Comment by fusiongyro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fusiongyro | Hacker News Reader

My impression from reading about the "brouhaha" here on HN is that people were mainly talking about the flaws of the policy itself. A lot of friction and hot air, but fundamentally, taking away a major employee perk isn't going to be easy even if it's obvious-in-black-and-white better for everyone, and this one is very grey. The one thing most people seem to agree on is that Yahoo! is not in a great position to be making stern pronouncements—after all, there are better companies hiring on both sides of the debate.

I see very little of this as having anything to do with Mayer-as-Mayer or Mayer-as-a-woman and almost all the reaction here having to do with Mayer-as-a-technology-CEO. Can't speak for the greater world, though I think my coworkers would agree out here in the middle of nowhere.

But I'm really here to bellyache about the format of this content. There are so many blog posts that read "Paragraph 1. In this post I'm going to tell you X. Paragraph 2: X! Paragraph 3: In conclusion, I think X." The length here is an improvement but I'm not sure a three page essay really warrants a table of contents of five parts.

> I see very little of this as having anything to do with Mayer-as-Mayer or Mayer-as-a-woman and almost all the reaction here having to do with Mayer-as-a-technology-CEO.

And this, I must say, I like a lot.

As IT industry, we might not be there yet when it comes to eradicating sexism, but at least it seems that this test has been passed successfully. Strongly as some may feel about Meyer's policy, it has been criticized almost exclusively on the grounds of merit and predicted effectiveness in achieving its desired goal (i.e. making the company more innovative). Little I've seen references to Meyer's gender and/or maternity playing a role here; that article (and the NYC article it quotes) look like exceptions rather than a rule.

That's the IT/hacker community I like and respect.

> There are so many blog posts that read "Paragraph 1. In this post I'm going to tell you X. Paragraph 2: X! Paragraph 3: In conclusion, I think X."

This is a classic persuasive writing/speaking technique, and often quite effective when used well. I think people try to shoehorn an otherwise expository or short-form post into that form because it's worked for them in the past.

To be clear, it's most effective when working with a subject matter lengthy enough to exceed the standard short-term attention span of ~5 minutes or so.

In this response, I'm going to tell you that I think it's pedantic and wasteful, and mainly done to take up extra space.

It's my honest opinion that people do this because they want to take up extra space, and because they vaguely remember someone in school telling them "that's how you should write an essay." But that doesn't mean it's appropriate. In many cases, it simply adds bloat. Unnecessary scaffolding upon which nothing hangs but empty air.

In conclusion, I disagree with you, because I think the form is overused and leads to pervasive snoring. It could be used well, but if it were I wouldn't be complaining about it. I have now explained why I think this is and now I invite you and/or the reader to draw your/their own conclusion/s.

In this case, it's a publishing artifact. I wrote the content in parts for the sake of Sulia, which has a 2,500 character limit on posts.

On the other hand, there is real value to using subheads; I'd rather lampshade transitions with subheads than write so-so transitional paragraphs.

You have extremely poor reading comprehension if you think I was disagreeing with you. As I said, it doesn't work well in very short examples.

Oh come on, that was comedy gold.

I think Hacker News is a more sophisticated venue than most; the mainstream media and the tech blogs haven't maintained that same focus on the real issues.

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