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Comment by rhcom2 | Hacker News Reader

It's great that you've never had similar negative experiences but stories like these are common and, while not exclusive to this industry, very prevalent.

You might think the entire industry would be disgusted but stories like these keep coming out, from high profile tech companies to small firms so it seems pretty clear this is a problem.

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I think the issue comes up consistently when people say things like "what's wrong with people in this industry". The statement would seem to apply to literally everyone in the industry is bad, which is trivially untrue. Especially when you are doing all you can it's weird to just be lumped in with other people and being able to do nothing about it. I'm not saying that how she says things is bad but it often will make people defensive regardless of whether they agree that it's a problem or not

Like you say, it's not exclusive to this industry and I think it's a problem that, the way we're often presenting it, we make it sound like these problems are only in STEM. We don't consider whether anything is a US-centric issue, or a SV-centric issue, France-centric issue, or whether it's simply humans being shitty.

Focusing on "fixing sexism in the industry" is hopeless if the problem isn't specific to the industry, I think.

Sexism isn't specific to any one single place. You try to fix the issues that you can impact, in this case the industry we're in.

What makes "the industry we're in" easier to impact than "the country we're in"?

And I would say that while sexism isn't specific to any single place, culture is highly impactful on the amount of racism/sexism/homophobia you may experience and this is what changes the most when you go from country to country. A startup in San Francisco will have a very different culture to a mid-size company in Madrid.

The industry is smaller and less resistant to change then the entire country. I also have the ability to affect where I work and my coworkers. I have almost no ability to affect the country besides voting and maybe arguably activism.

I get the sense that industry-level change is not as obviously a low-hanging fruit versus government-level change. There's a mechanism operating over the government, but what's the mechanism operating over an industry? A secret cabal of investors?

The individual. You call out shitty behavior, you don't support/work for shitty behavior, you support people dealing with shitty behavior.

Because fixing the entire country is a much large problem.

Most of the time, when people talk about "lets fix the broader problem not our specific problem", it is mostly an excuse to do nothing, as opposed to an actual attempt to solve the bigger problem.

People in tech have both the ability and responsibility to fix issues that directly effect the tech industry.

Whereas we don't necessarily have the ability to change worldwide culture as a whole.

The tech industry isn't US-only. What you see in the US is the tip of an iceberg that spans six continents.

So again how exactly is it easier to fix something "in the industry" vs. in the country?

Because you and me can do our part to help solve the problem here and now.

We can make direct contributions by working to solve the problem within our own companies and move the needle that way.

It is also because this whole "it is better to solve a different problem" is basically just an excuse to do nothing, by throwing our hands in the air.

I'll be more worried when it stops being news.

The tech industry shouldn't aim for perfection. It should aim for the average level of negative experiences across all industries, meaning it should have as many of these cases as other industries. It is not really a travesty or an indication of a problem in the tech industry if a few of these cases pop up from time to time.

What is clear is that these cases are publicized to a disproportionate degree when they occur in the tech industry compared to other industries.

I'm not sure it's just publicity though. It seems like having such a high male ratio can create these kinds of environment. You're right that perfection is probably impossible but I think 0 tolerance is still a good target.

You're kind of ignoring the huge chasm of a gap between "perfection" and "average level of negative experiences".

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Giving disproportionate attention to sexism in tech will probably discourage women from entering the field though.

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