
A rant-y personal opinion: I hate when people say “Product Guy.” - ASquare
http://blog.ellenchisa.com/2014/02/27/a-rant-y-personal-opinion-i-hate-when-people-say-product-guy/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=Anuj+Adhiya&utm_campaign=Anuj+Adhiya
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jonnathanson
Really, really good points, especially about "guy" and its corresponding lack
of a casual, female equivalent. Unfortunately, "girl" conveys a sort of
latent, sexist diminution, such that the phrase "Product Girl" is dismissive.
As a man, I'd cringe if another man described a female coworker as "Product
Girl," in much the same way I cringed in the Entertainment business whenever a
female creative exec was referred to as "Development Girl" (or its even more
diminutive form, "D-Girl").

"Gal" feels hokey and anachronistic to me, and I'm sure it falls tinny on a
lot of this readership's ears. For whatever it's worth, though, I've been
noticing that the word is making a steady comeback. I have no personal n-gram
analyzer in my daily life (and I wish I did!), but I could swear I have heard
"gal" more times in the last two years than I had in the preceding 20. I've
heard it from men (and the first time I did, it struck me as weird and Mad
Men-esque), and I've heard it from women (most typically, women currently in
their late '20s to mid '30s).

In a weird way, I'm almost rooting for it. Our language needs a casual term
for women that is not latently diminutive and, thus, a micro-aggressive power
play the way "girl" often is (whether its user intends it to be or not).

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mjolk
I feel awkward having correctly guessed that the bulk of the post would be a
complaint about the gender in the informal "guy." Surely there's more
interesting things to complain about.

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comrh
So instead of seeing it as personally disinteresting and moving on you painted
the issue as not interesting, or not worth talking about, which is an age old
silencing tactic[1], and add no critical points of your own.

[1][http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/This_is_boring](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/This_is_boring)

It may not be interesting to you, no one is tell you it has to be, but
silencing other people's issues because they're boring to you is really,
really lame.

~~~
mjolk
It's not a silencing tactic, good lord, stop suspecting people have hidden
agendas about trivial garbage like this.

Like the blog author, stop attempting to control what people say. Someone
saying "I'm a product guy" is in no way a slight or a problem in the world.
"I'm a product expert." There, solved.

~~~
comrh
I'm not trying to control what you say. I am critiquing what you said. I also
didn't assume you had a hidden agenda. Again I just pointed out that your
response is a common trope used to discredit people's opinions.

> Someone saying "I'm a product guy" is in no way a slight or a problem in the
> world.

In your world. Is it so inconceivable to you that other people might feel
different things are problematic in their lives? Who are you to decide what is
and isn't a problem when someone has just expressed that they are conflicted
about something.

~~~
mjolk
>In your world. Is it so inconceivable to you that other people might feel
different things are problematic in their lives?

It's not inconceivable, but I find it absurd that this is topic that a
rational actor would feel is worth getting frustrated over.

>Who are you to decide what is and isn't a problem when someone has just
expressed that they are conflicted about something.

Here's the thing: when you say "yeah, the thing you said is a tactic that is
commonly used by jerks," the other party is going to take offense. Especially
when it comes to feminism, in which being a chicken little just ends up
trivializing the problem domain.

~~~
comrh
Just because you were offended doesn't mean the criticism isn't on point. Nice
dig at all of feminism though, again implying the small issues aren't
important.

~~~
mjolk
>Nice dig at all of feminism though, again implying the small issues aren't
important.

No part of that was a criticism feminism. If anything, I was defending it from
you.

~~~
hashbanged
If you think that blogs like this are a threat to feminism, I don't think
we're working with the same definition of feminism. Can you please explain how
you are defending feminism right now?

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nairteashop
I have "product guy" in my profile :) so just a counter-point:

> Working on "Product" could mean you’re a PM, a designer, an engineer, or a
> bunch of other things I’m probably forgetting right now.

All of this is exactly what I did when I started my company, so I'm not sure
how else to convey what it is I'm actually good at. Now, I was not the best at
any of these, and we subsequently hired people who are to replace me in all of
those roles, but for many months I had end-to-end responsibility for our
product: the feature-set, design, engineering, QA, etc.

I do think that being a "jack of all trades, master of none" is a unique skill
set as well. For example, I'm not a good designer, but I was good enough to
build a decent looking MVP, and also to identify and hire a designer who _is_
actually great. Same goes for engineering, QA, etc.

And the "guy vs. gal" thing... well, "product person" just sounds awkward, and
"jack of all trades" sounds arrogant, so I'm not sure what else to use.

~~~
ellenchisa1
Yeah very true! For that, I tend to say "I'm building X" vs. attributing it as
"I am an X."

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ellenchisa1
hello! First time I've been on HN (thanks for sharing it). FWIW - this isn't
one of my favorite things I've written. It's just something that annoys me
personally, so I wrote it down.

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maiab
To avoid this, I often say "I really like product", which has the added bonus
of neatly sidestepping most of what I _do_ (engineering) and focusing on what
I like to do.

The lack of a casual, neutral way to refer to women is a long-standing
problem. I don't know what the solution is, but there's a group of women who
argue that "lady" is the best term. I think it depends on the context whether
"lady" is seen as being casual or formal; xojane often uses it casually:
[http://www.xojane.com/entertainment/where-the-hell-are-
our-c...](http://www.xojane.com/entertainment/where-the-hell-are-our-comedy-
groupies)

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kadabra9
In point one the OP complains that the term "Product Guy" is too vague and
generic (which I agree with), then in point two she complains that people
using the term makes her uncomfortable because there isn't an informal female
equivalent.

If "Product Guy" is such a vague, generic term that myself, OP, and others
feel it is, is it really a big deal that there isn't a similarly vague and
generic female equivalent?

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martinjones
Yeah, I totally agree. And it's not like you could say "gal" either. That's
just nerdy.

