Incivility in the Workplace: The Effects of Gender, Agency and Communion | Hacker News Reader

Incivility in the Workplace: The Effects of Gender, Agency and Communion

uanews.arizona.edu

55 pointsdpflan43 comments

Anecdotal, but I've heard the same from most women (those that know me well enough to share) in tech. The worst female bosses they've had were far worse than any single male boss. The story usually boils down to some version of "I succeeded in a harsher environment, suck it up".

There are a few exceptions, of course. Some people have risen through the ranks mostly based on tactics like fear and intimidation. Some male, some female.

Edit: Fwiw, I'm male, but with a decent track record of my female hires surpassing my success.

> The story usually boils down to some version of "I succeeded in a harsher environment, suck it up".

Mm, that quote characterizes the root of a lot of evil in the world (or at least propagates a lot of evil).

Anybody know a graceful way to disincentivize that kind of thinking?

I'm not sure, but some version of pointing out that men are being held more accountable these days? That is, success shouldn't be dependent on some innate ability to fend off, deflect, or ignore sexual advances and other forms of gender discrimination?

> > "I succeeded in a harsher environment, suck it up"

> Mm, that quote characterizes the root of a lot of evil in the world (or at least propagates a lot of evil).

That quote isn't a root of evil. It's a statement that has originated in something good, which can be co-opted for evil. My own parents have said that to me. In many instances, their using that idea was for the good. However, there are some instances where the trauma of their occupation/wartime experiences showed, where they used this idea for something bad.

Also, one of my professors told me something like that, when it came to my first exposure to C programming in the early 90's. Sometimes you are in a harsh environment, and you do have to suck it up and get on with it. Knowing that others have done objectively better than you are now in an objectively harsher environment is good and useful data to have.

Anybody know a graceful way to disincentivize that kind of thinking?

Thoughtcrime? Sorry, but seeking to prosecute thoughtcrime is far, far worse than just receiving information others have done better with less -- even if it is being used as a means of aggression.

Hey I just wanted to post in solidarity with you about the truly harsh environment (and having to suck it up) of learning C programming in the early 90s. I still to this day tell people in interviews that the most difficult and challenging technical experience of my life was cutting my teeth on pointers in C by myself in the early 90s with nothing but the K&R book.

>Thoughtcrime?

The other user is just asking how to encourage people to be nicer in a specific circumstance, not seeking to literally criminalize things.

not seeking to literally criminalize things.

You don't have to have legal support to create an environment of oppression and toxicity. If one's goal is solely focused on suppression of a certain kind of thinking, then it's doomed to fail. It's like not thinking about white elephants, writ large. It's the Streisand effect. It's far better to focus on positive goals. Build bridges between people. Encourage what you want to see more of. If one is considering thought policing, then it's a sign that something has failed.

This is such a broad interpretation of thought policing as to be absurd. By your definition obligatory anger-management or even general counselling would seem to be thought policing.

You can demonstrably control particular types of thought, that's pretty much the basis of clinical psychology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory - which you're describing - is a specific, immediate, psychological effect. It doesn't imply that thoughts can't be suppressed on a longer scale.

This is such a broad interpretation of thought policing as to be absurd.

No, your interpretation of it is absurd. The key is, are you trying to coerce people to hide their true thoughts, because you just want to control them? Anger Management should be something that is entered into consensually, because all parties know it's to their benefit.

You can demonstrably control particular types of thought, that's pretty much the basis of clinical psychology.

Sure. But suppressing others against their will for the sake of political power is immoral. I don't see that as a proper aim of clinical psychology, and the above context certainly wasn't what I was thinking about.

> Thoughtcrime?

That's an unexpected and intriguing direction to take.

Let's just assume that "disincentivize thinking" is a euphemism for "prosecute thoughcrime" and put it to the test.

A project I maintain has a monstrously complex build system. Part of my MO was to fix and improve it to the point that a mere mortal-- and even a newcomer-- can build the software without being a build systems expert.

Some of the work was a time-consuming pain. When I got behind users would come up with clever yet complicated workarounds which would propagate through the forums.

At that point I had essentially two choices-- either call user workarounds "good enough" or actually fix the bugs so that compilation remains easy.

The first option would inescapably lead to an I-had-it-worse-so-suck-it-up rite-of-passage for compiling the software. E.g., if you are compiling on platform V and want to use X, download Y and do command Z. As evidence, stacks of such workarounds characterized the build process before I improved the build system-- phrases like "not for the faint of heart" and "will probably take you a day" were good descriptors. Newcomers were dissuaded from learning it (learning it, i.e., you had to do something more than configure and make) and just depended on binary packages. And the ones who already knew the build system didn't have an incentive to mentor someone who wanted to improve the system-- they already had a mental map of the workarounds and knew that any change to the monstrous system would cause problems and be a time-consuming pain. It was much easier to just to pass on the workarounds. (Plus at some point there were actually zero developers who understood the system well enough to mentor anyone.)

The other option was to fix the bugs in the build system.

Because I had to slog through a harsh build environment and hated it, I improved it so that it would be easier for newcomers to build. I made a decision that made it less likely for the imperative "suck it up" to appear in the forums wrt to compilation. (Userbase is nice so I don't think they would have put it this way, probably something more like, "Yeah it's difficult, but that's just part of learning the system" or something like that.)

At the same time, the people who built the workarounds didn't complain. Instead they said, "Thanks."

As I see it I made a decision to improve a system. That decision almost certainly made it less likely for the following argument to be used: "I had it worse (or at least as bad) and did ok, so suck it up." This decision made it possible for more people to enter the developerbase in less time. Lots of positives, not so many negatives.

That's a good outcome for what I see as clear ethical behavior on my part.

Here's the question then: if "disincentivize suck-it-up thinking" is a euphemism for "prosecute thoughtcrime," don't we have to conclude that it is both ethical and beneficial to prosecute thoughtcrime?

Let's just assume that "disincentivize thinking" is a euphemism for "prosecute thoughcrime" and put it to the test.

Stop right there. I never meant that all disincentivize suck-it-up thinking was prosecute thoughcrime, so your example doesn't disprove anything here. It's a useful example, however. But a lot of "disincentivize suck-it-up thinking" is actually just the suppression of dissent, because someone in power thinks it is "wrongthink." You can even view the anecdote above as a "discussion," where improved build code is part of the interchange.

This was already discussed on Hacker News, but there needs to be an accounting for the fact that women's participation in the tech industry peaked in the 1980s and has declined since:

http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pus...

The data in that article is compellingly. I wish I truly understood the issues. I've had several female understudies that seemed destined for rising to the top. None of them, except one, have. They've come close, but backed out here and there. For reasons that seem unrelated to male influence.

That doesn't necessarily point to an issue, mind you. I backed out myself for personal issues. Could have had big roles, but declined them for non work related considerations. I'd like to think their reasons were similar, but it's hard to tell.

I've had several female understudies that seemed destined for rising to the top. None of them, except one, have. They've come close, but backed out here and there. For reasons that seem unrelated to male influence.

I'm very skeptical of some cries of conspiratorial male oppression. (Though not all.) However, I do think there is something in the structure of our society which acts as a powerful disincentive to women at a certain point. I did an architectural walk-through awhile back, and spoke to the CEO/architect of the small company that designed that building. My take-away from her was that, in order to "have it all," she basically had to build a smaller company that dealt more on a personal level with clients with doing smaller projects, as opposed to a larger company which could take on much higher-profile projects. I think there is a significant element of the communal which is vital to human well-being and high functioning, and that this missing element has something to do with what seems like unreasonable demands placed on working mothers and the frequent decision taken to reduce career emphasis to raise children.

Here's your accounting. That's the proportion of bachelor's degrees. The total number of women getting degrees kept increasing through the 80's and 90's, but boys got way more interested after the rise of home computing.

there needs to be an accounting for the fact that women's participation in the tech industry peaked in the 1980s and has declined since

The data in the article is by percentage. By numbers, I'd expect women's participation to be up.

I can confirm similar that women in tech I've spoken to have said some of the worst interactions they've had have been with other women.

So basically, women tend to be meaner to other women than the other combinations (men to men, men to women, and women to men)?

Personnal anecdote here. I majored and graduated from two bachelors with very distinct demographic. The first one (CS) was 90%+ men, the other (language studies) was about 75%+ women.

In the CS degree, relationship between people ranged from friendly to don’t care. Most people weren’t concerned about people that weren’t their friends in the class. All in all it was a neutral/good ambiance.

In the language promotion the ambiance was awful. The class was split in various groups of 2-3 people half openly hating each other (tons of gossips going one). When a group of 4 existed, it was actually 2 groups of 2 that also disliked and bath-mouthed at any occasion. I’m sill reading the Facebook degree group sometime, and besides one year, this distrust ambiance still exists as of nowadays.

So the conclusion of the paper doesn’t seem farfetched for me; it actually confirm what I experimented myself.

Broadly, maybe? [0] It's hard, if not meaningless, to attempt to extrapolate hard conclusions from general trends. Individual variance within a population almost always exceeds that population's statistically visible tendencies. As many of the other top-level threads on this article indicate, there's plenty of anecdata to that effect, though.

I wonder how much this research will be picked up and spun into "See? Women are ___" by people who are reading only far enough to have their biases confirmed.

[0] Ugh. Not intentional, sorry.

EDIT: footnote

More precisely: Women tend to self-report that women are ruder to them than self-reported rudeness of men.

> Paired with estimates that incivility can cost organizations an estimated $14,000 per employee

I would love to hear how they arrived to such a precise number. Unfortunately, no references in the article.

Having just come from a team where a female manager who a number of times openly stated that she only likes to work with men, and sabotaged the careers and performance of the people under her, especially the women, I can totally see this.

Did she ever explain this preference?

Have to admit, the reporting is not as good as I had hoped. No links to studies, very short, and for such a important topic...

Anyone knows of any citation?

http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-56107-001?doi=1

I'm a woman. I appear to be the only woman to ever make the leaderboard of HN (under a different handle). This is off the cuff. But, some thoughts.

I have stated that I tend to get along better with men. The response to that by other women involves ugly, bitchy personal attacks that blame me and make me feel like saying "And you wonder why I would rather deal with a man. Geez."

I have blogged about my thoughts on how women eat their own. I try to be very even handed and consider the context. I think one driving factor is that female success is a scarce product. If there can be only one token woman, then whoever got there first has tremendous incentive to actively discourage and alienate other women.

Being a prominent woman on HN has led to zero female allies from the site. Women do not email me or hit me up on twitter to bond with me over our participation on HN.

I do have one female twitter contact who is a YC alum. It is not a strong association and did not start on HN. It started on twitter.

I have had women be openly ugly to me on HN. I have had women piss all over me about how I don't speak for all women or something, never mind that I never claimed to

I have had women try to "side" with me and say incredibly misandrist things and other problematic things that make me cringe and make me want to openly reject their remarks and disavow any association with them.

I do feel women that came after me take it for granted that the atmosphere is more welcoming of women than when I got here, give me zero credit for my role in that and piss all over me. It makes me sympathetic to the thing described in the article of established women having a hostile just suck it up attitude.

I often feel other women are trying to use me to their advantage, often at tremendous threat to my hard won position.

I worked really hard to fit in here and gain the respect of the guys. I did a hard thing and many men here respect that because they have done hard things. The women who think it should be handed to them on a silver platter are often pissing all over me, my handiwork and the culture of male achievement as I have come to understand it, though I am sure my glimpses are just bare glimpses at best.

Women wind up fighting over the crumbs and it gets vicious. I find this baffling. I refuse to fight over the crumbs and cannot fathom why women don't reach out to me as a potential ally.

I don't fully understand what drives these patterns. I sometimes blog about it and a single off the cuff comment cannot possibly do the topic justice. I try to think through what might constitute real solutions. The tendency for women and society to pile on with the blame game is not constructive.

It's all well, fine and good to note that this is a pattern. The danger is in acting like women are just pathological creatures all around and not wondering what drives such behaviors.

I try like hell to be sympathetic to why other women are frequently so awful to me. But I have no plans to cut my own throat for their benefit. I would prefer to find another path forward. In the absence of that, I have every intention of looking out for myself. Nearly 6 years of homelessness taught me no one else really will.

I have had women piss all over me about how I don't speak for all women or something, never mind that I never claimed to

When people start associating politics with immutable surface characteristics, then watch out. By their actions, they are implicitly advertising that such surface-stuff is more important to them than the content of your character. In the old days, we called that bigotry.

Thanks you very much for writing this. I am also in tech and I was also homeless for 4 months, though mine was a bourgeois version spent in AirBNBs. (It started out with a physical assault on me, however.) It's good to know I'm not the only one and good perspective to know that others have been strong enough to survive much worse.

You hit the nail on the head. Not all women are like this but there are lots of stories out there of ones who are.....including comments like this on Twitter. https://twitter.com/runrunstacy/status/968220799306956800

I wonder if this study takes into account that, because some professions are skewed toward women and others are skewed toward men, on average women will interact more with women than with men on a daily basis. Instances of incivility from women and from men should be normalized by number of female coworkers and male coworkers.

I wish I could access the PDF to see if the researchers accounted for this.

Is the preprint available?

http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fapl0000289

Thanks.

This article is completely useless without knowing the sample size.

Her articles are on the first page of Google, two of them are very obviously titled, and one of them even lets you download the PDF. Here it is, I've even clicked on "Sort by Year." Buzz buzz, Queen Bee.

[0]https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=f7T153gAAAAJ...

It's entirely possible to lmgtfy without snark.

Unless it was edited, I don't interpret the comment as snarky. At least no snarkier than any other lmgtfy.

Indeed it is, my dear man! But in the words of the wise Renee Apidaesius: "Any bears that get their honey by pretending to be bees, will eventually be flooded by actual bees who mistakenly believe they are in good eusociality!"

Click bait title. See hn guidelines. We should rewrite yes no questions.

Thanks. We've removed “Is 'Queen Bee Syndrome' Getting Worse?”, which seems not to be the question addressed by the article or studies. We're happy to update the title again if someone can suggest a better one derived from the article.

I feel the title should be fair warning this is a gender study, as that indicates a lot about what people will expect to see in the discussion about it.

"Incivility at Work as Reported by Gender"?

Thanks, that's a good point. We've gone with (most of) the study title.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

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