Technology’s Man Problem | Hacker News Reader

Technology’s Man Problem

nytimes.com

87 pointsmetermaid69 comments

Ashe Dryden, along with other members of the Ada Initiative, launched a smear campaign against a man who was cleared of all charges in a domestic dispute.

One AI member, Leigh Honeywell, tweeted that she "want[s] anyone who googles [name] in the future to know he was arrested for DV" (she now tweets under "ennui as a service"). Several members of Ada, including Ashe, have signed a statement against him.

The Ada Initiative continues to host a page devoted to the charges which have been fully dropped against the man in question.

While I'm all for, and have encouraged, women in tech, and have worked with some very talented women (and men), a line is crossed when people move from advocacy to specific smear campaigns against specific individuals. There are courts and a justice system for a purpose, and while they may be imperfect, taking the law and justice into your own hands, publicly, in what is almost always a very, very messy situation, is crossing a line I cannot countenance.

I really can't stand by Ada, Ashe, or others associated with it.

The situation you describe is indeed awful, if true. Yet I cannot see how it is related to the article posted. Unless I am mistaken, that was about different people doing other problematic things. Perhaps we are supposed to view it as just tit-for-tat (no pun intended) in an ongoing battle of the sexes? If so, I really cannot agree with the context of your comment.

Well, I now notice Dryden was quoted in the article, though she does not seem to be involved in the events recounted in the story. So your comment is circumstantially related.

I'm not directly involved, but Dryden, Ada, and the man in question have all posted on it, and the accounts are largely in agreement.

As you noted: Dryden is quoted in this article. I don't consider her to have any moral authority based on her actions.

Taking the formal lawsuit route is also seen as dirty and ruins careers, so there's really no easy way to deal with this stuff when it's happening.

Court cases are expensive and messy, but they involve both sides presenting their evidence and testimony, and an impartial authority considering both sides of the situation.

Having seen adversarial vs. nonadversarial processes in action, I prefer the adversarial process. Incentives to perform due diligence in nonadversarial circumstances are highly flawed.

There are also the options of mediation or other resolution systems which streamline process and costs, though this isn't always possible.

This is bad enough on its own, but especially disturbing in light of the blog post linked by calibraxis, elsewhere in this thread, in which Dryden advocates 1950s-style industry blacklisting.

Charges against Michael Schwern were dropped and not pursued by the DA, but this is not the same as an exoneration. That fact is not a statement on guilt or non guilt. If organizations don't want to be associated with him because of that, they do not have to.

> The Ada Initiative continues to host a page devoted to the charges which have been fully dropped against the man in question.

Wouldn't we expect them to keep their pledge not to work with him up and public? What the charges were factored in to their decision, and those factors should be listed.

> There are courts and a justice system for a purpose, and while they may be imperfect, taking the law and justice into your own hands, publicly, in what is almost always a very, very messy situation, is crossing a line I cannot countenance.

Are you serious? The rates of successful prosecution for domestic violence and rape are laughable, people have a right to protect themselves though other means if that's all they have available (that includes rumors).

The article is great and pretty accurate.

>Women often take on the role of product manager, or P.M., which entails the so-called soft skills of managing people and bridging the business and engineering divide. Yet even though this is an essential job, it’s the purely technical people — not the businesspeople — who get the respect in the tech industry.

Well, I think PMs are universally reviled, male or female :)

It's a sweeping, evidence-free generalization nonetheless – business people in tech get no respect? Really now? If you list the most well-known names I would bet ~0% of them are purely technical

Business people in tech get no respect from the purely technical folks. "Every" programmer hates their PM.

Yes it's a generalization and thus false by definition. But there's a lot of truth to it. Project Managers are a nicer way of saying "boss" or "manager" in a lot of ways even if they don't hire & fire and thus yes, there are tons of people who don't like their boss.

Sure PMs are supposed to be more west-coast management style and delegate and herd cats but there's always shitty work that SOMEONE has to do and thus they end up having to do the east-cost top-down style stuff from time to time. And that engenders negative feelings no matter the sex of the person.

Business people get no respect because when asked about business logic they'll reply one way "definitively" and then 3 months later -- when it's critical for them to make a deal -- they'll change their mind about a thing "that will never change" and make extra work for a programmer. Programmers, being lazy by nature, hate this and that's why business people "get no respect" in tech. From the tech folks, not from management or broader society, but from the people who do the technical stuff.

You are adding qualifiers to it that were not present. It's a careless, obviously mostly false claim. An idea so tenuous should need evidential support, much less handwaving. I don't get the feeling the author put much thought into it.

The article said:

"it’s the purely technical people — not the businesspeople — who get the respect in the tech industry."

Simply put. Which is thoughtless nonsense that belongs in a poorly thought out livejournal post and not in a serious article in the new york times.

I've always found that having a good project manager on my projects has been a huge help. It lets me focus on the task at hand. I've stepped into the PM role occasionally, I find it to be difficult and stressful. Trying to minimise the time that people are blocked while protecting the team from direct client stress.

Appreciate your project manager ;)

Oh, hey, Ashe Dryden! Last I ran into her, she was busily advocating an overt hiring blacklist because some people on 4chan made fun of a blog post. I'm surprised to find her quoted in such a relatively even-handed article on the subject.

Ashe Dryden's excellent work speaks for itself. (As opposed to evidence-free chatter on HN, which NYT says can feel like "hostile territory for women".) It's nice overhearing people in real life speak glowingly about how her voice needs to be better heard. Can't wait to get her upcoming book and use it to help build a healthy team. (http://www.ashedryden.com/)

In another thread here, Alan Kay mentions how people with great ideas tend to be burned as heretics. As she mentioned in this article, "I've gotten rape and death threats just for speaking out about this stuff."

Dryden has certainly done some work for conference inclusiveness, but as a whole she is a highly polarizing figure. She is often blatantly provocative on social media, especially Twitter. She is a hardcore postmodernist and parrots Western guilt complex sociological theories that are popular today like gospel, as well as pushing identity politics to a maximum. Such people typically tend to revel in hatred and proudly exaggerate the trolling that they've received as evidence of their victimization and righteousness.

That and the whole blacklist thing.

> evidence-free chatter

Dryden deleted the tweet not long after posting, but see http://archive.is/GhW8N for substantiation. In all fairness, I must note that Dryden herself didn't introduce the word "blacklist"; one of her followers did that, in the course of picking up the ball and running with it. Another follower had this to say on the subject:

> I'm going through the saved list [of those who starred the "C-plus-Equality" joke Github repo] to find the Swedish and UK citizens. Already found 2. They can expect the police shortly. :3

It's the smiley, I think, that really sells it. And a little while later, this in response from yet another follower:

> Wished we were protected with hatespeech laws here in the US. uggghhh #firstammendment #isajoke

I don't claim Dryden has produced nothing of value, but I doubt I'm alone in finding it difficult to distinguish between the Dryden who's worth listening to and the Dryden whose friends and correspondents respond to satire by attempting to destroy the livelihoods of those who find it amusing.

Yep, the moment attackers have to provide evidence, everyone sees Ashe didn't say anything even resembling "advocating an overt hiring blacklist".

(BTW, what her Twitter "correspondents" say is about as illuminating as what our HN "correspondents" say.)

I typed the word "blacklist" in Dryden's blog search bar and the evidence magically manifested itself: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/weve-all-got-a-list

Please read your link. Ashe says, "Below are some of the reasons many people have told me they want something like this. Note that these do not necessarily fall in line with my beliefs, but I am putting them all in one place because I hear them so frequently."

And she also mentions that, as self-defense, people who've gone through harassment and death threats necessarily have lists of abusers. This is uncontroversial.

Personally, speaking for myself, I also think it's reasonable to discuss whether it's appropriate to hire those who commit "physical violence and sexual assault in our community spaces." It can get in the way of sprints.

Private lists of toxic people are one thing. Public, crowdsourced lists of people who should not be permitted to earn a livelihood, in the industry where they have built their entire careers, are quite another.

The disclaimers of advocacy, on which you place so much weight, ring rather hollow in light of the entire rest of the post, and especially the last couple of paragraphs:

> So how does this get fixed? Truthfully, I don't know. The problem is so systemic in our communities. Fixing this is going to require buy-in from a vocal and powerful majority of people. It's going to have to mean people losing opportunities and their standing in our communities because of the things they do.

> We cannot reprimand someone for their behavior while still allowing them to enjoy the privileges of their position without sending the message that we are somehow condoning their abusive actions.

I concede that the words "We should maintain and enforce a blacklist" appear nowhere in Dryden's post. If that is the standard of evidence you require, before you'll entertain the suggestion that a blacklist is something Dryden advocates, then I see no point in our even attempting to have anything resembling a conversation.

Otherwise, consider that offenses worthy of blacklisting, as enumerated in Dryden's first paragraph, range from battery and sexual assault -- which are felonies, not merely "bad behavior", and should be prosecuted as such -- to...dismissiveness. Perhaps you consider it reasonable for someone to equate peremptory rudeness and felony. That I should find it necessary even to entertain the possibility, that anyone finds that equation reasonable, is something that scares the hell out of me.

Computer science wasn’t always dominated by men. “In the beginning, the word ‘computers’ meant ‘women,’ ” says Ruth Oldenziel, a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands who studies history, gender and technology. Six women programmed one of the most famous computers in history — the 30-ton Eniac — for the United States Army during World War II.

This is misleading.

First of all, it confuses "computer science" with "programming". Yes, programming certainly had high female presence back then. However, it was also largely considered a menial job - number crunching. Computer scientists were still majority male.

And it doesn't stop there. Later the article says:

>computer engineering, the most innovative sector of the economy

Even though computer engineering is neither computer science nor programming. It's a little linguistic sleight-of-hand the author pulls.

FWIW, according to this chart [1] I found, computer science itself, the bug bear of the article, is not the most innovative sector. It's farther down the list than computer engineering, electronic components, machinery, transportation, chemicals and even consumer products.

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/innovation

    according to an analysis of patents

Ergo that chart is bullshit. I stopped reading there.

So actual, real, living people working in (what I assume is) our industry, say they feel uncomfortable, threatened and marginalized, and your reaction is nitpicking on the difference between programming and computer science?

It's hardly a nitpick, they're presenting deceptive information.

I don't understand. You have information showing that women in tech don't feel uncomfortable and marginalized? Because that's the important point here.

It's not that I'm denying the article's premise, it's that they're using misleading information to back up their claims.

The very next paragraph says that "once programming gained prestige, women were pushed out." Isn't that basically the same point you're making?

The articles I haven't seen yet:

1. Welding's Man Problem

http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20130125/AIK0101/130129...

2. Nursing's Women Problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing

3. Hooters (and others) Women Problem

http://blogs.findlaw.com/free_enterprise/2009/04/can-men-be-...

I get that I live in a bubble surrounded by only tech news. But when I was in school I knew plenty of women in nursing and it seemed as though the lack of diversity wasn't keeping them up at night. The median nursing salary in the bay area is definitely competitive with and possibly better than programming.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-nurse/s...

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programme...

I also get that there are plenty of dudes in tech being giant assholes or chauvinistic or sexist or misogynist or whatever other words you'd like to call them. But why is that so much more of a problem than the obvious sexism in other areas? What I mean is why is there a NYT article on male computer programmers behaving badly and not one on male welders behaving badly? I'm not suggesting that either one should get away with it, bad behavior is bad behavior. But why is it newsworthy in tech and not in welding?

Because society badly needs technology solutions to its problems, and it doesn't help if alpha male "broey-ness" excludes whole segments of society from being able to pitch in and work on them.

You'd also think tech would be a forward thinking industry that considers any discriminatory "ism" to be overall harmful and a problem to be worked on like any other.

>Nursing's Women Problem

While there are fewer men in nursing (and I'm sure being a man in a traditionally female-dominated industry comes with its own set of challenges) they tend to command higher salaries and faster promotions than women [1]. Compare this to tech, where women as a minority tend to be paid less.

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/male-nurses-beco...

"Today, even as so many barriers have fallen — whether at elite universities, where women outnumber men, or in running for the presidency, where polls show that fewer people think gender makes a difference — computer engineering, the most innovative sector of the economy, remains behind. "

With younger demographics showing far less bias towards gender in polls and elsewhere, and with the tech scene bringing in so much young talent, why is it that non-males are still not accepted as peers by the general male tech crowd? If anything, shouldn't the tech community have accepted non-males long before other industries given these circumstances?

That's a good question. However, polls don't necessarily tell us what's really going on, since:

- People can lie to pollsters because they're not comfortable admitting their true biases.

- People may not have enough maturity or empathy to realize that their own behavior is offensive to others, so they don't think the questions about bias apply to themselves.

Also, the "tech industry" is much bigger than the small world of Silicon Valley startups. In the wider corporate world, where there's more diversity of age and sex (and more HR people keeping a watchful eye on employees), the accepted norms of behavior are very different from "bro culture".

>elite universities, where women outnumber men, or in running for the presidency, where polls show that fewer people think gender makes a difference

>computer engineering, the most innovative sector of the economy, remains behind

Peculiar why people attribute the former to the natural order of things, while simultaneously attributing the latter to bias.

Of course you also can't (reliably) measure bias by asking people if they are biased (as in a poll).

Granted.

Considering that most elite universities started as male only and have taken a long path to inclusion, it is unlikely the power dynamics there have gone from biased pro male to biased pro female. So yes, the hard won primacy of women in higher education is probably the natural order of things.

Or it could be a sign that the lack of male teachers in our primary education system somehow has an effect on male student performance? Primary school teachers used to be mostly male so the teacher gender balance has clearly changed over time, but it seems incredibly hard to study this subject.

Personally I think it is important for our society that kids get more exposure to male role-models and caretakers.

>Considering that most elite universities started as male only and have taken a long path to inclusion,

>it is unlikely the power dynamics there have gone from biased pro male to biased pro female.

>So yes, the hard won primacy of women in higher education is probably the natural order of things.

Neither of your conclusions follow from your premise.

I sincerely hope the average HNer reading this more or less agrees, but does not comment. I'd have a hard time stomaching the idea that these comments are actually representative of the community.

Both men and women would benefit from learning more about nerd culture and women:

http://calculatedbravery.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/on-nerds/

That blog post is bad and you should feel bad. Seriously? Men can be low-status while women can't, because women have bodies to show off?

Please tell me, at the very least, that you didn't actually write that.

Yup. Jeez. Analyzing pictures of women to say whether they're attractive is about as big a red flag as there can be.

I thought this was great. It makes sense. Also evidenced by the fact that theres not a lot of women at the peak of economic accomplishment, but also not a lot of women in the homeless shelters in the dregs of society.

Very frustrated that I don't have enough karma to downvote. Grow up.

> "A culprit, many people in the field say, is a sexist, alpha-male culture that can make women and other people who don’t fit the mold feel unwelcome, demeaned or even endangered."

Wait, did someone just call programmer culture an "alpha-male" culture? That's hilarious.

When are people going to stop bitching about there not being enough women in <insert industry of choice>? Who cares? Like another comment said - nobody complains about there not being enough men in nursing.

I'm really sick of this whole victimization mindset that a lot of women embrace. In any male-dominated industry, there are bound to be cases of sexual harassment and misconduct. Nobody condones that. And frankly, there's really not much more anybody can do to fix it.

Technology and programming are among the most meritocratic industries in existence. All it takes is a computer and an internet connection. If you can code well and build great things, nobody cares whether you're a woman or some 13 year old nerd with Asperger's who gets bullied at school.

Oh and if you're outraged by some dumb boob app that a couple guys coded for fun at a Hackathon, you have your head way too far up your ass and need to stop taking yourself so seriously.

> And frankly, there's really not much more anybody can do to fix it.

Yes there is.

Whenever it happens we can all stand up and say together that it is not appropriate and that it will not be tolerated.

I was talking on a societal scale. Obviously in any specific instance of sexism/harassment, people can and should stand up.

> "When are people going to stop bitching"

Well, throwing around words like that so casually in a conversation about gender in tech certainly doesn't help.

> ...cases of sexual harassment and misconduct. Nobody condones that.

No, that would make us feel bad. So instead, every time something happens that we really can't ignore (and that is just the tip of the iceberg) we deny, justify, rationalize or otherwise deny that sexism, sexual harassment etcetera have actually taken place.

You can read any thread on HN about any incident and you'll find it full of apologism and denial.

And it's not just about women. Anything concerning minorities will get the same treatment. Or in a more recent example, all the threads surrounding the Eich debacle were full of comments suggesting that having a raging homophobe in charge one of the most prominent tech organisations is not an issue and disparaging the "liberal" lynch mob.

No, we don't condone anything. We just deny, deny, deny, and round it off by shooting the messenger.

Your comment is an excellent example of that.

In fact, it's pretty much a textbook example of how this so-called tech meritocracy functions. Including the small print that says "and oh, you'll also have to be one of us...".

Your comment on the Eich case doesn't make any sense, and seems completely irrelevant to the first part where you talk about 'sexism, sexual harassment etcetera' being rationalised. The reason that people were defending him was because nothing actually had happened at Mozilla.

He's been there since the Mozilla foundation was started but the chairman of the board said she was surprised about a political donation six years ago "because I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness," but apparently you, who I can presume don't know him at all can say with all certainty that he is a 'raging homophobe.'

If there was any evidence that he had ever discriminated against any of his coworkers in his duties at Mozilla or treated any badly because they were LGBT, then you would have a point, but there wasn't.

People do complain about there not being enough men in nursing.

> Oh and if you're outraged by some dumb boob app that a couple guys coded for fun at a Hackathon, you have your head way too far up your ass and need to stop taking yourself so seriously.

Calling it outrage is disingenuous, just a way of making it seem unreasonable in order to easily dismiss it. Better to think of it as one of the "thousand cuts" that drive women out of the industry.

from the title of the article, i thought this was going to be about the fact that there are a lot of tech jobs to distribute among a small number of people (male and female) compared to some other industries...

... immediately realizing that the article is about a very real difficulty (gender imbalance) for many lines of work, i immediately stopped reading, because based on the title alone, i suspect it's more of the (unfortunately) usual points.

for my two cents, i certainly would like to see more female programmers &/or mathematicians out there and am completely baffled about why, especially in academia, where it can be significantly easier to get into some math programs as a grad student, there aren't more women trying it out. perhaps because of articles talking about how problematic math and programming can be for women rather than about successful female mathematicians and programmers? i mean, there are definitely negative experiences that need to get out there, but i hope they don't obscure the fact that there are women in math/cs areas that have positive experiences as well.

You know... there's a lot of writing about that too. You're presenting a false choice, and then suggesting a theory that doesn't really have any basis but suggests that people writing about problems are actually part of the problem they're trying to solve.

I know women who have great experiences in math and computer science. I don't think any of them haven't had their experience at least partially colored by male privilege.

yeah, it's a difficult topic. probably shouldn't have put forward that "theory." should've just been like this guy ( http://www.infoq.com/presentations/culture-hacking-singapore ) and said, "we want women," in block capitals.

The article is out for vengeance. "Titstare" isn't even a real app, but satire. The article uses this joke as an example of technology's "man problem."

Men: you cannot make sex jokes in public, especially at tech conferences. Any sexual innuendo will be labeled misogynistic. Don't forget about the two guys who got fired after joking about "forking" and "dongles."

Male co-workers can make crude jokes between one another and laugh about it. But say anything sexual and if a woman hears it, you will be labeled sexist, misogynistic, and reported to HR or shamed on Twitter.

And women wonder why they feel excluded from their male peers...

There's nothing about that article that was "out for vengeance". It was a pretty even-handed look at what is a very present issue in tech culture today.

By the way, while I realize those admonishments were tongue-in-cheek, they were, in fact, largely correct. The problem isn't so much that we shouldn't be telling sex jokes in a public, professional forum. It's that you seem to think you have a right to do so free of the consequences of violating social norms. When women and minorities speak about privilege—that's part of what they're pointing at.

There's nothing about that article that was "out for vengeance". It was a pretty even-handed look at what is a very present issue in tech culture today.

It started off with the title - "Man Problem". That is, the men are the source of the problem.

It asserts that the problem is not a lack of women, or something that women are doing, or that women are not stepping up and seizing what they want. No, instead, the problem is that the 'evil' men in tech are being mean and not letting the poor defenseless girls play with their evil male tech toys.

Well, so what? Like many fields, tech is competitive and people play hardball. If women can't take the heat, maybe they can go into a field where they are the majority - nursing, cosmetology, fashion - and give the men a hard time.

I remember a co-worker inviting to his place, with others also invited. He asked me if I had had sex with a female coworker since, I suppose, that upon first meeting her, we got along very amiably at work.

It seemed like a confession of character moment, though it was expressed in a joking manner. It was a kind of contextual humor.

Is $5 typical for beer served at a dive bar in NYC?

If you order the cheap stuff. PBR can go for as little as $4, or $3 in brooklyn

It still seems kinda expensive, especially for a dive.

This article is hilarious. It neglects to mention that computer science programs(engineering in general) is 90 percent guys.

Engineering is probably the hardest major from a math and hard work perspective.

Almost seems like women want a voice without having to do any of that pesky work.

They're also majority White. Are you saying minorities also don't want to do any "pesky work"?

The numbers speak for theselves. Movements are how things change. And youre not going to start a movement if 99% of your age/gender/ethnicity isnt even remotely interested in the subject much less the cause.

The ones that are interested are getting subtly insulted and pushed out. That's the point of the article.

Youre saying the reason physics and engineering departments are 1% females is because theres massive widespread discrimination across EVERY department at every college in THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Thats the best explanation? Not that society is socially condintioning women, not that women are biologically different and choose care giver professions. Nope no other reasons.

You just schooled me. They are getting insulted. Thanks for solving the problem!

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