Only 5.3% of US welders are women. After years as a professor, I became one
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If people think this is harassment, no wonder people experience a lot of harassment.
Unless there was more to it the correct answer is along the lines of "yes thankfully" and then a laugh.
I'd recommend a good look in the mirror when looking for the problem in such situations.
Same goes for the thing about trying to discreetly notifying that someone has dirty hands:
Yes, I don't know what is up with Americans and demanding everyone has clean hands at all times, but as long as that is a thing this probably is meant as a favor. Maybe clumsily, but still.
More generally the saying: "when you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras" comes to mind:
If you expect things to be meant funny or helpful (and give people some slack) maybe life becomes a lot less stressful than if everything has to be seen through a lens of gender dynamics.
And if one is known as a reasonable person, I guess people will also take your side if you have to be loud and clear about something, e.g. if it turns out someone wasn't just clumsily trying to be nice or funny.
Why do men think sexism is symmetrical? The reason sexual overtures from men are a problem is because they are usually serious and they are statistically threatening, because men often hurt women who don't respond to them in a way they deem appropriate. You would never fear this woman.
I expect variation in the women I meet, some will be scared of me and some have much bigger balls than I do. If I calibrate my banter such that 1% of women are scared, am I in the wrong?
Black people are statistically much, much more likely to commit rape, murder, and robbery than any other racial group. Would you agree this is reason to fear black people, the way you believe it's justified to fear men? I mean "they are statistically threatening" after all.
That's the same with men too, usually. Why do you think it's sexism?
This counts as an inflammatory statement. Even thinking this is beneath a person of fairness. Those are people too. And you may not like the era they were in and you may want to redefine the era of today to some lala make-believe, but at no point should you disrespect and denigrate the people who don't buy in to your redefinition.
It is like saying: Windows developers are stupid and stuck in the past because they cannot get in line with programming on a mac. come on! they don't have to. And they don't want to.
Fair comparison??
Using verboten words as an example, I'm often willing to stop using words that others don't like. The harm to me is low (english is a big language, there's plenty of other words left), so if there's any harm at all to another it's reasonable for me to stop using the word. Assessment of harm will vary, as will harm to me from loss of words - which is why I stand my ground on some technical words.
My line is, n* - Not even going to type it pronouns - Whatever floats your boat master->main - Sure. Fine. I guess. Stop coming in my room and messing with my stuff. master/slave->controller/peripheral - Really? I'm going to say no for now, but work on brevity and check back later. MOSI/MISO->??? - NO.
Does drawing the line there make me a bigot? Where's the cutoff?
The BLE wireless protocol separates roles into central/peripheral and server/client. Often, but not always, a peripheral is a server.
Ask your female friends if it's ever happened to them. I expect a large majority of them will be able to tell you a story.
Here's the best way I've been able to come up with, to get a feel for it. Suppose you have a nice watch. When somebody says, "Nice watch!", you say, "Thanks". But when you start meeting more than one person who won't stop talking about your watch, you get a little antsy. When somebody follows up with "Give me your fucking watch!" you start to think about leaving it at home some times.
Except that when you're a woman, you can never leave that at home.
This experience really isn't just about her. It's something practically all women experience. She seems to have just assumed her audience would share that context -- perhaps a side effect of being in academia.
Actors get their famous catchphrases thrown at them consistently as well.
That's just the way it goes.
"No, I'm sweet enough"
100% agree, this is just people filling the emptiness with idle chatter. Intent matters.
People who are not women have to deal with such things as well, as a sibling commenter pointed out. Short guys, fat guys, skinny guys, they would all get picked on (in a friendly way or otherwise). The difference is that society will not tolerate them whining about it. Women won't care and men will laugh at them. So they suck it up.
It's frustrating when people say "just talk to a woman", as if all women have the same perspective on this, or women are the only ones who experience it. It's itself a sexist thing to say. I know women who don't have this kind of victim mentality and they're happier for it.
Yeah, harassment is is part of life. Just accept it, right!?
WTF? How low should our standards as a society be!?
Did I cry like a baby, no. I made jokes about their looks and mannerisms. It's called banter.
There is a line that should not be crossed, but someone making one off comments on the out of the ordinary shouldn't be classed as harassment.
I actually think humans will never be able to achieve a utopia where no one will ever be made uncomfortable for who they are. One problem is that some people are more sensitive than others. Put another way, someone will always get offended at something. At some point you have to draw a line and say everything on this side of the line is fine, and if you get upset, it's _your_ problem.
It is if you get leverage from it. There is a perverse incentive to have thin skin - in fact, you can get flak for not having thin enough skin, these days. I once heard someone call it "reverse CBT". I invented a game called "Take it Personal" to demonstrate how easy this is, where the participants say anodyne things to each other and are tasked with taking offense. It is an easy game, if an unhappy one.
Two particular instances I remember:
- a couple of streamers in a chat, and this was brought up. One of the girls in the chat didn't believe it and yelled at her brother, who promptly answered that the most recent compliment they received that was not from their mother was 3 years ago. Cue other guys in the stream relaying the same story.
- multiple people that transitioned from female-to-male, all of them mentioning they didn't realize how lonely you are as a man in the world, and how invisible you seem to be. Some almost got suicidal because of it.
If a man has 0 male friends, that's a different problem then the way that men treat even their close friends.
Many years ago, I used to take this advice seriously.
The feedback I got was generally along the lines of "what are you talking about?" and implications that it's weird to ask, so I stopped.
>It's something practically all women experience.
It's strange to me how so many people believe themselves to have this insight.
In the last 10-15 years (especially since #metoo) the bar seems to have moved drastically, what is encompassed under this term has changed. Additionally, a whole new generation grew up now having experinenced the decades before, setting their expectations differently.
I strongly suspect yours and the GPs people you've spoken to come from different age demographics, politicial spheres or both.
This article is talking specifically about the ways in which it is detrimental to be a tradeswoman. So in this context, being a woman makes it more difficult for this person to their job.
Looking at another example of something that would make being a tradesperson difficult: Would you call it harassment if customers were consistently making flippant remarks about a co-worker that was missing a hand?
It is hard to be funny without referring to anything about the current situation.
Especially seen that people pushing for this to be considered harassment are the exact same demographic closing their eyes when it's pointed to them that number of actual rapes are going through the roof in Europe.
White men joking about a woman looking good: harassment. White women getting raped: eyes closed, don't want to hear about it.
And of course the overlap between polite people complimenting women that they're good looking and actual rapists is approximately zero.
Priorities, priorities.
That was also the first time I didn't get in trouble for defending my personal space.
I had poor parents (dad working low paid jobs, stay at home mom). Grew up far from cousins. Started working (real, hard work) as soon as it was legal as a 15 y.o. Started paying my own clothes and shoes then as far as possible.
I probably could have made a point out of all that more often, but I have chosen to be thankful for loving parents, growing up in a good country and getting a lot of friends as I grew up.
But I do find it hilarious when certain HNers want to educate me about privilege just because I am a white SW engineer.
Edit, to be clear: I don't accuse you of trying to educate me. It seems you are just thinking out loud.
I am just pointing out that it is possible to not let ones background influence ones present too much.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/663/485/1f8...
I personally didn't care myself but I would still class it as harassment. Or like being told I had "man flu" by a female member of staff, to which I said nothing of course. Because what do you say?
Along with many more instances of what I would call harassment. Women definitely experience a higher degree of it for sure, but I think many men also brush being harassed off, the same as they do for a lot of things that would make one seem unmanly.
I’ve been a tourist in a number of different trades, and welding beats them all for hostility and resistance to safety practices. You get called a pussy for wearing a mask, but of course the manganese fumes from welding steel will give you brain damage. I’ve been advised to run cutoff wheels far above their rated RPM, which risks explosion. It’s sad because welding might as well some combination of knitting and calligraphy but with metal. It’s great.
Makes sense. I suppose if women had invented these things, they would have been able to name them something nicer.
"Safety" was "watch the fuck out and don't get hurt." I didn't have access to a respirator even if I had known enough to want one.
I did have enough sense to listen to the old guys who said your body can't take that kind of work for more than about 15yr without starting to break down, and that I should go to engineering school instead.
There was one (1) female welder that crew of at least 20 and she put up with a ton of overtly horrible stuff. She was also incredibly good at welding, I saw her once burn an entire 7018 rod without looking, no helmet, just by feel, and the slag came off in one piece.
The idea that sexual innuendos somehow differently affect men and women is rather strange.
There is no reward for macho or risky behavior, only a painful/miserable death and shorter life, and less time with family. So many male members of my mom's extended family died early from tobacco use and from industrial and agricultural hazards.
That means breathing fumes, unknown substances, or fine dust without a respirator (or smoking), not using gloves while handling chemicals/coatings/etc., or putting oneself in mechanically risky situations.
TL;DR: Just use PPE.
They cost money, they're a hassle, they're not fashionable, their benefit isn't immediately obvious but so is a seatbelt until there's a known problem like DDT, asbestos, tetraethyllead lead, dirt particulates, or fiberglass.
Fun fact: the actor playing Cooter was elected a US Congressman.
You're absurd if you think women can't be disgusting.
If someone calls you a pussy for not wanting brain damage, ignore them.
If you've been advice to run cutoff wheels far above their rated RPM, don't.
It's literally that easy.
I don't think this is unique to Women at all. There's a tendency in these authors to perceive Men's interactions in the workplace as "easy" or "natural" or even desired for some reason. They typically aren't.
> Stoicism is a workaround to credibility.
It also comes with a high price. Those who pay it typically do not last. Ironically they often refuse to recognize the source of their suffering. If the job is hard, modify the tools to make it easier, your class of use just hasn't been typically considered but it wouldn't be impossible to create.
> The pontificating metal-shop customer should be, too.
It's everywhere. The number of times my credibility has been assumed based upon my appearance is huge. Customers often have to choose between two Men if a Women isn't working, and the same tropes apply there as well.
It all seems like the right idea for the wrong reasons and so the interpretation is heavily compromised by it.
Blue collar work sucks ass. You generally only do it because you don't have any better options.
Shop talk and banter are fairly universal. Any difference is going to be a target. Thin bloke who doesn't look strong enough? Ginger hair? Tall guy, short guy? Weird tattoo, etc. Definitely the one black guy or the one white guy is going to get shit. But is it malicious? Almost certainly not.
The other thing, which in my experience is relatively common worldwide, is that working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics. In academia and in highbrow society the tendency is to basically sanitise every social interaction. When you're in an environment where that isn't happening then you can't suddenly ignore it any more.
> working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics
I'm curious to what you mean by this
I can't pinpoint exactly "what I mean" but basically traditional values. More willing to accept the fact that men and women are going to find each other attractive, that you probably don't want your wife or husband to have a "platonic" friend of the opposite sex that they meet up with one on one, etc etc.
Whereas the highbrow view is more like - okay but if we accept those things then women can't work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes. We want women to be able to work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes, anything else is unacceptable, so we should sanitise all of the interactions and punish everyone for being human and then we might be able to make it work, sort of kind of but not really, everyone will be miserable but we pretend.
This isn't just a UK thing. Seems fairly universal at least across the western world.
I got the impression that the highly educated types are wrong in a lot of ways, and the blue collar labourers are wrong in completely different ways, so I took the intersection of their worldviews and now ...well I'm probably wrong in every way ;) We can but try.
Couldn't agree more!
What is wrong from the view of each? (As someone who interacts both with phds and high school graduates on a daily/weekly basis I find the differences interesting).
Biggest surprise for me was the sense of community that seemed present in the lower earners.
I will say that, at the root of it all, we are who we orbit.
I was once in an environment where, depending upon how I was dressed, I would either be addressed in english and called "Sir" or addressed in spanish and called "Paisano".
Why was the community surprising? (I mean, my mental model is that most dyadic social interactions can be approached with either authority or community, so I'm not surprised that groups without much authority tend to play the community card instead)
It’s a great exercise in personal growth for coping skills.
No thanks, Ill take anything that isn’t involuntary labor
Because that is what it is. Nobody gets sent to Afghanistan as part of conscription.
And, in my opinion, it has been some of the most valuable education I have got and something I'd definitely recommend my kids and my friends do if offered the opportunity.
Similarly, in France some engineering schools required an internship in a factory to learn the perspective of blue-collar workers that the student might eventually manage but at 8 weeks only I don't think it gives as much perspective as what my German friends had.
You should be more careful with such statements as that's more exception than rule. If you're country goes to war, and it's not just some peace keeping mission, you can bet that whoever is at the time in army could be sent to the frontline.
Same goes for Taiwan and Israel.
Germany does not at the moment but can reintroduce it at a moments notice, and also they are taking steps to encouraging voluntary conscription like service.
Probably more 1st world nations, these were just the ones from the top of my head.
If we end up in an attack on our homelands thats another thing.
But even then no ordinary conscript that reads HN (ok, possible exception for russians, but even they try to maintain a veneer of "voluntary" on it when they send conscripts) will be sent to abroad.
We didn’t have any conscripts in Afghanistan because we don’t have any conscripts at the moment. I can say that there were a lot of people that were deployed in the Middle East when they didn’t want to be. Especially for second and third tours. I personally have a friend who was told he was going to be on a ship in the Navy who ended up in Iraq.
Of course?! We've had a volunteer army for the last half century?! How can you claim professional service members are being conscripted and sent to conflict?
And involuntary restrictions of basic freedoms like what and when to eat and where and when to sleep.
My parents hated it, and I don't think I have ever met anyone who remembered that experience fondly for any reason. If anything, the kind of stories that people tell about it seem to imply that it was more divisive than uniting - the rural folk who were doing that as a permanent job were both resentful of "city slickers" and annoyed at the fact that they can't do it "properly", while the students would very quickly tire of being yelled at and start treating their hosts with contempt.
I think it's the betwixt and between dynamic: working class folk know they're living on what they have coming; upper class folk know they're living on what they have; but middle class folk, no matter how they live, are only middle class folk if other middle class folk agree they are — hence the insecurity, and at one reason for the conformity.
(in the UK, I think U vs non-U started as a joke, yet was popularised by exactly the people it had been meant to be taking the piss from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English )
GP indicates another trichotomy- past, future and present orientation..
>Now they hide, not merely from envy and revenge but from expose journalism much advanced in cunning and ferocity since Veblen's time, and from an even worse threat, virtually unknown to Veblen,foundational mendicancy, with its hordes of beggars in three-piece suits constantly badgering the well-to-do.
Update for XXI to take into account (YC vs) “fakers” & the finally selfaware 4th estate
(the proles aren't any less status conscious than the outer party; what else could explain tracksuit chic and luxury brand revenue? "Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children.")
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPpjU1UeAo (the video features a nice 20' day sailer, but is a little short on horses)
EDIT: * διαίρει και βασίλευε, known in our times as "let's you and him fight". The brits played this game well during their imperial period, but looking at the world map of frozen (and hot) conflicts, maybe they played it too well.
(I might assign the labels differently though: working class is future oriented [live in expectation of what you have coming]; upper class is past oriented [live on what you already have]; middle class is present oriented [performative in the now]. The first two are economic; the last social. bien-pensant/What would Mrs. Grundy think?)
I find the same (also in the UK) from having lived in (and grown with) a non-western culture. One that is also uptight (much more so in many ways, and definitely sexist) but in a different way.
> Whereas the highbrow view is more like - okay but if we accept those things then women can't work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes. We want women to be able to work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes, anything else is unacceptable
I am quite surprised at the extent to which gender stereotypes are pervasive. At a bonfire last weekend kids were being sold illuminated toys, and all the little boys had swords, and the girls had unicorns. My daughters would have wanted swords (they are teen and adult) but I have realised that is unusual.
I’ve also seen this. There’s more of an acknowledgment: that people will be attracted to each other (or not),the status/dating games people play will be out and open. It will be acceptable to talk about physical/sexual qualities of your coworkers, etc. That when you are in physically close proximity you might see each others sexual parts and comment on them. It will be understood that after a breakup people will be less amicable.
You can also see this in literature: look at Les Miserables. In the factory they talk about sexual fantasies of the foreman. Whereas in the context of the upper classes it’s talked about in context of love/romanticism.
Contrary to popular believe, I find this much healthier. Emotions expressed can be dealt with and moved on. Emotions suppressed grow and fester. If it’s normal to talk about who’s is attracted to who, then everyone is aware of the sexual exploits of the general manager. Therefore people know where to set boundaries. If it’s hush hush kept quiet then the exploits of the Gm can grow.
The dynamic works when flirting is within a social circle because bad behavior risks your social status in the group and it works in bars because you're equals, around friends, and can just leave. At work, at least in an office, is kinda the worst combination. I've seen it work well outside of office settings because there aren't as complicated power dynamics— we're all equally in the shit in the kitchen.
pretty much all weird gender dynamics happen in upper class and posh environments. You won't find women on a farm afraid to get their hands dirty or men afraid to stitch something. People just do the jobs that are necessary. The entire idea that women are too pristine or fragile to do any work is basically an upper class fantasy because no working class household can afford to operate like this.
Whether its the military, manufacturing or agricultural environments, anywhere that's sort of blue collar or practical people aren't obsessed with their differences that much. I grew up in a rural environment and as kids boys would play with girls, as teenagers we'd go skinny dipping, there'd be none of the weird neurotic and insecure interactions I encountered when I went to university. There's entire categories of stereotypes and boxes highly educated and "high status" people invent to separate themselves in, not just along gender lines.
I agree. Gender differences seem to be exaggerated, while in upper classes women and men converge to androgyny. One contributing factor is that surviving on low incomes requires more differentiated roles (care taker vs manual laborer).
As a man who has been the primary parent for most of my children's lives (my ex is not very good with older children) I find the assumptions people make annoying. People are surprised my younger daughter lives with me rather than her mother. They struggle to find words to describe a man as primary carer.
I think this is damaging to men - bringing up children is incredibly rewarding and men are given a smaller role in it. Its damaging to women too.
Women do want careers as good as those of men. There are huge efforts made to equalise numbers of women in various careers (especially high paying ones and in senior positions).
I do not see how this can work without men taking on more traditionally female roles.
IMO we should make it more acceptable for men to be stay at home dads, just as we have made it acceptable (and entirely normal) for women to do a lot of traditionally male jobs.
Why would anyone choose the role of a provider if they aren't under a huge biological pressure to be one? All it does is offer an alternative way to slightly increase dating prospects.
But some of those that still do are and always have been dominated by women: nursing for instance.
I would say that nursing is a good example of a female dominated job that ought to have more men in it, as greater strength is a huge advantage when, for example, moving/positioning someone.
There's a lot of actual prejudices (not just banter) among, say, "educated" tech industry workers, too.
Including sexism, racism, ageism, and classism.
Most people will at least superficially hide it in modern workplaces, but it's still there, and having effects.
You've probably seen evidence of this places you've worked, and you can also see it often in pseudonymous HN comments.
You don't even need to be inappropriate to have workplace banter. Nobody ever said that a light environment has to be built on jokes that bust chops. In fact, busting chops kind of blows. There's plenty of room for clowning around outside of that, and plenty of ways to build camaraderie, too. You don't have to bring racism or sexism to the table to have a good time, and you don't have to have a good time at someone else's expense.
Man, I'm really sick of the robotic culture of tech. It's such a stuffy bummer. We should be making more skeleton jokes and showing each other macaroni art pictures.
HN is like this too unfortunately. Anything slightly out of the high brow sanitized tech groupthink gets downvoted or flagged even if it doesn't break the rules.
It's mostly people who think the world must be a certain sanitized way and if you tell them the reality is otherwise they must suppress you to preserve their world view which they see as being the ritcheous one.
People are too sensitive and act on their feelings and emotions instead of logic and critical thinking. Which is ironic considering how such people pretend to be liberal, educated and all about free speech and freedom of opinion but only as long as your opinion matches theirs.
With regards to camaraderie and banter, I don't even want to talk about world views. I genuinely don't think they matter too much in that context. Really what I'm sick of is just a lack of any attempt to make a connection whatsoever. I don't need to align with a person politically or socially to build a connection and have good workplace banter. There's just such a fundamental unwillingness to do so, in my experience. That's what bugs me.
And I know the difference. I've been in both blue collar and white collar environments. Blue collar people look to build the connection and bond together almost immediately, just about every time. There's a period of 'feeling each other out' when you start on a new job or with a new coworker so that they can suss out _how to connect with you_. That's right: it's such a first-class citizen to their working relationships that there's an entire art form to initiating it.
Contrasting with the white collar environment... it's almost non-existent, unless you work with people who, ironically, come from blue collar environments. I think it's really sad, and I think we could benefit from being a little looser. I don't think that means we need to drag any contentious topics in, nor do I think it means that we need to drag ourselves into un-professionalism. There's just something to be said for being able to be goofy and chat with coworkers that seems to be lost on the white collar environment.
Harmony is the strength and support of all institutions. Banter and camaraderie build that harmony.
I'm sorry that your experiences differed from mine, but some of my best friends are connections that I organically grew in ostensibly white-collar jobs (in the education and tech sectors).
Many of the engineers I know are some of the most eclectic goofballs you'll ever meet.
And let's face it the kind of people who want to dedicate their life to staring at a screen make for a strange crowd.
This is the same in blue collar environments. They have more of the levity that I'm seeking regardless.
> And let's face it the kind of people who want to dedicate their life to staring at a screen make for a strange crowd.
Maybe this is it? I'm not fully convinced. I have worked with tech dorks that had a sense of humor, and that didn't bring contentious things to the working environment. Is it a lack of wit? I don't know. The more I think about it, the more confused I get, honestly.
Banter is a matter of wit. You could call it an intellectual pursuit.
Blue collar jobs are primarily not intellectual pursuits. They need their own kind of smarts, but these smarts are relatively orthogonal to the kind of linguistic smarts used in banter, and most importantly the work output itself is not intellectual. There's little chance of the banter directly getting into the work output, and so there's little direct motivation for bosses to police it.
Software development is basically entirely an intellectual pursuit that very much overlaps the wit of banter, and banter is likely to leak into the work output. Hence easter eggs are a thing. So, bosses are more likely to want to police banter-adjacent activities, which has a likely chilling effect on banter itself.
Another, more recent, factor is that more software development activity is online/remote and therefore lower bandwidth. The subtleties of banter don't convey as well as they would in-person.
In the UK government, before programming was considered a high-value skill, the vast majority of programmers were women. So much so that programming was measured in girl hours (which were paid less than man hours).
When it became clear that programming was going to be a big deal, women were systematically excluded, flipping the gender balance (although they had trouble hiring initially because men saw it as lesser work).
At the exact same time (at least in the US), which was the 1980s, law and medicine (as in doctors, not nurses) rapidly shot toward near-parity of participation by men and women, while both being high-pay and much higher-prestige than anything to do with computers—now, still, but especially then. That the profession becoming higher-paying and a “big deal” was the cause of this shift doesn’t make much sense, given what else was going on at the same time.
[edit] to be clear, I’m not denying the existence of a gap, or making claims about whether it should be addressed—in fact, I think understanding the cause is vital if we do want to address it.
Professionalism is to keep distance to others, banter is the opposite, as it is a form of bonding.
"Modern" workplaces that advertise themselves as such are very likely toxic. Might seem counter intuitive but it is often the case in reality.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-big-pro...
Just that it's "universal" doesn't mean it has to be that way. For fucks sake we all exchange 40 hours a week (or more) to our employers, on top of overtime and commute. There's no reason at all anyone should have to put up with unprofessional abusive/discriminatory bullshit from anyone, no matter if customers ("Karens") or coworkers.
At least the young generation got the message, this time they have the numbers advantage to actually demand meaningful change, and we're seeing the first effects of it - particularly in the trades, that fail to attract new trainees despite pretty competitive wages.
(The next thing I'd love to see on the chopping block is corporate politics, it's utterly amazing that everyone knows at least one horror story where endless amounts of money were wasted, sometimes entire companies sank because two middle manager paper pushers thought their fiefdom wars to be more important than the success of the company at large... but apparently investors/shareholders seem to not care even the tiniest bit)
Instead, what you could do is think about how this is a completely arbitrary thing that the two cultures just do differently, and that maybe people shouldn't be offended by friendly banter that isn't meant to offend.
> everyone is picked on. If you don't get picked on that is reason for concern.
By quoting this, do I mean to encourage bullying? No, as the kid that wasn't included during my first years of school, NO.
But there is a difference between everyone calling each other names vs everyone calling someone names etc.
The line is mighty fine between bullying and good natured ribbing, and has a lot to do with group dynamics. Edgy banter can bring a group together, but bullying can do far more damage.
Being US military didn't make it right, we were effectively deciding who we would kill in an effort to make the team more cohesive. That never set right with me, and I still remember the joke (but maybe it's not a joke, joke) to this day.
Don't look to the military as a model of good teamwork. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. One cannot pretend it's the right model to follow.
They rarely know anything about what middle management is doing. After all, if you own any stocks, do you know anything about the middle managers in that corporation?
The thing is, we allow corporations to become (way) too fat. When a corporation grows too big, it grows uncontrollable as well - once the complexity of any corporation grows so large that there is no way for any single person to understand at least the basic scopes of everything the corporation's parts do at the same time, all kind of auditing and oversight becomes a sham, no matter if internal (boards) or external (consultancies, auditors, regulatory agencies).
> When a corporation grows too big, it grows uncontrollable as well
True, which is why corporations eventually fail.
BTW, governments also grow too big and become uncontrollable.
Sadly, in our modern world people are not only looking for things to be offended about, but are looking to be offended on behalf of other people.
> only looking for things to be offended about, but are looking to be offended on behalf of other people.
It's one thing if you or someone else personally enjoys some recreational conversational sadomasochism with the right partner, likely you can even persuade people to accommodate you with talk like that.
But the idea that there can't be genuine offense, only motivated offense attributed to some handwavy goal is clearly more projective pretense than anything like actual insight.
Honestly, it often will be malicious, or will quickly become malicious if you don't take it graciously. And why should you? It's not acceptable to make fun of people for being skinny, ginger, shy, black, white, female, or any other things that the in group considers non-standard for whatever weird reasons.
It’s up to every individual to find the value for themselves, and commit to working on themselves, whatever that looks like.
How about you, what’s your plan?
I can tell you that it doesn't involve condescendingly lecturing blue collar workers about my culture being superior to theirs
BLS is combining solder/brazing with welding. And has no concept of industrial vs fab, etc.
The data shows roughly 454k workers in the welders, solderers, and brazers occupation series. With their claim of 3.5 severe injuries per 100 worker-careers, that's about 16k severe injuries. If you assume an average career is about 25 years, that's about 636 severe injuries per year, compared to the 48 fatalities per year. So it's an order of magnitude higher (which I think is the direction most people would expect).
The (literal) toxic work environment is why I left welding, even though I genuinely enjoyed the work. But I was already starting to see real changes in my health, even though I was super careful about respirator use, etc. What really sealed the deal was learning that my shift lead, who I thought was a good decade older than me, was actually a few years younger, but had just been welding longer, with the body damage to show for it.
Now think of how many guys there are out there doing it with no repository protection and the good ‘ole safety squints.
People who work dangerous jobs can get pretty callous about it. I saw people doing dangerous shit constantly. And the people with permanent injuries end up using gallows humor to cope.
Wouldn’t it be in your best interest to be kind and supportive to one another in such a dangerous / difficult environment? That way everyone is happy and confident and focuses on the stresses of the job, not the stress of being bullied or being cajoled into bullying for the sake of conformity?
What you’re describing sounds like it really only appeals to a certain kind of person, and I don’t understand how that kind of person makes a better welder.
I don't know why there's a need to define either of these as inferior and wrong - isn't the point of diversity to allow people from different backgrounds to take different approaches?
To me, personally, the "kind, supportive" style often comes off as insincere. It's actually a barrier to me trusting someone. But I don't know, maybe that's just me.
I've hesrd others express this. That someone belives the mean things about them rather than the nice ones says more.aboit their self image than the comments IMO.
Like - the whole point is fostering a comfortable work environment, where drama like this doesn’t happen, because people are careful of how they interact with others.
A ‘supposedly’ supportive environment filled with backstabbing and gossip is in fact not a supportive environment, so why bring it up as if it’s somehow a ‘gotcha’ or even related?
Do people really not understand what a comfortable, supportive environment populated by kind caring coworkers looks like?
How about let people say and do whatever they want amongst themselves and stay out of their conversations.
Dudes in dangerous professions bond by calling each other slurs which is ok because they're all in on it, such that if you can't handle some bad words how are you gonna handle the real dangers of the profession where people need to know you have their backs, so you're either not cut out for the job.
You as an outsider from the nice people bubble don't have a say in this to lecture them since you're not in on it.
Sounds like a great way of excluding people from the workforce.
Apparently a lot of construction, extraction installation, maintenance and repair folk have a very bad time of i. Perhaps if they could get decent support in the work place that wouldn't happen. Though I suppose you'd probably conclude it's just natural attrition as the snowflakes kill themselves.
That's fine, but why do you think the culture should mould to your needs?
I think a professional work culture should generally be such as to allow the people who are capable of doing the work with the minimum ofaggression aimed at them. Controversial, I know.
Some dickhead flinging racial slurs at me all day doesn't make me feel that they have my back. Quite the opposite, actually.
You might argue that "punching up" is acceptable, or even that it's not slurring by definition (which I'd dispute), but membership of one "privileged class" doesn't automatically translate to actual privilege. (I think the feminists call this intersectionality.) In such a context, the labels of "privileged classes" absolutely can be used to punch down (e.g. saying "you're such a man" and slamming the door in the face of an impoverished gay transgender man trying to access domestic abuse services).
a derogatory or insulting term applied to a particular group of people.
"cisgender" has a technical meaning which is still it's primary use: someone who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth (so it can apply to intersex people as well). In this it is like "heterosexual" and "male". Arguably it is not like "white", in that who counts as white is malleable, but for the most part whatever it is, in most contexts, "white" is not a slur either.
* I am in fact a lapsed linguist. I have a PhD. My specialization was in semantics and pragmatics. Semantics is meaning encoded in language. Pragmatics is meaning inferred from use: "it's cold in here" meaning "shut the window", for example. I am aware that one can talk more precisely and at much, much greater length about all of this. But this is Hacker News, so this is all I am going to say.
I'd say "white" is no more or less malleable than the others. "Male" has multiple, mostly-overlapping definitions; by extension, "heterosexual" and "cisgender" are likewise flexible, though "heterosexual" has additional flexibility. While the concept of "white" is completely ungrounded in base reality, as a cultural term (a description of how racists categorise people, and of who's affected by the consequences) it's relatively stable: the definition in Western Europe is completely different to the definition in North America, and the boundaries have shifted over the centuries, but contemporary racists in a given racism-domain seem to agree with each other.
That is the point of the banter: to see how you handle stressful situations.
Women don't understand this, but nearly all men do.
Why? For every accident, there are around twenty near misses. For every near miss there are several situations that could have gone bad very quickly unless the person on the spot remains calm and acts rationally.
It is essential to know how you behave under stress in most blue collar work. They're not being assholes for fun; they're doing it to save lives.
I work in that industry and can say with confidence that statement is false.
Which is a good thing really, because I wouldn't want to think that people were actually determining fitness to be trusted with a soldering iron or embedded systems design based on their witty comebacks or tolerance for jokes about their wife.
If I can't stay calm and think rapidly under mild social pressure without threat of bodily harm or lost lives, I personally wouldn't feel honest in telling my teammates, "yes, if you or I are in a situation with risk to life or limb, you should trust that I'll handle it appropriately and protect myself and/or you."
Our assumptions about who will succeed in the most difficult situations don't seem to hold up.
My own experience in tall ships and shipyards, where there are plenty of life and death decisions is not that.
There are people that I can fluster easily in a social situation that are perfectly calm and capable in high pressure dangerous situations. There are people that are practically insult comedians that I wouldn’t want driving a car in the same parking lot.
What actually seems to be the common factor is male groups in informal settings
Two things can be true at the same time: that this type of banter has undesirable consequences as well as desirable ones. This type of nuance is generally the sort of thing that's worth trying to understand before you try to 'fix' it.
I completely agree with you about the purpose and value of banter- but do you actually know any women or interact with any on a regular basis?
It's simply not true- women banter with each other just as much as men do, and they especially banter with men they are interested in romantically- for the exact reason you mention - to see if they handle stressful situations well, which is a desirable (attractive) trait in a romantic partner.
I'll admit women tend to be more subtle with this then men- such that some people (especially the ones who are failing the test) will mistake it as complaining or arguing.
I enjoy it very much when my wife does this- I usually respond by turning it into some kind of joke, or turning it back on her in a way she doesn't expect, and I can see her light up with joy that I 'got it' and didn't respond with frustration/etc.
Assholes exist everywhere, but “we” don’t have to apologize for them or make the workplace a safer space for them.
It's a constant stream of "but my guys don't do this" "but my guys do do this".
It's all just rephrasing of, well, this is the highbrow culture, and this is the working class culture, and I'm in one or the other and you're abnormal.
The reality is that it's just two different worlds and where they clash things get weird.
Looking at _so many_ responses to my post, almost none of which actually have new content, makes me think this is some sort of dead internet bots vs. bots contest.
I never made a claim that "all men do X" or that "shop talk and banter are fairly universal". I did point out that I and my friends do not mock our friends and colleagues.
Still avoiding positive claims, but here are some normative claims:
- I object to claiming that mocking is normal and acceptable in all groups of men
- some, not all, working class subcultures use mocking as a shibboleth
- this aspect of those subcultures is not a thing I think "we" should valorizeJust telling the truth in a low key softball way where we can all laugh, and of course you're laughing right along with me.
Even so, categorical prohibitions of mockery (in society, in particular workplaces, whatever) are truly and obviously joyless propositions. Maybe they're warranted in some contexts! But to say 'there can be no mockery' is indeed inherently stifling.
Is that not down to the culture? I found some of the warmest workplaces were also the places were everyone was constantly shitting on each other and not taking it too serious. I'd not say it was bullying, as everyone got a piece. There was a certain toughness to it, but at the same time everyone was caring deeply for one another.
I think the current tendency to prevent all possibility to upsetting behaviour is overshooting the mark.
Against bullying is a good movement.
Against all possibly upsetting remarks is basically being against banter and killing a part of what makes us human. I hope that free speech remains allowed and to some extend "uncancelable".
Would you say this is more typical in groups of men, or among the men within a group? (I'm thinking about social situations myself now as well)
now that you mention it, id say when a woman does fit in, were all so struck by it that we let her steer most of the conversation. if i had to guess, its more typical in a culture where cooperative competition is accepted.
i managed a d1 women basketball team for a season and think their dynamic was similar. teasing was shorthand because it effectively communicated difficult-to-describe concepts using an emotional memory of "that one thing so-and-so did that one time" via a nickname or reference to an action.
> Spent a lot of time in hunting and fishing parties with near constant teasing
it would be mean to target people who weren't "in on it". when someone new enters the group everyone is nice and eases them into the banter. this is what i mean when i reference an internal "jerk instance counter" when a new guy isnt nice.
teasing becomes a shared language for effective communication. "the hill where Jake crapped his pants" is a very specific location that carries an emotional hook which helps memory. cut plug is a real type of bait, but in our circle refers to a person who overdid his bait every time and well use it as short hand to tell someone not to bother gold plating.
there are lines and we all learn them as long as we start with humble intentions to help each other
This probably seems obviously true to you but it should not. Some people think there's a reasonable amount of banter, sometimes at the expense of another acquaintance, before it becomes bullying or unacceptable in the workplace.
The attributes and reasons do not matter in isolation. They will find where to poke even if you’re a twin of one of the group members. Red hair is just the obvious one to use.
The alternative is going to the office, filtering thoughts in your mouth and reporting slight misspeaks and inappropriately timed eye contacts to a special manager who then decides who’s higher in hierarchy according to some rules.
> Women in trades have reported encounters with customers who doubted their competence and who refused to deal with them, seeking a man instead.
There is plenty of low key sexism (and racism) like that among white collars too so it is not restricted to trades (as acknowledged by the article's author), but this goes beyond banter like just teasing someone because they have red hair.
Real sexism is way more present among middle-class/white-collar workers (whatever their gender is) than between blue collar workers. You will have poorly worded jokes from your coworkers, but the ass-grab or demeaning remarks will always be from managers (the kind of manager who don't know the trade or inherited the job) or customers.
But the idea that only white collar workers are capable of ass-grabs or genuinely derogatory remarks is wild...
But even closer to me, and more recently: i know a woman who work in a call center, and she explained to me the reason why it's always managers on the workplace: the other don't have the time to play powergames with each other, they have too much work (for her it was a female manager who learned of her homosexuality who started to get touchy).
I stand by that. Obviously it is different in non-work settings, but at work?
- Construction workers hooting and whistling at women
- Gamers online being horrible to _everyone_
- Managers (as noted) sexually harassing employees
All cases were consequences for behaving badly are far less likely.
Isn’t that kind of the point though? That the racist and the sexist and the queerbasher think they have power over the group they’re bigoted against - and that’s what lends them the confidence to act mean?
But yes, people have always been in competition biologically to flaunt success and pick the best mating partner. You can do that through putting others down or otherwise controlling a mate. And the dimorphic needs between sexes only intensifies this. I'm no sociologist but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a universal experience.
https://research.aston.ac.uk/en/clippings/swearing-is-becomi...
Swearing and language rules are “made up”. The idea of harm is programmed into us.
People don’t riot despite receipts for priests molestation. They don’t riot over social scandal after social scandal. They’ll riot when they can’t feed their families. Most on the planet aren’t as obsessed with the pristine syntactic structures like the HN crowd. They never asked to exist and just want to live in conventional terms and die.
Like religion it’s just made up constraints; biological tick some all seeing eye will get mad.
Those are primary school rules. Seeing adults living like that is shocking.
It's not a struggle is a relief!
Once toil became intellectual (theocratic) is where life becomes insufferable and simply unfun. It amounts to human domestication.
it's still a workplace. There will always be people talking behind others' backs
It's not the work or the culture, it's the people. The type that would call you a vagina for wanting water on a hot day to avoid dehydration. Or the boss that will tell you "you think too much" when you come to them with an idea that increases productivity. But ya, the work or culture would be a piece of cake to navigate. For me, often time it's the idiots you have to work with that usually make a place a shit place to work.
If the customer was trying to guess which of two people in front of them might be a welder, and only 5% of welders are female, it's not irrational to assume that it's the man. The customer may never have seen a female welder before. Until they say something like you can't be a welder, you're a woman, I think the generous reading would be that the customer is having their priors updated in real time, not necessarily that they're a misogynist.
It's kind of gross, sure, if you're in that minority, but a part of me can appreciate that the conservatives are honest about what's in their hearts. It's hard to have a meaningful conversation when everyone is pretending to be someone they're not.
It's also hard to have a meaningful conversation with people who uncritically accept all information they hear as long as it's from the right source.
> Shop talk and banter are fairly universal. Any difference is going to be a target.
Can be exhausting. You have to either join in, be a target, or both.
That kind of thing rarely comes up in corporate america. In corp/academia people just like to imply you're lazy or unintelligent, subtly and frequently. But yeah, white collar jobs are annoying as well. That's why we all get paid to do them.
It makes me think it's a somewhat innate way to foster relationships. It definitely seems to break down walls. I've come to learn that the more a group roasts you the more they like you.
My strongest lifelong work friends definitely came from grad school where none of that happened. Or from research work where it didn't either. But there it was pressure and performance and cooperation that helped. It breeds trust.
In blue collar work, esp team oriented which it often is, I'm not sure it's the shop talk or the team/trust environment. Either way i felt the same bond to people making pizza 5 busy nights in a row as I did late night coding sprints while pair programming, or contorting under the steel hull of a target boat to reach a bad CPU while my colleague watched the terminal while seasick and we are both drinking diesel funes.
It's about shared trust I think. The level of casualness of shop talk is just an indicator and kind of a stress test of bonds.
It's something to do with the casualness or gruffness of it that makes it better. Office environments are so sterile. Maybe it's the lack of HR. lol
I choose less suffering at my work, I can choose my friends from other circles, thank you very much.
After eight years of working in the military, it only took two years before I never heard from another member of my unit. Within the first three months of leaving, only one person kept in touch (for the two years). When they moved out-of-state, I never heard from them either.
Don't underestimate the perception of what happens with what is likely to happen. I don't think it differs much between "the shop" and "the office" having worked in both. How many people do you talk to on a weekly basis from your last company?
The stereotypical band-of-brothers stuff only sets in when your clique has been enlisted long enough to see combat, lose people, and retire into civilian life together. Trauma bonding. That's 20-25 years of service IIRC, longer than most marriages. They have enough trust to go in on business or investments together. After that long it's a relationship of codependency.
Maybe people's ability to bond is just fucked these days, but two tours of duty has never really been enough to forge those sorts of bonds. Your experience sounds about right.
That sounds very far-fetched to me.
But yes, the best way to bond has often been by putting down others.
I realize I made a throw away account just to post this, but try reflecting shop talk back to white men with white stereotypes
They often can't take the shit they give out. You won't know who's-who until you get undermined behind your back and they start fucking with your work
The insecure ones blend in with the ones who can actually take the shit they give and it's the collective support of giving shit to non-white men in the trades that's the problem
It's high school bullies trying to present as it being all in good fun when it rarely is
> posh ... highbrow
It's using a stereotype as argument - perhaps not coincidentally - rather than listening to what people actually say.
There was a truth to the business about scolds and snowflakes. It's all right to have a bit of fun. No need to lose one's mind over it.
IDK, I think it's to enforce pecking orders based on stuff you can't at all help. I grew up working class and hated it--it's essentially bullying, no matter how you look at it.
It's one thing to make lighthearted jokes about some stuff you did, like "remember the time you forgot to base64 decode the images and stored garbage in the DB". It's entirely another to bully people for who and what they are. You're basically daring people to get somehow violent with you to get you to stop, and besides that being dangerous, a lot of people would rather not. It also creates this dynamic where people willing to be violent avoid bullying and rise ok the pecking order, and those who aren't don't.
How did I get my promotion that made the job worthwhile? A person fell 30 feet onto concrete. The next week, I was replacing him, with all of the risks he had, and the potential outcome.
That said, all of the chiding and sideways comments I received in the construction field didn't amount to half of the comments I received as a developer. There is something toxic about our field that we don't want to focus on (and I can't blame those that look away).
People claim "simple" when they mean "my way". People claim lack of "knowing how to use the language" when the wrong ideas get injected into a language (I'm personally looking at you Perl, but now that I'm working Golang, it's starting to feel too familiar).
The truth is, there is often more than one way to solve a problem, but an strong willed person won't see it that way. I've walked away from plenty of marginally (and I mean marginally) better solutions just to compromise to some form of a solution than I care to enumerate. One can't win such arguments.
I agree, it's not malicious, but is is egotistical. I've even won solutions where I said "Let's all agree that you're right, and then let's accept the code as-is." This industry is improved compared to decades before, but it's not yet fully rational, or even fair.
As a programmer, I've worked in places and with people who were straight-up sociopathically abusive and I've worked with people who were absolutely respectful and reasonable and groups that were in-between. The co-workers, the boss, the company and location's culture all went into this.
Thing about this is - since it is variable, since it is not necessary, there's no excuse for it as a natural thing, in any industry. Also, while sometimes it's the result just dysfunction (the "tolerant" boss who tolerates psycho team lead) but often it's a strategy for extracting more work for people (at Intel, for example).
it's also a way to adjust you to the lower end of the superego spectrum.
I read the article. There is zero indications anywhere in the article that this is the case, none.
Notably, the authors describes both her experience and the experience of other women. And they don't like but they expect and let it roll off their backs.
Sure, some work places have culture of "good-natured razzing" but others have a culture of straight-bullying. Sometimes the bullying comes from people who are damaged themselves and other times it comes from a company or a manager who believes this lets them control their workers (not always incorrectly). Either the bullying doesn't serve the workers.
But is it malicious? Almost certainly not.
A second of thought should show this kind of generalization is impossible. You're engaged in the classic "I know the working class and they are exactly this way" sophistry.
They get the exact same treatment that you'd get if you were the 14-year-old kid working in the shop with his uncle. You get called names, teased, and tested—it's part of the culture.
But instead of recognizing it for what it is, they try to apply labels like "sexism" to it. Or they're "resentful for being tested" as if any shop jockey feels _confident_ the first time they fix an item for a customer.
If you don't like the culture, leave it. Stop applying your labels when you don't even understand the world you stepped into. It's like labeling the Native Americans as "savages" just because they don't fit your sensibilities of how the world "ought" to work.
Another cabal of "offended people" who may have decided the recent presidential election, are those who are offended by any frank description of the economic and social conditions of the working class. For instance, this week David Brooks of the NY Times lamented that the Democrats failed to "respect" the working class. "Abandoning the working class" is also a fiction of propaganda. The head of the Democratic party rightfully called it BS.
That legs turn to jelly thing is internal. Some people are just less confident than others. Some can fake or really feel confidence even when they're inexperienced while some are the opposite. How can a professor not understand this when they surely all go through similar situations teaching a new class where the students are judging them on their competence?
She is in good company. Everyone thinks most other people are incompetent. Find the best welder you can, film them doing their thing, post it on the Internet. Watch the comments flood in with scathing criticism for how they're doing it wrong.
It's like a sport now.
Sad part is we had a young guy here in his 20's who was a real crackerjack: machinist, knew basic electric, could use a computer and was even picking up programming. He had a kid, found a good paying government job then up and left. I'd call him a unicorn.
It's obvious why an uninvited conversations are perceived as a sexism.
But anyone with the experience in almost anything but particularly in any trade would tell you what men do receive uninvited conversations with men bent on signaling their expertise all the goddamn time.
Sure, seeing 'a woman out of place' triggers some of them to do it when they wouldn't do it with a man in the same place, because they could get told to shove their oh-so-important opinion to the place where sun is not shining, but the source of this behaviour is not to be a sexist asshole but just being an asshole.
As the other comment rightfully notes, any difference is going to be a target.
Occasionally. Many times it is worth considerably less. Time is valuable.
My father was a mechanic. He learnt fast to stop trying to correct know-it-alls about cars. "Let 'em do stupid shit, it gives us work to bill".
The Germans have a good name for them that many languages have incorporated: Besserwisser.
My way of treating them: let them talk. It makes them happy. I might even learn something new. If they are wrong, I do try to ask them a though provoking question. I know that the question will live in their head in the background for a long time. Perhaps one day it'll help change their minds.
better-knower should be an adequate translation?
Kudos, both on the term and the way.
Apparently it's a large effort to recruit 100,000(!!) trades people, of all sorts, for a very large effort to build a lot of submarines.
And one thing they certainly need is welders. And they're training.
The opening video even has a female welder in it.
It's more of a grand assembly endeavor than a grand engineering endeavor (like the Apollo program was), but I know my time in the defense industry (supporting naval weapon systems: Standard Missile, Phalanx, RAM, etc.) was an interesting time. I've built enough software systems from seed that grew, flourished, and died with a simple `rm` command to know it can be interesting to point at a big metal hole in the water and say "I helped build that".
To be honest here, she started the lecture. He offered advice she lectured him and "explained why his method wouldn’t work". There was no need for that lecture/explanation.
Had she been a man she'd be challenged in the same way with that response. The right non-provocative response would have been "I can't use the measuring tape since that's only precise to X ...".
He felt put down and he'd have done exactly same had she been a man.
The article refers to various forms of sexism and harassment, including the passage above. I’m absolutely not denying that these things happen in the workplace. That would be insane.
But it is also true that the exact exchange above could completely have happened between two guys. Anyone who knows tradesmen understands that there’s a fair amount of good natured hassling of coworkers that has nothing to do with sexism.
A lot of this work is dangerous and has to happen quickly and on schedule. You’re not really given serious responsibilities until you can demonstrate you’re not going to get someone crushed under a heavy weight or burned.
It might be that she is misinterpreting some of this, but I must concede that she’s kind of a badass because she completed all three years of training and actually does work as a welder.
Personally, there are many jobs that people just don't understand because they just don't interact with them. Welding is one example, but there are many.
My Uncle died with a well deserved lifestyle after doing "large pipe" welding. The definition of large, in this case, was pipe you could theoretically drive a car through. Just to weld the pipe together from plate steel, one would have to weld together a rig to hold the plate, as well as a roller press to bend the plate correctly.
People would be astounded that I, a software developer, would hold a welder in such high esteem, but while I might be (my own, probably faulty estimate) in the top 10,000 he was in the top 100 (again my own, probably faulty estimate). I've seen him walk into a job that took three "lesser" welder (mind you, these are family members, so please don't call them out as such) six hours and complete it in 20 minutes.
I'm what one might call a 10x programmer. That said, he was at least a 100x welder. Alas, he died due to a lung full of chromium, which is a real risk when welding the exotic metals that generally the top welders are asked to work.
I miss him dearly, and Lon (Lonnie) if you can read this from heaven, you're still the best damned welder I've ever seen, and a true master of your craft. You inspire me to do better than I do. I only hope to become as good in my field as you are in yours.
> Alas, he died due to a lung full of chromium, which is a real risk when welding the exotic metals that generally the top welders are asked to work.
This is why. There's no appetite to do this kind of work. People are too comfortable.
I really hate implication of this statement. (You may not have meant exactly this, but I've heard it said with a straight face by others.)
Syllogized: People don't want to do [unpleasant or dangerous job], therefore let's make the rest of life worse so they will.
I can acknowledge the logic to that position, but there is also a logic to let's make [job] less dangerous, more bearable, and / or better compensated.
(To be clear: ensuring safety is broadly speaking the realm of government to enforce. Improving pay and working conditions is the responsibility of employers. Unions can affect both, but require the support of the state to be viable.)
I don't understand why anyone would choose the option which increases human misery. In what moral system is that the right thing to do?
It was simply an observation. I meant the first part of this, not the second part. Try not to read too much into it. No one wants a worse life, however there's also no incentive to improve those job conditions. Historically, once locals stop doing these jobs, they don't pick them back up again. The niche is filled through other means. And that's progress.
Technologists often think of robotics and automation as solutions to the dull, dirty and dangerous, and eventually we will make a field welding robot. In the interim, companies will find outside labour to do the work. Construction in North America is some of the most mechanized in the industrial world because of this trend. Take road paving for example, extremely hazardous work that was largely manual with people shovelling and pressing tar. Now there's a specialized machine that lays down an entire lane at a time, with humans largely relegated to operation and maintenance. Isn't that what we all want? That no one has to do this dangerous work?
In fact, the transition (ie, progress) will come faster if we legislate more-stringent safety regulations, and strengthen workers' bargaining position° in regards to pay and working conditions. Corporations hate that, of course, but increasing labor cost encourages them to invest in innovation.
°I like a UBI, but there are many sensible suggestions, all of which require political will. The anti-labor position you didn't take, but others do, stifles progress.
Welders don't really like their plastic testicles.
> 'comparing me to my co-worker: “You’re better looking than the guy I talked to before.”'
That's just harmless workplace banter. Why not just joke back? If that's worst example of 'sexism' she experienced, then the headline should read: "Welding profession is the least sexist profession in the world". Far less sexist than nursing or academia...
> Although I have a good gig as a full professor at Iowa State University, I’ve daydreamed about learning a trade – something that required both my mind and my hands.
I'm skeptical. I think you daydreamed about writing an article about workplace sexism and welding was just a means to that end.
Perhaps I'm picturing the situation wrong, but why wouldn't it work on the precision levels of a tape measure?
So a "loose" tip on a measuring tape is actually more accurate than a fixed rigid tip that does not move. (though I don't think I've ever seen a tape measure that is lacking this feature)
https://asktooltalk.com/questions/faq/tools/tape_measures/ta...
On a full stick (20/24'), holding an 1/8, especially for hand layout and fabrication, is perfectly fine in most cases.
If you're cutting with a bandsaw - the blade is a lot thinner than that.
And if cutting with a circular saw, the cutting teeth are wider than the main disk of the saw, which complicates matters - and I can't imagine it'd be easy to keep the tape measure hooked on either.
And of course - subtract 1/8 inch? Are you sure you don't mean add 1/8 inch? If you're learning a clever new technique, better to practice on some scrap, not do it on a customer's material while they're watching :)
At the higher level, saws have no undo function. Cut an expensive bit of metal too short? Someone has to pay $$$ for new material. Buddy on another machine did a load of work on the part before you cut it too short? He's going to have to redo it all. Who'll pay for his time? The stock you cut too short was on a long lead-time or urgent project? You just fucked up the schedule.
So if a machinist is doing some work for you and they want to measure twice and cut once - they're doing you a favour :)
Depends which side you measure, and/or how you position the saw relative to the mark, surely?
This is the real key. Emphasis on (professional) machinist.
I have, however, needed to intervene in the thought process of a Home Depot saw operator's idea of how to cut an 8' sheet into three equal pieces of approximately 32" each. :)
Would guess only 5.3% of YC readers are female. And would say, it's posh, not "real world," and it's not comfortable even though I'm a very strong woman - and a welder.
I think the average demographic here is the standard software engineering team in the US, unfortunately. I hope I'm wrong. There are some high profile HN'ers that are women (e.g. DoreenMichele comes to mind).
Fun fact: in eastern Europe (and Russia too?) the gender dynamics of software engineering are much more gender equal compared to the US/EU. Probably other STEM disciplines as well. I'm not sure about welding though.
I'm getting a bit side tracked with my thoughts, it's just that I think it ties into bigger issues.
I remember once being in a feminism class, as the only male, making a case for getting women into stem and it fell on deaf ears. I think that's also in part because women (and men for that matter) that take feminism classes tend to skew liberal artsy. I just happen to have a liberal artsy side and a STEM side (and a cool feminism teacher that was patient enough for all my naive questions so I felt emotionally safe to take her class).
I wish there were more women in the conversation but unfortunately there aren't. The last company I worked for happened to have an equal 50/50 gender split. That was cool. It confirmed what I thought about men and women: ignore gender and focus on personality and their thoughts. I've often been in situations where any form of stereotypes have been thrown out of the window and my last employer was one of them. It's beautiful.
Unfortunately, HN seems to be too big for that. The culture needs to shift and I don't have much of a clue how. I think in part it's with how women versus men are socialized here. Boys that are socially excluded tend to go towards computers. Girls don't really seem to be socially excluded that often compared to boys? Just brainstorming, I might be totally off.
> Are there actually any women in this conversation? I find many of the comments at YC to be obnoxiously male dominant and condescending, this comment section included. It's been frustrating me for quite a while now.
I'm curious how you find them frustrating. When I was reading them, I wasn't quite sure what to think about it.
By the way, I've used a throwaway because of my submission to HN, not because of this comment. I thought I was on my pseudonym account. I have autism (diagnosed in my mid thirties) and I think many people here are on the spectrum, which is what my submission is about.
Indeed. Women are socialized to seek men of higher status as a partner. Thus men feel the need to seek higher status to become an attractive mate. And so men "infiltrate" any position that offers a chance at higher status (at least where high pay stands in as a proxy). Likewise, men are socialized to seek women with beauty rather than status, so there is little imperative for women to seek professions of status, but do benefit from careers that will preserve their beauty – so something like welding in a harsh environment that is hard on one's health is not a top choice.
That said, the social norms do seem to be changing. It appears the younger generations aren't coupling up so much anymore, and if that trend continues attracting a mate may no longer be a consideration.
>You can be mad about it all you want
They will be. Millions of them.
If you're going to imply that one needs to be a woman to understand the female perspective on these social encounters, you could at least be consistent and fair about it. As much as you might tire of seeing discussions like the current one, I tire of the insinuation - across so many discussions I've found myself stuck in across the Internet - that women have some special insight into womanhood, and also some special insight into manhood.
Just as I tire of being urged to have empathy for people unlike myself, then shouted at when my empathy leads me to the "wrong" conclusions, or told that actually having such empathy is impossible on account of my whatever immutable characteristics.
how obnoxiously sexist and feminine
Ugh. I’m a total hack and can do better.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.bmxmuseum.com/user-images/2...
https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.bmxmuseum.com/user-images/2...
Steady hands and a good rhythm are helpful.
I won the top welding student award at my high school. The competition wasn't great. Mostly, I just didn't smoke a ton of pot right before class.
This is why safety critical welds are xray inspected, checked for cracks, etc. Not clear if her diploma included some certs, but those typically will include a bend test and/or xray.
Making welds look good is more than just appearance, the appearance tells a story about how the weld was developed, how the temperature was controlled, how deep the penetration, porosity etc. It's easier to do this than do a post weld validation of weld integrity. TIG welding requires a lot of skill and is not like using a glue gun.
Laser welding on the other hand is much easier. Instead of making the large investment in time to learn how to TIG weld property she could just skip it and go direct to laser.
I agree some of this is class warfare not gender warfare.
Liked the article. Odd to say that of a sad observation of life's iniquities, but it's a good article I think.
For me personally, despite being in tech in a well paying job, at my church and at various volunteer groups I'm part of, I am exposed to people of all backgrounds. And of course, growing up middle class and seeing how my friends and family behaved, I feel way more comfortable among what I consider 'normal' people. It's like two different worlds at work versus in person. Luckily, I'm now at a chipmaker where people seem more level-headed. Something about having to interact with physical constraints makes people more moderate I think. The SW startup world is so far off the rails, I found it difficult to relate.
Is this really harassment? It sounds kinda humorous or complimentary. Author seems to have no sense of humour.
While one person saying this once is not necessarily harassment, the frame of reference has to be from the context of the recipient. Consider how often the author has to hear this or similar comments from customers as a result of being a woman working in a trade.
Brother and I bought and old Chevy. Front end parts so badly worn that could turn steering wheel about 20 degrees before the wheels moved!
Used bumper jacks to raise the front end and rest it on concrete blocks. Took out everything from the steering wheel to the front wheel. The springs were dangerous -- kaBOOM!
Took the worn parts to a Chevy parts department -- they enjoyed helping a teenager do it yourself, first time.
Installed the new parts: Had no spring compressor so used two bumper jacks; had them supporting the car while also using the jacks on the lower A-frames to compress the springs. kaBOOM! as one of the jacks slipped, the spring expanded, the lower A-frame rotated ~180 degrees and hit near the center of the frame (but not me!).
Drove the car to our Buick dealer (family car was a Buick) to have the front end aligned. Mechanic was surprised and pleased to see the work done -- all nice clean parts correctly installed! But he said he couldn't do the alignment because he needed a bending bar for the king pin (vertical heavy iron bar connecting the outer ends of the lower and upper A-frames) so sent me to the shop of a friend. The friend said "Bet you got these nuts too tight ... no you didn't. How'd you know to do that?" Had read a maintenance manual at the city library. He said "We get those manuals ..."!
Shocks were part of the upper A-frame pivots and poor. At a parts shop, got two piston shocks that looked about right, were officially for some Mercury car, and drove to a muffler shop for the needed welding. The shop was pleased to help a do it yourself teenager and with a challenge well outside their usual welding. So, with some fabrication and welding, they got each shock attached to the frame and the front side of the lower A-frame. Worked great for years!
Lesson connected with the OP: People can like helping a teenager do it yourself, alone, a first time, with too little or nothing in information and tools and facing some danger. The muffler shop liked the challenge of doing the one-off, first-time, innovative fabrication and welding! Such a teenager can get a good welcome and respect.
This is not harassment.
I can think of a few instances where I would have looked past women in trade shops and have made a concerted effort not to, but it was because the value in skilled trades work is more than the transaction. there's a significant and physical trust component involved and also an implied relationship with aspects of reciprocity that come with the work. part of that is assessing whether the person you are dealing with can signal the values to facilitate that trust. tropes about sexism don't capture that nuance.
we can talk about sexism from men all day, but for men who are contenders for finding wives and having kids, when young working class women have "a man whose boss is another woman" in the top of their selection criteria, you will see guys lining up to welcome women into trades. until then, the stated reasons for why women don't feel welcome in them will seem inconsistent, evasive, and won't bear much scrutiny.
what the criticisms and entire worldview of the prof seem to lack is an understanding of human desire. great that she learned a useful skill. not great that she's coopting it to drive a narrative from her institutional background at the expense of men for whom this is their actual livelihood.
If she struggles when they ask her to do a 6mm and 8mm weld, guess what, then she shouldn’t get the job. If she does it properly, maybe she should. Complaining about being tired and having to squat to lift things? It’s the job. And having someone tell you your hands are dirty is now harassment? Maybe customer didn’t want a super dirty invoice. Guess what librarians deal with homeless creepers all the time. Welders are not uniquely harassed.
People really ought to have a poll on whether this whole woke equal nature of things matters. In WW2, we had plenty of Rosie the Riveter working. Now less so. Times change, jobs change.
I just want my welds not to break.
I keep wondering if Kurtis from Cutting Edge Engineering will eventually borrow the camera and have Karen do some gouging, metal deposition, and/or MIG welding on stuff to show how fun it is. Also, the combination of liquid nitrogen and flame for interference fit parts is pretty cool too.
Respect to her for actually doing it unlike every other email-job-holder who just revels in telling other people to learn a trade.
And more discussion around these issues is more likely to lead to positive outcomes than ignoring them.
Sometimes I wonder.
The left spends a lot of time pointing out that the right is bigoted, and the right just shrugs, because so what? These two groups disagree on whether there is a problem.
I think you are the only one who said that?
The more women are welders, the weaker the social constraints become against women being welders; or things like welders, because the stereotypes we're talking about aren't generally so narrow.
Women aren't a special case. Lots of people are hemmed in by stereotypes and biases. Why shouldn't they be free? Well, people who get the opportunities others are fenced out of do benefit from the biases, but that's not a noble motivation.
Lighter batteries and brushless and mass production allowing for a quick jump in and companies like Ryobi's making tools look good (but not cliched pink) and how-to's on TikTok have changed the landscape.
We have gone from upkeep at home to asset building.
Some of this will go to careers, but it's not that simple.
HN isn't mature enough to discuss this but men die in dirty jobs, no one really cares. For every one who dies many are hurt and for the many injuries there are many many near misses.
A near miss is often about reaction times and strength. These 1% issues are the problem. You are 3 hours from anywhere and stuck in mud by yourself and the tool kit is missing. So you can get the 5.3% up, but it can't be 50%
Funny, I thought it was about safety procedures and culture. Leaving accident avoidance up to reflexes is an incredibly poor way to build anything safely right?