Speaking out against Sarah Sharp (2013)

I like her, it seems like women in technology are divided.

on the one side you have the Randi Harper style bridage of ladies pushing for "Women in tech" which means treating women better than others and promoting women above men in cases where there is any choice (even if a man has better experience)

on the other side you have people like the author, and my old networking engineer colleague (who happened to be female) who are happy to be judged on their work!

I've said before that the concept of women in tech scares me (and been downvoted), not because women are better or worse- but because all I see from women in tech (the vocal minority) seem to be so shouty, so aggressive and so blind to the hypocrisy that I'm worried that any woman I hire -might- push people around (because they would automatically have an audience and there is a stigma that "the man" is doing something misogynistic)

I wish my only experience of females in technology was my previous network engineer, she did a good job, was promoted because of it, nobody had any issues with her gender, we never pandered to it and she never asked us to. It's not like people made sexual jokes .. ever, most jokes are about computers.. and it's definitely not like having a vagina makes you stupid around computers.

I wish the women who were pushing "WOMEN IN TECH" so adamantly would actually go to work in technology, instead of trying to make others do it.

I concede it is possible someone might write a reasoned and balanced response to Sarah Sharp's blog post. This is not that response. It's lost all credibility by the first paragraph, and only serves to reinforce Sarah's original point about the unnecessary rudeness on the kernel mailing list.

OTOH, was is interesting about this email is that it was posted on Wed, 24 Jul 2013, and Sarah's blog post was posted on Oct 2015. So I don't really understand was the motivation for posting this to HN is (shit stirring?) or what motivated the linked email.

I'm a total outsider to Linux kernel development, but this plays like a bad telenovela, I would have expected better from what seem to be intelligent people. And to keep it OT: no, it's not ok to tell someone "shut the fuck up!", like Linus Torvalds did, no matter the context. It doesn't solve anything, it's unprofessional, and it gives a very, very bad vibe. Not sure how come smart people can stand behind this ("To Linus: You're a hero to many of us.")

I'm having trouble seeing past the ad hominem attacks:

"She's a bully. She bullies her husband."

"I couldn't be silent and stand by while Sarah bullied and assaulted this list with her profanity and self-indulgent narcissism."

... and Linus worshiping: "I know he's a big boy. But dare I say, Linus is too nice to tell this drama queen to bugger off."

"To Linus: You're a hero to many of us. Don't change. Please."

I don't follow Linux development at all, so I have a hard time judging who's in the right here and who's to blame.

Somebody on Slashdot apparently found the relevant part of the archives where it all started [1]. After reading those posts, I feel like Sarah's reaction is comically overblown.

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8123533&cid=506646...

> Linus' 'Shut the fuck up' was to a developer who refused to take responsibility for his code, and blamed someone else's code.

I think this is what Sarah objected to. Criticism should be welcome, but is it asking too much of a 45 year old man to be civil with colleagues?

Good grief. Why did this author try to turn it into a woman thing? I've seen a lot of people agreeing with Sarah that the environment was toxic and rude. Most of these people were men.

Needs (2013) in the title.

More recent events ("3 days ago") discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10338094

"Linux kernel dev Sarah Sharp quits"

and here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10331891

Because a blunt, rude, & brutal response to the observation that the community around the kernel is blunt, rude, & brutal is obviously the way to go...

"I can't cover this story ... it is like walking a tight rope." -Swapnil Bhartiya (On Google+ comment on this story over 75 comments there)

Seems like unless your on center you are dead on either side. This is really complex to me. I disagree with any thing I would comment about. I am certainly pro-women (My friends call me the male feminist) but than there is other aspects of the story that make me want to ask questions I don't necessarily want the answers to.

Just a sad story...

(edit one word for clarity)

I'm suspicious. Google doesn't turn up a "Francesca V" as a kernel developer (only a Francesca A.) outside this post. Can anyone confirm or deny?

(2013)

Since this is from 2013 apparently, can we get the year added to the header please?

I pine for the days when the only drama I had to deal with was vim vs emacs.