
"Put down the crack pipes" doesn't go so well - roguecoder
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/03/27/roadblock/
======
RyJones
I made a crack in a leads meeting about another team needing to stop smoking
crack.

Later that afternoon, my boss came in and said, "Ry, you don't know what other
people are going through in their lives." The lead of the other team (who was
in the meeting) had been to rehab for his crack addiction.

~~~
switch007
Not sure what to think of this. To me, it's a well-used expression that does
not imply that you actually smoke crack. What other expressions should we not
speak in case they literally might offend someone?

~~~
gpcz
That expression already indicates an ad-hominem rebuttal, and ad-hominems can
offend by definition ("against the person"). By using a higher DH-level (src:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html> ) in argumentation, you can avoid a
lot of problems and have more meaningful discussions.

~~~
dllthomas
The goal wasn't argumentation, it was to be heard so that argumentation could
begin.

------
incision
I'm a man, I can't claim to have experienced the first example specifically,
but I've faced no shortage of stereotypical assumptions about my role and
abilities. I've experienced the second two examples more times than I can
count.

In place of gender, I could easily chalk most of these things up to ethnic
discrimination and be done with it, but that would be doing myself a huge
disservice.

Likewise, I think the author is doing herself a disservice by seemingly
looking for bias as a first and only explanation in each case.

It's _exactly_ this kind of hasty generalizing [1] that is surely the root of
much discrimination.

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization>

~~~
ameister14
I've never performed interviews, but I've definitely experienced the latter
two examples many times. Perhaps it's more common because of gender, but it's
certainly not the only factor, or even the most important. It IS the most
fixable, though; if it's a factor.

------
kolektiv
Well, another depressing comment thread. A huge pile on of comments
essentially of the form "I'm male/white/straight and have ALSO suffered some
of these things, therefore you probably haven't experienced discrimination and
you should just lighten up".

Honestly? This is the best you can do? It would be fantastic if people would
take a step back for a moment and try and deeply consider _why_ your initial
reaction is not disappointment and anger, but an attempt to deflect or
belittle the problem, regardless of whether you made a conscious decision to
do so. Of course you're not all sexists/racists/homophobes, but tending
towards trusting people would probably benefit us all.

~~~
MartinCron
One way to read the "this happens to me too!" comments is that they're not
belittling her experience, but validating it. All of us have been
disrespected. We all hate it. That's a very shallow understanding of her
point.

If something is annoying when it happens, it's also extra annoying when it
happens _just a bit more often_ because the people around might be _just a
little bit sexist_. Once this community can realize that, without it feeling
like an existential threat, we'll all be better off.

------
benjohnson
My wife suffers from this - she does DB administration. Successful strategies:

* Dress nicely - like a force to be reckoned with.

* Stop holding back and seek a bit of glory.

* Let others know the importance of what you do - "Oracle DB Admin for company's product line" vs "I just fix the database"

* Don't help jerks - if a jerk asks for a problem to be solved, solve it but report the solution to the jerk's boss so that they don't get the glory.

* Don't train jerks - keep your domain knowledge close to the vest.

* Wear heals - there's an odd correlation with hight and perceived stature.

~~~
famousactress
What exactly does a force to be reckoned with wear?

I'm being serious. The more posturing with clothing, the more I assume someone
isn't good enough at what they do not to bother.

~~~
MartinCron
A force to be reckoned with might be just one notch above the average of the
environment. Not so overdressed as to be distracting, but polished enough to
create a "don't dismiss me" unconscious message.

~~~
famousactress
I hold my own opinion here at least a little bit suspect. I certainly wouldn't
pass it off as truth or even good advice... but my tendency is to think that
by the time you're considering dress, you've already lost the battle you're
fighting.

Once you've gotten past doing whatever it is that you deserve respect for in
the first place, playing these kinds of games for it establishes weakness and
enters into a social negotiation of sorts that I haven't seen won from this
position very often.

The spoils here tend go to the person who's earned them, and doesn't give a
fuck about whether any particular other person thinks that's true.

~~~
MartinCron
I'm going to go out on a limb and state that there's a bit of a double
standard with how clothes are interpreted with men and women.

I'm only barely wrapping my head around men's fashions, I don't pretend to
understand what it's like for women.

------
kstenerud
Yes, yelling out "put down your crack pipes!" will reduce your perf score, and
rightfully so.

You are a PROFESSIONAL. A professional does not lose her cool or insult
others. When two people have entered into an increasingly intense discussion,
they WON'T notice anyone else unless actively interrupted. Once you understand
this, the solution to stopping the recursive loop is to force a non-maskable
interrupt, like so:

"Uh, guys... Guys. Guys! Hey! Stop! Listen!" You raise your voice just enough
to ensure that they hear you, with no irritation present in your voice. Once
they're interrupted, you tell them the news. Insulting them with the quip
about crack pipes is absolutely the wrong thing to do, and your boss is right
in chastising you.

~~~
MartinCron
_with no irritation present in your voice_

If people are being irritating, showing some irritation should be expected,
no?

~~~
kstenerud
It's far better not to add emotion to an already emotional situation. Be the
defuser, not the catalyst.

~~~
MartinCron
I'll agree that it's better, but it's not entirely realistic to expect (let
alone require) everyone to react in a non-emotional way.

I don't agree that the crack pipes comment is exactly wise or tactful, but
it's at least understandable in context.

~~~
catshirt
it was advice, not an expectation.

------
rsingel
The preponderance of comments that "this has happened to me and I'm a guy so
the world's not sexist" is so discouraging. It's logically inconsistent and a
giant sign of a defense mechanism.

It's a problem and you might do some of these things inadvertently, so maybe
listen a bit more and figure out how to keep yourself from not doing things
like assuming women at a tech conference are in marketing instead of
engineering.

The fact this thread is filled with a bunch of guys mansplaining how this
wasn't sexist behavior is very telling.

~~~
nandemo
In the first part she asks male co-workers if the same thing had ever happened
to them. It seems to me that she's prepared to consider if phenomenon X
happens due to sexism or it happens to everyone.

It seems that out of the 3 episodes she mentioned, the first one rarely
happens to men here, while #2 and #3 happens sometimes do. Of course it might
as well be that #2 and #3 happen more often to women, but I don't think
anybody is doing a scientific investigation here.

~~~
craigyk
Maybe she just dresses much better than the average SE. Some people might be
equally confused if they walked into the room and where greeted (without
introduction) by a guy who was better dressed than they expected.

------
YuriNiyazov
I'm a dude, and I can't even count the number of times that I have
demonstrated my technical ability, and was subsequently ignored. Happened all
the time.

~~~
lallysingh
Yes. Actually I recently experienced something very odd.

I was recently quite angry with someone, and I told them. I was noticeably,
noticeably angry at the time.

Ever since then, that person's taken my professional opinion more seriously.

I suspect that people don't take rational data (like observed technical
competence) and apply it to their subconscious reasoning and attention
systems. It's a failing of theirs for mis-prioritizing input. To get across
it, you've gotta get priority on other planes.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
What you are basically saying is that they can observe you knowing your shit
plenty of times, but they don't actually put a little checkbox in their head
next to "this dude know what they are talking about" until you yell at them
and say "I have demonstrated plenty of times that I know my shit, and you need
to put that checkbox in your head" ?

~~~
lallysingh
Actually I was pissed at them for something else. I think the act of
chastising was what changed our interactions, not the content of said
chastization.

------
jawnb
As a dude, I experience the latter two scenarios frequently.

To bring the topic to a more constructive angle, does anyone have any
techniques that might help in these cases?

My default is either extreme ambivalence, or raging hard ass. It's hard to
find the middle ground.

~~~
redcircle
(1) Part of it is about choosing whom you work with. Be careful about choosing
a job that might have fun work, but is with repressed people. (2) If they are
ignoring you in a meeting, there is a good chance that they have their self-
image caught up in the conversation, and don't want to back down, and are
getting emotional. The emotion behind rationality is humility.

Our interview process tries to filter out people that can't collaborate.

~~~
tod222
> The emotion behind rationality is humility.

That's beautiful. May I quote you?

~~~
redcircle
Don't attribute it to me --- it didn't originate with me. It is probably a
rephrased concept from Erich Fromm.

------
smsm42
So wait, somebody asks you for an advice, you give advice that they don't
like, they don't believe you, go around for more advice and then when
everybody says them the same advice they finally realize the advice was right
in the first place - you then assume that they didn't accept the advice in the
first place because you are "women in industry", not because it is common for
people to resist advice they don't like? Well, I don't even know where to
start with it...

~~~
zorpner
Maybe you could start by dismissing their experience (provided as an _example_
, not as a sum total of the problem) and asserting that they need to provide
more data and evidence? It's a pretty good way of marginalizing women in tech
if that's what you're shooting for.

~~~
smsm42
I don't "dismiss" anything. Dismiss is defined by Merriam Webster as "to
reject serious consideration of" (among other, irrelevant, meanings). I am
doing quite the contrary - I seriously considered it and arrived to the
conclusion that attributing a common, if unfortunate, occurrence in human
interactions as a proof of special, discriminatory treatment of "women in
industry" is wrong. Just as wrong as assuming anybody disagreeing with you
just didn't consider your arguments - instead of entertaining the possibility
they did seriously consider them and found them lacking.

I see lately more and more of examples where common problems - from petty
nuisances to serious problems between people - are harvested to find various
"isms" in them instead of treating them just as problems between humans - and
I personally don't like it.

>>>> It's a pretty good way of marginalizing women in tech if that's what
you're shooting for.

Of course that's what I am shooting for. Marginalizing women in tech is my
lifelong dream, and every step takes me a bit closer to it. No way it could be
I actually want to discuss the particular article and share my thoughts about
it - you can easily see thought this ruse and reveal my true and terrible
goal. Me pointing out it is a common experience not suggesting any "ism" is
just a wheel in the huge oppression mechanism I am constructing. Now you have
subverted my plans to oppress women everywhere, but I will retire to my dark
fortress and come back with even more evil plan of marginalizing women in tech
by pointing out maybe not everybody actually tries to marginalize women in
tech. Watch out!

------
codex
Yelling "PUT DOWN THE CRACK PIPES!", while effective perhaps the first time,
is not a sustainable means of interacting with people, even problematic
people. Once you've done something like this a few times, people will begin to
associate you with negative outcomes in group discussions, and will thereafter
try to ignore you so as not to encourage you. This is a subconscious reaction
to shocking behavior.

------
chrisbennet
My wife (a software engineer) has complained of this - guys that would just
interrupt, ignore or talk over her in a meeting like she is wasn't there.

~~~
kevingadd
The culture in software discussions in my experience is simply that the
loudest, most assertive person dominates the conversation. I don't know if
this affects women more negatively than it affects men, but it wouldn't shock
me. It certainly harms the quality of the discussion and how fast you can
arrive at the right conclusions.

~~~
pnathan
> simply that the loudest, most assertive person dominates the conversation.

This is very true. I watch quiet men get rolled over quite a lot. It's also
true that in the US, women are socialized to be quiet and non-assertive.

Well. You can figure the sad story out from there.

------
tunesmith
That second example - not being listened to until it comes from an outside
source as well - happens frequently. Not saying the gender angle couldn't
exacerbate it, but it really is common.

------
jerrya
"Did IQs drop sharply while I was away?"

So I've said this in meetings, hasn't everyone?

(And I bet I would say something like "Put down the crack pipe")

I can certainly believe there would be managers (and companies) that might
take exception to this, but it would be justified only if their meetings were
exceedingly well run. I'd hate to work for a manager or a company that took
exception to that though to the point of dinging me on a performance review.

Most people work at their company's location 8, 10, 12 hours per day. It's one
thing to ask employees to not harass other employees. It another thing to
demand of all employees they act like robots or be accused of unprofessional
behavior.

------
trustfundbaby
That whole thing where your opinion is overlooked for a second (usually white
male) opinion happens to you if you're not white or Asian or ridiculously
gifted in programming too.

The first few time it happened, I thought it was just kind of odd and my fault
in someway, but after 10 years in the industry, I can tell you categorically
that its not a fluke. Reminds me of this quote ...

"White men have to prove their incompetence. Everyone else has to prove their
competence"

\--- Mike Perham

That is not to say that everyone in tech is racist and/or sexist, I think its
more of an unconscious bias, much the same way someone (even women) might walk
into a car parts store and walk right past the female attendant to a male one
to ask a question about car parts or how a white kid on a basketball court
might be picked last because there are black kids on the court.

I think it is pretty insidious and eventually I think we will figure out a way
to help our industry get rid of these unconscious biases

------
HunterV
For some reason whenever I read something like this I always imagine the
workplace being like the environment in Office Space.

I mean, what's a perf score? Why does everyone bureaucratize everything?

We have such finite lives, why are we putting ourselves through this?

Join a startup, go freelance, take the pay cut and enjoy life.

You have a skill that is highly sought after, you'll find a job where you're
happier, if you don't, move on.

I swear, I know of so many notable startups (that are real companies with real
revenues, with real benefits, great locations) that are dying to have more
tech talent.

What I'm saying is that if you're going to be miserable in your work place,
move on with your life!

------
ritchiea
I've asked both men and women that have interviewed me if they are engineers.

The OP's anecdote sounds genuinely sexist and in a really bad way, but I can
also imagine a situation where someone says he has never been asked if he's an
engineer because the question was not confrontational e.g. casually at the
beginning of an interview "So what's your role at COMPANY X, engineer?"

~~~
sophacles
I've gotten that question, but I've never gotten it until I ask if the
interviewee has questions. And it's never been in the form of questioning my
credentials.

------
wellboy
The reason why she got pulled aside was because she wasn't coming across as
alpha. Sounds stupid?

Having to use drastic measures such as saying: "Put down the crack pipes"
shows insecurity. If she had simply stood up, maybe consistently told the
guys:"Hey, hey we don't have these...EXCUSE ME!" and then explained in a calm
manner what was wrong, she would have earned respect.

However, this way she more looked like a hysteric, loose cannon.

You have to really be confident (full) of yourself as a woman with a massive
personality to guide men in a male-dominated environment and that takes lots
of practice and time.

Marissa Mayer I'd say is an alpha.

------
voronoff
In my experience, all a man needs to do in order for someone to ask if they
are, in fact, an engineer, is to dress well. Nice leather shoes and a well
fitting suit worn casually will instantly create doubt about engineering
interest and capability.

That being said, it's pretty common for the female engineers I know to not be
taken seriously, especially at the start of their careers.

------
pwf
I've never been asked if I was an engineer, but I've definitely experienced
the latter of your two anecdotes. Sometimes it just depends on the person
you're talking to.

At one point I learned that the best way to get a certain coworker of mine to
finally get what I was saying was to pull another person in front if them,
explain myself to the third party, let them acknowledge that I'm right, and
then finally ask the original coworker once more if their plan was reaaally
the right way to go. Only then would they realize that I had a point. It
sucks, but if you have to get someone they trust to repeat what you're saying,
you might as well have a reliable backup ready.

As for speaking up in meetings, I was recently told in my review that I needed
to be more assertive, because I feared I'd experience the same thing you did.
Hopefully I can find a good middle ground between meekly watching people march
down the wrong road, and shouting about crack pipes... I haven't found it yet,
though.

------
DenisM
I'm a fairly loud guy, and my input used to get ignored all the time. I know
it's gut-wrenching to see things going down the drain where you could stop
them if only anyone would listen.

In my experience it's not a curse of being a woman or even being a quiet
person, it's a curse of being the most competent person in the room. Congrats
on that.

~~~
MartinCron
I think Rachel's point is not that it only happens to her because she's a
woman, but that she feels that it happens to her _more often_ or _more
acutely_ because she's a woman.

I don't dare presume to know her life enough to tell her she's wrong about
that feeling. Saying that it happens to you as well doesn't exactly work as a
refutation.

------
lsiebert
OP is trying to do her job, and prevent issues. They ignore her to the point
where she has to do something extreme to pay attention, and then have the
nerve to be offended?

Seriously, if you want your company to do well, you don't punish people who
speak up to prevent problems. I don't care if it's discrimination, because of
her gender, whatever. It's bad for the business.

In general, discrimination is bad for business because it means people do
things they shouldn't, like ignore engineers who know their shit, or take
extra time to get a second opinion when the first was from a knowledgeable
source.

Discrimination costs your business money, and not because of some theoretical
lawsuits.

Now, sure people will get ignored when they shouldn't be. People will get
second opinions for a variety of reasons when they don't need to. There is no
perfect company.

But we know logically, WE KNOW, that it's stupid to discount someone because
of their gender. So while we may not be able to prevent all such screwups
where smart people aren't heeded, here is an obvious case where this shit
shouldn't happen.

And that's the lesson to take away from this. Here is something that is
fixable that hurts the business, leads to pointless meetings and the cause is
known. If it was an engineering problem in your stack, you'd be fixing it by
now.

This is probably going to get buried, sadly. Maybe it deserves it's own post.

------
ChuckMcM
Been there, done that, got the perf review to prove it :-)

A small anecdote. An acquaintance related a story of fixing the 'drainage' in
their back yard. They were trying to grow some plants that were sensitive to
excessive moisture, and the plants were dying. Not watering them, watering
them a little, didn't seem to change. They died. A professional gardner
suggested that their problem was drainage. So they dug down about 3' (where
the soil was very very wet) and tried to build in better drainage. As they
were on the side of a hill, water table issues were not considered. It turned
out their "problem" was that the water main that fed their house and the
houses up the hill, was so pressurized at their property (because it had
maintain pressure at the top of the hill too) that the pipe seams were leaking
and it was pumping gallons of water into the ground underneath their property.
The problem wasn't their garden, the problem was that the city water supply
was poorly designed.

While I have never been asked if I was an engineer on the phone, I have
experienced similar things to Rachel in meetings and with regard to
suggestions. Co-workers will create an internal assessment of your value and
then respond based on that assessment. If they have written you off they will
ignore you, if you prove their assessment wrong in a public forum they will
attack you. These are _management_ issues, and something which was sorely
lacking in the stories.

If you are the "owner" of a meeting, and someone is trying to be heard and
isn't. It is incumbent on you to let them be heard. By your position power as
"the boss" you can naturally interrupt a discussion to collect more data from
other members. Its also important to ask questions like "does anyone have any
concerns?" to draw out people who have valid input but are too timid to share
it.

In a highly political environment there are two ways to create change, one is
through overt manipulation, which is to collect political power to yourself
and then exert it to enact change, and the other is covert manipulation, which
is to enact change subtly enough that the political organism doesn't react.
(sometimes called "triggering the antibodies").

The problem with the latter is that if you help make positive change while
keeping everyone not pissed off, no one attributes it to you (which is good
for the change agent because if they knew the anti-bodies would react, but bad
if your manager doesn't recognize it). I asked my manager what change he
wanted to be 'true' yet he (or others) had been unsuccessful making true, he
gave me one, and 18 months later that change was in place. He didn't believe
that I was the one who had made the change. I suggested he pick a change he
wanted to happen and not tell me, then in 18 months we could see if that one
happened :-). But he also didn't understand enough about organizational
dynamics to know that making change without having the source of that change
point back at you was even possible.

The point is that one of the very important jobs of managers is to make sure
that people who work for them are contributing as much positive to the company
as they can, and when they are being held back from that contribution by
people who are oblivious, willful or otherwise, they jump in and fix that.

Just another way that "managing" is different than "engineering" I suspect.

~~~
samstave
In my career I have found a way that has worked for me really well, especially
when I am the manager and even more especially given that I manage SMEs with
far greater knowledge than I have in their area of specialty.

I have used the following to provoke thought and discussion around problems in
a way that does not call anyone out:

Ill recap the decision, design or plan. Putting it on the whiteboard or in
print or whatever format the succinct plan is in.

I then ask everyone on the team or in the meeting to look at it and
specifically look for why it wont work or what is wrong with the plan.

Not what is wrong with WHO designed what - but tell the team why it wont work.

With the important distinction: Anyone one who brings up a reason why they
think it wont work is not only heard, but if their reasoning for why it wont
work is incorrect, the team explains why that risk or issue is mitigated by
the plan.

For example, you have a design where one person perceives a single point of
failure due to X. "well, we'd lose service if this device went down"

Then the team explains "well, actually that doesn't matter because we stay up
due to [this design element over here]"

This brings everyone up to speed and educates them as to why the plan is such.

If something is brought up that is a valid miss - then its addressed and a
plan on how to redesign for that condition is met.

The point is beat the design to death - not the person or team.

The team is supposed to put all their irons in the fire and forge out a
solution together.

~~~
eric_bullington
I like this idea, but I've also seen situations where it's become 1 or 2
holdouts against a chorus of yesses, and then the ensuing resentment against
them. And the holdouts had some very good points. I think it can work if the
leader/manager is good at this kind of approach, but it can also lead to a lot
of conflict as well.

~~~
samstave
Well, I didn't type this in the original post, but I should clarify: When the
question of "tell _me_ what is wrong with this idea" - I specifically make the
point of being the one to ask the question.

If you make the discussion directed toward the manager/team leader, then the
conversation is much easier.

Again, the team needs to put all their irons in the fire to forge a decision.
The plan/ideas of the team is the metal to be forged. The fire is the funding
and backing for the project. The hammer is the effort of the executing team
and the tongs are the skill of the overall project management.

------
grownseed
As a man, I can say I've experienced all the issues described by the OP.
Regarding the first one, I was made senior when I was very young, having
clients and even certain co-workers at the time respect my opinion was very
tough. I got where I was in no small part because of my hard work and my
choices, and that was pretty frustrating at first.

The other issues I think are relatively common and apply to most people, at
least at some point in their careers. Having constructive arguments and
listening to others' is a pretty rare skill, generally speaking.

Now the article seems to present these issues as if they were solely caused by
misogyny. I think it's more about general stereotyping, but also about
affected people not knowing how to stand their ground. I got pushed around and
ignored for a while, like most people will endure at some point. Getting
bitter won't resolve anything, it'll just give people around you a wrong
justification for their behavior, making you even more frustrated and bitter.

Standing your ground in my opinion is being able to show you didn't get where
you are by mistake. And if you happen to be the victim of stereotyping or any
kind of discrimination, making a firm point of it will make people think
that's all you're about, not your skills or your hard work. It's sad but I
guess you can only rise above the bickering, and that in itself can be quite
empowering.

And if that sort of behavior is common-place in your workplace (as opposed to
isolated in which case simply ignoring it works wonders), then you most
definitely aren't working for the right people. I despise ignorant
discrimination but I can't support people who make it the source of all their
problems either.

------
erikpukinskis
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has a great depiction of this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvSx7-CTTl4>

One of the funniest moments in the whole series.

------
davidroberts
I'm a guy, and while I've never been mistaken for HR, the other things have
happened to me from time to time.

The guy that listened to someone else before accepting the OP's opinion might
have done so because he knew the other person better or respected him more for
a non-gender based reason. Or maybe the idea didn't sink in until he heard it
twice.

Getting attention in a meeting where several loud confident people are
pontificating can be difficult if you are not a loud, self-confident person,
or if they don't already respect you.

But I don't think the OP needed to escalate to crack pipes right away,
although it's a great line. A "Guys, we don't use type-two data!" loud enough
to be heard over everybody else's voices and repeated until it worked probably
would have done the trick without affecting perf scores. It depends on the
culture of the group. There is usually some accepted way in a group to
interrupt conversations that are going nowhere. My guess is that anyone would
have been dinged by that boss for the crack comment, just because that's his
way of dealing with things.

Also, filling unappreciated and oppressed can become a self-fulfilling
prophesy in men as well as women. If you go in there unsure they will pay
attention to you, they probably won't. If you go in there thinking, "I'm not
going to say much, but when I do, they had better pay attention, because I
know what I'm talking about," they will sense it and listen, no matter who you
are.

One thing I think isn't understood by the women who post things like this is
that men are always in competition. It's like a wolf pack where a pecking
order must be established.

In any meeting some guys who are trying to be alpha are going talk over or
ignore other people they perceive as beneath them, or who they want to put
beneath them, men as well as women. It's not a gender thing as much as it's a
power thing. The way to overcome it is stand up for yourself and to establish
your competence in whatever the group respects whether it be fisticuffs in the
Army or technical skill in a company.

I suspect that the crack pipes remark, coupled with her obviously correct
understanding of the problem at hand, won her respect points with her co-
workers that will make them more likely to listen to her later on, no matter
what the boss thought.

In the same way, having her opinion confirmed by another respected person
probably made the coworker in the second example more likely to accept her
opinion without confirmation the next time.

Basically, nobody gets respect right away. It doesn't come with a title, or
even because you are a man. If you don't have the type of personality that
immediately commands respect, you'll have to earn it step-by-step. Even if you
do immediately command it, you can lose it very quickly if you don't show
yourself worthy of it.

Also men test each other and especially newcomers by teasing or pointed jokes.
The ability to "take a joke" is highly respected. It's not an attractive
trait, but it happens. You can just ignore it (recommended), or you can do it
better than they do. Depends on your personality. It usually stops after a
while. Complaining about it usually makes it worse. In one sense, if men are
doing this to a woman among them, it means they have accepted her to some
extent. Now all she has to do is start working her way up the pecking order. A
sardonic smile and a comeback (even a dumb one) can work wonders in this
situation.

None of this, however should be taken as a reason to accept actual sexual
harassment by word or deed. If that happens, a clear, sharp "I'm sorry, _what_
did you just say???" or "Get your hands off me!" is called for, followed by a
trip to that person's supervisor or higher until the matter is resolved.

~~~
timr
_"One thing I think isn't understood by the women who post things like this is
that men are always in competition. It's like a wolf pack where a pecking
order must be established."_

Not understood? Always in competition? Erm...I think that might be part of the
underlying problem she's describing. The whole "boys will be boys" thing is
horseshit. Civil, adult people don't want to play the game. I'm a man, and I
hate it as much as anyone.

There's no inherent reason that people have to be total pricks in the
workplace. Build a social structure where childish behavior isn't rewarded,
and childish behavior will be diminished. It works with preschool kids, so
there's no reason that adults -- people with fully formed brains and a full
cohort of emotional tools -- can't have the same response.

~~~
riggins
_There's no inherent reason that people have to be total pricks in the
workplace._

there's some economic theory that's inconsistent with that claim.

in short, in the absence of an ability to concretely measure work product,
firms are forced to default to tournament style pay. e.g. a > b > c ... a gets
paid more than b, b gets paid more than c, etc etc.

where work product can be quantified (e.g. installing windshields) and you can
explicitly tie pay to performance (i.e. you get paid per windshield) you don't
have a problem. Top performers get paid more, poor performers get paid less
and maybe go do something else.

As soon as measuring the value of work product gets murky that no longer
works. Hello, tournament pay.

This also explains why backstabbing work environments are so typical. Nothing
evil, just normal incentives at work.

------
seany
I'm male, and have had all of these things happen to me. To me this just
screams "I'm looking for a reason to espouse my reasoning for my feminism at
people". _yawn_

------
tmoertel
Here's a potentially troubling question: Is it considered _X_ ist, for
whatever variable _X_ you're concerned about, to infer anything about some
proposition _Y_ based on the observation that _X_ = _x_? That is, is it _X_
ist to rely upon prior knowledge that _X_ and _Y_ are correlated? Or is it
just _X_ ist to make stronger predictions about _Y_ than are supported by the
data?

Another way of asking the question: If we constructed a perfectly unbiased
Bayesian robot and fed it the true distributions of _X_ and _Y_ , would we
observe its predictions about _Y_ based on given values of _X_ and conclude
that the robot is _X_ ist?

~~~
catshirt
my take is that this is definitively the case. to correlate Y with X,
regardless of context or validity, makes you _X_ ist. yes, this is troubling.

------
CurtMonash
Yelling AND saying something insulting at the same time was overkill. Just
repeating "Hold on here" or something similar at increasing volumes until
other people finally shut up would have had the same benefits. Still
insulting, but less so.

I interrupt people all the time, male and female alike. (Hey -- if you're
paying my rates, you might want to actually hear what I have to say. :D) It
does seem more necessary to then go back and ask the women afterwards what
they were trying to say; the men generally don't need that kind of prompting.

------
lifeisstillgood
I have a hard time with these examples.

I fully accept that sexism could be driving all of the incidents laid out.

But ...

If one person tells you r=2 is a bad idea, maybe you listen. If two people say
it, then three. Well at some point you are an idiot if you keep ignoring. And
Google(?) is not known for employing idiots.

If you have to interrupt your co-workers discussion with "put down the crack
pipes", I would like to suggest that it might be worth considering that being
blanked in the aggressive and frustrating way described is _really_
unprofessional. I mean deeply revealing of a lot of anger and problems. Which
means her team is made of of men who have some serious issues, life-crippling
levels of sexism.

Or

Well, maybe being prepared to shout that the team is so wrong they are smoking
crack, indicates that it is worth looking at the glass house around us.

Getting on with others is hard. In a high pressure work environment it's very
hard, in one where Aspergers is just next door for most of the industry, then
its even harder.

Running good technical teams is hard and we get it wrong more often than not.
Which is why "don't flip the bozo bit" is a vital piece of advice.

But I would also suggest that don't flip the -ism bit without looking deeply
at our own behaviour is important.

We live and we die. I was born in 1971, the year of a sitcom called "Love thy
neighbour" where the 'joke' was a black family moved in next door. The range
of deep seated -isms in my head is vast. But it is a fallacy to think that my
head is the only broken one on the planet.

I take my steer from a man with a truly broken head - John Nash was right - we
live in a Game Theory world, where actions breed reactions and re-reactions.

In some egregious cases the -ism is so bad it is clearly offensive, and
clearly intolerable. Let's say it's order of magnitude out of whack.

In other cases, less so. Women, ethnic minorities, LBGTG and others are at
disadvantages because of who they _are_ thats got to be wrong. But we are in a
ever shifting game. And the secret of winning the game is not winning, it's
improving - changing us.

Want my opinion on the best path to business success. Therapy. Seriously.

I have met billionaires and tramps, people who sold all their possession dn
people who have ten of everything, the ones I am jealous of are the ones who
have peace. They were not the ones with the money.

There is sexism, racism and every other ism around. It seeps into every day
life and it is never acceptable to just let it lie. But just as challenging
something there and then is cause for for ing those responsible to look at and
question their base assumptions about how they behave, there is always room to
look at our own assumptions, for we are all playing a game called life, there
is no umpire, no final score, no second round play offs.

Sometimes other people's problems are an opportunity for us. Sometimes just
move on.

Edit: I got a bit carried away sorry

~~~
GuiA
And that's what the author is exactly outlining in her post: everytime someone
brings those things up, a lot of the answers are like yours.

"What if it was just a misunderstanding or a coincidence?"

That's bullshit. You weren't there, OP was.

I love the innate nerd skepticism, but at times like this it really is our
worst enemy.

Who would you rather listen to- a sane, reasonable and relatively smart person
(based on her credentials and accomplishments) giving you their take on things
for which they were physically present; or the little voice in your head that
says "but it was probably just a coincidence!", even though you have _zero_
knowledge of the situation except for what you just read of it?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
If there were two blogs, written by sane nice sounding engineers, and they
gave two different sides to an unpleasant story?

I ammcoming at this from the point of view of a ex-manager who has had to deal
with situations where, yes, something and someone has gone too far, but it is
far from obvious that there is a guilty party and an innocent party. Just a
seeping morass of grey and you get to play referee.

I think I am saying that it's the tiny daily cuts that really deeply wear
people down, but it's the big obvious infractions that we can actually spot,
call out and deal with.

So as far as I a middle aged white guy understand it, the -isms are mostly
background radiation, in some teams and organisations there are great people
who act as boron rods, soaking up the crap and turning things into a pleasant
place to work. At other places not so much. Work at the former.

Eventually the others will go out of business.

------
johngalt
When I'm being interviewed I ask everyone involved where they are coming from.
It's de rigueur for a number of reasons. First, one of the best ways to
understand someone is to listen to their perspective. Second, it's good
etiquette and people will like you more if you listen to them talking about
themselves. Third, how am I supposed to sell to you if I don't know you?

How could you _not_ ask this question of your interviewer and expect it to go
well?

edit: looking back on how many interviews where I've done this. I hope I've
not offended anyone by not assuming they were a certain <status_jobtitle>.
Frankly, I just don't know enough about them to guess. So I have to ask. If
they're the type that gets bent out of shape because I couldn't tell job title
from their halo then perhaps we aren't a good fit anyway.

------
jholman
If you want to convince someone who doubts the existence of the "cat food
factory", these examples suck. Okay, the assuming the woman is from HR but
that the guy is from Eng, yeah, we all believe that one. It hasn't happened to
us guys, maybe we can imagine making that mistake (and regretting it), etc.
But the other two stories? That shit happens to guys all the time.

Yeah, sometimes people won't believe you. And then they'll ask someone else.
And eventually they'll believe someone else, maybe. And that someone else will
probably be a guy.... because almost everyone in tech _is_ a guy. I'm
constantly getting ignored, and then some guy gets listened to (I'm a guy).
And as for the "crack pipes" story, we don't really have enough details, but
it's VERY easy to read that story and think "damn right you screwed up". And
I've been ignored and talked over (I'm a _loud_ guy). So, yeah, that stuff
happens to men.

Of course, the real question is not "do these things happen to women and not
men". That's like saying "[all] men are taller than [all] women", it's
obviously false, because sometimes I meet women over 6' tall. But of course we
know that both mean and median female heights are lower than male... the whole
curve is offset by like 5" in the USA. It's totally plausible that the
distribution of respect at technical skill discriminates in favour of males.
It's plausible that it doesn't, or that the effect is pretty small. If you
want to convince _an unbeliever_ , a few examples of moderate disrespect are
like pointing out a few examples of 5'6" guys (taller than the median US
female). It's just not persuasive!

And, in fact, in my opinion, it's worse than non-persuasive. It gives the
people who don't believe you (and don't want to) a straw man to fixate on.
"That shit happened to me too [and it did!] and therefore her claim about
privilege is wrong [wait, what]." If you want to advance a cause, you would do
well to make sure you only emit Grade-A arguments.

I don't know whether there is a "cat food factory" chopping up "fish" in the
tech industry. I would guess rachelbythebay knows better than me (she's closer
to the issue, and IIRC she's logged more time in the industry), but I am
skeptical about whether or not _she_ really knows either. Maybe I'm wrong and
she has attempted to do science on the subject. But if she has only her own
experience (as I have only my own), then her interpretive bias will be a huge
factor in her conclusions (as mine is in mine). Just as my ego benefits when I
fool myself into believing that my privilege plays only a tiny role in my
success (mock me here, please), her ego would benefit if she were to fool
herself into overstating the benefits of the privilege that she does not have
(and understating the benefits of the privileges she does have).

------
gehar
> "This is materially affecting your perf score."

No one said which direction the effect went.

~~~
cheald
Being pulled aside by your boss after rocking the boat is not likely to be
interpreted as anything but negative.

------
rdl
It _should_ have materially affected the perf score; you saved them how much
trouble by eventually getting them to notice this? That should be a 10-20%
bump at least.

------
DannoHung
What sort of chickenshit operation dings people for getting a bunch of
bickering morons to listen to reason?

Fuck them. And fuck you if you think there's some sort of more workplace
appropriate way to get someone to pay attention when you're being ignored.

~~~
polarix
In this case, presumably, Google.

~~~
smsm42
Google is big. Big companies are usually run by bureaucracy and policies.
Leave and go work in startup, which are usually run by people. I know, working
in Google is cool and pays well. But there's no free lunch. I've always
preferred smaller companies where you can actually talk to the CEO (and all
people in between) and it's not that bad a place to be.

~~~
michaelhoffman
I thought all the food at the Googleplex was free, breakfast, dinner, and
lunch.

~~~
smsm42
Turns out, you pay for it, just not in money.

------
yoster
Well, being ignored is something that should never be done in a business
model, be it a coffee shop or the biggest tech company in the world. However,
that statement was completely out of line.

~~~
mikeash
Sometimes a minor offense needs to be committed to avoid a larger problem.

~~~
dwyer
OR you could try a simple "excuse me" first. I try reserve the unprovoked
belligerence for Plan B, but I guess I'm just classy like that.

~~~
philh
Yeah, she tried that.

Assuming she doesn't have a glass and a fork, or a convenient lightswitch... I
might suggest knocking loudly on the table before mentioning crack pipes. But
I can't really fault her for missing out that step.

~~~
yoster
That is a great idea.

------
Evbn
Seriously, get together with Michael OChurch and do a YouTube/podcast show
"Everyone in Tech is Evil and Dumb". It would be super entertaining, and you
could sell premium ad space for those techie eyeballs.

------
temphn
This woman is just an extremely negative and hostile personality. She's
technically competent, so she can justify her behavior in her own head, but
she's basically a female bully who thinks people don't like her because she's
female. No, they don't like her because she is an unpleasant and caustic
personality. After leaving Google, for years she writes stories about how
smart she was, how irrationally they discriminated, how dumb they all were,
and so on.

Yet last I looked Google was still standing up on its own hind legs without
her. Just a little more than that, in fact. Maybe they just didn't want to
work with a smart asshole with a perpetual chip on her shoulder.

~~~
jacquesm
> This woman is just an extremely negative and hostile personality.

I've been wondering what to say to you to get you to wise up for the last half
hour, you usually have some pretty interesting stuff to say but this is such a
personal attack that I give up. Why? What are you trying to achieve other than
profiling yourself as nasty, negative and hostile yourself?

~~~
pyre

      | I've stopped yet another half-assed idea from
      | going into production, but at what cost?
    

I will say that this statement definitely gave me the, "I'm the only smart
person here, everyone else is just dumb," vibe.

~~~
scotty79
Well. At that instance she was. Fiercely discussing solutions to a problem
without first checking if it existed is dumb behavior.

~~~
pyre
Maybe, but "yet another" implied other instances too.

