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Edit: actually, you've done this so many times before that I've banned the account. Please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with. We're trying to avoid internet hell here, so repeatedly being pushed into a flaming pit is something we'd kind of prefer to avoid.

You broke the site guidelines egregiously by turning this into a gender flamewar. Seriously not cool. Please don't do this on HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I find these anecdotes to be completely untrue. Women are often assumed to be less competent, and are often passed over during hiring for men of equal competence.

I've seen some incredibly useless dudes sit back and rest and vest for months and months without any repercussions. I don't have an equivalent story for women because I work with significantly less women. Let's try focusing on the apparent and obvious biases against women before we start keeping score on how men are so disenfranchised.

Sexism is complicated, I've known useless women at work (crippled, not enough mastery or drive) and even abusive ones (charm as a pass to delegate their work to others).

I think one of the issue of work is that you have to be overly bold to crack through the process, even if you're an incompetent employee on many levels, you'll get there through tribal-ish reflexes. And I think masculine traits align with that, which make them get hired a lot more.

You can't find someone else's anecdotes untrue.

Reverse sexism is completely real, just like "regular" sexism. It doesn't compensate for it in any way, of course.

Reverse sexism helps some women, some of the time.

It doesn't help women, as such, in the big picture.

>You can't find someone else's anecdotes untrue.

Sure I can when they're filled with obvious and apparent cognitive biases.

But that's what personal anecdotes are. They are not something like "objective observations providing raw data, without any selection or interpretation".

Anecdotes might not support the conclusions they are intended to support, but that doesn't make the anecdotes per se false.

Anecodotes are, well, "anecdotal".

I mean, you gonna stick up for the guy that just got banned?

No, I'm sticking up for the idea that people's anecdotal experiences are valid, within their epistemological/cognitive limits, and not simply "false".

That doesn't depend on whether or not someone got banned.

That user unfortunately resorted to some behaviors that looked like antagonizing another user at the personal level.

His interpretations of some of his experiences are off the mark.

E.g. how some coworker hired interns in order to sexually victimize them is clearly not an example of women getting some sort of easy advancement or free pass. That the events happened is plausibly true; there is no basis for denying the raw facts of the anecdote. It's just not a relevant anecdote, really.

You want to argue that the guy espousing sexism through his anecdotal experiences has valid anecdotes?

Since everyone has valid anecdotes, and that person is a member of everyone, the inescapable logical conclusion is that, indeed, he has valid anecdotes.

I reiterate that I'm using a standard for "valid" that is befitting of anecdotes, which is confined to the facts. It doesn't cover the cherry-picking of observations that are selected as the basis for anecdotes, or the means of drawing conclusions, or the appropriateness or relevance of the anecdotes to the discourse and the like.

Nobody is going to care about how semantically correct you are given one of his anecdotes was him admitting he treats women differently because of their gender. Feel free to call that valid to appease your dictionary definition, however colloquial definitions matter just as much in casual conversation.

> admitting he treats women differently because of their gender

OK, I see the misunderstanding.

I'm not aware of a colloquial usage of "anecdote" which covers confessions of a behavior, let alone a habitual behavior. (By which I don't intend to deny that the usage is real; it's just not known to me.)

An anecdote could certainly include an admission; anything can happen in personal stories.

Still, even if your definition of "anecdote" extends to admissions, I don't see how you could then call it false.

If someone confesses that he treated specific women A, B and C differently, or else that he habitually does so, then the only way that can be false is that he's making it up.

It's the definition of the word '[in]valid' I was referring to. I'd also say this is the same thing as when I said his anecdotes were not true. What I saw was somebody using biased and bigoted thought to justify their reasoning.

I think I understand your reasoning for not wanting to call human experience invalid. I don't think it applies here because of the informal context (casual conversation) and because the anecdote was used as evidence. He extends his own behavior (treating women differently) to others without any factual basis in his anecdote (since I do it other people do it too). That's entirely invalid.

It also goes without saying that people often tell bald faced lies in the form of anecdotes. These anecdotes are obviously false or invalid as well.

>I find these anecdotes to be completely untrue.

You can't find my anecdotal experiences to be untrue because you haven't experienced my anecdotal experience. This is physically impossible.

What you can claim is that my anecdotal experiences do not apply to women in engineering corporations in general. However, this is not a claim that I made as I caveated my point with the fact that what I'm saying is based off of my own anecdotal evidence.

> I don't have an equivalent story for women because I work with significantly less women.

Evidence is the only way to make sense of the reality we live in and there are two basic types: Anecdotal and Statistical. You claim here that you have no anecdotal evidence. That means statistical evidence is your only option (a stronger option btw) so where is it?

>Let's try focusing on the apparent and obvious biases against women before we start keeping score on how men are so disenfranchised.

Why should I focus on your claim that has no evidence? If men are indeed disenfranchised shouldn't that deserve focus? Are womens' rights superior to mens rights? Are you implying men can't be treated unfairly?

Why can't we focus on the rights of both genders?

>Why can't we focus on the rights of both genders?

Ask yourself that question. In response to somebody writing about their experience changing careers you brought up how men aren't treated fairly.

I did. I responded because imo under normal circumstances nobody would be offered this kind of deal. It doesn't make economical sense for the company.

She was given leeway and my guess is because she's a woman among other things. Women do have advantages that men don't.

Women also have disadvantages but that is not my point. I am simply pointing out one area where women have an advantage in a male dominated field. It's a real advantage.

Oh no, women have one advantage over men (if it were true) in a male dominated field.

How do you not see how contradictory that statement is?

It isn't. Sometimes women are given an advantage, in a way that is completely unfair and only gives a small boost to certain women with certain personality, attractiveness and age characteristics. Men with certain outward characteristics get a least as much of a boost.

So your saying women have zero advantages over men? That absolutely none exist or has ever existed?

Out of all possible advantages (let's say 1000 in total) your saying men hold 100% of all these advantages and women can't even hold one advantage?

What in your mind is more realistic?

I'm saying what's the point of even keeping score when the odds are so stacked against women. Your complaints are entirely anecdotal, meanwhile it's very easy to point at empirical data showing how women are treated poorly.

If you wanna line up your complaints alongside mountains of empirical evidence showing how women are disenfranchised repeatedly feel free, just don't expect people to take you seriously when you call yourself a feminist.

If you actually want to call yourself a legitimate feminist you should spend more time listening and learning. It might make you actually feel silly to complain about how men are treated in tech.

>Your complaints are entirely anecdotal, meanwhile it's very easy to point at empirical data showing how women are treated poorly.

Show me the data for this specific case of horizontal movement in engineering organizations for women and you have an argument that can change my view.

>If you actually want to call yourself a legitimate feminist you should spend more time listening and learning. It might make you actually feel silly to complain about how men are treated in tech.

I am listening and learning. Show me your data. <-- that is literally a call for you to prove your points so that I can "listen and learn"

>I'm saying what's the point of even keeping score when the odds are so stacked against women.

Who's keeping score? I'm just bringing up one specific case of unfair treatment. I never tried to turn this into a battle of "which sex is treated more unfairly"

You wanna get educated go educate yourself. I'm frankly pretty disgusted by your posts and don't have the patience to educate somebody who is stubborn and unwilling to consider other perspectives.

This is such a horrible misogynistic comment, it saddens me greatly this crap is on top, tells a tale about HN audience. Janitor? Charity? Hot female? Just listen to yourself, you're so full of hate.

We've banned the account. Obviously that was egregious vandalism, if not arson.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069552

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069593

You have to judge this sort of thing by the entire community response cycle, though. Indignation, provocation, trolling often gets heavily upvoted—but then the rest of the community reacts appropriately and flags it. Usually that will bring it to our attention, too, in which case we can take further moderation action.

Consider the last sentence : "I think most men and people in general like to think of themselves as non-biased so most of this happens as subconscious actions."

Pretty sure this commenter thought of themselves as non-biased. Irony is a cruel mistress.

How is my statement biased? Men can suffer from unfair treatment as well. I never said anything to discount feminism, I simply stated one case where men are treated less well then women and I caveated that statement saying that this was based off of my own anecdotal experiences implying that your experience could be different.

Do you think it's possible to live in a world where women are the only gender that is mistreated? Or do you think it's more realistic to live in a world where infractions are committed against both genders?

This is off topic, but if my statement about this one case pissed you off because you're an ardent supporter of womens' rights I think you need to watch the video below and keep in mind... I literally never said anything AGAINST women's rights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMuzhQXJoY

I didn't say anything hateful towards women. I think women get this better treatment then men but I didn't say they should turn it down nor did I say they didn't deserve it. I simply pointed out a difference.

And what wrong with switching from Janitor to SWE? Same basic job switch from one another field with completely different skillets but completely different treatment due to perceived ranking.

(Blog post author here) Referring to my job change as the company offering me charity is offensive and incorrect (I took a pay cut and worked hard to learn what I need to in order to be effective).

Asserting that someone working in UX research/design is in an entirely unrelated field from software development is also wildly incorrect. UX folks work with SWEs regularly and are working on the same projects, albeit from a different perspective.

There are also examples of men at my company making fairly similar changes across organizations. I'd love for you to take a minute and consider why you approached my story with the preconceived notion that I've only gotten this opportunity because I'm a woman.

The problem is that you are likening her to a janitor to create the impression that she has zero programming experience. First of all, if you'd read the article you'll find she probably has as much experience as a lot of bootcamp grads. You're also kind of insulting janitors by assuming none of them could possibly have any coding skills.

So many people nowadays learn coding using "non-traditional" means, and some of those people are REALLY good. Her skills were evaluated over a period of time and she was found to be worthy of a place. Why is that so difficult to believe? If this story were about a man, how would your reaction be different?