive problem within software, as opposed to the broader STEM fields. Don't believe me? Sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk with experienced female software engineers about it sometime. Ask them what sexism they've experienced at work, how it's hampered their careers and their job satisfaction.
untog 11y ago
The scare quotes around "tech media" just remind me of people who rant about the "mainstream media". The tech press is pretty much the most sycophantic press sector out there, in its relationship to the industry it is supposed to critically cover.
- tptacek 11y ago
  So it's about ethics in tech journalism.
  - parennoob 11y ago
    Bit surprised you are doing Reddit-style snark on HN, or maybe I just usually read the insightful upvoted ones :)
pkinsky 11y ago
>Make no mistake, any company that does not behave as the organisers of this hackathon here - not actively displaying an organised, certainly biased, effort to promote the "Women in Tech" narrative - are open to being squatted on from above from the "moral highground" occupied by the tech media. It's important to keep in mind that tech journalism, and journalism in general, has roughly the same level of diversity as tech. One wonders why they never seem to report on their own organizations. edit: A few downvotes, but no responses. Probably my fault for forgetting to cite my claim: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/mar/04/women-national-newspapers http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/mar/04/wome... http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/11/hard-evidence-there-still-gender-bias-journalism http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/11/hard-evidence-ther...
tomjen3 11y ago
>This is what happens when you attack meritocracy in the name of making people feel good. It is what happens when you create an unrelenting narrative that continually assaults an industry over how many or few people with a penis or vagina they have in it. It is what happens when you've an industry surrounded by "journalists" who've never spent an actual day in it, ready to fire out articles shaming you for your lack of, or apparent abundance of, penises or vaginas in your company. Almost. This is what happens when things are as you say and you care what the newspapers say. HN doesn't allow you to write that in bended blinking neon so I will have to settle for repeating it: You can only be shamed by those you care about. As it happens I spend some part of my thursdays teaching school kids to code - boys, girls and those in between. I haven't seen any press attack us for not doing enough to bring more girls in yet, but assuming it comes I don't intend to change anything.
bloat 11y ago
"This is what happens when you attack meritocracy in the name of making people feel good." Calling the tech industry a meritocracy is an assumption. There are plenty of well thought out viewpoints that disagree, its probably worth reading some. https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/meritocracy-is-the-software-engineers-prince-charming-and-why-thats-harmful/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/meritocracy-... https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/techs-meritocracy-problem-a6e5e0a56157 https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/techs-meritocracy-proble...
mwfunk 11y ago
You are coming at this from the perspective that anything in the tech world is a true meritocracy, which I don't believe for a moment. Not in corporations, not in open source, probably not even hackathons that people do just for fun. I just don't see it. It has natural tendencies that asymptotically pushes it towards being a meritocracy, in the same way that markets have natural tendencies towards being rational and efficient. However the key to understanding them is understanding the ways in which they can never get to 100%. I would love to see the correlation between people who state that the tech world is meritocracy and people who feel like they have gotten where they are purely on their own merit (the truth of it doesn't matter, just what they think). I would imagine that correlation is very, very high.
asanagi 11y ago
I used to read Ars Technica. A few years ago, it was sold to a new owner. Then, slowly, a creeping change slunk into the content like a snake. Try a game of social justice bingo: check Ars every morning and count the number of days in the month there ISN'T an article on the front page about misogyny or kiddie porn. It used to be a website about tech. A damn good one, too. Dear tech media: I'm a programmer. I work in a small shop that serves a niche market. We employ more females than males. When I go to work, it's to do my job; to count references and check my pointer math, not to check what genitalia my coworkers, who half the time aren't even in the same office as me, are equipped with. STOP BEATING ME OVER THE HEAD WITH THIS SHIT. Ask my former manager, who is a woman, whether she preferred to work with the male employees or the female ones. She'll tell you the office women were a constant headache and had to be constantly babied and supplicated to. There was a time you could go on to tech websites and just read about tech. Who is profiting from the incessant beating of the misogyny drum? Not women techies who show up to work and do their damn jobs like the rest of us.
- Aradalf 11y ago
  I don't even know of any tech websites that haven't succumbed to this. The Verge, Ars Technica, they all beat the social justice drum constantly. Do you know of any good tech news websites that actually cover tech?
  - asanagi 11y ago
    There's this one. Anandtech is still pretty good. Umm...
phlakaton 11y ago
Do you say "unfortunately" because you cannot envision a tech culture that is meritocratic and actively working towards diversity and inclusivity at the same time? Or maybe because you think that the trends of decreasing diversity and persistent sexism in the tech world are acceptable; that they're not worth lifting a finger or pen to fight. I couldn't disagree with you more in either case. I also think you're jumping to a vastly premature conclusion if you think fear of "tech media" is what inspired this award. I don't even buy Gina's implied assertion that it was solely because of the team's demographics. (She doesn't offer enough evidence to agree or disagree with her.)

by borgia 11y ago

hedgew 11y ago

The media loves gender-related news because they are so divisive. They provoke our emotions and pull us into wasteful and hateful arguments. Such news are almost always the most read ones - the most profitable ones.

beat 11y ago
The article was an individual's blog post, not the mainstream media.
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  Replace money with attention and their point stands.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  The article is critical of the pandering he's talking about above.

beat 11y ago

So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from? It's actually gotten worse since the 1980s, not better. There are only two explanations for the obvious reality. One is that women simply aren't as good at programming as men are. The other is that there is a persistent and difficult cultural bias against women in this industry. Most of us would agree that it's the latter. So the question is, what do we do about it? Whinging about how terrible it is that we are even talking about this isn't it - that's just wrapping bias in silence. Any good engineer can tell you that a problem doesn't go away just because you stop acknowledging it. The author makes an excellent point... that "Thanks for showing up" awards aren't a solution, either. We love our craft because it's hard, because it measures us against hard reality rather than the soft vagaries of social politics. We cannot bring gender equality into software engineering by trying to turn it into social rather than technical victories. But complaining about the "assault on the technology industry" in the form of pointing out that we have a sexism problem? That's not good engineering, bro.

jseliger 11y ago
So where does the obvious gender bias in the industry come from It's not at all obvious that it exists: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14.... More men may work in tech because on average men are more interested in the subject. The key word in the preceding sentence is "may." "Bias" is complex and hard to prove and in the case of the tech industry there may be bias or there may not be. Even the phrase "tech industry" is odd. Does that include academic scientists? Where does tech end and other industries start? See also e.g. http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science.
- beat 11y ago
  The WP article dances around a problem... that the reason there are fewer women in STEM is because they avoid it from childhood. Which begs the genetics vs socialization question. Are women not as good, or are they discouraged at an early age? A lack of good candidates is a serious problem (this even more obvious racially than by gender - where are the black and latino engineers?). But the way women are treated relative to their male peers is a massive problem within software, as opposed to the broader STEM fields. Don't believe me? Sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk with experienced female software engineers about it sometime. Ask them what sexism they've experienced at work, how it's hampered their careers and their job satisfaction.

untog 11y ago

The scare quotes around "tech media" just remind me of people who rant about the "mainstream media". The tech press is pretty much the most sycophantic press sector out there, in its relationship to the industry it is supposed to critically cover.

tptacek 11y ago
So it's about ethics in tech journalism.
- parennoob 11y ago
  Bit surprised you are doing Reddit-style snark on HN, or maybe I just usually read the insightful upvoted ones :)

pkinsky 11y ago

>Make no mistake, any company that does not behave as the organisers of this hackathon here - not actively displaying an organised, certainly biased, effort to promote the "Women in Tech" narrative - are open to being squatted on from above from the "moral highground" occupied by the tech media. It's important to keep in mind that tech journalism, and journalism in general, has roughly the same level of diversity as tech. One wonders why they never seem to report on their own organizations. edit: A few downvotes, but no responses. Probably my fault for forgetting to cite my claim: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/mar/04/women-national-newspapers http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/mar/04/wome... http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/11/hard-evidence-there-still-gender-bias-journalism http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/11/hard-evidence-ther...

tomjen3 11y ago

>This is what happens when you attack meritocracy in the name of making people feel good. It is what happens when you create an unrelenting narrative that continually assaults an industry over how many or few people with a penis or vagina they have in it. It is what happens when you've an industry surrounded by "journalists" who've never spent an actual day in it, ready to fire out articles shaming you for your lack of, or apparent abundance of, penises or vaginas in your company. Almost. This is what happens when things are as you say and you care what the newspapers say. HN doesn't allow you to write that in bended blinking neon so I will have to settle for repeating it: You can only be shamed by those you care about. As it happens I spend some part of my thursdays teaching school kids to code - boys, girls and those in between. I haven't seen any press attack us for not doing enough to bring more girls in yet, but assuming it comes I don't intend to change anything.

bloat 11y ago

"This is what happens when you attack meritocracy in the name of making people feel good." Calling the tech industry a meritocracy is an assumption. There are plenty of well thought out viewpoints that disagree, its probably worth reading some. https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/meritocracy-is-the-software-engineers-prince-charming-and-why-thats-harmful/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/meritocracy-... https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/techs-meritocracy-problem-a6e5e0a56157 https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/techs-meritocracy-proble...

mwfunk 11y ago

You are coming at this from the perspective that anything in the tech world is a true meritocracy, which I don't believe for a moment. Not in corporations, not in open source, probably not even hackathons that people do just for fun. I just don't see it. It has natural tendencies that asymptotically pushes it towards being a meritocracy, in the same way that markets have natural tendencies towards being rational and efficient. However the key to understanding them is understanding the ways in which they can never get to 100%. I would love to see the correlation between people who state that the tech world is meritocracy and people who feel like they have gotten where they are purely on their own merit (the truth of it doesn't matter, just what they think). I would imagine that correlation is very, very high.

asanagi 11y ago

I used to read Ars Technica. A few years ago, it was sold to a new owner. Then, slowly, a creeping change slunk into the content like a snake. Try a game of social justice bingo: check Ars every morning and count the number of days in the month there ISN'T an article on the front page about misogyny or kiddie porn. It used to be a website about tech. A damn good one, too. Dear tech media: I'm a programmer. I work in a small shop that serves a niche market. We employ more females than males. When I go to work, it's to do my job; to count references and check my pointer math, not to check what genitalia my coworkers, who half the time aren't even in the same office as me, are equipped with. STOP BEATING ME OVER THE HEAD WITH THIS SHIT. Ask my former manager, who is a woman, whether she preferred to work with the male employees or the female ones. She'll tell you the office women were a constant headache and had to be constantly babied and supplicated to. There was a time you could go on to tech websites and just read about tech. Who is profiting from the incessant beating of the misogyny drum? Not women techies who show up to work and do their damn jobs like the rest of us.

Aradalf 11y ago
I don't even know of any tech websites that haven't succumbed to this. The Verge, Ars Technica, they all beat the social justice drum constantly. Do you know of any good tech news websites that actually cover tech?
- asanagi 11y ago
  There's this one. Anandtech is still pretty good. Umm...

phlakaton 11y ago

Do you say "unfortunately" because you cannot envision a tech culture that is meritocratic and actively working towards diversity and inclusivity at the same time? Or maybe because you think that the trends of decreasing diversity and persistent sexism in the tech world are acceptable; that they're not worth lifting a finger or pen to fight. I couldn't disagree with you more in either case. I also think you're jumping to a vastly premature conclusion if you think fear of "tech media" is what inspired this award. I don't even buy Gina's implied assertion that it was solely because of the team's demographics. (She doesn't offer enough evidence to agree or disagree with her.)