

You May Have Seen My Face on BART - weston
https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/you-may-have-seen-my-face-on-bart-8b9561003e0f

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rbanffy
I think it's a dupe.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993353)

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kordless
> I didn’t ask for any of this attention, and I’m rather uncomfortable with
> all of it.

I was on the front page of the New York Times for being "Hooked on Gadgets". I
asked for it by agreeing to be the center of the story, didn't know it was
going front page when I started, and it still made me uncomfortable when it
ran. At the time, it was the most commented story in the history of the New
York Times. I stopped reading the comments by people about 20 comments in. My
wife made it to about 100 comments before she had to quit.

People say horrible things to each other. They judge each other, they make
blaming statements about each other, they speak for other's feelings, they
refuse to listen to the real feelings, or thoughts, and love to rationalize
away whatever issues they have with themselves that they see in others. At the
end of the day, it's easier to fault someone else and draw blame to them than
it is to accept their own faults.

When you go online, you open yourself up to these people. There's not a lot
you can do about them other than give zero fucks what they think or say.
That's a tricky thing sometimes, because you can end up hurting people who
care about you while trying to avoid those that don't. I wouldn't say I'm
great at it nowadays, but I'm better than I was before as a result of having
dealt with it.

It's a process, being excellent to each other, and all I can do is try harder
at it tomorrow than I did today. :)

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mabbo
My college did this to me. Hastily thrown together event "Hey, let us take
some photos of you for the website". A year or two goes by, and I've left town
(graduated), and friends start emailing me photos of my face on the side of a
bus. Big campaign, apparently.

To make it better, I looked pretty much like a sociopath in those photos.

And I'm sure I signed some forms saying that they could do this, but they also
rushed us through those forms because we were apparently short on time.

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anigbrowl
_The negative opinions about this ad that strangers feel so compelled to share
illustrate solid examples of the sexism that plagues tech._

Actually I didn't find the comments highlighted in the illustration all that
sexist. It seemed to me that that commenter was not so much weighing in on
what engineers are supposed to look like, but rather attempting to analyze the
semantic content of the recruitment ad, because most ads/corporate
presentations are so heavily designed and the people depicted are often
professional models/actors, whether working on commission or selected from a
stock photography database. Think of all the generic business websites where
everyone in the photographs just happens to have culturally ideal proportions,
have perfect skin/hair/teeth and look impeccably stylish. When I see that I
don't think that the company is made up of fantastically good-looking people
who happened to be photographed at their desks, but that the people depicted
were chosen for a mix of attractive looks and professional presentation.

(Now, I don't mean this as dismissive of sexism in the tech industry, which I
think is a huge problem, well summed up by the real-life experiences mentioned
in the article.)

 _At the end of the day, this is just an ad campaign and it is targeted at
engineers. [...] News flash: this isn’t by any means an attempt to label “what
female engineers look like.” This is literally just ME, an example of ONE
engineer at OneLogin. The ad is supposed to be authentic._

Yeah, but 'authenticity' is itself a commodity in the world of advertising,
and advertising is fundamentally about turning things into commodities. Paying
money to display images of people along with a commercial message in front of
the largest audience possible is fundamentally different from presenting a
portrait of an individual. Here, the commodity bargain is 'be part of a group
of friendly cool people, in exchange for performing this kind of work.' I
don't believe that people are reacting to you so much as they are responding
to the superficiality of advertising in general.

 _In fact, if you knew me you would probably know that being famous is one of
my biggest nightmares_

PTSD aside, aren't nightmares where we are most ourselves?

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noahtovares
I think there is another issues with these ads.

"My code helps Fortune 500 companies keep their data secure" vs. "My team is
great. Everyone is smart, creative, and hilarious"

This gives the impression that the woman is not excited about the
'engineering' work, but instead about the social aspects of the workplace.

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matthewmacleod
_This gives the impression that the woman is not excited about the
'engineering' work, but instead about the social aspects of the workplace._

That's a weak objection at best. Talking about how smart and creative your
team is is obviously praising their engineering capabilities.

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bshimmin
You say that, but "hilarious" isn't normally a word I associate positively
with engineering. "Isambard Kingdom Brunel's bridges were _hilarious_!"

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freehunter
No one is saying their engineering work is hilarious. The idea is that they
themselves, the human, is hilarious. We don't judge a person solely based on
their technical skills but based on the quality of their character as well.
You can work with a genius and hate the job because he's mean. Or you can work
with someone who is quite average but a good person to be around and you might
love the job.

No one gets called out when they say Elon Musk is charismatic, and you can't
argue the man isn't good at what he does. Having a sense of humor says nothing
about your technical ability but says a lot about how enjoyable you are to
work with. Just based on your comments here, I would guess that I would not
enjoy working beside you. If you don't associate the character description of
"hilarious" with anything positive, you and I would not get along. See how
that works?

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bshimmin
I was responding more to the grandparent's comment that the woman's quote
suggests she is more interested in the social aspects of the workplace than
the engineering work (versus the quote from the male engineer, which seems
more obviously about technical aspects of the job). Smartness and creativity
certainly are traits I would appreciate in an engineer, but hilarity is not.
All three, however, are traits I would appreciate in a human. Condescension
and snap character assessments aren't normally traits I appreciate in anyone,
so you're right, we probably wouldn't get along.

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vvpan
I am slightly confused. So what happened?

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harlanlewis
People assumed the billboard used a stock photo, rather than a picture of an
actual engineer, because she didn't conform to the physical expectations of an
engineer. See the picture of the facebook comment thread in the article. It
turns out a lot of engineers don't conform to the physical expectations of an
engineer. A lot of them are posting to Twitter under the hashtag
#ilooklikeanengineer -
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/ilooklikeanengineer](https://twitter.com/hashtag/ilooklikeanengineer)

Conference organizers should probably keep things like this in mind when
booking male-dominated lineups ("we just can't find any woman engineers" is a
common refrain).

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vvpan
Ah thanks. From the text I inferred she is transgender or something.

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forgetsusername
> _" I am a passionate self-taught engineer, extreme introvert, science-nerd,
> anime-lover, college dropout"_

Is engineering not a profession? How can you be an engineer without completing
your education in an accredited engineering school?

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trav4225
Yeah, there's a fair bit of controversy on this topic. In California at least,
I believe that the use of the title "engineer" is regulated by the so-called
PE act:

    
    
      http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/laws/pe_act.pdf
    

Regarding public opinion, I myself have a degree in "Computer Science and
Engineering" and have worked as a "software engineer" for 21 years, but my
engineer friends don't consider computer engineering to be "real engineering",
and my scientist friends don't consider computer science to be "real science".
:)

