
Anti-pattern theater: how to get women to quit - protomyth
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/12/04/meeting/
======
kstenerud
I'd argue that her monotone, 20 questions-style responses were
counterproductive. You can see her boss having to fish for information, when
all she had to do was:

B: So I was looking at the pages from this weekend and it looks like we had
something bad on Saturday. What happened?

W: There were too many queries failing in the Netherlands. I got a bunch of
pages in the middle of the night and finally tracked the problem down to a bug
in the new authentication daemon.

B: So is it working now?

W: It's working under a kludge. I wrote a restart script for it, but we need
to get a patch to fix it for real.

B: When did this start?

W: Sometime before my shift.

B: Who was on call then?

W: S. He rebooted the machines and the problem went away, but it came back
again during my shift so I put in the auto restart as a stopgap measure until
we could get a real fix.

Her treatment of S is harsh because she doesn't couch what she says at all to
protect him, like you normally do in order to promote office harmony.

It's obvious that she's frustrated from her previous dealings with certain
people, and their alleged sexism (which, unfortunately, is not demonstrated in
her recounting). Unfortunately, her response is to attack a hornet with a
sledgehammer (with corresponding collateral damage) and then blame the result
on sexism.

------
philwelch
If you have a chip on your shoulder in re sexism, you will perceive every
negative interaction through that lens.

Alternatively:

> How do you piss off a technical woman so she will leave your team? It's
> easy. Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that would never
> apply to a guy. The easiest one of these is to say "you're being too
> emotional". Who's going to argue against that?

Making claims like that, in effect, is simply a unilateral claim of immunity
against the accusation of being too emotional: it gives one the license to be
as emotional as one likes, with any criticism conveniently pre-framed as
sexism.

~~~
ams6110
Generalizing, this applies to any "-ism", e.g. racism, sexism, antisemitism,
etc. While I would never claim these no longer exist, in modern western
society they are not the primary or even a significant factor in how a person
is judged or treated at work.

------
Confusion
Interestingly, she assumes and reinforces the stereotypes herself:

    
    
      Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that
      would never apply to a guy. The easiest one of these is to
      say "you're being too emotional". 
    

This is plain false. Guys also catch flack for being too emotionally invested
in something all the time. Someone proposes a solution, you criticise it and
they get overly defensive? Someone reports on an issue and is really harsh
about the person that caused it? Someone's performance goes subpar, but when
confronted, they are afraid to tell you what's wrong? That's all emotion and
they will all be called out for it by a decent manager.

    
    
      Here's what you do. After the meeting, you get her on chat
      and you say "wow, you were really hard on S".
    

Here she again assumes guys never get this line from their manager, which is
again plain false. Good managers will call guys out on internal rivalries,
lack of empathy or whatever other emotional reason there was for 'being really
hard on X'.

These kinds of statements reinforce the stereotypes, because they reiterate
the perceived status quo, where guys are non-emotional and thus never
criticised for it. That whole line of reasoning is just wrong for anyone that
wants to push for more equality. More equality does not mean showing women are
more like the stereotypical men: it just as often means showing that men are
more like stereotypical women.

------
fondue
Something similar happened to my wife.

The President of their company would breeze by the lab. In an effort to keep
employee salaries down he would casually mention how everyone in the lab was
easily replaceable. I have no idea how one would casually mention this but he
somehow managed to work it into the conversation. Needless to say everyone
there in the lab got the impression that they weren't wanted. I think in the
span of twelve months everyone woman there quit and moved on to better jobs.
When my wife moved on she found a job with double the salary and a company
that really appreciates her.

~~~
pkteison
What does "you are all easily replaceable" have to do with gender? It sounds
like the president is just a bean counting jerk, no gender involved.

~~~
jamesbritt
Such stories give the impression that you can say the exact same thing to both
men and women, but women will by and large interpret it (or at least act on
it) in a way quite different from men. I find that hard to believe.

For myself (a guy), if I worked someplace where I was often reminded how
replaceable I was I;d be looking for a new job all the time. Likewise, if I
was often told I was being "too emotional" I'd wonder if a) it was possibly
true, and b) consider that perhaps I need to work someplace where my
personality is a better fit.

In general, if you want to make _anyone_ quit, keep telling them they are
easily replaceable, or frequently lob baseless subjective criticisms at them.

~~~
true_religion
Why is that hard to beleive?

Society in general treats boys and girls differently from the day they are
born. Why should it be expected that this divergence in nurture ought to
produce similar results?

I think that in contemporary society, men and women are different---not due to
simple biology but due to upbringing---and while this difference isn't what's
reflected in so-called 'common sense' psychology, it is a valid difference
worth exploring through science.

~~~
jamesbritt
_I think that in contemporary society, men and women are different---not due
to simple biology but due to upbringing---and while this difference isn't
what's reflected in so-called 'common sense' psychology, it is a valid
difference worth exploring through science._

This raises a problem. Should employers speak to both men and women the same
way, or should they take sex into account when speaking to people and phrase
things differently?

~~~
true_religion
I can't say definitively, but here's my two cents about the practice of social
interaction....

Changing the way you speak to someone based on a single coarse criteria is a
poor way to go about social interaction.

You have an entire person in front of you and can guage how to say something
based on your past knowledge of their personality, context, the way they're
dressed, their current body language, anything else you've gleaned about them.

If all you know about them is that they are male or female, then you'd best
just adopt a neutral posture until more information streams in.

Right now the only thing you can guess at with any real degree of accuracy
knowing someones gender is which gender they prefer romantically.

~~~
roguecoder
And how far their genital nerve-cluster protrudes! ;-) (Though that's still
overlapping bell curves, of course, and totally irrelevant to any work
conversation that does not involve participating in pornography...)

------
waveman
I read her blog because it has some interesting ideas. However it reminds me
of PZ Myers' blog in some ways. There is the same repetitive theme of how
stupid all these people are compared to moi.

"Within six months, they had an actual user-affecting outage directly
attributed to things on that team. We hadn't had any of them during my tenure
running that service."

"As I've said before, enjoy your pages, guys. "

Maybe this is just typical sysadmin arrogance / all users are ID10Ts.

I also see signs of a paranoid attitude:

"I knew it was going to be a disaster and they'd use it against me".

Playing games of passive-aggressives:

"I was going to be cold and dry and only answer exactly what was asked of me."

Really if you drop of load on a co-worker in a team meeting you are going to
get some blowback.

Her blog is also full of complaints of women not being treated fairly eg:

<http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/11/23/hiring/>

(has to walk across the road to get to her car)

Unleash the white knights!

~~~
adaml_623
Your last comment about origAuthor desiring a secure environment to work in
and extending that desire to the carpark is a bit rubbish.

If your employees have to be at work after dark then you should definitely
organise safe conditions for them to get home. Women are more sensitive to
this because they get attacked/raped by strangers a lot more often than men.
It's the real world. You have to deal with it.

HNers should be able to deal with it when they realise they are wrong and need
to change their thoughts and behaviour.

~~~
DanBC
> _Women are more sensitive to this because they get attacked/raped by
> strangers a lot more often than men._

Men are much more likely to be the victim of violence from strangers than
women.

The vast majority of violence (including sexual violence and rape) against
women is from people they know; "friends", husbands, colleagues.

This is a minor point though; I do agree that employers need to provide a safe
environment for employees, and that women feel more at risk in dark car parks.

------
wccrawford
At my previous job, people would get mad at me for 'throwing someone under the
bus' because I would simply tell the facts about a situation, and it ended up
being that someone else screwed up. Apparently I was supposed to keep quiet
and take all the wrath on myself instead.

That's what's happening here. I'm male, she's female, and it happened exactly
the same way. She's taken a common (and bull __ __) occurrence and decided
it's sexist, when it's not. It's just a bad situation, possibly with a bad
company.

What they're really telling her is that she should have taken one for the
team, and they would have expected any other team member to do the same. She
actually succeeded in her 'show no emotion' gambit, but had no idea she had
done so.

I actually agree with her that women are accused of being emotional more than
men are, and it's due to stereotypes.

And I agree with comments here that say men are just as emotional about their
work. I certainly am.

But the problem isn't that women are told they are too emotional. It's that
mean are -not- told that. And they need to be.

------
AndyKelley
After consuming this article, the update, and the comments here, this is the
take on the situation I'm walking away with:

1\. The manager was unjustified in saying that W was "too hard on S".

2\. Based on the story in the article, it's not fair to say that the manager's
unjustified statement was based on sexism. There isn't enough evidence to
conclude that.

3\. Rachel very well might have experienced sexism in the situation she wrote
about and various other ones, and Rachel simply didn't explain it well enough
in her article, or could only remember this ambiguous example where it's not
entirely clear that there was sexism.

------
gordonguthrie
This discussion is quite amazing. Someone with a high-quality technical blog
writes a post about sexism.

Magically a huge stream of comments arrive:

"the author reached an entirely fallacious and baseless conclusion"

"without any evidence, concludes that the manager said this because she is a
woman"

"Whether or not this incident was motivated by sexism, there's absolutely no
indication, based on the facts presented, that it was."

"then she is overreacting. Not because she's a woman, mind you. Because she
really is too touchy about this"

"she's raging over and reading so much into a statement that is, by normal
standards, extremely neutral, leads me to believe that even if she has been
directly accused of being too emotional in the past, then maybe there's
something to the accusations"

"Playing the sexism card every time you run into a bad manager with a
dysfunctional team seems like wasted effort to me."

"to look for gender based explanations just seems overly paranoid"

"It can only be used on women who give a crap about being viewed as
emotional."

"I can claim that my business partners are space aliens who read my thoughts
and are plotting to colonize the planet all day long, but as long as there's
no shred of evidence of this, the fact that nobody appreciates the lengths I
go to wear tinfoil hats and research anti-alien combat techniques is
meaningless"

"it's related to "W" being a bit of a jerk than it is "W" being female"

"If you have a chip on your shoulder in re sexism, you will perceive every
negative interaction through that lens"

"that, in effect, is simply a unilateral claim of immunity against the
accusation of being too emotional: it gives one the license to be as emotional
as one likes"

"It's obvious that she's frustrated from her previous dealings with certain
people, and their alleged sexism (which, unfortunately, is not demonstrated in
her recounting). Unfortunately, her response is to attack a hornet with a
sledgehammer (with corresponding collateral damage) and then blame the result
on sexism."

"this blog post brings to mind a different female stereotype: too much drama"

"that author's emotions are out of control in both cases - during the
described incident and when she writes the post. She fails by refusing to
recognize that"

"It seems overly emotional to me to write this article. (Maybe it is perfectly
sensible, but to me, it seems overly emotional)."

The actual article begins with the paragraph:

"How do you piss off a technical woman so she will leave your team? It's easy.
Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that would never apply to
a guy. The easiest one of these is to say "you're being too emotional"

This entire discussion is unbelievable - Rachel By The Bay ought to be a
respected member of this community based on her blog - instead she is being
attacked in a bizarre way.

~~~
JulianMorrison
It's sexism. Sexists don't like being called "sexists" because in today's
ethical climate, that label is disapproved. Actually being a sexist, however,
is not. So they use lightly-coded language like drama, emotional, touchy,
frustrated, paranoid and the sexism card. Thus, other sexists can applaud them
without admitting to sexism. And on places like Hacker News, sexists can band
together to defend themselves against accusations of sexism, using the
downvote button to make opponents give up in disgust, leaving them to be
sexists together and in mutual acknowledgement that they're not really sexist
at all.

~~~
philwelch
It's communism. Communists don't like being called "communists" because in
today's political climate, that label is disapproved. Actually being a
communist, however, is not. So they use lightly-coded language like 99%,
special interests, police brutality, and equality. Thus, other communists can
applaud them without admitting to communism. And on places like Reddit,
communists can band together to defend themselves against accusations of
communism, using the downvote button to make opponents give up in disgust,
leaving them to be communists together and in mutual acknowledgement that
they're not really communists at all.

It's witchcraft. Witches don't like being called "witches" because in today's
political climate, that label is disapproved. Actually being a witch, however,
is not. So they use lightly-coded language like religious tolerance, atheism,
rationalism, skepticism. Thus, other witches can applaud them without
admitting to witchcraft.

It's pedophilia. Pedophiles don't like being called "pedophiles" because in
today's political climate, that label is disapproved. Actually being a
pedophile, however, is not. So they use lightly-coded language like equal
rights, LGBT, gay marriage. Thus, other pedophiles can applaud them without
admitting to pedophilia.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Communism as the only opposite to corrupt, massively unequal crony capitalism?
Sounds like you're a communist, comrade.

Except of course, that your whole response amounts to "waaah, Julian called me
a sexist". Yes, I did. You are a sexist.

~~~
philwelch
I was identifying an unfair rhetorical tactic on your part. Not every
criticism of abusive corporate and government practice amounts to communism,
not every criticism of religious intolerance amounts to witchcraft, not every
criticism of homophobia amounts to pedophilia, and not every criticism of a
vague, venting blog post vaguely complaining about sexist treatment without
really illustrating it amounts to sexism.

I really don't give a shit whether you think I'm a sexist or not: frankly, the
fact that you jump to that rather than actually engaging any of my points says
more about you than about me. What I do give a shit about is people like you
outright sabotaging reasonable discourse through nothing more than personal
attacks.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Every word of what I wrote was meant literally and intended to describe the
very real phenomenon of sexists who want to avoid the label "sexist" while
being sexist, and who use their majority power in vote driven web sites, or
their shout-down power in comment threads, to drive away anyone who attempts
to apply the label "sexist" to them. And actually the same applies to the
various other disapproved labels, such as "racist" and "homophobic" - in all
these cases, liberal gains in the last 100 years or thereabouts have made
owning the label in public uncomfortable. But so long as you can weasel around
the label, the deed itself carries little opprobrium. And so we get this
conspiracy of mutual non recognition.

It's pretty clear, given that, that your picks for "scary label" are nonsense
and evidence failed comprehension, or refused comprehension. Witches are _not_
on the upside of a power gap, seeking to continue their witchy abuses while
avoiding the label "witch". Sexists are.

~~~
philwelch
> It's pretty clear, given that, that your picks for "scary label" are
> nonsense and evidence failed comprehension, or refused comprehension.
> Witches are not on the upside of a power gap, seeking to continue their
> witchy abuses while avoiding the label "witch". Sexists are.

"My witch-hunt is just, because in my case, the witches actually exist and
really do secretly control society."

The real problem is that complicated issues like this turn into exercises of
identity. It happens on both sides; your side is filled with self-identified
feminists immediately siding with anyone who makes an accusation of sexism.
Straightforward statements pointing out that no sexism has actually been
demonstrated or that it's rhetorically unfair to shield oneself from criticism
for being emotional are themselves taken as expressions of sexism, in much the
same way that anyone calling for moderation or pacifism was, in the Cold War,
accused of being in cahoots with the communists.

The result of this is that you alienate thoughtful people. On several
occasions I've spoken out on HN against genuine sexism and in favor of genuine
feminist interests. But I'm not interested in getting caught up in a tribalist
ideological groupthink, and I have thoughtful criticism for dishonest
rhetoric, and so you read me as "sexist", in the classic "you're either with
us or against us" mindset (rephrased by contemporary leftists as "you're
either part of the solution or part of the problem").

------
shasta
Ironically, this blog post brings to mind a different female stereotype: too
much drama.

------
Tichy
I wonder if the women who complain about bad treatment in IT also read
Dilbert. Just as a basic impression of what it is like to be male in the
industry.

~~~
roguecoder
Because Scott "men are genetically programmed to rape so we shouldn't really
blame them" Adams wouldn't possibly infuse his strip with sexist, martyr-
complex, responsibility-avoiding, self-serving cultural portrayals. Nope,
definitely not.

Not saying the tech industry is a bed of roses. But "this sucks for everyone"
doesn't mean "so she shouldn't complain". It means "we should fix this for
everyone."

Women have all the problems men have there, plus they are isolated, subject to
sexist behavior and criticized heavily if they ever speak about their
experiences. This is a case of "yes, and..." not "yes, but..."

If men don't like the way other men are treating them it is not women's
responsibility or even possibly under their control. It definitely shouldn't
be proposed as an excuse to dismiss or ignore women's feedback on how men
treat them (which is both women's and men's problems, and is under men's
control).

~~~
Tichy
I am not even a Dilbert fan, it just came to mind as an easy way to get an
impression. (Office Space, on the other hand...).

It just sometimes seems as if when women say "men", what they mean is actually
only the top 5% of alpha males they actually recognize as men. The rest of the
male population and their plight does not even register on the radar.

Yes, the problems should be fixed for everyone, and I also can imagine there
are problems specific to women. Not sure they are always sexist, though. For
example I also face problems as a father when I take care of my child alone at
times. It occurred to me it might have parallels to the situation of women in
IT. Namely, usually mothers meet other mothers (on the playground, at home,
wherever). Now, if I want to meet other kids on my "daddy day", I feel a bit
awkward. I haven't created the same networks that my wife did - hooking up
with mothers starting from birth courses to frequent playground and mother
group visits. I suppose I could call her "other mother" friends and visit them
with my son, too. But it would feel a bit weird, at least at first (haven't
actually tried it yet), because I am not directly their friend, I am only the
friend of their friend. I wouldn't blame it on sexism, though, it is simply
evolved historically, because they went to more kid related courses than I
did. Even if I change the diapers once per day and my wife does it 6 times a
day, it creates a distortion.

I am all for fixing the problem, but blaming the wrong reason is very
counterproductive to that. Just saying "it must be sexism" prevents people
from looking at other possible causes.

------
true_religion
> Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that would never apply
> to a guy. The easiest one of these is to say "you're being too emotional".

I'm nor sure this would never apply to a guy. Saying someone is illogical or
"motivated by emotion, not reason", or is "overly sentimental" seems to be a
common attack during geek flamewars.

It's also a fairly common attack during corporate shark feeding frenzies.

That it was once used to attack women in general (as opposed to individually)
actually makes it more tenous to use it as an attack against a woman. The
speaker in that case can be accused of being sexist, whilst if they called a
man "emotional", it would force someone to address the accusation itself.

~~~
jeltz
And as a bonus when used against a man you will at the same time question his
manliness. So actually I think this low blow argument might be even better
used against men, but works against women.

And for the specifics of the article. I see no explicit accusation of being
emotional. "I was being hard on S" does not necessarily mean that the people
being hard on another is emotional, since it could also mean almost the
opposite: that you do not care about people's emotions. And this argument
("being too hard on") can be and is used on men.

I do not see how this article relates to sexism, rather it relates to various
low blow tactics in corporate politics.

------
mkopinsky
For further context, see
<http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/06/04/fireandforget/> "Fire and Forget, or
Sexism in Software Engineering".

~~~
waveman
Her complaint here, one of many many complaints of sexism, seems to be that
her manager is unhappy that she loads him down with complaints and too much
detail that he doesn't want to know.

She puts this down to sexism. It's not clear why this is sexist. She is
wasting his time. If he is like most managers he is very pressed for time and
he doesn't need his time wasted.

In this case, sexism is a redundant explanation because other, better, simpler
explanations are available. in Bayesian theory this is technically called
"explaining away" and it is a good thing. Fact A is not evidence for claim B
if explanation C is better.

<http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/bnintro.html>

~~~
wpietri
Note that you've gone from "It is not clear to me that it is sexist," to "She
is wrong about the explanation."

That something isn't clear to you only means it isn't clear to you. She is in
possession of an enormous volume of information about the situation. You
aren't. The reasonable conclusion isn't "sexism is a redundant explanation";
it's "perhaps she has not revealed the information the led her to her
conclusion".

Now ask yourself: why did you so quickly leap to the particular erroneous
conclusion that sexism was not the problem? There are a lot of erroneous
conclusions to come to. Or you could have come to none at all.

------
lhnz
My own strategy would probably be to slowly create talking points about
empathising with the user and the good it does to products. This is fairly
subtle and you're unlikely to be called out on it. Eventually your detractors
will be playing in your frame when they next try to argue that you're 'too
empathetic/emotional'.

That or just leave.

~~~
r00fus
Bingo. If you can't find a way to tie any honest but possibly harsh comments
back to either getting work done on time, customer satisfaction or
(ultimately) the company's fortunes, you might be in the wrong.

As it appears that the blog author was in the right, framing is critical to
put attitude in perspective.

I'm not a woman, I have been in situations similar to these and made similar
responses and gotten different but functionally similar reactions (i.e., don't
put blame where it belongs, you might make the incompetent person feel bad).

After trying to connect the success of that particular task to the project
success and company welfare and getting nowhere, I eventually left.

------
parfe
Ah sexism. I love it when I sees it. This thread just oozes it! In fact, most
of the posters here write with the exact sexist bent the writer warns about.

* Explain she overreacted; tell her she is wrong.

* Claim her feelings have no merit; tell her she is wrong.

* Tell her you know how she should feel; tell her she is wrong.

* Flatly deny she encountered sexism; tell her she is wrong

* Change the discussion to center on men; minimize her response by associating it with a trivial issue "everyone" has to deal with

~~~
potatolicious
What if she _is_ wrong?

The problem with this discussion, and the reason I'm not otherwise
participating in it, is that because I have a penis I'll automatically be
accused of sexism if I do not agree with the author's claims.

This isn't about getting at what happened, this is about everyone needing to
tip-toe on eggshells because whenever this topic is raised, _everyone_ is
automatically wrong. If you're a woman who brings up sexism, you're
automatically too emotional or oversensitive. If you're a man who dares
question a particular case of alleged sexism, you're sexist, but you're just
too sexist to know that you're sexist.

I dislike your insinuation that someone who claims sexism can't be wrong. I
also dislike the amount of psychoanalysis that's going on in this whole
thread, including yours.

Everything in this thread eventually boils down to: you're a woman, you're
emotional. You're a man, you're pig-headed. The whole thing is a gigantic
exercise in absurd extremes that have little basis in reality.

~~~
parfe
>What if she is wrong?

And what if she is? Debating the correctness of her interpretation only
distracts from her point that _If you act in the way described towards an
engineer you could make her feel like the author._

>I dislike your insinuation that someone who claims sexism can't be wrong.

The comments here focus on the event itself rather than dealing with the
actual topic of the blog post. People care more about inconsequential details
than the social and professional implications the author describes.

~~~
jtheory
Yes, this. It's a blog post; she's relating an anecdote, not compiling
evidence for a court case.

It's perfectly plausible, if you take for granted the context that she
mentions -- in total & over time, it was frustrating enough that she left the
job.

But the topic is "sensitive", so suddenly everyone turns into lawyers and now
it's very important to find out if _that particular experience_ is really
sexism, because if not we don't have to have this excruciating conversation.

Who knew you could be sexist without, you know, groping someone or constantly
making blonde jokes? This subtlety thing sucks; you have to actually think to
avoid sexism, apparently.

------
blangblang
Replacing all forms of "woman" with the appropriate form of "employee" and
neutering pronouns doesn't seem to change the story at all.

------
Scootah
I worked in helpdesks for just shy of a decade, from office junior in a dev
shop, to level 1 in a dialup ISP, then through pretty much every available
tech role up to microsoft tech lead at for a top 5 in the world hosting
company and senior tech escalation for a top 5 in the world domain registrar.
I've been working as an IT contractor in enterprise (government, large
industrial, large corporate) environments for the last 5 years.

I've personally seen

\- a boss with a policy to only hire ugly or fat girls, because pretty girls
distract the geeks

\- a level 2 engineer passed over multiple times for promotions, because she
wouldn't say fuck in the presence of three or more members of the senior
engineers group

\- a systems engineer bumped to team lead, then project lead, then solutions
architect, generally held to be the best boss anyone in her group had every
worked for and one of the highest delivering tech leadership resources in the
company, quit and start a business outside of IT when guys who were
consistently performing below her metrics in other teams were getting better
bonuses and better base salaries, and she was being told that there wasn't
money to go around for her.

\- an enterprise architect come back from maternity leave (10 months) where
she had been effectively part timing (10 to 30 hours a week) because the
incompetent guy who'd taken over from her was hopeless and kept calling her
for help, who was told that because she'd been out of the current technology
scope for so long she'd have to go back to the help desk for 6 months to come
up to speed and she'd then be eligible to apply for a promotion, if she did a
good job. The incompetent guy who'd been badgering her for her time through
her maternity leave was made permanent in her old job.

\- Company christmas parties organized behind the girl's backs - so that they
could be held at a strip club, while the girls got stuck holding the fort
while everyone else got paid to go to the pub.

The christmas party incident, the three girls who got stuck in the office were
told to their face that it was a random selection and they just happened to
come up. Three girls in a pool of 40 resources, and they happened to all come
up? For a party that they hadn't been told about, at a strip club?

I worked with a girl once who probably wasn't as talented/knowledgable as most
of the guys in the tech pool. But she was by far the hardest worker.
Absolutely crushed our ticket system metrics consistently. But could never get
a promotion. At first it was just air excuses 'oh, Dave just deserved it this
time.' and things that were maybe plausible. Then they got thin - guys with
less experience who weren't very good and way under performing compared to her
getting promotions? They just did better in the interview. She started to get
pissed about it - as she was passed over for about a dozen different
promotions opportunities when the majority of her peers in the tech pool
agreed that she should have had the promotion - she worked her ass off. Then
she got a reputation for being hard to work with and a complainer - because
she had the temerity to be pissed about the blatant discrimination. Any guy
who had to put up with that crap would have been just as hard to work with.

My experience has certainly been that competent girls get fucked over in IT.
And yeah, everyone in IT will be on the shitty end of a bad management
decision if you hang around long enough. But almost every IT job I've had, and
every competent girl I've worked with has had a laundry list of bullshit like
that.

When your job is diagnostic investigation and repair - you learn to start
looking for linking factors and commonalities. You get good at root analysis.
It's not hard for anyone who isn't an asshole to see that the crap women go
through in enterprise IT, almost certainly has something to do with their
gender.

~~~
Tichy
I don't doubt your stories, but they seem to be unrelated to the article
presented here.

~~~
Scootah
Really I was just trying to illustrate that the author is being cast as overly
emotional when describing a very calm and restrained response to an irritating
situation - when in her situation I'd probably be livid and far more emotional
in my response. As would most guys.

Almost every guy in IT I've ever worked with gets emotional, angry, sarcastic,
abrasive, abusive or annoyed when stupid and inconsiderate people (ie users,
coworkers, bosses, jerks in general) waste their time or make them deal with
unnecessary stupidity). I've never heard anyone suggest that those guys were
menstral, or unsuited to working in IT because of it. Guys working on call
after often short tempered, upset, frustrated and generally emotional from the
lack of sleep after a lot of call outs - but when a girl goes through the same
thing, guys in IT are often and consistently dicks about it, and act like they
don't behave the exact same way.

Girls cop a huge amount of gender biased abuse in enterprise IT (in my
experience and observation) and generally take it with at least as much grace
as any guy takes user stupidity - and then has to put up with user stupidity
as well.

I'd never have survived in IT with the shit the girls I know have had to put
up with. I'd have found another career very early. When a woman with legit
tech chops and a decent length career behind her in IT isn't a man hating
bitch - I generally think she should get a lot of leeway for having a bit of a
temper - not the kind of lynch mob response that showed up in a lot of the
conversations about Rachel.

------
msellout
For those of you who believe that the incident described is not not one of
sexism: the author's purpose is to describe an incident and explain to you
that it is, in fact, sexism. Her goal is that you watch yourself more closely
that you do not create an incident similar to the one she described.

Whether or not the incident described was, in fact, sexism, it _could_ have
been and similar events should be avoided.

------
cafard
At best, I'd say that there must be some context missing.

------
davidhansen
I'm pretty sure the author reached an entirely fallacious and baseless
conclusion. My understanding of the events are thus:

1\. An authentication daemon crashes periodically due to a bug.

2\. "S" discovers that rebooting the daemon's host prevents this from
happening for a while, and does so.

3\. The author is paged( 5 times ), discovers the problem, and writes a kludge
script to keep the systems running until the bug can be fixed.

4\. During the post-mortem meeting, she identifies "S" for his role in the
events.

5\. A thin-skinned manager suggests the author was too hard on "S".

6\. The author, without any evidence, concludes that the manager said this
because she is a woman, and is hellbent on "pushing [her] out" of the team.

The reality is that thin-skinned managers and managers overly sensitive to
maintaining office decorum exist everywhere, and they don't do this based on
your sex. Citing anecdotal evidence, I can say that having a penis does not
shield you from accusations of being "too hard", and that hearing this from
managers, coworkers, or employees, likely has nothing at all to do with sexism
or a desire to "push out" women.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _The author, without any evidence, concludes that the manager said this
> because she is a woman, and is hellbent on "pushing [her] out" of the team._

Well, without any evidence that she presented. She's been working with this
particular group, and we haven't. It's not unbelievable that there have been
numerous other minor instances of some form of preferential treatment or
sexism. She did, after all, consult with friends, with some foresight of what
was coming. While some amount of skepticism on our part might be prudent,
there's also no reason to outright disbelieve her, either.

> _The reality is that thin-skinned managers and managers overly sensitive to
> maintaining office decorum exist everywhere, and they don't do this based on
> your sex._

Woah. That's a lot of certainty right there. How are you able to be so
assertively positive that managers -- indeed, in this context, no managers
anywhere -- do this based on gender? Even subconsciously? Even without meaning
to maintain a tight-knit good ol' boys drinking group?

This is what never fails to amaze me, that enough people are so _certain_ that
there's no such thing as sexism in the technology industry. Meanwhile, someone
else on Reddit or elsewhere posts a picture of a co-worker and the majority of
the comments are, "she's hot, you bang her yet?"

~~~
nimblegorilla
The claim was "How do you piss off a technical woman so she will leave your
team? It's easy. Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that
would never apply to a guy."

I'm a man and I've also been in the situation of overly sensitive office
managers. Maybe this problem does happen to women more often than men, but to
say that it never happens to men is completely untrue.

Playing the sexism card every time you run into a bad manager with a
dysfunctional team seems like wasted effort to me. In the case above it's
really hard for me to get past this developer's sour grapes to know if there
was real sexism or just inability to recognize her (or anyone's) competence.

I'd rather see some thoughts on how a reasonably competent team loses a solid
female developer.

~~~
Duff
The issue isn't sensitive managers, it is that sensitive managers call men
jerks, lazy or assholes, but they'll say that women are "shrill" or "too
emotional".

There's a difference there -- with the woman, the manager is attacking her as
a person. With the guy, he is directing the commentary towards the man's
behavior.

~~~
quanticle
_... it is that managers call men jerks, lazy or assholes, but they'll say
that women are shrill or "too emotional"_.

I don't really see a distinction. To me calling someone an asshole is equally
a personal to calling someone shrill.

~~~
daxelrod
The distinction is that, in many peoples' eyes, "shrill" as a personal insult
is almost always directed at women. There is a stereotype of a shrill woman.

~~~
mkopinsky
And asshole as a personal insult is almost always directed at men.

------
wtvanhest
It seems overly emotional to me to write this article.

(Maybe it is perfectly sensible, but to me, it seems overly emotional).

~~~
tkellogg
I agree. I found the article very informative. I will have to try this new
social pattern at my job to get rid of that bitchy UX designer.

------
watmough
This is some awesome writing. Bookmarked.

~~~
qzio
I agree, why the f are your comment down voted?

~~~
andrewflnr
I didn't downvote (can't actually), but some possible reasons are: * The
writing style was not considered relevant to the conversation about sexism. *
No one is interested in the GP's bookmark list.

~~~
watmough
Darn, this article got posted about the same time I submitted a link. I did
post that, since I did get bogged down for an hour or so reading the other
posts on the site.

The author appears to be a female sysadmin, in Ireland, with some time in
Google, or a contractor for Google.

Really excellent stuff, and you know, sorry for my irrelevant comment, but
something, any comment can serve to get a deserved link up onto the front
page.

~~~
VladRussian
While R&D at Google may be a geek's heaven, the Operations at Google is a
hell, an ITIL hell, 200% Dilbert [the ITIL's blueprint is the Britain's state
healthcare IT by IBM in the 1980ies]. No wonder that she's snapped.

------
VladRussian
it is clear that author's emotions are out of control in both cases - during
the described incident and when she writes the post. She fails by refusing to
recognize that.

High-tech jobs are very stressful (after all, each of us is immensely smart
and is surrounded by morons :) and managing and controlling the stress is a
part of the job. Failure to do so is a professional failure, especially when
it is support/operations type of the job. Instead of recognizing her problem
and trying to deal with it, the author pulls the sexism card. Next time her
boss and others may be not that fortunate, and it may cost them job,
reputation and/or lawsuit.

