
Your company’s Slack is probably sexist - bunburying
https://work.qz.com/1128150/your-companys-slack-is-probably-sexist/
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n42
The article makes an observation that online communication favors a typically
male communication style. That does not make you, your coworkers, or your
company bad or inconsiderate people. There is no reason to respond defensively
to an article like this, because it is not an attack. It is an observation on
how modern work environments may favor one style of communication over
another, and what role that gender socialization has in all of this.

What's important to gather from reading an article like this is that people
are different. They communicate differently. Keep that in mind when you are
communicating with them, because you may unintentionally be limiting their
potential to contribute.

~~~
romanovcode
> male communication style.

I'm sorry but WTF does this even mean? Every individual person has it's own
communication style AFAIK.

~~~
n42
The keyword that you seem to strategically be removing is "typically". Yes,
everyone has their own style of communication. From the article:

> Gender socialization helps explain these findings. “From age two or three,
> kids show patterns where little boys are more assertive and girls more
> indirect,” says Herring.

If we are going to discuss an article based on studies supporting the idea
that men and women are raised to communicate differently, we have to accept
that there is room for some generalizations with how people communicate.

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whataretensors
The idea of being always available on Slack is bad for all programmers
regardless of gender. Flow requires long periods of uninterrupted work.
Sometimes intense thought outside of sitting at a computer. Slack sets up the
expectation of instant communication from non-devs who don't follow the same
schedule.

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internetman55
It's interesting how the author reads the male behavior as indicating
authority/confidence/etc. I usually just read it as poor social skills and
general lack of awareness.

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maldusiecle
> ... the ones who posted blunt statements, or dropped in links with no
> context. They responded to others’ statements with sharp critiques, “no,” or
> radio silence

I haven't seen many (any?) people fitting this description on my company's
Slack, which makes me think this is more a reflection of culture in the
author's workplace than of Slack as a medium.

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mindcrash
I've just logged into our Slack.

Seems we only share links to interesting GitHub repo's, issues on stuff we use
and interesting blog posts about code/software architecture and devops related
stuff.

Zero sexist messages.

But here's the thing: All male team. All white aswell. Are we an exception?

