“the COO was a woman who changed her mind often enough that the various groups that worked on the project were never able to accomplish anything truly useful.” What was the purpose of pointing out her sex?
Would you have felt the same way if the sentence was, "the COO was a man who changed his mind often enough..."? In other words, does that sentence imply to you that men change their minds more frequently?
I've seen this kind of sentence construction many times and it does not seem odd to me. “For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me," is a famous example. Is it important to the sentence that Pooh is a bear? We already know he's a bear. In fact, I'll say that it actually presents the opposite implication from what you reached. I think Milne is making a joke here: we already assume that all bears have very little brains and so the statement is humorous. We expect a contrast and yet there is none. "She is a woman who changed her mind frequently" would imply that ordinarily women do not change their minds frequently, but this one did (unless you feel the same sort of joke is being made).
So, the OP's question is, why did the original author choose to state the gender of the COO? In my opinion, they simply did it to make the reader feel closer to the situation. Stephen King discusses this kind of thing at length in a couple of his treatises on writing. He says that you should avoid adjectives because they clutter up the writing and make it more complicated. If you have doors of many different material, you should change your story so that those doors no longer exist because specifying all the different kinds of doors just makes it confusing for your reader. However, it's a thing people who are not well practiced at writing do very frequently (which is why Stephen King discusses it at length ;-) ). I'm with the first responder in thinking that choice of mentioning the gender is not indicative of any subtext at all. It's just clumsy.
It could have been phrased as, "The COO changed her mind often enough" and still made the point without drawing particular attention to her gender.
Phrasing it as, "The COO was a woman who changed her mind often enough" draws a lot more attention to her gender rather than the issue of lack of direction.
I'm not normally one to point out this kind of thing, but it stuck out to me too.
Keep in mind the author is a coder, not necessarily a writer. In re-reading the article though he only seems to specify gender when it's a woman. Perhaps he really disliked this woman or he has some bias he isn't aware of.
In using the search function through the article it seems the exact opposite. Perhaps you have some bias you weren't aware of when reading the article?
Nope, just re-read the entire article. Your using the search function doesn't seem to have been appropriate to the task nor does it address the entire context of my comment.
I'll break down my points to make myself simpler to understand as my points seems to have been misunderstood which is a lack of clarity on my part.
1. The author isn't a writer by trade. Just as coders develop best practices, writers do as well. It's not fair to judge the author for bias based on his writing style if he's not someone who's been trained on this.
2. It's entirely possible that this particular COO was one of many, however they were so odious as to cause a more emotional reaction, which isn't related to gender. As far as gender specific comments there aren't many one about a man and to about one particular woman. We may be more sensitive to this now as this article was written before the MeToo movement really gained stride, so it's possible we're seeing this through our current understanding without taking into account that we've shifted as a culture since then.
3. The third possibly is that there's an inherent bias. It's a possibility, but it's not a definite, and certainly even if there is a bias it didn't reflect terribly on the author as it's really minor. I have biases, you have biases, they were/are an important function in quick decision making that can save lives or not. The book "Thinking Fast and Slow" goes into this really well if you're interested.
Hopefully this clarifies better what I was attempting to address.
"Your using the search function doesn't seem to have been appropriate to the task"
The search function is unbiased, interpretation is.
I appreciate your breakdown of how you delve into judging a author's intent factoring in the (assumed) writing skill but this is not the content of your comment I was referring to, rather:
"In re-reading the article though he _only seems to specify gender when it's a woman_. Perhaps he really disliked this woman or he has some bias he isn't aware of."
The _noted_ section is what I was describing as factually false and why I said maybe your delving into the author's work was biased. The search function reveals " he ", " him ", & " his " to be used more than " she ", " her ", an " hers ". In diving into interpretation it seems to be ignored that 2 paragraphs down the author resents a micromanaging male director, if this had contained "her" instead of "him" would it be interpreted total condemnation rather than chance? Why is this not also an emotional reaction and if so why does it matter less?
I.e. the article is balanced in calling out gender overall (as shown by word frequency) and the author seems to dislike people based on what they did (as seen by reviewing the sections called out) so the only way bias in re-reading can be called out here is if you're searching for it and ignoring what doesn't match.
I think your response to my comment is fair. Interpretation being required is why I disagree with a simple count function of gender pronouns. In rereading I did see what you were talking about with the make manager being discussed. I personally agree with your conclusion and could have worded my initial comment better to be clearer, it was early morning for me which is not when I'm at my peak mental faculties, so I apologise for my lack of clarity.
That was weird to me as well. Usually I don't care about or point out that sort of stuff, but maybe it's the wording of it "the coo was a woman" that's so strangely forward. Like that characteristic is more important than her changing her mind, or that the description is that let coo = "woman who changes mind."
Software methodologies that don't actually account for and work with the way humans actually behave (instead of some idealized notion of how they should) end up like this - tons of essays on how it's not really the methodology's fault, it's the implementations, etc.
It is the methodology's fault, by definition - they exist to be implemented, and if the in practice implementations don't work as intended, then something is wrong in the method, level of proscription, etc.
That seems a bit strong. Coming up with a methodology that no business can screw up, no matter how loosely they follow it, seems like it would be very difficult? Is that a realistic standard of success?
Maybe we could make an analogy to cookbook recipes. Some recipes require cooking skill and some practice to do them successfully. But if the recipe is good, you should be able to train at least some cooks to have consistent success with it.
But I would guess that such a methodology wouldn't actually generalize to lots of different kinds of software. It might work for repeatedly building similar things using similar technology in a restricted domain.
Methodologies exist only to shepherd delivery - don't make shepherding itself the primary focus of your day-to-day lest you lose sight of the real aim: to deliver projects on time with minimal bugs while minimizing the effects of inevitable bugs on revenue/customer satisfaction.
You forgot the devs are stakeholders too. Usually they want to be paid for the least amount of work. (Unless manipulated into thinking work is a goal. I know a bunch of these.)
Or at least be actually fulfilled by it.
16 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 57.0 ms ] threadI've seen this kind of sentence construction many times and it does not seem odd to me. “For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me," is a famous example. Is it important to the sentence that Pooh is a bear? We already know he's a bear. In fact, I'll say that it actually presents the opposite implication from what you reached. I think Milne is making a joke here: we already assume that all bears have very little brains and so the statement is humorous. We expect a contrast and yet there is none. "She is a woman who changed her mind frequently" would imply that ordinarily women do not change their minds frequently, but this one did (unless you feel the same sort of joke is being made).
So, the OP's question is, why did the original author choose to state the gender of the COO? In my opinion, they simply did it to make the reader feel closer to the situation. Stephen King discusses this kind of thing at length in a couple of his treatises on writing. He says that you should avoid adjectives because they clutter up the writing and make it more complicated. If you have doors of many different material, you should change your story so that those doors no longer exist because specifying all the different kinds of doors just makes it confusing for your reader. However, it's a thing people who are not well practiced at writing do very frequently (which is why Stephen King discusses it at length ;-) ). I'm with the first responder in thinking that choice of mentioning the gender is not indicative of any subtext at all. It's just clumsy.
Phrasing it as, "The COO was a woman who changed her mind often enough" draws a lot more attention to her gender rather than the issue of lack of direction.
I'm not normally one to point out this kind of thing, but it stuck out to me too.
I'll break down my points to make myself simpler to understand as my points seems to have been misunderstood which is a lack of clarity on my part.
1. The author isn't a writer by trade. Just as coders develop best practices, writers do as well. It's not fair to judge the author for bias based on his writing style if he's not someone who's been trained on this.
2. It's entirely possible that this particular COO was one of many, however they were so odious as to cause a more emotional reaction, which isn't related to gender. As far as gender specific comments there aren't many one about a man and to about one particular woman. We may be more sensitive to this now as this article was written before the MeToo movement really gained stride, so it's possible we're seeing this through our current understanding without taking into account that we've shifted as a culture since then.
3. The third possibly is that there's an inherent bias. It's a possibility, but it's not a definite, and certainly even if there is a bias it didn't reflect terribly on the author as it's really minor. I have biases, you have biases, they were/are an important function in quick decision making that can save lives or not. The book "Thinking Fast and Slow" goes into this really well if you're interested.
Hopefully this clarifies better what I was attempting to address.
The search function is unbiased, interpretation is.
I appreciate your breakdown of how you delve into judging a author's intent factoring in the (assumed) writing skill but this is not the content of your comment I was referring to, rather:
"In re-reading the article though he _only seems to specify gender when it's a woman_. Perhaps he really disliked this woman or he has some bias he isn't aware of."
The _noted_ section is what I was describing as factually false and why I said maybe your delving into the author's work was biased. The search function reveals " he ", " him ", & " his " to be used more than " she ", " her ", an " hers ". In diving into interpretation it seems to be ignored that 2 paragraphs down the author resents a micromanaging male director, if this had contained "her" instead of "him" would it be interpreted total condemnation rather than chance? Why is this not also an emotional reaction and if so why does it matter less?
I.e. the article is balanced in calling out gender overall (as shown by word frequency) and the author seems to dislike people based on what they did (as seen by reviewing the sections called out) so the only way bias in re-reading can be called out here is if you're searching for it and ignoring what doesn't match.
It is the methodology's fault, by definition - they exist to be implemented, and if the in practice implementations don't work as intended, then something is wrong in the method, level of proscription, etc.
Maybe we could make an analogy to cookbook recipes. Some recipes require cooking skill and some practice to do them successfully. But if the recipe is good, you should be able to train at least some cooks to have consistent success with it.
But I would guess that such a methodology wouldn't actually generalize to lots of different kinds of software. It might work for repeatedly building similar things using similar technology in a restricted domain.