Words are cheap.
My mother always told me "When you point a finger at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you." What are these people personally doing to ensure that they are respecting women, creating the right kind of social climate at work, etc?
Because all the policy in the world can't per se fix a shitty culture. Shitty culture is as shitty culture does and it is perpetuated by every single individual in the organization and their individual choices.
I'm not impressed with people who point fingers. They are usually people wanting someone else to fix a problem so they don't have to actually change.
Part of the reason to go to the walkout was to find out what to do. People didn't just stand there doing nothing. They listened to women speak about their experiences and ask for specific, concrete actions from attendees that would lead to less sexual harassment, bias, and associated garbage.
Do these things have to go hand in hand?
I'm not suggesting they shouldn't take company time. I'm wondering why this can't be done differently. And so far the replies I'm getting don't actually address such inquiries.
By handling interactions I have with women at work cognizant of the many ways in which their experience in the workplace differs from mine.
Also, I think about my daughter, and how I'd want her to be treated if she worked here.
> They are usually people wanting someone else to fix a problem so they don't have to actually change.
I can't personally fix the problem of (IMO wrong) decisions made by management on these issues. But I can help increase the pressure (public and internal) on them to make concrete changes.
Although I thought the answer was a bit obvious, I answered... Words are cheap and the employees want to see action.
Your response is to talk about pointing fingers? I don't understand your point.
What do you have against Google employees making demands of their managers?
My mother always told me "When you point a finger at others, you have three fingers pointing back at you."
I'm pretty sure employees know that fingers are being pointed at them. Employees are constantly evaluated, and management places expectations on them (both work related and cultural) that those employees must meet, at penalty of termination.
It seems like you're questioning the idea that the fingers should point both ways... by saying that the fingers point both ways.
So saying that to me really doesn't cast any light whatsoever on this situation for me.
That just sounds so naive. If I knew what your real disconnect with this was, I'd try to help you understand.
Let's walk through the basics:
* Employees have a problem with management.
* Management says "we'll work on it" like they always do.
* Employees may or may not believe, but they want to see action taking place. Employees feel secure enough at their privileged jobs to make a statement by "walking out", with the explicit threat of further action if demands aren't met.
* Management encourages the employees... And will have to decide if they mean business, in part based on the walk-outs.
I appear to be the top ranked woman on HN. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard here (under a different handle). Historical surveys suggest the membership was possibly as much as 98% male at one time.
I get nothing but crapped on when I say that. I get nothing but mocked when I suggest that is indicative of personal competence on my part. People mostly admit to recognizing me at all in order to say something dickish. It's relatively rare that I get genuine support.
I got to the leaderboard by not grandstanding, not pissing on all the guys here, etc.
I'm not naive, though I may well be on my way out the door because I've been thrown off of plenty of other forums for saying "The emperor has no clothes." It's generally a socially unacceptable thing to do.
But it doesn't come out of naiveté by any stretch of the imagination whatsoever.
I don't really care about your prowess at "winning" at HN. I don't have any clue what you're going on about.
Edit: oh, and if you regularly get kicked off of forums, perhaps it had to do with situations like these? You seem to be overreacting in a very strange and hard to follow way, that comes off kind of aggressively.
Color me unimpressed. Methinks if all these good guys were so interested in women's rights, it would be possible for me to get a smidgen more respect here.
But, no. And pointing that out gets further dismissed as "I don't have any clue what you're going on about."
Par for the course. And it's a big part of why I am highly skeptical that anything will actually be changed by this walk-out. If men at Google really wanted to change the culture, they could start right here, right now, in this very discussion with actually taking my questions seriously and treating me with respect instead of piling on to stomp me into the ground for saying "I don't get it. Seems to me there's maybe a better way to approach this."
Anyway, before the mods* decide that my comments here somehow constitute bad behavior for baldly saying some of the things that people the world over never like having said to them about blatantly obvious hypocrisy, I think I'm done with this utterly pointless discussion.
* Not an attack on the mods here. They've been awesome. Just long experience tells me that pushing it too much is nothing but downside.
edit:
Edit: oh, and if you regularly get kicked off of forums, perhaps it had to do with situations like these? You seem to be overreacting in a very strange and hard to follow way, that comes off kind of aggressively.
Ah, yes, let's blame the woman in the overwhelmingly male forum and say she's just behaving badly by suggesting that the guys could actually be respectful to an actual woman if they actually think women's rights are important. Bonus points for this bit of "la la la not listening at all to a word she's saying."
If you* can't figure out that Mz and Her First Name and Middle Name are the same person, you aren't paying attention. And that means your criticism is completely vacuous on the face of it, even before we get into other reasons I have no interest in your opinion that would likely be verboten here as some kind of personal attack.
* You personally, not the general "you".