
'You Get Sexual Advances 24/7': What It's Really Like to Be a Female Engineer - randomname2
http://fortune.com/2018/02/06/brotopia-emily-chang-tech-sexual-harassment/
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Slansitartop
> In this exclusive excerpt from her new book, Brotopia, which comes out today

They've been spoon-feeding these excerpts for some time, in order to hype the
book. Since it's actually out now, it would be better to just have post for a
review of it, rather than for each artifact of its PR campaign.

At the very least the title should be updated to indicate it's from
"Brotopia."

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darksim905
I seriously don't doubt things are like this. Holy crap.

~~~
luckydude
I'm old (almost 56) and retired so I'm perhaps out of touch. Have things
changed this much?

I just asked my wife (who I met at Silicon Graphics) to read the article and
asked her if things were like that at SGI. She said no, there was little to
none of this. I'm sure, people being people, there was some but her memory
matches mine, it wasn't rampant, there were no "24/7 sexual advances" that
just wasn't a thing. Or if it was we both didn't notice it.

I made the comment that I didn't have enough game to harass anyone like what
is described in the article and I didn't know any programmers that were like
that. My wife thinks that maybe the programmers of today are really different
than they were 20-30 years ago.

I dunno, I wonder if this is just normal life at every company now or if these
are some companies with a worse culture than others. I sure hope these are not
the norm. If these stories are the norm we're headed for a depressing world
where men and women don't like each other very much. It's hard to start there
and end up as partners.

It seems like a lot of the fun of flirting would be viewed as harassment,
which is a shame, flirting is fun when both people are into it. You can do it
without any sexual intent at all, I used flirt shamelessly with my admin at
SGI. I got called on it when I stopped (I got busy with a project). My boss's
boss called me in and asked me "why did you stop flirting with Kim?" I
explained and he said "Kim is going through rough divorce, she could really
use the attention, please find some time to give her some." So I did, but it
was harmless fun, we both knew we were just playing, it wasn't going anywhere.
Would that be OK in today's climate? Seems like no.

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conradfr
And yet you met your wife at work ;)

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luckydude
Yeah but dating coworkers was fine back then. And flirting was OK. Hell, I was
seeing 3 other woman at the same company in the same building, they all knew
about each other and were fine with it [1], when my wife swooped in and
decided she was serious. She sent those other women packing :)

Articles like the one from OP make it sound like the women and men are at war,
just doesn't seem like fun time to be dating. But I'm not in that mix so maybe
all this is a bunch of outliers, who clearly aren't having fun. Maybe there
are a bunch of men and women in their 20's and 30's getting along just fine.
That article paints a pretty different picture. Maybe it's just that there are
some asshole men who are making life miserable and they are finally getting
some attention. The article made it sound like all the men are assholes,
"sexual advances 24/7" etc.

[1] Yeah, I know I said in the first reply that I had no game. And I didn't
but around 32 I gave up on women, I sucked at it, so I stopped trying. Guess
what? The Larry that put women on a pedestal was unattractive, but the Larry
that ignored women was hugely attractive. I kinda wish I had gotten that memo
a decade earlier :(

~~~
Slansitartop
> just doesn't seem like fun time to be dating

That's an understatement:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2018/02/12/it...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2018/02/12/its-
tough-for-me-to-know-where-the-line-is-the-metoo-era-is-making-dating-more-
confusing/)

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mindslight
The title sounded pretty objective, but the article itself is pure flamebait.

Preaching to a choir is divisive and counterproductive.

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throwaway92891
I have never witnessed this kind of behavior first hand at any of the
companies I've worked, and there are very few people I've worked with I can
imagine perpetrating this kind of behavior. I really think there is a
percentage of bad apples in tech that are really ruining it for the rest of
us. And tech would be better for not just women, but also most men, if we
could root them out.

