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> Why is it so compelling for some people to participate in a world where, ostensibly, they will never be seen as their entire selves and will be judged solely

• theorique 12y ago
  A line of C is syntactically correct or incorrect without regard to the race, gender, sex, or other identity aspect(s) of the individual(s) responsible for writing it. Exactly right. Maybe some people (usually young, nerdy teenage guys) base their entire identity on their code. Most people who code professionally or recreationally over the long term strive for excellence and correctness at all times, but don't base their entire identity on coding. The industry is a lot healthier and more balanced than the OP article makes it out to be.
  • walshemj 12y ago
    the "code" is just a tool to do interesting things is how I always looked at it.
  • srpablo 12y ago
    > The industry is a lot healthier and more balanced than the OP article makes it out to be. I think that, for some who believe it is healthy (not necessarily you, but many others I speak to who make similar claims), the conclusion is arrived at incorrectly by survivorship bias: the most visible people _tend_ to seem like they're doing alright! They're usually nice people! Good intentions all around! But speak to people who left or are leaving (like OP), and you get a more complicated picture. I think the diversity numbers posted by Google, Twitter, Apple etc., and arguments made by a number of underrepresented people in tech make a pretty compelling case to me that the industry and its culture have plenty worth criticizing.
    • hueving 12y ago
      >I think the diversity numbers posted by Google, Twitter, Apple etc. ... reflect almost precisely the pipeline of people coming out of universities. Our culture discouraged young girls from coding. We cut off our oxygen supply and we idiotically sit around arguing about how we should treat the remaining oxygen better so we don't suffocate. There are not enough qualified women to bring the ratio of software engineers anywhere near normal. You can bitch and moan about terrible companies and culture, but you can't attract a population of people that don't exist.
• zorpner 12y ago
  > I want to get the author to read this: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c Please no. That article is genuinely terrible -- it's the worst of hacker exceptionalism coupled with an embedded false equivalence between social rejection and rape. It's a direct symptom of the effect where an echo chamber produces conservative extremism. I know it's quite popular on HN in part because it provides people with a framework to justify the misbehavior of the social structure they're participating in (somewhat ironic in the face of the "we don't participate in ambient social structures" absurdity the article proposes), but it's fundamentally misguided and that acceptance is itself a problem with this community.
  • Kalium 12y ago
    I suggest it because it makes the counterpoint that different does not fundamentally mean broken. That is something the author does not seem to grasp.
  • tomjen3 12y ago
    >where an echo chamber produces conservative extremism For a minimum of 90% of HN the following is true: does not support religion as better than non-religion, support a womans right to choose to have an abortion or not, strongly supports the right of gays to marry, supports the rights of transexuals, supports Obama Care. That is objectively not a hotbed of conservatism.
• Karunamon 12y ago
  That was a beautiful article and a great read - thank you for linking it. Most important quote, IMO: If you tell me that your goal is systemic change toward radical acceptance, and I see that you treat those you perceive as lesser-than with the same kind of scorn and derision that pushed me toward this insular little subculture where I feel comfortable — and I do see this, every day, to the point where I’ve had to cull people I genuinely like from my social media feeds because it was that or get mentally knocked back every few minutes into the headspace I spent my K-12 years in and was only too happy to leave —then you’ve successfully convinced me that your acceptance is not radical and the change you want not systemic.
• ggchappell 12y ago
  Very nice article. Lots of interesting points. But toward the end, the author writes as if addressing a very specific group of people, and I can't figure out what this group is supposed to be. FTA: > And that’s the bastardly crux of it all: two groups who nominally want the same thing — a culture of acceptance — separated by the values that lead them to that desire and the fear that ultimately nothing will really change. One group is the hackers. And the other is? And then the last paragraph: > All we’re asking for is constructive proof that you accept us for who we are, rather than the fact that we build your toys or that we tripped and fell into a pot of money. The dominant culture has had two decades to demonstrate to us in copious detail what it’s willing to offer — the good parts and the bad ones — and now it’s your turn. Please show your work. Who is the "you" here? Not the dominant culture, evidently.
  • Kalium 12y ago
    > One group is the hackers. And the other is? I think it's "geek feminists". It's the putative audience for the whole piece.