

Sexual Harassment in the Tech Industry - jerrya
http://www.marieclaire.com/career-money/jobs/geeks-attack

======
masto
I'm glad to see a women's magazine that's finally standing up against gender
stereotypes. From the sidebar:

    
    
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~~~
threeseed
So you're saying that in keeping with "gender stereotypes" men should be
inconsiderate, sexist assholes and women should just shut up and deal with it
?

And for the record trying to equate a fashion/lifestyle magazine with the
totality of the female gender is completely and utterly stupid.

~~~
walshemj
Ironically some of the worst discrimination against women in particular
pregnant ones is at womens mags.

------
Udo
I don't think Richards should be part of that list of examples. The others
named in the article were assaulted and generally treated very badly. So was
Richards, eventually, but her original stunt combined with her hypocritical
actions beforehand should disqualify her from serving as an example for sexism
at tech events. Don't get me wrong, the threats against her after the stunt
are just criminal, but they're not exactly perpetrated by brogrammers at trade
shows.

That said, the article is a poignant reminder that something is amiss in the
software community - as well as in our society at large but I always thought
we were better than that. Like most issues, the reasons for this seem to be
complex and varied. Bringing more female developers into the mix is only one
measure. Clearly, the darker problem is that there are evidently a lot of men
out there who like to engage in that kind of behavior. Showing them that this
is not OK only covers part of the issue, the scarier part is that apparently
considering women to be less-than-human is a prevalent and deep-running
attitude.

As an aside, the term _brogrammer_ is probably misapplied here. I always saw
brogrammers as beefy, sun-tanned, macho douchebag coders who spit out some
front-end code before heading off to the beach. Sure, there's probably some
overlap between them and people who commit sexual assaults, but I don't think
it's a good descriptor for sexist assholes/predators in general.

~~~
Ixiaus
TBH, I would guess that "brogrammers" actually comprise a very small number of
trade show perpetrators due to the fact that they may generally have more
social access to women outside of the work place. Many of the geeks I meet
were and are socially very awkward people, social ineptness is (sometimes)
correlated with ineptness in interacting with women. I would say (again, a
guess) a "brogrammer" has less interest in sexually assaulting a woman at a
trade show then a sexually deprived and socially inept geek does; you'll find
brogrammers at bars and clubs where it seems the lewd treatment of women that
aren't aware of their bodies due to drugs and alcohol is the norm.

Mind you, I'm not nearly saying all geeks are like this - I consider myself to
be a reclusive geek but have the utmost respect for women and I have yet to
meet another programmer that hasn't shared that mentality with me. (it makes
me sad when so many trolls come out to bash - whether justified or not, it
isn't a civilized conversation)

~~~
Udo
I agree with you, but I don't think sex perps are statistically prevalent in
either group, they are probably in a group by themselves. While the typical
brogrammer is absolutely capable of making lewd remarks, it's unlikely he will
engage in aggressive acts, because he is already very successful with women -
why would he want to jeopardize that.

Like you, I would also consider myself a reclusive geek, and probably like you
I wouldn't even consider that kind of behavior, not only because it's wrong
and frowned-upon, but because the thought of doing this would never occur to
me. Most geeks I know fall somewhere in this spectrum between "ladies man" and
"recluse", but I can see none of them exhibiting the kind of behavior we're
talking about.

Hence I believe there must be a third group of people who are, for lack of a
better term, insane beneath their fake exterior.

~~~
Ixiaus
I agree with your analysis :)

------
Nursie
I'm always suspicious of these figures about relative male/female earnings.
The methodology is rarely given and it usually turns out to be apples to
oranges comparison.

That said, what these women have experienced is horrible. As a man in tech my
only response is "this stuff is unacceptable, and this isn't me, please try
not to tar us all with this brush".

~~~
threeseed
There is a perception amongst some guys in IT that women aren't capable enough
to be great programmers. Hence they either don't strive to higher positions
(and higher wages) or they are deliberately kept down.

I've seen it happen on a few occasions and it's really disheartening to watch
them get screwed over.

~~~
Nursie
I've certainly seen that attitude in a (thankfully) very small number of the
engineers I've worked with, and never systemically.

Most of the female engineers I've worked with were of a far higher standard
than the people that held those opinions.

\--edit-- to be clear I'm not trying to say it can't or doesn't happen
systemically, it's just that either I've been lucky in where I've worked or
it's not been obvious to me. But then I'm a guy and I've never been in
management positions.

~~~
eliasmacpherson
I've noticed the same, that all but one of the female engineers I worked with
were of a far higher standard. That is pretty damning to me though - only
those that are really dedicated end up staying. I think it goes to show that
the environments that I worked in aren't all that great, and that the 'feeder'
channels, third level, other companies, aren't that great for women. The
argument that held most sway with me til the recent social media boom was that
women were too smart to get involved in IT (more sense to do medicine), but
that doesn't seem to hold any water now that other industries are lagging.

~~~
Nursie
Oh I didn't necessarily mean the women I've worked with in the past had to be
at a higher than average standard or hugely dedicated to stay in the industry.
I've worked with a whole spectrum of abilities of both men and women.

I was more implying that the guys that felt the need to belittle women were
usually pretty damn awful themselves.

But you may well be on to something there anyway...

------
cafard
When will "brogrammers" join metrosexuals, hippies, the Sharks and the Jets in
some corner of a cultural dictionary? (Or perhaps I shouldn't get my hopes up
--the expression hipster returned after a 50-year hiatus, if describing a
different phenomenon.) How are these guys different from salesmen, flyboys
(remember Tailhook), etc., drunk on alcohol and testosterone?

And Marie Claire? Merciful heavens, I hope that Maxim will step up and
contribute its perspective.

~~~
threeseed
Rather than address the content of what is being said you try and dismiss it
as though Marie Claire could never, ever produce an objective, insightful look
at the role of women in the IT industry. And then try and excuse the behaviour
with a "but sales guys do it". Nice work.

I spent years at university (at great cost) and countless long hours because I
genuinely believe that this is a serious profession on par with a doctor or
scientist. And I for one am sick of these stories coming up again and again
and being dismissed by people such as yourself again and again.

~~~
cafard
First, I would refer you to masto's comment some ways up for a hint why I
posted.

Second, I do not condone such behavior. It is flat wrong, whether done by a
coder or by a pilot or salesman. A conference that lets guys get away with
this without losing their credentials is at fault.

Third, I do not think that the seriousness of any occupation is a guarantee
against bad behavior by its practitioners. It does not take very wide reading
to encounter thoroughly bad--criminal behavior--on the part of doctors, for
example.

------
abelardx
Boys need good women around them to become good men, and girls need good men
around them to become good women.

We men should be policing ourselves. If you see this happening, step up and
tell them it's not OK. Just stop them, it's that simple. This isn't a women's
issue, it's a people issue.

~~~
VLM
About 90% right but rather than being divisive, as in forming or expressing
division or distribution, you could just summarize it as "its a being
civilized issue". As in you shouldn't act like a zoo primate, regardless of
who is doing what to which gender, etc.

What those cons need is need is a bunch of moms and grannies not just young
hotties (and no this is not blame the victim, keep reading) In that old women
are a instinctual effective civilizing influence on young boys who are
operating at a lower mental age for whatever reason. A stern glance from an
old grannie is, oh, probably about 100x more effective at intimidating a jerk
than a strongly worded article in Marie Claire. I'm sure that an entire nation
of drunken childish frat boys is quaking in their boots knowing that Marie
Claire magazine is not so happy with them. The presence of some father figures
would help too, fathers of daughters of roughly the age of the harassed
hotties tend to be kinda protective. I have no idea how a PR campaign "Take
yer mom and grandpa to Defcon this year" would work.

Who would ever have guessed that it takes a cross section of all of society to
act civilized, that some kinda weekend long lord of the flies re-enactment
doesn't result in the revival of medieval chivalry or the revival of the
womens lib movement or whatever.

------
jonheller
Oddly, I've yet to meet one of these "brogrammers" in my life in my past 13
years in the industry.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've generally found males in this field to be
extremely respectful and welcoming to females, I think partially because of
how few of them are in programming and development.

------
taylodl
Guys we need to ban together and remove these mysoginistic "brogrammers" from
our profession. If you see guys behaving in this manner - in this case we're
talking attempted rape - intervene. Don't just ignore it and hope the problem
goes away. It's not, and it appears to only be getting worse.

------
throwit1979
Decent article, but it's difficult to take seriously this form of
argumentation:

 _where instances of sexual harassment and assault against women are so
rampant there are even websites devoted to cataloging them_

The existence of websites? Really? By this standard of evidence, we are also
to believe that alien abductions, aspartame-induced brain cancers, and
infiltration of the government by subterranean lizard-people are also rampant.

------
parfe
I wish the article didn't use the term brogrammers. No one actually considers
himself a brogrammmer so it makes it easy to dismiss any responsibility. Every
make me a sandwich joke, everytime someone asks "was she hot?" after an
interview, every resume tossed in the trash because the candidate was a member
of Women in Computer Science (yes someone admitted to that in a comment on hn)
enables sexism to flourish. The "innocent" jokes people refuse to take
responsibility for enable the more serious trangressers.

Then when visible evidence of how hostile the community can be shows up such
as a thousand terrible comments on a blog it's discounted as 4chan, or
"trolls". As though a bunch of 14 year olds care about a tech conference
implementing a sexual harassment policy.

~~~
pyre
The "4chan crowd" usually only needs some token amount of motivation, and a
target. It doesn't matter of they care about the 'core values' at stake. IIRC,
in the case of Adria Richards, it was posted somewhere on 4chan, and that's
when things really took off (at least in terms of volume). The '4chan crowd'
really only had to take offense to her 'name and shame' attitude, without
caring about the larger 'sexual harassment policies at tech conferences'
issue.

------
pyre

      | That has translated into six-figure salaries and over-the-top
      | perks like concierges, car service, and free gourmet meals.
      | Wall Street's masters of the universe have been supplanted
      | by Silicon Valley's big-swinging code jocks.
    

Really? Maybe I'm just running with the 'wrong' circles to see this, but I
don't think that the industry is quite as bad as Wall Street. In Wall Street
it's in-grained in the culture, and unofficially encouraged by upper
management (especially the lavish lifestyle part, because then you always are
dependent on staying with the company and competing for that next $1 million
bonus).

