Hacker News Reader

Comment by morpunkee | Hacker News Reader

Apparently this mailing list comment triggered this reaction:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...

I tried really hard to follow the threading in that but I came away being completely unable to parse it, at least on mobile. What was the attempted "joke"?

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...

Guy reports a behavior where date math doesn't return the result he expected and jokes that it might have to do with how women don't like to admit when they're aging.

I am fairly conservative libertarian leaning guy made in Russia and even I find this kind of joke absolutely unacceptable in professional setting.

I wouldn't have made the joke, myself, but it's also not really insulting to anyone. It's not saying that women are bad at math, or that women broke date arithmetic to seem younger, it's just referencing that phenomenon.

What about a joke where adding weights resulted in quantities too large, and it's suggested that it was written for dudes who want to say they can bench press more than they really can?

Same, I find this joke to be inappropriate in professional settings. May be it doesn’t offend anyone or may be it does, you never know.

I'd rather that joke were not made. There is a difference though between a discreet 'not a great moment' and public 'absolutely inacceptable [and we should hound the poor sap out of all gainful employment opportunities for life]'. A classic management principle is 'praise in public, criticize in private'. While the joke was was indeed inappropriate, the public reaction was 10x worse.

I can agree that there should be no public flogging, provided it is first couple times. If it has been explained to the individual that certain behaviour is considered unprofessional and yet they insist on engaging in it then... well, there should be consequences.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com