How one SV engineer benefitted from the tacit acceptance of entrenched sexism | Hacker News Reader

How one SV engineer benefitted from the tacit acceptance of entrenched sexism

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10 pointsgregleffler15 comments

I agree Haseeb's comment was sexist, and I'm glad that Keegan called him out on it.

But I think the punishment she's asking for is too strong. She seems to be implying that he shouldn't be allowed to have a successful career after making that comment, which I think is a massively disproportionate punishment.

Also, this isn't "tacit acceptance of entrenched sexism". There was nothing "tacit" about her calling him out, and her response and Ruggeri's response were not "acceptance". In fact, if every sexist comment got called out like this, people would stop making sexist comments. The problem is when people make sexist comments and don't get called out on it, or when the incident is brought to higher authorities and the authorities defend the sexist comments--neither of which happened in this case.

Also it is not so clear that this person is really a winner in the long term.

My experience is that if you negotiate for a high salary, unless you really perform like a super-superstar, you will be the last to get a raise and the first to go if anything goes wrong.

I'd only heard the name App Academy before this article. I did a bit of reading on it. It's an intensive twelve-week program, and it looks like applicants have to pass heavy screening for aptitude. I can well believe that properly screened and highly-motivated people can learn a huge amount in twelve weeks. And Qureshi seems highly intelligent. He's described in the Business Insider article as a former professional poker player with an English degree. His blog says he was a millionaire poker player by the age of 19. So I'm guessing he's pretty powerful analytically.

But still. If a company is putting a quarter of a million dollars on the table, I would think they'd be able to find somebody as smart as Qureshi who also had a computer science or computer engineering or mathematics background and years of coding experience.

I don't work in the tech world this article is describing, so I don't know. But it seems odd to me.

If you're looking for a job in any field, and any type of ism is a concern for you, you have three options:

1. Ignore the ism and be yourself.

2. Call out bad behavior and campaign against the ism.

3. Adopt the behaviors of the ism and try to minimize the differences.

Individual personalities and circumstances likely dictate which of these you choose, but everyone who is subjected to an ism and looks for work chooses, and none of those options are the better choice for everyone.

If you are in a hiring role, keep in mind that you put your company's reputation at risk and can invite legal action if you judge candidates by any measure associated with isms. Be thoughtful and prudent out there.

you forgot

4. Whine about it in a blogpost to try to create an internet outrage army

I think Haseeb wants to offer genuine help to women. If this woman doesn't want to take the advice, it's OK. Just ignore it. But please don't write a blog post about how he communicates instead of what's important: the message. For Engineers communication style was always secondary, and although it's getting more important, it should be staying secondary to the content and the real meaning behind the message.

>> “Shake hands like a man, especially if you’re a woman.”

Er, that's a load of bollocks.

[Haseeb left a long comment (sorry it does not seem to be possible to link directly to it) Here is an edited version (I have removed sentences but believe I have preserved some key points) To be clear I don't know Haseeb and have never met him, but I thought his comments helped to put aspects of the original post in context. I don't know that they are true but they are posted under his LinkedIn ID.]

Hey Faye, Someone linked me to your article that you posted on LinkedIn Pulse about me. First off, your article is completely fair. Though this took place about 6 months ago, it's something that weighed heavily on me when it happened. I never reached out to you to discuss it personally, though I don't think that was my fault. Let me explain.

[...]

That presentation was the first time that I realized I'd said something flagrantly sexist. I'd written the slides about 30 minutes before the presentation and never read them aloud to anyone. I immediately felt ashamed when I read them aloud, because I knew it was a sexist line that I should've immediately deleted and re-written. So when you pointed out that it was sexist, I hoped that the best way I could concede the point would be to acknowledge you were correct and fix it in front of everyone. After the presentation, I was pretty ashamed. I wasn't really sure what to do about it, because I thought two things: one, I made a point to fix the presentation, so was that enough? Should I have done something else? Second, should I apologize to you personally? But would that be weird? You weren't the only woman in the crowd; should I go apologize to every woman? Would that be even weirder? I wasn't sure what to do, so I decided I'd wait for lecture feedback.

[...]

When Ned took me aside a few days later and told me about receiving an anonymous e-mail about it, it made me feel even worse. He didn't tell me which female student it was, but his conversation had confirmed both that someone was strongly affected by this incident, and that I hadn't done enough to address it. Ned did not tell me who you were. I told Ned to let whoever had sent that message know that I'd be happy to apologize to them personally if that was something they'd be open to. I also would've hoped to ask what I could do best to address it to the rest of the class. I never heard back. So the personalized apology you said never came, was because Ned rightly did not reveal who you were unless you wanted to communicate with me directly. Though I didn't hear anything more about it, that incident affected me very strongly, and made me much more vigilant to be thoughtful about my language and what biases I bring to my teaching at App Academy. I decided that if I were ever to make a mistake like that again, the best thing to do would be to call it out and openly address it as a mistake after the lecture, and apologize explicitly to the students.

[...]

There's a lot in your post I don't agree with (no surprise there). I also don't think Ned was in the wrong in any way here, and I think it's unfair for you to paint him as having been complicit in anything untoward. But mostly I want to say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry both that this happened and made you feel unwelcome at App Academy, and also that I wasn't able to make it right after it did. Sincerely, Haseeb

tl;dr: too-blunt reality check offends some

Trying to make your interviewer believe you are like them is fine. Accepting that most interviewers are men, as immutable fact, is not. Telling women they need to be less womanly to get a job is not.

Even if it works? I mean sure, in a perfect world. But the advice was to job-seekers in the current world. Thus, 'reality check'.

We can spell out the right and wrong way things should be run all day long. Not useful unless you're in a position to change them. For the rest of us, good advice is to adapt.

It's not going to work, because instead of giving the people skills and confidence to negotiate, they're just going to leave the industry because they feel unwelcome.

Well I also left out the most obvious thing, which is describing a confident handshake as "shaking hands like a man." That really is blatantly sexist.

Did you understand what was meant? Then the phrase was effective. Are there statistical correlations between handshakes and gender? Blunt reality check again.

What it means is that women should be encouraged to give confident handshakes, not that women should renounce their femininity and try to be more manly.

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