She is a person who thinks that Adria Richards of donglegate did nothing wrong.
She is public friends with a group of high functioning SJWs (and for this reason stay the fuck away from them unless you want to be character assassinated - they are throwing that around a lot right now) who think GitHub of all places is the pinnacle of misogynistic, explicitly female hating culture. If that's GitHub then truly tech is doomed, but then again this is SJW world where any mostly male environment is a hostile work environment, where things like libertarianism is hated because they don't value equality of opportunity and instead demand equality of outcome irregardless of merit. They think that feelings, that status matters more than results... you know, building things, making the world a better place one little thing at a time instead of always being on complaining.
Internet trolls being assholes has nothing to do with sexism. People who feed the trolls, who are male and female, get burned. Let the idiots burn. And yeah I've been called a gender traitor by the SJW idiots because I don't agree with their idea that feminism = females.
You know, I really hate it that those two pieces of information alone are almost enough to make me outright dismiss the chance this person has anything sane to say, but SJW are just so damned toxic and clearly feel no need to alter course that I simply cannot view it any other way.
It's a special shame, because I imagine if someone were a predator and wanted to pick victims who would be unlikely to be taken seriously, that entire SJW milieu would be ripe grounds for such victim hunting. Anything any of them say will be immediately assumed to be wildly exaggerated hysterical nonsense, because almost everything they say is exactly that.
I wonder if they realise just how much they're shooting themselves in the foot and enabling their "oppressors".
To use their own phrasing, I won't be tone policed, thanks. If you have something specific to say in regards to the content of my post then say it. My irreverence toward SJWism has been earned.
Interesting way to phrase things since ultimately that's what the employers that SJWs work for expect as well. Except that the equality of outcome expected by their employers is the quality of the work product produced, and that that is secondary to the outcome they expect from their workplaces. Unless explicitly part of the creation mythology of the organization, pretty much all profit-seeking enterprise came into being to solve a problem that produces profit, not solve the problem of social justice. Anyone joining such organizations, expecting that equality of outcome with respect to their social cause of choice is the goal is quite frankly delusional. I would imagine that they are often blind to areas in which their demand for equality of outcome for their social cause might be at odds with the expectation of equality of outcome with respect to work product that increases the value of the enterprise.
If you want to be part of a profit-seeking enterprise that balances equality of outcome of social justice and work product that adds value, then you probably need to create just an enterprise yourself instead of joining existing enterprises that don't explicitly share your goals and complaining years after discovering that they don't.
For so long I tried to convince others (even females) that sexism and casual sexism wasn't a thing in software development.
I tried to project an image of guys who were introverted and shy around women, and that so called "brogrammers" were in the extreme minority.
But those same women I tried to convince gave me concrete examples, sometimes even in the companies I worked for. Things I might have ignored or looked past were seen in a different light from their perspective.
When you are in the minority somewhere, even small things are personal and cut deeper. A fact that many in the tech industry seemed to have forgotten from high school, if they were there in the time before being a computer geek was considered cool.
As I said in the related thread on this event, let's stop with the victim blaming and personal insults when someone makes claims of being harassed. We pride ourselves on being intelligent and tolerant. Let's act like it and put down those who don't live by it.
I don't think accusations of harassment should automatically be believed. It's telling that the article includes the episode from the Ruby conference, which to me is a very good example of mistaken accusations to the tech industry (it had nothing to do with Ruby or Tech conferences whatsoever, there was just an incidental connection).
"Victim blaming" implies you know for sure who the victim is. Given that this is nothing but one big he-said-she-said, I will instead reserve judgement.
We have someone who's been accused of being unable to take criticism and being vindictive. She responds by throwing a public tantrum and blaming all of Github for it. If the shoe fits... Why is she so convinced that post is about her anyway? Unless there was some truth to it.
The tech feminists never seem interested in taking the high road, and instead optimize for maximum drama. Don't complain about being a public figure when you broadcast your life on Twitter.
If there was something specific and genuine that happened, and the person in question wished to do something about it other than attract a lot of attention, I imagine they'd post a lot more detail other than "I was harassed, HR made up a story, GitHub has a sexist culture".
GitHub, like any company, wouldn't say anything about an individual HR case.
We should be reserving our judgement of what happened - personally, I'll wait a month or two and ask GitHubbers what they actually think when I see them - but this isn't a professional way to handle something.
He didn't judge her or Github with respect to the "incidents" in question because we have no facts on those incidents. What we do have facts on is how such the here-say is being publicized by one individual. In that respect, it's fair to judge those specific actions while reserving judgement of the actions involving the actual incident being discussed until a later date when more facts have been made public.
> Given that this is nothing but one big he-said-she-said
At least the linked article seems to just be a "she said", so, unless there's more info somewhere, I don't think this has even reached the he-said/she-said stage.
I am against harassment of any kind (race, sex, looks, etc), however as far as I can see, there has been no harassment...
All I ask for is evidence.
If there was some evidence I could believe it, all we have is someones (clearly hot headed) claims. I have worked with many women programmers in school and on the job and have never seen sexism. I have however heard multiple woman complain about not having enough women in tech, as well as complain about sexism.
Yet, they always seem to be treated fairly. If women did not complete her job on time she was forced to stay after, same with the men. If a woman didn't know how to answer a question she missed the points, same with a man.
Further, I fail to see any justification for sexism. Not only is there no evidence, but there is no reasoning as to WHY they were sexist (besides giving her bad performance reviews, which may or may not be deserved).
She's not alone in her frustration. Last fall, a community member of GitHub's code base, Ruby on Rails, blogged about being sexually harassed by her own boss while attending a Ruby conference. She later deleted her post due to receiving an onslaught of victim-blaming, rape, and death threats.
Yeah, there's a lot that needs to change. Sigh. A lot.
She volunteered to do body shots with her own boss. Is it 'victim blaming' to suggest that creating a sexual environment in your workplace is a dumb idea?
You are barking up the wrong tree. I am mostly commenting on the death threats and rape threats and general hostility. I routinely advocate that women take responsibility for their half of the equation, but in light of how ugly it apparently got, your remark is just part of creating a hostile atmosphere for women.
Here is something I wrote that made the front page not terribly long ago (like February, I think): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203401 I am a woman and I get accused all the time of victim blaming for talking about what women can and should do differently if they really want things to change, but, seriously, your remark just sounds really misogynistic and ugly to me.
> your remark is just part of creating a hostile atmosphere for women
> your remark just sounds really misogynistic and ugly to me.
Pointing out that creating a sexual situation in the workplace is a dumb idea does not mean I hate women, and not does it create a hostile environment for anyone.
You are accusing people of offending you because you want attention.
It becomes a problem when vitriolic responses like that (death threats, etc) are taken as indicators of the entire community. It absolutely needs to stop, and we all need to work together to stop it. However, most people aren't insensitive, sexist assholes, and that's important to keep in mind (I'm not saying you claimed otherwise).
when the people who respond with death threats, rape threats, and other sorts of abuse are welcome members of a community, it is indeed that community's fault. A community of actual decent human beings would blacklist people who act in these ways.
The "community" isn't a monolith. There is no central node where you can just snub out anyone you choose because of some arbitrary mob consensus. I am also curious as to how you would define a "welcome" member of a community.
Communities like Twitter are largely amorphous and chaotic. Akin to a huge bazaar where everyone is being loud. How would one go about to blacklist people? That's McCarthyist bullshit. Mob mentality is far too dangerous to pull off idiotic stunts like informal global blacklists, although many try.
Seriously, weev? Who the hell praises and welcomes weev? Everyone knows he's a despicable asshole and a troll, but nonetheless his charges over the AT&T incident are still unjust and based on a highly vague and harmful piece of legislation: the CFAA. So it is perfectly legitimate to defend him on that.
Most people aren't that kind of openly hostile extreme asshole. But I left HN for 18 months in part because it was clear to me that being a "prominent" (by karma score) female was a problem for me. And HN has been an extremely poor networking opportunity for me. I have mostly kept my mouth shut about how negative my experience here was for a time because I did not feel that would help me. I felt it would just make my situation worse.
Given that I am homeless in part because of my inability to effectively network and turn my online projects into an income stream, I feel very strongly that you don't have to threaten rape or murder to quietly and politely do egregious harm to a woman's life.
If I ever choose to "elaborate" it will likely be on my blog, not some off the cuff remarks on a comment on HN that I can't later edit or delete if I decide I would like to reduce some of the shit show that is likely to ensue. I am enough of a target without actively provoking people. I sure as hell don't need the kind of trouble you are inviting me to step into.
Weren't you "inviting" attacks with your previous comment? And wouldn't a blog post be just as problematic? I don't want to get you in trouble. But you want to talk about this (whatever it is) but you also don't want to talk about it.
So I'm now even more confused about your story and the main story we were discussing...which are both incredibly vague and provide no real insight into the issue we're discussing.
No, I was not inviting attacks. A blog post could potentially be "just as problematic" but a) could be written more carefully, over a long period of time and b) could later be edited or redacted, something I have done bunches of on an old blog I no longer have so I know for a fact that it can make a difference.
FWIW, I have a very serious medical condition and I was in a lot of pain yesterday. So perhaps my remarks were not at their wisest. But I also have quite the track record for discussing hot button topics in a manner that helps vent steam and reduce the pressure everyone feels rather than leading to a big blow up. Usually, initial response is pretty ugly because people bring a lot of preconceived notions and baggage and thus fully expect me to be an asshole about it. It takes time for it to sink in that this is not the case.
Why publicize that you are female if that is the case? Why not abstain from making any references that identify your gender so that people can judge you purely by the quality of the content you contribute to the conversation? Most of the best comments I see on hacker news come from people whom I know the least about, and whose profile page tells me nothing about who they are and often lack information on how to contact them as well. Anonymity gives you the opportunity to separate the message from the messenger.
I happened to be moving a blog and reposted the new urls to a few things that had previously been posted here, thinking a few folks might be interested. To my shock, they were better received than the first time around, it got genuinely discussed and I made the front page three times. So I stuck around and tested the waters and it seems to be a different environment than the one I left.
I didn't really want to leave, so I am glad to feel more comfortable at the moment than I did previously. HN doesn't really have any competition. One reason I am not real keen on naming names, linking to public assholish personal attacks, etc is because I don't think that furthers any of my own goals. I would like to be able to participate productively here -- because, frankly, this is where the money and the power is for some of the things I want to accomplish. I have no desire to be relegated to a pink collar ghetto (btdt). I think most of the women who air a lot of dirty laundry are probably doing themselves more harm than good. But when I try to talk about things I think are very basic concepts in that regard, I get accused of "victim blaming" and crap like that. So I say relatively little compared to what I think about such things.
What does that mean? Just someone who has her repo on github? I am not sure how github would be responsible for someone who just has her code on github.
> What does that mean? Just someone who has her repo on github?
More distant relation than that -- it appears that the connection that is being drawn is that the person at issue had a job that involved working with Ruby on Rails, and Github is built on Rails, so, clearly this is some kind of deep connection between these incidents.
1. Purge every company of assholes
2. Allow complete freedom of association
#1 is hard to implement because assholes are everywhere. #2 is the obvious solution, and in fact it is so obvious that Julie Ann Horvath's actions implicitly endorse it—don't work for companies filled with assholes.
Alas, the obvious solution is illegal under US federal law. Asshole-filled companies are required by law to hire the kind of people assholes love to harass. In other words, the very laws designed to promote the interests of asshole-targets guarantee that they will come into contact with assholes. (Medical geeks might recognize this as iatrogenesis.)
Of course, there's always:
3. Convert all assholes to non-assholes
This can be considered a special case of #1, and would be the best of all possible worlds. Indeed, a great deal of energy goes into achieving it. But it essentially reduces to "eliminate the existence of assholes". It doesn't take a particularly subtle grasp of human nature to understand why this doesn't appear to be working.
In sum, the obvious solution is illegal and the desirable solution doesn't work. Is it any wonder this conflict seems never-ending?
> Typically one would take harassment issues in the workplace to HR.
HR exists to protect the company. In a large company, where both the victim and the harasser are relatively small in the overall scheme of things, HR is (assuming the department is somewhat competent at its job) likely to be somewhat useful to a victim, simply because the downside risk to the company of not dealing with harassment is probably much greater than the value of even a supervisory employee. Even with a higher-level harasser, in a large company the firm is more likely to have established protocols, the violation of which would increase the risk to the company, which might make HR more useful to victims.
At smaller companies, its less likely that HR will be useful, and, at any company, its a given that HR's primary interest isn't protecting the victim its protecting the company (including, especially, against a potential lawsuit by the victim).
And, all that aside, yes, there is often a stigma attached to reporting the kind of things which constitute sexual harassment (a stigma which is reinforced by a society which engages in victim-blaming and slut-shaming), and, despite the laws against such, a very common fear of retaliation.
Going to HR, wether by choice or not, is the last, optional step before one needs to leave a company, regardless of fault. HR isn's some magical department that can fix such issues, and they're not likely to help. That's not their job. Their job is to minimize the impact of anything that might or might not have gone on the company, especially the legal impact. Sure, in theory, one could go to HR and work things out, but in practice, one will not be welcome at a company after doing so. HR does not work for the workers, it works to protect the company and executives. In a situation where one is up against more established employees, it's guaranteed to backfire. HR looks to minimize the damage, and that will usually not be in favor of the person claiming harassment.
Obviously I don't know what happened there, but after scrolling through her twitter, well… My imagination shows me somebody, be it male or female, I cannot really like or sympathize. Maybe it's more about personality than "sexism" sometimes?
It makes me sad that a community that I'm part of and am passionate about has such negative behavior towards female members. I think it would be extremely positive for the developer community as a whole if there were more female developers, but I'm not sure how we go from the male centric community that exists today to one that accepts female members as equal peers. I'd like to think that the dev team at my startup would be welcoming and accepting of a female dev, but the truth is I have no idea, because we only ever had one female developer interview, and she had only a rudimentary understanding of HTML and JS, so we did not hire her.
Does anyone out there in the startup community have a more integrated dev team? And if so how did you attract female devs and guide the team culture to make them feel welcome and accepted?
If you are interested in investigating there has been quite a few articles I've seen over the past few years on Hacker News and Reddit by female devs highlighting their experiences with how they have been treated by the dev community. Here are a few interesting articles to get you started:
First of all my original post was not focused on this case alone. I'm interested in the general pattern of the problem, of which this appears to be just one instance. I'm also interested in how it can be solved to increase the participation of females in the development community.
But with regard to this specific case, since you say that you see no evidence at the original link, I would urge you to think about the fact that you evidently do not consider Julie's own words that she has been harassed to be evidence enough. Denying that there is an issue, or that the complaints of women like Julie are legitimate is part of the problem in the first place.
Personally I see a consistent pattern of low participation of women in the industry, and regular instances of women complaining about sexist treatment and not being taken seriously. I therefore see no issue with taking Julie's words at face value because I see plenty of evidence that this is a legitimate problem.
>But with regard to this specific case, since you say that you see no evidence at the original link, I would urge you to think about the fact that you evidently do not consider Julie's own words that she has been harassed to be evidence enough.
The aforementioned situation this article is about? Or is this a case of, "Well, this one obviously doesn't count. And that one doesn't count. So I've seen no actual evidence!"
I hope GitHub issues a public apology and a statement that can help frame her accusations and bring more light to what actually occurred. The article unfortunately did not offer the specifics of what happened, but it is unfortunate and unacceptable that gender continues to cause conflicts in workplaces for our industry.
This article is leaving me really confused if she is/was an employee of Github, and if it/she is talking about sexism at Github the company -- or in the "Github community" (meaning the collection of people using github I guess?)
She is public friends with a group of high functioning SJWs (and for this reason stay the fuck away from them unless you want to be character assassinated - they are throwing that around a lot right now) who think GitHub of all places is the pinnacle of misogynistic, explicitly female hating culture. If that's GitHub then truly tech is doomed, but then again this is SJW world where any mostly male environment is a hostile work environment, where things like libertarianism is hated because they don't value equality of opportunity and instead demand equality of outcome irregardless of merit. They think that feelings, that status matters more than results... you know, building things, making the world a better place one little thing at a time instead of always being on complaining.
Internet trolls being assholes has nothing to do with sexism. People who feed the trolls, who are male and female, get burned. Let the idiots burn. And yeah I've been called a gender traitor by the SJW idiots because I don't agree with their idea that feminism = females.