
I Am Alex St. John’s Daughter, and He Is Wrong About Women in Tech - kelukelugames
https://medium.com/@milistjohn/i-am-alex-st-john-s-daughter-and-he-is-wrong-about-women-in-tech-4728545e7c0e#.miz0024yn
======
pdabbadabba
This whole saga has been uncomfortable from the beginning--and now I'm
cringing harder ever than ever. Not because I disagree with much of what
Amilia has written, but just because it's painful to be, in some way, a
witness to the rift that this piece makes evident.

In any case, Amilia is right to highlight this quote:

> Why do young white males tend to be the ones who pick up computers, teach
> themselves to code, start businesses in their basements with their friends
> and get rich? It’s an obvious opportunity to everybody isn’t it? If you are
> a different race, gender, or religion… what’s your excuse? I know of very
> very few successful bootstrapped tech companies founded by women or blacks.

This, folks, is a racial (and gender) pathology claim. Unless we interpret
Alex as inquiring about the social circumstances that prevent women and
'blacks' from seizing these 'opportunities' (and I don't see how that's a
plausible interpretation here), then what Alex is suggesting is that there is
something wrong with women and black people, a physiological symptom of their
gender or race, that prevents them from seeing or taking these opportunities
when presented with them. I find that, if you pay attention, you also see this
way of thinking at work behind the scenes in more reasonable-sounding claims
about racial and gender politics. Sometimes its overt, but more often its
buried in points about, e.g., the corroded norms of "black communities."

~~~
dvdcxn
>Why do young white males tend to be the ones who pick up computers, teach
themselves to code, start businesses in their basements with their friends and
get rich? It’s an obvious opportunity to everybody isn’t it? If you are a
different race, gender, or religion… what’s your excuse? I know of very very
few successful bootstrapped tech companies founded by women or blacks.

I've always wondered if the answer to this was due to the culture and class
demographics. The Current crop of tech leaders came from the era where middle
class boys were bought computers by their parents as it was seen as a thing
for boys to be into and not girls (I think this stereotype is still prevalent
but far less powerful now). Computers just were not affordable to working
class folks back then. Considering the poverty most minorities families faced
then and still do now, it's sadly the case that they couldn't afford
computers.

I expect (and hope) that in the next 10 years we'll see the distribution of
tech leaders become naturally more diverse. Not because of any activist drive
but simply because these kids are much more likely to have access to the tools
they were denied in the past.

~~~
nemothekid
> _I 've always wondered if the answer to this was due to the culture and
> class demographics._

You could probably make a well supported case for why this is true for
minorities, but what makes the entire hypothesis shaky is if it was a cultural
and class issue, what does that say about middle/upper class white women?

Now let's assume that these women were discriminated/discouraged out of tech.
How are we sure that in 10 years those same forces won't do the same to
minorities?

I don't have a solution, but I don't think the computer penetration problem
sufficiently answers the question.

~~~
mercer
Perhaps gaming has something to do with this? Leaving aside whether there is
something 'male' about gaming and the specific games that are most common, I
recall that in my youth gaming was a 'guy thing'. I can imagine that
frequently interacting with a computer in the form of gaming easily leads to
becoming a programmer or tech worker.

------
rectang
Here's what she's rebelling against:
[http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pd...](http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf)

    
    
        RULE 1:  You don’t recruit and retain male engineers
        you recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends
    
        *   If the wife or GF is unhappy the engineer is gone
        *   If the relationship breaks down the engineer is gone
        *   The paycheck goes to HER
        *   Why does SHE want her husband or BF to work for you?

~~~
wtbob
Is this one of those true things we all agree not to talk about? Because I
sure don't see anything wrong with it: if a guy's wife is unhappy with his
job, then he'll get a new one.

~~~
untothebreach
The problem here is not that an unhappy spouse will cause the employee to
leave, but rather that the author makes the assumption that the employee will
be male, and that the male will have a female SO.

~~~
rectang
EXACTLY. So many people on this thread have not even noticed that women are
not considered as candidates!

~~~
douche
Because it says explicitly:

> RULE 1: You don’t recruit and retain _male_ engineers you recruit and retain
> Wives and Girlfriends"

Reading is fundamental

~~~
st3v3r
The implication being that you don't recruit or retain female engineers at
all.

~~~
lucozade
No the implication is that that's not how you manage female engineers, it's
just how you manage male engineers.

He says later that female engineers will go get promoted into non-engineering
roles soon enough anyway. The implication there is you don't need to worry
about retaining them as engineers as they won't stay that way.

BTW this isn't an endorsement of either his views or his approach. I mean the
general thrust of the presentation could be renamed "ways to stiff your
staff".

There are bits of it that ring true e.g. the different motivations between
newbies, lifers and the rest. The majority though is clearly intended to be
provocative.

------
mikestew
I guess I haven't been paying attention to the latest from a man who would
give toddlers a run for their money in the tantrum department (well, other
than telling Wild Tangent to leave me alone). Why he's getting the time of
day, I have no idea. Sure, he did something something DirectX twenty years ago
at Microsoft, but if he's done anything of note since other than run his
mouth, I must have missed it.

If anything he has to say upsets you, ask yourself "why?" Because he's a
brilliant game dev ala Carmack? Because everyone wants to work for Wild
Tangent? Because of those lovely AAA titles Wild Tangent cranks out one after
another? The answer to all is "no". So why do you care? Hell, his own
offspring doesn't want anything to do with him. You can't stop VentureBeat and
TechCrunch from writing it, but you don't have to read it.

~~~
RodericDay
He's a particularly bad exponent of what people feel are actually very widely
held ideas in the tech community (ie: young > old, work long hours don't
complain, etc).

------
edgyswingset
> Dad, if you use my face in an offensive slideshow again I beg you to please
> at least throw me a bone and put in a more flattering picture. As a self
> absorbed millennial I have provided the internet with a profusion of selfies
> in a rainbow of sepia tones. Please choose any of those.

He picked an unflattering photo of his daughter and used it as a visual
example of a "woman in tech" without her permission? What on earth?

------
ahallock
> Worst of all, many women enter into CS majors only to find that they are
> already hopelessly behind as they discover that their male counterparts
> already know the material from tinkering in their childhoods.

My college experience was quite different. I never tinkered with computers or
electronics during my childhood, and I had no problems getting up to speed. In
fact, I'd say most of my peers at the community college I went to had zero
programming experience. The instructors didn't assume any prior knowledge,
either.

~~~
whateveridunno
She didn't say "all women", she said "many women." I attend the University of
Texas at Austin. I started out as a CS major, still am, but no longer want to
work in the field. One of the reasons was the fact that although I'd taken AP
CS courses in high school, I still felt looked down upon because I'd first
been exposed to and developed an interest in CS "late". This attitude came
from my peers, the companies that attended our career fairs, and even from my
first exposure to the online tech press/blogosphere- I remember reading an
essay by Paul Graham wherein he essentially implied that if a woman hasn't
started coding by 13 all hope is lost for her. The only people I didn't get
that impression from were (most of) my instructors, but that wasn't really
enough, especially in the 500+ person intro classes I was in at the time.

Incidentally, like many women in CS, I was encouraged to look for role models
among other women in my department and in the broader tech world. Dear other
technical college women, if you're reading this: Don't. In my personal
experience, successful women in the field are much, much more likely to have
had parents who were programmers and to have started earlier. All the women
who were pointed out to me as role models had this background. It was only
when I started looking to the successful men in my program that I started to
find people who had first learned to code in their sophomore years and decided
to stay. I have my own theories as to why that imbalance exists, but the
simple truth is, I could have learned a lot more about how to "catch up" from
those men than the women I was pushed towards.

~~~
ahallock
> I still felt looked down upon because I'd first been exposed to and
> developed an interest in CS "late".

Come on, there are assholes everywhere who use this tactic to make themselves
feel superior or to get rid of potential competition, men and women alike.
This is not exclusive to CS. A lot of people are worried that they put so much
time into something and that someone 'fresh' could make them look bad by
picking it up quicker. It makes it that much more satisfying when you beat
them.

~~~
whateveridunno
If it was just a small minority of men in my program, I would have agreed with
you, but this attitude seemed also prevalent- and I could be wrong about this-
in companies and the larger tech world.

One thing I noticed in particular, was that a hell of a lot of "diversity
initiatives" (stuff like code camps, scholarships to diversity conferences,
etc) set up by companies like Square and Google and nonprofits like Grace
Hopper gave their opportunities mostly to minorities who were already very
successful, with internships in prestigious companies. If even the programs
explicitly meant to increase the percentage of women/minorities in the
industry go largely to very experienced people, I thought at the time, then
there's really no hope for me at that point.

In any case, none of this is what led to me deciding I didn't want a tech
career, it was just a contributing factor. I probably could have pushed
through it, but I realized I didn't like tech enough to do so- I liked coding
well enough, but I didn't like or value the work most tech companies were
doing.

~~~
jdcarter
I have to agree that there are a lot of bad programming jobs out there, but
there are some really good ones, too--many times in places that aren't
obvious. I'm speaking only from my own experience here, but I'm currently
working at a big-name company and they pay well but the work is boring as hell
and the culture is not to my liking. I've worked at smaller/no-name companies
and had a vastly better experience--more diverse work, more opportunities to
develop new skills, and a much friendlier culture as well.

If you have any interest in staying in the field--and I hope you do--don't
limit your view of potential jobs to just the high-profile companies. Talk to
some of the smaller shops around, you might really like what you find.

------
bad_user
The article has a quote from: [http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/16/game-
developers-must-avoid...](http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/16/game-developers-
must-avoid-the-wage-slave-attitude/)

> " _I can’t begin to imagine how sheltered the lives of modern technology
> employees must be to think that any amount of hours they spend pushing a
> mouse around for a paycheck is really demanding strenuous work_ "

I cannot speak for developers in Silicon Valley or other places, but I suspect
the feeling of disgust when hearing such things is similar. The problem is
that solving design, engineering, computer science and math problems every day
can be stressful and exhausting. Do that for more than 8 hours per day and
maybe also multitask between projects everyday, in an environment that has
toxic management and it's a recipe for burnout, burnout being that deep sense
of tiredness, emptiness and helplessness, being nothing less than depression
out of which some people never recover.

Now I'm sure that this is way better than digging for blood diamonds to feed
your family, as Mr. Alex St. John is saying. But I can't believe that somebody
born into privilege can even think to suggest that such jobs aren't so bad
compared to African slavery.

~~~
douche
If everybody else's lived experience matters, then take into account that this
guy grew up in a log cabin in Alaska. I didn't grow up that far off the grid,
but doing anything on a computer is a damned sight easier than working all day
swinging a chainsaw or turning wrenches on heavy equipment. Pays way better
too, and I haven't smashed a finger, lacerated anything, or taken a bath in
hydraulic fluid since I became a desk jockey.

~~~
dblohm7
Perhaps if we were to restrict this discussion to the physical aspects of the
job, then yes. That is a very narrow view, however.

------
LogicFailsMe
I remember interviewing for an engineering gig at WildTangent at a time when
my latest gig in the valley paid $120K plus 0.5% of the startup.

WildTangent offered me $35K, less than I had made as a post-doc before leaving
for industry.

#$%& you Alex...

~~~
beachstartup
yeah, i'm searching, digging deep for sympathy for someone naive enough to
accept a 35k offer in a 100k+ environment, and i'm failing.

the stress, the hours, the burnout, it's not for passion, it's for MONEY. you
can go work on your passions in absolute leisure on a beach in southeast asia
and never worry about money, but for the kids out there reading this, don't be
tricked into thinking developing throwaway shitbox games for some asshole ex-
microsoft millionaire is your passion.

35k is a very different kind of 'fuck you' money.

~~~
LogicFailsMe
What? You think I accepted that offer? No no no, Instead, I went to a post-IPO
company while the stock was down from the dotcom crash and did just fine when
it recovered.

In-between, Craig Venter offered me $45k, so glad I have standards. Everyone
should have standards, no?

Edit: +1 for "35K is a very different kind of @#$% you money."

------
bmurphy1976
I more-or-less said the same thing on Reddit: GOOD FOR HER! If every asshole
who had influence or power had such a strong and confident daughter calling
them out on their bullshit, this world would be a MUCH better place.

~~~
danso
The most surprising fact to me was that she is just 22. Rebelling against
parents isn't uncommon at a young age, but writing a full-blown public
takedown is uncommon at...any age.

------
JamilD
Dupe; discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11542664](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11542664)

~~~
sridca
Why is this post hidden from the front page? It was there moments ago.

~~~
sridca
I came across this:

> _(2015-10-16) The people behind the scenes at Hacker News now hand pick
> stories they want on the front page. It 's not a user-generated voting-
> controlled news site. But it pretends to be one and tries to look like one.
> It's deeply dishonest._ [http://www.curi.us/1612-anti-israel-bias-at-hacker-
> news](http://www.curi.us/1612-anti-israel-bias-at-hacker-news) /
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10402465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10402465)

This is outrageous, and I will find a way to create a front-page list that is
"unadulterated".

~~~
maxerickson
There's really no pretense that votes are the only factor in ranking stories.

Here's the moderator commenting about the many factors:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20rank&sort=byPopulari...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20rank&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

(not all the results are applicable, enough are)

~~~
sridca
> There's really no pretense that votes are the only factor in ranking
> stories.

True, however the HN front page has always given me the _impression_ that
votes matter the most, and that the front-page is largely reflective of the
interests of the HN demographics. The question I'd ask is: why is there no
explicit indication (written in the footer, perhaps) of the front-page being
vetted by a handful of moderators?

A subtle form of pretense is not speaking of the truth.

~~~
Tiksi
[http://news.ycombinator.com/active](http://news.ycombinator.com/active) seems
to be pretty unadulterated, although it goes by comments not votes.
Controversial topics that get flagged as flamewars and drop off the front page
(they hit 40 comments before 40 votes iirc) stay on the first page of /active
as long as they're still... active.

Also, HN is pretty open about being more heavily moderated than other parts of
the net, it's far from secret. And while I don't necessarily share the view
that moderation of discussion is a GoodThing™, I find it acceptable since no
one is trying to pretend that it's not happening.

~~~
sridca
[http://news.ycombinator.com/active](http://news.ycombinator.com/active) is
quite interesting and this particular thread is standing at position #6 over
there!

> HN is pretty open about being more heavily moderated than other parts of the
> net [...] I find it acceptable since no one is trying to pretend that it's
> not happening.

A subtle form of pretence is to not explicitly state the fact. Why is there no
explicit indication (written in the footer, perhaps) of the front-page being
vetted by a handful of moderators? Why is the 'active' page kept hidden (it is
not in the navbar)? Why all this secrecy?

~~~
Tiksi
The active page (along with a couple others) are shown on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists) (the
'Lists' link in the footer). There's a few more odd pages like newpoll that
aren't linked to in any obvious place.

I don't really see any of it as secrecy, as that implies actively and
intentionally hiding, to me it seems more like not going out of the way to
show/tell people. The Guidelines and FAQs go into it a bit IIRC, and dang has
written comments on it as well. I'd describe it more as unintuitive than
secretive. It seems like the same reasoning behind keeping HN minimalistic and
not webapp 2.0 bloatware. It might chase some people away but it also keeps an
eternal september at bay.

Also the front page is not vetted by moderators (if it was they'd be doing a
terrible job as dupes and blatant linkbait are common), but there's code in
place to mitigate flamewars and such. If you want to see what stories and
comments are actually getting killed (by users, not the mods) you can enable
showdead in your profile, which imo should be enabled by default but I can
understand why it's not.

Generally if you see a story drop off the front page quickly, it's getting
comments a lot quicker than it's getting votes. I do think mods will
occasionally remove the penalty for this on stories that triggered the
flamewar protection without there being a flamewar. Additionally some domains
and topics are penalized, and there seem to be filtered words that will auto
kill your comment. Try leaving a comment with (Im sorry, gotta avoid it
somehow) m@$tur b@t3 in it. But again that's all automated, just unintuitive.

------
dudul
The slide about "real engineers" is priceless. Real engineers don't care about
money? They want a "mission"? Ha! Good luck hiring engineers in ad-tech,
finance, etc. What's the mission? Showing more annoying ads to users? Yeah!

I guess I'm not a real engineer, cause I care about money. I sell a skill,
provide a service, this service has value, pay me.

Now, TBH, a few good advice in this presentation, but often weirdly worded.
Making sure the spouse/family is happy is a good advice, but doesn't have to
be presented as "the wife/girlfriend".

~~~
ownagefool
The entire presentation is essentially a list of "how I think we can get good
developers and underpaid them". I don't really care if he invented gaming
itself, fuck this guy.

------
erroneousfunk
Obviously, the entire slide deck is terrible, but, a personal thought about
the "The NOT male engineers" slide...

Some people might think "Well, it's a terrible thing to say like that, that
women should get the more social jobs, but society/culture/genetics/hormones
-- perhaps a grain of truth, right? Women are just social!" You might even
think it's a good thing to promote them, or make them the "communicators" or
put them in architect positions.

I just want to say that these are the good intentions that made my first few
years of out of college job experience absolutely awful, which makes this
slide especially upsetting to me. I was an engineering major with a strong CS
background, but also a 6' tall, beautiful, outgoing, well-spoken woman.
Obviously, I'd be perfect working with clients, or acting as a liaison between
developers and designers, or as a technical sales engineer, right!?

So, I was "let go" twice, the first time, just 5 months after graduating, and
then again a year later. I missed meetings, told clients their ideas were bad,
was a terrible diplomat, didn't prepare very nice-looking reports, complained
about using MS Office, constantly forgot to log billable hours, spent too much
time writing code... I hated it, I was terrible at it, and yet I _kept_
drifting towards these types of jobs! It was what recruiters showed me, what
college counselors showed me, what everyone said I should do, and what _I_
thought I should do!

It took me way too long (to my credit, I was young) to realize that I'm much
much happier "just" writing code, and working on a project that I can really
take the time to get into. If I'm going to do "collaboration" I'd rather do it
with other engineers that share a common(ish) technical background, where we
all bounce ideas off of each other and have similar goals for the product or
feature. And I'm so much happier not having to worry about what I'm wearing to
work every day, or if I need to prepare for a customer meeting in the morning!

So, even if you think that it might be true that women are more social on
average (whatever your own personal reasoning is, doesn't matter) PLEASE don't
automatically try to lead women into roles like this, or assume that she'll be
great at bridging gaps between clients/developers/designers/god-knows-what
(because she's a LADY! Amirite!?). Some are, some aren't. Some men are, some
aren't. But using these social/cross-discipline positions as kneejerk
suggestions for a woman to "move up", or "do something more interesting" may
be doing more harm than good to her career if she takes the advice.

------
DonHopkins
Alex St John glorifies the benefits of slavery and Microsoft's imperialistic
dominance of game developers in his own words [1], describing his infamous
Toga Party / Roman Orgy / Slave Auction he threw in the Spartan Stadium at the
1996 Computer Game Developer Conference:

>"Sex, violence and debauchery were all hallmarks of a great Roman “orgy” and
I wanted to come as close to capturing that experience as I could get away
with."

>"The slave auction was also a special occasion. The Roman guards were
rounding up the losers from the gladiatorial events and anybody who was
offending a “senator” or Cleopatra and throwing them in the slave pit. Once a
sufficient number of slaves had been collected from the party, Gillian
returned to the stage to auction them to the audience for the gold they had
won in the games. Gillian could set any base price she wanted for a
“specimen”, if the audience wouldn’t pay the price the slave would be “thrown
to the lions”. We had configured a “pit” full of foam to one side of the stage
and directly in front of the first caged lion. A failed slave would be marched
to the edge of the pit at spear point and pushed in by the praetorian guard
where they would fall into box full of foam below the audiences line of sight.
Then a huge video clip of lions tearing up a wildebeest and roaring would be
played on the big screens on either side of the stage accompanied by the
sounds of screaming. Down in the foam pit we had a collection of fake bloody
body parts that somebody would toss up in the air during the lion feeding. Of
course the “victim” was then allowed to sneak out the back and return to the
party."

[1] [http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/03/06/bunnygate-
pt-2/](http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/03/06/bunnygate-pt-2/)

------
run4yourlives2
I hope that if I turn into what can best be described as a self righteous
asshole, my children will be smart and capable enough to call me on it, hard
and fast.

There are so many incredibly insulting and poorly thought out half-truths in
the original presentation referenced that I'm shocked it was given in the
context of a professional environment.

------
Gratsby
It's always fun to pile on, but what I got out of ASJ's post was "love your
job for whatever hours you are there."

Negativity begets negativity, but thinking positive and thinking big is just
as contagious.

~~~
JamilD
The tone of it was more like: love your job for whatever hours you are there,
even if it's 80 hours a week, and if you don't love it, you're not a real
engineer, you're in the mediocre majority, and you don't deserve to be there
anyway.

~~~
Gratsby
I didn't get that. I guess perception is everything.

------
simonswords82
This is ridiculous, she lost me at:

{Dad, if you use my face in an offensive slideshow again I beg you to please
at least throw me a bone and put in a more flattering picture. As a self
absorbed millennial I have provided the internet with a profusion of selfies
in a rainbow of sepia tones. Please choose any of those.}

This is some sort of weird public spat between a father and a daughter, it's
not newsworthy or even constructive.

~~~
cookiecaper
I'm not sure if I clicked upvote or downvote, sorry. Using HN on a small
screen right now. I meant to upvote.

------
RyanZAG
Seems like the big thing everyone is missing: you can hate Alex all you want,
but he's not making conjectures. He's giving his advice based on successful
experience in reality. I'll take his word - as politically incorrect as it is
- over 1000 people making arguments off what is 'right'.

If you're running a business and Alex's tactics give you even a 10% edge -
take them.

~~~
ssmoot
I thought his posts on the subject were a mix of pragmatism and satire? A
"this is how the world works, you've got this, here's what you'll face".

Was it not meant to be satirical? Was he genuinely advocating squeezing what
you can out of people until they burn out and then tossing them aside?

I guess from the tone I thought he was trying to poke fun at the POV he was
espousing? But the only thing I know about him was that he went around
evangelizing DirectX at Microsoft Developer conference a long time ago so I
could've completely misread.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Does this[0] look like satire?

[0] [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgP-
xKKUkAIxXph.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgP-xKKUkAIxXph.jpg:large)

~~~
RyanZAG
It actually does look like satire because it's so over the top. Are we sure
it's not some kind of inside joke?

If this is how he actually does treat employees in a serious fashion then I
take back everything nice I said about him. You can create a high performance
culture while not being inhuman. I still stand by harsh tactics being
important in business, but harsh tactics end where someone's health and well-
being begin.

~~~
jsprogrammer
His website [0] seems to be having database connectivity issues at the moment,
but Google's cache caught it[1].

[0] [http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/17/wage-
slaves/#comment...](http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/17/wage-
slaves/#comment-4045) [1]
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rCVIzSi...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rCVIzSi52RgJ:www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/17/wage-
slaves/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us#comment-4045)

