Is there a point to this article? I agree that women often get the short end of the stick in the valley (and I personally despise the brogrammer culture that has sprung up), but simply complaining about problems like this won't do anything to make them go away.
The more people who come out saying it's unacceptable the more likely there is to be a paradigm shift, at least, that's how I hope it will go. Another voice to add to those decrying the brogrammer culture is always welcome.
By what he has written, he could also write a similar article about why he doesn't want his daughter to work in NYC (assuming his daughter chooses finance over technology).
There is no real content in this article and more people saying something is unacceptable doesn't necessarily lead to a paradigm shift. Some examples I can think of:
-> Vietnam War (or all the other war) protesters.
-> Women needing to take their husband's or father's permission to step out of their households in countries like Saudi Arabia, etc.
He wanted to state that he has a daughter, and he'll be there to decide where she can work and cannot. This github thing is dirty and full of jerks watched over by old men, and he doesn't want her to touch that. For equality's sake.
The person who wrote this appears to be fantastically ignorant - they do not seem to know the difference between code that is on Github and code that is written by Github employees. This is akin to believing that everything you receive on your Gmail account has been written by Google.
I'm just about old enough to remember when the common image of a person involved in technology wasn't of some over-entitled brogrammer, and I lament that as much as anyone (fwiw, I think it's a false image and only very few people fit that stereotype, but it's a powerful image). But if you're going to go on the attack, getting basic facts wrong will undermine your argument.
I think there's a significant difference between saying "I don't want my daughter to work in Silicon Valley" and "I will forbid my daughter from working in Silicon Valley". All the author is saying is that he sees SV as a hateful place for women to work and, wanting the best for his daughter as he does, he would advise her against going there. I don't think he's saying he'd actively stop her if she still wanted to.
Wow, how many errors can this writer make in such a short piece? Besides misunderstanding the difference between a Github user and Github employee (both which may be able to write programs), he gets the gender of a New York Times writer wrong, even though she quite clearly states what her gender is and at the top of Google results for her name. But Asian names are tough, I guess?
The excerpt before the inevitable correction:
> Some of it may be about age. As The New York Times noted this week, there's a terrifying cult of youth in Silicon Valley, and with youth comes a lot of testosterone and a sense of invulnerability. What Yiren Lu misses in his op-ed piece, though, is that the men who are funding these young guys are often older, but they don't seem to be imparting much thoughtfulness or wisdom into the mix.
When did the world get so sensitive? I don't know if I grew up in some bubble of hate but where I come from people were brought up to be able to handle themselves.
> "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me."
Today it seems more like "Sticks and stones may break my bones but that's okay because there'll likely be DNA evidence; names are not allowed because it breaches my human right to be."
I'm sorry, but my kids will be brought up to ignore names and to punch the bully back twice as hard in person, not in the press; and they will be taught to appreciate differences, not gloss over them and pretend they don't exist. Perhaps most of all they'll be taught to pity those that have brought politics-level bullshit into everyday life, and to rail against it at every opportunity. The Github meritocracy rug fiasco makes me feel physically sick - meritocracy is now offensive? We're now being held at gunpoint by professional victims who have a problem with professional status being merit based? Fuck me.
Humanity has been at war of one kind or another forever, when are we going to learn to stop trying to change each other and just get on with it? I never understand those people in bars who get into fights with others who say something they deem offensive. What a waste of time. Sure you might change the view of 1 in a 100, but that's 100 shitty nights out you've had. What's the point? And who's to say you're right and he's wrong? If you think there's such a thing as a moral absolute, I'm afraid you haven't thought long enough. Despite how the NSA might like things, we're all sovereign beings and no one has the right to dictate the contents of another's mind. So cluster with the ones you like and forget the rest. Life's too damn short.
Oh, and don't feel the need to tell me I don't know what it's like to be on the receiving end of this stuff. Just don't.
> I never understand those people in bars who get into fights with others who say something they deem offensive. What a waste of time. Sure you might change the view of 1 in a 100, but that's 100 shitty nights out you've had. What's the point?
If they back down, they'll look weak. Looking weak can be a survival issue for some people, (or more commonly seems to be felt like one even when it's not,) especially if they don't have much faith in the rules of fair play.
"my kids will be brought up to ignore names and to punch the bully back twice as hard in person" vs "I never understand those people in bars who get into fights with others who say something they deem offensive"
I'm really pissed off and disappointed by people that assume that most hackers, being white, male and heterosexual, were somehow privileged to get into the position that we are in now... The reality is, it's not my skin color, my sex or my sexual orientation that made me a hacker, but years of hard work in my teens and pure perseverance in the face of insults, mocking and being "the unpopular geek". I've most definitely been much less privileged during my teen years than most girls (can't say about non-whites or gays, because there weren't any (yet)). It only now, after we've struck gold and the "outsiders" want to get in to get a piece of the pie, that we're being acknowledged, envied and called privileged. Maybe that's why we don't particularly try to make tech welcoming to the outsiders - we want no impostors who are only in it for the money or because it suddenly became cool.
If the gatekeepers (hiring managers, venture capitalists, etc) are only willing to hire or to invest in young, white, straight males then working there is very much a privilege that is only afforded to young, white, straight males. It's a privilege because it's granted by someone else. "outsiders" who are women, black, gay, etc can't "earn" their way in. No amount of hard work earning your hacker spurs is going to change the fundamental make up of who you are. That's why it's not fair, it's unequal, it's wrong, and it's something that everyone should rally against.
And if not? Maybe they just all want to hire real hackers (however you define real). Maybe they want to hire people who have been programming since their early teens, which most women and blacks haven't been (or so it seems). I'm trying to tell you that where I am is not because I'm white, but because I sacrificed a lot in order to become a good programmer. My belief is that there is not discrimination, the employers and VCs just want the best, which usually happen to be white males. You seem to see things differently.
In my many years of experience of cleaning up after crappy developers, white males are pretty bloody far from being "the best". Which is fine by me because it keeps me in a job.
I think the reality may well be that young, straight, white males are more capable developers on average, largely due to the fact that they're more commonly from an upbringing in moderately wealthy middle-class families free from the pressure of poverty or discrimination that hold minorities back, and with aspirations that they can easily work in industries that don't appear closed to them as they are to women. The discrimination could well be that of society as a whole rather than the particular company they're applying to work for. But to assume that the specific developer sitting in front of you in an interview is not as good as his or her counterparts because they don't fit your idea of "the best developer is a white male" is just plain discrimination.
More than 50% of people are women, many of them rich. Even if men were as discriminating as you claim, why shouldn't there be enough women to become clients of and fund startups by women?
Also do you really think a majority of the venture capitalists would leave money on the table because they prefer to discriminate against women?
Also do you really think a majority of the venture capitalists would leave money on the table because they prefer to discriminate against women?
Yes, but not because "they prefer to discriminate against women", rather because they believe that female founders represent a disproportionately higher risk than male founders. A lot of VCs (seem to) believe that women aren't ruthless and cut-throat enough to lead their companies to success. The recent proliferation of 'women-only' VC funds sign-posts that some people in the industry recognise that they have a problem.
Even assuming that's true, what about startups that bootstrap?
Are there any comparisons, for example numbers of startups bootstrapping/taking on VC by men vs women? And their success rates? Not that it would be an all-telling comparison, but it would be a start.
Yeah; like Hollywood, or the military, or Washington. Its a universal problem - those entrenched tend to prefer hiring similar people. Nothing new here.
He tries to not only tell men what not to do (be bros, swear on the job, work long hours, disrupt things), but also women what to do (be emphatic and compassionate, feminine, polite, don't disrupt things). Is he really doing women a service here?
I also think drawing daughters or nieces into such arguments is a very cheap shot.
Why not just let people get on with their lives...
24 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 64.0 ms ] threadThere is no real content in this article and more people saying something is unacceptable doesn't necessarily lead to a paradigm shift. Some examples I can think of:
-> Vietnam War (or all the other war) protesters. -> Women needing to take their husband's or father's permission to step out of their households in countries like Saudi Arabia, etc.
I'm just about old enough to remember when the common image of a person involved in technology wasn't of some over-entitled brogrammer, and I lament that as much as anyone (fwiw, I think it's a false image and only very few people fit that stereotype, but it's a powerful image). But if you're going to go on the attack, getting basic facts wrong will undermine your argument.
The excerpt before the inevitable correction:
> Some of it may be about age. As The New York Times noted this week, there's a terrifying cult of youth in Silicon Valley, and with youth comes a lot of testosterone and a sense of invulnerability. What Yiren Lu misses in his op-ed piece, though, is that the men who are funding these young guys are often older, but they don't seem to be imparting much thoughtfulness or wisdom into the mix.
> "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me."
Today it seems more like "Sticks and stones may break my bones but that's okay because there'll likely be DNA evidence; names are not allowed because it breaches my human right to be."
I'm sorry, but my kids will be brought up to ignore names and to punch the bully back twice as hard in person, not in the press; and they will be taught to appreciate differences, not gloss over them and pretend they don't exist. Perhaps most of all they'll be taught to pity those that have brought politics-level bullshit into everyday life, and to rail against it at every opportunity. The Github meritocracy rug fiasco makes me feel physically sick - meritocracy is now offensive? We're now being held at gunpoint by professional victims who have a problem with professional status being merit based? Fuck me.
Humanity has been at war of one kind or another forever, when are we going to learn to stop trying to change each other and just get on with it? I never understand those people in bars who get into fights with others who say something they deem offensive. What a waste of time. Sure you might change the view of 1 in a 100, but that's 100 shitty nights out you've had. What's the point? And who's to say you're right and he's wrong? If you think there's such a thing as a moral absolute, I'm afraid you haven't thought long enough. Despite how the NSA might like things, we're all sovereign beings and no one has the right to dictate the contents of another's mind. So cluster with the ones you like and forget the rest. Life's too damn short.
Oh, and don't feel the need to tell me I don't know what it's like to be on the receiving end of this stuff. Just don't.
If they back down, they'll look weak. Looking weak can be a survival issue for some people, (or more commonly seems to be felt like one even when it's not,) especially if they don't have much faith in the rules of fair play.
I'm really pissed off and disappointed by people that assume that most hackers, being white, male and heterosexual, were somehow privileged to get into the position that we are in now... The reality is, it's not my skin color, my sex or my sexual orientation that made me a hacker, but years of hard work in my teens and pure perseverance in the face of insults, mocking and being "the unpopular geek". I've most definitely been much less privileged during my teen years than most girls (can't say about non-whites or gays, because there weren't any (yet)). It only now, after we've struck gold and the "outsiders" want to get in to get a piece of the pie, that we're being acknowledged, envied and called privileged. Maybe that's why we don't particularly try to make tech welcoming to the outsiders - we want no impostors who are only in it for the money or because it suddenly became cool.
And if not? Maybe they just all want to hire real hackers (however you define real). Maybe they want to hire people who have been programming since their early teens, which most women and blacks haven't been (or so it seems). I'm trying to tell you that where I am is not because I'm white, but because I sacrificed a lot in order to become a good programmer. My belief is that there is not discrimination, the employers and VCs just want the best, which usually happen to be white males. You seem to see things differently.
Individuals are not averages.
Also do you really think a majority of the venture capitalists would leave money on the table because they prefer to discriminate against women?
Yes, but not because "they prefer to discriminate against women", rather because they believe that female founders represent a disproportionately higher risk than male founders. A lot of VCs (seem to) believe that women aren't ruthless and cut-throat enough to lead their companies to success. The recent proliferation of 'women-only' VC funds sign-posts that some people in the industry recognise that they have a problem.
Are there any comparisons, for example numbers of startups bootstrapping/taking on VC by men vs women? And their success rates? Not that it would be an all-telling comparison, but it would be a start.
I also think drawing daughters or nieces into such arguments is a very cheap shot.
Why not just let people get on with their lives...